Over the weekend of August 2nd/3rd there were two one day tournaments in Oxford.
Graham and Helen attended the first – a 7 game 3 division tournament. Helen and Graham were placed in the A division in positions 15 and 17 out of 20. Many of the top players had played in World Championships. A very strong division.
With 7 games to play and a field of 19 other players, both Helen and Graham thought they would avoid each other – sadly not – as they met in round 3. This picture was taken by the tournament organiser Rob Blundell.
Graham came out on top and went on to win a further 2 games. One game finished 477-475 in Graham’s favour, another he won with a score of 532 including the 9 timer UPSETTER.
Helen’s games were a lot lower scoring; she, too, ended on 3 wins from 7 games after winning the final two games of the day. Apart from a drubbing from Graham, almost all of her other games were close, win or lose. Some interesting words played were EEJIT and FACTORY, and also extending the word ACHE in both directions to make ACHED, then PREACHED.
On day 2, Graham and Helen were joined by Fiona. Sunday’s tournament was a 7 game round robin and Graham and Helen were in Division B. Fiona was in division E (14 players) so her opponents were based on her ongoing tournament performance.
She writes :
I was one of 14 players in E division at the Oxford Sunday tournament. Seven games were played. I started off well with a win, but then lost four consecutive games, before winning the last two, finishing with 3 wins and a +229 spread. I didn’t have much luck in terms of blanks and Ss, but also made a couple of silly mistakes that probably cost me close games (not noticing my opponent had played IH because I was looking upside down must be up there!).
I did play a few nice bonuses – ANALYSE and TENFOLD back to back in my first game, EBONITE, LANTERN, ETERNAL, SOONEST and NEUROTIC. Also a couple of invalid bonuses – one challenged off, the other not! A couple of times I was able to extend words already on the board to reach the triple spot – adding -ING to ENJOY for 57 points and LAND to MAIN for 35 were both satisfying.
Back in Division B, Helen and Graham were again lowly rated in the division (5th and 7th out of 8) and again had to play each other – this time Helen was victorious clawing back a 140 point deficit to win 468-430. Graham managed to win 3 games during the day, but got beaten by over 190 points in 2 of them, one of which included the odd looking 9 timer EUDAIMON.
Sunday's round-robin tournament of 7 games looked to be tough, given that all 7 players were of similar standard, within a few ratings points of each other. Helen started the day well, and, by lunchtime, she was still unbeaten and was leading the group with Graham in second place.
It all went wrong for Helen in the game after lunch, against Wesley Choy. Helen had taken an early lead of about 50 points when Wesley responded with two consecutive moves of TEXTILES, for 176 points, then HAZE for 76 points; the game was lost for Helen from then on, but she managed to pull back to lose by 'only' 50 points.
Before the final game, it was still possible for 6 of the 8 players in the group to win, as there were two players on 4 wins, and a further four on 3 wins. Helen's final game was against Barry Grossman, one of the equal top rated players in the division, and she found bonuses of TAENIATE and LOOSENS to win the game by 63 points, and also win the division with 5 wins from 7 games.
Well played Helen! Here is Helen receiving her prize and her winning board from the last game!
