Tournament news

[Rob Richardson]

Hello, fellow devotees of the round board!

As most of you know, the Cleveland Crokinole Club's inaugural Holiday Classic singles tournament was a rousing success!  Many thanks are due to Jim Gress for organizing the tournament and to Schnitz Ale Brewery for being their usual friendly, efficient hosts!  The 34 players included several from the top 10 in the National Crokinole Association.  They were divided into two preliminary round-robin pools in the morning, and then divided into a 10-player A pool and eight-player B, C and D pools for an afternoon round-robin.  The top 4 players in each pool played semi-final and final matches to determine the final rankings.  In the A pool, Ryan Buhr defeated Darren Van Gammeren to take top honors.  The match of the tournament was the third-place match, which pitted our own Zack Sherman against Jeremy Tracey.  Zach pulled off the upset to take third place!  A video narrated by Garrett Tracey of the semi-final match between Jeremy and Darren has already been posted.

There's a lot of tournament action coming up!  

• The Elmira Winter Crokinole Classic, an NCA Tier 1 event, will be held on Saturday, January 17th.  Detains can be found here.  Registration will close on January 14th or whenever it is full.  As of six days ago, there were still plenty of open spots.  There are competitive, recreational and cues divisions.  It takes about five hours to drive from Cleveland to Elmira.
• If Elmira is too far for you, you could visit the TGG Con gaming convention in Kittanning, PA (home of Browncastle Games) on January 17th and 18th.  Admission is only $6/day.  Details can be found here.  Of course, Browncastle will be there, as will many other games. Browncastle will be running tournaments.
• The Windsor Crokinole Tournament, an NCA Tier 2 singles event, will be held on February 28th.  Details can be found here.  Although this is not a Tier 1 event, its location ensures that plenty of top players will attend.  .It's a 3-hour drive from Cleveland, and play is scheduled to start at 10 AM.  If you're Jim Gress, you could probably drive there, play and drive back in one day.  If you're me, you may want to book a hotel for the previous night.
• Browncastle Games will be holding its annual charity tournament on March 14th to benefit the Royal Kids Camp.  It's a unique format:  players are divided into groups of eight players each.  Each group plays a St. Jacobs-style doubles match, seven 4-game rounds, changing partners each round so that every player plays against every other player and plays with every other player as their partner during the course of the match.  After the matches are complete, the two highest-scoring players from each group become permanent partners for a double-elimination match.  The tournament is promoted through Steven Brown's church, and it attracts people of all skill levels.  Kittanning is close enough that it can easily be done in one day from Cleveland.

Happy flicking!

RobR