Cock of the North 2011

And so I flew to Coventry for my second ever tournament played on British ground. I actually flew only to Luton and then took the National Express coach to Coventry where after some sightseeing I took a 1-hour-walk to the venue.

I got paired in the first two rounds with numbers 2 (Alastair Richards) and 1 (Wayne Kelly) of the tournament and found out I was the 7th ranked player as Theresa Brousson hasn't made it to the tournament.

As was to be expected I lost the first two games but they were quite close - too close considering the fact that in none of them had I seen any blank. Then I won game 3 and finished the day on 1-2.

I haven't slept well this night, the room was cold as I hadn't turned on the heating on time. After I have turned it on in the night it made me wake up with a headache.

But after all it all didn't seem to matter. I played one of my best 12 games in history, won 9 out of 12 games and finished the day 5th with 10-5.

Then I went to bed again - the room was perfectly warm and for the first time in days I slept very well.

But then again it didn't matter at all. I lost first five games in the row and just when I was hoping to make up for my bad luck in the sixth game it turned out that my opponent would be the gibsonized tournament winner whom I'd be playing for the 3rd time in this tournament.. You can imagine the look on my face then. As if it wasn't enough I got smashed by Alastair again by more than 200 points. I played one bingo and he played 6. Great one!

Without any hope I went on to play my last game which I accidentally won.

And so I finished the tournament in 8th place with 11-11 and -566.

This tournament performance is my poorest since the beginning of my recording in December 2009. Very poor average number of points and poor bingo statistics.

I was somewhat relieved after I have learnt that I only got 43% of the blanks and 40% of the S's in the whole tournament. Unfortunately this only goes to show how unpredictable this game is. You'd think that 22 games would be enough to eradicate the chance factor. Well it isn't and I suppose neither will this be achieved by playing 34 games at the Worlds.

But after all it is the game of luck and should stay this way.

The more unpredictable it is the more people will try to do better at it by trying their luck. For me too, this defeat is a signal that it may not get so bad at the Worlds after all. I may hit the lucky streak and finish higher than I normally would...

And now I shall forget Coventry and for four days concentrate on my goal for the World Championship this year, which is a top 100 finish or 12 games won.

Incredible as it may sound for many of my friends this goal is very ambitious...

 

The STATS:

Games won: 11

Games lost: 11

Spread: -566

Average for: 386.8

Average against: 412.5

Blanks: 19/44 = 43%

S's: 35/88 = 40%

Games won:

2 blanks: 4/4 (100%)

1 blank: 6/11 (55%)

0 blanks: 1/7 (14%)

Bingos for: 32 (1.45 per game)

Bingos against: 41 (1.86 per game)

7 letter bingos: 13 (41%)

8 letter bingos: 19 (59%)

Bingos with blanks: 15 (47%)

Bingos without blanks: 17 (53%)

Highest no of bingos in a game: 3

Lowest no of bingos in a game: 0

High game: 488

Low game: 287

Highest combined score: 909