JARVIS TROPHY
5/6 February 2001
Friday KO (15)
Playing to 5 points this tournament got off to a good start. The last four were Raj Jansari vs Al Hogg, and yours truly vs Lionel Wright. Unfortunately, especially for me, the former won in each case leaving Raj against Lionel in the final. There were a couple of contentious plays made by both players, the diagram below illustrating one such play.
5 Point Match
Black 1 White 2
Black(Lionel) to play 52 |
We all agreed it wasn't a very good roll for black but there again he didn't have a very good position in this game either. One thing we were certain of (all except Lionel that was) is that it was important to remain on the 23-point as it was the only chance to get a return hit unless pointed on or picked-and-passed. So imagine our surprise when black moved 23/18 8/6. We couldn't agree on the 23/18 and remaining on the 18-point; if that man was to be moved we were all agreed (except Lionel) that it should continue to the 16-point.
Everybody but Lionel thought this was the wrong play and so I decided to evaluate it through JellyFish. JellyFish rated the move played as second best with 23/18 10/8 being the first choice. Our move of 23/16 came out in 7th place. So, well played Lionel. However, having made the correct play it was of no use to him and Raj went on to win the weekend break and the prize money.
Doubles KO (16 teams)
As always there were the usual silly names, the aptly named 'Can't Win A Thing' went out in the first round, 'The Incredible Ones' were not as incredible as they wanted to be and also went out in the first round. 'Fingers & Thumbs', making a return to Biba after a two year absence, were stopped in the second round by 'Lady And The Tramp' who went on to the final, where they shared the prize money with 'Barf' (now that's what I call a sick name).
Jarvis Trophy (78)
Having now ditched the Swiss knock-out format we played a simple Swiss in which the number of wins was counted and the old points system abandoned. This meant that any player winning five out of six could technically be the runner-up in the competition if a 7th round was unnecessary, as the criteria for deciding positions was to be based upon the number of wins your opponents scored. However, in the end we played a 7th round decider between the two players who had each scored six wins out of six matches - it being decided that a play-off was better and fairer than looking at the opponent's wins.
Simon K. Jones was very quickly through his six matches and awaited the result of the match between Jeff Ellis (who made a very welcome return to Biba) and John Slattery. It was Jeff who emerged from the match to meet Simon in the final.
The final swung back and forth until eventually Jeff was leading 10-9 Crawford, a match from which he emerged to take the Jarvis Trophy. Jeff now joins David Levi as a UK Finals 2000 qualifier. Also, despite a two year gap, Jeff also became our 7th 1000-to-1 winner having won ten 11-point matches in a row. Not a bad comeback, Jeff! Well done.
The Top Intermediate winner was Stefanie Rohan, who I am sure, will go on to much greater things and might well be our first female champion.
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