Recapping the May Minnesota Madness (3M) tournament
The May Minnesota Madness (3M) has run its course, though I'm not quite sure that you can ever really take the madness out of people like us who enjoy playing Scrabble for hours on end! One of the perils of having a playing tournament director is that it can be a bit challenging to collect as much color commentary as usual, but I think I can do the tournament justice.
A brisk Saturday morning saw nine of us caffeinated and ready to shake some tiles and play some bonuses. What's that? I can hear you saying, "You said that there were 10 players in your preview, I saw 10 players in the standings, what gives?!" As it turns out, one of our players had arranged for time off to play the tournament *next* weekend instead of this weekend and wasn't able to arrive until the start of round 3! Fortunately, some flexible opponents and scheduling allowed us to make up the missed games so that no one ultimately needed to take a bye.
As for the Scrabble itself, Jim Kramer was an unstoppable force all day long on Saturday as he jumped to a two-game lead with a perfect 8-0, +782 record! His final game was a 545-484 barnburner win over yours truly, in which he shrugged off my extension of his opening DIV to DIVISIBLE by playing a HINDFOOT, RADIATOR, ACETONE combo. Trading bingos at the end of the game often works out in favor of the player who goes last, as it was when Jim played RENTIER to seal the win. Mike Johnson put together a winning score of 640 on Saturday as well, and I myself was quite pleased to find a play of DOWNGRADE in a game against Steve Pellinen. I also had two (!) games on Saturday where my draw for first required a second tiebreaker!
More than half of the tournament players enjoyed Thai food on Saturday night, albeit in different groups at different restaurants. Well, I say that we enjoyed the food - I just have to trust Chris Lipe when he says that he enjoyed the sweating and pain of his dish after he challenged the kitchen for truly Thai-level spice! We also found ourselves surprised by and enjoying some of the Art-a-Whirl festivities in Northeast Minneapolis; chilly breezes have no shot at stopping Minnesotans from enjoying beer and wearing shorts outside! It does make me wonder, though - between the last three CoCo tournament locations (Austin, Portland, Minneapolis), who would win a competition for the most hipster mullets on display?
Back to the games. Things got even more competitive on Saturday morning, and the standings tightened considerably as Jim and I tried to hold off charges from Chris, Steve, and Mike. Jim showed that he was going to put up a fight, dropping plays like a disconnected INCORPSED in his game against Mike. In Round 14, Jim and I played for first and second place while at least three players were still in contention for the class prize. As the dust settled, I was fortunate to pass Jim on spread at 10-4, and Mike completed an impressive 5-1 day to finish as the highest placing player (in third place) among the group who finished two places above their initial seed. Mike also had by far the highest rating gain of the tournament, breaking 1900 for the first time - and if he keeps making plays like ACQUITTER for 107 + 5, I'd say he's more than capable of keeping his rating and continuing to rise!
I can't say enough about how much I enjoyed organizing and directing the 3M and how great it was to see dearly missed friends. I also have to mention what a pleasure it was to work with GameZenter - the food was great, the playing space was well-lit and is adaptable to host events of almost any size, and I mean, come on, just check out that banner they made for us! Rumor has it that CoCo players might just be seeing that banner again in the near future...