Jim Kramer's Spectacular Tournament Stories

2 - The Mother of All Overdraws

The 1995 Minneapolis tournament turned out to be quite interesting. Going into the last round, Lisa Odom and I were tied at 9-0-2! I got a good jump on her in the finale, and with about 50 tiles played I had shut the board down to where there were few places left to play. (With Lisa having played both blanks, killing the board had not been as simple as usual.) There were three bingo spots. One had to end in an X (hooking EAU), another had to end in a K (hooking VETCH). The third was a juicy spot, so I blocked that, keeping on my rack letters that could block either of the other spots. The board was otherwise totally dead. My hand was still in the bag drawing tiles when Lisa's eyes suddenly flashed and she passed one tile.

"Pass one?" I said as she punched her clock. Shocked, I spilled the contents of the tile bag. "I guess I overdrew," I said sheepishly. A couple of tiles remained in the bag. "Hell," I said, spilling them out, "I may as well draw them all."

Spotting a few ugly tiles, Lisa gave them to me. I noticed, though, that she didn't give me any of the three U's that had landed right near my rack. She made a move to start returning the rest of the tiles to the bag.

"I hate to be a stickler for the rules," I said, "but Section III.C.1 states that you must look at the overdrawn tiles and show them to me."

After seeing all the tiles, I determined her rack to have been BCJKMQU. She was undoubtedly exchanging the Q in hopes of another U. I blocked the K spot, then the X spot, and won the tourney. It was a milestone of sorts for me--my 100th tournament victory! I also won the good sportsmanship award!