You can do it too!
I'm not going to lie. I'm still feeling a little shocked over Saturday.
As many of you have heard, I was held up at the border. I was taking a bus in from St. Catharines, scheduled to arrive in Buffalo at 9:10.
We'd hit construction-related traffic outside of Niagara Falls and pulled up at the Peace Bridge at 9:10. Traffic was backed up all the way to the Canadian side of the bridge (Grr.) At this point, I decided to send text messages to Chris Lipe saying that I was running behind and might be late. Thanks to one person on our bus being held up at Immigration, we didn't clear the border until about 10:30 -- and the bus was 90 minutes late getting into Buffalo.
However, in the preceding hour and a half, Chris informed me that I need not worry about rushing to the tournament site, as he had declined to start my clock, instead offering to make the game up at the lunch break. Joan Tondra also came down to the Buffalo bus terminal to drive me up to the tournament site (which saved me from having to wait for a cab). I very much appreciated the gestures, not knowing then how important this would end up being to the outcome of the day.
Of course, I rush in at 11:00, the start of Round 2, and immediately sit down to play Randy Greenspan. I was getting beaten rather handily until I bingoed out for 90-something, catching Randy with a high-point rack, pulling a 170-odd point defecit back to 48.
Then something changed.
For some reason, I started drawing the bag. I thought it might just be my day to do something when I beat Chris at lunch to move to 2-1. And the tiles just kept coming, as did the wins. Just as my 5th game was finishing, I noticed that Randy had been bingoed out on down column O for the second time in 5 games -- with Chris doing the damage this time. When Shelley totaled the cumes before the KOTH round, I was amazed to find out that I still had an outside chance at winning the tournament (as Randy's spread advantage was only 124 points over mine).
As I sat down at the table, my mindset was "Well, the US beat Russia, Appalachian State beat Michigan, Nancy Zerg beat Ken Jennings -- I can win this." Pulling TANNERS out of the bag to open certainly helped matters. About two-thirds of the way through the game, we were about tied when it came to game score, and I figured that I needed to take some chances in order to pull out the tournament win.
The first chance was (O)VeRSORT*, which came off the board very quickly. However, the line wasn't closed off -- and two turns later it was still open for me to take another chance. (O)VerSMUG* sounded good in my head; so I thought I would give it a shot. Down it went. Chris, at the next board over playing Judy Cole, told me afterwards that he thought, "Andy, what are you doing? You can't just throw down anything you like against an 1800 player with the tournament on the line!" Then came the hold, a hold that felt like about 5 minutes, but in reality was only about 55 seconds. When the hold was released I thought that I might have a shot.
My next play of VOE(S), which was played to a) get rid of the V; keep the bingo line open to the G with an N on my rack and a blank and an I unseen, had the secondary outcome of blocking a 28-point play of Randy's. Randy's play of EH emptied the bag and cut my lead down to 25. I'd picked up the blank and a K and despite a rack of AEKLNR?, I couldn't see a bingo. There wasn't one. Fortunately, though, I managed to see a 39 point play for the K, ELK, to bring my lead up to 64.
ELK ended up being the difference, as I went out on my next turn to give me a 398-322 win (taking Randy's time penalty into account) - winning the tournament by a mere 28 spread points.
There are a few people I'd like to thank: Shelley for running the tournament, Joan Tondra for picking me up at the Buffalo bus terminal, Chris for being sportsmanlike enough to not start my clock, and Steve Pellinen for coming up with the NAST idea.
To all you 1200, 1300, 1400, and 1500 players that thought this thing was going to be dominated by the experts: If I can do this -- you can too! I want to see you out there joining me in the Main Event next summer!
As many of you have heard, I was held up at the border. I was taking a bus in from St. Catharines, scheduled to arrive in Buffalo at 9:10.
We'd hit construction-related traffic outside of Niagara Falls and pulled up at the Peace Bridge at 9:10. Traffic was backed up all the way to the Canadian side of the bridge (Grr.) At this point, I decided to send text messages to Chris Lipe saying that I was running behind and might be late. Thanks to one person on our bus being held up at Immigration, we didn't clear the border until about 10:30 -- and the bus was 90 minutes late getting into Buffalo.
However, in the preceding hour and a half, Chris informed me that I need not worry about rushing to the tournament site, as he had declined to start my clock, instead offering to make the game up at the lunch break. Joan Tondra also came down to the Buffalo bus terminal to drive me up to the tournament site (which saved me from having to wait for a cab). I very much appreciated the gestures, not knowing then how important this would end up being to the outcome of the day.
Of course, I rush in at 11:00, the start of Round 2, and immediately sit down to play Randy Greenspan. I was getting beaten rather handily until I bingoed out for 90-something, catching Randy with a high-point rack, pulling a 170-odd point defecit back to 48.
Then something changed.
For some reason, I started drawing the bag. I thought it might just be my day to do something when I beat Chris at lunch to move to 2-1. And the tiles just kept coming, as did the wins. Just as my 5th game was finishing, I noticed that Randy had been bingoed out on down column O for the second time in 5 games -- with Chris doing the damage this time. When Shelley totaled the cumes before the KOTH round, I was amazed to find out that I still had an outside chance at winning the tournament (as Randy's spread advantage was only 124 points over mine).
As I sat down at the table, my mindset was "Well, the US beat Russia, Appalachian State beat Michigan, Nancy Zerg beat Ken Jennings -- I can win this." Pulling TANNERS out of the bag to open certainly helped matters. About two-thirds of the way through the game, we were about tied when it came to game score, and I figured that I needed to take some chances in order to pull out the tournament win.
The first chance was (O)VeRSORT*, which came off the board very quickly. However, the line wasn't closed off -- and two turns later it was still open for me to take another chance. (O)VerSMUG* sounded good in my head; so I thought I would give it a shot. Down it went. Chris, at the next board over playing Judy Cole, told me afterwards that he thought, "Andy, what are you doing? You can't just throw down anything you like against an 1800 player with the tournament on the line!" Then came the hold, a hold that felt like about 5 minutes, but in reality was only about 55 seconds. When the hold was released I thought that I might have a shot.
My next play of VOE(S), which was played to a) get rid of the V; keep the bingo line open to the G with an N on my rack and a blank and an I unseen, had the secondary outcome of blocking a 28-point play of Randy's. Randy's play of EH emptied the bag and cut my lead down to 25. I'd picked up the blank and a K and despite a rack of AEKLNR?, I couldn't see a bingo. There wasn't one. Fortunately, though, I managed to see a 39 point play for the K, ELK, to bring my lead up to 64.
ELK ended up being the difference, as I went out on my next turn to give me a 398-322 win (taking Randy's time penalty into account) - winning the tournament by a mere 28 spread points.
There are a few people I'd like to thank: Shelley for running the tournament, Joan Tondra for picking me up at the Buffalo bus terminal, Chris for being sportsmanlike enough to not start my clock, and Steve Pellinen for coming up with the NAST idea.
To all you 1200, 1300, 1400, and 1500 players that thought this thing was going to be dominated by the experts: If I can do this -- you can too! I want to see you out there joining me in the Main Event next summer!