| Name | v. Top 5 | v. Bottom 5 | Total | ||||||
| TPs | % | Posn | TPs | % | Posn | Total | % | Posn | |
| Simone | 56 | 56% | 2nd | 72 | 72% | 3rd | 128 | 64% | 1st |
| Peter | 50 | 50% | 3rd | 77 | 77% | 2nd | 127 | 64% | 2nd |
| Steven | 47 | 47% | 4th | 79 | 79% | 1st | 126 | 63% | 3rd |
| Wolfgang | 59 | 59% | 1st | 55 | 55% | 7th | 114 | 57% | 4th |
| Bhavic | 42 | 42% | 6th | 71 | 71% | 4th | 113 | 57% | 5th |
| Jérôme | 46 | 46% | 5th | 52 | 52% | 8th | 98 | 49% | 6th |
| Julia | 37 | 37% | 7th | 60 | 60% | 6th | 97 | 49% | 7th |
| Jon | 33 | 33% | 8th | 61 | 61% | 5th | 94 | 47% | 8th |
| Pavel | 32 | 32% | 9th | 44 | 44% | 10th | 76 | 38% | 9th |
| Luke | 23 | 23% | 10th | 46 | 46% | 9th | 69 | 35% | 10th |
| Laszlo | 21 | 21% | 11th | 37 | 37% | 11th | 58 | 29% | 11th |
Getting onto player-by-player reports, the first two (pre-tournament) rounds went like this:
(29 May) One game played ... one of the biggest shock results in Tantrix history as Luc beats Jérôme when the latter runs out of tiles for the 2 forced spaces needed to complete his loop ... I bet Luc's sponsors are pleased :-) For those who don't know, Luc is being sponsored by his local pub, who among other things are going to provide him with beer and coffee on the day!
(30 May) Wolfgang beats Bhavic in one of the longest and craziest tournament games yet seen :-)
(31 May) Laszlo has a bad start - 2 of the "weaker" 6 win again - Luc makes it 2/2, Simone has the biggest win so far.
(1/2/3 June) Higher ranked players win some games * shock * - Steven beats Pavel (as does Peter) and Jon, but only just!
(3 June) Simone becomes the 3rd player to make it 2/2 - is Jérôme trying to give the rest of us false hope? ;-)
(4 June) Peter gets his second 16 TPs to 4 win, v Jon, to go top; Julia gets her first, v Seri, to join him in 1st.
(5 June) Bhavic beats Julia by two points - the first time a loser from Round 1 has beaten a winner from Round 1. They go 7th & 6th respectively.
On 5 June itself, Simone built on her great start and led the African Championship from start to finish with a stunning performance, losing only 2 games, one of them by a single tile.
Bhavic pushed Simone close in the middle of the tournament, getting to within 2 points after Round 6 when Simone had her biggest loss (15-23 to Wolfgang) and then to within 1 point when he had the bigger win in Round 7. A 20-27 loss to Jérôme when Simone beat Peter 19-17 in Round 8 opened the gap again, but Bhavic closed it to 5 points in Round 9 by beating Simone 25-24 in the 'top of the African table' game. That win wasn't enough though, as Simone won her last two games to win the African Championship by 15 points.
Despite losing his pre-tournament games (to the top two Europeans), Jon bounced back by winning 5 of his next 6 games, but faded at the end.
Working through the European Championship entrants in reverse order, Laszlo had a terrible day, a 23-21 win against Jon in Round 10 being the only bright spot. Luc was unfortunately unable to match his incredible pre-tournament start, with just a draw against Pavel on 5 June - but had shown us what he could do when things went right.
Pavel beat Laszlo in Round 4 and drew his last 3 games to finish 6th in Europe, 9th overall. Julia suffered the disappointment of seeing her pre-tournament win against Seri ignored when he did not show for the main event. She won 4 games in a row between Rounds 4 and 7, enough to make her 5th in Europe. She had the consolation of beating Wolfgang and claiming a time penalty from him.
Jérôme, having not played that much recently, was far more erratic than usual, but did manage to beat old adversary Steven, and take a huge risk in the Round 11 v Peter (probably as an attempt to end up in the top 3 Europeans) which ended up ensuring that the latter won by enough to take 1st place in Europe. Wolfgang took 3rd place in Europe - he had some big wins, including one against Simone, but a draw against Pavel, 3 narrow losses and a bigger loss v Julia stopped him from finishing higher.
Steven and Peter both won their first 3 rounds, to give Peter 47 points to Steven's 46. Peter and Steven both lost to the Africans in Round 4 - the 'crunch' match was Steven v Simone. Simone planned very well, but even she must have been surprised when the tiles she needed miraculously came up almost exactly when she needed them, though Steven had had so much luck in rescuing lost positions in the previous games, it wasn't that surprising that it all ended at once! Simone played very well to take full advantage and record a big win.
This game saw Steven make two fatal mistakes which were probably what cost him the championship in the end. Already facing a big defeat, he tried to minimise it by setting up a mini-trap which would have got him half a dozen more tiles if it had worked, without thinking that in the form she was in, there was no way Simone was going to fall into it. She blocked, maximising her win, and to compound the error Steven went 5 seconds over time to lose another point and end up 6 points behind Peter, with Julia separating them, the gap rising to 14 in Round 5 when still in 'shock', Steven held out the white flag against Jérôme.
Luckily for Steven, he had the bye in the next round - time to get his thoughts together - and then won all of his last 6 games, in 3 of the games coming back from almost certain losses. Peter was doing things the right way though - winning big and keeping his losses small. A one tile loss to Steven in Round 7 and a loss to Simone in Round 8 set him back a bit and gave Steven the lead, but a big win in his penultimate match left them both on 110 points, (Steven leading on tie-break), with one game to go. Jérôme's last-gasp risk worked in Peter's favour to give him the bigger win while Steven was losing to Julia and although that game was rescued in the end, it wasn't enough and Peter became the champion. We couldn't have asked for a closer contest! :-)
Many thanks to controller-on-the-day Jason for doing a vital job very well in the happy chaos that is a weekend tournament and to Mike for getting up very early to help with this.