The Senior Parlour

The Junior Parlour at Trinity College, Cambridge, opens its doors to aging othello players at least twice a year, and Saturday was the Cambridge Regional. I went down on the first train at the crack of dawn, which conveniently gets me to Cambridge at just the right time for a 9:30 start, more or less, although my arrival didn't please Imre, who'd been expecting to run the seven-round tournament with eight players (ideal) and ended up having to work out pairings for nine (difficult) instead.

Also, Garry had to leave at lunchtime, which you'd think would make the numbers nice again, but if you've ever had to work out swiss-system pairings for a tournament that has nine players for the first three rounds and eight for the last four, you probably know differently. Anyway, not having played othello at all since the last competition I went to, whenever that was, I did extremely badly and came last again. I think we should talk instead about last year's competition, which I won - wasn't that awesome? Oh well, never mind.

In any case, I've volunteered to organise the nationals this year, meaning that I get to pick a date in September that doesn't clash with a memory competition like it has for the last two years. Although someone will probably later reschedule a competition to clash with it, just to spite me. Assuming that doesn't happen, I'm intending to have the Cambridge Memory Championship here in Nottingham in September also, but I'll have to compare everyone's calendars to work out which dates will be best. Stay tuned.