Below are the 7 most recent journal entries recorded in einroy's LiveJournal:

Sunday, August 6th, 2006
2:15 pm	Sunday Morning - Rounds 8-11 Sunday brought undefeated Jim Kramer to Table 1 for the morning and the potential for a battle of undefeateds in Round 11 when Joey Mallick would be rotating through. Unfornately our dream match up was not to be. You know how some people think other people are their good luck charms. I'm apparently not Jim's. First through was Lloyd Mills who had to have a bit of tailoring done as he had lost a button on his shirt. He wanted to be sure he looked his best for our live internet audience. His opening play looked good as he dropped FITTERS on the board before Jim had even drawn his letters. From there they traded 20-30 points plays until Jim was able to hop back into the game PANDOReS through an O. Need to shut down computer. More here later (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 5th, 2006
10:12 pm	Saturday Afternoon As my wife will attest sitting still is not one of the things I'm good at. 7 rounds of sitting still is starting to take a toll on my back and neck. I must say it is somewhat difficult to come up with interesting anecdotes to pass along as you can see the games I see live almost as soon as I do. We had Panupol at Table 1 for the final three games and the parade of challengers consisted of Trip Payne, Joel Sherman, and Bob Ellickson. Trip was the only one of the three to leave the table with a win. With the opening rack of ?BEIOTW, I probably would have thrown down BOWTIEs, he played the much more interesting hOWBEIT. Joel's game had a three bingo opening, two by Panupol, using one blank in each, and Joels SAHIWAL sandwiched in the middle. Joel ended up spending a long time looking for a prayer out bingo to rescue the game but there was none to be found. Game 7 ended up as a Panupol rout when his 2-blank bingo OuTBaKE put Bob in a big hole and he wasn't able to fish a bingo to a tough board. After the days games there was a nice reception for all the players and staff. Got to meet a number of people who I knew only by name or internet handle. Food was pretty good once again not quite enough for dinner though I'm certain many a player made it dinner so they could get to the after hours games. Well saddle up for 7 more tomorrow, til then adieu (1 Comment |Comment on this)
2:11 pm	Saturday Morning We're off to a rousing start. I have been surprised by the amount of concentration required to annotate games. It's surprisingly easy to miss a rack of letters if one is writing or typing something else. So far I think Steve and I have done a reasonably good job at keeping up. Our only known mistake was ending the game on the computer before we entered in the time penalty. Doesn't seem like a big deal but the 10 points changed the outcome of the game so it may have been wrong on the website until John was able to fix it. Everyone can see that games at Table 1 on the NSA's website http://www.scrabble-assoc.com so there isn't much point in me rattling off the neat bingos played (HANGFiRE jumps to memory) So I'll pass along the 2 or 3 things that won't likely show up on the site. In game 4 Panupol Sujjayakorn overdrew and Bob Linn exposed a T-O-S from his rack and of course put the S back in the bag. Also Panupol held Bob for about a minute and a half after Bob played BURD/HANGFIRED before letting it stand. For those of you who know how the pairings work you may wonder why the Round 2 game between Dan Fogel and John O'Laughlin was played at table 1. Panupol was scheduled that round to play Ira Cohen at Table 1 but Ira is on crutches and is staying at his table. We didn't realize they were playing elsewhere until after the start of the game, so we grab an available unstarted game and moved it to Table 1 for annotation. Foods been great so far, I'm looking forward to the reception tonight. Time to get back to my chair. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, August 4th, 2006
5:15 pm	I have arrived I had hoped to have entries in here already but finding internet access along the way proved troublesome. 7 hours of flying and a generous offer of a ride by Michael Rhodes has landed me at the beautiful Arizona Biltmore. As someone who has never been west of the Mississippi (ok I went to Texas once as a kid, but I don't remember much.) I've noticed to things immediately about the desert southwest. 1) It's more beautiful than I imagined. 2) The phrase " but it's a dry heat" is a lie, it's still just hot. The rooms are in arranged by "villas" with 4 rooms to a villa. The one I'm in has an awesome view of the mountains behind the resort. It also has a bathroom larger than the room itself. The only negatives so far are that the room is quite a distance from the playing room, and the aforementioned heat makes the walk a bit uncomfortable. Second, being the calliber of resort that it is the food on site is pretty high price wise. I'm typing this from inside the playing room after helping Sherrie Saint John with some of the computer setups. I think those of you who are playing tomorrow will be pleased by the playing room. It is spacious, well lit, and I think will server quite well for the USSO. After getting up at 4:30 AM EST to catch my flight out of Erie, 5:30 PST is beginning to feel awfully late. The only thing better than seeing hundreds the of SCRABBLE boards set out in the playing room will be seeing twice that number of people playing on them. See you all tomorrow (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 1st, 2006
3:45 pm	Blogging the National Scrabble Championships (USSO) I’m hoping that while I’m in Phoenix for the USSO I’ll have a chance to blog the event for you the home viewer. I’m going to be annotating the first board so I should have some stories to pass along. I’ve never been to a Nationals and am really glad that I have the opportunity to attend even if it isn’t as a player. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to get to a tournament and I don’t really want to play in a Nationals until I’m at a respectable rating. (Comment on this)
3:44 pm	USSO I figured it was time I got a Scrabble related post up. I’m pretty excited that this August will be my first opportunity to attend an National Scrabble tournament. I’m not going to play though. It’s been about 2 years since I’ve been able to make an actual tourament and pretty certain that I’m much to rusty to be competitive even in the lower divisions. So I’ve signed on as an annotator for the event. The stipend that being an annotator provides is actually what is allowing me to go, otherwise I doubt I could afford the airfare and weeks hotel costs. It’s the perfect situation really, I get to see Scrabble played at the highest level, get to see all my Scrabble friends from acrossed the world, and all this without the pressure and expense of playing. (Comment on this)
3:32 pm	Why here? Good Question. Why since I already have a blog running at blog.einroy.com would I start one here too. Well it's simple really I have a number of Scrabble related things I wanted to get posted and made available for other Scrabblers but I didn't want to clutter the Scrabble content with the non-Scrabble stuff that abounds on my regular blog. So here it is. I'll start my cross-posting my Scrabble posts from blog.einroy.com (Comment on this)