I have to say that none of those people look terribly like me, or indeed like each other, but I take this as evidence that the person I'm most likely to be mistake for on the street is Jackie Chan, which is extremely groovy.
Anyway, Cambridge! I couldn't go to the othello on Saturday because I hadn't finished all the preparations for Sunday (in my defence, it's a lot of work, and I'm extremely lazy), which is a shame because a lot of other players couldn't go either - the Cambridge Regional clashed with the Copenhagen International, and there were only four players who chose Cambridge. Apparently Iain won again, which pretty much confirms him as BGP champion this year.
So it was on Saturday afternoon that I hauled my big rucksack full of memorisation and recall papers, packs of cards, speed cards timers and my laptop down to Cambridge on the train. I stayed in Cityroomz, having been sensible enough to book the room in advance for the first time in my life, and found it as delightful as always.
I got up super-early on Sunday morning, allowing the maximum possible time to walk (or stagger) all the way to Trinity College from the hotel next to the train station, since the buses don't run so early on a Sunday morning and I'm not going to compromise my principles and take a taxi just because I've got a rucksack that's too heavy for anyone other than Geoff Capes to lift. I got there a bit before 8:30 (start time was nine o'clock, but there are always people who get there early, even if I tell everyone they'll have to wait outside in the rain because the man with the key won't have got there yet) and bumped into Dai and John on the way there. Dave and Nelson were already hanging around, too, and we got suspicious questions from a porter who thought we might be up to no good.
Aubrey turned up promptly, with the key, and let us into the room. I'd asked for the room at the back, rather than the Big Glass Cube, since it's slightly farther away from the loud beeping lift, but it didn't make very much difference - it still could be clearly heard going BING-BONG! at unexpected moments. There were also other games tournaments taking place in the BGC - draughts in the morning and backgammon in the afternoon, which provided a bit of background noise too (especially the latter, with the rattling dice), but I'd say there was an adequate level of silence roughly 75% of the time, which I suppose is acceptable for a cheap little memory competition. The room was also rather too small for the eleven competitors, four arbiters and enormous film crew, but we managed well enough.
Yes, there was the enormous Japanese film crew, which led to another person hanging around too - Trinity College rules apparently require a Fellow or a Porter to be present during any filming. Imre, who arranged the rooms for the Cambridge MSO, is a Fellow (I wish I was a Fellow, it's a really great-sounding thing to call yourself) but was one of those othello players who prefers Copenagen, so Fuji TV had to pay for a porter to stand guard. Trinity College Porters wear bowler hats, which makes it probably the awesomest job in the world. I'm going to change careers.
Eleven competitors, from six different countries. Seven if you count Wales as being foreign! Two of these competitors, the Danish ones, weren't taking part in all the disciplines, which is probably a good thing because I hadn't been able to get a Danish translation for the dates.
Team Sweden - Idriz, Mattias and Oliver - put in a strong performance, especially Mattias, who narrowly won the Words and Names & Faces disciplines. The Swedish championship in September (they're promising 100,000 spectators, which seems a little optimistic) should be interesting. The speed cards was won by all-American hero Nelson Dellis, with a time of just over a minute - he's got to be favourite for the US Championship next year. Runner-up in all three of those, and winner of all the others, often by a vast margin, was the new German superstar Christian Schäfer. His scores included 693 in 5-minute binary, 653 in 15-minute numbers, 260 in abstract images and 81 in dates - world-class results all four. He's now moved up to number 14 in the world rankings and is one to watch out for at the World Championship in August.
Nelson's speed cards was just enough to knock old campaigner and best-of-Team-Britain James Ponder down to third place overall, while Christian's win ensured that the German domination of the Cambridge Championship continues - four of the five winners now have been Germans (nobody's ever won it twice).
Incidentally, Sir John Houblon has been haunting me lately. The Japanese TV crew have been paying for all their incidental expenses with a huge wad of £50 notes (that kind of thing is perfectly normal in Japan, but perhaps I shouldn't be mentioning it here where the chances of being mugged are somewhat higher), and then Oliver paid his entry fee with another fifty. I can't remember the last time I saw a £50 note, and now they're everywhere.
We finished not on time, but not too late, and went to a Chinese restaurant in the evening. I had plenty of time to stand around chatting to people, not too much time spent talking to the cameras (they continue to be a lot of fun), and everything went more or less smoothly all the way through!
Back to work tomorrow, on Wednesday it's down to London where Dominic will do something with my brainwaves, another couple of days of trying to get my real job done, then Wales on Saturday for my first competition (as a competitor) of the season. I haven't done enough training, as per usual.
