hungry2. The coolest place in the world to be next weekend is Seattle, for the Richard Hugo House's festival celebrating games. "A festival of arts and ideas exploring the nature of games, competition, deception, design, and more." Very impressive-looking line-up of events.
3. My predictions for round two went 5-2, with two correct scores from seven. Not great. St. Petersburg Lentransgaz upset second-seeded Bosna Sarajevo; their match featured five draws and a slight surprise victory on board five. Tbilisi of Georgia improved almost immeasurably overnight to pull the same five-draws-and-an-upset-win over Kiseljak of Bosnia.
My team, Asker Schakklubb of Norway, had a satisfying win over Finnish rivals; my tips, NAO Paris, comfortably dealt with Werder Bremen. However, it should've been more comfortable still. Michael Adams, playing black as NAO board three, had an opponent sacrifice a bishop and a pawn against him for no apparent reason in the first 12 moves. Then Michael decided to accept the draw. An extremely disappointing lack of fighting spirit.
Today's highlights: NAO Paris to overpower Minsk, if they can be bothered; Tbilisi's 3½-2½ winning streak ends at two as they come up against Kasparov's Ladya-Kazan-1000; a huge all-Russian clash Tomsk-400-Yukos face Norilsky Nikel, which very weakly favours Norilsky, Polonia Plus Warsaw can't afford to lose to Clichy Echecs 92 and Bosna Sarajevo start their recovery by swatting Schachfreunde Neukölln from Germany. Lower down, Asker take on Werder Bremen, most notable for a board one clash with Norwegian prodigy Magnus Carlsen facing British former-prodigy-making-good Luke McShane. Luke ought to deal out a lesson about what little prodigies who work hard can grow into.
4. Two weeks to go until the start of the World Puzzle Championships. I predict 23 teams and the United Kingdom team to finish eleventh. Lots of lovely WPC-style puzzles are available. I also predict an open team-based timed competition in 2004.
5. Sweeping up some old polls, the consensus of opinion is that I sleep like a starfish, or at least dance by Raising The Roof. This SCIENTIFICALLY PROVES the theory is a load of old clap-trap, for I actually sleep like a soldier (and dance a gentle Hippie Sway). You had clues, not least following how
dinahrae who slept next to me at Nimbus voted.6. On the "worse to come last in a tournament or not to enter at all?" issue, the results are pretty close; 44% (11/25) of you are over-competitive, whereas 56% (14/25) are not competitive at all. I'm with the 56%. Surprisingly close, though. (My boss is with the 44%. Oh dear.)
7. Let's wrap up the entries for the "How many entries will I have made by the end of my second year of LiveJournal?" prediction pool.
bateleur: 249leiabelle: 250lnr: 262amuzulo: 294daweaver: 397missingdonut: 398songmonk: 426expetesso: 488sincelastjuly: 503cygnusfap: 507addedentry and 2ndavemusic: 512trebro: 519jumbach and glissando: 536drbear: 811lambertman: "lots!"Two matches, which seems somewhat coincidental as coincidences go. This really doesn't seem to be as interesting as I thought it might've been at the time. The winning answer is looking 400s-ish to me.
8. A little over three weeks to my birthday. I'm actually really looking forward to it this year, more so than I have done for a while. *rubs hands*
9. Was sent a pair of hugely entertaining and very silly home-made DVDs yesterday, full of tremendously funny but improbably complicated, hard-to-explain in-jokes. Hopefully I can persuade the author to release at least some of the mock film trailers he has done to the Internet, which you would love.
10. Err... need a spacefiller. Oh yes, aren't people with funny names funny?
