On Sunday August 23rd, Richard and Fiona played in a 7 game tournament in London, run as part of the Mind Sports Olympiad.
Here are their reports :
Richard :
On 23nd August I played in the 7 game MSO Tournament. It was based in the Mercure Hotel in Earls Court and there were numerous other tournaments taking place for Chess, Backgammon, Draughts and numerous other board games. This did mean it was noisy and there were spectators walking in to watch the games.
Games 1 and 2 were wins for me of over 100 so a good start. Then played Rik Kennedy in game 3. He bonused early with KINDLED -I responded with DILUTES. After his second bonus of UNCAPES he led by 4. I then found AIRLINER for 76 and SAVORIER for 86 to lead by 69.
I thought I had a third successive bonus playing ROOMLET. There was no hold and I drew all my tiles face down. At the second the first tile was about to hit the rack he challenged but like me had presumed it was good. It was not! The only bonus was TREMOLO. This played but would have opened a 9 timer. Disappointed though as I knew the word and Rik blocked the spot to prevent me playing it the turn after.
Despite ROOMLET coming off I had an out in 2 to win but it relied on me knowing the correct 4 word outplay in one of two spots. My rack was AENR but the word had to end in a vowel. The trouble was I couldn't think which of RANE or NARE was good and ended going for RANE. NARE was the only play out and RANE was challenged off. I had considered non outplay options but they didn't score enough. The result was a 407-389 win for Rik.
I paid brutally for that miss after lunch as all four games resulted in 3 or 4 bonuses played against me with opponents averaging 494 per game! Lost 2 by about 200 and one by over 100. In the other game I did pull level after 3 bonuses of my own but had to empty the bag, picked the Q and got stuck with it losing by 44. The only consolation was that there was little I could do to change the results of these games.
Richard : CAROLERS 64, BARTISAN 61, DEVOTING 92, SAVORIER 86, COORIED 82, HAROSETS 86, PLONGD 27
Opponents - REEDBED 70, CAESURAE, PERIDOTE 86, MISNAME 90, GELADAS 75, MANITOS 72
Fiona :
I played at the Mind Sport Olympiad (MSO) Scrabble tournament. MSO is always a bit different, with lots of different board games in different rooms, a lot of noise, and people casually wandering in and out to see what's happening.
The tournament was seven games in one open division.
I had a very good game with Barry Grossman, finding three bonuses to have a good lead, and tried to keep blocking bonus lanes, but he bonused out in an awkward spot on his last move to take the game. One of my bonuses was UNITARDS - the S was played to make FEINTERS which I was very unsure of, so wasn't surprised when he challenged, but was very surprised when he only challenged UNITARDS! FEINTERS is not valid so I was very lucky!
My next game was against David Shenkin who I've never yet managed to beat! This time proved no different, with awkward tiles not helping. My real downfall came mid game when I at last had a bonus on my rack AEIMNOS on my rack with a handy T on the board. I was immediately going to play AMNIOTES, but realised MOANIEST would score more but open the triple. After some deliberation I played MOANIEST. It's not valid in Scrabble! David challenged it off, and played his bonus in the same spot - a 150 point swing which I couldn't recover from.
I'm sure you've all heard me whinging incessantly about the dictionary differences between Countdown and Scrabble, but that one really surprised me - there's so many nonsense comparatives in scrabble but the perfectly ordinary 'moany' is not a word! I went into the lunch break feeling a bit disillusioned on 3 losses. The afternoon fared much better and I won 3 of the four remaining games to finish 20th out of 28th, which I was quite happy with given my disappointing start!