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1999 WORLD TANTRIX - ROUND 3 REPORT
Round 3 provided the biggest upset of any tournament so far, when in the first match the only unseeded player left in the draw, Mighty, knocked out top seed and Tantrix inventor mikem, and by 69-51 (4 games to 2) too. Mighty skillfully rode any luck that came his way to win the first two games and managed a draw in game 3 to really put the pressure on the world No. 1, then held his nerve to take game 4 and put the match virtually out of mikem's reach.
Match 2, between the two Aucklanders Runes & Pekko, was expected to be quite close too, but after 13th seed Runes lost the first two games, he folded and Pekko ran out an easy 61-19 (4-0) winner in just over an hour. His reward - a quarter-final against someone even closer to home!
Match 3, the third all-NZ affair, between 12th seed Ridcully and 18th seed Justin, was won 73-47 by Ridcully, close to the Elo prediction of 77-43, but this doesn't tell the whole story by any means. The score in games, amazingly, was 3-3, but Justin managed to give away no less than 15 time penalties in the 6 games, most noticeably in game 1 when he went 9 minutes over the time limit and still lost!
Match 4, between defending champion and 10th seed steven2 and 3rd seed AlexK was one of the most exciting of the round, as expected. The teenagers were leading the over-20s by two matches to nil in this round and northern hemisphere players had been dropping like flies in the main draw by the time this one was played, so there was a lot of pride at stake.
With some great line-building Alex won game 1 by 25-19. He was way ahead in game 2 as well, but steven2 found a complex plan which worked spectacularly to overtake him but run very low on time. The time pressure produced an elementary counting error and AlexK won 27-20 leaving his opponent 32-8 TPs down and rather shell-shocked.
The last game in the first session was crucial. Both players had potential big loops on either side of the Tantrix and steven2 completed his to leave the score at 34-26 to AlexK and a faint chance in the final session.
The final session was a complete turnaround. steven2 won game 4 to take the lead for the first time in the match and then won a very tight game 5 by 17-15 to leave AlexK needing a 12-tile win in the last game, a task which proved impossible. Another great escape!
Game 5 between 4th seed Zazza and Pekko's brother, 29th seed kingkong, was fairly one-sided. kingkong had got this far through withdrawals and defaults, so had the disadvantage of coming into the last 16 with no experience of WTC matches. The tile totals were close (119-112), but in TP terms Zazza won 62-38 within the distance.
5th seed and Pan-American champion Crispy v 9th seed and European Champion, Pepe, was very exciting as might have been expected. Pepe drew first blood in the single game in the first session. A draw in game 2 left him 24-16 TPs ahead. Crispy scraped an 18-17 win in game 3 to pull back to only two TPs behind, but Pepe got a big 26-12 win in game 4 to end the second session looking good, 48-32 ahead.
Pepe must have fancied his chances coming into the final session, but Crispy won game 5 by 31-22 to leave Pepe only 52-48 up going into the final game, needing at least a draw to go through. The suspense continued right up to the end, Crispy winning an incredibly close game 20-18 to go through to the quarter-finals by 62-58.
Match 8, between 2nd seed Bdot and 16th seed ddyer, was predicted by the pre-WTC Elo ratings to end 82-38 or 5-1 in games. Unfortunately for Dave, the prediction was almost perfect, Bdot winning 81-39.
Match 7, between lolo and offpiste, was the last match to be played. Two of the first three games were drawn, but with a 26-15 win in the middle, offpiste finished the first session with a surprise 36-24 lead. However, in the final session, lolo emulated steven2 (the other European to go through) by winning all three games to make a comeback and win by 71-49.
So, somewhat surprisingly, only three of the top eight seeds made it to the quarter-finals, which is made up of four New Zealanders (three from Auckland all in the top half of the draw), two Europeans (from FRA & GBR), one Australian and one American, meaning that all of the biggest Tantrix-playing countries have at least one survivor.
Coincidentally, all four families with two players in the last 16 saw one family member get through to the quarter-finals and one get knocked out. There are 3 teenagers in the quarter-finals, one 20-something (Ridcully) and four 30-somethings.
The biggest win in a 6 game match was Bdot's 81-39 v ddyer, though Pekko actually scored 76.25 % of the TPs in his 4-game match against Runes. The closest match was Crispy's 62-58 win v Pepe.
The amount of time people took for their games varied widely yet again. All of the teenagers were very quick, AlexK just the fastest on average with 41 minutes for 6 games. Most of the 6-game matches took about 2 hours.
Slowest was Justin, for the third round in a row, managing to take a full 100 minutes for his 6 games, losing 15 time penalties (it would have been 19 had the 20-0 TP limit not applied in game 1) and smashing the record for the slowest game with an inexplicable 24 m 16 s - a record I hope will never be beaten. As a result, his match with Ridcully was the longest at 2 h 35 m.
In the Plate, papillon is looking good in the top half of the draw. He hasn't lost a single game in the competition yet and with his Round 3 win over Jean, he made it 8 consecutive tournament game wins, beating mikem & Bdot's record. Three of the top 12 WTC seeds (IrcMaidon, Tell and jzyhk) are in the bottom half, though the only player to reach the quarter-finals from that half so far is Iznogoud.
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