We had a good turnout for this month’s return to our usual tournament structure – 23 players came to play, giving us 3 (almost) full brackets.
The Andersons and associated kin came down from Seattle, and Jeremy came up from Salem. By chance, I ended up playing all and only the out-of-towners. We had a couple of new people show up – Sahar, David P, and Gayle all made their tournament debuts.
In the “A” bracket, I won in round one over Molly, Pete defeated Nick, Jeremy took out David C, and Max beat Christy. Max and Pete went on to play in the final, with Pete pulling out a lucky gammon to finish the match 3-2 in the Crawford game. Jeremy beat me out in the consolation bracket for the tie of second place. When I left, Max and Jeremy were negotiating whether to pool their winnings and play for it…
In the “B” bracket, Sande beat out Sahar, Julie won over Cam, Greg beat Richard, and Mir won over David P. Sande and Mir advanced to play the final, with Sande taking the prize! In the consolation bracket, Cam got a revenge match with Julie, and came out ahead in their second head-to-head.
The “C” bracket wasn’t completely full, but saw Rick beat out Matt in round 1, Mark A beating out Nathan, and Tim beating Joel. Newcomer Gayle got the bye for round one. Rick ended up besting Mark A for the final, with Nathan over Matt in the consolation bracket.
Folks, this was our record setting 11th tournament for the year. Between the regular monthly tournaments and the “Road to Vegas” series that I scheduled for November, we’re going to have 15 or 16 tournament events this year! I’m not sure how many holiday specials will get added in there yet… When I get to assessing the “Player of the Year” award, it’s likely the cutoff for consideration is going to be 15+ matches played – we already have 11 players who have at least that many, with David C leading the pack at 31 (!) matches for the year. I mean, I’ve got 37, but as the organizer, I have an unfair advantage.
Next month’s tournament is already on the calendar, I have a bunch of scheduling conflicts for October, so it will be earlier in the month, and on a Saturday in order to not conflict with Sande’s social event the same weekend. See you there!
-Mark