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PC 2007 Commentary: Round 19

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Go to: Before the Tournament, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4, Round 5, Round 6, Round 7, Round 8, Round 9, Round 10, Round 11, Round 12, Round 13, Round 14, Round 15, Round 16, Round 17, Round 18, Round 19, Round 20, Round 21, Round 22, Round 23, Round 24, Round 25, Round 26, Round 27, Round 28, Round 29, Round 30, Round 31, After the Tournament, Award Ceremony.

This round's annotated game featured: Ron Tiekert vs. James Leong.

Round 19

Back from lunch, hopefully full and a bit rested for the three games this afternoon. Finishing on the early side, Conrad Bassett-Bouchard (Moraga, CA) comes up to my table and asks if we are going to take a "youth" photo this year as we've done in year's past. I said, "What a good idea, Conrad." I was able to get Mary Rhoades to agree and I think we'll try to do a photo of the 18 and under set tomorrow at 2:45 pm, 15 minutes before games begin. Be there or be on the "missing" line.

I asked if Conrad's game was a good one and he said, "Yes, it was. For my opponent...." I walk over and see Steve Oliger (Holtwood, PA) sitting at the completed board. Steve played FREEBIE for 70, SUaSION for 76, TERPINES for 72, and LANATES* for 79. Conrad played TORQUATE through the A, but it was Steve's win for sure, 505-334.

Richard Lauder (Madison, WI) kindly finds me and asks if I want to see a 1000-point game. I'm just about ready to follow him when Matt Hopkins, his director, comes over to ask me to see a great game. Sure enough, it was the same game. Great minds thinking alike again. It was a 606-401 win for George Viebranz (Strongsville, OH). George got down ENDEARS for 71, QUASHED for 140 (a dbl-dbl), RELOCATE through the first E for 74, SaNGUINE to the E for 64, ZED for 57, and ENJOY for 32. Richard played OBTAINEr from the O for 80 and FILASTER* for 76. This was a wonderful 1007 combined points game.

Brad Mills (Charleston, WV) and Angela Dancho (Thornton, CO) are finishing a game as I walk by. I see EQUATED and CIVILEST on their board. Brad's win, 367-351.

Michael Wolfberg (Westford, MA) walks by me as I'm turning circles in division 5 and says, "I finally lost my second game." I peek and see it was a win for Sam Hollington (St. Catharines ON), 424-378.

So, it was a matter of simple transposition. Excited to see and be able to play ZACATONS, Tom Kowalik (Schaumburg, IL), slapped it down only to hear Kelly McKenzie (Newport, KY) say "hold." Tom looked up in horror to see ZACAOTNS* on the board. YIKES! They didn't even bother to look it up and of course Kelly blocked that spot. Tom had to settle for AZONAL the next turn. He also played NECROSeS, SIGNORE, and FIXED to the triple for 56. Kelly played BEEFS for 42 and VALINE for 30. It was Tom's win, 387-358, phonies not withstanding.

Quiet guys, Roy Kamen (Covina, CA) and Scott Leifer (Middleboro, MA), are sitting at a board, just about ready to put it away. I asked if it was a good board and they both said yes. I asked them to tell me about it. Well, first off, Scott got three bingos in a row: TINKLIER for 63, RUMPLES for 78, and FROUNCE for 78. Roy stays in the game with X, Q, Z plays and then gets down his own bingo, FALTERS, for 85 and then a 32-point J play. Scott plays his fourth bingo, UNDERAGE through the N for 68. Roy responds with PROVIDE/UNDERAGED for 90. At this point, they were even on score. Scott then gets down IGNORES for 78, sewing up the win, 540-437.

Some fun numbers, well unless your name is Wayne Clifford (Calgary AB). In round 18, Roy Kamen (Covina, CA) defeated Wayne, 398-390. This round, Roy's fiancee, Maddy Golob (Canyon Country, CA) also beat up on poor Wayne, winning 398-390. Must be a household mandate.

Joel Sherman (Bronx, NY) shows me a board. He says, "This is the second 10 I've played this tournament, however this one is good." We laugh and he points to INTeNTIONS played through the ION for 65 points. This play went down in a game with Jesse Day (New Haven, CT) after Jesse played ION. It was Joel's game, 413-403.

Two players notorious for using all their time to the very last second played this game, and guess what? They both ended their game with 1 second left on each side of the clock! The game winner, 515-341, Pakorn Nemitrmansuk (Thailand), used most of his time at the beginning of the game, which necessitated he go faster at the endgame, when Ron's clock began to run down. I see Pakorn's sAGAMEN on their board.

Bryan Pepper comes up to me as I'm finishing these comments and says, "Dave Wiegand (Portland, OR) just lost to Ian Weinstein (Coral Springs, FL), 525-526. These scores held after the recount. Dave got up and smiled." Bryan and I agree that Dave has the right attitude and is just down deep a good guy. Grats to Ian on his squeaker of a win! Sorry I missed that board!

Here's a brief note from webmaster John Chew.

On the technical side of things, we are using a total of 11 computers, not including word judge stations, to run the championship and produce this web coverage.

the-pc.poslfit.com is a virtual dedicated Linux web host rented for the month from GoDaddy.com, running my proprietary SCRABBLE^® web coverage production tool, tsh 3.180, and a backup copy of our annotation server. Our primary annotation server, my ancient "blue & white" G3, went down about an hour ago because of a power outage that outlasted the UPS battery backup system. www.poslfit.com, a shared web host at geekhosting.com, is the web server for our annotated games. www.scrabble-assoc.com, the NSA's virtual dedicated Linux web host, is the web server for tile and player images.

An Apple XServe (rackmount server) is producing and streaming the video feed. Two Windows laptops are running two copies each of tsh to manage Divisions 2-5. Two Windows laptops are running TinyFugue to connect to the annotation server. Sherrie is creating text and photo content on her PowerBook G4 and uploading it to the web server. My MacBook is producing Quackle annotations (at offpeak times), following my gMail and AIM accounts for reader-submitted corrections, acting as print server as well as monitoring the annotation server, streaming video feed and main web site.

Despite the apparently primarily electronic nature of the production, we will print about 5,000 sheets of paper over the course of the week, mostly standings and pairings for distribution to the players and staff.