We had one of our final sunny afternoons of the season to compete with, but a pretty good showing for our return to Lucky Lab for the fall: 15 people participated. We had one more show up about an hour into it, but by that point it felt unreasonable to try to deal him in, unfortunately. But he hung around and got some play time in with people who had finished their tournament play, so no harm done.
My heart-break game was against Justin, in the second round. I took a cube but failed to get the turn-around shot and was looking likely to be gammoned. Justin had two checkers left, on the two point; I had a full board and one checker left in the outfield, on the nine point. “Roll a 1!” I called before his penultimate roll, and he did! “Roll a 2-1!” he responded as I picked up my dice cup, and I did! Curses! Justin went on to take second or third place.
You would think I would know that, right? Well. Mark F came in first, winning against Karen, Jake, Tim, and finally Justin. So Justin had a 3/1 match score. At that point, he had 19 games won, and the other two people with a 3/1 match score (Martin and Jake) had 17 each. Brian was sitting down to play against Tim for their last match, after which one of them would have a 3/1 match score. I deemed that Justin had taken second, and that Brian had an outside chance of taking third, because he had 12 points from his first three games. I let him know he needed to win with 6 points in the match to take third, and they went at it. Well, Brian is an overachiever – he concluded the match with 8 points! Brian and Justin settled the matter between themselves somehow.
Thanks especially to the newcomers and long-gap returning players this time: Phillip, Michael, Jake, and Karen. It’s great to have new people showing up.
We’ll be back at Lucky Lab on October 14th for the next installment – see you there!
-Mark