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1999 WORLD TANTRIX - ROUND 2 REPORT
Round 2 proved to be very eventful. There were lots of very close matches and 6 of the top 16 seeds went out.
Most of the upsets came at the start and end of the round. Seeds 1 to 5 all survived, mikem being pushed closest (55-45) by his daughter Marina who won two of the five games, but even he never looked seriously threatened.
Seeds 6, 7 and 8 all went out in three of the four closest matches in the round. Seed 7 jzyhk lost 46-54 to Justin in the first match to be played, Justin using the unusual tactic of losing time penalties in an attempt to make sure of his wins. Seed 6 and African Champion, IrcMaidon, lost just 51-49 to Pekko. She had to keep him down to a win by 4 tiles or less in the final game to go through, but he managed to win 28-18.
As expected, the French showdown between lolo and 7th seed (and last year's runner-up) papillon was one of the matches of the round. lolo won the first two games to take an early lead before papillon won one back. Another win for lolo in game 4 meant that papillon needed a win by 12 tiles in the final game. It isn't that hard to keep your opponent to a win by less than 12 tiles if that's the main thing you are trying to do, and although papillon won the last game 20-16 (and hence ended up scoring 3 more tiles than lolo in the whole match), it wasn't enough.
9th seed Pepe went through without too much trouble. 10th seed steven2's match against Iznogoud looks like it was fairly easy since he finally won 59-41, but it was on a knife-edge right up to the end, mainly due to a horrific blunder at the end of game two which converted an easy win into a draw. In game 5, Iznogoud needed to win by 4 tiles or more and towards the end he was leading 17-9 with steven2's lines linkable, but potentially blockable too. In the end, Iznogoud ended up blocked at both ends instead and a very relieved defending champion won 22-17.
Seed 11, Tell, went out too - Mighty repaid the faith of his many "fantasy" fans by becoming the only unseeded player to make it to the last 16 with a 56-44 win.
Seed 12, Ridcully, beat Tonto 56-44, but needed at least a draw in the final game to make sure of it. His brother, 13th seed Runes, had a clearer win 63-37 v leslie. Seed 16, ddyer, beat xavier quite comfortably in the end - the first game, a 42-42 draw, broke the record for the highest aggregate score in a tournament game.
The last two top 16 casualties were seed 14, JimT, who was 41-39 up against offpiste after 4 games but lost the last 24-22 to go down 53-47 and woody, who became the only one of the 32 seeds to withdraw from the tournament.
The biggest win in a 5 game match was Crispy's 70-30 v Aussie, though Bdot actually scored 72.5 % of the TPs against scoop in the one match where game 5 was not played. The closest match was Pekko's 51-49 v IrcMaidon.
The amount of time people took for their games varied widely again. Zazza took just 24 minutes for his 5 games v Pfire, who had the fastest opponents in both rounds 1 and 2. This match and Pekko-IrcMaidon were the quickest matches at just 1 hour and 3 minutes.
Slowest was Justin, taking 79 minutes but managing to win despite a total of 5 time penalties for the second match in a row. His match was the only one which took more than 2 hours in total.
Of the 13 countries with entrants, and the 9 with players in Round 2, just 6 have survivors in the last 16 of the main draw - New Zealand with 9 (47 % of their entrants), which is very impressive if a little boring, Australia with 2 (50 %), USA with 2 (18 %) and (if Runes beats leslie) just three Europeans from France (10 %), Hungary (50 %) and the UK (100 %) - massive southern hemisphere domination. In fact, the first three matches in Round 3 are all NZ-only affairs and mikem could win the whole tournament without playing anyone from another country.
Unfortunately, of the 12 female entrants, only one (Bdot) has survived to the last 16, which is somewhat surprising. However, the female entrants do hold a record which makes them more than usually popular with the controller - not one of them has defaulted in the main draw, whereas 9 of the male entrants have!
A final curiosity - half of the 16 survivors are pairs of entrants from the same family. However, after the unfortunate draws for the Tarsis and McManaways in rounds 1 and 2, all of these players have avoided each other in this round.
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