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The Přerov Qualification Tournament 2011

Přerov, CZ, Sun March 27^th 2011

 

 

I looked forward to this one. Let alone if I could have gone there already some years ago but had to cancel my participation for health reasons.

There's no way one could get to the Přerov tourn from Trutnov without arriving a day before the tournament and leaving a day after, but oh well. I had promised to my Olomouc friends that I'd come to see them but I'd already once had to cancel it, and so we looked forward to see one another the more.

Before that I stopped by in Brno, but there turned out to be nothing much to do. Apart from buying a few candies (not even the typical Moravian ones, which weren't currently on sale – shit!!!) I was totally disappointed, the town not even offering the spell it once had for me.

So in the evening I headed straight for Olomouc. Now I had to take another hour's trip, this time by the public transport to the Olomouc outskirts where the friends of mine lived. Let's call the two by first names – Jana and Jakub, Jakub being Jana's 13-year-old son.

We had a supper together about which Jana said she had told Jakub to prepare. It was excellent, but Jakub blurted out the truth – it was Jana's work of art, duh.

We then had a game of scrabble: the two are both rather low-rated on the scrabble site – guess who won. Nope! I was the last – Jana having won and Jakub being the second, although beating me by about ten points.

Shit just happens. I just hope it's not meant to be an omen of the upcoming tourn.

Jakub looked forward to going to Přerov with me, though just as a spectator. He looked forward to meeting a lot of players from the scrabble site in person. I tried to talk him into taking part in the tournament actively, just for fun – just as many “back tables players” do – but he said he didn't have the guts, let alone if he'd have to pay CZK 300 entrance fee in that case.

However, the devil piped in – later that afternoon, Jakub caught a fever. He's sick quite often, but I thought if he was two weeks before that, we could be sure he wasn't gonna be.

“Heck, and I looked forward to going there so much,” he frowned.

“No worries – this is not a regular annual tourn, but in like two or three years it might be held again,” I tried to comfort him.

“Well, what a solace!” he grinned ironically. “Now I have to wait for two or three years. I'll be like seventeen by then.”

 

I had a plan of the street drawn by Jana, as Jakub couldn't accompany me to the town bus stop as originally planned. It wasn't all that difficult after all.

 

As we reckoned, I got to the station in time. Taking the express fast train, I was there in some ten minutes, having had to watch out in order not to miss it. The route from the station to where the tourn was to take place was described on the site and I just copied it into my scrabble notebook before I hit the road.

 

As I am approaching the Precheza company canteen where the tournament is supposed to be held, I meet some of its participants – an unshakable sign of going the right way. I join them and we get there about half an hour before the beginning, which, as usual, we make use of by verifying the completeness of the scrabble sets. I greet Katka Rusá and help her verify the one she's sitting over.

The crazy gal has brought her bike along, saying she's gonna cycle all the way back to Prague after the tournament. 300 kilometers! Wonder how you gonna survive that, let alone go to work the next day.

“I don't enjoy scrabble anymore,” this 2003 Czech Scrabble Championess reminds me before the tourn via Facebook chat. “I do enjoy cycling though. So I'm going to the tourn and looking forward to cycling the way back.”

Holy moley. The world is full of paradoxes and the scrabble part of it is no exception.

 

Seeded at table #13 of 32, I get 1788-rated Pavel Chaloupka for my first opponent. You may remember it's him who holds the January tourn in Kladno; a top-21 scrabble veteran (on the scrabble tourn scene since 1999) that has managed to get into the finals 11 times – every year from 2000 to 2010.

Sounds like hard work and no fun, eh? Indeed. I have played against him just once so far and lost (not counting our online games at the scrabble site, where I last won over him on 9/1 last year – not too fequent a winning either!).

I've said that a thousand times. A game against a top player is tough, but when on top of that tiles fall his way, the game is just impossible. And they do, even in such a conspicuous way that he himself has to acknowledge it. He gets a blank and plays a nice bingo with it: when it turns out a couple of moves later that he has the other blank, too, I try hard to compose a pure bing of my own, but what I keep getting to the six-letter “bingo-prone” combination is a seventh shit. I watch the free triple-word O15 field which is currently the only and best place I could use.

Now, whadya think he does?

Yeah – shoves a bingo right on this triple using the other blank he had gotten in the meantime. When I get the 5-point Ú and am about to place it on a double triple spot to get me over 300 at least, he jams the spot just before that. Why lose more words about that – one of those completely fucked games in advance. I lose 438 – 278.

Fuck. Is this what the whole tourn's gonna look like? If your first game usually predetermines the character of the tourn for ya, looks like I've come the 250 kms for a kick in the ass.

A fall to table # 21 and Lenka Paličková for my second opponent. I defeat her even in spite of a bingo from her side 323 – 275, which pushes me a little up in the continuous ranking of the tourn, to the 46^th place of 64.

Our team capo Pavel Žibřid goes by to show off his first-round result: he sure has a reason why! He's just kicked the ass of a triple National Champ Pavel Podbrdský who, apart from his skills, has been known for being a lucky one (and yes the “one” represents the former subject “ass”). Now, Lady Luck had apparently forsaken him as against Pavel Žibřid he ain't ever gotten over 260 – he lost 259 – 430. “He ain't even told me to fuck off,” Pavel Žibřid glossed it with a grin.

“What about you – did you win?” he asks me.

“Yeah,” I say bluntly. A 1522-rated opponent – not much of a reason for a trace of joy in my voice.

“Against whom?”

“Lenka Paličková,” I lash my hand.

“Well, don't be mistaken, she's dangerous!” There's a tone of acknowledgement in his answer – and if such a scrabble macho says that, it can't not be true.

Katka Rusá shows her knees – no way to deny her hell of a ride from Prague. The traces of pressure were a little too plain see. “That's brutal,” Pavel comments on that.

“I wonder how she rode along the highway,” Pepa Grosskopf laughs.

 

Not only the tourn was fucked – the toilet wasn't shit here, too. There was just this one pissoir so you had to stand in line even at the Gents, not only at the Ladies which was something you had already been used to.

The toilet wasn't shit – as you might rightly think, yeah, one toilet, again. It wasn't shit in the idiomatic sense – it definitely was in the literal one, though. When one wanted to go take a dump, he had to wait for the former dumptaker to finish. So everytime you had to take one, you entered a gas chamber of bad smell.

“So how was it – a friendly environment, eh?” Martin Vacek grins at me as I walk out.

“Kinda,” I sneer back.

 

As I return, I find out I'm almost late. The third round is about to begin, so I shuffle around to find table #16 where I'm supposed to be playing. Nobody's there, though.

“Over here,” Lída Rusá, Katka's sister, waves her hand in my direction from a table in the very front of the room. I couldn't understand why over there when we are assigned to play at #13.

“We are always here,” Lída explains. Now, I maybe could reveal who she means by “we” and why those “we” are “always here“ at the one particular table in the front.

That's to say, my upcoming opponent is not going to be her, but Petr Burda. A guy my age confined to a wheelchair, in whose case not only the legs but also the hands are disabled so he just tells Lída the position of the words he wants to make and she, being officially called his assistant, lays them on the board for him.

Don't be mistaken – he's pretty dangerous. I play him on the site from time to time where he's got quite a rating; I just wonder how he operates the mouse and keyboard. Maybe it responds to his voice somehow, or PC work may be something he can do even with these feeble hands.

 

The second move of mine in this game was my best in the whole tournament – a pure triple bingo for 95. But then Lady Luck turned her ass on me. He got a blank and made a bingo with it. When I evened up the difference, he got the other blank and made off with another bingo. Even this one I managed to level up with big fat moves; he was there with one of his, though, straightaway. I played vciť – an imperative of vcítit, to put oneself in someone else's shoes. The ť being on double-double, the whole word yielded 36. Now that I hoped to be safely away from his threat – he plays his killer also for 36, while what I draw from the bottom is a real sediment – a worst shit you can imagine. So when Petr goes out and adds this shit, he wins by a bit, mere 15: 391 – 376.

“Well, a hell of a luck on my side,” he admitted when receiving my congratulation. Indeed – not a big deal to win with both blanks and two bingos by 15.

 

At least something to look forward to now – the dinner. I turn on my MP3 player and the song which starts playing grasps the tournament situation in words – no other, of course, than Avril's What the Hell.

“The salad is tasty,” Pavel Žibřid makes a literal sour face.

I have a beer and sit back down opposite him. A beer a day keeps the doc away – but hey, I've been sitting opposite one for about half an hour!

Fourth round, this time me against the scrabble association director, Pavel Vojáček. But if I thought I'd scalp this one at least to level up the bad luck ... no way. I was getting ahead at the beginning of the game, but then he played a tripled bingo for 92 and I just couldn't catch up with the shit I kept getting. My blank, of course, did not come until the end of the game when it was already useless. When he goes out, the leftover I have t deduct even knocks me under 300. I lose 299 – 381, but if I thought that took the biscuit, it didn't. That's to say, I got Pepa Grosskopf in the fifth round as my next opponent, and although I started off with a pure bingo, in the end I lost by seven points – 347 – 340.

Although I force myself to a grin while congratulating, in fact I'm, of course, pissed off as hell. Getting beaten, though by seven points, by a 1400-er! Shittttt. Oh well, as Jirka Kamín once said – anyone is beatable and you can as well lose to anyone.

Pissed off as I could be, I fall as low as table #27. 27 of 32 – what a downfall. But do you think I'll get a wimp now to play against and have a rest? I hadn't gotten one before and – no, there isn't one scheduled on the sixth-round match-ups against me, either: Marek Lašťovka. Another top player currently in the top 50 who has been on the tourn scene for over 11 years and has made it to the Finals six times, twice of that finishing as high as eighth there.

Today, though, in the 5^th round he ends up at table #27 of 32  – and it seemed like at last an interesting game, as it was going to be between two guys whom luck had totally forsaken at this tourn. But when I looked around, I saw I wasn't by far alone in this: many a player qualified for last year's Finals was sitting at the neighboring tables with one win so far I like I have, such as Jindra Zbyněk Burda (table #29) or Jindra Voráčková (table #28) who, as always, “didn't care”. When the tourn vet Jana Vacková mentioned to her that she's been “enjoying it less and less”, meaning the tourns, Jindra Voráčková, a tourn vet just like her, replied, “me I haven't been enjoying them for four years already. I attend them because Jarda [Buksa – her live-in boyfriend, top-25 veteran player and a frequent finalist too] does.”

 

Who is doing do good, though, is a buddy of mine from the scrabble site Marián Viochna, rated 1695 (he's going to end up as high as ninth). By the end of the tourn he makes it as high as table #2. Saša Willerthová, a tourn vet from Ostrava, who you'd say she oozes charm until she opens her foul mouth, says to him:

“I tell ya, man, doan fuck tonite. Cuz everytime you do good at a tourn and then get laid with your gal, you gonna get her with twins.” A few of us couldn't help letting a laugh on hearing that – that's what really happened a few years ago to Marián.

Seventh round – to continue the fucked nature of the tournament, I'm sent against Jindřich Sikora, the beer-bellied drunkard that noplayed me at the site years ago. What is it that decides the game which seems to be neck and neck until even more than its first half? Right – he gets both blanks, makes a primitive bingo with it. Although I do my best to even up the difference, without any tiny bit of luck it's just impossible. I lose 341 – 371. 55^th of 64 in the continuous ranking! Shit.

Zbyněk Burda did not win either – evidently persuaded by a similar bad luck strike as I was. “I'm matched up against Venclová – doesn't that just take the biscuit!”

 

Indeed. Although the mother of a frequent finialist, Luboš Vencl, Drahomíra Venclová is a weak player always ending the last or last-but-one at best, but she says she enjoys the game anyway. She forever occupies the hindmost tables, so when one gets to play against her, it's only when (s)he's totally out of luck.

I'm starting to be glad this there are only eight rounds only at this tourn. I couldn't get a sweeter cream of the crop for the last round for an opponent – the beautiful half-Vietnamese Žaneta Leová. Lady Luck had obviously hang up somewhere – it was only then that she seemed to have finally arrived. I draw a blank right in my first handful of seven and after playing off the unsuitable tiles, I make a bingo as soon as in my second move. I sort of feel the tiles start flowing my way – pretty early, eh, now during the last round of the tourn! At least the bingo is nice, so nice that even she says nice. Mezkova with a blank for the O – the feminine possessive form of the noun mezek, a mule. It yielded 80 points, a difference she doesn't catch up on – I win 294 – 377 without putting in any particular effort (and she had beaten me quite a couple of times before as you surely remember).

Okay – after this one, I will be in the top fifty of the tourn. Of 64, haha!

 

Indeed. 48^th. Crrrrrapppp. I haven't bombed out of a tourn this way for ages. What does a 48^th place mean qualification-wise? 0.1 points. Indeed – a tenth of a qualification point, to write it out in full.

 

I called Kuba to let him know there'd really been nothing at all he would have missed. “Thank God you haven't been here with me observing,” I make a sour long face into the phone. “One of my worst tourns of recent time.” The same I repeated to my cousin Martin, too, saying it's all to the good he hadn't taken me here with his former boss as he had planned.

“How do ya think it's possible?”

“Partly bad luck, partly badly played, I suppose.” And, last but not least, as Stefan Fatsis would notice, negative thinking during the game.

 

 

I returned by train to Olomouc; I was so fucking short of money. I wish I hadn't taken that fucking trip to Brno. Of course I could use the nearest ATM, but I wanted to save as much on the account as possible. I eventually still withdrew some CZK 200 and made do with it – apart from having had to borrow a few bucks for a streetcar ticket to the train station.

I try to beat the bitter taste of failure by music in my headphones and drinking up the rest of the mead I took along. When a pretty young woman enters my coupé, I offer sharing the bottle with her; she refuses, though. Whatever. I sink my broken heart in the mead. The rest will come in handy at work – I'll offer it to my colleagues at the party we're throwing the following Wednesday.

 

linkuj.cz vybrali.sme.sk

poslal scrabblista, 17.04.2011 2:02:00

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