Back in the Saddle

I'm not sure what my expectations were for this tournament. I had nerves galore. People kept saying: "what are you worried about??" Things to worry about included:


1. I had to be really sure of my words. The spidey sense gets lulled when all you play are ISC games. I mischallenged RIsKERS and let TUSKIER# get by me without even a blink. Weirder, in one game I hooked an L onto OCA to make LOCA … and my opponent said a few minutes later: "Oh! I didn't notice you did that!" as though LOCA was no good, and I was rattled enough to think maybe it wasn't! But I looked at her blankly and cheerfully (yes, one can do that), and she muttered at her pen and played one of her three "out of the bag" sevens of the game. Grrr.

I digress.

2. I worried about luck. I draw well, but I know there will be stretches where it doesn't look like it, and so I worried that one of those stretches would be during this tournament. If I look at the "numbers", it looks like I was a little short on the power tiles, but I think that is misleading. In the games where I was outblanked, I drew great bingo racks and was able to stay right in them.

Luck WAS odd in this one. Four of my six losses were blowouts. It's hard to say they were unwinnable: I can point to at least one early error in each game that would have changed the game's flow considerably. So I can't blame tiles.

3. I worried about how I would feel looking over at the division 1 players, and that I would be jealous that John got to play in that division. (I was, a little.)

4. Sleep. Sleep is always an issue for me at tournaments. Ambien knocks me out, no problem, but there is a fuzz factor in the morning. It's tempting to blame my losses on this, since ALL my losses were the first games of the day. But that's not really accurate. Was it a factor? I'm going to compare general performance in the first games against general performance in the later games, but if it's a factor, I suspect it's a minor one. I did, however, take Ambien at 8:30 on Saturday night to try to get it out of my system earlier. I think that helped a little on Sunday.

5. I worried that there would be a kid health crisis. I checked my phone excessively. During the awards ceremony, I noticed that Greg had called and I was terrified for an instant that something had happened. I had to go outside and call him back to make sure things were okay. But I think this was a good way to get back in the tournament saddle. In my heart, I really did know it would be okay to play again. I just had to … do it.

So… I went 12-6 and came in sixth. I particularly enjoyed three of the games: the game with Diana Grosman, which was a quietly excellent game that I barely managed to win by 2; the game with Mike Eldeiry which was a barn-burner from start to finish and just, well, FUN; and the game with Diane Firstman, which I almost didn't get to play. The pairings were weird, and some of us went out in the hallway to "discuss" this with the directors. (For instance, the guy in second place wasn't going to be allowed to play the first place guy.) We and common sense prevailed, and we went to KOH format. Sheesh. In our game, I had an early 120-ish lead, and I kept it… but at the end, with BBIQTTX and two in the bag and a 100 point lead and an open line that I couldn't completely block and bingoey tiles unseen — I had to do some serious thinkin'. (Yeah, that looks like bad rack management, but, um, well, it's not as bad as it looks.)

Games like those make me keep playing.

And the people are the other reason. There was a church service going on in another ballroom (the preacher at one point said something like "you know how babies are really cool when they're newborn and then you don't like them so much when they get older", which baffled me no end, but maybe I missed a theological point). Someone said "we have OUR church" and talked about our dictionary bibles, and we tee-hee-ed. But there is something in that. The Scrabble community is like my tribe. I looked around several times in great (sappy) happiness. The people — my friends — were glad to see me, and I was glad to see them, and there is no substitute for that.

Edited to add: I mean no criticism of the directors re: the last round pairings! The computer was spitting out inexplicable things and they were working hard to make it right.