Butter Cup was arranged for the second time on 7 March, 2009 in Stockholm. Nine players came to Greger"s flat on the central island of Kungsholmen and played 8 games with Swiss pairing and unweighted spread. Free rounds counted as a win with +200 in spread.
Henrik Holmström started with a free round, which gave hime the lead after round 1. He won the next two games and kept his first position. The players then took a longer break for a vegetarian pasta lunch prepared by Greger (at self-cost). Henrik remained in the lead also after round 4, when he and Gunnar played a tie, 419-419, the first one recorded in a rated English tournament in Sweden. In round 5 Johan Rönnblom reached the top of the results table, half a win point before Gunnar and Henrik. And there he remained until the last round. Johan won with 7 points (+657 spread), followed by Gunnar and Henrik with 6.5 points (+633 and +567) respectively.
The top three winners received a small glass runestone with a medallion and an engraved plaque. All players could also choose an item each from the prize table. The winner Johan selected a DVD with the documentary "Scrabylon" about US scrabblers. The other prizes for 2nd, 3rd and 4th place were not as priceworthy, and all players could also choose either a marker pen or a small notebook.
Two special prizes in the form of medals were also awarded. The prize for highest winning score went to Gunnar for his 599 points (the second best ever recorded) in round 6 against Jannike. Gunnar also got the prize for the highest number of bingos, 13 in all. Johan also had 13 but fewer 8-letter words. However, very embarrassingly, Johan should have been given that prize because I missed to register two of his bingos in the computer, and this mistake was not discovered in time.
The average score of the tournament was 374, the third best in a tournament so far. The average number of bingos per player was 1.33, also the third best ever. Only the two tournaments where at least two British players took part, Butter Cup 2005 and Beverly Hills Cup 2006 were, were better in those respects. Several matches reached the top-50 for highest losing score, highest winning score, and highest total score. On average, each winner won by 99 points, and the score differences were highest in round 6 (+178) and round 8 (+134).
All these facts have confirmed the feeling among the competitors that our standard of playing skill and word knowledge had increased. However, at least one phony on average could still be seen on the final boards, which were all photographed except one. Check the photo album (use the link below) where the phonies are mentioned under the photos.
All games were played on Greger"s turnable boards bought from Mattel. Some of us forgot to turn the boards right most of the time... 😉 A strange thing was that the SamTiles used on table 2-4 were a very tiny bit too large to fit between the indented squares. One of the boards was especially hard to place the tiles on. Table 1 in the kitchen, however, had a bag with smooth Mattel tiles and they fit perfectly. (I forgot that I had bought two more bags of that type that we could have used.)
Many thanks for a great day and hope to see you soon over a Scrabble board!
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