Causeway Challenge 2011 - day 1

What a tournament, what a day.

You have to fall in love with this tournament the minute you start playing or even before that. And exactly this happened to me yesterday when I first entered the enormous Grand Ballroom of the ZON Regency Hotel in Johor Bahru, Malaysia.

The view was simply breathtaking - just imagine 97 Scrabble tables with ample space between them - no usual hassle with other players sitting too close next to you or touching your back when leaning back too comfortably in their chair behind you ;)
Another thing which stroke me was that although the number of players is almost double as during the WSC 2011 in Warsaw the room is much quieter here. It must be the polite Asian players who seem to respect other players to greater degree than their European or American counterparts.
Apart from one organisational disaster* everything went smoothly forward.

*Just after round 1when players in the Masters division neeeded to wait for one whole hour just for the draw to be made out and then chase the rest of the field resulting in reduced time for lunch)

All went so smoothely that I even managed to lose 5 minutes on my clock in the last game today despite showing up on time. It looks like the Causeway Challenge tournament has the rule, that you always need to be there ready for the next game to be anounced even if the timetable would suggest something contrary. Funnily enough in this last game I got so motivated by the lack of time that I won it by my highest margin yet - 531:220. Thanks for that, Michael - I would probably have won more games today had my clock been started more often ;)

As to the games I'm now completely sure it was worth coming here. Why?

1. Just to play with Asian, Australian and African players.
2. To experince two consecutive games without a blank nor an S.
3. To experince shortly after that two consecutive games with both blanks and 4 Ss...
5. To lose a close game by 3 points.
6. To play out DDEGLNU for 86 points - (I)NDULGED
7. To overdraw DEEIXOH?, get an E put back into bag by the oponent and play OXHIDEs afterward and then facing AEGINNN use the X of the former word to play ANNE(X)ING and then later in the game face EEEORSS on the rack and spot a floating V to play O(V)ERSEES and win the game by 311 points :)
8. To take a risk playing a Thai player and lose the game in the last move when he played (G)LOAMiNG.
9. To taste delicious Asian food for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
10. (...)

It's been a great day and I'm happy with my games, though as usually my standing doesn't seem to reflect my good mood. I'm currently 41st (out of 56) with 3-6 and +93.

I'm looking forward to 10 even better games tomorrow.

As usually please keep your fingers crossed for me - the games start at 1:30am CET and end at 12:30pm CET...



The STATS for CC day 1:

Games won: 3

Games lost: 6

Spread: +93

Average for: 420.3

Average against: 410.0

Blanks: 9/18 = 50%

S's: 17/36 = 47%

Games won:

2 blanks: 2/2 (100%)

1 blank: 1/5 (20%)

0 blanks: 0/2 (0%)

Bingos for: 20 (2.22 per game)

Bingos against: 14 (1.56 per game)

7 letter bingos: 11 (55%)

8 letter bingos: 9 (45%)

Bingos with blanks: 7 (35%)

Bingos without blanks: 13 (65%)

Highest no of bingos in a game: 4

Lowest no of bingos in a game: 0

High game: 531

Low game: 295

Highest combined score: 893