The May Bishan Heights RC Mini, just like the May Jurong Green Mini, follows a certain tradition as well. For the past 3 years (2011-2013), which is the whole of my scrabble life, I recall that it has always taken place on the Sunday just after the Sundown Marathon. As a result, Sky, both an enthu scrabbler and runner, had to miss the BHRC Mini for the past 2 years. In fact, digging back into archives, this was the case in 2010 as well, where BHRC mini fell right after Sundown Marathon.
Sky thought he had finally broken the curse of not being able to play the BHRC Mini this year, as it was previously slated to happen on the 26th of May, while Sundown was on the 1st of June. However, some divine power caused the BHRC to be shifted one week later to 2nd June, and the hapless Sky once again could not participate.
However, NTU WGS still made it's presence felt in Division A, where Kian Boon, Victor and Jeya made it to the top 10 spots by virtue of rating. Gabriel participated in B, which had a very wide rating spread, all the way from an estimated high 14-- to NM J Goutham at 1810. Despite the absence of the Hall 7 Gang, Ramona stepped up to the challenge of taking on Div C solo, and was well rewarded for it.
In Jeya's words, Div A was brutal. GM Marlon kept up his stunning performance by winning his second tournament in a row, with 8 wins out of 9, 2 clear wins ahead of the field. Jeya earned his 2nd NM star admist tough competition, finishing 9th with 3 wins over NM Victor Chua, GM Hubert and GM Andy.
WGS Boss LKB started out well with 4 out of 5 wins, but lost 3 out of the next 4 games to finish 5th, a hair's breadth of 36 spread points away from 4th placed Victor Chua. NM Victor Chua made another return from obscurity, and showed that his blade was still sharp. After 2 losses in the first 2 rounds, he made a remarkable recovery to take 5 games out of 7 to finish in 4th place, just ahead of GM LKB.
In Div B, Gabriel finished 6th out of 8th, but managed to keep his rating above 1600 to eke out his final Master star, to achieve his Master title. On a side note, he had been trying to keep his spread below 100 in all losing games, and had manage to maintain a streak of 23 such games before it was finally ended by NM J Goutham with a spread of -108, when the latter nicely prevented Gabriel from bingo-ing out with AREOLEs by a nicely placed AGEE, which does not take an 's' behind.
In Div C, there was some confusion about the pairings at the start, which I believe was due to a player who did not turn up, resulting in some incorrect pairings. This resulted in a situation where the normally lonely ZZ Bye 1 found a friend in ZZ Bye 2, even though there was an even number of players (6). Unfortunately, I'm unsure of the exact details so I cannot elaborate further.
Ramona played well to score 4 out of 7, which surprisingly put her at 2nd place. Her losses were all of small amounts, of -8, -7 and -34. In fact, one of the losses came from her opponent pulling off a flash-draw on her, and could have been avoided had she called the TD. This was in a same game where she had let that opponent retract a move, and upon hearing that, a fellow player aptly termed her opponent, a young female player, as "surprisingly vicious at such a young age". Nevertheless, even though she finished 2nd at 2 wins behind the champion, Ramona had the highest positive spread in her division, a respectable +361, thanks to her big wins and small losses.
For the benefit of all, I would like to clarify the flash-draw rule here. I must admit when I was first introduced to scrabble at the inter-hall level, one of the first things I was taught to do was how to intimidate and flash-draw an opponent. Many newer players will attempt this, and I believe flash-draws occur with a highest rate in Div C. Of course, nowadays, I see more finesse in putting down a word my opponent does not know, and letting them challenge it.
Under Section 3.1.1 of WESPA version 2, which describes the Elements of the Turn, states that to complete a turn by playing a word, a player must, in this order:
(a) Place the tiles on the board;
(b) Announce the score for the turn;
(c) Press the timer to start the opponent's time;
(d) Record the score for the turn and the cumulative score on his/her score sheet
(e) Draw replacement tiles;
(f) Tiles track if desired.
Section 3.10.2, which describes Flash-Drawing, then states that
(a) If the player fails to record scores as required by 3.1.1(d), or pre-writes the scores, he or she has flash-drawn. The opponent is not considered to have accepted the turn, and may challenge even after a replacement tiles is drawn.
(b) Flash-drawing constitutes unethical behavior and is a level 2 offence
(c) If a turn is successfully challenged after a flash-draw, then:
(i) If no flash-drawn tiles has touched the player's rack, all flash-drawn tiles are revealed to the opponent and returned to the bag.
(ii) If a flash-drawn tile has touched the player's rack, the player is overdrawn by the number of tiles drawn in the flash-draw, and the rule pertaining to overdrawing applies.
I would like to make a reminder to all players to be familiar to the rules, especially since they may not be what you are familiar with in IHG. I strongly despise any form of unethical behavior or cheating, and would also like to encourage all players to be on the lookout for such incidents. Even if you're not the TD, ANYONE can catch someone if they're doing something wrong. Remember, when in doubt, just raise your hand and call the TD.
The next tournament will be a 23 June 2013 (sunday) mini at East Meadows (near Tanah Merah MRT), from 12pm-10pm.
