We had a fair turnout for this month’s regular monthly tournament – 13 players. After the blowout attendance at last week’s final qualifier, I wasn’t sure what to expect – only about 7 people registered. But it made for enough people to run a couple of brackets.
In the “A” bracket, first round had Andres over newcomer Hugues (more or less pronounced “Oogh”), Julie over Mark A, Joel over Bodger, and Ed getting the lucky-because-he-was-late bye. Julie went on to win the bracket over Andres, with Ed taking the Consolation bracket.
In the “B” bracket round one had me beating out Jeremy C, Dave over Kyle, and Howard over Tim. Howard won the bracket, with me taking second, and Dave won the consolation bracket.
I managed to record about 2.5 of my matches, so maybe some of it will make it onto YouTube in the coming days/weeks. We shall see.
With today’s event down, we do have an exciting development in the race for Player of the Year – Howard has now edged out Leah! There are still 3 events to go to finish the year (the two Championships and the December regular), so things could shift again, and of course Jim B is right behind them as well. PotY could go to any of the 3, honestly – and Larry D has a shot as well, although he’ll miss the next two events – but that means his total wins-losses can’t drop either…
| Player | Tourn’s Attended | Matches Played | Matches Won | Wins-Losses | % |
| Howard Markowitz | 18 | 52 | 31 | 10 | 59.62% |
| Leah Nash | 5 | 14 | 12 | 10 | 85.71% |
| Jim Benson | 7 | 19 | 14 | 9 | 73.68% |
| Larry Deckel | 14 | 35 | 21 | 7 | 60.00% |
| Mark Danburg-Wyld | 18 | 51 | 28 | 5 | 54.90% |
| Jeremy Krieger | 5 | 14 | 9 | 4 | 64.29% |
| Ed Parecki | 8 | 25 | 14 | 3 | 56.00% |
| Kyle Petersen | 14 | 41 | 21 | 1 | 51.22% |
| Joel Nehl | 16 | 42 | 21 | 0 | 50.00% |
| David Cohen | 12 | 34 | 17 | 0 | 50.00% |
| Andres Claux | 8 | 22 | 11 | 0 | 50.00% |
| Nathan Alter | 6 | 18 | 9 | 0 | 50.00% |
| Mark Arel | 12 | 35 | 17 | -1 | 48.57% |
| Jeremy Conant | 5 | 12 | 5 | -2 | 41.67% |
| Bodger Millerd | 18 | 47 | 22 | -3 | 46.81% |
| Julie Bellman | 11 | 29 | 13 | -3 | 44.83% |
| Stephen Hoffman | 8 | 15 | 6 | -3 | 40.00% |
| Tim Emineth | 17 | 43 | 18 | -7 | 41.86% |
Here’s a position that came up in my first round match against Jeremy C. I had just gotten extremely lucky – Jeremy rolled 6-6 after I hit him loose in my home board, and then my 4-4 is an excellent return roll!
When you roll doubles, it’s easier than average to make a blunder, because there are so many more options to consider. Here I didn’t think too hard or too long before settling on 8/4 (to cover the blot) 6/2(2) (to make another home board point), and then I paused to consider the last one, settling on 20/16 (to get more contact so I could hoover up more of his blots after he dances again on my much improved home board). This is not bad, only a -0.462 pentablunder. Sigh. The best move, 20/12*/4, is so amazingly better once you see it. But, you have to see it to play it. So, that was my worst move of the afternoon… Still, it is a dice game, so my luck factor helped cover for my poor play in the match (and in my next one too).
Next event will be the Women’s 2025 Championship, coming up on November 30th – see you there!
-Mark