2005 British Open Tantrix
UK Press Coverage

On Thursday 12 May, the Cambridge Evening News carried a very colourful report on the 2005 British Open Table Tantrix Championship ("BOTTC"), which can be viewed below. The article filled almost a whole page so had to be cut a bit to fit on the scanner, but we have purchased plenty of copies of the full article to send to those included in it, and to others on a first-come first-served basis:

Many thanks to journalist Ben Lee for the article and Warren Gunn for the pictures.

The pictures were taken on day 1, so naturally the photographer concentrated on the local entrants and the reigning World Champion Péter Petrecz, which explains why there are no pictures of the winners, though not the curious elevation of three of the Hungarians to 'grand masters' - I blame the lightning bolt in the last round for that! :-)

As usual, you'll have to guess which of the quotes Steven actually said during a telephone interview and which were of the "well, I guess you could just about say that" variety. ;-) Apologies once more to Attila for shamelessly slipping the 'Attila the Hun' line into the original press realise though - now you can see why!

For the record, although none of the UK entrants made the final eight (c.f. six last year), there were some UK medallists - Esther Purnell of England won gold in the 'Rising Stars' competition and Malcolm Preen of Scotland won bronze in the same event.

Additional pictures from the Cambridge Evening News photographer were for sale on the photo gallery on the Cambridge Evening News site itself, but probably only on a temporary basis.

Five weeks earlier, one of the Somerset papers had carried a story about the qualifying event run by Wassail Games of Frome to find local players to sponsor to attend the event. Imagine how happy Pete Minall of Wassail Games was when Esther came home with the 'Rising Stars' gold! The article seen on the right and another one can also be read on the newspaper's site here and here.