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The Zlín Scrabble Qualification Tournament 2011

Zlín, CZ, Sat Jun 19^th 2011

 

I've been looking forward to this tourn since the beginning of the year – I take this one mainly as a pretext to see my best friend and spend some good time wih her.

I had to come as late as 8pm though as I had to be at work until three. Which didn't matter that much in the end as Šárka said she wouldn't have been able to come home to Zlín before me anyway.

On the train I had a bad idea to have a game of scrabble against myself, so I got my traveling scrabble set out of the bag, drew two opposing racks and started. Why bad? I guess you'll see. After a few moves, that's to say, something happened in the game which took away my lust to finish it. You wonder what on earth it could be that is able to make me put an end to a game of scrabble in progress? Well, that was so: I had the following rack, ABNOTVZ. After spending some minute on thinking, I saw an awesome bingo in it: zbotnav. What the heck is that, you wonder? Well, an ancient past participle of a rare spelling variant of the verb zbobtnat, to swell – the rare variant being spelt without the other B. Now, what would a passerby say to that?

a) He's just playing some nonsense words, or he's just gone crazy.

b) He's just showing off playing scrabble, and he can't even spell the word zbobtnat – how lame!

The annoying paranoic feeling was so strong that it made me put the game back into the backpack. (The first thing I did the next morning at entering the tournament room was that I checked the word. It was good. Well, I had known that after all. But it just looks so weird you can't resist checking.)

What's more ideal before a scrabble tournament than a good-time evening with friends – and on top of that, playing scrabble with them? Even though none of them had played scrabble before. Oh Šárka did, as a matter of fact, but in Slovenian.

It all started over supper: we all gathered to have it together (something that doesn't really very often happen to me back at home), including Šárka's about 90-year-old grandmother, and when they made me start narrating about scrabble and its tournament scene, after awhile one of them suggested, “Why don't we just stop talking about scrabble and simply have a game of it?”

Needless to say, I had a traveling set of scrabble along, so I brought it to the kitchen. They had wrong idea about the game being 100% dependant on luck of the draw, so I had to show them how wrong they were.

Of course they didn't see any of the big words experienced scrabble players do; let alone the ones only scrabble players know. But the main problem seemed to be the tactics, or rather the absolute absence of it on their side. They'd just throw onboard (overboard, I'd say – they're gone forever this way!) six bingo-prone letters for six points, forming the first word they'd think of. We scrabble players, of course, know this is not a way to go – at least something that would convince them about the wrongness of their idea about scrabble and the “luck of the draw”.

We had a toast of the Giant Mountain mead – a spirit I had brought them when I was there the year before.

When the rest of her family had gone to bed, Šárka didn't fancy doing so yet, and neither did I. We curled up on the living room sofa, shooting the shit, and when tired of doing so, giving each other one of those heartfelt goodnite hugs of ours – one that lasts a couple of hours (heh, that rhymed) after which it still stays JUST a hug. (You just need to have the kind of nerves of steel I do.) After this I'll sure have a good sleep.

I did. The following morning before seven I jumped out of bed (and you know I never do – I crawl out of it), had a cup of tea and coffee and even a breakfast made by Šárka's mother (I had told her I'd have one at the tourn and still she didn't mind making one for me.) and went for the town bus to get me to the downtown church where the tournament was to be held..

20^th table of 24 against Lenka Paličková. Despite her being as low as 77^th on the Chart, she's been regarded as “dangerous”.

But this is something one mustn't be prejudiced about. And I'm not, really. I've beaten her easily last time I played against her, so let's make history repeat itself.

She did fight hard, that's really something to be acknowledged. I acted tactically since the very beginning, though – opening the game with the word ohoď, the imperative an imperative of “to throw [sth/up] at someone and cover them with it completely”, I set myself up for a quadrupled six-point Ň, oň being a good word too (a bookish one for “about him/it” / “against him/it”). In my 12^th move I threw a bingo. Zbyněk Burda would say “no way I could catch up anymore” and she didn't really. I beat her 401 – 339, and as I was, as usual, using my blitz tactic, done far before the end of the round, I went and watched other players play. An interesting situation was developing at table #4 between the scrabble butchers Petr Landa and Břetislav Basta. They were JUST before the end of their game, and one of them was evidently on the brink of going out, while their current score stood at 332 – 332. Quite logically, the one to go out first was going to win.

The one to do so was Petr, winning by 2. You know how enthusiastic he is about scrabble – losing that closely would probably make him hit the roof.

Beating an opponent always equals asking for trouble. And so, moving to table #7, I get this scrabble veteran Milena Filipová to play against, who has been around the scrabble scene along with her daughter since 2002 and since 2007 regularly gets into the Finals, too (Hana manages to get there yearly as well but only since 2008.).

A funny thing happens right at the beginning. I draw eight tiles instead of seven by mistake. A blank among them. “I have eight,” I announce instead of the common I have seven. Milena randomly picks one of them to be returned into the bag – which one do you think she drew?

Of course – the blank.

I had said to myself, though, that I ain't gonna spare nobody today. Seeing my first rack is kind of bingo-prone, I worked up a pure bingo, and since she left a free triple line for me (which I hadn't even hoped for), I play my bingo right there, squeezing as many as 95 points out of it. All to the good she had deprived me of the blank – playing a pure bingo is twice the pleasure of playing a common one.

She “didn't catch up anymore” and what's more, didn't even pile up 300 points in spite of having both blanks. Been there – it just happens. I win 298 – 356 – hey, doesn't it just suck to move up just ONE place higher in the continuous ranking.

Speaking of the continous ranking, as we gather at the noticeboard to check up on how each of us is doing after the 2^nd round, we can't help but wonder what the heck is happening to Dana Fialová (ever heard that name? Not really, she being worse than average with her 1490 rating – but seeing she's been through just 90 tournament games, this looks like she's gonna be a dangerous threat in the future.). She's as high as eighth in the continuous ranking of the tournament, having beaten the young talent Jakub Závada who once even shone as high as fourth on the Association chart.

During the break my team capo Pavel Žibřid, who is currently 1 – 1 to our wonder (he had lost to the charming top gal Hana Lukáčová, the girlfriend of the 2008 Champ Martin Kuča), looks out of the dining room window from where there is a view of volleyball courts. “One more loss and I'm gonna go play volleyball instead,” he cracks. “Back at the hospital [where he works as an anesthesiologist] we play volleyball among the departments. My team has always fought just to avoid being dead last. The orthopedist team is always used to playing in various ortheses...”

Speaking of the today amazingly well-doing Dana Fialová, she gets me to play against in the third round. Just wait – I'll show ya.

I start off with a 24-point XU (X being worth 10 points in Czech scrabble). We both chuckle, knowing what we know. It's a word nobody apart from scrabble players AND the Vietnamese has ever heard of. The Vietnamese should be proud of their minor currency being so popular. At least among scrabble players.

Bingo-prone combinations not turning up in my rack, I have to resort to “classic” playing, squeezing the shit out of bonus squares. In my tenth move I come up with stočné for 28, the money one is supposed to pay for consumed water. The blank feigns to come six moves later and I would even have bingoed with it had it been for a spot for the bingo on the board. So instead, I use the blank for the other A in a 35-point žíhala, a feminine past tense of to anneal. This gets me like 25 points ahead, which may seem like just a bit but now towards the end it becomes crucial. When I go out, after adding her leftover I win 321 – 294. Well, you have expected me to win by far more, eh? So have I. But she seems real dangerous today, I have told her so – she's kept me busy, too!

“I had a homeless bingo,” she says.

“That sucks. Been there such a lot of times.” You bet I have.

I meet my team capo Pavel Žibřid again. I ask him how many wins he has so far – not so much out of curiosity about how he's been doing as rather to check on whether he is likely to become my next opponent.

“You got three? I got two. I've just been outside and spent the break watching volleyball – just in case I'd end up there,” he cracks.

Who do I get for my fourth opponent, after I have afforded to beat this average one by twenty-seven? Downright the best Czech scrabble player! Guess there's something rotten in the scrabble state. It was because this best player, Martin Kuča, has just lost to hardly 1700-rated Eva Baďurová (for a second time already in the history as a matter of fact).

Oh well though. A large percentage of the opponent's prevalance is made of the player's being intimidated in advance by his or her opponent's rating and achievements. So let's not let him have it that easily. Let alone if I have beaten him once already.

To show the absence of fear within me, I punch him in the face with a bingo right in my third move. As it is a bit colloquial, Martin challenges; it comes back good though.

For the next sixteen turns we run neck and neck which brings me quite a lot of satisfaction. Keeping busy the best Czech scrabble player!

Just as this happy thought flashes on my mind, he plays a bingo. A “primitive” one, as Zbyněk would say – i. e., a negative verb. It secured him quite a lead for awhile.

Now, I fixed my eyes at the upper right corner of the board. A free triple-triple line interrupted by an S on N1 field. Downright an S! Such a Sstupid letter. Most triple-triple-unfriendly.

After spending over a minute thinking (which as you know is not my style at all at all) I came to term with the fact that no triple-triple was there. I put down the rack I had to consult it later on: AAEIPRT, there being an S on the board which would have had to be the last-but-one letter of the triple triple.

No use making any bones about it – of course I lost, BUT – only by eighteen, which against the best Czech scrabble player is a result one can be more than satisfied with: 350 – 332.

I show him the triple-triple-prone rack I had written down, adding there was a S which would have had to be the last-but-one letter of it. Let's see if the best scrabble player can come up with one.

“I don't think there is one,” he utters after giving it some thinking.

Okay – 3 – 1 after four rounds ain't that bad, either. The only thing which makes me uneasy is that a lot of top players are of the same or even worse won – lost ratio after this round, so even after losing to the best scrabble player no relief is likely to be had.

Not really. Who awaits me to fight against is the nutrition advisor my age, 1811-rated Luboš Vencl – constantly in top 20 on the Chart. I have already beaten him at a tourn once – so he is beatable, eh – but my personal ratio with him as of now is 1 – 3 in his favor.

As I return from the toilet, I feel something having fallen right into my face. As it's dropping down on the ground I can see it's a plush toy neuron cell. Luboš Vencl's talisman :{)> just wait – if you only knew I'm just gonna play against you. You'll regret throwing your talismans at me.

He starts hard with a pure 80-point bingo as early as in his 2^nd move. I bingo back, though with just a 59-point one – oh well, better than nothing.

Should anyone come and watch our game at around the 10^th turn, they would favorize Luboš. Duh, much higher rated, he's gonna win as a matter of course.

But then, after several reshufflings of my rack, I came up with this breakthrough move: šňábo (with a blank for the Á), the sixpoint Ň being sixtupled when put on the O12 triple (the vocative case of šňába, a kind of brandy). Sixty points altogether, which shrank Luboš's lead to about 30; but if he thought he was still secure, though, he was soon to get to know he had been mistaken. Right on my following turn after my 60-point move, that's to say, I spat a pure tripled bingo at him. Nepoviji, the negative 1^st person future of “to bear [a child]”, brings me – or bears me, eh – as many as eighty points and gets me so much ahead that it practically decides the game in my favor. The bag gets empty – not very likely that he'd catch up on my 50-point lead now, eh?

He didn't. I won 431 – 382, our sum of scores remaining the sixth biggest of the tourn for the next two rounds. Seventh of 48 in the continuous ranking, I move to table #4 for the sixth round, to play against Hana Filipová. As you remember, I had beaten her mother a few rounds before that, so now it was time to execute her daughter, too. About the same top strength, yet another bit stronger.

We are about to start the sixth round, but we can't. Yvetta Hlubinková waves her hand at table #17 to catch attention, saying that her upcoming opponent, Ivo Hradský, is missing. Shortly after that Milena Filipová at table #10 informs that her upcoming opponent, Pavlína Pospěchová, is missing too. The two missing opponents happen to have played against each other in the previous round.

“They're somewhere together, eh?” we gather.

“Where have they gone? The nearest pub is quite far away,” Dana Kučová the IT manager wonders. She takes her bell she uses for denoting the beginnings and ends of tournament rounds, and runs outside where she rings it loudly once again. As soon as the first words about adjudicating their games in their opponents' favor have been uttered, they both turn up, faces all sweaty and breathing hard.

“They've had sex!” Saša Willerthová, infamous at the tourns for her dirty mouth, shouts out.

“Yeah, a quick one,” Radek Mannheim pipes in.

“Sorry... we've been jogging,” Ivo says, putting an end to other players' imagination.

 

Shortly after the beginning of my game against Hana in this sixth round, I form a six-letter bingo-prone combination on my rack, and say to myself in my mind, if she sets me up with an E, I could play a pure one.

Anyone, and me too, would guess, well, this is just nothing but wishful thinking. But hey – she plays a 8-letter, 51-point non-bingo move, and does set me up with the E – just as if she had read my mind! (Well, not a good comparison as had she read my mind she would definitely not have set me up.) I play nezažíti, a sort of ancient infinitive of “not to experience”, also having thought of rearranging the letters and playing zatíženi, a plural masculine passive of “to burden”. Hana evidently fights with shit on her rack – serves you well, I was in your current shoes back then when we played each other at last year's Finals. To top it I get a blank and form a “primitive” (as Zbyněk Burda would say) 74-point bingo – i. e., a negative verb containing a blank, nevplave, the negative future 3^rd person singular of “to swim in”. Okay, even a lame bingo counts though – it fastens my leading position and I round it up by winning by nice exact 150-point difference – 296 – 446.

“Nice game,” I grin, knowing that for her it was probably everything but nice.

“Indeed,” she grinned sourly. “Save the fact that I got absolutely nothing to play with.”

Well, shit happens – just like it did back in my last game with you at last year's Finals.

The “classic” scrabble veteran Jiří Kamín has been doing very good at this tournament, too, being 6 – 0 as of now, and the very first in the continuous ranking of the tourn. That would be nothing amazing – he's been managing to get into the finals every year since 2001 when he began his scrabble career. BUT his Ostravian girlfriend Eva Baďurová, who has never gotten there and shone at tourns just from time to time, has been smashingly successful too, going 5 – 1 so far (and as high as 5^th in the continuous ranking)! Being as low as 42^nd on the chart, she amazed everyone around with her performance. Her boyfriend may have been giving her proper training over the years and this seems to be the result!

“You know, we [Eva and him] made a deal back at home that we'd both end up among the top three!” Jiří cracks a comment on their doing good.

I'm high – not to mean drunk, but as high as third in the continuous ranking, folks! And guess what – I'm moving to table #1 for the seventh round. My opponent to be is guess who. For sure – Jiří Kamín. His girlfriend Eva is playing right there at table #3 – another top table not far from us, against the 1804-rated scrabble butcher Marek Holba who is second in the continuous ranking of the tourn and 34^th on the chart at this moment. Eva and Jiří give each other a conspiratory wink.

What needs to be pointed out before my game against Jiří is the difference between our attitudes to playing scrabble. He has always been what we here traditionally call a “classic scrabble player” while me I am a “bingo thrower”. Now, “classic scrabble players”, who rely on traditional scrabble weapons such as doubling premium square bonuses in both directions, etc., have always despised “bingo throwers” and claimed that the way the latter play is basically “wrong”. Well, it can't be that wrong after all when two such “bingo throwers” have become triple National Champs, but you know – changing one's mind is a hard thing to do.

Well – I'm sorry, Jiří, I just can't help it, I think to myself as I draw my first rack of seven. That's to say, I see a blank among them. Now, what would a “classic scrabble player” do with a bingo-prone combination, let alone containing a blank? Don't tell me they'd break it all up just for the sake of playing a “proper” move.

So on my very second turn I play a 74-point verb zahořet – to catch on fire, with a blank for the uniquely Czech letter Ř.. He let me enjoy this lead of mine for just a while though. He was neck and neck with me soon, “covering me with punches”, as Jirka Kracík would say (if you think I haven't dropped a word about this ole passionate member of my Parnas team, it's because he hasn't attended any tourn this year yet due to his long-time thyroid gland disorder). When towards the end of the game I finally thought I was safely far away from him, he used a blank and played boxe, the blank for the B, a vocative case of box – the Czech for boxing. This made me become absorbed in my rack for the whole two minutes allowed for a move, after which I came up with a final, deciding move which he, as the bag was already empty, “couldn't catch up anymore upon”. I finally win 332:317 – folks, a win at table #1! Something I ain't really been through so far at a qualification tournament.

 

I go have a rest and enjoy my euphory for a bit. I join a bunch of top players talking, two of them being from the Parnas team.

“I played the bingo rinorea,” the 1751-rated businessman Martin Hrubý says – a medical term for a cold, the English/Latin for it being RHINORRHOEA. Whereupon my team capo Pavel Žibřid, a doctor himself, cuts back: “See, and I [tried to extend the word FESTERED by prefixes] zhnisán, ohnisán, and uhnisán, and none of them was good. From now on I don't believe in festering.” [The problem is that the word hnisat proper doesn't take on the passive form].

“Another volume of the Slovak scrabble dictionary has been issued,” Zbyněk Burda contributes with a piece of news – he has been attending Slovak scrabble qualification tourns in Slovakia. “Can you believe that – they're gonna have the word ix [the name for the letter X in the alphabet, which has so far been spelled as iks]!”

Staying, of course, at table #1, I get another scrabble butcher – as if anybody else but scrabble butchers ever ended up at this highest table! – Petr Landa, 8^th on the chart, whom you sure remember for his morose comments he grumbles when tiles don't fall his way. I didn't yet know that I'll have more than enough of them now and that this is gonna be a game I'm gonna remember for a long time, if not the rest of my life.

My opening rack looks like this: ÍKNOPRŠ. The first thing I see in it is the word krníš, a 2^nd person singular present of the verb krnět – become retarded or atrophied. I put it on the board, whereupon, JUST before pressing the clock, I say to myself, hey, is your brain retarded or atrophied, or what? Can't you see that beautiful pure bingo? Koprníš, the 2^nd person present of “to become paralyzed”. The 4-point Š double-doubled, the whole word for 80 points.

“Oh, sure, expected that,” spits Petr at my move. And while he evidently plows through the shit on his rack, I get both blanks and work on forming another bingo. I have it ready by the sixth turn, while he – either in the hope of me not going there or out of despair – sets me up right in front of the triple word score square. Sorry Petr, I just can't help it... I play a tripled neuvité, “not made” (about wreaths), the first blank for the non-accented E and the other for the T, simultaneously making a tripled nýte (the vocative case of the noun “rivet”) and kan (the plural genitive of kana – the Czech for CANNA the plant), the whole thing for 89.

As my lead is now approaching 150, Petr desperately hides his face in his hands and turns around to 1735-rated Marek Holba at the neighboring table (#2). “Look at this,” Petr blows off steam, just as if he was about to literally hit thew roof. “Just take a fucking look. I'm just fucking gonna give this one up.”

That's before I shovel another good move there – this time just for 36; it's, however, enough to make Petr growl again. “Don't forget to write about this in your tournament story,” he blurts. You bet I won't! Especially not now when I know that you read 'em.

I kill Petr 492 – 295. Not only that this becomes my highest tournament score so far, but against such a player! As high as 8^th on the Chart. As I said, a game to be remembered for a long time to come, if not the rest of my life.

“Have the tiles ever so evidently been falling your way?” Petr asks me with a long, worn face.

“I don't think so,” I grin guiltily, trying hard not to make the smile look malicious. That wouldn't be something poor Petr would deserve – let alone if I have, and yes I have, just deprived him of a medal he would have brought from this tourn.

 

Winning at table #1 again ... for a second time in a row!

 

Who else do I get now for my last opponent but the one who has been doing far and away the best at this tourn so far – Marek Holba. 34^th on the Chart, rated 1735. While I'm second in the continuous ranking of the tournament at this point, he's the first – so it's not very surprising we've ended up playing against each other now. And even now, before the last game even started – I had been seeded at table #20 for the first round and now I've ended up as high as table #1!!! Well what a leap on the Chart this is gonna be – another thing to look forward to.

Going outside to let my (short) hair down for a bit, I bump into this top player Ivo Hradský (who studied at the English Department like I did, and now teaches English, too) who is just talking to 1653-rated Yvetta Hlubinková and complaining he has a hard time finding verbs in his racks. “I play nothing but nouns,“ he laughs, while Yvetta says it's vice versa with her. Now when I come by, Ivo cracks: “Now Tom here, he can find anything on his racks – save interjections!”

We laugh our asses off – that was actually a hidden praise from him as interjections are the only word class you can't use in Czech scrabble (not to speak of proper names – of course).

Martin Kuča, the 2008 Champ and the best Czech scrabble player in the eyes of many of us, pokes Marek from the neighboring table #2 where Martin is about to begin his last game, and tells him: “Marek, you're gonna play in such a way so that the game ends up in a tie, eh?”

They both chuckle (they would sure have shared a laugh had there been less tension in the air before the round). What Martin hinted at was the fact that even if the game between Marek and me did end up in a tie, he'd still end up first due to his higher TurČAS criterion (a number which, to put it very simply, sums up the way you did at a tournament – including the difference between the sum of your scores and your opponents' sum of scores, the number of rounds and the so-called Buchholz criterion which sums up how your opponents did at the tournament on the whole).

I remember the time I first played this guy – at last year's Finals. Despite his strength, I outclassed him then by almost a hundred, piling up more than 450 points as you sure remember – so why be afraid? This game to come is only to decide whether I would end up gold or silver at this tourn; nothing that would matter much.

Well – no need to take these unspoken words of mine so literally, Marek! He opens the game with a 86-point pure bingo. All to the good in the end though – it makes me see that my rack, impossible at first sight with a Ř and a C in it, is bingo-prone too. I decide to swap one tile – a letter I feel kind of doesn't fit into this upcoming bingo (one of the TWO swaps I make in the course of the whole tournament). And yeah – I do come up with one right on the next turn, a pure one, too: sochařin, the genitive plural case of sochařina, a kind of colloquial general term for a sculptor's work. Its colloquiality makes Marek challenge; it comes back good though and makes me glad my all-life interest in art has just fruitfully reflected itself in a scrabble game of mine.

The third turn, though, is where I stop enjoying this game of ours. That's to say, Marek plays another bingo – and not just any bingo: a pure quadrupled one for 101 points. I had some fuck it!s on the tip of my tongue when I realized again that this game doesn't matter – I'm going to end up second anyhow. Even Jiří Kamín told me so when he saw the continuous ranking after the 8^th round, and as he's such an experienced tourn veteran, I can take his word for it.

This returned optimism and elan into my veins, making me able to finish this game with the same verve as I would just any other one of scrabble. And it did pay – four turns later I come up with another pure bingo of mine, shrinking Marek's killing lead to about a hundred and sixty, which would not increase for the rest of the game anymore. Anyway – two pure bingos on each side! Ain't that awesome. Marek doesn't stop pushing hard though and towards the end of the game he's over 500. Like I made my tournament record in the previous round, looks like Marek is just going to make his in a game against me...! Well, that's just like her – Lady Luck, that is: flighty like she has always been.

He whacks me 523 – 365: folks, hasn't my defense been pretty good, too! And as I said, I end up second anyway. 2^nd of 48 people! My plush froggy bookmark talisman deserves at least a kiss. The patient frog has been with me all the time watching me, and did her best to keep her webs crossed for me, too! My best qualification tournament ever so far. Guess my qualification for this year's finals is now practically secured.

When the conclusion ceremony of the tournament came, Marek and I learn that the sum of our scores in our game – a nice 888 – was the best of the tournament, and the two of us are given a bottle of hand lotion as a “minor prize”. Marek then, as the winner of the tournament, has the right of the first choice among prize items which have all been laid out on a table in front of us. Then it's my turn as the second best player of the tournament; as all of us Libras do, I hesitate for a bit and then grab a bottle of wine. Third comes this dangerous tournament veteran Martin Vacek.

Folks, guess we've got quite a reason to celebrate! I call Šárka and the my mom to tell them the awesome result (I had been informing them continuously in the course of the tournament anyway) and then go to a nearby supermarket to buy another bottle of wine. One for the celebration and the other for my mom – for her to have at least some memory and taste of my smashing success here.

We have a toast to it with Šárka and her mother back in their place. Do you remember that last time I was here – the year before – Šárka's younger brother Jiří was there with me as a spectator? I tell you what, Jiří – you should have come and watched today!

linkuj.cz vybrali.sme.sk

poslal scrabblista, 09.07.2011 2:32:00

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