1999 ORIGIN PACIFIC WORLD TANTRIX CHAMPIONSHIP
PREVIEW OF THE FINAL

On this page :
Introduction     Bio. info. & WTC so far    
Jamie notes & pic     Zenon notes & pic    

After 78 matches (full of both predictable and surprising results) and 341 games, the 1999 Origin Pacific World Tantrix Championship is reaching its conclusion. Southern hemisphere players appeared to dominate the tournament at the start and although for a little while it looked like the northern hemisphere might just manage to produce someone who could keep the title from going down under this year, we've ended up with a New Zealand v Australia final between Jamie Sneddon and Zenon Kowalczyk, or Ridcully and Zazza as they are known in the tantrix.com lobby.

The two finalists have only played each other once before in a tournament game. That was on 22 August 1999 in the
Pacific Championships and Zenon won 36-22. This helped him to come 3rd in that tournament on 101 TPs, just ahead of who else but Jamie in 4th on 98. Even the pre-WTC Elo ratings predict a win to Zenon by just 95-85. It looks like it could go all the way to the ninth game and with a trophy and a free flight to Nelson to play for, there's plenty at stake!

The final will be played over three sessions, all starting at 08.30 GMT / 19.30 Sydney time / 21.30 NZ time, on Sunday 14th, Thursday 18th & Sunday 21st November. All are welcome to watch in the www.tantrix.com lobby - in the later sessions there may even be live voice commentary on some of the games from last year's World Champion - if we can get it to work and I don't find it too embarrassing!

Player Jamie Sneddon ("Ridcully") Zenon Kowalczyk ("Zazza")
Country New Zealand Australia
 
Age 24 15
Residence Auckland Lismore, NSW
Occupation PhD Maths Student & Lecturer School Student
 
Pre-WTC Elo 1814 1866
Seeded 12th 4th
 
Previous 1999 Pacific - 4th place 1999 Masters - 2nd place
tournaments:   1999 Pacific - 3rd place
 
1999 World Tantrix Championship records so far:
 
Round 1 55-25 v (Un) Alida Remiens (NZL) Bye
Round 2 56-44 v (31) Leanne Silver (NZL) 63-37 v (Un) Alex Pearson (USA)
Round 3 73-47 v (18) Justin Phillips (NZL) 62-38 v (29) Thomas Peek (NZL)
Quarter-Finals 73-67 v (10) Steven Trezise (GBR) 70-70* v (5) Ben Trumbore (USA)
Semi-Finals 89-71 v (20) Matthew Peek (NZL) 84-76 v (21) Laurent Berguin (FRA)
 
  (seedings in brackets) * = won on total tiles tiebreak
 
Matches so far 5 4
Games so far 30 25
TPs so far 346-254 (57.7 %) 279-221 (55.8 %)
Tiles so far 627-589 (Av. 20.9-19.6) 576-522 (Av. 23.0-20.9)
Own time taken 4 h 41 m (9 m/game) 2 h 46 m (7 m/game)
 

Jamie is having to get used to his new-found "fame" and to journalists ringing him up, first quoted in a NZ Herald article about the WTC and soon to be in an Infotech article.

Jamie Sneddon

Jamie only started playing online early this year, but has been a Tantrix addict for rather longer. He claims to have one of every Tantrix product ever produced (even the Original puzzle) and with fellow Aucklander Paul Martinsen ("Ponder") holds the computer record for the four longest lines unsolved puzzle. Incidentally, Paul is very likely to win the Fantasy Tantrix competition if Jamie wins the final.

Jamie certainly has the stamina to win the final, because he's won the two longest tournament matches ever - a 2 hour 35 minute 6-game marathon against Justin and the record, a 2 hour 53 minute 7-game match against Steven. In both cases, especially with Justin, it was Jamie's opponent who had to do most of the thinking.

A fairly easy Round 1 win against Alida Remiens was followed by a minor scare in Round 2 when he was only leading Leanne Silver 42-38 with one game to go, but his nerve held and he won the last game. Round 3 was a 73-47 win v Justin Phillips, only Justin's 12 time penalties making the win look so easy.

The crunch match looks to have been the quarter-final against defending champion and 10th seed Steven Trezise. He's the only player from outside New Zealand whom Jamie has played so far, and, amazingly, the highest seed he has met. In a very tense match which for a long time looked like it could go either way, Jamie finally won through by just 6 TPs. The smi-final against Matthew Peek, another Aucklander, was a little easier, Jamie getting a great start and leading by 86-54 before the final game.

Zenon Kowalczyk

Zenon has played Tantrix online since 1997 and is rather more used to being featured in the newspapers, usually with his younger brother Alex, whose Tantrix "shadow" Zenon has somewhat emerged from in this tournament. He was even on TV in Australia last Friday - fame indeed! He can't wait for the excuse to go to New Zealand and claim his prize if he wins the final!

Zenon is one of the fastest players around, with more games finished with under 4 minutes on his clock than anyone else. I wonder if Jamie can make him take longer in the final!

As the number 4 seed, Zenon had a bye in Round 1 and 63-37/62-38 wins against Alex Pearson and Thomas Peek gave him probably the easiest passage to the quarter-finals of anyone.

Then, as for Jamie, the northern hemisphere opponents came up things and things got much tougher. The quarter-finals saw Zenon up against Pan-American champion Ben Trumbore. The match went back and forth until Ben finally opened up an apparently decisive 66-54 advantage with one game to go. Zenon needed a 7-tile win to save himself. Surely Ben would be able to stop him doing that when he didn't even need to take any risks to win the game himself ... but no, an 8-tile win made it 70 TPs each and Zenon won on tiebreak by just 4 tiles.

The semi-finals produced another tough opponent, Laurent Berguin. This time, Zenon was 51-69 down after 6 games. A spectacular 50-24 win in game 7 brought it back to 70 TPs each and Zenon won the final game. So, two amazing escapes - could this be Zenon's year?

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