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tropicurl!
The past three bonspiels I've gone to, I've made it to the first event final and then lost; at last year's Tropicurl in just five or six ends, then at the Funspiel in eight where we were doing okay except for one very bad end, and then at the Cherry Blossom in eight where ditto. This year, we went to the Tropicurl big event final and won!, which is the first time I've won a grown-up bonspiel (having previously won the big event at five-and-under bonspiels, and lower events at five-and-unders and ordinary spiels), so I want to record what happened before I forget the details. :-)
Friday morning our first game was at 8am, which is gross. Our opponent was a team from Madison that had been the first-event runner-up two years ago; we played well and they struggled, and we were comfortably in the lead when we ran out of time (the rule was we couldn't begin another end later than 1h50 after our starting time, so we came in after seven). 1-0.
Our next game was against a team from Mayfield, and we played like crap. We can't really be said to have won that game; we just missed slightly fewer shots than they did, and so we didn't lose. 2-0, also in seven.
Saturday morning we were back on the ice at 8am, which totally sucked! Our opponent was a team from the Toronto area, two older couples, who had heard of us and were intimidated going in. And we handled them relatively easily; I think we could have played eight ends by the clock, but they conceded after seven.
Then our fourth game was against a team skipped by the guy who beat us last year, but with a whole new team in front of him. The ice was doing wiggy things and we couldn't stay on top of it; we didn't play as badly as we'd played on Friday evening, but they played way better than Friday evening's opponents; we were down three after seven, and they ran us out of rocks in the eighth.
This year there was an extra feature of the draw. The tournament is capped at 48 teams, which you'll note is not a power of two - so you've either got two brackets of 24, for four brackets of 12 in each of which four have a bye through to the second round (or, alternatively, eight have to play an extra "play-in" game in a sort of zeroth round), so you eventually - after three rounds if you've got the bye, or four if you have to do the play-in - shake out to four semifinalists; or, you've got three brackets of sixteen, which means after four rounds you've only got three semifinalists. In previous years they've done the first thing, but this year they did the second. But, they said it wouldn't be at all right to give one of the three undefeated teams a bye into the final - everyone has to play a semifinal - so they borrowed a trick from NASCAR by which if there is a yellow flag or some other happening I don't quite remember, the first car that's a full lap behind the leader gets the lap back. In this case, what they did was, the three of us who had lost in the fourth round were entered in a draw for a reprieve back into the first event. Dude!
We were ranked according to how badly we'd lost our fourth-round game: one of the teams had only lost by one point, and one had lost by four, so we were the second-ranked team no matter whether we'd lost by three or by two (since we were counting one at the time we were mathematically eliminated). The coordinator put three objects in a grab bag, two like and one unlike - in this case, two chocolate pudding cups and one vanilla. The skip of the top-ranked losing team was allowed the first choice of whether he wanted to draw or wait - and he chose to wait, because with all three objects in the bag, he had a 33.333...% chance of picking the vanilla pudding, but with only two left, assuming the first one picked had been a chocolate, he had a 50% chance of picking vanilla. So the choice then came to my skip, did he want to pick first and take the one-in-three odds, or let the last-ranked losing skip pick first, and take the chance that both the other guys would pick chocolate. Our skip chose to pick first, and after keeping his hand in that grab bag for quite a while, came out with ... vanilla pudding! We were resurrected into the first event! We cheered and applauded! And then realized that meant we had to play a third game on Saturday! Wait, was this a good or a bad thing!
So we were in to the first-event semifinal. They ranked the undefeated teams according to how many points they'd won by, so there was no chance we could face the team that had just beat us again right in a row. Instead, we got the team that had won by four points in their fourth-round game - in other words, we were the fourth-seeded semifinalist, and they put us in against the first-seeded semifinalist, which makes complete sense. The back end of that team were the couple that, with a different front end, had beat three of us in the Cherry Blossom in March, but this time, we played well and they struggled a little bit, and we won in six ends (though we noted that although we were in the lead the whole time, we never felt like we were safely in control - they could have come back at any time).
The team that had just beat us in the fourth round won their semifinal, so it was time for a Sunday rematch in the trophy round!
Sunday, the ice was crazy fast and wicked straight outside-in (but really not at all off the center line), and somehow we sussed it out earlier than they did. We won the toss and took the hammer, and they held us to one - but then we stole one in the second end and stole two in the third, for an early 4-0 lead, which made us feel a little better, though still not obviously like we were walking away with it. The fourth end - oy. We were doing really well, counting two, but suddenly it turned out that although we had two rocks in scoring positions, they had four rocks in the house, and if this went bad for us, it was going to go really bad really fast. Then we missed a hit and they made one, and we had one rock in the house and they had five. We made a draw and we had two and they had five, and things were getting scary, and bottom line, when their skip was in the hack, he was trying a risky but not impossible hit that if it had worked out would have left him with six. Eep! Fortunately, he only got three out of it. I've never been so relieved to give up three points in my life. We were kind of shaken by that, and they stole two in the fifth, so now we're down 5-4 with three ends to play. Not a disaster. We tried to play the sixth to take one, and skip's last shot didn't go the way it should have - we got the hit but rolled out for a blank end, so now we're down 5-4 with two ends to play. Still not a disaster. We tried to play the seventh clean, and skip's last shot didn't go the way it should have - we got the hit but didn't roll out, so now we're tied coming home without the hammer, which is Not Ideal, especially against this team. But we played a great eighth end, forcing them to use up most of their rocks peeling our guards, and at the very end, all we'd left the other skip was a very difficult heavy draw around a guard to get to our shot rock, which he couldn't see, in the hope of moving it far enough that his rock would count - and he was not able to do this, as his shooter got outside the line he wanted and he'd thrown it with too much weight anyway. Steal of one in the eighth, and a Lucky Dog champion is us!
We have a picture of the four of us on the ice with the pudding cup on the button. :-)
Friday morning our first game was at 8am, which is gross. Our opponent was a team from Madison that had been the first-event runner-up two years ago; we played well and they struggled, and we were comfortably in the lead when we ran out of time (the rule was we couldn't begin another end later than 1h50 after our starting time, so we came in after seven). 1-0.
Our next game was against a team from Mayfield, and we played like crap. We can't really be said to have won that game; we just missed slightly fewer shots than they did, and so we didn't lose. 2-0, also in seven.
Saturday morning we were back on the ice at 8am, which totally sucked! Our opponent was a team from the Toronto area, two older couples, who had heard of us and were intimidated going in. And we handled them relatively easily; I think we could have played eight ends by the clock, but they conceded after seven.
Then our fourth game was against a team skipped by the guy who beat us last year, but with a whole new team in front of him. The ice was doing wiggy things and we couldn't stay on top of it; we didn't play as badly as we'd played on Friday evening, but they played way better than Friday evening's opponents; we were down three after seven, and they ran us out of rocks in the eighth.
This year there was an extra feature of the draw. The tournament is capped at 48 teams, which you'll note is not a power of two - so you've either got two brackets of 24, for four brackets of 12 in each of which four have a bye through to the second round (or, alternatively, eight have to play an extra "play-in" game in a sort of zeroth round), so you eventually - after three rounds if you've got the bye, or four if you have to do the play-in - shake out to four semifinalists; or, you've got three brackets of sixteen, which means after four rounds you've only got three semifinalists. In previous years they've done the first thing, but this year they did the second. But, they said it wouldn't be at all right to give one of the three undefeated teams a bye into the final - everyone has to play a semifinal - so they borrowed a trick from NASCAR by which if there is a yellow flag or some other happening I don't quite remember, the first car that's a full lap behind the leader gets the lap back. In this case, what they did was, the three of us who had lost in the fourth round were entered in a draw for a reprieve back into the first event. Dude!
We were ranked according to how badly we'd lost our fourth-round game: one of the teams had only lost by one point, and one had lost by four, so we were the second-ranked team no matter whether we'd lost by three or by two (since we were counting one at the time we were mathematically eliminated). The coordinator put three objects in a grab bag, two like and one unlike - in this case, two chocolate pudding cups and one vanilla. The skip of the top-ranked losing team was allowed the first choice of whether he wanted to draw or wait - and he chose to wait, because with all three objects in the bag, he had a 33.333...% chance of picking the vanilla pudding, but with only two left, assuming the first one picked had been a chocolate, he had a 50% chance of picking vanilla. So the choice then came to my skip, did he want to pick first and take the one-in-three odds, or let the last-ranked losing skip pick first, and take the chance that both the other guys would pick chocolate. Our skip chose to pick first, and after keeping his hand in that grab bag for quite a while, came out with ... vanilla pudding! We were resurrected into the first event! We cheered and applauded! And then realized that meant we had to play a third game on Saturday! Wait, was this a good or a bad thing!
So we were in to the first-event semifinal. They ranked the undefeated teams according to how many points they'd won by, so there was no chance we could face the team that had just beat us again right in a row. Instead, we got the team that had won by four points in their fourth-round game - in other words, we were the fourth-seeded semifinalist, and they put us in against the first-seeded semifinalist, which makes complete sense. The back end of that team were the couple that, with a different front end, had beat three of us in the Cherry Blossom in March, but this time, we played well and they struggled a little bit, and we won in six ends (though we noted that although we were in the lead the whole time, we never felt like we were safely in control - they could have come back at any time).
The team that had just beat us in the fourth round won their semifinal, so it was time for a Sunday rematch in the trophy round!
Sunday, the ice was crazy fast and wicked straight outside-in (but really not at all off the center line), and somehow we sussed it out earlier than they did. We won the toss and took the hammer, and they held us to one - but then we stole one in the second end and stole two in the third, for an early 4-0 lead, which made us feel a little better, though still not obviously like we were walking away with it. The fourth end - oy. We were doing really well, counting two, but suddenly it turned out that although we had two rocks in scoring positions, they had four rocks in the house, and if this went bad for us, it was going to go really bad really fast. Then we missed a hit and they made one, and we had one rock in the house and they had five. We made a draw and we had two and they had five, and things were getting scary, and bottom line, when their skip was in the hack, he was trying a risky but not impossible hit that if it had worked out would have left him with six. Eep! Fortunately, he only got three out of it. I've never been so relieved to give up three points in my life. We were kind of shaken by that, and they stole two in the fifth, so now we're down 5-4 with three ends to play. Not a disaster. We tried to play the sixth to take one, and skip's last shot didn't go the way it should have - we got the hit but rolled out for a blank end, so now we're down 5-4 with two ends to play. Still not a disaster. We tried to play the seventh clean, and skip's last shot didn't go the way it should have - we got the hit but didn't roll out, so now we're tied coming home without the hammer, which is Not Ideal, especially against this team. But we played a great eighth end, forcing them to use up most of their rocks peeling our guards, and at the very end, all we'd left the other skip was a very difficult heavy draw around a guard to get to our shot rock, which he couldn't see, in the hope of moving it far enough that his rock would count - and he was not able to do this, as his shooter got outside the line he wanted and he'd thrown it with too much weight anyway. Steal of one in the eighth, and a Lucky Dog champion is us!
We have a picture of the four of us on the ice with the pudding cup on the button. :-)