Nations of the Globe

A slightly delayed write-up of the British National Othello Championship last weekend, at the Globe 'music venue and bar' in Newcastle. Actually, on the Saturday at least, it was a venue of silent and sober concentration in the upper room, and by the time the live music started downstairs on the Sunday all the competitors were totally in the zone and barely noticed.

We had eleven players, which is exactly the worst number for a nine-round tournament (followed by one-game final). There's a bye, and all but two of the players get the bye at some point. Everyone plays nearly but not quite everyone else. And if you're doing the pairings manually, it becomes an absolute nightmare to pair people on a similar number of points by the time you get to the last couple of rounds. It makes you feel guilty about turning up, knowing that if you didn't it would have been ten players and a wonderfully appropriate round-robin.

But I was doing the pairings, which makes me a Very Important Part of the whole proceedings and not guilty at all about being there. And the pairings weren't done by hand (as was, for many years, the tradition at the Nationals), and nor were they done on the venerable, ancient and incomprehensible Papp program that has been used in our tournaments before now. No, we used the shiny new and astonishingly simple FlipTheDisc.com, which I heartily recommend to anyone who's wanting to run a tournament of their own. You can see all the results from this and other tournaments in the "Live Events" section, and play through the final game on screen here if you're so inclined. It's like living in the future! We all agreed the spirit of Adelaide, for many years the manual-pairer, was guiding the whole thing and making it work.

Reigning champion Guy Plowman couldn't make it due to an incident with a deer and his car, but we had Imre Leader with, as the BOF website puts it, "almost uncountable British Championships to his name" (it's true - you run out of fingers and have to take both shoes and socks off to count on your toes, which isn't always convenient in polite society), plus multiple-winner Joel Feinstein (you still need the fingers of both hands for him, but the shoes can stay on), and others including young Lithuanian superstar Marius Juodelė, who was a hot favourite after winning other competitions all over the place in recent years.

I myself played pretty terribly all round. Actually, the only two games I was really happy with were two I lost, against Imre and Bruce Kyte. It's not like I was in with a chance of winning either of them at any point, but they were thrilling and entertaining games that were close and a lot of fun to play. Bruce, though, was the one who set the early pace, being the only one on three points after three rounds. The ranking list was always tight and exciting all the way through, with no runaway leader. I was never in contention, but plenty of other people were in with a chance of making the final or the 3rd/4th place play-off.

On Saturday night we went to the really great Persia restaurant in Newcastle, which I heartily recommend. It could become a Newcastle othello tradition, like the Indian meal in Cambridge that's an essential part of the events there!

The final ended up as Imre vs Marius (who was fractionally ahead of Joel on Brightwell Quotient tie-break score - another thing that makes you very thankful it didn't have to be calculated manually!), with Joel vs Bruce for 3rd place, and it ended up with Marius winning his first British Championship title! Bruce secured third place, and a good time was had by all!

So another name is added to the roll of honour and at least theoretically to the trophy (I forget whether the trophy has names on it, or whether I'm confusing it with the European one - I don't tend to win these trophies, you see, and the British one is still with Guy the last I heard. If it does have names on it, an almost uncountable number of years' winners doubtless need to be updated). I still have it on my bucket-list to get my name on this list one day, although I haven't yet formed any concrete plans as to how to go about it.

1977	Alan Woch
1978	Geoff Davidson
1979	Alan Woch
1980	Neil Cogle
1981	John Parker
1982	David Stephenson
1983	Imre Leader
1984	David Sharman
1985	Neil Stephenson
1986	Imre Leader
1987	Peter Bhagat
1988	Graham Brightwell
1989	Joel Feinstein
1990	Imre Leader
1991	Joel Feinstein
1992	Joel Feinstein
1993	Joel Feinstein
1994	Imre Leader
1995	Graham Brightwell
1996	Joel Feinstein
1997	Joel Feinstein
1998	Graham Brightwell
1999	Imre Leader
2000	Graham Brightwell
2001	Imre Leader
2002	Garry Edmead
2003	Garry Edmead
2004	Imre Leader
2005	Imre Leader
2006	Graham Brightwell
2007	Imre Leader
2008	David Hand
2009	Michael Handel
2010	Imre Leader
2011	Guy Plowman
2012	Borja Moreno
2013	David Hand
2014	Guy Plowman
2015	Imre Leader
2016	Imre Leader
2017	Imre Leader
2018	Imre Leader
2019	Imre Leader
2020	Covid-19
2021	David Hand
2022	Imre Leader
2023	Guy Plowman
2024	Marius Juodelė