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Back to 2009 King's Cup Live Coverage

2009 King's Cup Commentary: Round 18

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Go to: Before the Tournament, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4, Round 5, Round 6, Round 7, Round 8, Round 9, Round 10, Round 11, Round 12, Round 13, Round 14, Round 15, Round 17, Round 18, Round 19, Round 20, Round 21, Round 22, Round 23, Round 24, Round 25, Round 26, Round 27, Final Round 1, Final Round 2, Final Round 3, After the Tournament.

The boy who was excited to see Jason Katz-Brown's (USA) name at the top of the list a few rounds back has been dropping by between rounds to collect as many autographs as he can. This happens occasionally back home, but not as often as I'd like.

There are a few other differences in how tournaments are arranged here and there too. For one thing, to accommodate local and U.S. OSPD players, all players in the Open division are allowed to refer to a list of the twos and threes and their inflections. The tournament organizer provides all equipment; the boards, racks and tiles are all locally made. The tiles consist of two nested pieces of clear plastic (each the shape of an open box) with a printed letter sandwiched between them. Twice so far, a tile has become disassembled in the bag, and twice players have discovered tiles sets with incorrect distributions. There's a hardward parts box with a large number of drawers holding spare tiles of both colours for these reasons.

Amnuay Ploysangngam (THA) comes by every now and then to see how the Thai players are doing. I think his nightmare scenario is an American player who doesn't speak any Thai winning the top prize and being a dud on late night Thai talk shows. (That's a joke for the NSA's John and Jane Williams there.)

There was a ten-minute delay getting standings posted this round. At the end of a long day it gets a bit confusing as to what round it is, with a good third of the players being one round ahead of the rest. So when a player turns in a slip marked for the next round we just set it aside until all the results for this round are in, which would be fine if the slip weren't really intended for the current round.

Harshan Lamabadusuriya (Eng) opened against Jason Katz-Brown (USA) at Board 1, even though they're in ninth and second place, because the board assignments follow the pairing system in using the Portland (Fontes) system of working from two rounds back. Jason was in first then, so he's on Board 1 with his opponent. Harshan traded five vowels keeping EN, lost a free challenge two rounds later on Jason's MOFETTE (a noxious emanation from a fissure in the earth), then a little later played PRESTING(62), OUZELS/DELAYS (61) and MAX (62) on consecutive turns. In the meantime, Jason lost a turn to BOOF*, end trailed by 125 points. The two traded late bingoes (DITHIOL and DISCREET), and Jason ended up losing 465-353.