Another season is over! I think it has been a very good one and here is the round-up . . .
In Classical Antiquity ruskicanuck finished as champion of Division A ahead of pantherboy, despite an early loss to NikiforosFokas, with long-time FOGDL stalwarts hidde and klayeckles finishing in third and fourth. Sennacherib, who resigned from the tournament about three quarters of the way through was relegated. dkalenda won Division B remaining unbeaten throughout and will now play in the top division next time. The real surprise package though was Ulysisgrunt who finished second, when most of the time this year he has played at Division C level. The bottom half of the table was very close and FlawlessCorn42, another player who dropped out before the end was relegated. I should point out that both Sennacherib and FlawlessCorn42 will not be eligible to play in Season 4, but if they were to return in Season 5 then they will still be relegated to a lower division. In Division C IMC put on a superb performance to win all 9 matches and he has won a prize voucher from Slitherine. Morbio also had an excellent season with 8 wins and he is very likely to be joining IMC in Division B next season. These two players were far too strong for the rest of division and it was Bluefin who eventually finished bottom and he will be relegated to Division D. In Division D this time we witnessed the remarkable performance of youngr who started and finished all his matches in less than 2 weeks finishing top in the process. youngr is the second winner of a prize voucher from Slitherine from this section. I must also mention the performance of Barrold713 who finished second, which I think I am right in saying is his highest finish so far in three seasons. And spare a thought for our poor old wooden spoonist bcBarnesRR who lost all 9 matches in his first season, but carried on gamely until the end. I hope he returns for another try next season.
What is becoming a titanic struggle between ruskicanuck and pantherboy at the top of the pile in the FOG2DL continued in Late Antiquity Division A with ruskicanuck again narrowly getting the better of his main challenger and winning a Slitherine prize voucher into the bargain. ruskicanuck finished with 9 straight wins while pantherboy won 8 out of 9 matches. A very noticeable feature of this division was the very good performances of three players playing at the top level for the first time. nyczar pipped dkalenda for third place and DzonVejn also finished comfortably in mid-table. rexhurley, who had a fairly torrid season, finished bottom and was relegated. harveylh produced another blistering performance in Division B to whitewash the opposition and win a Slitherine prize voucher. In the end he finished an incredible 15 points ahead of the second-placed GDod. It was very close between the rest of the players in this division and in the end it was Ulysisgrunt who filled the automatic relegation place. Division C was the most incredible competition that we have ever had in the FOGDL over 7 seasons. In the end only 9 points separated top from bottom and it was newcomer FightingPoultry who prevailed despite only winning 5 of his 9 matches. Sometimes players have finished fifth with the same number of wins! And the wooden spoonist was Doyley50 who won 3 of his matches and he can consider himself a bit unlucky because normally that would put him in about seventh or eighth place. This division also had the most draws with 7 of the 45 matches finishing that way and Stimovsky can now be considered our "draw specialist" after sharing the spoils in 5 of his matches.
Early Middle Ages was a new section for Season 3 but it made no difference to pantherboy and ruskicanuck as they fought for supremacy in Division A for a third time this season. pantherboy prevailed this time, beating ruskicanuck in their fixture together (ruskicanuck had won the corresponding fixtures in Classical Antiquity and Late Antiquity) so that a last match defeat to ianiow was rather academic. NikiforosFokas just managed to get ahead of ianiow for third place while newcomer to the top flight Dzon Vejn had a very difficult campaign and finished in the relegation spot with 9 straight defeats. In Division B it was neck and neck for a long while between dkalenda and harveylh, but it was dkalenda who finally prevailed in the deciding match between the two, winning himself a Slitherine prize voucher in the process. paulmcneil, markwatson and GDod (again) had very good seasons and it was FlawlessCorn42 who finished bottom after withdrawing from the tournament. Again, Division C was a very exciting affair and it was melm who emerged from a cluster of players in mid-table to finish with 6 straight wins to claim promotion to Division B. FightingPoultry (again), youngr (again), Hendricus, oscarius and Ulysisgrunt (again) were all in the hunt right up to the last few matches. Our wooden spoonist needs no introduction really as it was B for Barrold713 who never really recovered from winning his second match.
The fiendishly difficult From Maurya to Alaric section saw klayeckles prevail in Division A with 8 wins and a Slitherine prize voucher, ahead of the very solid Ludendorf with Snugglebunnies finally finishing third after a really excellent start. Much of my attention was concentrated on the fortunes of former champion Breogan who started off with 7 straight defeats. He looked certain to be relegated but victories in his last 2 matches saved the day and it was ZygfryDeLowe who filled the automatic relegation place. In Division B it was IMC who prevailed (again) in a very tight contest ahead of three players tied in second place - ahuyton, markwatson360 and nyczar. Our wooden spoonist was iandavidsmith who just lost out to Hendricus.
The Themed Event produced a number of surprises, not least being Nosy_Rat's narrow victory over pantherboy in a final that was decided by the tie-breaker. I was expecting pantherboy to win as he had entered 4 sections this season and had already played 30+ matches whereas Nosy_Rat had only played 7. And at the Group Stage the qualification of melm and FlawlessCorn42 ahead of players from the A divisions suggests that the gap between the divisions is not as wide as we might think. Ludendorf and shadowblack were the beaten semi-finalists.
So that completes the round-up for Season 3. it was a season that saw the introduction of a modified scoring system for drawn matches and allowed players to agree a re-start if the terrain looked like producing a draw. I think that these changes worked very well once everyone had settled down and there were only a couple of queries about them after the first week of the tournament. Certainly the number of draws were reduced by about a half and the dreaded agreed 0-0 draws virtually disappeared from the tournament. We did have 6 players of the original 60 drop out, which is quite a high figure, and we had one player who was extremely slow to make his turns (there is always one player like this!) but otherwise the match completion was very good.
I would like to thank my fellow adjudicators Anders (hidde) and Ian (ianiow) for all their support this year; I would also like to thank Richard (rbodleyscott) for technical support and heads-up on any forthcoming changes. And thanks to the people at Slitherine, including Iain, Daniele, Marco and Ciro for helping me make it all possible. And well done to all of you, the players, for taking part in a sporting manner and answering my wretched PM's when I needed some pettifogging (i.e. trivial) information for some obscure reason.
I will be back in the New Year with a full programme of league seasons (starting February 1st, June 1st and October 1st) and there will also be another KO Tournament (starting May 1st). Have a good Xmas and A Happy New Year to you all!
