Go to: Commentary Games Players tsh Reports Scoreboard A Scoreboard B Standings Photos Prizes

Back to EOSC 2010 Live Coverage

EOSC 2010 Commentary: Round 27

[ ]

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 16, Round 17, Round 18, Round 19, Round 20, Round 21, Round 22, Round 23, Round 24, Round 25, Round 26, Round 27, Round 28, Round 29, Round 30, Round 31, Round 32, After the Tournament.

Division A

Several players are late due to traffic, and at least five clocks are started.

Christine Strawbridge (MLT) has had to withdraw from the event due to illness. David Delicata (MLT), originally paired with her this round, gets a forfeit win; Christine will not be paired in future rounds, and we wish her a speedy recovery.

Nigel Richards (MYS), playing Harshan Lamabadusuriya (Eng) has overdrawn tiles. I don't immediately see any strategic advantage in doing so (e.g., to make Harshan waste clock time, or to mislead Harshan as to what kind of rack Nigel has); I suspect Nigel is just playing at being human, after reading the commentary from Round 26. Whatever it was, it didn't work: Harshan won 509-373.

This round's live game has been delayed due to procedural issues associated with a replacement annotator. It will be posted as soon as possible.

With Nigel losing and Helen Gipson (Sco) beating Theresa Brousson (MLT) 479-394, Nigel's lead has been cut to one game. Helen and Nigel play next round, giving her a chance to catch up to him on wins at least, though Nigel still has more a spread advantage of more than 2,000 points.

Harshan's win keeps faint hope alive for him. He's three games behind Helen, at 18-9 +1532, with twelve more points of spread. In order to finish on top, he needs to win all of his remaining games,a and have Nigel lose all of his. In the most optimistic (for him) scenario, he might get to play two more games against Nigel, and assuming for the sake of simplicity that each player has a 50% chance of winning any game, that would give Harshan a 1/256 chance of finishing first. By way of comparison, that's similar to the chance of a game ending in a tie on an odd-numbered score.

With the leaders spread out at 22, 21, 18, 17, 16, 15 and 14.5 wins (followed by eight players at 14) and five rounds to go, it could take as many as 21 or 22 wins even to finish in the top four money positions. Fourth-place Joanne Craig (AUS) has a good chance at a prize, fifth-place Theresa is still in the running, and sixth-place Vincent Boyle (Sco) is going to have to hope for a bit of luck.

Division B

Charles Micallef (MLT) and Jayne MacKenzie (Eng) have been asked to turn in their results as quickly as possible, as pairings will be deferred until it is known whether or not Jayne will be Gibsonized with a six-game lead and five rounds remaining.

Jayne beats Charles 436-366, and because no one can now catch up with her, she will be paired with players who do not have a chance of reaching the lowest (4th place) prize. In this round, it will be Dominic Borg (MLT).

Charles plays fifth-ranked Catalin Caba (ROM), and #3 and #4 Nicky Huitson (Eng) and Sue Ball (Eng) play each other, as the battle for the remaining places intensifies. Charles and Nicky have 17 wins (but Charles has +1364 to Nicky's -34); Sue, Catalin and Anna Borg (MLT) all have 16 wins.

Here's a list of "words" challenged this round in both divisions:

THOWLS MOUSSED RIBBIER SEITENS GAUZED TETANOID FAINTERS

One is a phoney, and one is not good in OWL. We are playing with five-point penalties for challenging an acceptable word.

In the end, even with non-Fontes pairings and delays to traffic, pairings were posted at 54 minutes past the hour, keeping us on schedule.