OK, two people do not a tournament make, so it will be postponed. It’s actually not a bad thing, because the rest of this year I’ll be busy with other stuff. The tournament will be after all the holidays, sometime in mid-January.

OK, Lepers III sign-up. Most of you know what it is already: an online chess tournament held via FICS games. Each participant will play one game a week for several weeks. The first pairings will be listed October 20. Usually there’s a longer sign-up period, but I want to finish the tournament before Thanksgiving if possible.

If enough people sign-up, I’ll either increase the pot, or have multiple section prizes. We’ll see.

And bang-up job on that poster, Mascot. I can tell you didn’t rush it so you could go out drinking Friday night with your friends.

Finally, and only three weeks late. The celebration video honoring Ivan’s victory in the Second Tournament of Lepers! I had promised a “proper and justified coronation” for Ivan a few weeks back, and decided to let the Mascot handle the details. (In retrospect, this was a mistake.)

Ivan won a $25 USCF e-certificate for his efforts. Polly got $10 for second place.

Info on the third tournament coming soon.

Congratulations to Polly and Ivan for being the last two players standing in the Lepers II tournament! By virtue of having the better regular season record, Ivan will be White.

—–

To paraphrase Mr. Crabby Old Chess Player: I’ve read twelve minutes of opinions on the US presidential election and had to stop because of reflux.

Unfortunately, the people who made this brand of fortune cookies seem to know English, so the fortunes are more insipid than entertaining. I’ll try to do better next week.

: That fortune happened to me! I was driving around when I saw this business in a pink and purple building named “Planet Pleasure”. Curious, I went in to see what they sold, and boy was it special!

Lepers update: Polly defeated Blunderprone, so the next match is Polly vs Chessaholic to determine the winner of their division. As far as the Wahrheit-Wang match, seems Wang is missing in action, so Wahrheit wins by default. This means Ivan wins his division.

So…the final match will be winner of Polly – Chessaholic vs Ivan!

Still need the results for Wahrheit – Wang and Blunderprone – Polly (colors may be switched there, I forget them). Would like to bring this to a close soon (yes, recognized on this end that Polly’s been away in Q-bec and Dallas Open.)

Only one game is not reflected is Wahrheit vs. Wang, and I might have missed that result:

So there’s a four-way tie for first in the Dr. Gene Ray division. There’s not an easy way to resolve the tiebreaker either, except for…more games!

This will be a mini-playoff format. If your game isn’t played to a conclusion, just play again until you do reach one. The matchups and colors were determined randomly:

Tom vs Chessaholic
Polly vs Blunderprone

Then the winner of these two games would play, and the winner of THAT game…is the winner of the Dr. Gene Ray division.

In the Alex Chiu division, it’s much simpler. The winner of Wahrheit and Wang would still tie Ivan points-wise. But Ivan’s beaten Wahrheit, so he’d win the head-to-head matchup. But if Wang wins, since he’s beaten Ivan, he’d win the division.

And, uh, congratulations on Sciurus winning a $5 McDonald’s gift card. (Takchess is MIA with a couple forfeit losses, so I don’t think he’ll be claiming his.) If you want to claim it, I’ll get Allen to get in touch with you.

I apologize for lack of updates, especially for the tournament. I’ve been busy with other things.

The next step for the tournament is the final match between the winners of the two divisions…except until all the games are finished, we won’t know who those are.

In the meantime, you can visit The Picture is Unrelated to get your kicks…disappointingly tiny, but should provide 2 or maybe 3 minutes of quality entertainment.

Apologies for the delay and no score update. I had a seizure and will complete more. Ivan, if you don’t mind, I’d rather shoot for Thursday or later this week.

Finally the round 2 game against Wang. You can pretty much tell this was a game between two wanna-bes, especially the gaggle of errors in the endgame. Although maybe I’ll put it down to time pressure.

MyGames_standard_20080621_wangos.pgn