In which, after a short break, we get down to business

We spent the weekend up in Stockbridge, enjoying the retirement gift from the alums, a stay at the Red Lion Inn. We’ve been there before and love the area. It was a little on the cold side, more of a shock of the new than actual cold, given how warm it was the previous weeks, but otherwise it was fine after a little dribble of mist Saturday morning. Saw Naumkeag, a nice little Gilded Age house and garden, and Chesterwood, home of the creator of old Abe’s statue in DC and the wonderful Statue of the Republic from the '93 Columbian Exposition, et alia. French was nothing if not a big thinker. Plus of course, we visited the requisite antiques and garden shops and whatnot. A splendid time was had by all, and I’m considering retiring again to squeeze another trip out of the alums.

I had been vacillating about going to the Kaiser, because it was looking small and perfectly manageable for Kaz on her own, but I thought better of it when I realized that it’s going to be small and sort of nutty. I like nutty, the coming up with solutions that are not of the tabroom persuasion but of the tab room persuasion. How can we get these people into that round that they really don’t belong in, is a thought that requires a fairly deep cut into what can and can’t be done at a tournament. That you can torture tabroom around it is a relative given, although tabroom won't do it on its own. The fun is in figuring out what will make the teeming masses in the field happy. The rest is just overriding the defaults. Much different from the needs of running a big tournament, especially with MJP and, as we’ll have with Biggo Bronco, varying commitments. More on that as I learn it myself.        

After I got back yesterday I updated all the hired judging from BB and hired everyone out. We did pretty well. The Bronx Bigwigs, or I guess the Big Bronx Wigs, have been coming through with pretty decent coverage. I’d still like to see more, but what tab room doesn’t want infinite judging? What field doesn’t want infinite judging, for the matter? The more judges, the more likely you’ll get satisfactory prefs, and my sense is that satisfactory prefs is the top measurement device for most folks of a tournament. Debate ziti is debate ziti no matter how you slice it, a comfy judge lounge has its charms, and a schedule that would warm the heart of a cruise director is nice, but lots of 1s that are real 1s is something you can take to the forensics bank. (Then again, in my estimation of a tournament, nearness to good restaurants comes first, with nearness to Starbucks a close second, but I don’t really care who wins or loses.)

Tomorrow we fry the TBAs, and I’ll go through and find those schools who dropped their entries but not their judges, which always causes the odd burp during round 1, since there’s no device I know of to find these via tabroom other than brute force. But then again, I’m the right brute for the job.