Othello's coming home

 Real live othello competition returned to its British homeland of Cambridge at the weekend! The British Othello Championship had to interrupt its proud every-year-since-1977 record last year, but returned with a bang in 2021. Well, the kind of polite and restrained bang that's acceptable in a nice place like Cambridge, obviously.

We had twelve competitors, a nice number for the Junior Parlour and for the traditional evening meal at an Indian restaurant, and a great time was had by all! I've been playing quite a lot on eOthello over the past year or so, and thought I might be on good form for this glorious return to live action, but I was actually pretty rubbish all weekend. I did have a nice win over Roy, which takes some doing, and was quite pleased with how I played against David Hand on the Sunday, with only one particularly bad choice of move messing things up for me - although I can't in all good conscience allow the "surely deserved to lose" in his account of the tournament to stand; he was a lot better than me.  We ended with Imre top of the table with a perfect record, and David his opponent in the final on tie-break. It was the opposite way around in 2019, and the final went the opposite way as well, with David becoming the new British Othello Champion!

 1: 9 pts [657] LEADER Imre (79) {GBR} 

 2: 7 pts [646] HAND David (2357) {GBR} 

              [591] BECK David (6437) {GBR} 

 4: 6 pts [612] BARRASS Iain (2047) {GBR} 

 5: 5 pts [578] TURNER Ian (2036) {GBR} 

              [534] PRIDMORE Ben (4019) {GBR} 

 7: 4 pts [506] ARNOLD Roy (2006) {GBR} 

              [483] CHAPPELL Digby (100052) {GBR} 

 9: 3 pts [517] KYTE Bruce (2078) {GBR} 

 10: 2 pts [440] CHAPPELL Fraser (100057) {GB} 

 11: 1 pt [406] CHAPPELL Graham (100050) {GBR} 

              [402] CHAN Cheuk Wing (4123) {HKG} 

 FINAL RESULT: HAND 38 vs LEADER 26

Now we need to update the trophy - it's about ten years out of date with the little shields added to the back bearing the names of past winners, and move on into a bold new era of proper othello tournaments! I really should see if I can get one arranged here in Redditch...