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EOSC 2011 Commentary: Round 17

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Go to: 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.

Chinedu Okwelogu (NGA), still in first place, with a one-game lead over Theresa Brousson (MLT) and Mikki Nicholson (Eng), plays Mikki for a second time in the annotated game at Board 1. Fourth-place Helen Gipson (Sco) replies again to Pramit Kamath (IND) again at Board 4, and Raymond Tate (Sco) plays Theresa at Board 2.

I had prepared a lengthy written explanation of why it was that Helen would play Pramit again in the same place in consecutive rounds, and why Pramit would start again, but neither player was curious enough about the situation to ask. Briefly: to save time, the first two rounds of each session except at the end of the tournament are paired based on standings at the start of the session. At this point in the tournament, the top 12 players are paired with each other, and the rest Swiss. In Round 16, there was still a way to pair the twelve with each other without repeats; in Round 17, repeats became necessary. As soon as repeats were necessary and therefore permitted, the twelve were split into two groups so as to minimize the upper group (subject to a minimum of four players) while not inducing three-peats. Normally, those four would be paired 1-4, 2-3, but 2-3 had already played each other twice, so 1-3 2-4 pairings were used. The remaining eight were paired Swiss, and as Helen and Pramit were the only ones in that group on 10-5, they played each other. As they (like most players) had had eight starts and eight replies, the computer drew randomly to determine that Pramit got to start again. (The longer explanation comes with diagrams).

The prettiest play of the round was probably Geoff Cooper's (Eng) bingo from ?KNPTSU. There are three possible seven-letter words; he played the alphabetically second one.

Now for this round's top results. Chinedu beat Mikki while Theresa lost a three-point heartbreaker to Ray. This opens up a two-game gap between Chinedu on 14-3 and Theresa and Mikki on 12-5. Ray, Helen, Pramit and Dan Sandu (ROM) are another game back at 11-6, and Mohammad Sulaiman (ARE), David Delicata (MLT), Cecil Muscat (MLT), Vincent Boyle (Sco) and Sheena Wilson (Sco) round out the top twelve on 10-7.

Pramit continues to lead Class B by a game, while Albert Zammit (MLT) has a one-game lead in Class C despite his two forfeits on Day 1. Pramit is also leading in the "Lucky Stiff" category, with six wins by a total of 109 points. (The correspondingly unluckiest player is Geoff, who has six losses totalling -146 points.) Games were generally close this round, with five of the 21 games being decided by fewer than ten points.