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Back to 2011 King's Cup Live Coverage

2011 King's Cup Commentary: Round 2

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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.

It took us until the end of lunch to get all of our startup problems sorted out; in large part this was because there were some issues that could only be dealt with this morning, and we only had one hour between the opening of the mall and the scheduled start of play. Yes, we're playing in a mall: the Siam Paragon mall is in Bangkok's trendy Siam Square district, and for today and tomorrow we're playing in one of its four-storey oval atria, in an area cordoned off with stanchions, international flags and cylindrical stacks of empty green boxes of the lead sponsor, Brand's, chicken soup energy drink.

We're attracting a reasonable crowd of curious onlookers from among the shoppers. In my limited poll of awareness of "crossword game" among local Starbucks baristas, about half of them seem to have heard of the game, and those that have are quite enthusiastic about the idea of a tournament.

We'll be playing here for the rest of day and again all day tomorrow, before we relocate to the riser in the middle of the 6,000-player main event for Saturday and Sunday.

Siu Hean Cheah (SGP) remains in the lead and undefeated, though no longer maxed out on spread: 2-0 +410. He beat Charnwit Sukhumrattanaporn (THA) 536-476, the highest loss so far in the tourney. Trailing him by a single point is Charnrit Khongthanarat (THA); 15 more of the 73-player field remain undefeated, thanks to a 387-point tie between Daniel Srichawla (THA) and Jocelyn Lor (MYS). Siu Hean Cheah (SGP) faces Thanapong Kukiettikulchai (THA) at Board 1 next round.

We have an annotator recording games to paper at Board 1; these games should get entered and posted to our website later on in the day.