How things went:
1. I slept well. In my earliest tournaments, this was a huge problem. Now I'm older, wiser, and I have ambien. I do think there's an ambien effect that lingers in the mornings, but I tried to push that back with a lot of caffeine, to random effect.
2. My struggle to get enough calories (at tournaments) continues. The last two events I've just gone with nutrition drinks. THIS time I went with nutrition drinks that are for gaining weight, 350 calories a teeny bottle. (My dietary requirements are funky and I eat very slowly; that plus nerves will starve me.) I think the super-plus nutrition drinks helped. Four a day gave me a 1400-calorie base to work from.
3. Nerves! I hardly had any. I will have more to say about this at some point.
4. I drew reasonably well. I think I always do. (I say this even in the current environment, because it's true.) 32 blanks in 30 games (two against Chris Lipe, as usual), but I also had a lot of racks "just at the right time": FIDDLY for 66, etc. Very few impossible racks.
5. I need to calibrate my caution/challenges a little better, but it's improved over the last few events. Overall I think I had one phony challenged off (WI*, which was not a real attempt at a word), two left on the board. Obviously this means I chickened out of a few things. I earned some +5s. I spent some +5s, but not too many, and left four (I think) of my opponents' phonies on the board -- one of which I was astonished was bad and thought nothing of, one of which I worried about (agarized*), one of which I left on because I could lose if it were GOOD, and the fourth which I completely screwed up, thinking I was being all strategic, and then losing on recount the game I thought I had won against SamK on a play I hadn't noticed he'd underscored. My own fault. If I challenge his phony off, I win; if I've been paying better attention to the scoring throughout, I make a different call at the end -- and I just hadn't given myself the correct info to use to make the decision. Plus, it was a ridiculous three. (There were several misscores in the game, including one of my own.)
1. I slept well. In my earliest tournaments, this was a huge problem. Now I'm older, wiser, and I have ambien. I do think there's an ambien effect that lingers in the mornings, but I tried to push that back with a lot of caffeine, to random effect.
2. My struggle to get enough calories (at tournaments) continues. The last two events I've just gone with nutrition drinks. THIS time I went with nutrition drinks that are for gaining weight, 350 calories a teeny bottle. (My dietary requirements are funky and I eat very slowly; that plus nerves will starve me.) I think the super-plus nutrition drinks helped. Four a day gave me a 1400-calorie base to work from.
3. Nerves! I hardly had any. I will have more to say about this at some point.
4. I drew reasonably well. I think I always do. (I say this even in the current environment, because it's true.) 32 blanks in 30 games (two against Chris Lipe, as usual), but I also had a lot of racks "just at the right time": FIDDLY for 66, etc. Very few impossible racks.
5. I need to calibrate my caution/challenges a little better, but it's improved over the last few events. Overall I think I had one phony challenged off (WI*, which was not a real attempt at a word), two left on the board. Obviously this means I chickened out of a few things. I earned some +5s. I spent some +5s, but not too many, and left four (I think) of my opponents' phonies on the board -- one of which I was astonished was bad and thought nothing of, one of which I worried about (agarized*), one of which I left on because I could lose if it were GOOD, and the fourth which I completely screwed up, thinking I was being all strategic, and then losing on recount the game I thought I had won against SamK on a play I hadn't noticed he'd underscored. My own fault. If I challenge his phony off, I win; if I've been paying better attention to the scoring throughout, I make a different call at the end -- and I just hadn't given myself the correct info to use to make the decision. Plus, it was a ridiculous three. (There were several misscores in the game, including one of my own.)
6. Class prizes: it feels wrong to get a cash prize over someone who actually placed ahead of me. I'll probably fold most of it back into the game somehow -- put some towards next year's prize fund if possible, etc. Having said THAT, it felt pretty cool :) I'm of two minds, obviously.
7. People were awesome. The Collins divisions that we usually get to play are small and involve multiple repeats -- and those repeats move from tournament to tournament. This time I got to play many folks I'd never played before, which was a real treat.
8. For thirty one-hour sessions, I blocked out the world of bad news and stupid news. It was marvelous.
Edit to add: edited August 2013, to remove whitewashing.
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