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NSC 2009 Commentary: Round 7

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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.

Round 7

Our last round today and unfeated players are becoming fewer and fewer. As this round wrapped up, there were only four in the room. Two in division 1: Rafi Stern (Seattle, WA) and Adam Logan (New York, NY); one in division 2: Thomas Reinke (Middleton, WI); and one in division 3: Dave Leonard (Buffalo, NY).

Panupol Sujjayakorn (THA) vs. Rod MacNeil (Cambridge, MA). Their game in progress, I see TOQUETS, GONADIC, StERILE, and RAZEEING through the N for 77 (I saw this one go down!).

Since the players at table 1 in division 1 are being annotated and thus are perched atop a riser, they get their challenges done for them by division 1 director, Bryan Pepper. This roun, Alex Fiszbein (South Lyon, MI) tried REGAlIAS/pAISANI* and Rafi Stern (Seattle, WA) challenged the play off (it is the second one that is phoney).

TRIUNES goes down and I hear Alan Stern (Shadow Hills, CA) say 71. He's playing Wayne Clifford (Calgary AB) who has played LAmENtED. Alan has also played KINDIST in this in-progress game.

Mary Rhoades asked players to volunteer to help clean up the tables after sessions. It was the smartest idea ever. These players, Linda Bianca (Myrtle Beach, SC), Connie Creed (Philadelphia, PA), and others, fill the slip baskets, straighten the table cloths, remove the crumped candy bar wrappers and papers. It makes for a very clean room!

At the end of the last round, Adam Logan (New York, NY) told John Chew that his non- annotated game with Nigel was a good one and might be fun to put up online. John asked Adam to write down his plays, racks, and word on board positions. In about 3 minutes Adam had that done and he gave it to John. This in hand (with 80% of the work already done), John approached Nigel to ask he could recall any of his racks in that game. He said, "Yes, I can remember two of them. In turn 2 when I played SALVOeD, I had SALVO?D on my rack. And in the last round where I played WAD, I had WAD on my rack." The king of dry humor. I see that after Nigel played SALVOeD for 80, Adam got down ROOFLINE through the O from Nigel's play for 72. The game was quite close with Nigel at a slight lead for seven moves. Then Adam inched ahead and was able to maintain enough of a lead for the 378-353 win.