Scottish Championships 2015 - Day 7 - My Life is now Complete

17th July, 2015  will be a day I will remember forever.  This is my 8th Scottish Championship as an arbiter and for the first time ever since I became an arbiter 11 or 12 years ago,  I have finally won a pairing argument with Alex!  I can now retire happily as an arbiter as there is nothing else left for me to do!

Happy days :D   I can dine out on that forever!

The boards decided to misbehave today.  It started fine but after a power surge, I lost all of the wireless boards.  Did the usual, recycled the power and rebooted the boards.  2 failed to come on :(.  20 minutes later and I was down to 1 not working but try as I might, it would not come on.

Bizarrely the board started working again, however it was from a later part of the game which made no sense at all!  As the boards are battery powered, it should have retained the memory.  It was like the board had lost power.

Typically the game was the last to finish so I had to wait until I got the scoresheets so I could enter the moves up to when the board came back and the rest would fall in automatically.  Finally the mystery was solved.  The players told me that the connection to the board had come out during play and that they had connected it when they noticed!!

Of course it begs the question, WHODUNNIT!!!

I was grateful to them for plugging the board back in, it saved me putting 60 moves in!

After todays play, unless the top 3 boards all draw tomorrow, it is likely that the overall winner will come from there.  6 different countries between them (and not one Scot!)

The top 2 seeds face off on board 1 and are a half point ahead of boards 2 and 3

 1 v 2, it is surprising how often that doesn't happen in a tournament!

There is a whole host of players vying for the Scottish Crown and some multiple winners amongst them. There are 10 players on 5 points, sitting a point behind the leaders.  All are either Scots or qualify to be Scottish Champion!  Looks like a tiebreak will be needed again to determine the winner.  Then again, there are 2 rounds to go so who knows what will happen!

Who will it be?  As my son would say, "Daddy, there are 2 sleeps to go!" Facing off we have..

Pleasingly, there are 3 untitled players in the group.  How many will still be there tomorrow?


Finally for the evening, I like to take photos at unusual angles.  here are a couple I took today (for a bonus, name the 2 players, one of whom is now known as Mr Pinkie!).  Enjoy