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2008 German Open

2008 German Table Championship

The 2008 German Open was held on 26-27 January, 2008 in Berlin, Germany. Organized by Klaus Quecke and Susi Rieger, it was the 4th German Table Championship. It had the distinction of being the first Tantrix Table Tournament of 2008. Thirty-three entrants from eight different countries took part. The trophy will spend the next year in Great Britain with winner Rick Yagodich.

1. Place:  Rick Yagodich (UK)
2. Place:  Zoltán Németh (HUN)
3. Place:  László Szobonya (HUN)



  More photos

The Champion speaks

Berlin: the city on which much of the last two centuries of European history has pivoted.

Preliminary arrangements were a bit confused, or maybe I simply misunderstood the options when I registered a year ago. Anyhow, the troops were a little spread out this time round, scattered amongst various hotels, hostels and free accommodation.

Anyhow, I got in early on Friday - I felt something of a duty, being in a city I had not visited before that I must give my camera some exercise. Most of my time was spent in the Tiergarten - a wooden park that stretches westwards from what is now the centre of the city. The de rigeur attractions were taken in: Brandenberg Gate, Reichstag, Checkpoint Charlie.

But that's enough of my doings. The tournament. It started with a restaurant meeting and a mass exodus to the Pergamon Museum, complete with guided tour. The Germans are quite proud of their museums, and given the artefacts gathered in that one small part we saw, I can understand why. Back at the restaurant, the obligations of the draw went ahead... with complicated guidelines in place to ensure that no one group was overloaded with half of any particular nationality. Luckily, those guidelines were not breached, though one group did end up with quite a few Hungarians in it.

With less than the usual supply of other games to be played, we all headed off in our respective directions relatively early. In other words, I was back at my hotel before midnight; such is unheard of at an self-respecting Tantrix tournament.

Most of Saturday's groups offered a clear contest at the top end - there were sufficient contenders that the top two spots were not assured. Simply looking at some of the names in the second group shows how tough the contest was: Lennart (Pellepen), Zsófi (kissali), Matthias (voogel), Ben (benopi). I had no particular surprises on Saturday, except that I played one move stupidly against Tristan (karatekid) which allowed him to take the game from me by three tiles. Coincidentally, he finished at the bottom of the last group on Sunday - an interesting quirk of my results. My other loss was to Attila Mikulán (blick), who was the highest seed in the group. My overall result: second.

The other groups were generally dominated by the various Hungarian contingents, resulting in the top group consisting of myself, Marek (1kornik21) and six Hungarians. There is no denying that they have some of the strongest players around.

Before we moved on to Sunday... another restaurant awaited us for the evening; a rather cosy little place with a very high turnover of patrons. As well as the obligatory food (yes, we do eat occasionally) there was an assortment of games and similar distractions in play. Most notable amongst these was the Rubik's Magic - also notable was Malin's (Malle) expertise transforming it between the two configurations (a personal best of 1.6 seconds) - and a Trax bag which got turned into a Jenga.

Again, I got a full night's sleep. This may have been the critical factor. The other candidate is an idea someone suggested to me on Saturday of not bothering to look at the results during the day. No way to worry about how my position was evolving.

I set myself a target. Finish the day 5-2. Given the stiffness of the competition, that would be a good result. And wherever I ended up from that, so be it. If one of the others pulled off a 7-0, that was their prerogative. And indeed, twice the games went my oppeonents' way: against Mária (egmaria) who happened to finish last in the group, and top seed Tamás (tommg). I did not realise that throughout most of the day, I was leading the group.

When I finally checked the table after my last game, I discovered that the result would depend on Zoltán (Zormac)'s final result. He needed a large win to get ahead of me. Taking a peek at his game, I saw it was not possible. My lead was secure. And the Hungarian's inability to claim the German crown remained. Phew.

Following the award ceremony, about half of us made our way to yet another restaurant to cap off the weekend. It did seem to be a rather raucous affair. But the food was excellent, and the company top notch.

Monday - well, it's not like the experience ends until one gets home, is it? - I got in a visit to the East Side Gallery, that portion of the wall that still stands, where graffiti tourists have shown their disregard for history and the more artistic decorations adorning the great idealogical divide. This was followed by a stint at the Berlin zoo... I had to see what all the fuss with Knut was about. Despite the guide book saying that it was one of the most spacious and ethical zoos around, it came across to me as one of the most constricted and unpleasant I have seen anywhere. Then off to the airport, where we were delayed something like four hours because the inbound plane from London wasn't able to take off due to fog...

My photos can be found by clicking here. (Warning, there are none of the actual tournament)

Rick Yagodich

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Last update: September, 2010