Jack Wicks won the Colchester B-Level tournament

[<<] [>>] by Colin Hemming at Colchester
8-9 May 2004 (AC)

Speaking before the tournament, Jack Wicks had said that he would like to do a triple peel at some over the weekend. In the event, he did three, including one 6th turn triple in only 32 minutes, and threw in a straight double for good measure.

The format of the tournament was Egyptian. Colin Hemming, managing his first CA event, had set the time limit at 2 hours plus 6 Wharrad turns. This is a slight bending of the tournament regulations which allow 2½ hour limits for a weekend event, and also allow the last hour of any limit to be replaced by 12 Wharrad turns. There were a few raised eyebrows when the limit was announced, but in practice it worked extremely well for this class of player (handicaps ranged from 2 to 6), and games were completed at a very satisfactory rate: everyone completed 3 games on day 1, and all those who wanted 4 completed 4. George Woolhouse very nearly completed 5, and only the manager's hunger pangs (or strictly speaking, his wife's hunger pangs) meant that his 5th game had to be pegged down at 7:15 to be completed in the first 20 minutes of play on Sunday. What we have to do to achieve marital bliss!

The overnight leader was Jack Wicks (no surprise there) on +19 points, but second place depended on the result of the pegged-down game. In the event it was won by George, who went to +9. Third place was shared by Ian Price and John Rolfe, both on +6. Note that these figures are not cumulative hoop scores, but rather net index changes on the Egyptian system: the manager had allocated different starting indexes according to handicap and so comparison of absolute index levels was meaningless. This system also worked very well for this class of event.

Sunday morning was not quite the frenetic hive of activity that the Saturday morning had been, since all the games had to be completed before the next round could be finalised; this meant that most players had a short wait. Jack and the unfortunate victim of his 32-minute triple had a rather long wait. By lunchtime Jack had completed his third triple, and his opponent in the final would be either George Woolhouse or John Rolfe, assuming that just one of them won their second game of the day. George came through again, but the
final and the tournament went to Jack +13

Special mention must be made of Mike Porter, who won his Silver Award and finished in third place. No Gold Award for Jack, he'd already won that last year, but he and George both earned handicap reductions, to 2½ and 5 respectively.