Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Lucky at cards

I did get the silver medal in Sunday night's othello tournament at the MSO, and then yesterday I added a rather fortunate bronze at continuo - it was a four-round swiss with sixteen players, and I lost my first game but won the next three, leaving me as one of the four people on three points and somehow by way of the tie-break ending up in third place. And only at the MSO will you hear a conversation like "We've got the perfect sixteen players for four rounds!" "Yes, but we've only got seven complete sets..."

It was okay, there was another set with one missing piece, and they could borrow another piece from a ninth set and change the colour of a couple of squares. These things all work out in the end. So I got to stand on the bottom step of the podium tonight and get a nice round of applause and stylish bronze medal, following which blow me down if I didn't win another bronze in the five card draw poker tonight! I got the most monstrously lucky hands, over and over again, and since there were fewer players than usual (most of the devoted bluffers were playing liar's dice instead), it carried me through to the final three.

I also did the decamentathlon this morning (which didn't go particularly well) and mastermind in the afternoon (winning a rather unimpressive three out of seven), so I'm not sure where else I can add to my medal haul now. But we'll see - anything can happen at the Mind Sports Olympiad!

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