Tuesday, April 05, 2011

In which some tournaments are dragged and dropped on the calendar

One nice unexpected benefit of the State tournament was getting a chance to talk to Monticello’s RJT. Since her retirement from the field of forensics (but not from her teaching job) I’ve really only seen her on her home turf. This was a good opportunity to look at next year’s schedule and sort out a few things, namely, the positioning of the Monti MHL where it’s always been, followed by our taking a look at the Monti invitational. This has, since the beginning of time and perhaps even before, always occurred on Columbus Day weekend. But this year that weekend is right in the middle of the Jewish holidays, so an executive decision was made to move the invitational to the previous weekend, which is of course the earlier Jewish holiday, but the impact seemed less, and the day off on Friday would allow us to get an early start, so there you are. The best of a bad situation, simply put. As I’ve discussed with O’C in the past when the Vassar RR could have potentially fallen on the holidays, there is always the prospect of a special “Goyim Only” event, but no one has ever taken me up on that for some reason. Go figure.

Speaking of the VassaRR, I think O’C also declared what weekend that would fall on. (All of this is posted on my various schedules.) He’s been talking about holding it in NYC, but still under the Vassar auspices, to make it easier for people to get there from far afield. Makes sense to me. I have to admit, though, that I’m a little RRed out. I mean, there seems to be a round robin nowadays with almost every tournament. I can understand why it’s done, as an attempt to attract stronger competition, but that does tend to be the usual suspects week after week, and it does turn weekend tournaments into endless affairs and one wonders about regular old school after a while. The good news for me is that next year I’ll not be in the thrall of any usual suspect, so at least my calendar will be clear. I’ll miss Bean Trivia at Lexington, though.

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