PRELIMINARY ROUND:

(Sat 24 Aug)

The preliminary round matches took place today. Ela Sikudova (SVK) was behind after three games against April White (NZL) but got a big loop in game 4 to win by 44.2-35.8 TPs - Ela will play Australian Champion Josh Button (AUS) in R1. In the other match, Rob Morton (GBR) beat Gina White (NZL) by 52.0-28.0 TPs and will play no. 32 seed Anthony Sanders (AUS) in R1.


ROUND 1:

(Sun 25 Aug)

In the first R1 match to be played (early because one of the players is going on holiday), Andreas Kemerle (GER) (coincidentally drawn against his usual practice partner Christine Dreesen (GER) in S5) won 4/5 games against his higher-ranked opponent to take the match by 66.5-33.5 TPs.

(Mon 26 Aug)

Anthony Sanders (AUS) must have got a shock today - a training session by Dave Dyer made Rob Morton (GBR) a different player from the novice seen in the preliminary round and he won two games and drew another against the no. 32 seed in S7. However, Anthony won by 56.5-43.5 TPs in the end thanks to better margins. No. 8 seed Wolfgang Schwarz (GER) won his first two games against James Preen (CAN) to lead by 30.9-9.1 TPs.

(Tue 27 Aug)

10-y-o Dale Thompson (GBR) gave no. 19 seed Murray Pharaoh (NZL) a huge scare in S8, drawing game 1 and winning game 2 before Murray came back to win the next two and take a 47.7-32.3 TPs lead with one to play. No. 23 seed Martin Harlow (GBR) also made hard work of establishing a 34.1-25.9 lead against Katarina Krausová (SVK) in S3 but no. 8 seed Wolfgang Schwarz (GER) had no such trouble, winning all 5 games against James Preen (CAN) in S7 to win the match by the massive margin of 81.2-18.8 TPs. However, Wolfgang had all the luck that was going in games 1, 2 and 4 and says that in reality, James put up a very good fight in most of the games.

(Wed 28 Aug)

Katarina Krausová (SVK) won game 4 against Martin Harlow (GBR) in S3 to leave Martin with just a 0.4 TPs lead going into the final game, but a big loop in that game allowed Martin to escape from R1 alive by 59.7-40.3 TPs. This was a great performance from Katarina though given that she had a lobby ranking of just 565 at the entry closing date. No. 14 seed Bevan Chong (NZL) drew his first game on tiles with Thom Clutterbuck (GBR) in S6, then later in the day lost the second before winning the third to lead by 33.8-26.2 TPs. He leads mainly thanks to Thom giving up no less than 3 time penalties in their first game.

(Thu 29 Aug)

No. 14 seed Bevan Chong (NZL) finished off Thom Clutterbuck (GBR) in S6 with two wins by more than 10 tiles to take the match by 67.0-33.0 TPs.

(Fri 30 Aug)

No. 24 seed Pierre Sanchez (FRA) won the first three games in his match against 12-y-o Seb M (NZL) in S6 to effectively kill the match as a contest but Seb did well to win the last two games to reduce the margin to 61.5-38.5 TPs.

(Sat 31 Aug)

This was the first big day of the 5th WTC so far. In the morning, no. 30 seed Marion Scott (GBR) was held to draws in games 1 and 3 by 13-y-o Jason O (NZL) in S5 but won game 2 to emerge from the first session leading by 36.2-23.8 TPs. William Brooks (GBR) reeled off three wins in his first three games against Glynn Ridley (GBR) in S7 to leave the result of the match in little doubt and eventually won by 63.9-36.1 TPs. William will face no. 32 seed Anthony Sanders (AUS) in the first R2 pairing that we know for sure.

The afternoon saw easily the most exciting match of the tournament so far, between Alex Heyer (FRA) and Paul Hirst (AUS) in S4 and nearly the first ever tiebreak game in a tournament. Paul, the less experienced player, won the first game by two tiles, Alex won the second by the same score and the third was drawn to leave the score at 30.0-30.0. Alex won the fourth game by five tiles despite Paul's valiant efforts to keep the margin down and was then forced into an 8-tile loop early in game 5 leaving Paul needing to make a line of 21 tiles or more. He nearly managed it, but having to close of the threat of a bigger loop from Alex, some slightly inaccurate play and the bad luck of not getting the first free move in the endgame limited him to 19 and Alex won the match by just 50.7-49.3 TPs. Good play by both players throughout.

No. 29 seed Ilona Halbach (GER) showed her greater Tantrix experience as she won her first three games against first-ever Korean entrant Daniel Robbins (KOR) in S1 to lead by 45.6-14.4 TPs. She even added four tiles to her line around a hole at the end of game 3.

In the evening, 2001 European Championship runner-up Philippe Durand (FRA) was well beaten in S3 by 15-y-o compatriot Andreas N (FRA), one of the next generation of French Tantrix stars perhaps. Philippe was clearly not having the run of the tiles as well as being off-form and up against an on-form opponent. Much of the damage was done in the first two games, in both of which Philippe managed to get left with two long disconnected lines - indeed, in game 1 both of his lines were 20 tiles long! In the end, Andreas won by 64.0-36.0 TPs.

(Sun 1 Sep)

13-y-o Kyle B (AUS) caused a surprise today by beating Irene Dyer (USA) by 52.9-47.1 TPs in S7. Irene reached the WTC QFs in 2000 but ever since she was two games up against Matt Peek in the last 32 last year before losing the last three, everything seems to have been going wrong in tournaments for Irene. This time she won the first and third games but Kyle won both of the last two games, the final one by just two tiles, for a fine win by 52.9-47.1 TPs. No such problems for no. 30 seed Marion Scott (GBR) in S5 though - she won both games convincingly against Jason O (NZL) today to win the match by 70.0-30.0 TPs.

It looked for a fleeting moment like one of the biggest Tantrix shocks of all-time might be on the cards today as 10-y-o Josh Pharaoh (NZL) drew his first game against no. 3 seed Shaun Cooper (NZL) in S4 then won the second! It was not to be though - once the spectators had flooded in, Shaun won the last three games to record a win by 61.0-39.0 TPs. Josh went within one tile of Shaun in game 5 too and even though he was unable to repeat his father's victory over Shaun in this year's NZ QFs, Josh can be very proud of his performance. Shaun will play Alex Heyer (FRA) in R2.

Josh's father, No. 19 seed Murray Pharaoh (NZL), had of course been in a similar position himself against another 10-y-o, Dale Thompson (GBR), drawing game 1 and losing game 2, but like Shaun, he had won games 3 and 4 too. He won game 5 today to win the match by 63.9-36.1 TPs. Dale is another 10-y-o who can be proud of his performance though.

No. 9 seed Heli Niemi (FIN), last year's runner-up, must fancy another long run in the WTC, because she started out in merciless form against Michael Drewett (AUS) in S3, racking up 49.5 TPs from wins in the first three games. Michael gained a consolation win and draw in the last two games but Heli went through comfortably by 65.2-34.8 TPs in under an hour. John Warden (USA) also went through in under an hour, defying the closeness in seeding points between him and sole Turkish representative Aras Kutlusan (TUR) by reeling off four wins in row. A consolation win for Aras in game 5 kept John below 70 TPs - in the end, John won by 68.9-31.1 TPs.

Joe Ruby (USA) won his first game against Brigitte Empt (GER), a very close game with multiple blocks towards the end, but Brigitte came back to win the second and leads by 22.0-18.0 TPs going into Tuesday's second session. No. 11 seed Kevin Scott (GBR) was another seed to make a shaky start, 16.4-3.6 TPS down against Gilles Brazzalotto (FRA) - Kevin he got blocked and a good run of tiles allowed Gilles to complete some unlikely connections. Kevin did not have a chance to respond immediately because his own mix-up over the time in Guadeloupe meant that the match started an hour late and there was only time for one game. He will be hoping for a much better second session on Wednesday.

At the end of a very busy day in the lobby, Steven Wiley (USA) won a close match against Chris Dellaway (NZL) by just 52.4-47.6 TPs.

(Mon 2 Sep)

Monday started with a very exciting match in S2. Rick Yagodich (GBR) made the perfect start against Thomas Jarl (SWE) with a 50-point (25-tile) loop in game 1. However, Thomas won the next two games, one of them with a 20-tile loop, to take a narrow lead before Rick won game 4 to leave himself needing only a draw in the final game. He looked to be about to win it until an amazing run of tiles fitting forced spaces for Thomas allowed him to get the first free move in the endgame and block the main gap in Rick's line that would otherwise have been forced. Accurate play from Thomas to take full advantage of his good fortune allowed him to end up a happy winner by 53.0-47.0 TPs but Rick must count himself very unlucky indeed.

Mária Erdey-Grúz (HUN) drew game 1 and won game 2 against Jessica Tebbe (GER) in S2 to lead by 25.3-14.7 TPs in a match which on paper is the fourth closest in R1. That match continues on Thursday. Two wins by Zoltán Németh (HUN) have given him a big 32.0-8.0 TPs lead over Zoltán Nédeczky (HUN) in S8.

Double Pan-Am Champion Brad Swanlund (USA), the no. 10 seed, had a slightly shaky start, narrowly losing game 2 to Karen King (GBR) in S1 after winning game 1. However, he then won the last three games by big margins to record the second biggest win of the tournament so far by 71.8-28.2 TPs. In Round 2, Brad will face compatriot Steven Wiley (USA), who was runner-up to him in the Pan-Am in 2001. However, Brad has never beaten Steven in a match - the Pan Am is an all-play-all event and in 2001 and 2002, Brad has won by doing much better against the other players after losing his match against Steve. Can Brad break the jinx and get through to the last 32 for the first time?

An exciting match followed between János Püspöki (HUN) and first-ever Irish entrant Mark Harris (IRL) (playing patriotically as green!) in S7. Mark was restricted to a 9-tile loop in game 1 but won when both ends of János's line got blocked close to each other. He then completed a slightly lucky 18-tile loop in game 2. János mounted an excellent combeack though, winning the next two games to take the lead by just 40.2-39.8 TPs.

So, could János be the first player this year to come back from a two-game deficit to win? He threatened an 11-tile loop early on in game 5 and Mark was forced to prevent that when he would have preferred to connect up his own line. From then on, János always had a slight edge and some excellent blocking late in the game sealed his victory. Mark had already taken 14 minutes when there were still 16 tiles left in the bag, so he dropped a couple of time penalties to make the final score 57.5-42.5 TPs.

This was the longest match of R1 so far with 2 hrs 8 mins of playing time and in R2, János will play no. 8 seed Wolfgang Schwarz (GER), the winner of the most one-sided R1 match so far and the only other one to have taken more than two hours. Potential spectators should prepare for a long haul! :-)

James Stuart (GBR) became the first player to be defaulted this year. His place in S2 of the draw against no. 32 seed Ragnar Wikman (FIN) will be taken by Gina White (NZL), a 'lucky loser' from the preliminary round. If any more players default in the near future (i.e. while there is still time for the match to be played if a replacement is brought in), we will give their places to those who have entered the Plate since the WTC entries closed, in order of entry. To be fair to their opponents, we will not replace defaultees with players whose highest ever lobby ranking is higher than that of the defaultee or of their opponent, and players can veto replacement opponents if they would prefer to be 100% certain of reaching R2 than to get a bit of match practice.

Finally, a record to end the day - today was the first day that the tournaments site has ever had more than 800 page hits - great to see so many people taking such a keen interest!

(Tue 3 Sep)

Tuesday started with a great match that really drew in the spectators. On paper, Brigitte Empt (GER) v Joe Ruby (USA) was the third closest match in the round, and it lived up to that billing. Brigitte had been 22.0-18.0 up after the first session and she won game 3 by two tiles, then Joe won game 4 by the same margin. That left Brigitte needing a draw in the final game, where the lead kept changing hands but neither players was ever able to get more than a couple of tiles in front. Brigitte needed a draw in this last game and with two tiles left in her hand in the endgame and four in Joe's hand, her line was one tile longer than his and one and of his line was blocked. Could she keep her nerve?

Brigitte first thought about the obvious move - adding one of her two tiles to her line to go two ahead. However, there was a big risk that if she did that, Joe would be able to find a way to play his tile without any of his own colour on it such as to force Brigitte's last tile, leaving him three tiles to add to the open end of his line - enough to win by one tile. Fortunately for Brigitte, she saw sense and played safe, adding a tile to Joe's line give him a draw, but turning his line into a blocked space so that he would not add any more. So, Brigitte won the match by just 52.0-48.0 TPs and will face no. 9 seed Heli Niemi (FIN) in R2.

No. 29 seed Ilona Halbach (GER) then finished off a big win against first-ever entrant from Korea Daniel Robbins (KOR) in S1, following up her three wins in the first session with a win and a draw today to take the match by 69.5-30.5 TPs. No. 18 seed Graeme Jolliffe (AUS) won his first two games against Paul Baynton (GBR) in S5 to lead by 29.8-10.2 TPs. Matthias Neumeister (GER) won his first two games against Nicolai Alexeji Kummer (GER) in S1 by seven tiles each to lead by 31.0-9.0 TPs.

An excellent performance from no. 17 seed Kevin Baird (GBR) won him his match against Totte Wendt (GER) in S7 by 72.0-28.0 TPs, the second biggest win of the round so far. Kevin won all of the first four games before Totte managed to hold him to a draw in game 5. Kevin will play 13-y-o Kyle B (AUS) in R2.

Kevin's compatriot Alex Thompson (GBR) did not have such a good evening though, losing all three games in her first session against Jacques Giraud (FRA) in S4. The margins were low enough to give Alex an outside chance if she can construct big wins in the two remaining games. It will be tough though - Jacques, who played well, leads by 42.5-17.5 TPs.

Two S2 matches got underway to end the day. World Junior Champion Simon Wright (GBR) won his first two games against Lewis Palmer (GBR) but Lewis came back to win the third by 11 tiles to keep himself in the match, just 31.9-28.1 TPs behind. Indeed, Rick Yagodich thinks Lewis could have won game 2 as well - "Lewis actually blocked himself off.... the piece he used to create the second forced space on his line that went unfilled was the only one remaining that would have gone in the first gap too". In addition, no. 20 seed Jérôme Papillon (FRA) won his first three games against Dallas White (NZL) to lead by 44.2-15.8 TPs.

(Wed 4 Sep)

As expected, Matt Peek TGM (NZL) started off his defence of the World title with an emphatic victory against first-ever Macedonian entrant Zoran Tomovski (MKD) in S1, winning all five games to record the second highest score of the tournament so far, 78.1-21.9 TPs.

It must be very daunting being a relatively inexperienced player up against the reigning World and NZ Champion who has only lost one tournament match in the last year (and that was a mini-match in the WTTC, where he captained the the winning team) and who smashed the record for a winning streak with 19 consecutive tournament game wins in the middle of a 26-game unbeaten run earlier this year! To Zoran's credit, he did not just roll over and make it easy for Matt, blocking well to go within a single tile of him in the first game and putting Matt under severe pressure in the last game.

Up to a couple of years ago, Laurent Berguin (FRA) was one of the best players in the world, finishing 4th in the 1999 WTC and reaching the QFs in 2000, losing to the eventual World Champion in both cases. His form has suffered a bit since then to the extent that his Elo rating was not even high enough for a seeding place this year. He had an early wobble in his match again Péter Strauss (HUN) in S6, losing the first game, before recovering to win each of the other four games by at least seven tiles to take the match by 73.9-26.1 TPs. In R2, he will face no. 14 seed Bevan Chong (NZL) in what could well be the most intriguing match of the round.

In a later match, Jacques Giraud (FRA) finished off Alex Thompson (GBR) in S4, making it four game wins in a row by winning the first game of the final session before Alex achieved a consolation win in game 5. The final score was 61.8-38.2 TPs to Jacques. In addition, Matthias Neumeister (GER) continued his demolition of Nicolai Alexeji Kummer (GER) in S1, winning the single game they played today to increase his lead to 44.9-15.1 TPs and no. 11 seed Kevin Scott (GBR) got his quest for the world title back on track in S5, reversing his loss in game 1 on Sunday by winning today's two games against Gilles Brazzalotto (FRA) to lead by 33.9-26.1 TPs.

Half of the 64 matches have now started and 25 have finished. No less than 6 matches have been completed in S7 but only one match has been completed in each of section 2 and 8.

(Thu 5 Sep)

No. 2 seed Leah Sanders (AUS), who came 3rd in the WTC last year and 3rd in this year's Australian Championship, won her first game in S8 convincingly against first-ever Norwegian WTC entrant Mette Lund (NOR) to lead by 17.0-3.0 TPs.

Another Australian seed, Kathy Upton (AUS) at no. 31, has a much tougher fight on her hands in S1. Though virtually unknown before the tournament started, Peter Hinton (GBR) played extremely well to win the first two games before Kathy clawed one back. Peter leads by 33.3-26.7 TPs. This is proving to be an exceptionally exciting match, with the result of each game in doubt all the way through and eventually decided by just one tile in all three games!

In S6, Australian Champion and no. 21 seed Josh Button (AUS) beat the last of the two Slovakian players, qualifier Ela Sikudova (SVK), by 65.6-34.4 TPs but Ela put up a very good fight, winning game 2 and drawing game 5. In S8, Zoltán Németh (HUN) completed a comprehensive win against Zoltán Nédeczky (HUN) by winning two of the three games in their second session to add to the two he had won in the first session, eventually triumphing by 67.6-32.4 TPs.

World Junior Champion Simon Wright (GBR) won game 4 of his match against Lewis Palmer (GBR) in S2 leaving Lewis needing a 16-tile win in game 5 to go through. That was a lot to ask, but Lewis went quite close in the end, winning the game by nine tiles so that in the end, Simon went through by just 51.2-48.8 TPs, the second closest match of the tournament so far. In R2, Simon will play no. 20 seed Jérôme Papillon (FRA), who carried on winning all the games in his match against Dallas White (NZL) to emerge victorious by 73.9-26.1 TPs.

Three more matches started tonight - no. 22 seed Tamás Köpeczi Bócz (HUN) won two games against Colin Bridges (GBR) in S4 to lead by 28.0-12.0 TPs but Eleanor Gordon (GBR) made an excellent start against higher-rated Peter Henderson (AUS) in S1, drawing one game and winning the other to lead by 26.0-14.0 TPs - the second session is scheduled for Wed 11 Sep. A 23-tile loop gave Melinda Barry (GBR) a good start against 'lucky loser' from the prelims April White (NZL) and she will take a 18.8-1.2 TPs lead into Sunday's second session.

Finally, Markus L (SWE) became the second person to be defaulted this year. The replacement opponent for no. 7 seed Mike McManaway (NZL) in S2 will be Chris Irvine (AUS), the first late Plate entrant to satisfy the other criteria described in the note on 2 Sep about the first default. Chris had not even played on the Tantrix site at the original closing date for entries. Both of the defaults so far were to some extent expected because they were the only two entrants to have maintained email silence since entering and appeared to have stopped playing on the site a few days after they entered.

(Fri 6 Sep)

Billed as potentially one of the closest matches of the round, John Waggott (GBR) v Carl Crook (GBR) in S5 turned out to be quite one-sided with John winning four of the five games to win by 65.0-35.0 TPs. This was the quickest match of the tournament so far, averaging just 9 minutes of playing time per game - Alex Thompson commented that it was like being at the races! Curiously, if John wins all his matches but each other match in sections 5 and 6 is won by the player with the most seeding points, John would reach the semi-finals without having played against anyone from outside the UK.

No. 2 seed Leah Sanders (AUS) continued her demolition of Mette Lund (NOR) in S8 - she has now won all four games and leads by 63.3-17.7 TPs, enough to ensure that she will go through to face Zoltán Németh (HUN) in R2. In fact, it was later confirmed that these players had agreed to set a bad example ;-) by not playing the last 'dead' game.

This was followed the biggest shock of the tournament so far in S1. No 31 seed Kathy Upton (AUS) had been down by two one-tile wins to one after the first session of her R1 match but it looked like normal service had been resumed when she won game 4 by 12 tiles, leaving Peter Hinton (GBR) needing to win game 5 by one tile or more to level the TP scores and win on tiebreak by 3 games to 2. In an incredibly tense final game, he won by two tiles to become the first player so far this year to knock out one of the seeds.

You have to feel sorry for Kathy, but what a performance from Peter less than five months after he first registered on the Tantrix site. Maybe we should have seen it coming, given how bad people have always tended to be in making Fantasy Tantrix picks - no less than 18 people had chosen Kathy for their Fantasy team and only one had picked Peter. Funnily enough, that one person would be Peter's opponent in the next round, Peter Henderson (AUS), if he manages to escape from a surprise defeat against another in-form British player Eleanor Gordon (GBR) when their match resumes next week.

Nicolai Alexeji Kummer (GER) finally found some form against Matthias Neumeister (GER) in S1 to win both games in their final session, but Matthias easily kept the margins low enough to get himself over the 50 TP barrier, winning the match by 56.7-43.3 TPs. His 'prize' is a match against no. 1 seed Matt Peek TGM (NZL) in R2 - a doubtful privilege, but Matthias does appear to have enough skill to make Matt's life a bit more difficult.

No. 11 seed Kevin Scott (GBR) had lost his first game against Gilles Brazzalotto (FRA) in S5 before winning both games in the second session. In the third session today, he won both games agin to complete what in the end looked like a reasonably comfortable win by 63.8-36.2 TPs. Kevin will play John Waggott (GBR) in R2.

No. 22 seed Tamás Köpeczi Bócz (HUN) had looked to be cruising to an easy victory against Colin Bridges (GBR) in S4 after winning both games in their first session, but today Colin turned the tables, winning two close games to cut the margin to a tiny 40.8-39.2 TPs to Tamás who therefore needs to draw the final game to go through to R2. Peter West (NZL) leads David Dunn (GBR) by 47.9-12.1 TPs in S4 after winning all three games in their first session, though David was very unlucky at the end of game 2.

The first session of an intriguing all-French contest followed. Jean-Marc Nelken (FRA) was taking on Fany Buisan (FRA) in S7. The last time they met in a tournament was in Group C of this year's European Championship. Fany won their match in that tournament by 21.0-19.0 TPs but paradoxically she then got thrashed by everyone else in the group to finish a distant last whereas Jean-Marc beat everyone else to top the group! Does this mean that Fany is Jean-Marc's 'jinx' opponent? It looked like it after their first two games tonight because Fany won them both, but Jean-Marc recovered to win the third by a single tile to leave himself in with a chance in the final session on Sunday. Fany leads by 37.4-22.6 TPs though, so realistically Jean-Marc would need to win both of the remaining games.

(Sat 7 Sep)

Marc Abramson (FRA) reached R2 today with a 55.6-44.4 TPs win over World Junior Championship runner-up Brett Laishley (AUS) in S3, winning three of their five games. In S4, Peter West (NZL) made it four wins out of four against David Dunn (GBR) to ensure his passage into R2 by 65.1-14.9 TPs - it is not yet clear whether the final game in this match will be played.

No. 15 seed Julia Schwarz (GBR), the 2000 World Champion, made a good start today against Malcolm Wotton (GBR) in S4. Some strange play from Malcolm early in game 1, (apparently going for a loop which he had little hope of completing and ignoring her threats altogether) made Julia think that he was weak enough to make it worth her trying for a big loop. The current World Champion might not have agreed with this assessment, having lost to Malcolm in a non-tournament game, and Julia's strategy was definitely very risky - had Malcolm made sure that he benefited from the good run of tiles he got by creating lookalike YGY forced spaces or playing the other of the two YGYs in his hand in a forced space at move 40, the loop would have ended up being blocked and Malcolm would have won. As it was, Julia completed an 18-tile loop and the following game was drawn, so she leads by 27.3-12.7 TPs.

A chance of one of the all-time WTC shocks emerged today. 10-y-o Matt Ruby (USA), playing way above his ranking especially in terms of some skilful line-building, took a 36.6-23.4 TPs lead against European Champion and no. 4 seed Steven Trezise (GBR), who had a nightmare first session. Thanks to Julia, Péter and Rick for much of the analysis that follows.

Steven was walking all over Matt in game 1 and found a great move with a BRB tile on move 18 that would have threatened a big loop without too much risk of getting blocked. After checking a few other possibilities, he felt quite relaxed as he picked up the BRB tile and placed it, then felt very, very sick as he realised that he had actually had two BRB tiles and had placed the wrong one, blocking himself for most of the rest of the game and allowing Matt to win it by three tiles.

Game 2 was more straightforward even though Matt, with a bad set of tiles, found what looked like a surprisingly good block at move 11, though whether that was the intention or whether it was because it was the only tile that could have added to his line at the time we will probably never know. In the end, Steven won the game by four tiles.

Game 3 was full of incident. At move 11, Steven's tiles were such that any move with which he could have added to his own line either ended up adding more to Matt's line or blocking both ends of his own line, and he took 8 minutes trying to find the best move from an unappetising set of options, thereby setting himself up for time trouble at the end of the game. In addition, feeling a bit freaked after his loss in game 1, Steven played over-cautiously at move 19, turning one end of Matt's line further away from the other than he really needed to when trying to prevent a potential loop and indirectly setting up a big addition to Matt's line later in the game.

Steven should really have gone for a 12-tile loop at move 26, but over-caution exacerbated by small oversight when working out exactly which BYB tiles were left stopped him from taking this chance. Nevertheless, things nearly worked out OK for Steven in the end - as he played a forced tile on move 34, it looked certain that he would be able to force a 16-tile loop with his next free move until he picked up one of the two tiles that filled the one open forced space ... the one that would force in the tile he needed to complete his loop - a 1 in 11 chance. To add insult to injury, a risky (nay, foolhardy) move made in deep time trouble went bad when the order of the remaining tiles helped Matt to add a dozen more tiles to his line, turning a disastrous game for the no. 4 seed into a completely catastrophic 14-tile loss. Can Matt win or draw one of the two games tomorrow and claim a famous victory? No need to ask which of the two players will be sleeping better tonight ...

No. 26 seed Dave Dyer (USA) had a fairly comfortable win against Petra Wark (NED) in S8, losing only the third game and winning the rest to go through by 69.5-30.5 TPs. No. 25 seed Ragnar Wikman (FIN) was similarly untroubled, winning the first four games against 'lucky loser' from the prelims Gina White (NZL) in S2 before she did very well to take game 5, the final score being 67.6-32.4 TPs. Ragnar will play Thomas Jarl (SWE) in an all-Scandinavian match in R2.

Important note: Many thanks to Simon Wright for spotting a couple of errors - Peter Hinton could have won by one tile and won by 3 games to 2 on the number of game wins tiebreak that operates before the total tiles tiebreak. Similarly in Simon's own match, Lewis Palmer needed a 16-tile win, not a 15-tile win in the final game - 15 tiles would have levelled the TP scores and Simon would have won by 3 games to 2 on tiebreak. I have amended the reports up above but I thought I should clarify the position directly to avoid any potential for confusion.

In order to try to avoid me or anyone else overlooking game wins again, I will add them to the individual results lists on the results pages for each section - game wins ignoring draws will be shown in italics in the 'C' column on the totals line for each match. 'C' = colours for the individual games but this column was previously empty on the totals line.


ROUND 1 draws to a close, ROUND 2 gets underway:

(Sun 8 Sep)

Hungarian Champion László Harsányi (HUN) was in deep trouble against Daniel Martin (NZL) in S8 today, losing two of the first three games and drawing the fourth before escaping with a big win in the final game. The final score was 53.7-46.3 TPs and László will meet no. 26 seed Dave Dyer (USA) in R2. In the same section, Melinda Barry (GBR) had a much easier time against April White (NZL), following up her earlier win in game 1 with four more wins all by margins of five tiles or more to record the second biggest win of R1 so far, 80.8-19.2 TPs.

Round 2 got off to an unexpectedly early start today. No. 2 seed Leah Sanders (AUS) lost game 1 against Zoltán Németh (HUN) in S8 but did not look back after that, winning the other four games to become the first player through to R3 with a victory by 65.2-34.8 TPs.

Malcolm Wotton (GBR) staged a strong comeback against 2000 World Champion Julia Schwarz (GBR) in S4, getting the tiles he needed towards the end of two very tight games to end up with a slim lead of 40.7-39.3 TPs.

In game 3, Julia played a couple of inaccurate moves early on. However, in the end, with the scores very close, there was a forced space at the end of Malcolm's line that could be filled by just two tiles. Julia created lookalikes for it and tried to get out as many tiles on each turn as she could to give her the best possible chance of getting and then wasting the tiles Malcolm needed. However, it looked like Malcolm was blissfully unaware of the danger he faced because he appeared not to do anything about it at all, even creating yet another lookalike for the same tiles! Maybe he had a great plan but the fact that no one else could see what it was must have made it even more annoying for the no. 15 seed when in the end, the tiles that could fit the forced spaces were the last two tiles to come out of the bag and both came out to Malcolm, who not surprisingly won as a result. Game 4 was more straightforward but very tight all the way through, Malcolm eventually winning by a single tile.

The match between Miklos Hansel (HUN) and Bruno Fillon (FRA) in S6 always looked like it might be a close one and in the event, it turned out to be the third closest match of R1 so far - the first and second having been just 0.2 and 0.1 TPs respectively. Miklos, the slight favourite for the match, started well, winning game 1 and drawing game 2, but Bruno came back very strongly to win games 3 and 4 and take the lead. Miklos was left needing an 8-tile win in game 5 (i.e. all Bruno had to do was to play safe and stop Miklos from winning by more than 7 tiles) but somehow he managed it - the hardest last game target anyone has actually achieved in the tournament so far. Miklos actually won the game 5 by 12 tiles to take the match by just 50.8-49.2 TPs - he will face Australian Champion Josh Button (AUS) in R2.

No. 6 seed Péter Petrecz (HUN) was unhappy with his form in his first session against Walter Haselmann (ARG), the first-ever entrant from Argentina, but nevertheless won both games to lead by 33.0-7.0 TPs.

No. 4 seed Steven Trezise (GBR) scraped home against 10-y-o Matt Ruby (USA) in S5, but if you thought the first session had been full of drama, the second almost certainly surpassed it. Matt mixed some skilled, insightful play with some basic errors throughout the match and unfortunately for him, it was the latter that were in evidence at the start of game 4, which Steven ended up winning quite comfortably.

Steven was left needing a win in game 5, Matt just a draw. The spectators piled into the game room, only to get a big shock when halfway through the game, tiles started to appear in illegal places and (in a couple of cases) to change before their eyes. There was no option but to restart the game and Dave is still not quite sure what went wrong.

For the record, Steven had been running away with the game at the start, but the position had just become a bit more interesting. On Steven's screen before the error occurred, an unfortunate tile pick-up had pushed Matt's short line close to a 10-tile loop. However, Matt did not have the tiles to force the loop and further forced tiles during Steven's turn had left a situation where if Matt had tried to bring his loop closer to completion, Steven would have taken his main to 18 tiles immediately, with both ends unblocked and plenty of tiles left in the bag.

After the error, the position was similar but Matt had slightly less potential for a loop. In either case, the result would probably have been a small win to Steven as happened in the replacement game, but in such a tense situation at the end of a very tight match, it was not the kind of thing either player would have wanted to happen.

Steven ran away with the new game 5 early on but his attempts to keep both ends of his line free ran out of steam when a free move at the bottom of the Tantrix designed to force in one of Matt's tiles to Steven's advantage came unstuck when Steven picked up another tile that filled the space and ended up badly blocked. Matt was blocked too and Steven was just ahead, but it looked like Matt would be able to add more to his line when the block was broken than Steven would, so the game was still in the balance.

In the end, Steven saved himself by blocking the top end of Matt's line and then forcing out all of the remaining tiles so that the restriction rules were lifted and he could play a tile he had been holding onto in the crucial forced space to block the other end of Matt's line in a three-yellow-sided space. This meant that although Matt had the first free move in the endgame, he could not add any tiles to his line. Although the time spent finding the crucial move cost Steven a time penalty, it was well worth it because it won him the match by 52.2-47.8 TPs and with it a place against Andreas Kemerle (GER) in R2.

Matt was understandably disappointed, but should be very proud that at the age of just 10, he won two more games than many people thought he would and went within 5 TPs of knocking out the reigning European Champion in what was almost certainly the most eventful match of R1. Matt certainly shows lots of potential for the future. Steven's heart rate, on the other hand, should hopefully return to normal sometime next month! ;-)

To round off an eventful day, no. 5 seed Tom McCoy (GBR) beat Andras Keszei (HUN) by 71.0-29.0 TPs, though Andras can be pleased to have taken one game off the British Open Champion.

(Mon 9 Sep)

Barbara Böcsödi (HUN) was a very late withdrawal/default from S3 today. Fantasy Tantrix fans of her opponent in R1, Catherine Moxham (NZL), will be happy to learn that Cat has agreed to let us bring in late Plate entrant Luke S (AUS) as a replacement.

No. 18 seed Graeme Jolliffe (AUS) went through to R2 with a 60.5-39.5 TPs victory over Paul Baynton (GBR) in S5, though Paul had a much better second session, winning two of the three games (one on time when the tile scores were level) to keep the final margin very respectable. The match did however include an equal tournament record for the lowest score in a single game when Paul lost game 3 by 15-8, only the third time a score as low as 8 has been recorded in a tournament game.

Malcolm Wotton (GBR) was celebrating the second big shock of the Championship so far as he held on grimly for the draw he needed in game 5 against 2000 World Champion and no. 15 seed Julia Schwarz (GBR) in S4 to get through the equal second closest match of the Championship so far by just 50.7-49.3 TPs. In fact, the two seeds to go out so far (Julia and Kathy Upton (AUS)) were both taking part in matches projected to be among the five closest matches involving seeded players and both lost by less than 2 TPs!

It had been clear that getting through this match would mean a lot to Malcolm (and understandably so) and he had put in more intensive pre-tournament practice than most, even winning a 'friendly' games against the reigning World Champion, who thought that this was one player in the bottom quarter of the list that all of the seeds would want to avoid at all costs. He played very well in game 5 - much better than in the previous session where he would have lost at least one if not both of the games but for fortuitous runs of tiles near the end.

Can the latest rising star build on this success by going much further in the tournament? Well, he is certainly improving at a rapid rate, and is easily good enough to make sure that he wins games against the top players if the tiles are on his side (not as easy to do as it sounds by any means!), but it looks to me like he still needs to take the need for defensive play seriously and improve that aspect of his game significantly if he is to continue to win matches against the toughest opponents when the tiles are more neutral or even run against him. He will have to decide for himself if taking a 'tip' like that from a player who nearly got knocked out by someone ranked under 700 is a good idea or not! :-)

No. 6 seed Péter Petrecz (HUN) showed that he means business in this WTC by completing a 81.9-18.1 TPs win against Walter Haselmann (ARG) in S3, the biggest win in R1 so far and a new tournament record for a 5-game match. Walter however managed a kind of record of his own - he just got in ahead of the Chilean entrant by a few hours to become the first entrant from South America ever to play a WTC match! Péter will play Andreas N (FRA) in R2 - she also had a good (if much closer) win in R1.

Fany Buisan (FRA) completed her victory over compatriot Jean-Marc Nelken (FRA) in S7. As mentioned in the report on their first session, the last time they met in a tournament was in Group C of this year's European Championship. Fany won their match in that tournament by 21.0-19.0 TPs but paradoxically she then got thrashed by everyone else in the group to finish a distant last whereas Jean-Marc beat everyone else to top the group! Clearly then, Jean-Marc would rather have met anyone but Fany in a knockout match, and by the end she had won four of their five games to take the match by 65.2-34.8 TPs.

Stacy Henwood (NZL) made a strong start against Tracey Fletcher (GBR) in S2, winning their first two games comfortably. A big mistake by Stacy and some good play by Tracey brought the British player back into the match with a big win in game 3, but unfortunately she was unable to build on this success, making lots of little mistakes in game 4, and Stacy eventually won the match by 67.7-32.3 TPs.

At the end of the day, it was reported that at least four French players have been unable to access the Tantrix website recently, for reasons as yet unknown. This may cause disruption to the end of R1 and we will keep you posted.

Yet another record was broken by the end of the day - the tournament website (that means the WTC home page, results pages, etc but not the lobby or any of the tantrix.com site) had received 882 page hits in the last 24 hours - so thank you all for your interest, which helps to make all this seem worth doing! :-)

(Tue 10 Sep)

Maybe nerves are really beginning to set in (or maybe I just watched too many games!), but some shocking blunders were spotted today, some of them from players who should know better. I am usually saying that about myself, so this makes a nice change. Anyway, I unintentionally got carried away with analysing games today, so please enjoy - the two most amusing bits are in the second half of today's report! :-)

First-ever Chilean WTC entrant, 15-y-o Sebastian B (CHI) emerged from the first session of his match against James Mihalisin (USA) in S6 narrowly leading by 21.7-18.3 TPs. The first game was very close until near the end, when James showed a much higher level of skill in the endgame to win by 8 tiles. However, Sebastian's superior line-building skills came through in game 2 and when James got blocked as well, Sebastian ended up with a 17-tile win.

James gets my vote as the most sporting player of the tournament so far for persevering with trying to organise this match. He gave his younger opponent a chance of playing despite multiple unanswered emails, two no-shows and a very late arrival for this session. In Sebastian's defence, he is young, English is not his first language and things did improve once I started to email him in Spanish. To be fair to James though, any no-show or late show by Sebastian for the second session will be strictly penalised.

Round 2 continued today with two more matches getting underway. No. 10 seed Brad Swanlund (USA), double Pan-American Champion, has major issues about playing against compatriot Steven Wiley (USA), the Pan Am runner-up in 2001. In fact, to shamelessly steal a phrase from a famous tennis champion (and to take it out of context), when Brad is playing Steve, even Brad's issues have issues! ;-)

The problems stem from paranoia induced by a run of defeats against Steve in the Pan Am itself and in friendly games. These include a couple of amazing games where Steve managed to connect his lines around three sides of the Tantrix in one turn! They might have started off seeming like run of the mill defeats, but they have now happened so often that Brad now seems almost to expect to lose their games. The Pan Am has always been an all-play-all event and Brad does much better against everyone else in the Pan Am than Steve does, but the WTC is of course a pure knockout competition.

Steve won game 1 by a single tile. I watched game 2 and during that game, it became very clear why Brad struggles so much against him. Brad was not himself at all. Instead of playing his own game, he played like someone running scared, defending things that probably did not really need to be defended and letting more obvious bad things happen to him as a result. Let me be totally honest here, I have been playing like that against another American player for years with exactly the same results. This game woke me up to what I have been doing wrong in all those games too!

Brad made his first mistake by choosing the wrong place to play a tile at move 12 and compounded his problems by playing a dreadful move 19 - it was clear that the sequence of forced spaces he created was going to lead to Steve being able to waste five of Brad's tiles in a small loop at the bottom of the Tantrix without even needing any lucky tile draws.

Despite these two mistakes, Brad is an excellent player and was not too far behind by the time only a few tiles were left in the bag. If he selected the better of two tiles for the forced space he had to fill on move 41, he would force in a green corner at move 42, followed by a green straight that was already in his hand and another green tile that was in Steve's hand. Not only would three tiles have been added to his line, but Steve would probably have had to use a free move to stop Brad from connecting the new end of his line to a small green line two spaces further up the Tantrix. The spectators held their breath as Brad tried both tiles and thought and thought ...

... then cheered when the tension broke as Brad played the correct tile at move 41 ... only for jaws to drop in disbelief as he played the green straight at move 42, only adding one to his line instead of three and not giving Steve any threats to deal with. The other tile he could have played would then have forced in two extra green tiles as described above. Steve duly won the game by four tiles to lead the match by 28.0-12.0 TPs.

So, can Brad get over his mental block in time to start a comeback in the second session or will Steve prevail over him once again and this time get a proper reward for his efforts? All should be revealed on Thursday.

No. 9 seed Heli Niemi (FIN), last year's WTC runner-up, and Brigitte Empt (GER) are two of the fastest strong adult players in the world and their R2 match in S3 was always expected to fall into the 'blink and you might miss it' category. It seems to be turning out that way, but it is very exciting too. Brigitte won game 1 by four tiles but Heli came back to win game 2 by three, despite Brigitte being in the lead going into the endgame.

Game 3 looked to me as if it revolved around whether Brigitte would be able to fill three indirect connections up the RH side of the Tantrix with yellow corner tiles. I looked on stunned as Heli repeatedly failed to try to block her and Brigitte repeatedly failed to try to play a tile on the RH point of the Tantrix that might force in all the tiles that she needed. True, neither of them had a perfect block or force available to them, but the strange thing was that they did not appear to even try tiles at that position - maybe I missed something.

Heli was well ahead coming into the endgame but ultimately she had to let Brigitte complete her connections in order to use her first free move in the endgame to block Brigitte from adding six tiles to her line around the bottom LH corner of the Tantrix. Heli ran out of tiles very quickly too, and only just held on for a one-tile win as Brigitte added her remaining tiles to her own line unhindered. Heli leads the match by 32.9-27.1 TPs and definitely looks to be the stronger player but there is still all to play for in the final session.

2001 European Champion and no. 16 seed Ben Polman (NED) finished off a fairly comfortable victory against Gary Sebalja (NZL) in S8, winning two of today's three games to add to the two he had won in the first session and thus claiming victory in the match by 71.2-28.8 TPs. Ben will play Melinda Barry (GBR) in R2.

Jessica Tebbe (GER) and Mária Erdey-Grúz (HUN) played the last three games of their match in S2 today. It was billed as likely to be one of the four closest matches in R1 and it turned out to be one of the greatest comeback wins ever seen in the WTC. Jessica did not even manage to win a game until game 4 (though game 1 had been drawn), yet that still left her in with a chance of winning the match if she could win game 5 by at least three tiles.

Game 5 was incredibly exciting. It looked like Jessica had thrown away her last chance when she failed to use move 14 to stop Mária from indirectly adding six to her line around the bottom of the Tantrix, probably not noticing that Mária already had the tiles she needed to do this in her hand.

Later in the game, Jessica got a chance to attempt to force-connect her upper and lower lines on the RH side of the Tantrix and after her move, only a RBR forced space separated these lines. Mária's move 38 appeared to be perfect - not only did she create a RBR lookalike, but she also had the presence of mind to start a sequence of forced moves that allowed her to get enough tiles out of the bag to ensure that she picked up the one remaining RBR tile herself so that she could waste it.

However, when faced with needing to waste a tile to stop a connection via a single forced space, the last thing you expect to have to guard against is the possibility that the move that should save the game for you might end up leading to the other ends of your opponent's lines connecting. This is especially true when at the time they are separated by more than half a dozen spaces (even I was getting ready to congratulate Maria on a fine win after move 38), but that is exactly what happened! After that (despite a valiant effort by Mária to reduce the margin), Jessica won the game by six tiles and hence the match by just 51.4-48.6 TPs.

A further twist was to follow. Jessica was happy to have won the game but thought that Mária had still won the match. When it was explained to her that she had won one game by 6 tiles and one by 4 whereas Mária had won one game by 6 tiles and one by 1, with one drawn, she provided my favourite quote of the tournament so far (so race for your German dictionaries now if you need to) - "Ich bin ein bißchen blöd. Ich hab ein Spiel ganz vergessen!" The funniest thing about it is that if she had remembered the game she forgot and realised that she still had a chance of winning the match, she might have been far more nervous during game 5 and not have won it after all! :-)

You have to feel a lot of sympathy for Mária, who was clearly the stronger player and did just about everything right in game 5. However, this is not meant to take anything away from Jessica, who herself unluckily lost by just 2 TPs against Kristina Chilton (NZL) in Round 1 last year and who fought so impressively hard to come back from what looked like virtually certain defeat after the first three games.

No. 22 seed Tamás Köpeczi Bócz (HUN) had appeared to be in a bit of trouble against tournament débutant Colin Bridges (GBR) in a long two-hour match in S4 after Colin had won both games in their second session to trail by just 1.6 TPs with one game to go. However, watching the final game was agony for the British fans as Colin threw away two good chances to win and in the end he was very lucky to escape from the gane without an 18-tile loop being completed against him.

Colin, playing yellow, said goodbye to any realistic chance of winning game 5 by failing to spot that playing a YRY across the bottom RH corner of the Tantrix would have connected his two main lines at move 14. The next problem came with only a few tiles left in the bag when Colin did not take the chance to waste the green straight that would otherwise force completion of Tamás's loop when it came out of the bag. However, he got away with this in spectacular fashion when (with the loop one forced tile from completion and that tile in Colin's hand) Tamás picked up a run of forced tiles that created a lookalike space in which Colin could waste the crucial tile.

This left Tamás completely blocked on a score of 17, so Colin now had an outside chance of getting the one-tile win he needed. For some reason though, no doubt unaware of the shouts of "Go ON Colin, put THAT tile THERE" raining in on monitor screens up and down the country (well, at least one screen anyway ...), he preferred to add two of his own yellow tiles to the top of his line rather than adding one of them and forcing one of Tamás's tiles and thus still retaining an extra option for the following move. To be fair, if Colin had made the best move here the game would probably have ended up 17-17 and Tamás would still have gone through. In the end, Tamás won game 5 by a single tile and with it the match by 54.1-45.9 TPs.

Having said all that, Colin deserves full credit for achieving the fourth best result against a seeded player so far, especially when you consider that he had a lobby ranking of under 600 at the closing date for entries to the WTC. This match gives him an excellent base to build on for the future. However, Tamás was clearly the better player and deserved to go through to face Jacques Giraud (FRA) in R2.

Mauro Lazzara (GBR), who just missed out on a seeding this year despite some good tournament performances, looks to be coasting against Sharon Crook (GBR) in S6 after scoring 34 in each of their first two games and winning them by 10 and 21 tiles respectively. Mauro leads by 34.3-5.7 TPs - and it will be interesting to see whether Sharon can start to make a match of it by winning game 3 at the start of their second session tomorrow.


(Wed 11 Sep)

Karsten Täuber (GER) was defaulted in S4 today after maintaining email silence for some considerable time and not replying to a chaser in German from Lutz sent a couple of days ago. No. 28 seed Frank Heyer (FRA) has kindly accepted late entrant Gabriela Krausová (SVK) as a replacement opponent and they will play their match on Thursday.

The connection problems experienced by some of the players in France and Guadeloupe now seem to have been resolved. Sylvie Banuls (FRA) played her match with no. 13 seed Garry Laishley (AUS) today after a long delay because of those connection problems. Many thanks to Garry himself for persevering and to Laurent Berguin for contacting Sylvie by telephone to avoid us having to default her unnecessarily. Sylvie had a very good start, winning game 1 before Garry recovered strongly, winning the next three games and drawing the last to take the match by 63.5-36.5 TPs. He will play Jessica Tebbe (GER) in R2.

No. 9 seed Heli Niemi (FIN) won both of her games against Brigitte Empt (GER) in S3 today to complete a fairly comfortable 61.8-38.2 R2 win. This was the shortest match of the tournament so far with just 43 minutes of playing time. In R3, it is possible that Heli could meet no. 27 seed Yoseph Phillips (ISR) in the WTC for the second year running. She beat him in the last 16 on her way to the Final last year. She may have to wait for a week or two to find out if she will be meeting Yoseph again because he only started his R1 match against Pierre Faure (FRA) just after she finished her R2 match. He won the first game but Pierre, well supported by a group of French players, won the second by 13 tiles and would be ahead if he had not conceded a time penalty in the process. As it is, Yoseph leads by 20.6-19.4 TPs.

No. 11 seed Kevin Scott (GBR) won his R2 match against John Waggott (GBR) in S5, winning the first four games before John got a consolation win in game 5 to end Kevin's 8-game winning run. Kevin won the match by 67.7-32.3 TPs. He then handed the PC to his wife, no. 30 seed Marion Scott (GBR), who is playing against John Warden (USA) in R2 for the doubtful 'prize' of a match against Kevin in R3. John won the first game by 7 tiles but Marion managed to connect her lines in game 2 to win by four tiles. Adding a time penalty against John in that game gives her a very narrow 20.2-19.8 TPs lead at the end of their first session.

Lutz Göhmann (GER), who captained the WTTC runners up last month, won all five games against Paul Davidoff (GBR), also in S5. However, the match was a lot closer than the scoreline of 71.3-28.7 TPs makes it look, with Paul playing very well given his lower ranking and getting to within two tiles of Lutz in three of the games. After such a good test of nerve, which he came through with flying colours, Lutz will play no. 18 seed Graeme Jolliffe (AUS) in R2.

New Swedish Tantrix 'pro' Oskar Green (SWE) took the lead against Raymond Hemmecke (GER) in S4 by winning a very strange first game. The scores were 18-14 after just 18 moves, with both players having loops. It took 22 more moves for the scores to change. With move 40, Raymond forced a couple of tiles to take his line to 18 but ignored the small possibility of Oskar getting a loop. Oskar was incredibly lucky with two of the next three tiles to come out of the bag and completed a 17-tile loop to win the game 34-20. A lucky 14-tile loop seemed to have given Oskar game 2 as well, but he did not block quite well enough and Raymond built his line very efficiently to take it to 29. Nevertheless, it was a strong tournament début for Oskar, who leads the match by 23.7-16.3 TPs.

No. 20 seed Jérôme Papillon (FRA) won his first R2 game against World Junior Champion Simon Wright (GBR) in S2 with a 12-tile loop that Simon did not seem to do enough to stop. He looked to be running away with game 2 as well, but Simon took big risks to try and fill in lots of indirect links in a potentially long line and, amid miscounts on both sides, Simon's brave plan paid off and he won the game to cut the gap to just 20.3-19.7 TPs in Jérôme's favour.

Alex Heyer (FRA) shocked no. 3 seed Shaun Cooper (NZL) with a big win in the first game of their R2 match in S4. However, Shaun recovered with two smaller wins to hold a small 31.8-28.2 TPs lead after three games. There is certainly all to play for in the final session.

There was another remarkable comeback in a R1 match that the seeding points had suggested might be close when Franck Torset (FRA) recovered from two small losses against Neal Bolton (GBR) in S8 to win games 3 and 4 by slightly bigger margins then held on for the draw he needed in game 5 to go through by 52.5-47.5 TPs. Franck will face no. 19 seed Murray Pharaoh (NZL) in R2. The first ever Portuguese WTC entrant, Manuel Correa (POR), got his match underway too, losing game 1 then winning game 2 against Thierry Berguin (FRA) to leave Thierry leading narrowly by 20.8-19.2 TPs.

A new record for the number of WTC matches in which action was seen in any one day was set today. Games were played in no less than 11 matches, 6 in R1 and 5 in R2. Up to now, it has been remarkable how evenly the matches have been spread, with action in 6-8 matches just about every day. The record for the number of hits on the tournament pages in one day was broken again too, this time by just 8 with 891. The most popular results page today was S4.

It is interesting to note that no one with a lobby ranking that was below 700 at the closing date for entries has reached Round 2 so far - only the lucky late entrants still have a chance to do anything about this.

(Thu 12 Sep)

James Mihalisin (USA) won game 3 against 15-y-o Sebastian B (CHI) in S6 to retake the lead their match by 31.6-28.4 TPs.

John Warden (USA) became the first unseeded player to reach R3 and only the third player to knock out a seed so far this year by beating no. 30 seed Marion Scott (GBR) in S5. Marion had been ahead by just 0.4 TPs after the first session but she made an unfortunate error in game 3 when she needed one corner of her colour to go into a forced space to complete a loop. ** Correction ** She knew exactly which tile she needed (it would have been illegal to play it until the endgame), and it was still in the bag. Then, with only four tiles left, she overreached herself trying to minimise John's line and give herself a bigger win. She blocked his line, forcing one of his tiles in on the other side of the tile she played but not noticing that it was a lookalike for the long-awaited tile which she then immediately picked up. There was only a 0.25 chance of this happening even if she had noticed it. As she ruefully reflected afterwards, often it is best to take the small safe wins in tournament games.

Marion did complete a loop in game 4 to retake the lead in the match - a 12-tile yellow loop in the shape of a crown near the top of the Tantrix. That left her needing a draw in the final game but it was not to be. John built his line well and Marion never seemed to get the tiles she needed to be able to compete in the second half of the game. When the main blocked space in the game was finally filled, she was a bit behind, and felt that she had to take a big gamble with the tile she chose to fill the forced space at move 37. A safer approach would have been to loop off John's loose red corner, but John's two main lines were very far apart at that stage and Marion clearly felt that the move she played was the only way to keep the end of her line open. I am not sure it was the only way, but in any case, John managed to connect his two lines to win the game by 11 and the match by 55.1-44.9 TPs.

Things are, as expected, getting a lot tougher in R2, not just for Marion but for all the seeded players. Double Pan-American Champion Brad Swanlund (USA) was feeling the heat again, continuing to play like a shadow of his usual self against his least favourite opponent, Steven Wiley (USA) in S1 and losing yet another game (game 3) as a result.

Steve might have run away with game 4 too had he picked up the right tiles in the middle of the game. However, feeling like he had already lost the match, Brad relaxed a bit and played well in the second half to keep Steve's two lines apart, not to mention building a good line himself, and won the game by 8 tiles. That leaves him in with a tiny chance of avoiding a R2 exit for the second year in a row but he trails by 47.3-32.7 TPs so he will need to win the final game tomorrow by at least 17 tiles. It probably will not help that Brad now feels that he can only beat Steve when he does not think about any of the moves!

In R1, no. 28 seed Frank Heyer (FRA) won his first three games against 10-y-o late replacement Gabriela Krausová (SVK) in S4, the second by only one tile, to lead their match by 44.1-15.9 TPs. Sharon Crook (GBR) did well to win game 3 at the start of her second session against Mauro Lazzara (GBR) in S6, thus giving herself a chance of getting back into the match, but Mauro then won games 4 and 5 to win the match comfortably by 71.1-28.9 TPs. Mauro will play no. 24 seed Pierre Sanchez (FRA) in R2 - that could be a very even contest indeed.

Eleanor Gordon (GBR) held a slightly unexpected lead of 26.0-14.0 TPs against Peter Henderson (AUS) in S1 going into today's second session but looked to have let the match run away from her when Peter completed a 25-tile loop for a huge win in game 3. She recovered very well though to win game 4, leaving her needing only a draw in game 5 for the biggest match win of her Tantrix career.

Peter looked to be heading for victory in game 5, but Eleanor hung on in there and when, towards the end of the game, Peter created an indirect link in his line requiring a YBY (clearly not having realised that there were no YBYs left in the bag) Eleanor created another YBY space to block the other end of his line and then just had to add a few tiles to her own line to win the game, and the match by 57.6-42.4 TPs. So, instead of an all-Australian battle in this sub-section, it will be a contest between two British 'giant-killers', because in R2 Eleanor will play Peter Hinton (GBR), the conqueror of the no. 31 seed.

Back to R2 and no. 16 seed Ben Polman (NED) won his first three games against Melinda Barry (GBR) in S8 to lead by 43.3-16.7 TPs.

In R3, John Warden (USA) has to play his R2 opponent's husband, Kevin Scott (GBR), the no. 11 seed. Indeed, despite John only finishing that R2 S5 match earlier today, Round 3 made a very early start for these two players only in order to give them a chance of fitting the match in before Kevin goes away next week until after the R3 deadline. The standard of play in game 1 was fairly high. John seemed to have the edge for much of the game but ended up with one end of his line stuck in a RBR forced space that could not be filled. Kevin then forced in a tile which created another RBR space at the other end of John's line and afterwards proceeded to add tiles to his own line to win the game and take a 15.0-5.0 TPs lead.

If you review that game, you might ask yourself if John could have played the red corner tile in the other forced space that opened up at the bottom of the Tantrix after Kevin's forced moves instead of creating the second RBR space. Yes, he could have, but no other tile was left to fit the space he did play it in and hence his score would have been reduced by another tile. So, he did do the right thing.

Finally, Thierry Berguin (FRA) beat Manuel Correa (POR) by 62.2-37.8 TPs to progress to a R2 match with no. 29 seed Ilona Halbach (GER) in S1. Thierry won games 3 and 5 but game 4 was the most interesting. A very blocked game, it ended up very tall and thin with the final score 10-10. Manuel did not have any lines with more than seven tiles in them but did have two 5-tile loops to choose from! You can see the final position here.

(Fri 13 Sep)

Double Pan-American Champion Brad Swanlund (USA) became the fourth seed (he was seeded 10) to bite the dust, winning his last game against Steven Wiley (USA) in R2 S1 but not by enough to win the match. A very neat play-and-force double block towards the end of the game stopped Steve from getting a 20+ tile loop, but Brad was unable to get the similar-sized loop he needed to overturn the deficit and Steve won the match by 52.0-48.0 TPs.

In the end, the TP score was quite close. Will Brad's wins in game 4 and 5 help him to feel that his 'jinx' opponent is no longer such a threat, or will only being able to beat him when it probably was not going to make any difference reinforce the problem? We will probably not find out until next year's PanAm.

Definition of 'jinx' opponent: To avoid players described as such feeling denigrated in these reports, I ought to explain what I mean by this term. Saying that someone is a 'jinx' opponent is in no way meant to mean that the higher-rated player would otherwise expect to beat them every time.

To me, a 'jinx' opponent is someone who appears a little weaker than their opponent on some objective measure (eg. rating, previous top three finishes in tournaments, etc) but tends to thrash (not just beat) the higher-rated player every time they play them in a match. Usually, the two players concerned are fairly similar in strength and it is just that matches between them tend to be anything but close.

The 'jinx' can be down to any combination of a) one player's playing style particularly suiting or not suiting the other player's playing style; b) a tendency by the lower-rated player to treat matches against the higher-rated player as particularly important and thus to raise their game for their encounters with that player; c) a tendency by the higher-rated player to play a different (weaker) game than usual against the player they feel they are jinxed by, usually for psychological reasons linked to previous defeats; d) a tendency for the lower-rated player to get particularly lucky against the higher-rated player, even if this is just a perception rather than the reality; e) the lower-rated player actually being stronger than the higher-rated player but their previous tournament performances not reflecting this.

Back to the action ... 10-y-o Gabriela Krausová (SVK) had only played 12 online games before she faced no. 28 seed Frank Heyer (FRA) in S4 but she had been practising offline and had impressed Frank during the first session of their match despite losing all three games. She must have impressed Frank even more today because she won games 4 and 5! While Frank had still done enough to qualify for R2, the final score was only 54.1-45.9 TPs.

Frank's opponent in R2 will be Raymond Hemmecke (GER) who ended up beating new Tantrix 'pro' Oskar Green (SWE) quite comfortably, winning today's three games to take the match by 63.5-36.5 TPs. There are now only five matches left to finish in R1, three of which have yet to start.

There is a new feature article today. When do you call it quits? is by World Junior Champion Simon Wright (GBR) and considers the vexed question of when to call a break between sessions if it has not been decided beforehand. The only drawback to publishing this article is that it might encourage tactical scheduling and hence arguments when one player wants to carry on and the other wants to stop. So, we will go with the convention that if the number of games has not been agreed before the start of the session and one player wants to stop but the other does not, then the session will stop. The only exception to this would be close to deadlines when controllers may to insist on players not dragging out matches unnecessarily.

(Sat 14 Sep)

There was a big rise in lobby ranking last month for Catherine Moxham (NZL), but this month's biggest gainer (over 200 points so far) is 13-y-o Luke S (AUS), Cat's opponent in S3. This did not seem to worry Cat though and she won all five games for what would turn out to be the fifth biggest victory of R1, 79.5-20.5 TPs. Cat's next opponent will be last year's QFist Martin Harlow (GBR), the no. 23 seed, in what promises to be a tough R2 match for both of them.

Another seed is in a little bit of trouble in S7 - Tantrix 'pro' and no. 12 seed Britta Steude (NZL), last year's Pacific Champion, won game 1 against Steve Borley (NZL) but got a bit of a shock when he held her to a draw in game 2. It was an even bigger shock when Steve won game 3 to take a narrow lead in the match and although Britta won game 4 to lead by 43.2-36.8 TPs, she will have to make sure that she avoids defeat in game 5 if she wants to reach R2.

Tantrix inventor Mike McManaway (NZL), the no. 7 seed, did not have anything like the same kind of problems seeing off the challenge of Chris Irvine (AUS) in S2. The match was billed as likely to be the most one-sided of R1 with 1179 seeding points separating the two players and while Mike won all five games, Chris to his credit kept the margins down enough to ensure that it was only the fourth biggest victory of R1, 80.5-19.5 TPs. Mike will play compatriot Stacy Henwood (NZL) in R2.

In S3, no. 27 seed Yoseph Phillips (ISR) has twice reached the last 16 of the WTC but was another seed to find life in R1 tougher than expected. Pierre Faure (FRA) won games 2 and 4 to leave Yoseph needing to win game 5 or face an early exit. However, Yoseph played the last game well and that together with small mistakes from Pierre at the start and end meant that Yoseph won the game, and hence the match by 55.5-45.5 TPs. Yoseph, who will play Marc Abramson (FRA) next, has the distinction of being the only player from a country with just one entrant to progress to R2.

(Sun 15 Sep)

Yet another no-show from Sebastian B (CHI) in S6 resulted in him being the first player to be defaulted mid-match this year. His opponent, James Mihalisin (USA) had been leading by 31.6-28.4 TPs anyway. In R2, James will meet no. 5 seed Tom McCoy (GBR) - these two players met in the WTTC QFs and won one game each, Tom just shading the mini-match by 20.8-19.2 TPs but James ending up on the winning team in the match as a whole.

No. 14 seed Bevan Chong (NZL) seems to be in great form this year. He looked to have drawn a very tough match in R2 S6 against Laurent Berguin (FRA), a former WTC semi-finalist, but won four of their five games to record a convincing victory by 71.7-28.3 TPs. Indeed, Bevan might even have won all five games had he not made a bad mistake in game 2. Another good omen for Bevan is that the players who have knocked Laurent out of the WTC in the last three years have all ended up reaching the Final and two of them have ended up as World Champion!

Also in R2, no. 17 seed Kevin Baird (GBR) stormed to a very convincing victory against 13-y-o Kyle B (AUS) in S7, winning the first four games to seal the match before Kyle grabbed a consolation win in the final game. The final score was 68.5-31.5 TPs. although hknocked out in the QFs of this year's European Championship, Kevin got closer than anyone else in the knockout phase to beating the eventual winner, so he is certain to be looking to take advantage of a reasonable WTC draw.

(Mon 16 Sep)

In R2 S5, no. 18 seed Graeme Jolliffe (AUS) won game 1 against Lutz Göhmann (GER) (the top-rated unseeded player who missed out on being one of the top 32 seeds by just two seeding points) to take an early lead by 15.8-4.2 TPs.

In another R2 match, no. 20 seed Jérôme Papillon (FRA) won all three games today against World Junior Champion Simon Wright (GBR) in S2 to win their match by 69.1-30.1 TPs. Having been very close after the first session, the match hinged largely on game 3, which apparently turned out to be very interesting - I have not had time to have a proper look yet. Jérôme seems to be coming into very good form at just the right time and is not in the scariest section of the draw (though all sections are very tough this year) so he may go a long way this year.

No. 11 seed Kevin Scott (GBR) took a big step towards ensuring that he will become the first player to reach the last 16 before he goes away for three weeks by winning both games in his second (very early) R3 session against John Warden (USA) in S5 to lead by 44.0-16.0 TPs at the halfway stage of their six-game match.

(Tue 17 Sep)

R1 drew to a close today as no. 12 seed Britta Steude (NZL) won her last game against Steve Borley (NZL) in S7 by default, today being the deadline date for Round 1. Steve had failed to show for the game as arranged on Sunday and then failed to respond emails from the controller or his opponent and to a message left on his phone by the latter. This was a very unexpected default given that Steve was just one game win away from what might have been one the biggest shock win of the tournament and even his opponent considers it a very unsatisfactory end to the match. Britta will play Fany Buisan (FRA) in R2.


ROUND 1 round-up:

There is now a separate report on the success of each country in Round 1.


ROUND 2 continues:

One of the surprise winners in R1, Jessica Tebbe (GER), made a good start against no. 13 seed Garry Laishley (AUS) in S2 by winning their first game but Garry won game 2 with a slightly bigger margin to lead by 20.5-19.5 TPs at the end of the first session. No. 28 seed Frank Heyer (FRA) won a tight first game against Raymond Hemmecke (GER) in S4 by just one tile to take a 13.3-6.7 TPs lead. Stacy Henwood (NZL) gave Tantrix inventor and no. 7 seed Mike McManaway (NZL) a scare in the first session of their match in S2, winning game 1 and drawing game 2 to lead by 25.5-14.5 TPs.

The match between no. 3 seed Shaun Cooper (NZL) and Alex Heyer (FRA) in S4 was close at the end of the first session nearly a week ago, but Shaun showed plenty of class today to win both games in the final session and take the match by 63.5-36.5 TPs.

The very early R3 match finished today and John Warden (USA) described the outcome most succinctly:

"yeoda: Well folks, you'll be happy to know that I CRUSHED cuthbert in game 6 of 6 ... unfortunately, he got the other 5 ..." (thanks to Brad for reporting the quote!)

Yes, no. 11 seed Kevin Scott (GBR) continued to look in menacing form against John in S5, winning games 4 and 5 to make it 5 wins in a row before (as in R2) his opponent gained a consolation win in the final game. Kevin won by 77.9-42.1 TPs and said "That's what you get for beating my wife in the previous round!" Well, actually, he did not say anything of the sort, but John could be forgiven for thinking that was happening! :-) Kevin can now go away on business for three weeks happy in the knowledge that he is the first player to reach the last 16, that he has only lost one game per match so far and that his potential opponents all have two more matches to fit in before he gets back before they even reach that stage themselves.

(Wed 18 Sep)

Two of the matches involving players whose Elo ratings differ by less than 100 points continued to be very close as expected. No. 24 seed Pierre Sanchez (FRA) and Mauro Lazzara (GBR) won one game each in the first session of their match in S6 but Mauro's win was bigger so he leads by 23.0-17.0 TPs. In the match between no. 28 seed Frank Heyer (FRA) and Raymond Hemmecke (GER) in S4, a draw followed by a 6-tile win for Raymond in the second session mean that Raymond now holds the advantage in the match by just 32.0-28.0 TPs. In the same section, Jacques Giraud (FRA) continued his good run of form by winning game 1 against no. 22 seed Tamás Köpeczi Bócz (HUN) to lead their match by 15.8-4.2 TPs.

In a rematch of a close WTTC QF encounter, no. 5 seed Tom McCoy (GBR) won both games in the first session against James Mihalisin (USA) in S6. The first game was a very long, tense one and the standard of play was high. Tom lost a time penalty but it was worth it as he used the extra seconds to grind out a 1-tile win. However, it looked like there was a way that James could have tied the game - maybe he would have found it if he had risked going over time too, but it is always a tricky decision whether to sacrifice time penalties to look for extra points that may not even be there.

*NEW* Bevan Chong has pointed out that if James had played his red straight on the far right green tile directly by his line, with the red pointing inwards towards his line and the green pointing away, it would have forced Tom to add to James' line, as well as forcing the the YGY in Tom's hand as well. That would have left Tom with two tiles (that both had red on them) and two points behind James. He wouldn't have been able to add both of them to his line, or force James to add his last tile to his line, so it would have been a 1 point win to James.

The second game saw Tom construct a 15-tile loop that was likely to complete and James a 10-tile loop that was very likely to complete. In the end, James was unable to find an effective way to block Tom's loop (the game has not been analysed enough to know if there was one) and both loops completed to give Tom a 30-20 win in the game and the lead in the match by 28.5-11.5 TPs.

No. 7 seed Mike McManaway (NZL) won the only game of the second session in his match against Stacy Henwood (NZL) in S2 by 14 tiles to overtake Stacy in the match. Mike leads by 31.5-28.5 TPs. Finally, in what appeared to be the best-supported match of the day, no. 29 seed Ilona Halbach (GER) and Thierry Berguin (FRA) won a game each in S1, Ilona getting the better of the margins to lead by 21.7-18.3 TPs.

(Thu 19 Sep)

It was a very busy day today with action in ten R2 matches.

Lutz Göhmann (GER) overturned the early lead of no. 18 seed Graeme Jolliffe (AUS) in S5 and eventually won the last four games. Their second game in this session (game 3 in the match) was very exciting. Despite a dodgy-looking opening, Lutz appeared to play better, keeping his main line relatively unblocked whereas Graeme was blocked at one or both ends of his main line for most of the game. However, there was plenty to worry Lutz - if the first tiles that came out to fill the blocks had been the ones Graeme wanted, Graeme would have had chances for a long line or even a big loop.

In the end, Graeme's main chance of saving the game was when a possible medium sized-loop came up, just three red links (two corners and a bend) from completion. The crucial spaces were initially blocked along a controlled side but when Lutz was forced to play more tiles than expected during one turn, Graeme got the first free move in the endgame. At first sight, it looked like the tiles Graeme needed were still available and he played the red corner in his hand to force the two tiles in Lutz's hand that he needed to complete the loop. However, Lutz was one step ahead of him - playing the red bend in the upper forced space first created a lookalike for the lower forced space so that he could waste the red corner there instead of completing the loop. When Graeme crashed at the end of the game, it seemed as if even his PC had been crushed by the disappointment!

That win must have given Lutz a lot of confidence, because he forced Graeme into a 9-tile loop very early in the game 4 when his own line was only three tiles long. I would have fancied my chances of blocking Lutz's line to keep it below 18 in such circumstances - Graeme did too and certainly did his best, but in the end Lutz managed to construct a line of 21 tiles to win the game. In the early stages before any permanent blocks were possible, I think creating long controlled sides with Lutz's line at the other end might have been more effective than blocking right next to the ends of Lutz's line, but having said that, the block at the RH end of Lutz's line did last for a very long time!

After that, Graeme needed a huge win in game 5 to stop Lutz from going through, but Lutz took that game too to win the match by 63.3-36.7 TPs. This was one of the six R2 matches where the players are separated by less than 100 SPs and after a disappointing European Championship this year, Lutz had looked like he was coming back into form when he led GER A to the WTTC Final. So, maybe the demise of another seed in this match was not that surprising after all.

No. 19 seed Murray Pharaoh (NZL) beat Franck Torset (FRA) by 58.7-41.3 TPs in S8 but the match was in the balance until the last game, with Murray having won games 1 and 4 and Franck games 2 and 3. In game 5, with the score at just 8-6, Murray found a fantastic line-building move 18 that almost created an indirectly connected 17-tile loop on its own. When Franck tried to turn the top end of Murray's line away from the bottom end and very unluckily picked up the worst possible tile for the forced space he had just created, Murray's loop was virtually assured. Murray then forced Franck into something that under any other circumstances Franck would probably have gladly accepted - an 11-tile loop - and that to all intents and purposes was the end of Franck's chances.

Peter Hinton (GBR) and Eleanor Gordon (GBR) in S1 had both had surprise wins in R1, turning an expected all-Australian encounter in this R2 match into an all-UK clash instead. Indeed, Peter was one of only two players to knock out a seed and, based on seeding point differences, was responsible for the biggest shock in R1. However, Eleanor clearly had the upper hand in their first session, winning both games quite comfortably to lead by 30.8-9.2 TPs.

No. 27 seed Yoseph Phillips (ISR) won his first two games against Mark Abramson (FRA) in S3 by 12 and 13 tiles to take a huge 33.4-6.6 lead, but it was not all plain sailing because Marc recovered to win the next two games to give himself a chance of progressing if he won game 5. It was not to be though - Yoseph held his nerve to take game 5 and with it the match by 55.5-44.5 TPs. Yoseph will play no. 9 seed Heli Niemi (FIN) in the last 32.

The match between Raymond Hemmecke (GER) and no. 28 seed Frank Heyer (FRA), the European Championship runner-up, in S4 was as close as their Elo rating difference of just 67 had suggested it might be. They entered the final session with Raymond ahead by just 4.0 TPs. Raymond won game 4 by two tiles to extend his lead and leave Frank needing a 9-tile win in game 5 to save the match. Frank did win that game but only by two tiles and Raymond had put out another seed by just 52.0-48.0 TPs. Raymond will face an even tougher challenge when he plays no. 3 seed Shaun Cooper (NZL) in R3.

2001 European Champion Ben Polman (NED), the no. 16 seed, finished off Melinda Barry (GBR) in S8 by winning both games in their final session to make it five wins out of five and a TP score of 74.9-25.1 - Ben will play no. 19 seed Murray Pharaoh (NZL) in R3. Jacques Giraud (FRA) won two more games against no. 22 seed Tamás Köpeczi Bócz (HUN) in S4 to lead their match by a massive 47.7-12.3 TPs. János Püspöki (HUN) could be on his way to a big shock win against no. 8 seed Wolfgang Schwarz (GER) in S7 after winning their first two games to lead by 29.6-10.4 TPs.

Tantrix inventor Mike McManaway (NZL), the no. 7 seed, finally saw off Stacy Henwood (NZL) after a very dodgy start two days ago had left him looking like he might be in a lot of danger. He won game 4 to leave Stacy needing a 13-tile win in game 5 to force a tie-break game. Stacy did well to win game 5 by 7 tiles, but that was not enough to stop Mike progressing by just 51.3-48.7 TPs, the closest result in R2 so far.

Possibly the best match of the day saw another seed bite the dust in an encounter where the players were separated by just 68 seeding points. Miklos Hansel (HUN) held Australian Champion Josh Button (AUS) to draws in the first two games then won the last three to win the match by 62.8-37.2 TPs. The match was a lot closer than the final score implies through - both players played very well and the last three games could have gone either way.

Game 4 is a good example of the knife edges on which the match turned - Miklos was just ahead as the endgame approached but Josh had the longer indirect line. Josh's line needed only one corner to connect it but it was on a controlled side. Josh did the right thing, putting permanent blocks at both ends of Miklos's line, and if he had got the first free move in the endgame, he could have added the corner to his line and won the game. When Miklos got the first free move in the endgame instead, it looked like the game was over - Miklos could surely just block the crucial space in Josh's line.

However, it was not as easy as that because Miklos did not have a tile to go in the space next to the crucial one. He had to find a way of wasting the two corners Josh still had in his hand. Miklos thought for well over five minutes and tried everything, but there was no tile he could place that would waste Josh's two corners on either side of it. Then, just as Josh was thinking that he might survive after all, Miklos found a move that wasted one of Josh's corners on one side and also forced Miklos himself to fill a space that then created another forced space in which Josh was forced to waste his other corner. Heartbreaking for Josh, but scintillating stuff for the Hungarian and neutral observers!

This was the first surprise result in S6, the only section not to have a surprise result in R1. Miklos will play no. 14 seed Bevan Chong (NZL) in R3.

It is probably tempting fate to say this with my own match coming up this weekend and having a high SP difference, but the seeding point differences are proving to be a very good indicator of when the higher rated player is in danger in R2, as they frequently did in R1. Half of the R2 matches have been completed so far and all eight of the players who outrated their opponents by more than 200 SPs have won, but the lower rated player has won all three of the matches where the difference was less than 100 SPs, while the matches where the difference was 100-200 SPs are 3-2 to the higher rated players.

(Fri 20 Sep)

Matthias Neumeister (GER) is holding his own against reigning World Champion Matt Peek (NZL) in S1, winning game 2 by seven tiles after Matt had won game 1 by the same score to leave the match tied at 20.0-20.0 TPs.

Jessica Tebbe (GER) continued what has been a wonderful start to the WTC for Germany with the third surprise German win so far in R2 and her second surprise win of the tournament. She also created by far the biggest surprise of the round so far by beating no. 13 seed Garry Laishley (AUS) in S2. Everything looked fine for Garry as he won game 3 to extend the narrow lead he had had at the end of the first session but Jessica won game 4 to leave the match in the balance until the final game.

Jessica got ahead in game 5 and despite Garry going over the time limit by more than in minute in a desperate search for a way to save the match, she won the game by three tiles and the match by 55.4-44.6 TPs. Jessica's matches always seem to go down to the wire - 55.4-44.6 would be a very close match for most people, but it is the biggest margin in any of Jessica's three WTC matches (in 2001 and 2002) so far! Jessica will face in-form no. 20 seed Jérôme Papillon (FRA) in R3.

The R2 match where the two players were closest on seeding points turned out to be very close indeed. After today's final session, no. 24 seed Pierre Sanchez (FRA) had won all of the odd-numbered games by small margins and Mauro Lazzara (GBR) had won all of the even-numbered games by big margins in their match in S6. The TPs came out at 51.9-48.1 to Mauro, making him not only the seventh player to knock out a seed in R2 but also the first player in the tournament to win a match when his opponent was the player who had won the most games. It really has not been a good R2 for France up to now - seven French players have completed R2 matches and only one of them has survived.

(Sat 21 Sep)

All of the biggest shocks in R1 and R2 seem to have come in the couple of days before I play my matches, just to worry me even more ;-) Thomas Jarl (SWE) gained his second surprise win in a row and the biggest seeding point 'upset' of R2 so far when he beat no. 25 seed Ragnar Wikman (FIN) in S2 in a very close match. Ragnar was in trouble after Thomas won the first two games but seemed to have recovered when he won the next two to give him a small lead before the final game. Towards the end of game 5, both players had long lines with one corner link missing in the middle. The missing links were very close to each other and unluckily for Ragnar, Thomas was the one who got the first chance to fill in his own gap and block his opponent's gap. Thomas took his chance well to win the game and hence the match by 54.3-45.7 TPs. After taking a bit of time to celebrate his achievements so far, can Thomas make it three in a row by beating Tantrix inventor Mike McManaway (NZL), the no. 7 seed? That will be an even bigger challenge.

No. 9 seed Heli Niemi (FIN) and no. 27 seed Yoseph Phillips (ISR) in S3 played their R3 / last 32 match very early because Heli's time is going to be taken up with moving between Finland and France over the next few weeks. These players met in the last 16 of last year's WTC, seeded almost exactly the opposite way round (Yoseph 10 and Heli 27 cf. 28 and 9 this year) and Yoseph was hoping that the result would reverse too, because last year Heli beat him by 72.0-48.0 TPs on her way to the Final.

One anonymous observer apparently summed up the match (well, one game of it at least) by saying that "Heli made some small mistakes very quickly whereas Yoseph made some big mistakes very slowly" ... and that might well be a good summary, though I am sure there was plenty of good play in there somewhere too! The first three games were shared (one 4-tile win each and one draw), but Yoseph gave up four time penalties in those games to leave Heli leading by 34.0-26.0 TPs at the halfway point. Heli then won games 4 and 5 to put the match beyond doubt before Yoseph managed big win in game 6, though he gave up three time penalties to leave the game with an almost certainly unique TP score of 12.5-7.5.

By the end of the match, Yoseph had given up no less than 9 time penalties, a record 'bettered' only by his match against Jamie Sneddon (NZL) in 1999 (sorry Yoseph, but I had to fit Jamie into the report somewhere this year!), when he gave up 9 time penalties in just one game and 15 in the match - and that was when time penalties only started after 16 minutes! However, Yoseph had at least managed to keep his defeat by Heli smaller than it was last year, which may be some small consolation. Heli will now be safe in the last 16 for the next few weeks while she tackles her major logistical problems. :-)

Back to R2 and no. 26 seed Dave Dyer (USA), 3rd in the Pan-American Championship in each of the last three years, had a potentially tough clash with Hungarian Champion László Harsányi (HUN), rated less than 100 Elo points below him, in S8. László did get a sniff of a chance when he won game 1 but that was as generous as Dave got, because he then won the remaining four games to win the match by 62.7-37.3 TPs. Dave's win means that all four seeds in S8 have reached the last 32 and he will play no. 2 seed Leah Sanders (AUS) in R3.

No. 6 seed Péter Petrecz (HUN) also had a shaky start against Andréas N (FRA), one of only six U16 players to make it to R2, in S3. Péter's win in game 1 was in doubt for much of the game (if I read the note on his result submission right!) and Andréas even managed to win game 2. Péter then turned up the heat, his wins getting bigger in each of the last three games and culminating in a 29-tile loop in game 5, the biggest game score of the tournament so far. Péter won the match by 72.5-27.5 TPs but it has been a good tournament for Andréas nonetheless. It is now just 1 win out of 8 for France in R2 though ...

The second session of the match between no. 8 seed Wolfgang Schwarz (GER) and János Püspöki (HUN) in S7 ended with a match result so surprising that even a top Hungarian player was quick to admit that he was completely shocked! It was not so János winnning that was surprising (the difference between their Elo ratings was less than 200, which is significant but would never make an upset win in a short match impossible to imagine), as the style with which he won. He ended up winning all five games to win the match by a massive 72.9-27.1 TPs.

Wolfgang had done well in the last two WTCs, only losing narrowly to the very top players after tough draws, beating the odd top player too and tending to thrash players outside the top few seeding places. That combination of factors explain why the Elo calcs churned him out as no. 8 seed this year. He has certainly never gone out of a tournament without a fight before. János, on the other hand, has always underperformed in tournaments - always a tough player to beat but never quite making a significant breakthrough.

So what can have happened in this match? Well, firstly none of the margins were very high, so maybe each game was quite close but János was on form and getting the crucial moves right ... secondly, it is known that Wolfgang was feeling out of sorts in the first session, so maybe after two losses there he felt he had to take big risks today and paid the penalty ... and thirdly, János must have raised his game well above anything we have ever seen from him in tournaments before. If he believes that János can keep this up, no. 17 seed Kevin Baird (GBR) may not be looking forward to their R3 match very much at all! :-)

(Sun 22 Sep)

NB. A correction and a bit more information on past time penalty records has been added to the report on Heli and Yoseph's match yesterday.

No. 32 seed Anthony Sanders (AUS) lived dangerously in the last round against a qualifier and this time, after winning two of the first three games of his match against William Brooks (GBR) in S7, things went awry again. He ended up losing the last two to some fast accurate play from the 13-y-o Will, who won the match by 53.5-46.5 TPs.

Despite having lost both games in their first session, James Mihalisin (USA) made a good attempt to get back into his match against no. 5 seed Tom McCoy (GBR) in S6 before his hopes were dashed. Jed game 3 but Tom won game 4 and he will take a commanding 47.5-32.5 TPs lead into their final game. The wins today should have been the other way round though - many thanks to Jed for the following insight from a player's point of view:

"Two more good games today with both players either coming close to or actually incurring time penalties. While it has been a good match, many of the games have been 'lost' by one player rather than 'won' by the other. As mentioned before, Jed had a winning move at the end of game 1 (actually a fairly obvious one) but missed it due to time pressure."

"In game 3, Tom had a good move that would have given him an excellent chance of a win. He deliberated for a long time but then played a move to block Jed's line, not realizing that Jed could then block the remaining open end of Tom's line to guarantee a two tile win."

"In game 4, the game was very blocked most of the time. As the tiles in the bag started to run out, Jed gave up a guaranteed win by playing his forced spaces in the wrong order. This led to a complete depletion of his tiles and a two tile loss whereas playing in the other order would have allowed him to keep most of his tiles so that he could have completely blocked Tom and earned a victory by at least two tiles."

Thierry Berguin (FRA) came back from a small deficit at the end of the first session to be no. 29 seed Ilona Halbach (GER) by 61.1-38.9 TPs. The match hinged on games 3 and 4, both of which were very close and both of which Thierry won by one tile. Had either these games gone the other way, the result could have been very different. Indeed, Ilona could still have gone through with a 6-tile win in game 5, and despite changing to red in an attempt to regain some favour with the tiles, it proved to be too big a task.

(Mon 23 Sep)

He may have beaten the 2000 World Champion in R1, but Malcolm Wotton (GBR) was brought down to earth very quickly by Peter West (NZL) in S4. Peter won both games in their first session convincingly to lead by 32.1-7.9 TPs and Fany Buisan (FRA) continued the improvement in her tournament form by winning her first game against no. 12 seed Britta Steude (NZL) in S7 to lead by 16.2-3.8 TPs.

No. 22 seed Tamás Köpeczi Bócz (HUN) was another seed who had difficulty in R1, but that was nothing compared with the onslaught he faced in R2 from tournament débutant Jacques Giraud (FRA) in S4. Jacques had won all three games in their first two sessions and won game 4 today to seal the match before Tamás at least managed a draw in the final game. Jacques won the match by 73.2-26.8 TPs, the second biggest win of R2 so far.

After a terrible start to R2 for France, two more French players have joined Jérôme Papillon in R3 over the last two days. Australia, however, is having a dreadful WTC - four unexpected defeats for Australian players in R2 have seen the back of the players who finished 1st, 2nd and 4th in this year's Australian Championship and only Leah Sanders, 3rd in the Australian Championship and 3rd in last year's WTC, survives - she will therefore be the top Australian player in the WTC for the second year running. The ever-predictable New Zealand players have now finished 25 matches without a single result going against the seeding points!


ROUND 2 draws to a close, ROUND 3 gets properly underway:

(Tue 24 Sep)

Matthias Neumeister (GER) could be setting himself to cause a shock of seismic proportions in R2 - he won today's game against reigning champion Matt Peek TGM (NZL) to take the lead in their match by 34.3-25.7 TPs.

Matt had said that meeting up-and-coming opponent in the early rounds and going behind when the shortness of the matches in those rounds makes it so hard to recover was what he most feared, and he might have been right to worry. Still, last year he was two games down in his first match before winning the last three games, and we all know what happened after he survived that scare! However, I am sure that plenty of people will be in the lobby at 08.00 GMT / 10.00 CET / 20.00 NZT on Friday to see if Matthias can do the hard work of getting rid of Matt so that they do not have to ...

Good wins in games 2 and 3 allowed no. 12 seed Britta Steude (NZL) to take the lead against Fany Buisan (FRA) in S7 but Fany came back to win game 4 by 16 tiles. Fany leads this R2 match by 43.5-36.5 TPs, leaving Britta needing a 2-tile win in game 5 to avoid an early exit.

The tournament Elo ratings of 2001 European Champion Ben Polman (NED), the no. 16 seed, and 2002 NZ runner-up Murray Pharaoh (NZL), the no. 19 seed, are separated by just 4 points, so it was somewhat appropriate that they drew their first game today. It will be interesting to see who gets their nose ahead first when this R3 match resumes.

Peter Hinton (GBR), one of only two players to knock out a seed in R1, had appeared down and out after losing both games in the first session of his R2 match against compatriot Eleanor Gordon (GBR) in S6. He staged a good recovery today though, winning games 3 and 4, but faltered needing a 2-tile win in game 5, which Eleanor won to take the match by 57.9-42.1 TPs. She marches on to play Steven Wiley (USA) in the last 32.

No. 5 seed and British Open Champion Tom McCoy (GBR) takes up the story of his R2 match against James Mihalisin (USA) in S6, which finished today with Tom winning the last game to win the match by 63.5-36.5 TPs:

"In today's game, Jed's move 32 was somewhat questionable in my opinion - rather than connect the missing corner of his line, he tried adding to it with outside chance of getting a large loop. [surely he had to go for this under the circumstances? - ed] This meant that I could block that corner the next move. In any other circumstance, I'm sure he'd have connected his line, and my win would have been much less."

"I think he's been really unfortunate in this match; 4-1 does not reflect our abilities at all. In game 1, he was rushed by time and game 4 was a not-so-convincing win by me, as I had some huge luck towards the end: Jed lost many of his tiles through forced spaces going into the endgame, and then couldn't block me as my free end had red either side, and he only had non-red pieces."

"So, game 4 could easily have gone the other way, and Jed says after reviewing it [see his report yesterday - ed) that he found a way of playing the forces that would have given him the win. In game 5, he was under pressure to produce an 18-point win (not 17, which would have meant I'd have gone through on games won), and so he took risks that he wouldn't usually."

Tom will play Mauro Lazzara (GBR) in R3, a pairing that ensures that the UK will have at least one player in the last 16 or that they will lose at least one good player in R3, depending on how you look at it! Their British Open game back in May finished 21-21 with both players in time trouble. In fact, Tom ended up giving away one time penalty, which made it the only game he lost in that tournament. You can go to the British Open reports page and page down to Round 2 to see a picture of that game.

Malcolm Wotton (GBR) won game 3 of his R2 match against Peter Nova (NZL) in S4 to give himself a glimmer of hope, but that was quickly extinguished when Peter won game 4 to break through the 50 TP barrier. Peter leads by 53.2-26.8 TPs with (possibly) one game left to play and he will meet Jacques Giraud (FRA) in R3.

Thomas Jarl (SWE) has already made sure that Sweden's first foray into the World Championship has not gone unnoticed. He has the lowest number of seeding points of anyone left in the tournament, having had a lobby ranking of 778 at the closing datefor entries. After beating the no. 32 seed in R2, in R3 he faced the much tougher challenge of no. 7 seed Mike McManaway (NZL) in S2. Mike takes up the story of their first session:

"Game 1: Mike chased an 18-tile loop that came off (just) to win by 36-21."

"Game 2: Mike went through his first 10 tiles with only red corners and Thomas did well to hold onto the early lead that resulted to win by 18-16.

"Game 3: Thomas could not decide which line to chase and ended up with three separate lines, never a good situation to get yourself into. Mike won the game by 24-18 to lead the match by 38.6-21.4 TPs."

Many thanks to those who provided written contributions that have added a bit of detail to the otherwise very basic reports on the last few days. Updates are likely to be slower than normal over the next few days while system problems and their aftemath persist (probably only one update per day - check in the European morning / NZ evening) but still a bit more regular than the last few days!

(Wed 25 Sep)

Peter West (NZL) stopped Malcolm Wotton (GBR) from making the score in their R2 S4 match more respectable when he won their 'dead' fifth game today to make the final score 68.5-31.5 TPs.

No. 23 seed Martin Harlow (GBR), who reached the QFs last year before falling victim to the eventual World Champion, was held to a draw in game 1 by dangerous tournament débutante Catherine Moxham (NZL) in R2 S3. Martin then raced ahead by winning game 2 by 14 tiles, with the extra thinking time Cat used to try to avoid such a big loss costing her two time penalties as well. It was now midnight GMT so the report on this match continues below ...

(Thu 26 Sep)

... continued from above. Both players went over time in a very tight third game, Cat winning by a single tile. That reduced Martin's advantage in the match but he still has a healthy 35.7-24.3 TPs lead to take into the final session later this week.

Tantrix pro Britta Steude (NZL), the no. 12 seed, must have felt the pressure today as she took on Fany Buisan (FRA) in the last game of their R2 match in S7. Two exciting sessions had left Fany in the lead, her fine performance making up for a very disappointing European Championship earlier in the year, and Britta needed to win game 5 by at least two tiles to make it to the next round. Britta made it ... just! She won by one tile more than she needed to take the match by just 50.8-49.2 TPs and she will play William Brooks (GBR) in R3.

The great run of Thomas Jarl (SWE) (who will always be able to say that he was the first Swede ever to win a match in the WTC) came to an end today at the hands of Tantrix inventor Mike McManaway (NZL), the no. 7 seed. The underdog for the third match in a row, Thomas dealt with his biggest challenge so far very well, and was not far behind after he won the first game of tonight's final session in their R3 S2 match. Mike then won game 5. leaving Thomas the near impossible task of needing to win game 6 by at least 20 tiles. In the end, Mike won game 6 as well to win the match by 73.4-46.6 TPs. Mike is the third player so far to make it through to the last 16.

No. 5 seed Tom McCoy (GBR) and Mauro Lazzara (GBR) started their R3 match in S6 today. Tom describes the first game:

"Perhaps not the most fluent form from either of us. I managed to get an early loop of 11 tiles, so during most of the game, the tiles were in Mauro's court. He came close in the end with 19, but went into the endgame with THREE indirect corner links, which I had contrived to block along controlled sides most of the game."

Mauro skilfully gained the first free move in the endgame, thus enabling him to connect the 2 adjacent indrect links (adding a much greater portion than the lone link), but after that, with a lot of tiles forced away, I was easily able to block both ends."

Mauro won game 2 though, thanks to a lot of luck at the end he says, so he leads by 21.7-18.3 TPs at the end of the first session. Tom's view of Game 2 coincides with this:

" I just had my worst defeat of the tournament so far. After a fiddly start, it was a rather blocked game, though I thought I just had the edge for most of it, having the slightly longer line and with other fragments 'waiting in the wings' to be connected should the forced spaces permit."

"However, as the tiles suddenly flopped effortlessly into the controlled sides towards the end of the middlegame, they 'magically' brought two previously separate blue lines closer together, enabling Mauro to connect them on his next move, just before the endgame. Ouch! From possibly a naturally biased opponent's point of view, what had previously been a few odd blue scraps had suddenly all joined together."

"I ALMOST had the tiles to do likewise, but Mauro's free move had also forced away the remaining YRR corner, meaning I couldn't link up two disjunct red lines with my red straight. A great move if that was the plan and it won him the game. Maybe I should have been more wary of the threat that his lines would connect earlier in the game, who knows? Easy with hindsight ..."

(Fri 27 Sep)

I would like to record my thanks to Andreas, my R2 opponent, for being so understanding over the few days since my PC crashed. You should thank him too - if he had insisted on me playing sooner, there is no way you would have had your daily fix of results back so soon - I would have had to practice (or maybe even sleep) instead. Apologies to Lutz (the next opponent for the winner) too. Andreas and I should be playing this weekend and yes, I know I am the first player to ask for an extension to a deadline this year ... very embarrassing ... but if you value your results service, etc, you will never ever mention it again :-)

Reigning champion Matt Peek TGM (NZL) finally managed to fight off the tough challenge from fast-improving Matthias Neumeister (GER) in S1 today but it went right down to the final game, in which Matthias lost two time penalties in a desperate last gasp attempt to find a way to stop Matt from winning. Matt had to win both games today and he did with a performance reminiscent of that in his first match last year when he had to come back from two games down.

Matthias can be very proud of his performance in this year's WTC but now that Matt has got through, the tournament seems to be playing into the no. 1 seed's hands once again. The other three seeded players in S1 have all suffered surprise defeats so Matt will not have to play another seed until at least the QFs. Unseeded players can be very dangerous too (as he has just found out) but even so, Matt must fancy his chances of another good run, especially with the matches getting longer from now on. First though, he will have to get past Thierry Berguin (FRA) in R3.

British Open Champion Tom McCoy (GBR), the no. 5 seed, wrested back control of his R3 match against Mauro Lazzara (GBR) in S6 by winning game 3. They met again later in the evening and Tom won games 4 and 5 as well to take an unassailable 65.3-34.7 TPs lead in the match with one game left.

János Püspöki (HUN) is having the best run of his Tantrix-playing life at the moment. He may have lost his first two games in R1 this year but he has not looked back since, his second win against no. 7 seed Kevin Baird (GBR) in S7 today taking his winning run up to 10 TGs in succession since that shaky start! He leads their R3 match by 28.2-11.8 TPs.

The last match of the day (the final session of the R2 S3 match between last year's QF-ist Martin Harlow (GBR), the no. 23 seed who never seems to fail to provide spectators with excitement, and Catherine Moxham (NZL)) was the most dramatic and, in some senses, the most controversial match of the tournament so far. Matt Peek TGM, the reigning World Champion, saw both games in the final session and has saved me a lot of work by providing this detailed report:

"The end of this match was the most worthy of a review of any I have seen, so please take a look at the games (especially the last one) and review them with my commentaries - it will be worth it!"

"This match was one of the many gorgeous matches on offer in R2, and the final session promised to be a classic, with a win for Martin in game 4 probably going to be enough to take the match."

"Game 4 started with solid play - but a curiously risky move by Cat on move 7 was followed, luckily for her, by the one tile she wanted coming out of the bag straight away to join a segment that was, in my opinion, quite speculative to attempt so early in the game."

"Both players closed in on loops at about move 13, but curiously neither attacked to seize the initiative, with firstly Cat temporarily blocking Martin instead of going after an enticing loop of her own even though Martin was unable to seriously threaten for a loop on his next move. Martin, though, despite Cat's 'block', did not play a seemingly obvious move 15 that would have given him a wonderful chance of a loop, or at least a threat that could have wasted moves by his opponent. Instead, he turned Cat's line away, adding three to her score."

"The rest of the game was tight throughout, with the defining move being move 40. Worried about a real threat of Martin joining his line at the top of the Tantrix, Cat temporarily blocked again along the top, overlooking completely (I think) a potential winning move. Had she played to turn herself along the bottom, she could have added three tiles directly, and caused enough tiles to come out of the bag and be played for her to be certain of linking another two onto that and, in doing so, to waste the tile Martin needed for his join - putting her six ahead with no dangerous options in the endgame for her opponent. I feel this move is definitely worth a look!"

"In my opinion, in this game two very good players' skill was compromised by their over-cautious play (which certainly happens to even the best players on occasions), where they perhaps instead could have forced their opponent to defend threats of loops and thus build a longer line before blocking to seal a win. In any case, the game was drawn 20-20, meaning that Martin could afford to lose by up to seven tiles in the last game and still win the match. Surely he could not lose now ... could he?"

"The first interesting move in game 5 was move 8 by Martin. After Cat had left some of his links separated from the end of his line, he turned them towards his main line - very speculative perhaps because a double-line strategy is normally glory or horror, whereas Martin could afford a small loss and still take the match. Cat then expertly kept Martin's lines apart and a fortunate tile draw for her threatened a sizeable loop of 14 tiles!"

"This forced Martin to play another unproductive move, turning Cat's loop away but increasing her long line. His lines were still short, but one was close to a smallish loop - smallish but significant, since it would effectively be 7 tiles bigger in the context of the match as a whole!"

"On his next turn (after Cat joined a potentially blockable and important indirect link in the middle of her line), Martin played a good move to increase his line length and again threatened to join his lines were the right tile to come out of the bag. Cat then added three tiles in a good move that also greatly reduced the likelihood of Martin making his join. At this stage the score was indirectly 20-11 indirectly, so the match position was very close."

"Again Martin added three to his line, and Cat now had to make an important move, with tiles to fill key forced spaces having just emerged from the bag. She then played a moderately risky move, but the tile that could have made it go wrong came out quickly for her, consolidating an indirect segment of six tiles, before yet more favourable tiles came out of the bag and allowed her to add a few more to her line and take the score to 24-14 (directly) to Cat!"

"By now it was almost the endgame and more bad luck hit Martin. It was his free move and he had only one tile with his colour on it, and it did not leave him with any decent line-building moves. He did what he had to do, and added to his line as well as he could."

"It was now the endgame, with both ends of both players lines open, and the score 24-16 - remember that Cat required an 8 tile margin at least, otherwise she would lose the match. On her turn, Cat found a move to waste all of Martin's remaining tiles and win 26-16. However, her time was 15:** which meant the time penalty conceded would have taken Martin back over the 50 TPs threshold and he would have won the match!"

"But, in the most sporting act I have ever seen in a Tantrix games, especially given the circumstances, Martin chose not to claim the time penalty, giving Cat the win in the match." (We've called the Croydon 'men in white coats' and they should be on their way to Martin's just about now to cart him off to the local asylum ;-), but we do feel rather proud of Martin's sportsmanship nonetheless - Editor)

"The reason was that Cat had played her last (redundant) tile and clicked the spot to confirm the tile placement, but her hardware did not respond. Still, the sporting gesture by Martin was to be commended more highly than I can even begin to describe."

"In summary of the final game, Cat's attacking play and strategic decision-making in the circumstances was exactly what she needed to do and it was executed well enough to beat a fine player like Martin. As a prize for her victory, she gets a 'date' in the round of 32 with no. 6 seed Péter Petrecz (HUN), that any player, myself included, would not be envious of at all! Perhaps that is what Martin was thinking of ... :-)"

For the record, the final score was 50.5-49.5 TPs to Cat, making this the closest match of the 99 matches completed in this year's WTC so far. Had Martin claimed the time penalty, it would have been 50.5-49.5 TPs to him.

New Zealand are now sure of just pipping the UK to have the most players of any country in the last 32 (with 8) and have at last been involved in a shock result (their first in 28 matches in this WTC) but by the narrowest of margins and in just about the strangest circumstances imaginable. I am off for a very long sleep now in the hope of finding some long-lost inspiration tomorrow and somehow finding a way to ensure that the UK ends up only one player behind NZ when R2 ends! :-)

The Plate Preliminary Round started today too - the main WTC page has links to the results and I may cover the Plate on this page when it reaches its later stages.

(Sat 28 Sep)

No. 14 seed Bevan Chong (NZL) and Miklos Hansel (HUN) had a win each and a draw in the first session of their R3 S7 match and Bevan leads by just 30.4-29.6 TPs. No. 12 seed Britta Steude (NZL) leads William Brooks (GBR) by 32.1-27.9 TPs in their R3 S7 match after they also had a draw and a win for each player in their first three games.

The much-delayed R2 match between no. 4 seed Steven Trezise (GBR) and Andreas Kemerle (GER) in S5 got under way today. The very eventful first session ended with Steven ahead by the incredibly narrow margin of 20.2-19.8 TPs.

"What had happened to the Andreas who was only ranked 816 at the start of the tournament and allegedly never counted tiles nor tried to block even close to the endgame? Some serious training together with fellow Leipziger Matthias Neumeister, who frightened World Champion Matt Peek earlier this week, seems to be the answer. I was stunned by how well he played today, barring some basic lapses in the endgame itself."

"In fact, It felt like a case of déja vu - last year I played Leah Sanders in my first match and she played amazingly well - it turned out later that a chance meeting with inventor Mike McManaway was at the root of her sudden improvement, and she even beat her 'teacher' later in the tournament."

"In both games, Andreas built his line at the start as if he were one of the top players in the world. He was undoubtedly helped by the fact that in both games I started off with lots of tiles with corners of my colour (blue) and straights of his colour (red) on them, which meant that it was hard for me to do anything without giving him fairly easy opportunities to add yet more tiles to his line, but this was about the only phase of the games where the tiles seemed to be particularly favouring one player over the other and it was very impressive play by him to take such full advantage."

"Then in game 1, the 'player who never counts the tile' found a really stunning move, noticing on only move 20 (as if he were Matt Peek, as someone commented later) that all the tiles of one combintion were out and using that fact to create a permanent block that stopped me from accessing the crucial missing link in my line until the endgame. This was not a perfect move, in that it partially blocked him until the endgame too, but it shocked me that he noticed this possibility at all at such an early stage of the game."

"It soon became very clear that the player who gained the first free move in the endgame would win the game whatever else happened. I get the impression that the UK supporters were experiencing agonies as I played apparently crazy moves, eg. one tile at the bottom left that blocked the end of my line along a controlled side until the endgame. However, it was all part of a coherent plan - I knew exactly which tiles were left in the bag and I was trying to reduce any uncertainties linked to the order in which they came out of the bag by making sure that there were no forced spaces that could be filled before the endgame."

"I was banking on my extra experience then giving me the edge. I intended to gain the first free move in the endgame for myself by playing moves that created no forced spaces or one forced space (depending on what the count was at the time), so that I could fill in the missing link in my line and block the missing link in Andreas's at the same time. That plan worked and I won the game by 10 tiles."

"Game 2 was an absolute nightmare which played totally into Andreas's strengths. His move 3, adding two red bends to the top of the Tantrix that could potentially connect at either end to his two red tiles along the bottom of the Tantrix, was very spatially aware if a bit risky and it set the pattern for the rest of the game."

"I kept trying to keep his top and bottom lines apart (usually a good plan), needing to spend minutes on every free move, and hence getting into massive time trouble, because all of the options seemed to be bad each time, but the lines both kept getting longer as a result. Because I also had to deal with the threat of larger and larger loops as well, turning the top end of his bottom line either way was always incredibly dangerous - a real catch-22 situation."

"In fact, we spent an hour or so analysing the game here last night and could not find a really bad move that gave the game to Andreas, barring a couple of moves that could have been better had I known exactly which order the tiles were going to appear."

"The apparently suicidal move (move 10 or 14, I think) where I turned his line towards an 11-tile loop was made so that I could waste the red straight in my hand. I was thinking that there was only a 1 in 3 chance of the other red straight that would fit that space coming out, and an 11-tile loop would not be a total disaster, especially if it was delayed so that he might still have felt the need to build his line at the top rather than being free to concentrate on blocking me straight away."

"Had I not wasted the red straight in my hand, he could have forced the loop immediately with his next turn and anywhere else I could have wasted it added lots of tiles to his line. There was of course a risk that if the other red straight was not the first of the tiles that would fit the forced space to come out, he might have been able to force a slightly bigger loop too."

"With hindsight, my next free move (maybe that was move 14) might have been the one that cost me the game, or at least helped the margin to end up so big. I was considering turning the LH end of his top line away completely, which would certainly have prevented the long line he got in the end, but in the end decided to play a tile that turned it away only partially but also created a lookalike for the other red straight that could have forced his 11-tile loop. As it turned out, an 11-tile loop would have scored a lot less that what Andreas actually scored!"

"The other critical move was move 31. I had to try to prevent an even bigger red loop and prevent Andreas from connecting to his top line as well. Unfortunately, 11 of the 12 tiles in our hands had red on them, which made this all the more difficult. Andreas had also perhaps been quite fortunate that the combinations with red on them had been coming out of the bag quite evenly during the game, which reduced the possibilities of blocking to virtually nothing."

"Playing any of the tiles with red on them would at worst have allowed him to get a big loop or connect to the top line easily and at best have created a temporarily blocked space that could have allowed an even bigger loop or line had the tiles come out of the bag Andreas's way, so with only seconds to think, I played the only tile without any red on it. Looking back later, it turned out the tiles Andreas needed to go around this to connect to his to line were already in our hand - it needed a clever move to do it, but he found it, and because the RR combinations had been coming out evenly, there was no way I could block the remaining missing link in his now very long line."

"Can anyone find a better move 31 for me? Possibly creating a temporarily blocked space would have been a bit better because if the tiles had come out right for me, I might have been ok - but the chances of them coming out right were way below 50%."

"Andreas was now sure of a big win. Fortunately for me, he was too nervous to play the best move 43, which would have forced in the link he needed and added to one end of his line, and he also made a mistake right at the end (as if he, not me, was the one in time trouble!), which allowed me to limit the margin to 9, one less than the margin by which I had won the first game, and keep my time down to 14:59."

No. 14 seed Bevan Chong (NZL) and Miklos Hansel (HUN), one of the dangerous players who only just missed out on being seeded, continued their close match in R3 S6 later in the day. After losing game 4 and winning game 5, Bevan commented on the results form that he felt like he was living dangerously. Well, it turned out to be a little too dangerously because Miklos won game 5 and hence the match by 64.5-55.5 TPs to become the first unseeded player to reach the last 16 so far this year. He will play no. 5 seed Tom McCoy (GBR) in R4.


The rest of Rounds 2 and 3

System problems and illness meant that a large backlog of reports built up. Because R4 is of more current interest, there is now a new page with previews and reports on all R4 matches which will be updated most days and I will try to fill in the rest of the reports for Rounds 2-3 when I get the chance.

Subjectivity: In reading these reports, do you think I'm not always 100% objective? (I do try to be, but I'm sure I don't always manage it!) Do you think I concentrate too much on the UK players or on my own section of the draw in these reports? (I know I do, because they are the players whose matches I am most inclined to watch, for obvious reasons) Are the reports sometimes inaccurate? (I write them VERY quickly, so I'm sure I miss plenty of things, but if you are reading this, you probably agree that quick, imperfect reports are better than none at all) Do you think I sometimes say things that are a bit controversial? Well, these reports would be (even more!) incredibly boring to read if they weren't a bit controversial sometimes. :-)

If you are at all concerned about any of the above, please note that players who feel like they have been unfairly treated always have the right to reply and I will always correct/remove anything I have written that turns out to be wrong or unfair or causes offence. You can also ask me not to make any comments on your matches apart from giving the scores if you like - I might even be quite relieved if you do!

If you want to redress the balance or just want more reports on players you are interested in, there is nothing to stop you contributing your own reports or setting up your own reports page. I am more than happy to link to other reports pages as long as, like me, you allow the right to reply and agree to correct/remove anything that a player takes reasonable objection to. The more reports pages the merrier. :-)

The potentially closest and potentially most one-sided matches in R1

RESULTS FROM:

SECTION 1     SECTION 2     SECTION 3     SECTION 4
SECTION 5     SECTION 6     SECTION 7     SECTION 8

ROUNDS 4 TO THE FINAL

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