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|
Cary Morris and Chris Yaure push their
luck. |
Jake Jocoby once again came through
with Egyptian themed prizes. |
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|
Israeli Yossi Dvora and Rod
Spade draw from the Ra bag. |
The finalists enjoy their 15 minutes
of fame. |
The Dog Ate his Homework ...
Ra set a new attendance record, besting the 176 record
set in 2009 by 1. We had another strong Monday night heat of
20 tables of 5 for an even 100 players. The other heats filled
16, 17, and 10 games respectively. Even the Friday morning heat
drew 50 players, but only ten of them were dipping their toe
in the water for the first time. That left 40 players taking
one more crack at advancing to the semifinal. I'm considering
the removal of Heat 4 to make Ra a 3-heat event with the
semifinal Friday morning.
 Another
possible change for next year would be to bid on starting suns.
Everyone starts the game with 10 dollars so you would bid with
that. You couldn't bid more than 10. Send me an email if you
have feedback on either of these proposals.
The defending champion, Janet Ottey, won her first three heats
and barely missed taking Heat 4 as well by 1 point. She was the
only triple winner. We had ten double winners. To make the top
25 you needed a win in your first heat played and a 5th place.
If you only played in one heat but won you finished up to 37th
place. However, as so often happens due to no-shows, if you won
your only heat played you still made the semifinal. We went down
to 38th place to make the semifinal cut-off and that happened
to be the place of the last first heat played winner! There were
51 different winners. Still not enough for all winners to advance
to a quarterfinal - even if they all chose to advance. Fat chance.
I'll take this time to shout out a sportsmanship nomination
for Scott Saccenti. He was on the bubble for the semifinal. I
told him that Greg Thatcher was running late and that we should
wait 5 minutes. Just when I was going to call it someone said
"here comes Greg". I was worried about what Scott's
reaction would be. But instead of anger he graciously said "
he was the one who deserved the spot". I had the pleasure
of playing Scott's son Anthony (14) in a heat of Ra and
he was an awesome kid. Good sportsmanship must run in the family.
Way to go Scott.
Three of the semifinals were decided by 2 points. Greg Thatcher
beat Mike Kaltman 39-37. Blair Morgan bested Jeff Meyer 43-41.
And Patrick Shea beat Randy Buehler 45-43. Randy got 6th place
laurels as the closest runner-up. The fourth game was decided
by three points as Rodney Bacigalupe topped John Shaheen 34-31.
The only blowout came in the last semifinal where Keith Levy
beat Daniel Eppolito 53-39.
I don't recall the score of the Final because I left the results
in the kiosk for all to see. When I went back to retrieve the
results, the kiosks were already packed away. But I do remember
congratulations are in order for Blair Morgen for winning his
first Ra championship.
|
Steve Scott [11th Year]
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