Sunday and Monday

Despite the little rain we decided that on Sunday we would try our chance with the outdoor play at the Parc des Bastions. We just had time for one hour of play on the giants boards and some more friendly games before we got really to wet and decided to retreat to the chess club. This of course meant that we had a lot less chances to get local or passing-by players to play with us. Nevertheless, we managed to fulfill the scheduled program : four tables were joined to make an almost perfect ping-pong table (see the pictures), and we had the traditional multi-bughouse - easier to handle than usual because we played in only on four boards. Driven by FantasticCat's spirit, the evening was very competitive - almost more than Saturday's tournament ! - with a four-players simulbug round-robin (1.nabla, 2.Tjeulesbetes, 3.FantasticCat, 4.RalfiZoller), followed by some hard-fought matches between the same four players. FantasticCat's constant stamina until late in the night was impressive, while the three other players ended quite exhausted.

Monday was Murphy's day. The weather forecast was worse than on Sunday, so that we decided to go straight for the chess club. But we were unfortunately welcomed by three state employees working in the adjoining office, who explained to us that, on the contrary to what I thought, no arrangement was made and that we could not use the place on a week day. Plan B was to use the secondary local of the chess club, which is not nearly as nice as the primary one, but still fully equiped. This unfortunately made for some delay, as FantasticCat and his wife were doing some sightseeing, were supposed to meet us later at the club, and would have had a hard time trying to find the secondary place. In spite of all this a lot of bughouse could be played later, with the intensity of play somewhat compensating for the reduced playing time. A quartet of locals, composed of me, Tjeulesbetes, Geetha Prod'hom and Laurent Vilaseca, was finally kicked out of the secondary local at 8:30 PM when it appeared that a slow tournament chess games had to be played there.

And guess what was Murphy's last move ? Despite of the very menacing weather, no serious rain fell during the entire afternoon, so that we could easily have played at the Parc des Bastions !