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USSO 2006 Commentary: Round 12

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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, Final Round 1, Final Round 2, Final Round 3.

round 12

Back from lunch, well-fed and smiling. John D. Williams, Jr., reminded the players of the Director's meeting tonight followed by the Town Hall meeting. They should wrap up around 10pm.

Bryan Pepper waltzed over to tell me about a dilemma one of his players was having. His new clock just wouldn't work. They hit all the right buttons in the right sequence and Bryan was assured by the player that brand new batteries were just put in, etc. Finally, out of desperation, Bryan opened the bottom of the clock to check out the battery placement and he discovered two things. 1: the batteries were put in the right place. 2: the batteries were each wrapped tightly in cellophane, thus guaranteeing that none of the necessary parts were making contact with one another. The cellophane was removed and voila, the clock worked beautifully!

Another clock anecdote, this one told to me by Mary Rhoades. She was called over last round to help player with a two-clock dilemma. Sure enough, Ted Rosen (Rochester, NY) and Dave Leifer (Alpharetta, GA) were using a clock to play their game, but the problem was, each was using a different clock! Faced with a math problem of more proportion that she felt ready to handle, Mary point blank asked each player how much time he thought he'd used. Since there was at that point only three plays on the board, it was pretty easy to answer. One said 2 minutes, the other admitted to using two and one-half minutes. So, Mary reset one of the clocks and told each of them to dock themselves if they went over the time she'd set. As it turned out, both players finished up in plenty of time. So, a word of caution: it isn't enough to use a clock for a rated game, both players must use the same clock!

We've been lucky so far to have pretty seamless game recording going on. Steve Pellinen and Scott Smith are on laptops at division 1's board 1 and Kyle Widergren and Tim Crotty are doing paper annotation at table 2 in division 1. There will be plenty of annotated games to go around!

Scott Pianowski (Berkley, MI) tells me two things. The first is that a friend has been watching the web US Open coverage and noticed a photo of Scott holding an empty diet soda container and an uneaten banana at the same time. Said friend's comment on the photo, "it is nice to see how nothing's changed, Scott." Message being: eat more fruit and drink less soda! Second bit of news is that Scott's galpal, Kit Morehead (Berkley, MI), played FILIBEGS today. He can't believe she found that play!

Rafi Stern (Seattle, WA) comes up to tell me that he made a play for 1 point. I asked him to show me and sure enough, he hooked and I in front of a blank L and earned 1 point. In their game, Glenda played AIRlIKE and Raji played ARISTAE. Rafi won, 389-355, and is now 7-5.

At the next table, a very different game unfolded, a much more open one where Carole Denton (New Carrollton, MD) defeated Gretchen Cowan (San Clemente, CA), 449-390. Carole played REFUTing for 63 through the T and YEASTING for 74. Gretchen played UNtITLED for 77 and GLIStER for 81. But the most style points of the game went to Gretchen for CARBOY to the OY on the triple lane for 39 points.

Stephanie Steele (St. Paul, MN) had a monster win this round with a score of 543 in a game against Hilda Schlechter (Oshawa ON). Stephanie's bingos were DAILIES, TENDERLY, RIESLING, and ATTENDS. She had a fifth, but Hilda blocked and it wouldn't go down.

About halfway through this game, board 1 annotator Scott Smith realized his wallet was missing. Since he was connected electronically to his co-annotator Steve Pellinen, he wrote to him panicked about the lost wallet. In the middle of recording racks and plays, all Scott could think about what how he wasn't going to able to fly home without a major credit card to check in with at the airport, etc. Perhaps due to his life experience, Steve was able to calm Scott down by insisting it was probably behind the internet table where he'd been sitting and blogging just before the game. Sure enough, Steve was right and the wallet was retrieved.

After this tidbit was shared, I bothered to look down at the board and saw that Marty Gabriel (Charleston, IL) made a very good opening play in his game: MYRICA!

Marty Gabriel (Charleston, IL) and Jean Carol (Cincinnati, OH) are playing each other at Board 1 in Division 1. Steve Pellinen and Scott Smith are posting the game live.