March 28 Battle Creek Tournament, Part One
After years of playing online Scrabble at isc.ro and Facebook, I decided it was time to step up to the big leagues. I signed up for the March 28 tournament in Battle Creek a few weeks ago; this is part one of the story of my day.
Preparation is key
Admittedly, I could have done a better job cramming for the big event. I just returned from a Scrabble-free vacation in Florida late Thursday night. On Friday I forced myself to play a couple of practice games with a real Scrabble board. Getting the feel of actual tiles, keeping score manually, tracking tiles – trust me, it’s an entirely different experience.
I also boned up on the tournament rules. I’m a rookie entering a group of experienced players; violating protocol is absolutely the last thing I want to do.
Sadly, my insomnia picked a bad time to kick in. I went to bed around 1 a.m., woke up at 4:30, and never fell back asleep. To make matters worse, I had to get up at – gasp – 7:30 to drive to Battle Creek. I can hear all you 9-to-5′ers feeling soooo sorry for me, but I went into freelance web development to avoid waking up early. ;-)
Gameday arrives
When I first arrived at the Westlake Presbyterian Church in Battle Creek, I walked into an entirely differently subculture. I say that with deep admiration – the depth of immersion of any group into a given topic amazes me. One group was discussing the plural word forms of foreign currency; another was setting up board scenarios, deciding which of the eight possible bingos would be the next best play.
The other thing that struck me: I’m one of the youngest players here, and one of the few who doesn’t know everyone in the room. I later find out most of the players have played with each other for 15+ years.
I keep telling myself it’s just a board game, but it’s amazing how quickly one can get nervous when entering a new world.
Bracketology
I wandered up to the scorers’ table and checked out the draw. There were four divisions: A, B, C and D, each with 8-12 players. (Nice touch: as we’re in the home of Kellogg’s, each group has a cereal name). The top three divisions were for the highest-rated players; being a newcomer, I was placed in Division D (Frosted Mini-Wheats), and I’m seeded 12th out of 12. Lowest seed in the lowest division.
Great. I’m the Morehead State of Scrabble.
We get a total of seven games: three in the morning, three after lunch, and a final “King of the Mountain” game to decide our final position. It’s going to be a long day, and I can already tell it’s going to be one hell of an ego check.
Soon enough, 9:30 rolled around, and it was time to get started…
March 28 Battle Creek Tournament, Part Two :: Triple-Triple says:
[...] This post is Part Two in a three-part series about my adventures at the “Cereal Bowl” Battle Creek Tournament held on March 28. Part One [...]
April 1st, 2009 at 1:49 pm ::