Jim Kramer's Spectacular Tournament Stories
6 - The Mother of All Blocks
The end of the 1997 Cincinnati Masters tournament was quite interesting. I've been inundated with e-mail asking how young upstart Jim Geary stopped my 12-tournament win streak. As I'm sure you all know, we met in the final round to determine the champion. Though I had crushed the Jimster each of the numerous times we'd played, he seemed to have learned from those defeats. In fact, he'd had nine consecutive 500+ games (including two losses to me) leading up to our encounter. He was quite cocky about it, so much so that before the game he bet whatever prize money he would win against whatever prize money I would win that he'd hit 500 in this game as well. After Jim made the nice 9-letter play TWANGLING, I found myself down by 8 points with 1 tile remaining in the bag. I wasn't too worried, though, since he had not blocked my 176-point play, nor was he very close to 500. Remembering the motto, "See a good play, look for a better play," and having plenty of time in the endgame as I always do, I surveyed the board. "Double or nothing on our bet?" JG asked, rudely interrupting me on my time. "Well, I haven't really tracked the tiles on my sheet yet, but it seems unlikely that you'll hit 500," I said. "Sure, double or nothing." Jim eagerly shook my hand, perhaps forgetting that I don't need paper to track the tiles. The position is shown below. My rack was ABEIRTY. The remaining tiles, amazingly, were ABEIRTY?. I trailed 338-346. What did I play? The answer after a brief interlude.
(COMMERCIAL TIME) Hi, everybody, this is the simulated voice of Alfred Butts. Follow all the action of the World Scrabble Championships here on cgp. All your favorite players--and Jim Geary too!--will be duking it out in our nation's capital. And for those of you out there who have been or are about to be thrown off welfare: invent a game! It worked for me. Until next time, keep your seat on the chair and keep reaching for the blanks. (END OF STORY BELOW) Of course, I saw immediately that YTTERBIA at either O1 or A8 would win only 3 of the 8 possible endgames, since Jim would play the same triple-triple in response. Passing would win 7 out of 8 times if Jim played a triple-triple, but he could pass back if not do better. Instead I played ATHEISTICALLY 8B 29, amazingly blocking both the A and O columns. I didn't even mind grabbing the B out of the bag, one of 2 tiles that could cost me the game. After Jim's face patriotically turned red, white and blue, he regained his composure and began to slap down his winning play. "Are you sure you can afford to do that?" I asked. "After all, you're about to owe me twice your prize money. That's $20,000 if you win. If you lose, you only owe me $1,600." Like a true champion, though, JG played EYESTRAIN 13A 62, his second straight 9-letter word, winning the championship. He turned the $10,000 prize over to me, saying that he didn't know where he would get $10,000 more, but that he always pays his debts. I gave a dismissive wave of my hand. "Forget it," I said. "Or if you really feel you must pay, just send it along with the next JG Newsletter."