| | Wednesday, 1st August
Wednesday, the traditional "day off" for US Go Congresses. For an extra fee, there are various sightseeing trips available touring the around the surrounding area. And the fees this year seem quite reasonable. I've been wanting to see the Amish, but I also wanted to play some Go. The Diehard tournament is a one day 4-round event for those not wanting to take advantage of the sightseeing trips. But I still remember playing in it last year and being completely wipped out afterward. I didn't want to play Go that badly.
Oh wait, I didn't remember seeing the signup sheet for the trip to Philadelphia and Independence Hall. That sounds very interesting too. But I just can't make up my mind. I never signed up for either, so I'm just hanging by the buses thinking at any minute now, I'll just my the fee and hop on at the last minute.
Just then Chuck shows up, getting ready to run the tournament, but there's a snag. He thought he was going to have a helper, using the fancy new PyTD to run the pairings. "Well," I say, "if I had the lastest code, I could help." Oops, did I just volunteer? I Can't use my computer though - which is what I would have preferred - because the Mac version hasn't been kept up-to-date. So Chuck borrows a Windows laptop and asks if I've ever used WinTD, and he shows me how to start entering the player's names.
Round two starts after round one.
I never knew so many people could ask the same "dumb" question over and over again -- "When does round two start?" Ok, I'll admit, it should be reasonable to want to know how long a break they can take inbetween rounds, but we're trying to squeeze 4 rounds into 6 hours, so there's no time for breaks. As soon as round one is done, I'll run the pairings and start round two. "But when will round one end?" they ask. Are you kidding me?!? I'm not even sitting in the playing room to see who is still playing!
I'm having fun though. And I hope my responses weren't too rude. I tried to keep a smile at least.
By the time round 3 gets underway, Chuck decides I'm doing fine and he'll take a long, late lunch (though he forgot to tell me it would be a long lunch). This is when things start falling apart. We're still waiting for a couple of games to finish before I can pair for the last round. Its getting late, and people are getting impatient and starting to drop out. I find out the last pair of players are still playing and without a clock. So I drop them and pair round four -- 1st mistake.
I should have talked with them myself, but didn't. When they discovered they had been dropped, they were upset and showed me where they had actually reported their game results already. Oops! Right there in front of me, and I just didn't see it. Ok, my fault completely -- re-pair (that's always a mess).
Next mistake. Several players were unable to find they're opponents. You see, in the main playing area, the table numbers do not start with "1". Those are in the strong players room downstairs. Unbeknownst to me, there was an apparent informal and verbal rule to add 40 to one's assigned table number, then go to that table. So after I repaired a couple of the unmatched players with each other, and dropped their missing opponents, one of those missing opponents eventually showed up wondering why they had been dropped. By now the round was well underway, not much else I could do but apologize. I felt bad too, because one of the dropped players was a little Japanese girl with a 3-0 record so far. I should have yelled out the players names, but I didn't. They were already sitting at their table waiting.
By the time round four had ended, Chuck had left to go to the pro dinner. I couldn't figure out how to print out the final results. And the girl's father, still upset about his daughter's lost chance to go 4-0 in the tournament, comes to talk to me again. I still can't help.
But after telling my story and getting some advice from some friends, I decided that maybe I could help. Let's see if I can find someone about the same rank who would be willing to play one more round with this little girl. I found one of the two boys who were re-paired together. He had overslept and missed the first few rounds, so he was eager to play another round. He was the same rank and lost to the girl's original opponent, so it was perfect - she now has her chance for a perfect 4-0 result.
Now I've got to figure out how to get the game into WinTD.
Diehard round 5 - Seth Wax vs Yukino Takehara
Yukino lost. |
| | Posted 8/20/2007 10:25 PM - 177 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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