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Odkazy:

The Pardubice Qualification Tournament 2011

Pardubice, CZ, Sat & Sun Jul 16^th & 17^th, 2011

 

 

I looked forward to this one for another reason than to the Zlín one – this time for its length. The Pardubice tourn, that's to say, is traditionally a two-day, 15-round one. Lots of scrabble – and chances being that if you don't do good on the first day, the tables may turn on the other one.

The tournament is a part of a big annual game event in Pardubice called Czech Open where tons of other tournaments in various board games take place, enjoying attendance of participants from all over the world. So apart from 15 rounds of scrabble another thing for you to look forward to was an authentic big event buzz.

As I was looking for the most convenient train connection to Pardubice, I thought it wouldn't be necessary to take an earlier train than the 6.40AM one for this 100-km trip. I was mistaken though. It would have been possible to go by the 6.40 one but then, as it is necessary to take the Pardubice town bus to get me from the train station to the place of the tournament, minutes, even seconds would matter to me to make it to the tournament on time. So, not much enthusiastic about that at all, I gathered I was going to have to take the 5.40 train. Oh well – we'll take a nap onboard.

Having arrived to Pardubice, I had a while available before the town bus was due, so I went guess where? Right, of course – Pardubice is world-famous for its delicious gingerbread which I love, and a store selling it was situated right at the station. I stuffed my bag with tons of gingerbread packs and hurried to the town bus stop when a car stopped right next to me. It was the scrabble veteran Jirka Kamín, heading here from Prague, and offered me a lift to the place of the tournament. Good – at least I don't have to take the trouble finding the way myself, not to speak of having a good company and sparing a few bucks for the town bus.

When we all arrived (well, not all, actually – about three of the ones who had applied for the tourn were missing) though, having followed the arrows and signs saying SCRABBLE, we discovered all the large rooms have already been taken. The organizers have probably heard that there isn't more than 63 of us including the IT staff, so we had to make do with a small room jammed between two other ones and seats for the go tournament onlookers. Well, we did, but there was this adventurous moment where we had to climb over a traverse between two sections of onlooker seats to get us to the room. Luckily it was quite low so we all managed.

We knew we were going to have a good time so this obstacle was soon forgotten, as well as the fact that we were going to play in the hall owned by one of the biggest Czech power companies that sucks an arm and a leg from us all for consuming electrical power, while its managers all enjoy astronomic salaries.

Gathering that the three people missing aren't probably going to arrive anymore, Dana the IT manager drew the lot and we started, the first round opp pairs being matched up as usual – every “upper half player” was to get a “lower half opponent”. Back then when I was in the lower half the first round used to be a tough one, of course. Now that I'm among the top 35 players on the association chart, I know that the first round is going to be a rest – just to get me going.

František Růžička. Oh well – this guy can get dangerous, no doubt, but otherwise – his 1593 rating ain't gonna intimidate me, although he shone last year at the East-West Championship of the top 30 players where he even beat me and a lot of other strong players around.

As if he was telling me not to underestimate him, he started of with hooking a pure bingo on my first move. I was just about to appreciate it with a “shit” or something when I actually looked at the word he had played – I knew at first sight he had spelled it wrong. Ha! Don't you know poddajné, “submissive”, is spelt with a double D? Of course it wasn't good. He has to take it back and miss the turn – sure a dose of optimism for you when your opp starts off with a forced missed turn. Great – a way to go, man! Stay this submissive. Or “submisive*” if you like.

Five turns later, he does manage to play a good bingo. I challenge just in case but it comes back good, which makes the rest of the game a thrilling strive for a bingo myself, which I realize is the only way to catch up.

First, I make some hooks with non-perspective letters. Keeping only the “bingo-making” ones, I soon have a rack which does look promising. Still no bingo in it, though, but hey – in my freshly drawn letters from the bag, I welcome a blank to complement my promising-looking rack. Still not able to come up with a bingo, I make one last hook – to set me up downright at a triple. I say to myself, of all the hooks I've made, this is the one least likely to be left unblocked by him.

Revealing the seventh letter I've just drawn, I breathe a sigh of relief. A secret one, of course – not to be plain for him to see. This makes my bingo secured – and my win secured, as well. What if he blocks it here? Well, I can play it there. What if he fucks the spots up here and there at the same time? Well, I can play it over there.

You're destroyed, old man, I smile to myself. And yes – what he left for me of the hooks I had made is the one with the triple word!!! I shove the word lisknou there, a future tense of a colloquial verb meaning “to slap”. The colloquiality of the verb makes him challenge – well, maybe also the fact that it turned the tables in my favor.

I afforded a little “swinehood within the rules” with one word in this game. I played the word jenový, which could be an adjective made of the noun jen – the Czech for yen, the Japanese currency unit. I then hooked a word onto it with a M, making it the singular instrumental case (jenovým). When he yet extended it – with an A to make it a dual plural instrumental case. Now, what do you think I did? Ha! “I guess I'll challenge.” My own word, haha! It went off, but to his pity, not mine.

All of this contributed to a final deciding but well-deserved win of mine, 309 – 373, after which I had to acknowledge he's really been becoming a hard opp – which we saw in December in Ostrava at the Top-30 East-West tourn after all.

10^th of 53 in the continuous ranking of the tournament – not bad to charge me with optimism after the first round. But hey, cool down, there are 14 more rounds to go. And a tough guy for an opp in the upcoming round.

Something shocking has just happened at table #1. That's where the 1442-rated loser Milan Svrček had been seeded, to play his first round against the triple National Champ, Pavel Podbrdský, who apart from being good has been known for being a lucky ass. And guess what – yeah, Milan beat Pavel. Not by much – 337 – 312, but still, it's probably gonna remain the best scrabble scalp of Milan's life. As I said, the first round match-ups are done in such a way that the “lower half” players always get “upper half” ones to play against to get an “introductory kick in the ass”, but when shit happens and they kill the butcher – it's a hell of an event. Just like now.

 

Okay, up against the second round butcher.

Oh, I knew that. The scrabble association director himself – Pavel Vojáček. I do have beaten him quite a few times but with his 1760 rating he still remains a dangerous threat – I remember how he killed me last time we played. But hey – my rating is just 6 points lower than his after all.

And so, just like any other two about-the-same rated players, we start a cutthroat neck and neck fight. When on my seventh turn I shoot a bingo at him, he shoots back with one of his – which is even by 15 points fatter than mine.

As we run on, an interesting point turns up later on in the game. I feel my rack to be bingo-prone again, but I can't come up with one. I realize than even if I had one, there'd be nowhere on the board to play it. So I make what some would call an amateur move – a hook for me for two points.

 

It's a kind of funny feeling but I felt like since that two-point move of mine everything changed. I ran ahead again and this time left him behind. When I looked over my shoulder, he was forty points away. I win 383 – 337.

In his Word Freak bestseller about scrabble Stefan Fatsis noticed something about the different scrabble players' behavior after their game has finished. High-rated players discuss it, while low-rated ones break right right away and form the required ten-times-ten tile square on the board so the next player pair coming to the table know they haven't lost any of the tiles.

And so whadya think – of course Pavel and I do discuss the game. When I had thought the 2-point move of mine was a strange point in the game since which everything went my way, I was right – the 2-point move, that's to say, was actually enough to thwart his then plans.

“I had a 38-point word there,” he tells me. Oooophhh! Now I don't really mind not having managed to play the second bingo.

 

Tenth of 53 in the continuous ranking after the first round – well that ain't bad, is it? Sure good enough to inject optimism in your veins.

Three tables higher – to #6 for the third round. As I check the third round match-ups right after they are pinned up, I chuckle as there's another little soldier for me to kill. Little soldier – that's what vojáček means, and right after killing Pavel Vojáček, I now get his son Filip to play against.

Filip is nowadays said to be playing better than his father, although he has never qualified for any championship, while Pavel has been doing so regularly since 2003 with the only exception of 2006.

 

As we shake hands before the beginning of our game, I notice something shocking. Who usually appears here at the front tables are usually the well-known faces of us from the top of the chart, so regularly it almost looks tedious. But hey, what kind of ineffability is it today – not only one but downright two low-rated players – Viktor Hagenhofer and Milan Svrček right against each other are sitting there as high as table #3!

I knew this kind of game had to come. I didn't expect it that early though – as early as in this third round. I fight with shit – shit I keep getting all the game long. I fight bravely though – I keep up with Filip even with this shit. It's said that you know a good player when you see one not by what they can do with good racks – but on the very contrary by what they can do with shit. Well, but what good is it that I am probably a good player if I lose to Filip? Now he's still neck and neck with me but only thanks to having used a blank.

Now guess what. Now towards the very end, he gets the other blank as well. He uses it for an about 25-point move, which is enough to keep him ahead. He wins 309 – 287 – with both blanks, shame on him! With both blanks by mere 22, against all the shit I kept getting.

And hey – at the table next to us, Viktor has already piled up more than 400 points in this game against Milan and wins – to confront the triple National Champ Martin Sobala at table #1 in the next round! What kind of ineffability has been happening?

 

Despite the loss to Filip – probably due to the fast it was just by these damned 22 points – I fall just two places down in the continuous ranking of the tourn, to 10^th place of 53. I complain to Luboš Vencl, the top-21 player and nutrition advisor my age who I bump into after the round.

“Don't worry – a 14 – 1 record is still enough for the first place,” he grins, making me laugh – heh, I don't really expect to win this tourn. Although I ended up silver at the last one. Luboš tells me about his last game which was really exciting – he's just won by four points after all the hope for a win having abandoned him as at the end of the close game he got stuck with a 4-point Ý in his rack. He had to pass the three following turns of his and just watch his opponent adding points. What a relief it must have been for him to still eke out a win by four.

 

A loss, though a close one, always has a bright side to it – getting an easier opponent to play against. This time it was to be the pretty Zuzana Strnadová. She comes from Trutnov and occasionally turns up there so we have a game of live scrabble from time to time. Unofortunately, if I expected another of our good-time games, this was everything but a good-time one – at least for her, as she was probably getting similar shit to the one I kept drawing in my previous game. Securing a substantial point distance from her, I got a blank and tried composing a bingo but didn't manage in the end. I burned the blank when going out in my last, 18-point move – but even so, I won by 130. 368 – 238 – as I check the score statistics which are computed after this third round, I find out my current sum of scores is higher than that of the triple National Champ Pavel Podbrdský. This fills me with optimism – and when I find out my fourth opponent is going to be the scrabble devil Petr Vejchoda, I just lash my hand, oh well, this is the trouble I've been asking for.

Not sure if you remember him, and I don't think so – the only tournament he attends in the course of a whole year is this two-day Pardubice one. He's a star, no doubt, he's kind of too lazy to attend the other tournaments (luckily, we should say) and so he just attends this Pardubice one as one tourn per year is enough to keep him at the top of the chart. Hadn't he been lazy, he could already have qualified for many championships and perhaps become the National Champ – but he just prefers to sit at home playing scrabble online and be a star on the scrabble site.

Playing against such aces, quite paradoxically, puts you at ease – because you just know winning over them is next to impossible.

Opening my first handful of seven, I rejoice in my mind – having a blank since the very beginning helps. And not bad tiles to accompany it, either. I feel it's quite bingo-prone – so I play off one tile, which he accompanies with a grin of a classic scrabble player that he is, as opposed to us bingo throwers.

Not getting what I wanted, I decide to get rid of more tiles with a proper move – and only then, absolutely unexpected, the tiles for a bingo came. Life's just like this sometimes – you get what you pursue only after you give up the pursuit. I set up p?zděte in my rack, having a choice between pozděte – a 2^nd person plural imperative of “to be late” – and pizděte, a 2^nd person plural imperative of “to muck up”. For sure that I liked the latter better – although bookish, it comes from the vulgar Romanian pizdă, “a cunt”. He challenges. It comes back good and I hope a classic scrabble player with classic scrabble weapons doesn't catch up on this. He being, as I said, an excellent player, though, he did – I was glad to get the other blank to help me to a 30-point move towards the end, which – yes, YES IT DID – secured a win for me. 313 – 345 – no big deal with those both blanks, but against such a scrabble butcher a blank usually doesn't even help. Hearing congratulations from such someone as him was real music for my ears.

 

”I've beaten Vejchoda,” I can't not boast the first scrabble friend I bump into during the break after the game.

“Yeah... he told me so... he told me you mucked up his victory,” he grins, hinting at the word which won me the game.

I'm now sent as high as table #2. And yeah … asking for even more trouble. Trouble in the form of who we believe to be the best Czech scrabble player of all, the tip of the top and #2 on the chart – Martin Kuča. As I brought the previous round score sheet to Dana the IT manager – who is aactually his mother – to process them, she told me I was likely to get him for my next opponent. She was right.

As I had told myself before – I ain't gonna let anybody intimidate me, whether by their achievements – Martin being the 2008 national champ and a quintuple national vicechamp – or by their position on the association chart (his is stable – the second).

I was at the brink of pressing the clock after putting a five-letter word on the board, when I said to myself, wait, man. Why content myself with a sixteen-or-so-point word when I possibly got a bingo...!

The word “possibly” isn't something I utter just for kicks to describe the word: pozbytu. Frankly, it's so impossible I almost doubt it, needless to say it has probably never been used in a sober text, but it just sounds so grammatically probable it makes me think, if not this, then what's the correct completive accusative-case feminine adjective form of the bookish word “forfeit”?

Martin challenges. If it sounds impossible to one of the best Czech scrabble players, well, then it's really weird.

But....

… it's good, folks.

I breathe a sigh of relief; but hey, how long until this scrabble devil throws a bingo too?

What do you think?

Yeah. No more than one turn – he throws a nice adjective telnické, a place name derived from a Telnice town which I haven't heard of and so I challenge. (I have already mentioned in one of my stories that adjectives derived from place names are written with lowercase initial letter, wherefore they are not considered proper names and thus are allowed in scrabble.)

Three turns later he throws another bingo. As his lead grows to some 140, I say oh well, I know who I'm playing against after all.

Or not...?

As I draw a fresh couple of letters from the bag, I say to myself, hey, I smell a bingo in the air, but this time on my side again for a change. If things work out fine...

I make myself a hook under the left-hand corner and hope for the best.

Yesss. What has just come from the bag is not the usual shit but one of the high-probability combinations I had hoped for. Vískaje – what a nice bingo this will be, a nice ancient masculine present participle of the bookish verb vískat, to caress (one's hair).

 

Of course...! Grrrr. Of course he goes there with his move. Now where do I go with my bingo...? I am probably destined to stick it up my ass.

I spend a few seconds of my move tossing lightnings from the dark clouds in my eyes. Then I cool down and think, hey, there must be a way.

 

More than a minute later, after a thorough inspection of the board, the bulb switches on. Skvívaje! Man, is that possible? Another of those impossible ancient present participle forms of mine, this time with a repetitive infix in it on top of that. It sounds good to me though – in concordance with the grammar rules. But again, when I tell my mom later on the phone about this cutthroat bingo fight, she laments she wouldn't have found these two bingos in her wildest dreams.

 

I'd say the extra points the triple Martin had blocked in fact decided the game – he wins by 30. Even so, we reach this awesome score 379 – 409. And hey – he had both blanks! I guess I'm mucking satisfied with such a result.

The 1^st player on the Association chart, the triple National Champ Pavel Podbrdský, who is also infamous for being fucking lucky, is now 3 – 3 – looks like after his loss to a 1442-rated player in the first round predestined the way he was gonna do at this tournament. For example he lost to this half-Vietnamese beauty Žaneta Leová in the 4^th round.

“We have to win a lot to avoid Pavel!” Luboš Vencl, a top player himself – 21^th on the chart – tells the nice top-rated woman Věrka Majtánová with a grin.

Now, being 4 – 2 and 12^th of 53 in the continuous ranking of the tourn, who do I get?

Jiří Matějček . Ever heard that name? I don't think so. He hasn't been around the tournament scrabble scene for more than five years and all that time he had been nothing but just an average good player. At this tournament though, he had so far been doing extremely good – tiles just have been incredibly falling his way. He had beaten Jiří Kamín, Jana Vágnerová, and Pavel Vojáček, and now stands up against me (or sits down to be exact).

What do you think – after I play my first move, he gets a 101-point pure bingo into his rack without any work on it – just to throw it onto the triple. And shortly after that one more. My blood boils, I'm so pissed off I have to gather all my will and strength to suppress it. You fucking lucky bastard!

But this is not meant to be the end yet. This lucky ass, that's to say, has recently made moves on Dana the IT manager's daughter Petra who, for a change, had broken up with her boyfriend before that. And so, while Petra has been busy all the time since the beginning of the tourn, helping her mom process the results, all he did was annoying her and she, on top of that, seemed to be glad.

A few tiles before emptying the bag, a blank feigned to come to me, while I had long been thinking he had it as well. I managed to compose a last-minute bingo with it, but it only saved me from ending up under 300. To make the experience from this game even more sucking, Petra the IT manager's daughter, whom Jiří recently picked up in such a poor way, came to him and shamelessly put her arms around his neck. I didn't think you were into PDA. Go to hell with your showing off.

 

But I just grit my teeth and aim my sight into my rack. Whatever – I'm gonna lose anyway, now it's clear, no way to catch up anymore.

I did, but pissed off as I was, I could just as well tell myself there was not much I could have done about it. He has apparently been kissed by lady luck right on his ass this tourn.

I lose 329 – 442. Oh well, sometimes I feel like there's a great lot of destiny and predestination at the tourns.

Being seventeenth of fifty-three in the continuous raking of the tourn may not sound that bad to some of ya. But hey, I aim higher – especially after being beaten by such an average player...!

Still staying quite high – at table #12 for the eighth round – , I get another rather weak player doing good today – yeah, the one that beat the triple national champ Pavel Podbrdský in the first round: Milan Svrček, this old greying completely average-looking chap who met this beautiful young gal at a scrabble tourn and hit it off with her, the two getting married at once. What the heck was it she saw in him???

Whatever. I'll just kick your ugly old ass for this, old fart – at least scrabble-wise.

Of course this all is just what's on my mind and I'm not gonna speak it. He lets a faint smile and shakes my hand. Heck. I could do without the handshake in this particular case, but whatever, it's just a custom, none of an expression of a personal relationship with the player.

It was an easy – or, if you like, he was an easy game. And an easy prey. The fact that he had beaten a triple national champ in the first round – that was something I took for a lucky strike of his, which is indeed what it actually was, and nothing but it.

I told ya. I didn't even need a bingo or overrack my brains to make it 400. I win 327 – 411, this being the end for today. The second, “smaller half” of the tourn is going to take place the next day. 13^th place of 53 in the continuous ranking halfway through the tourn is something I can content myself with for the time being cuzzzz … I'll be back!!! Right tomorrow, with a new full stamina pack. And then let's push it even higher!

 

I have a friend in Pardubice from the university years, who stayed at the same halls of residence; he was on an archaeological business trip at that time, though. So had to travel to Hradec, which is quite nearby – about 25 km far away, to be put up for the night by my grandma.

 

She didn't mind to get up as early as 5.30 to remind me of the way to the train station and spend some time with me – she's an early bird after all anyway.

 

I didn't seem to have much of a choice as far as the morning trains to Pardubice were concerned. I headed for the 7.05 AM one, but as I arrived at 6.45 to the station, I saw a fast train coming right in my direction. Doesn't often happen, eh? An earlier train in your direction, let alone a fast one. I jump on, but if I looked forward to a short but nice and enjoyable trip, I was disappointed. The train was full of awful diesel smell. As I entered the nearest coupé, I noticed the seats were in different color than in the other coupés. And no, I haven't entered the first class...

To put it more exactly, the seats here weren't red as in the other coupés – they were grey. Put together with the diesel smell, I let a laugh, saying it looks like this coupé's been smoked.

 

With still a lot of time on my hands, I decided to save some further bucks for the town bus and go to the place of the tourn on foot. What's better for clearing up one's brains before a tournament than a proper walk on fresh air?

Having arrived, I still had like an hour before the other half of the tourn starts. But if you think I'm about to have to wait here and kick my own ass in boredom, you're – luckily – mistaken. The room had already been open, as downstairs there was a chess tournament in progress. And soon – minutes after me – Martin Hrubý arrives, another keen scrabble player, one who has been attending each and every scrabble tourn since 2003. Being a private investor, he travels a lot so he doesn't mind attending a tourn even if it's held say on the very other side of the republic. The games and clocks having been left where they were from the previous day, so Martin suggests what's obviously on our minds – what about having a “warm-up game”. We do; a good one as always between us. Just as we finish, Dana the IT manager and her daughter Petra come.

“Well, I just exactly expected that the two of you already would have been waiting here,” Dana grins. Yeah, two scrabble geeks, eh?

 

Looks like it's gonna take awhile to set up the coffee machine. Which is a shame, as a coffee's what I'd appreciate right now – I'm gonna get a butcher for an opponent. A scrabble butcher of course I mean: Martin Kapler, currently 29^th on the chart, hunts the scrabble scene since 2005 and since 2008 he regularly manages to qualify for the finals every year.

Tiles fell my way, though, in this game – even I myself had to acknowledge it. I got a blank in the very beginning, waited for some good tiles to come, then composed a bingo with it (psíkovi, a locative case of the noun meaning “little dog” the blank substituting the S), whereupon the new handful of seven gave me the other blank, too. With its help I soon compose another bingo, nekovech – a plural locative case of the noun nekov, denoting the opposite of a metal (from a chemical point of view). I've always been into chemistry :{))>

A few turns later he punches me with a pure bingo, but as it had taken him some time to compose it, it just shrank the difference between us to about a one-bingo one: 328 – 390.

As always, with my blitz-style I am done long before the end of the round, so I go and hang around among the tables. I stop by the table #7 where the final move of the game between Michal Přikryl and Věrka Majtánová is taking place. Michal is losing, but he's going out with the word zadek – buttocks.

The other observing players let an amused chuckle, one of them saying, “Well, you've shown her, right!”

 

Yeah, he's shown her – the ass :{))> at least in letters.

Another great game to watch in progress is in its conclusional phase – surprisingly – at table #1 (as always … and as it should be, after all), this time between the scrabble site devil Petr Vejchoda and a young talent Břeťa Basta, a handsome man my age living a double life. Their score is fucking close, so a few of us gather around with bated breath. Petr wins thanks to the letter G which Břeťa has to deduct from his score...

 

As I'm now 10^th of 53 in the continuous ranking of the tournament with a current 6 – 3 record, I can now expect … well not a butcher but downright a scrabble grim reaper, eh?

You may remember whom I once called that – the old-as-hills top player Jarda Kodym who really does look like one. However, he quit tournament scrabble last year, saying it turns out too expensive for a pensioner.

So if I now call my upcoming opp a grim reaper, it's because of his scrabble rating an achievements. A triple national champ, last year's vicechamp and the current #3 on the Chart, who had to cancel his participation at many of this year's tournaments because of his wife expecting a child. Yeah, the one who won the Slovak championship last year as well – Martin Sobala.

We get both blank each right in the first few turns of our game, which makes it even more interesting. Martin uses it as early as in his fourth move in a bingo – how typical of him, eh – but as I reckon on that, I don't let him enjoy the lead for long. Five turns later I come up with a bingo of my own. Nepábila, with a blank for the E – a negative past tense of the verb pábit coined by the world-renowned Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, which means “to talk in one long, not much reason-controlled complex sentence”, let me approach to his current score again.

But then something happened. In the scrabble set of every language mutation there are some letters which are generally felt to be sort of “unwelcome” whenever they come. In the Czech set they are the 2-point C (three in each set) and the 4-point accented Ý. Now, I swapped them in about the middle of the game and got them again towards the end when there already was nowhere to burn them – only to get to know during our after-game talk that originally it was him who threw them back into the bag at the beginning of the game. So I now deduce them from my score – I'd lose anyway but thanks to them the difference is higher by eight now. Even so, I'm more than satisfied – it's not that bad, against a triple national champ and generally one of the best, if not THE best, Czech scrabble player – 342 – 378. I did the right thing at the beginning of the game, which contributed to this good final result – I had a “bingo-prone” combination of letters on my rack, but no bingo being possible to make of it, I just let it go and played the best move the combination offered, instead of playing small moves and waiting for a bingo forever as I did back at the beginning of my tournament life.

Eleventh in the continuous ranking. Heh, I fell just by one place in comparison with the previous round. And I get the 1500-rated beer-bellied Pepa Nerodil for my next opponent, who as I can see, has been dong pretty good too.

For some reason, he stays on sir/madam terms with most players, so when we shake hands, he's like “good morning, Mr Rodr”. So as a bonus to my greeting, I start off with a more than 100-point bingo, *xantypu, with the X quadrupled – which I thought to be the accusative case of the Czech for a xanthyppe , a shrew. However, the Czech shrew is spelt with an I, xantipa, unlike the Anglophone xanthyppe (and the spellcheck here wants an I, too – huh? I've seen the English version in a dictionary with a Y, and unfortunately it stuck in my mind.). So Josef challenges it off to my surprise. Oh well – I use the X in another nice move, though not a bingo, and play a bingo three moves later – and this time a tripled one, for 86. I race forward, leaving him behind by like 200 points, and even though he plays a bingo later on too, in the 14^th move (přistál, the maculine past participle of the verb “to land”, with a blank for the á), but this does not stop him from losing by more than 150. I get far over 400 and with with my highscore of this tournament, 451 – 300. Being seventh of continuous ranking sounds far better!

As I record this game into my scrabble note-book, I have been doing so for the past four games on its carton cover as there was no more room to write in, and now, after the game with Josef, there wasn't more room even on the carton cover. I thought about a way to continue recording my tourn results and prevent myself from losing it before I reach home.

And hey, I've got an idea. How about using the other side of the score sheet of the game we played before the other half of the tourn, the “warm-up” with Martin Hrubý – this could even enable me to save this “unofficial” game of ours. But I just have to get a shot of Scotch – oops, I mean a piece of Scotch tape!

 

Well, I'll just ask the IT managers, Dana or her daughter Petra – they're always ready with just about everything.

“Do you happen to have a piece of Scotch tape, please?”

“It depends,” Dana answers something most unexpected. Like, either she does have one or not – what could it depend on? Heh. But she puts a clarification to this mysterious answer right away, when she sees I just need to fasten the score sheet into my note-book. “Okay then, here you are – I just thought, had you needed to fasten together your shoes, this Scotch tape wouldn't have been strong enough to do so. For paper this one will do.”

 

It worked. Thanking her, I run towards the noticeboard in the hall, where the match-ups of the upcoming 12^th round have just been pinned up. Now that in my note-book there's room enough to record it in, I'll kick the upcoming opp's ass – on the ass, there's always a lot of room to kick!

 

Oooooppppsss. Guess I aimed a bit too high now, being 7 – 4. Whodya think I get? Of course, the triple National Champ Pavel Podbrdský, who's apparently gotten over his initial bad luck and now he's back again kicking asses.

And yeah, it wouldn't have been him hadn't he shoved on a pure bingo early in the game – postáli, a 3^rd person plural past simple of “to stand for a while”, and another one, this time with a blank, four turns later. Bingo-prone combinatio not coming to me, I just had to rely on the “classic“ wepons such as bonus squares, so for instance, a word with a sixtupled Ř yield 42 points for me. Not giving a fuck about bingos helped me – I shrank the difference between us to a one-bingo one. Now, when I turned the bag the wrong side up to show it was empty, what do you think I held among the last handful of tiles? Yeah – the blank. ONLY now. Typical, eh?

At least it allowed me to go out with a nice word even this player who shines at the top of the chart didn't know.

As he was staring at the word – tátoš, a kind of horse – , he started laughing, “you're playing for beauty, eh?” Well, what's left for me, if the winner has already been decided. “It's like,” he turns to Katka Rusá at the neighboring table, “you once played [the word] exošach [exochess, a game resembling chess].

Jiří Matějček, the average good player doing extremely good today who recently picked up Petra, Dana the IT manager's daughter, has just played the word sexujme – colloquial for “let's have sex” at the nieghboring table, #3.

I lose 409 – 343 – which, against a #1 on the chart and a lucky ass in one, ain't that bad at all, is it.

 

Instead of a “weaker player”, though, I get another butcher – well, okay, just because everyone's weaker than the guy at the top of the chart I've just played against. Jarda Buksa, an old scrabble veteran is currently 23^rd on the Chart, and has fought his way nine time into the finals so far – every year since 2002. So far though, I have a positive win-lose ratio with him – 3:1 in my favor, and the only loss was by 9 points – at last year's finals as you sure remember.

I get a blank right at the first draw, but chit to accompany it, so I just save it for better times. They come at the most unexpected moment: four turn later, that's to say, I start drawing the following shit from the bag: the 8-point Ď, the 4-point impossible uniquely-Czech letter Ř, the 3-point accented É, the 2-point accented Á... so as a result, this is what I hold in my rack: ÁĎEÉNŘ?. Even to those – or especially to those – of you who don't speak Czech it's probably clear that this looks anything but rosy – too many accents in a rack is just like having too much of anything anywhere.

Butttttttt.... heh, do I mean but or butt? Guess! Ha. BUT – I say, this is SOMETHING! I behold a Ž at the H11 position on the board. The double-letter square right under it could help me to a pretty bunch of points if I play the 8-point letter Ď as a part of the word žďáře, an ancient masculine present participle of the verb žďářit, to burn woods [in order to gain room for a new agricultural area]. I started counting my points, knowing it would make me about as many as seventy of them thanks to the sixtupled Ď, when --- hey!!!

I stopped counting and took all of my letters back. Ya think I've just gone crazy? Nope! On the very contrary, I've just gone sensible. Contenting myself with only about seventy points would be way too humble when there's much more … right there!

That's to say, the previous world I nearly played, žďáře, inspired me of a bingo I could make of these at-first-sight-impossible letters. If you burn woods, they're burned, duh – ŽĎÁŘENÉ! The plural passive adjective made of this verb, to burn woods. Hands trembling, I count the shitloads of points. You know, I've put these fat letters on double word. Ninety-four!

This having pumped elan into my veins, I race forward unleashed. I get the other blank, too, and play another bingo, vyhojili, the third person plural past tense of “to heal [esp mentally/one's anger by bitching up somebody]”. Jarda shrinks the difference to just a one-bingo one with good moves, and this is how it stays – I win 436 – 350.

 

Having finished the game early as usual with my blitz tactics, I come downstairs to the pub to let my hair down a bit. A few players who have also already finished their games are chatting here over beer. I desire one too, ya bet! It's too hot outside, and nothing does you as good as a mug of cool golden-shining drink.

I meet Štěpánka Procházková here, a newcomer to the tournament scene, and drink the beer while engaged in a good, relaxed chat with her and her boyfriend. Since the beginning of the tourn, she was talking to me about her impression she had from it and I often had to encourage her saying there's no such thing as an easy beginning.

 

So, what nice surprise do you have for me, I say to myself having come back recovered. Well, a really nice surprise, and this time I do mean it, no irony – Katka Rusá! Come on, dear friend, and let's have a nice game regardless of the result. Quite paradoxically, though a national champ in 2003, she's now rated lower than me after she has bombed out at several tourns lately. But she's gonna be back up there after this one!

I draw a blank right in the first handful of letters. I expect some mud to accompany it, and at first, it looks like that: a C, a V, an R, a P... the whole thing looks like this: CLOPRV?. My fingers itching to swap the awful C and V, and maybe the P and the R, too, I tell myself wait – here comes a bingo! Provlec. Ever heard that? Well, scrabble players have – a very bookish imperative of “to reeve [most typically a thread] through [the eye of a needle]”. Four turns later I come up with a 32-point chuďas, a bit colloquial for a poor fellow, for 32 – not quite a poor fellow, ha. Even six turns later I still enjoy a good lead, when she, totally out of the blue, bingoes too, with nabodni – the imperative of to impale, the blank for the D, and made the game a unsure-winnder fight again for awhile.

But then another unexpected thing happens, this time of a totally different nature. We have a visitor – Markéta Gutmanová, the nice fair-haired lady you sure remember to be a top player until 2010 when she had to put a break to her scrabble career because of pregnancy, retiring from the scrabble scene in high stage of it already. So she just came to see us at the tourn, her baby in her arms.

“You're bringing up a future scrabble player, eh? A way to go!” I sneer.

Before long though, the baby started crying and it took Markéta several seconds to calm it down.

“Dunno – five,” said Katka with a fed-up face, playing a five-point move and pressing the clock. On emptzing the bag, I had already gained a safe 30-point lead again. But it was a hell of a fight – especially from that bingo of hers on. I win 392 – 363.

“I'd play a move worth more,” Katka comments her five-point word, “But I just got out of it by that baby bitching. I can't stand little children.”

 

The last round – I end up at table #5. A good jump from the #19 in the first round, eh? Means a jump up on the chart as well.

I tried a quadrupled bingo on my fourth turn. To my surprise, it got challenged off, although I talked to my mom on the phone and she, not a scrabble player but always bright in Czech, thought it legitimate too. Oh well, it apparently wasn't in the dic(k)tionary. I play a bingo, valid this time, again two turns later, and then even one more, but he plays his for more than 100, and then keeps racing ahead with fat non-bingo moves while I strive with shit. He wins 422 – 358, the sum of our scores – 780 – being sure awesome but I was pissed off of course, as a game which looked promising and turning in my favor in its initial phase went completely wrong in the end. Oh well.

 

As I said in the beginning, this tourn was a part of a big event in which dozens of tourns in other board games were being played at the same time, so we were told to come downstairs for the prize ceremonial where the results were to be read and prizes awarded. Which was fun; first, we saw the list of people who had applied for the tourn: we discovered there was the name of someone from Kazakhstan among us! Haha! Of course he hasn't come; he probably thought the tournament was going to be an English scrabble one, and on finding out the way things were, he didn't dare try, ha. And then, the organizer of the whole big event started reading them results. Which was even more fun as, he himself not being associated with scrabble in any way, our names didn't sound familiar to him so he often mucked them up when reading them. The players made fun of him, mucking the names up themselves then, making Luboš Vencl into Venčl, and so on. The tourn was won by the best scrabble player in the eyes of many of us – Martin Kuča, with 12 wins of 15. I finish eleventh (of fifty-three participants) with a 9 – 6 record.

 

The next tourn is taking place in Třinec – pretty far away, more then 300 km, so I hope the result's gonna be worth it! I could take it as a fun trip, as by this 11^th place from Pardubice my participation at the finals is more or less secured (after my silver from Zlín and fourth place in Kladno)... I'm going to visit a friend of mine from my university years and anyway, looking forward to the trip itself, starting to get kind of itchy feet!

linkuj.cz vybrali.sme.sk

poslal scrabblista, 26.08.2011 8:12:00

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