Back to Tournament Reports

From: Lester <maxim@netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 12:33:07 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Portland
Message-id: <Pine.3.89.9709031239.A15180-0100000@netcom16>

Portland.

We drove up from the Bay Area. Went into work for a few hours on Wednesday, left late in the afternoon and drove to Redding, a couple of hundred miles north of Oakland-SF. Studied anamonics and listened to part of an unabridged recording of "The Shipping News." (Joan driving, I put the seat back and fall asleep after the second or third paragraph and she later tells me what I missed.)

Made it to Eugene, Oregon on Thursday, found out that we could get a suite at Quality Inn for less than we paid for one room in Redding, and watched the US Open Tennis in the morning, rooting in vain for Kafelnikov, who got crushed by Woodforde.

Got to Portland around 4 pm Friday. Slightly disappointed that the new site was not "downtown" but instead a little in the suburbs. But that faded when we saw the elegant playing room, good lighting and plenty of space.

The tournament was a pleasure. So much so, that I fervently hope that Joe and John and other tournament directors can find a way to use Fontes' wonderful organizing skills and thoughtful innovations in future tournaments. Among the things I especially liked:

  1. Fontes figured out a simple way to avoid all repeats until the last two rounds, and to pair one round at a time without making people wait for pairings:

    We started out with a 7 round, round-robin. Fontes then paired the 8th round based on the standings after round 6. Rounds 9 through 18 were done the same way, as a pure Swiss, omitting the results of the very last round. That way there was no waiting, and no re- pairs.

  2. A large font (npi) was used for the printouts, so that the standings and pairings were easily visible even to the most myopic of us.
  3. Alongside the standings and pairings, also in large type, was a straightforward printout of results of the previous round -- e.g.:
         LESTER SCHONBRUN 480    ROBERT FELT 420
         etc.
    
  4. Fontes found innovative and pleasant ways to encourage quiet and accuracy, speaking to offenders directly, with courtesy and respect, and rewarding the whole group with prizes if the general noise level was low.

    There were other niceties. On the first day, I forgot to find out when we were due back from lunch (a buffet, included in the entry fee). I started to ask someone, and then noticed the information was chalked on a board in the lunch room, very noticeably. This above-and-beyond sort of thoughtfulness was typical of the way the tournament was run.

  5. Aside from all this, there's Portland. Great restaurants (Sherrie and Gregg took us to one, Bob Schoenman and Alice Van Leunen introduced us to another).
  6. Powell's -- the best bookstore in the world.
  7. Lots of bridges, which are easy and safe to walk over. On Monday, at 7 a.m., Gregg Foster and I walked over the Steel Bridge to downtown and then back over the Broadway Bridge and had plenty of time left to shower before the first round at 9 a.m..
  8. And then there's Wiegand, and now, Lennon, Helaine Garren, Karen Merrill, Ruth Hamilton, Michael Baker, Keith Valentine, and dozens of other friendly or pleasantly nutsy people.
Back home by Tuesday night, to find that our landlady had decided to wait to start painting our hall until a few hours before we arrived home.

Re: Prozac moment --

John and James found it, and so did Cynthia.

I did play YOGI, at 15h, because I didn't give a thought to the spot on the 9 row, and I was too lazy to check my tracking or just do the addition and see that playing YOGEE 15a would win against anything but a blankless bingo with the C falling on a12 (which would tie). Or playing away one tile and preserving my YOGEE plays at 15a or o10 would work fine...

Cynthia did find gIANTESS, a real beauty.

A couple of other ironies: She didn't have that much time, and had I not blocked the spot on 15h, she might never have found the spot on the 9 file. Also, she made the DEV play at 6b just two turns before, making the A in gIANTESS playable.

I challenged, of course, but it occurred to me afterwards that instead of shouting "challenge" I should have called out "Kavorkian" or "Prozac."

Les.