Stick was lookin' for a soul to steal
With the WSOB, Monte Carlo, and traveling Europe I've had 0 time to be online and feed you updates (or rollouts to those who are still waiting on me to send them). Now however, I have one entire day where I have shit all I have to do and the weather tomorrow looks like it will be cloudy/rainy again so I won't have a reason to go out...aka good excuse for me to postwhore.
How did I land in Georgia? Good question ... I met a lot of ppl from all over the globe thanks to MC and the WSOB and not having anything to do post Cannes one of them conned me into going to Paris for a week, not that my arm needed much twisting to go back to Paris. Once there I found out she was helping Chiva with his tourney in Georgia (the country for the 1,000th time) so I figured why not?
I've never been as far east as Georgia, basically Russia for anyone who doesn't know where it is and is too lazy to google. The tournament was held at the Adjara Casino which was a decent casino, esp. for a non US based casino. Had poker, blackjack, roulette, lots of some sort of Caribbean stud variant, bonus hold 'em (my favorite), etc... A lot of European casinos fall a bit short in the typical American casino realm, having tons of slots and that's about it.
First event I got into was the doubles. The setup for doubles was a bit different, you and your partner would each play a 9 point singles match, followed then by a doubles match, then, if you didn't go 3-0, you'd play two more singles matches. I partnered with Falafel which was interesting at least, obviously the strongest team here or any place else on the planet. Our first match cruised along without bumps nor bruises. We won both singles and the doubles match.
Unfortunately there were only 4 teams that entered, 1000 euro entry per team + added prize money which is always nice. With 4 teams it's winner take all and we'd never consider hedging of course. In the finals we were to play Jurgen Orlowski and Nodari Gagua. We played our singles matches, Falafel lost his, I won mine, on to doubles we moved.
Interesting, pay attention:
As stated before, everything was clocked. The doubles was 3:30 + 12 second delay so for a 9 point match we had ~31 minutes. It was a seesaw match, esp. the dmp game which came in the 12th game, and our opponent's were deathly low on time. I believe they started the game with almost 2 minutes left but I could be mistaken. The last time I looked they were at 6 seconds but it should still be more than enough time for the position they had to play out which is this:
| Gagua - Orlowski | 26 |
|---|---|
| |
| Stick - Falafel | 43 |
Position ID: 7w0AAPRuBgAAAA Match ID: MAEgAAAAAAAA | |
White on roll, match in hand pretty much, 6 seconds left on the ticker. Gagua on shake and he does just that...he shakes..and shakes..and shakes extremely long for having 6 seconds left on his clock. His partner reminds him they have no time left but he wasn't paid much attention and then after about 6 second he rolls. He is rolling on the side of the board that has no checkers but alas, the dice spin and they cock against the rail. He proceeds to pick them up and SHAKE AGAIN like he did the first time. My jaw was on the floor as to what I was witnessing. He shook and rolled and the dice were readable with 2-3 seconds left on the clock as I was acutely watching both.
He tosses a 63, with his partner almost frantic now about the time he slightly jumbles a checker while picking it up and off and hits the clock probably a quarter of a second too late. His flag fell, match over. I will leave my opinions at the door for now as I'm sure a lot of you will want to debate how it went down, if there should have been more reserve time, if we should have accepted a win like that, whatever.
So we're now up 2-1 in the finals and we went back to our singles matches. I was to play Orlowski and Falafel Gagua, the one who had been rolling. I imagined Gagua would be steaming after that and reminded Falafel. Orlowski, a chess player, had dwindled seriously low on time in his singles match v. Falafel. With the score 4-2 to 9 and a centered cube (as you'll see in another post) Orlowski only had 2:36 left when he started with 22 minutes!?! I had hoped to take advantage of this early, complicate a game or two and run him seriously low. Well, that idea was shot in the ass when I turned around and he hadn't even used two minutes and was up 7-0. The games were sick, I was getting destroyed. I was able to muster up 2 points to bring it to 7-2 when I see my partner getting up, he had won 9-0, I need not finish my match, we won the doubles!
Having covered most of my expenses to get to Georgia I was happy and ready to win the Masters (what we'd call the main). The tournament attendance as you may have seen here was lower than expected. Added money, a success last year, Chiva running it again, decent venue, not sure why there weren't more. Anyway, only 4 ppl didn't get byes, Falafel being one of them, my equity was already crimped a snitch. We swapped 20% before the tourney started.
I coasted to the semi finals winning 2 matches. Falafel, luckily placed in the opposite half of the draw as me, also smoothly sailed into the semis. This was perfect, I thought for once in my life I might get to see a finals between what is likely the strongest two players to enter the tournament. The cube play by the 'locals' was atrocious ... I mean sick sick sick. Cubing an hour and a half early and passing in the same manner. Once you realized you were playing such a person you could steal points almost at will and expect snatch cubes that you loved playing out.
Unfortunately my match wasn't even a match. I lost 11-1, was down 10-0 Crawford and pulled off a miracle to even get a point. Makes me sick to lose in the money rounds, esp. like that, after refusing to hedge of course. Falafel could have just as easily lost his match. He had to roll 3 sets in a race he was way behind in and have the guy toss a missing deuce to win that game and the next game, dmp, he hit a shot when his opponent was bearing off. (not only hit the shot, but hit it and covered his homeboard blot to make a closed board!) He pulls it out to make it to the finals.
Oh well, I can win the conso which is as good as losing the finals moneywise so onward I move. Again, get to the semis or money round and get owned by some stellar play. I guess I should win the last chance then? Never easy is it. I motor through 3 matches to get to the LC finals and am again asked to hedge. Another resounding "no" from me. We go 1-1 and I send over a blitz cube which is perfect at this score. He properly takes and I nearly have the blitz complete when he tosses 44, my only open home board point and hits me in the process. I'm not entirely out of it, I get in and anchored up on his bar point immediately and have plenty of play left with the strong shape of my board.
It's -4 -4 he's holding a 2 cube and we get to this position where he properly recubes because of the score but winning ~37% I have an easy take even at the score. A couple of shakes later I run with a 64 and he is on roll here as White at effective dmp:
| gnubg | 66 |
|---|---|
| |
| user | 65 |
Position ID: u9uBCAD23jgAAA Match ID: MAE8AAAAAAAA | |
I surprised him by offering to hedge now, barely stopping him from rolling. I see no reason not to hedge here as there's no play left. I told him we'll roll it out and whatever it says each of us wins is how we split the loot. He ends up being basically a 60/40 favorite and we played it out so there would be an official 'winner'. On the last shake I had one man on the 3pt and one man on the 4pt and he was off regardless so I'm a slight dog. After shaking and seeing the first die land on a 2 I was a huge dog but the second die saved my ass and earned me another trophy doubling up.
I won 3 trophies at this tournament, what the hell am I supposed to do with 3 trophies while traveling in Europe?? Oh, and my wallet is too small for all my cash.
Another nice event at this tournament was 'the world versus Georgia'. A freeroll for the respective teams, each team composed of 5 players and one singles match to 5 points was played. Whichever team won 3/5 was declared the winner and the freeroll money was split amongst the team. I was on the World's team as was Falafel and Jurgen. I forget offhand who else was no the team but we went 4-1 so more cheeseburger money for Jacobi Sticki Rice.
So the casino food was mediocre at best but there's a 24/7 Mcdonald's right across from the casino so needless to say every night we left we hit up the Mcdo's before heading back to the hotel. Where else would we have found food at that hour anyway? This wasn't your ordinary Mcdo's, oh no, since only the drive through is open that late at night I figured we'd have to actually take a taxi to go through as you would in the US. I've tried on more than one occasion to walk through a drive through and have yet to succeed in the US. Tbilisi is not the US though and Chiva pulled up in his imaginary Benz, honked, and asked the girl working the window if she "liked his car" and it was cheeseburger central for us. We continued this routine nightly ... we almost had to because Julie and Chiva who were both working the tournament would find some way during the day to bet cheeseburgers by playing craps or tossing coins and seeing who could get them closest to the wall etc... (pictures later) At the end of the day someone would owe someone else some cheeseburgers.
There's more to write but I doubt many of you read everything anyway so I'll cut it off. It is, after all, 7:30am, sun is out and I'm still up. Luckily nothing is going on tomorrow other than late night flight to Riga and then to Paris.
Stick