7th British Open Table Tantrix Championship
London, Sat 5 April - Sun 6 April 2008
After doing reports for the first two BOTTCs, I meant to do more in later years but never had the time, so this year I decided to write a bit after every round. Julia has turned my notes into a report complete with pics - I hope it brings back some good memories if you were there, or tempts you to attend an Open in future if you were not! Thanks also to Amy Bailey for taking the snowy group photo and to Ben Thomas for taking the pictures of the prizewinners.
DAY 1
A select band of 16 entrants from the 9 countries on 3 continents whose flags are shown above made their way from Rosebery Hall to City University on a cool but sunny morning for day 1 of the British Open. N.B. Click on any image for a larger version.
BACK: Rick Yagodich (Rick), Julia Schwarz (jade), Barbara Kocsis (barbiko), Petra Wark (humber), Ben Polman (benopi), Mauro Lazzara (Soqquadro)
MIDDLE: Ben Thomas (Retro), Vincent Auger (Syagrius), Simon Wright (shunter), Rob Morton (skweeki), Chris Essex (tizz88)
FRONT: Anick Auger (kcina), Igor Wilk (igor85), Joe Ruby (JMSC), Neil Jenner (Typo), Michel Auger (grandpere)
Entrants included the 2005 & 2000 World Champions, Neil Jenner ITM & Julia Schwarz, plus three players aiming to become the first to win three Opens - Rick Yagodich TTM, the reigning Swedish & German Open Champion, Ben Polman ITM, the reigning Dutch Open & 2003 British Open Champion, and Rob Morton ITM TTM, the 2004 British Open & 2007 German Open Champion.
Also taking part were 2006 European Champion Simon Wright ITM & reigning African Champion Mauro Lazzara. In addition, there were five players taking part in their first British Open and the oldest entrant, 72, was three times the age of the youngest - so all in all, a nice, eclectic mix of participants!
Although the comments below are generally written in the past tense, they were all (including any speculation about what might happen later on) written immediately after each round and have been left as they were bar some tidying up for dodgy English when I was in a hurry!
ROUND 1
No. 1 seed Rob had lost a WTTC mini-match to Vincent shortly before the BO, with Vincent candidly admitting that there was a fair bit of luck involved in some of the games. The Frenchman continued to be something of a thorn in Rob’s side, holding him to a draw here, as both of them, I believe, claimed 11-tile loops. Worse fates were to befall the 2nd and 3rd seeds, Neil and Rick, who were defeated by Joe and Petra respectively. The other five games all went with seeding, with an 11-tile win for Julia against Michel giving her a narrow lead at the top of the table.
ROUND 2
Simon, Julia & Petra were the only players who managed to win both of their first two matches. The table at the end of R2 showed little correlation with the Elo ratings, with three more ratings upsets in this round (Julia edging out Neil by a single tile after the tiles had not been kind to him, Barbara beating Vincent by 11 and Igor beating Ben T by 10, while Michel managed to hold Joe to a draw as well), meaning that the top four seeds were spread evenly down the table.
If you are here for the pics, keep going - the photo count will start to increase very soon! 
It was girls on top at the end of the round, with Petra managing to do just enough to edge Julia out by 0.1 TPs despite dropping a time pen against Anick. Cue an ‘ooh ... close’ murmur from the room as Petra's result was the last to go up on the big screen!
ROUND 3
The top three managed to keep their 100% records for another round as all games went with seeding except for Petra’s 1-tile win against Mauro. "She’s on a roll!" he said ruefully as he handed me the scoresheet. Certainly, neither we nor any Italian waiter could possibly deny that she was proving to be far better at controlling the tiles than she is at taming the average recalcitrant lobster! However, by now the ITMs/TTMs were beginning to assert their authority, with all of them but Neil in the top half of the table.
Nearer the bottom of the table, the Augers were still maintaining their family group, right next to each other in the table, unfortunately without a win between them. However, it was new Scottish no. 1 Ben T who was bringing up the rear, having had a nightmare start to the day.
ROUND 4
Julia met Simon in R4 (see right), so one of their winning streaks was bound to come to an end. In the end, Simon reversed his loss to Julia in the 2005 WTC 3PPO, winning by 5 to fleetingly take the lead with 4 wins out of 4, though he had not faced any of the other top seeds on the first morning and admitted to thinking he was in trouble when Julia made a good move early in the game only to be thwarted by her tile draw. However, Petra’s 10-tile + 1 pen win against Barbara would later give her the lunchtime lead by 1.5 TPs.
Was this the beginning of a heroic run to victory for one of them, or were they going to do a Zormac - i.e. suffer brain death after a big lunch - or a Heli - i.e. go through day 1 unbeaten only to slide down the table on day 2?
Meanwhile, the top three seeds were all in trouble again, with Rob going down to Chris, though he stayed just ahead of him overall, Neil going down to Mauro by 12 tiles and slipping to 13th place, and Rick losing to Ben P, who moved up to 3rd place ahead of Julia, who completed the lunchtime top four.
Good son that he undoubtedly is, Vincent delivered a 17-tile thrashing to his mother (méchant ou quoi?! ), to put clear blue water between himself and his parents, while Ben T got off the mark too by beating Michel, though he had to endure a bit of a scare towards the end before he did so.
A perhaps unexpected addition to the top 5 after this round was tournament debutant Igor, who recorded his second win, this time against Joe - at this stage, he headed Rick and Rob, though by just 0.1 and 0.3 TPs respectively!
ROUND 5
Often seen as GB’s best hope at the BOTTC (for the three obvious reasons that he has won it before, he is invariably the top Brit in the table ratings and Neil has never beaten him offline!), Rob has suffered a little at the hands of the Hungarians in recent years and he went down to another one as Barbara turned him over by 7 tiles. Perhaps luckily for home hopes, she was the only Hungarian in the competition this year, the other top Huns no doubt too concerned with doing an extensive post mortem on how they lost to their own D team in the WTTC to mount another dawn raid on the medals.
Many might have expected to see the top two seeds in adjacent positions in the table after 5 rounds, but they were probably thinking more 1st and 2nd than outside the top 10! That set up the rest of the competition nicely though and you can bet that nobody who had attended a few table tournaments over the years was daring to write either of them off at this stage!
Having worked out that the eventual champion might need to win up to 12/15 games, Neil was spurred on to record a win in this round, Michel being his victim. However, his R6 opponent Simon went down to surprise package Igor, who somehow stayed in 5th, but was now only just over 2 TPs off 2nd place. Part of the reason for him not moving up despite winning is that Rick and Mauro, who moved up to 3rd & 4th respectively both scored big wins, Rick beating Anick by 15 and Mauro beating Ben T by 22!
Petra suffered her first loss, to Chris by 2, but retained 1st place, Chris moving up to 6th. Julia continued to slide into mid-table, losing to Joe, while the controversy of the round arose in the Ben P v Vincent game, where a dodgy 39 tile that had been removed from another game reappeared only to be followed by the real 39 tile. Backtracking, it became clear that Vincent had been certain to win whatever happened, and he helped to avoid the need for any prolonged debate by agreeing to accept the lowest feasible winning margin.
ROUND 6
Petra pulled 3.5 TPs clear at the top by beating Vincent (see left) by 4 tiles but the result of the round was probably Rick’s 5-tile win against no. 1 seed Rob, which meant that he ended the round 2nd. Suddenly, we began to wonder if he could become the first player to win three different Opens - in fact, if he could win here, he would have won the last three European Opens in a row!
Neil met Simon in a rematch of their 2005 WTC SF, which Neil won. As he had against Julia in R4, Simon got revenge for three years earlier, winning by 2 tiles to finish the round in 3rd. With Rob & Neil in the bottom five, those checking the results online could be forgiven for wondering whether it was still 1st April! Meanwhile, Mauro moved up into 4th by beating Julia by 6 tiles.
Yet another win for Igor (see below left) still wasn’t enough to lift him out of 5th place but a 9-tile win for Chris saw him move up to 6th and Ben T, who lost to Joe (see below right), down to 9th. Barbara was another player on the way up, to 8th, after a 4-tile + 4 (net) pens win against Anick.
Players were now beginning to show more and more interest in the game by game updates appearing on the big screen - to see what they were looking at, just click here.
ROUND 7
With 1st placed Petra taking on 3rd placed Simon (see right), this round promised to shake up the top of the table. In the event, a 6-tile win for Petra kept her in 1st place by 3 TPs and pushed Simon down to 4th, with a bit of a gap (nearly 7 TPs) opening up between the top three and the rest, though it was nowhere near as big as the gap separating the bottom three from the rest.
A 7-tile win for Mauro against Anick helped the Angolan to take over 2nd spot, while Chris was hot on his heels in 3rd after beating Michel by 11. Rick, in 5th now (after losing to Joe by 5, the American ending up just behind him in 6th) and Simon were at this stage the only ITM/TTMs in the top half of the table, despite Ben P beating Ben T by 8, Rob thrashing Igor by 14 and Typo beating Vincent by 4.
Meanwhile, Barbara was now in the top half after a 7-tile win against Julia, who had dropped to 12th just behind Neil and Rob.
ROUND 8
Although it was only enough for 11th place at the end of the day, Neil struck a late blow for the ITMs with a 2-tile win against Petra, which meant that by the end of the round, she dropped to 3rd place. Mauro’s 1-tile win against Vincent moved him to the top of the table, so who would be leading at the end of day 1 depended on the result between Chris and Igor. Chris ended up winning by 7 but dropped 2 time penalties, leaving the African Champion on top by 2.7 TPs at the end of day 1 with Chris 2nd and Petra 3rd.
Simon’s 8-tile win against Barbara kept him in contention in 4th place, 7.2 TPs off the lead. There was then almost a 10 TP (i.e. approx. 1 win) gap back to Ben P, whose win against Michel left him in 5th at the end of day 1. However, he headed a group of no less than 8 players with between 4 and 5 wins, all with TP totals in the 80s! At the end of day 1, all three continents were represented in the top 6.
Petra was leading the Rising Stars ('RS') competition, while Igor in 2nd and Barbara in 3rd were separated by less than 1 TP. The other three players eligible for the RS medals filled the bottom three places.
With the no. 1 seed only just in the top half of the table and two former World Champions down in 11th and 12th, there was clearly scope for some big moves up and down the table on day 2. Would the tournament masters mount a big push or would one or more of the three non-ITMs leading the table at the end of day 1 manage to hold on? Read on and you might just find out!
GROUP MEAL
Giving the camera a break, I joined everyone else for another enjoyable meal at Strada. However, someone was snapping enough shots to make up for the rest of us put together and I fear they might appear on a Flickr near you before too long.
DAY 2
The sun that greeted the start of the Open had been replaced by grey skies by the time of the first group pic (see top), but I'm not sure any of us expected to see heavy snow when we woke up on day 2. That meant walking to City in the face of a blizzard - that's British English for a few mm of light snowfall, enough to disrupt the whole transport network but not enough to remain on the ground for more than a few hours ...
The temptation to risk frostbite (UK speak for slightly cold fingers) and to risk Joe's knees falling off by taking another group pic was overwhelming! (Remember, as with all these pics, clicking on it should give you a larger version)
BACK: Rick Yagodich (Rick), Barbara Kocsis (barbiko), Steven Trezise (steven), Mauro Lazzara (Soqquadro), Ben Polman (benopi), Neil Jenner (Typo)
MIDDLE: Petra Wark (humber), Vincent Auger (Syagrius), Ben Thomas (Retro), Chris Essex (tizz88), Michel Auger (grandpere), Rob Morton (skweeki)
FRONT: Julia Schwarz (jade), Joe Ruby (JMSC), Igor Wilk (igor85), (standing) Anick Auger (kcina), Simon Wright (shunter)
We thought we would commandeer a family of snowmen that had appeared on the grass and pretend we had all made them, but that cunning plan got sprung when the children who had actually put all the work in came back with carrots and currants to create the facial features and told us off for using stones to do the same thing. The most industrious of them wasn't going to stop working for a photograph either, oh no!
ROUND 9
Petra regained the lead with a 13-tile + 1 pen win against Igor, with Mauro just 0.3 TPs behind after a hard-fought 1-tile win against Rick, whose dreams of winning three European Opens in a row were looking more fragile than they had been when he was in 2nd place three rounds earlier.
Petra and Mauro had now pulled away from the chasing pack, with Chris about 10 TPs behind after losing a tight and mildly controversial game against Neil where unfortunately a tile he had been waiting for turned out to have been on the floor all the time. Chris was on W 7 L 2 like the top pair, but time pens had dragged his overall score back quite a bit compared to them.
Rob beat Julia by 11 tiles + 1 pen to suddenly look very menacing in 4th place - would this be the start of a day 2 charge up the table? Ben P stopped Simon remaining in the top group with a 5-tile win against him (see right), moving just above the Northern Irish no. 1 himself by just 0.1 TPs.
Barbara made it into the top half of the table with a 13-tile win against Ben T and the Augers had a good round, Anick holding Joe to a draw and Michel getting within a tile of his son Vincent.
ROUND 10
Mauro went back to the top with a 6-tile win against Barbara and he led by 8.4 TPs after Petra lost by 3 tiles to Julia.
This round was notable for some big wins, probably because it was one of the rounds which pitted the top four in the seeding list against the bottom four. Chris beat Ben T by 13 tiles to regain 2nd place, edging out Petra by 0.9 TPs. Rob consolidated 4th place as he beat Michel by 22, but was just 0.4 TPs ahead of Simon, whose 15-tile + 1 pen win against Vincent brought him back into contention.
In fact, the five tournament masters taking part had now massed ranks behind the top three, filling 4th-8th places. Ben P, now just behind Simon again after ‘only’ managing a 5-tile win (in his case against Joe) was 6th, Neil was 7th following an 8-tile win against Anick and Rick was 8th after a 13-tile win against Igor.
ROUND 11
This was the second of three rounds in which the top four in the seeding list were due to play each other, with Rob taking on Simon and Neil taking on Rick (see below left) - however, it was the match involving the other ITM, Ben P, playing tournament leader Mauro (see below right) that would turn out to be the most crucial to the eventual outcome of the tournament.
Ben P looked on for a narrow win, which would have lifted him to within 10 TPs of the lead and kept Mauro within reach of the chasing pack, as long as he could manage to waste two tiles before having to play one of them in a crucial space for Mauro in the endgame. Under time pressure, and much to his own disgust, he only wasted one, handing Mauro a narrow 3-tile win instead. Let's just say that I was somewhat relieved at that point that we hadn't set up an audio feed from the tournament, but I totally understood Ben's frustration.
As a result of this, and despite 2nd placed Chris’s 2-tile win against Julia, Mauro was now a game ahead of Chris, a game and a half ahead of Simon (who managed to win a low scoring game against Rob by 2 tiles to complete a 1-2 against the top seeds), and two games or more ahead of everyone else. Mauro had Joe, Rob, Michel and Chris still to face - would he and Chris still be the top two when they met in R15?
The other ITM v TTM match ended in a draw, which didn’t really help either Neil or Rick, who were both only just in the top half of the table. Just behind 3rd placed Simon and just ahead of Rob was Petra. She had suffered a 6-tile loss to Joe, who was now back in the top 10.
Meanwhile, Barbara, now seriously challenging Petra for the Rising Stars gold medal, beat Igor, just behind her in that competition, by 12 (see above right) to end the round in 7th place. Igor had scored less than 10 TPs in total from his first three matches on Sunday to drop to 13th, but was still well clear of the bottom three.
One title was always likely to be decided in Round 11 - the over-50s title, the worthy successor to the old U18 competition which wasn’t held this year because all those who have been eligible for it in recent years are now over 18. It was 'avantage grandpere' as Michel beat Anick by 11 with the yellow loop that you can see below. He was now quite a few TPs ahead of her overall.
ROUND 12
Would Joe be able to stop Mauro running away with the competition? Well, he did his best, holding him to a draw, which meant that Simon’s 12-tile win against Michel lifted him into 2nd place, 6.4 TPs off the lead.
Chris dropped to 3rd after Vincent beat him by 9 tiles, nearly a game back from Simon. Ben P, who beat Anick by 21, and Rob, who beat Petra by 2, were within 2 TPs of Chris in 4th & 5th places respectively. 5-15 TPs behind them were Neil (who kept alive his hopes of a medal with a 5-tile win against Ben T), Petra, Barbara (who drew with Rick and was now just 2.5 TPs short of the Rising Stars leader), Rick and Joe.
Igor ended his losing streak with a 4-tile win against Julia, with whom he was now level on points. He was still more than 20 TPs adrift of the top two in the Rising Stars competition, but more than 40 TPs clear of Ben T and virtually assured of a RS medal.
ROUND 13
The first round after lunch was set to be a momentous one, with the top 6 in the table playing among themselves. 1st placed Mauro was set to take on 5th placed no. 1 seed Rob, 2nd placed Simon meeting 3rd placed Chris and 4th placed Ben P due to play 6th placed Neil.
Rob beat Mauro, pushing him down to 2nd and rising to 3rd himself, 7.1 TPs behind the Angolan. This allowed Simon to rise to the top of the pile, a 3-tile + 2 pens win against Chris (see above left) taking him out to a 4.6 TP lead with two rounds to go. Chris dropped back to 6th.
It was a good round for the Dutch contingent - 2003 BO Champion Ben P moved right up onto Rob’s heels (0.5 TPs behind) with a 2-tile win over 2005 World Champion Neil (see above right) and Petra moved back into contention for a main BO medal with a 48-36 win (see right) in a game of big loops.
An 8-tile win for Joe against Barbara lifted him to 7th (Neil completing the top half of the table), leaving her effectively needing to win both of her remaining games with Petra failing to win hers in order for the Hungarian record of winning at least one gold medal at every recent BO to continue.
Julia beat Rick to go ahead of Igor again, this result the final nail in the coffin for Rick's chances of winning his third Open, while Ben T won his third game of the tournament (v Anick) to make sure he would finish outside the bottom two.
ROUND 14
Mauro’s 14-tile win against Michel gave him 2nd place on the live scores but he would end up top again after Simon lost by 6 tiles to Joe, who makes a habit of cutting down high-fliers in tournaments, or at least that’s the impression I get! Joe ended up in the top 5 himself as a result of this win.
Rob also edged ahead of Simon, by just 0.4 TPs, after beating Anick by 13, but was still 7.3 points behind Mauro. Ben P moved right back into contention with a 3 tile + 1 pen win in his all-Dutch game with Petra, who slipped to 7th after Chris ended his losing streak with a 1-tile win against Barbara to move into 6th, though he gave away his 9th & 10th time penalties of the tournament in doing so. However, the narrowness of the TP margin allowed Barbara to climb a bit closer to Petra in the battle for Rising Stars gold.
A fortuitous tile draw after Neil played a move with non-zero but negligible risk allowed Igor to beat him by 3 and move ahead of Julia again into 12th. Neil, now down to 8th, was battling with Rick (who was 10th after losing to Vincent by 6) to avoid finishing bottom of the ITM/TTM pile. Finally, Ben T won back to back table games for the first time, with an 8-tile win against Julia.
ONE ROUND TO GO - WHAT WERE THE POSSIBILITIES?
A win for no. 8 seed Mauro against no. 7 seed Chris (now 6th, but he had been 2nd behind the Angolan earlier in the day) would give him his first table tournament title to add to the online African Championship he won last year, and Africa its first table tournament winner.
If Mauro lost, no. 1 seed Rob (playing no. 2 seed Neil), no. 4 seed Simon (playing no. 3 seed Rick) and no. 5 seed Ben P (playing no. 6 seed Julia) would all have a chance of overtaking him to win the title, with Rob and Ben both able to become the first player to win three Open titles if they did so.
Those four looked set to share the main medals between them, but Joe and Chris had an outside chance of bronze if two of those in 2nd-4th lost.
In the Rising Stars, Barbara could snatch gold from Petra right at the death if she won her last game and Petra lost hers by enough, but she could also lose RS silver to Igor if she lost and Igor won by enough!
ROUND 15
A tense final round (spot the serious concentration going on in these pics!) took on even more of an 'edge' when Chris beat Mauro (see below left) by 4 tiles in the first of the important games to finish. Updating the system after that result showed Mauro still on top, but the scores of the top four (Mauro, Rob, Simon & Ben) were 62%, 62%, 62% and 61%!
At that stage, Ben was behind in his game with Julia (see below right) and Simon's match with Rick (see above right) was too close to call, so with Rob never having lost a table game to Neil, the whispers around the room were that he must be in pole position. No wonder the poor monkey (see below left) had keeled over backwards with the stress of it all! Rob's mascot would later recover to be feted by his favourite groupies as he got wasted on the winner's invisible champagne, but since this is a family site, the less said about that the better!
While all this tension was building up, the Rising Stars medals were decided. Barbara had done all she could with an 11-tile + 1 pen win against grandpere, which assured her of at least the RS silver ahead of Igor, and the ever-chivalrous Ben T was doing his best to make it a hat-trick of wins over female opposition in his last three games in an attempt to salvage his Elo from the car crash of the previous 12 rounds. Could he get the 2-tile win needed for Barbara to ensure that a Hun would take away at least one gold medal for the fourth BOTTC in a row, or would it be a fourth year of them taking away at least one silver instead? Ben did win, but only by a single tile, leaving Petra in the RS gold medal slot by just 0.2 TPs, having been no less than 14% ahead of Barbara at the end of Round 6!
Everyone's attention turned back to the main Championship. Simon was kicking himself for having drawn a game against Rick that he may well have been able to nick a 1-tile win from, so he could no longer win the title but would get a medal if either Rob lost or Ben drew. Only Rob (with any win) or Ben P (with a 5-tile win) could still overtake Mauro.
As it turned out, Rob kept up his 100% table record against Neil, winning a low-scoring game by 2 to move into 1st place and dash Mauro's hopes of becoming the first African representative to win an Open. It was beginning to look like a Rob-Mauro-Simon 1-2-3 until Julia made a similar blunder against Ben P to the one he had made against Mauro in Round 11, turning a big win for Julia into a 3-tile win to Ben, who thus took bronze, edging Simon out of the medals - no wonder his head has just dropped into his hands (see below left) as the final update (below right) appears on the big screen, while Chris looks on 'sympathetically'.
Looking at the final results, it is astonishing how close the top four ended up. Rob in 1st finished less TPs ahead of Ben in 3rd than Ben finished ahead of Rob when Ben was 1st and Rob 2nd in the 2003 BOTTC, despite Mauro getting in between them this time. Simon would have finished 2nd had he found the 1-tile win against Rick, and even with a draw against Rick, he would have won a medal had Ben not made that blunder against Mauro in R11 (in which case Ben would have finished 1st) and/or had Julia not made that blunder against Ben in R15. Indeed, had you told Simon that morning that he would finish just 4.4 TPs behind the winner, he would have thought a medal was assured!
Like the top four, Chris had lost just 4 games, his 10 time pens being what did for his chances, while Joe in 6th, Petra in 7th & Barbara in 8th were covered by just 1 TP and Neil in 9th & Vincent in 10th were separated by just 0.1!
As you might remember, many screens ago (!) I suggested that we might get some pretty big moves up and down the table during day 2, but I am not sure whether anyone was expecting things to turn out quite the way they did. Indeed, somehow Rob's dash up the table to reach the top slot right on time seemed less of a surprise than the chaos he left in his wake! Rob's day 2 performance was exceptional though (indeed, he won 8 of his last 9 games from mid-afternoon on Saturday onwards) and he fully deserved to become the first player to get his name on the BOTTC trophy twice and the first player to win three Open titles.
PRESENTATION OF PRIZES
The presentation party consisted of the UK's three past World Champions (notable for not having won any prizes at all, though one of us had a slightly better excuse than the other two ), with most recent winner Neil proving to be a dab hand at adding plenty of fun to the role of main presenter! As usual, (almost) everyone came up to get a certificate, to be greeted by a round of applause and the mass clicks of the assembled paparazzi (though one of them added 'rapid escaping from lenses' to the long list of things she is better at than lobster-taming - ok, ok, I'll stop now!), but the main prizewinners were:
Rising Stars - Petra (centre) gold, Barbara (left) silver, Igor (right) bronze
Over-50 winner - Michel (if he shares his PT set with grandmere, she might even forgive him! )
Best excuse for jet-lag - Joe (Ben's trip from NZ being discounted because he finished in the top three!)
Best scores on one day if not the overall winner - Mauro (day 1) and Ben (day 2) day 1/2 comparison
They are fighting over the Hive set because they both chose it as their prize - Ben 'won', but never fear, Mauro will get his in the near future!
Overall Winners - Rob (centre) gold, Mauro (left) silver, Ben (right) bronze
Congratulations to Rob and to everyone who won prizes or even just did slightly better than they expected. To everyone else, well there's always next time! Julia and I would like to thank everyone for coming and for making the event such fun! We hope to see you all at the next British Open, date and venue to be confirmed.
Steven
P.S. You can now find Barbiko's 70+ more pics from the British Open by clicking here.
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With 1st placed Petra taking on 3rd placed Simon (see right), this round promised to shake up the top of the table. In the event, a 6-tile win for Petra kept her in 1st place by 3 TPs and pushed Simon down to 4th, with a bit of a gap (nearly 7 TPs) opening up between the top three and the rest, though it was nowhere near as big as the gap separating the bottom three from the rest.
Rob beat Julia by 11 tiles + 1 pen to suddenly look very menacing in 4th place - would this be the start of a day 2 charge up the table? Ben P stopped Simon remaining in the top group with a 5-tile win against him (see right), moving just above the Northern Irish no. 1 himself by just 0.1 TPs.
As a result of this, and despite 2nd placed Chris’s 2-tile win against Julia, Mauro was now a game ahead of Chris, a game and a half ahead of Simon (who managed to win a low scoring game against Rob by 2 tiles to complete a 1-2 against the top seeds), and two games or more ahead of everyone else. Mauro had Joe, Rob, Michel and Chris still to face - would he and Chris still be the top two when they met in R15?
It was a good round for the Dutch contingent - 2003 BO Champion Ben P moved right up onto Rob’s heels (0.5 TPs behind) with a 2-tile win over 2005 World Champion Neil (see above right) and Petra moved back into contention for a main BO medal with a 48-36 win (see right) in a game of big loops.
