Asian English Olympic 2013
18-21 February 2013
Round 22 :Julius Wilson vs Christian O.B
This is the multiple records holder game in Indonesian
tourney, most bingo played by both opponent (8) and highest combined score,
which just 1 points short to 1100 points, also highest average score (688/11
resulting over 60 average points per turn)
At the last day for preliminary round (which consist of 25
games), with 21 rounds completed, Julius got 18 VP’s, and only got 3 losses,
which was 2 VP ahead of Christian O.B and Fadlan Satria. The condition seemed
perfect for Julius Wilson to extend his lead and make him guaranteed to play in
final round with just 4 rounds to go. But then interesting thing happened…
Julius was confident with his opening play, EMAILED, with
rack DELIME?, stated his blank as A, for 74 points, while O.B didn’t have a
tile to counter it effectively with BIINQVY. Still, considered lucky to play
NIQAB using Julius’s blank for 30 points
The next move, Julius seems had a vowel-heavy rack, dumped
HOA for 16 points, fortunately O.B tile wasn’t improved yet and only reply with
TIVY for 18 points, and made score 90-48 for Julius after 2nd move.
Then the real action begin, right after this
With the rack still full of vowels, Julius managed to spot the
only bingo, DOUANIER, using D already in board for 61 points. But it left his R
in triple-triple line for 167 points FRAGILER, gave O.B almost 100 points more
than his best bingo before, FRAGILE/REMAILED for only 73 points. The next move,
Julius keep getting more vowels than it should be, MOOVE for 24 points, while
O.B got nice spot to load his K for 38 points.
175-253 after 4th move
A rack full of vowels forced Julius to exchange, yet OB once
again managed for bingo UNSCALED for 78 plus 5 points challenge penalty. Julius
managed to keep himself one bingo behind by ENTRAIN/REMAILED for 71, but as
soon as he thought he only need one bingo to level the score, he got smacked
with STATICE/STIVY to to triple word for 91 points, score was 246-427 after 6th
move. It was very very unusual condition to be almost 200 points behind while
you managed to score over 40 points average per turn. Plus, 6 bingoes are
played after 6th moves…
As the game continue, things are getting worse for Julius,
his IF and MOZO for 28 and 30 was no match for SPAZ for 40, then JOGS for 56.
With the gap expanded to well over 200 points, Julius secured the last blanks,
but also got clunky medium-tile combination P and W. His move, PAW for 29,
seems good move, made him reach 333 points and dumped 2 medium tiles for bingo
next turn, tragically, for him, it made O.B breaking 600 points barrier with
HALTERE for 81 (which was homeless if he didn’t play PAW). With just 4 tiles
left in bag, Julius said… “OMG, this is the highest combined game”, then he
played his 4th bingo DATURINE for 64 points (he could do better if
he was sure about MOOVED), made combined score reaching over 1000 points with
397-604…
The endgame may not be as great as other game, but the last
7 tile, which OB got, seems not great, yet it has secret ability to extend his
winning spread. This was the board position when sack was empty
As you can see, OB was quite lucky that Julius cannot use
his entire tile in one move; the BRUW was just not worked. The final task to OB
was how to divide this “not so great” combination into 2 high scoring moves,
and block Julius main spot. Such a lucky coincidence that DUNGY, or GUNDY in A1
answer all the question above, it was 41 points move, leave unstoppable OX that
can be played for at least 30 points in various spots in board. After more than
3 minutes, Julius shook his head, and play BUR only for 14 points, and pressed
his clock to made his final score 411, while OB finish the game with OX/TIX for
35 points, to make his score just 12 points below 700 after added with unplayed
letter (W). Julius then ended the game by saying “This is the openest board I’ve
ever seen”, and was quite happy eventhough he know he was losing almost 300
points. Julius still lead the standing with 3 rounds to go, and all of us
laughed hard because it was a very rare situation when the leader got
pulverized closed to 300 points, isn’t it?? This is the picture taken right after
the game ended
Partial annotated about this game can be found here http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=13686#0
Thanks for reading
Created by Christian Oktavius
No comments:
Post a Comment