Wednesday, January 04, 2017

Four Tournaments and a Distraction

We’ve arrived in the new year with a vengeance. I’ve got a bunch of tournaments in a row, and been attending to all of them. Except one.

The one is Bigle X. This is one of the events where other people do all the work and all I do is tabulate. To suggest that Kaz knows what she is doing running a tournament is to suggest that the sun rises in the east. Of course, at Bigle she is responsible for everything, and everything is a lot of stuff, so Vaughan and Bro John and I do the tabbing for the LD divisions and she keeps her hands off the equipment. I know that a lot of tabbers who run tournaments find themselves sucked into tabbing, but I’ve always maintained that he who tabs his own tournament has an idiot for a tabber. There’s too many other things that might come up. If nothing else, a tournament director needs to be making sure that the rounds are happening, that runners are checking that all is well and whatnot. Until we have universal understanding that the start button in tabroom.com means that you have started the round, and that pressing it indicates this to the tab room, we will need human intervention. Not to mention that a TD needs to make sure there’s coffee in the judges' lounge, ziti in the cafeteria and no floods in the rest rooms. Among other things. If someone collapses in a heap suffering from dengue fever, the TD must address it. If there are procedural challenges, hello TD. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Meanwhile V and BJ and I are sitting on our duffs studying the tropical fish in the tab room (although we’ve been promised comfier chairs albeit less wildlife this year). I’d rather tab than direct any day. No question about it.

Then there’s the two colleges. The Gem of Harlem is in two weeks, for pete’s sake, and we still don’t have room confirmations. Try managing a waitlist with no idea how much space you have. Penn is in the same situation, but at least they’re not for another month. I’ve shut down TBAs for both this week, and will be playing the game of numbers for a while as we await confirmation. As I’ve pointed out many times, nothing engenders emails asking if coaches will be getting slots than an announcement on my part that I don’t know if coaches will be getting slots. In any case, I’m muddling through with these. If you really want to know what’s going on, follow me here. Anything else is just rumor.

And finally there’s Baby Bump. Registration was going slow for this, so I figured I needed to take steps. I sent out a message to local people whose tournaments I run pretty much telling them to kiss Menick goodbye if they didn’t register by Friday. Needless to say, they began registering, and things there are looking fine. I’ve pretty much promised that next year we’ll go back to two days. They’ll be ready for it.

Oh yeah. The distraction. I’ve really become enamored of my PS4. I finished Uncharted 4, and started on a Lego game. Apples and potato chips, as they don’t say. I liked U4 a lot and bought the 1-3 set to play at a future date. The thing is, if you buy a new game, it’s maybe $60, and if you buy last year’s game, it’s maybe $20. If you’re wondering what I’m doing when I’m not pairing rounds, I’m probably playing last year’s game.

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