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The Fall Prague Qualification Tournament

Praha, CZ, Sat Nov 5^th 2011

 

I had long hestitated whether or not to go to this tourn. I had long been qualified for this year's championship, so why bother going? But hey – I was so fed up with online scrabble. So fed up with the tile-handling machine which always seems to be biased. If I am to get crap, I want to draw the crap myself. Wanted to go play live again, hear the rattle of the tiles and feel them, instead of moving virtual ones with a mouse. And I wanted to see my scrabble friends live, too, not just on the scrabble site or Facebook.

On top of that, I was too busy at work, taking lessons for a colleague of mine who had left for Australia – taking them although I wasn't very well. And so I said to myself, hell, if I'm able to go to work and teach for eight hours a day in spite of being unwell, why couldn't I as well go to a tourn? I'm gonna get better by Saturday anyway, and oh well, it's just nothing but a bad cold after all.

 

I found these 18.09 and 18.13 trains which I hoped to catch on my way back from the tourn so I wouldn't need to look for a place to stay overnight. I hit the sack early and next morning at 3.50 I take my backpack and head to the train station, not having the faintest clue that this is the place where the total ineffability of the day begins. From an evidently still sleepy conductress I buy what I think to be a two-way ticket to Prague and, not having any mind to sleep anymore, I sink into a book to kill the time for the succeeding hour until we reach Starkoč, a tiny town where Jirka Kracík was to get on according to what he had said.

He did. I had had some tea tags and teabags ready for him as he's an ardent collector of things, having infected Zbyněk Burda with tea tag collecting, too. Zbyněk, though, drinks them all teas he collects, too – even when they don't taste good...

I have taken along the booklet we got at the World Scrabble Championship. Zbyněk skims through it, and seeing the prizes for the first ten places, says with a grin:

“Wasn't there a prize for the 11^th anymore? Not even a rotten salami like at the Volyně tourn?”

 

I found Martin Hrubý, the ardent scrabble player and tourn veteran from Western Bohemia, whom I had promised to bring copies of score sheets from the World Championship. He said he'd study them and take part in the Prague English scrabble tourn the year after...

 

Oh nope. Žaneta … even worse than to lose to a hard opp is to do so against one who is not that hard but who, for a change, distracts you with her charm and beauty.

Which she's always done, without even knowing. Now, though, apart from having those secret female weapons at her disposal, the tiles kind of flew her way on top of that. I try a bingo. It gets challenged off but she plays one of hers in its stead, a good one this time. I answer with another one of mine, which she challenges as well but which comes back good.

But this was the end of the up till then neck and neck fight. The tile gods forsake me in my gorgeous opponent's favor and she comes up with a tripled bingo, while I get what's left – the crap of the bottom. I believe the bingo good; I challenge it “just in case”, in vain though.

Towards the end of the game, leading by 150, she plays this word dačo on a triple for 21. Dača being a not very much used colloquial term for a cottage, this vocative case of its, dačo, is identical with a colloquial Slovak word for “something”. That's what I rely on to perplex her, as I grin and say: “Hey, ain't that Slovak?”

She hesitates. Her Vietnamese descent makes her unsure about certain words from time to time, which, though, doesn't prevent her form being a pretty good (meaning “pretty and good at the same time” in her case as well, which is a deadly combination, especially for young singles like me) player.

“Stop trying to fool me,” she sneers back, still hesitating. “Like, that's not very nice...”

Yeah, not very nice, just like your PDAing with that Sikora of yours.

“You got your female weapons, so I gotta resort to the linguistic ones,” I laugh.

“Drop it,” she tries to challenge the fact. “I'm wearing this jumper of mine just for this sake, so that the things underneath don't distract you, and, like, I'm getting pretty hot.”

Honey, you aren't just getting pretty hot. You have always been pretty hot, even in winter.

She kills me 471 – 320. I have brought a copy paper to keep a memory of this tourn – just like I had known something – but didn't use it yet in this first game. Knew why, eh? It wouldn't have been worth preserving.

 

If you lose a game, it always leaves you something to hope for – an easier opponent in the next round. Which is not by far a rule after the first round, though., as many a “favorite” might have lost due to the “total coincidence” rule of first-round match-ups...

And so I get Pavel Palička. Although he's never qualified for the Nationals, he still remains a pretty dangerous opp – at one tourn he made it as high as the 5^th place.

As I drew my first rack of seven, I thought I'd die. What's worse – to be pissed off for the absence of good luck, like in the first round, or for feeling lame for being lucky?

That's to say, I draw BEHJMOO. Hobojem, duh. Just about every fool would see this instrumental case of the musical instrument, heh (hoboj, the Czech for an oboe) in it.

“I'm so sorry... just luck,” I say as I lay it on him, collecting my easy eighty points.

“Don't be,” he calms me down. If I only knew! For then, I just thought he was so calm by nature. But he was, because he was holding a blank and forming a bingo of his at that very time. At his fourth move he comes up with korzetům, a blank for the M, a plural dative case of the corset.

As he plays TAX, doubling the X on the double-letter near the triple-word, I say to myself, ha, he's asking for trouble. Holding an O and a V on my rack, that's to say, it's just a matter of time till I get an Á, an É, an Í or an Ý to make a killing taxový, taxoví, taxová, or taxové – an adjective of TAX – for over fifty.

And I did, right in my eighth move – the neuter gender variant, with the É. Four turns later, I turn ANI (nothing to do with the anus in Czech – just an ordinary conjunction meaning “nor”) into aniž (“without -ing”), hooking bože (a vocative case of god) on a triple. Bože! 120 points ahead. Whew, it doesn't look like he was after catching up.

He wasn't, really – there was no way anymore. Not even a 40-point move towards the end prevented him from losing 387 – 298.

Moving to table #20, I expect a butcher for my third opp. What a (nice! ha) surprise to find out I am to play against 1170-rated Gabriela Gugová now.

Hey, how's that possible? She must be 1 – 1 then now, having beaten someone a lot stronger.

Indeed. She's won over Martin Hrubý – even played a bingo against him.

Oh well, shit happens. I'm gonna take revenge for him.

I said to myself there was no reason to be gentle then. And so for the first five moves I beat her with steady 30-point blows on overage, thus getting ahead by seventy not even needing a bingo. And so I even was in a position to afford to act tactically: after three moves with 9, 5 and 12 pts. value respectively, I got what I didn't need at all for the intended bingo – a six-point Ň. Well, I've learned quite a few lessons so I knew it wasn't worth pushing and throwing the Ň off. I saw a good spot for it – which would even almost make up for the bingo. Making vsuňme, “let's insert” or “let's put in”, using the blank for the V, thanks to the sixtupled Ň I get 56 points, making the gap between us yawn even more – 219 – 96. Getting some bingo-friendly letters again, I thought, with such a difference I can afford some tacticalness again. 11 – 6 – 4 – 10 … and yes – here it comes. Pure ocezení for 78... “strained around”, like with a sieve. Not that the bingo at this point of the game would decide anything, let alone the win or lose. I smash her by nearly two hundred – 445 – 251.

But I've asked for trouble by this. Of all the opponents present – Pavel Podbrdský, the up till recently number one on the chart and a triple national champ. The one infamous for having shitloads of good luck apart from the brains. But oh well, at least I know what to expect.

And indeed. Of course he draws the blank right among his first rack of seven. The bingo he makes with it right in his third move is too primitive – not worth a “top” player at all. Zatrhuj – just an imperative of an ordinary verb (to tick). The blank is a U for Ursula. Seventy-four. But hey, you ain't gonna get me that easily. I play a pure one of mine a move later, which he challenges but comes back good. Prokrven, “with blood running through”. Seventy.

“I'd rather have a look at that one,” he says. It's good, of course. BLOODY good. If blood can run through something, why couldn't that thing be run through by blood, eh...

Well, what so you think happens only five turns later? Of course. He picks the other blank. And plays another primitive bingo, right on the triple. I assume there's not much I could do about this ineffable luck of his, so I just let it go and play the best way I can to shrink the difference at least. I lose 426 – 329: ha, the first one on the chart needed both blanks and heaps of luck to beat me not even by a hundred.

And no relief after that. I get Jiří Kamín now, who's made it into the Championship ten times – i. e., every year since 2000 when he entered the scrabble scene – and now he's in the top 20. However, having beaten him several times already, I got no time to fear. Keeping him busy running neck and neck for the first seven turns, I come up with a pure 76-point doubled bingo after that. He challenges; it comes back good. When he plays a 43-point MANX three moves later, I'm already a hundred points away – too much for it to be a threat to me.

In my 14th move, still a hundred points away, I get what I don't expect at all – both blanks. It takes two “strategic” moves to play off two unsuitable tiles, whereupon I come up with the bingo nekvačíš, a present 2^nd person singular negative of “to be outta here”.

“You all just can't play without them blanks,” he grumbled. Haha! Like, hadn't I played this second bingo, I would've still been in the lead by 70.

I smash him 426 – 276, hitting the first third in the continuous ranking of the tourn – 21^st of 64. This kicks in another dose of optimism – let's move even higher.

Tomáš Fanta, I read on the 6^th round match-ups. Oh yeah, the better you do, the tougher it gets. Let's make another cup of coffee … you're gonna make it, and this time I don't mean the coffee!

I was expecting a tough one... but not that tough. I was sweating like a pig, my brain at the brink of overheating, trying to get the shit out of the tiles. In the 12^th move I come up with a 59-point possessive-case bingo idiotova, “[an] idiot's”, but as it was quite lame point-wise, he was right back breathing on my neck with his score again.

There was this spot on the board which we both saw and watched – all it took was to add a D and it would make you 40 points. The one to get this D was Tomáš – and no, I don't mean me :{)> I, though, shot back with a 40-point fonuj, which his eyes popped at. “What weird words you're playing on me today,” he comments on that as he's picking himself up from the chair to challenge.

“The imperative of fonovat – to phonate, to carry out phonation,” I hand the definition even before validating the word.

The main surprise, that's to say, was to come at the very end, during our last moves. I worked out a most efficient plan to go out but said to myself, oh well, if he did before me, I still got little or nothing to deduct so I should still be okay.

“Eight, out,” says Tomáš. Where's that usual pissed-off expression on his mug he has when he loses? That's strange. Maybe he's changed, you say? Haha! As House, M.D. would say – people don't change.

“So, it's three zero five to three two two, right?” I check. In my favor, of course.

“Eh? I got three two five to three two two.” In his favor, for a change.

“Let's check.” Hopefully it's not me who's made the mistake!

“Here it is,” I say after awhile, rejoicing in my mind to have found the error. It's him who's miscounted it, so the win is mine. “Sixty-eight plus forty-one.”

“And? What's wrong with that?” he tries to make a marveling grimace. Ha! Are you tryin' to fool me?

“Well, that's definitely not one two nine,” I grin. “It's one zero nine.”

A few second of deadly silence. A straight look in my eye, and he knows he ain't gonna convince me with this attempt at bullshit. You can read on his face what's going through his mind. How could I be that full of shit and lose this game because of this one stupid miscount of mine?? Fuck, shit, fuck, guess I'm gonna hit the roof.

“I suppose you were so laid back when playing cuz you thought towards the end that you had the game nailed, eh?”

“You bet!”

Tom went and unburdened his stupid loss to just about every person he bumped into. Chit just happens...

Eighteenth in the continuous ranking of the tourn – that's an ordinal number I kind of like! But well, which cutthroat am I going to get now?

Marek Lašťovka. Oh okay. A tough opp but I've beaten him quite a couple of times, both at tourns and at the scrabble site.

Remember this 43-year-old black-haired archivist and typesetter with glasses, moustache and beard? No? And, you say, what makes him so special that I should remember him among the loads of opps you've had over the past four years you've been playing tournament scrabble?

Well, it's like this – he was my very first opponent at my very first tourn. Back in Volyně in 2007, and Pavel Žibřid said that day I was a poor, unlucky fellow to have gotten matched up downright against him. That was long ago though – I have beaten him several times since then, so no reason to fear now.

And I say that all the time: it's all about attitude... I've just told myself I had nothing to fear, and here I come with a 45-point AXON as early as in my second move. He, though, shoots back with a 28-point tógo, a vocative case of tóga, TOGA, to be neck and neck with me again for the next few moves. I start getting behind, but as you might guess, just because of cooking a bingo.

Heck. I just can't make one up... save this poor one for 58 points. Grrr. There must be a fattier one, come on.

There just isn't one. So I play this bookish nezkopit, “not to put into a pile”. Fifty-eight. He challenges. “Let's have a look at nezkopit,” he pronounces it thoroughly, which was just a sign of how weird he finds the word. Of course it's good. Among my new rack of seven I find the other blank and use it in my very next move for rolbu, for 33 points, the accusative case of rolba, which is a special vehicle for removing snow (“snow cat”). He plays an invalid word which I challenge off, so instead of catching up, he still stays 34 points away. Although he tries hard to catch up (his 27-25-22 series towards the end of the game looks pretty threatening), I win this hard hell of a fight 332 – 306. 11^th in the continuous ranking... sweet. But well, less sweet is a mere thought of who might await me in the next round.

Věra Majtánová, say the mach-ups. Great – I couldn't wish for more: if I'm supposed to have my ass kicked by a top player now, then at least by a nice one.

“We've both already qualified for this year's championship, so let's just have a nice game,” I say, speaking her mind.

As soon as I let that one out, she throws a pure bingo. It seems weird, and indeed, I challenge it off. And play one of mine instead, a good one this time. 80. Whack. And then one more. Actually not a bingo this time, but of an equivalent number of points – 63. Thus kicking myself into a 104-point lead as soon as in the 3^rd turn, I don't relieve the push, going on with 24-30 and tightening the board with an inextensible word. Later on, I double-triple a word, which gives me 42, and squeeze the shit out of the X for 45 in my very next move. Getting far over 400, she, for her part, was glad to make it over 300 at least.

“How did you do?” A friend player stops by and asks. He gets astonished at seeing the score, looking at the sheets we are just signing – 305 – 439 in my favor.

“How could I have done when he played about twenty bingos against me?” she sneers.

“I made just one bingo,” I tried to defend.

“Well, this was a bingo,” she points at my 60-point ťapce, grinning, “this was a bingo,” – this time she comments my ex, vestě, and vy for 45 points in my 13^th move – “and this was a bingo,” she attributes the same quality to my tripled oči and uď for 42 points.

 

Radek Mannheim watched the qualification chart and said he had a “personal goal” – to finish above me in it. Well well – seems like you're going the wrong way, sir! You'd better turn around, go straight on and then turn left.

 

Last round. The obvious – could you please put the tiles back into the bag when you finish playing, turn off the clocks, etc …

Oh dear. Who am I gonna get as the last-round “present”if I'm 7^th of 64 in the continuous ranking of the tourn now?

 

Milan Kuděj, reads the verdict of the match-ups. Are you shittin' me??

You sure remember this stout bearded guy. Yeah, he's Katka Rusá's uncle and the talent for scrabble is running in their family, he being a triple National Champ.

I say to myself, I've already secured a place in the top ten of this tournament, so let's just have some fun now – anyway, it's improbable we'd win against Milan.

And so, while other players were frowning and racking their brains over their racks, Milan and I at table #1 were laughing our asses off all the time. And surprisingly, his good mood didn't freeze even in the 6^th turn when I played a bingo. I don't say threw on purpose – because I took it slow just to enjoy the act of putting a bingo against a triple National Champ. First I laid državá* on the board, stopping for awhile and pretending to hesitate. That's to say, this looks like a feminine adjective, and I meant to make him think for a few moments that I was going to play a non-word.

He just smiled into his beard. But for a different reason. “This is a good word,” he commented the non-word just before I pressed the clock. “Had you played državách, it would have been worse.”

He knew. He knew exactly that this was what I was going to do. And so, as I put a blank for the C followed by the H tile, we burst out guffawing together. (Državách, the locative plural case of država – a territorial possession.)

“You didn't buy it from the beginning, did you,” I said, wiping tears of laughter off my eyes.

“Not really,” he confirms. “Državá isn't a word, duh.”

But this wasn't going to be the end. I went on beating him with blows worth 30, 37, 30, getting into a 100-point lead after five moves. He didn't lose his good mood even then. Not even after the 16^th move when it was clear that while I have gotten over 400, he wasn't even going to pile up 300 points. That's to say, as I announced a pass, he deliberately played off one tile after one tile, to gather as many points as possible even though he knew was going to lose by more than a hundred. Now, there's this difference between the Czech verbs hrát and hrát si – both of which translate as to play, while the other one, followed by the reflexive pronoun si, is used generally for children and the activity they do most often (playing, i.e., with toys, etc.). And so, while Milan killed his tiles he had left one by one and I kept passing, he followed each of his moves by this question, “Can I keep playing?”, USING, as you might figure out, the reflexive verb, so it sounded like from a little boy asking his dad to let him play for a bit more.

It wasn't the first time I had beaten this triple National Champ at a tourn. The first time I did – at the tourn in Náchod in 2008 – I even won a by-prize for the “most surprising winner”. But it was by mere 17 then, while now by more than a hundred – 404 – 293.

 

Now, an only disadvantage of ending up among the first five became obvious: the results were read from the back, so I had to wait for the very end. But time was not what I had at that moment. I had a watch on my wrist but no time on my hands. And guess I've just missed the last streetcar which would have gotten me to the station in time.

I asked Katka whether the next streetcar would make it too.

“Well... if you're lucky enough,” she grinned. Hm. Which I'm not. I guess I've had my daily share of good luck at this past tourn, eh...

“The sixth place: Ivo Hradský,” announced Pavel Vojáček, the scrabble association director, a top player himself and the organiyer of this fall Prague tourn. Hey, starting with Ivo, these already are 7 – 2 people – my category! Those with seven wins.

“The fifth: Tomáš Rodr.” Cool. This time I was even glad not to have ended up any higher – cuz that way I would've had to wait for a few seconds longer and might have had a hard time catching the train. Which I actually already do!

I won a bottle of good wine. Said a quick good bye to Katka and ran, as she said I could manage with a bit of luck.

 

Of course I didn't. Of course I didn't catch it, but knew of one more going my direction four minutes later. The only drawback to it being the fact that it was going to be more expensive. But oh well. Fuck the money! I got my prize, got my fifth place of 64, and have had a great time!

 

As I was leaving, I heard the rest of the results, too. The tourn was won by guess who!

Of course – Milan Kuděj, his game against me being the only one he lost at this tourn. That's why! That's why he was in such a good mood and didn't even let his losing to me destroy it – cuz he knew it wouldn't have prevented him from being first!

 

Drenched with sweat I arrived at the train station. What about this renowned, omnipresent delay of Czech trains? Of course – it's up and gone when you rely on it. As I have already said, I had to take a bit more expensive one, but oh well. I should get away with my two-way ticket.

Now, as I arrived at the Pardubice station and got off to change trains, I had some time left, so I wanted to buy some of this renowned Pardubice gingerbread. There were two booths open at the station: a newsagent's that was full of it (meaning of the gingerbread) and a shop with various other things including a bit of the gingerbread, too.

Now, as I approached the newsagent's, the newsagent didn't care a hoot and kept on PDAing with a guy inside. Just takes the biscuit, eh? Or, actually, takes the gingerbread. When I said the store was full of it, I didn't know the attribute would fit better to the wench inside. And no, this time I don't mean gingerbread.

So I went to the other store. A lot narrower choice of gingerbread fillings and flavors but oh well, what the hell. I ain't gonna play a spectator to some showers-off just to get a better choice of fillings.

As I enter the Pardubice-Hradec passenger train, I hand the conductor my ticket.

“You may have given me the wrong one,” he gives it back to me.

What the hell? I have traveled all the way from Prague with this one ticket, with the conductor on the previous train acting like everything was all right.

“Not really. This is the one I've traveled with all the way from Prague.”

“And nobody noticed...?”

“No... not even me.” Not even the SuperCity Pendolino conductor...!

Grrr. So I just had to cough up my last bucks for a Pardubice-Trutnov ticket. And just because of the sleepy conductress on the 4.37 Trutnov-Hradec train who had apparently overheard me saying I wanted a TWO-WAY ticket...!

But oh well. The main thing is to get home safe and sound ... to recover the strength for the upcoming Championship!

 

Remember what Radek Mannheim said about his “personal goal”? Haha – in the end he finished 29^th in the championship qualification, while I'm 12^th. So we both qualified, duh, as the first 32 do, but he didn't finish above me as he strove to... see you at the National Championship, on November 26^th in Kadaň!

linkuj.cz vybrali.sme.sk

poslal scrabblista, 22.11.2011 22:43:00

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