Auckland Matchplay Champs 2007
Preliminary Round - Eileen McLean Memorial

Report by Liz Fagerlund
Howard Warner has been very keen to run a Matchplay scrabble competition which starts as a tournament, and from that tournament players play knock out rounds -16, then 8, then 4 then the last 2 battle it out for the title of Auckland Match play champion. This sort of competition is held in other countries and Howard had participated in the preliminary round of an Australian one, but was unable to continue, as he returned to NZ. I helped Howard with the organisation beforehand and running the competition on the day, as well as both of us playing. Eileen was remembered at the start of the tourney – she won the Swiss draw pub tourney that Howard and I ran last year, and she would have certainly been a starter for this one had she still been with us.

34 players took part in the first Auckland Matchplay champs held on 17 February – they were players from ratings in the 2000s down to players with ratings in the 600s and one was in his first NZ tournament. The format was a Swiss draw with no repeats, and all players in one grade. It was hoped that players would enjoy this, as it gave them an opportunity to play people they would not usually play at tournaments. Needless to say, there were upsets in several games, with players having wins against opponents who would normally be a grade or more above them at a regular tournament. People were fantastic with helping set up tables, put out contributions for the shared lunch (which were many and varied and enough to feed several more – fantastic spread!), doing dishes and helping pack up at the end. There were 3 laptops set up for word checking and players did their own checking -this worked very well. Howard Glenda and I shared the task of putting in scores and printing off the next round. We managed 8 games and were out of the venue, all packed and cleaned up by 5.30.

 

Results
Place Name Wins Spread
1 Andrew Bradley 8 462
2 Glynis Jennings 7 893
3 Howard Warner 6 1142
4 Janice Cherry 5 431
5 Patrick Carter 5 395
6 John Foster 5 346
7 Denise le Bron 5 154
8 Chris Hooks 5 117
9 Lawson Sue 5 80
10 Selena Chan 5 64
11 Liz Fagerlund 5 -21
12 Rosalind Phillips 5 -22
13 Jennifer Smith 4 344
14 Margaret Cherry 4 225
15 Roger French 4 135
16 Chris Higgins 4 91
17 Liz Catchpole 4 -2
18 Anderina McLean 4 -9
19 Ernie Gidman 4 -123
20 Glenda Foster 4 -169
21 Val Mills 4 -198
22 Kate Wignall 4 -406
23 Lynn Carter 3 -32
24 Scott Thiemann 3 -65
25 Bernie Jardine 3 -180
26 Marianne Patchett 3 -279
27 Pat Bryan 3 -314
28 Mary Gray 3 -339
29 Su Walker 3 -424
30 Karen Miller 2 -231
31 Valma Gidman 2 -241
32 Olwen Skelton 2 -264
33 Bernice Hyde 2 -772
34 Margaret Hanson 1 -778

 

Prizes

Prizes were all cash prizes - all the money paid for entries, after taking out a few expenses – hall hire etc, went back to 17 of the 34 players in prize money. We decided that nobody could have more than 1 cash prize – hence the money was distributed amongst more players. 1st to 6th all got prizes.

Other prizes

person moving up the most number of places from their starting place before game 1 – Chris Higgins moved from 28th to 16th.
2nd best mover – Scott Thiemann moved from 34th up to 24th.
High game Pat Bryan 541
High word Rosalind Phillips – 130 – equality
2 letter word – Anderina McLean – 46 zo
3 letter word – Selena Chan – 48 kex
4 letter word – Lawson Su – 68 flex
Low winning score – Glenda Foster – 332
Compound word – Liz Fagerlund – 59 toenails
High non-bonus word – 80 razees
Unusual word – Chris Hooks – wirra

Notable achievements

There were 18 games where a player scored over 500 points – Howard did it four times (including a 654, but as he already had a prize the high game score prize went to someone else), Glynis also had 4 games over 500. Chris Hooks had 2, Margaret Cherry, Janice Cherry, Andrew Bradley, Lynn Carter, Jennifer Smith, John Foster & Scott Thiemann all had 1 over 500 game.