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Sidorsky, H. Settle, Aitken win Spring Tny

We had 32 players come out to the 14th Annual Spring Tournament, divided into group sizes of 8, 6, and 18 in divisions 1, 2 and 3, respectively.

Division 1

In division 1, the field was weaker than usual with several top players missing this tournament, but it was still a good field that was fairly evenly-matched in terms of skill, even though the ratings were all over the map.

The eventual top 3 finishers got out to early good starts. After day 1, the standings had Paul Sidorsky 1 game ahead of Lam Tang and Siri Tillekeratne. Day 2 saw Paul jump out 2 games clear of everyone else after beating Lam in the 2nd round-robin, needing to win only one more to essentially clinch. However, top seed Mike Ryan beat Paul next round while Lam won, narrowing the gap. For the last two King-of-the-Hill rounds, it was Paul and Lam again. If Paul won he would win the tournament, while if Lam won it would set up a rematch to play for the championship.

Lam won the first game handily. The second game was a back-and-forth affair with neither playing missing a beat, and in the end it really just came down to luck. Paul's late bingo clinched the tournament for his first ever Calgary multi-day tournament victory in div 1. However Lam still ended up second, an impressive performance considering he was seeded in the middle but actually rated second-last, having just come off a poor result in Vancouver.

Meanwhile, Wendy McGrath, the lowest seed who was brought up to even the division, also had a great showing. After a sluggish start she made a late charge to end up in 4th. She needed to beat Siri, who had slipped slightly, to make the money, but Siri took the last game to finish third, preserving the finishing order from the first day.

Divison 2

Huguette Settle ran away with Division 2 and had to be Gibsonized. Huguette won 12 of the 14 games. Congratulations to her! She gave Betty a run for her money and beat her every time, coming up with a bingo towards the very end of the game - the last game costing an additional 32 points because Betty was stuck with a number of tiles.

Brendan Huang, Betty Bergeron and George McWhinnie tied 7-7, however Brendan came second with the best spread of +369, followed by Betty +235 and George +201.

Dorothy Klovan is someone to fear! Although only winning 5 of the 14 games, her rating increased 27 points.

And Julie Kading struggled but came out ahead in her rating as well. Winning 4 games her rating increased to slightly.

And last, but not least, Division 2 was the only Division to hand in perfect tally sheets for computer input. Congratulations to Division 2!!!

Divison 3

In Division 3, John Aitken from Vancouver started the event with a perfect score on Saturday at 8/8. Terri Morigeau was close behind at 7/8. In the second day, they both slipped a few times, allowing tournament newcomer Shandy Booth and also Sam Settle (of Edmonton) and Juraj Pivovarov to catch up.

Going into the final round, we saw

John Aitken,    10  /13, +100ish
Juraj Pivovarov, 9  /13, +600ish
Terri Morigeau,  9  /13, +200ish
Sam Settle,      8.5/13, +300ish
Shandy Booth,    8.5/13, +300ish
Marion Dimond,   8.0/13, +100ish

John played Juraj, Terri played Sam, and Shandy played Marion (who had 8.0/13).

Shandy won his game against Marion Dimond, giving him 3rd place. Terri won against Sam, clinching 2nd spot. She won two games in the tournament by 2 points demonstrating very alert endgame play. John, despite his great early lead, still risked getting only 3rd place with a loss, as Juraj and Terri would have beat him on the spread. However, he won an exciting game in a come-from-behind fashion, and won the division with the only score of 11/14.

Congratulations to everyone in a hard-fought division 3.