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1999 WORLD TANTRIX - ROUND 1 REPORT
Round 1 is almost over, with just one match in progress (Iznogoud leads ChBen 32-8 after two games) and at least one player in each of the remaining 5 games on a final default warning. In writing this report, I've assumed that these players will not make contact in time and will be defaulted, though of course I'd love them to prove me wrong!
Even minor shocks were very thin on the ground in Round 1. Of the 24 seeded players who didn't have byes, only two lost - no. 25 Joche and no. 28 fraufuchs. Mighty, repaying the faith of his many "Fantasy Tantrix" fans, and Pfire were the successful unseeded players.
It was good to see all four games being played in nearly every match, even when this wasn't strictly necessary. Only two players had the misfortune of losing every game - everyone else won or drew at least one. Caotik had the misfortune to meet the top seed who had to play in Round 1, No. 9 seed Pepe. Pepe's 59-21 TP victory was the biggest in the Round.
There were a few close matches, where the player who was behind after three games had a realistic chance of winning the match if they had a good win in the final game. However, in most of these cases, the player who was already leading won the final game to make the final match result look much more clear-cut. The closest match after the third game was Tonto-Dove, where a 3-tile win would have given Dove the match on the "total tiles" tiebreak and a 2-tile win would have meant a 'blitz' tiebreak game.
In the end, the closest matches were Scarab-melinda at 44-36 (memorable for lots of other reasons too to all who witnessed it!), closely followed by Mighty-Joche and Pekko-glea at 46-34.
The amount of time people took for their games varied widely. Fraufuchs, one of the two seeds who lost, took just 19 minutes for 4 games v Pfire in the fastest match, which took 51 minutes in total.
At the other extreme, Pandora took 56 minutes v lolo, but slowest of all was actually Justin, who took 50 minutes but for only 3 games. He lost 5 time penalties, but he obviously used the extra time well, since he won his match 44-16 - ie. 49-11 before adjustment for the time penalties. The slowest 4 game match was Pepe-Caotik at 1 hour 37 minutes, but the slowest match overall was Dide-Justin at 1 hour 30 minutes for just 3 games.
Making assumptions about the defaults, of the 13 countries with entrants, 9 have survivors in Round 2 of the main draw - Finland, Brunei, Canada and Mexico will now have to look to the Plate for success. Impressively, 13 of the 19 New Zealand entries survived Round 1 (68 %) but only 5 of the 11 Americans (45 %) and 4 of the 10 French entrants. All four of the Australians survived (three with byes and one with a default win) as did both of the Hungarians. Germany, the UK, South Africa and Switzerland have just one entrant left in.
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