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Back to 2011 King's Cup Live Coverage

2011 King's Cup Commentary: Round 1

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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, Final Round 1, Final Round 2, Final Round 3.

As usual, we got off to a chaotic start here this morning. Four players showed up at registration without prior notice, which was convenient, as we'd had four dropouts over the last 24 hours, but it was still several minutes into the first round of play before we had the last stragglers seated. This of course explains an unusual feature of the schedule, namely a lunch break after the first round of play, which gives staff a chance to fix anything that we couldn't during play.

In this case, this includes getting a 50" Samsung plasma screen working to display the electronic scoreboard (we eventually diagnosed the problem as a faulty VGA cable, after swapping in a spare), and more than the usual problems with network access (TrueWifi's access point in the mall was down for over an hour, and our backup broadband wireless WiFi router was also having trouble connecting).

Kian Hung Yeo (MYS) was playing John Barker (AUS) at Board 10 when an unusual situation came up necessitating the only director's call of the round. John had overdrawn by one tile on his previous turn, but only placed seven tiles on his rack, leaving the eighth facedown. His error came to the attention of both players when he went to draw replacement tiles after his next turn and then noticed the previous turn's eighth tile. I ruled that his play scored zero, because it had been made from an eight-tile rack, and that he should replenish his rack to seven tiles before adding the eight tile and following the overdraw procedure.

Two players end up in first place at the end of this round, thanks to the 350-point limit on game spread: Siu Hean Cheah (SGP) and Alex Tan (MYS). Cheah will play Pakorn Nemitrmansuk (THA) at Board 1 next round, and Alex Tan (MYS) will play one of our last-minute entrants, Antonio Malonzo (PHL).