Parker

The Tournament

Losing Will Be New Experience For Most By Mary Parker

1-22-2035

Imagine being the best chess player in your neighborhood. Or maybe the best basketball player. So good that no one who lived near you could beat you unless you were really having an off day. Imagine being unchallenged at your favorite sport for years on end. Imagine then that you moved to a different part of your country and looked around for someone to play the sport you had dominated at your old home. You found plenty of people who played it, but lo and behold, they were all better than you! You go from beating everyone decisively to not being able to win a game most days.

How big a shock would that be? How would you handle it?

Since I can't play in this inaugural Tournament (but everyone had better come to play four years from now!) this aspect of the contest is the most interesting to me. And it won't be like this next time. This World Tournament is going to open the door to exhibitions, amateur Tournaments, etc. CIG will no longer be isolated to each country, the best players of each nation will be able to play each other almost any time they wish from now on, now that the technology has finally been standardized.

But that hasn't happened yet so look at what we have this time. These 16 players have won 52 National Championships between them! Six players have at least 5 titles, and another has 4! That means that almost half of the field has finished their national season the last person standing at least four times. That is a lot of winning, folks. And I haven't even mentioned the three additional players who have won the Championship 3 times each, meaning 10 out of 16 have at least three titles. Considering that some countries have hundreds of CIG players during the regular season and most have Championship Tournaments of at least 12 players, to have won the whole thing multiple times is a great accomplishment.

Besides Championships, consider these numbers. 9 of the players have gone six months and 20-30 regular season games without losing a single time. 7 of those 9 also went undefeated in the playoffs. Indeed, Kim Jong is the poster child in this category. He has NEVER lost a regular season game in his four year career! He has lost a total of three times, and two of those three losses was in the Championship two years ago when he was running a 104 degree temperature but refused to delay Game 1 of that final round out of consideration for his opponent.

Or what about Blake Ezor's lifetime 100-3 offensive record? Or the fact that he's won 55 straight times on offense? That is a mind boggling statistic. And it's not like he's played punks, 7 of the wins during the streak are against Erik Von Beck, who is the best player in the world not in this Tournament. Another 7 were against since retired five time German Champion Jorge Brock.

I could go on and on. Harry Brown is the winningest player of all time. Johnson and Kerrigan have split ten of the last eleven American Championships. Gabrielle Sallor has only lost 31 times in eight seasons. Sissy Crydom only 21 times in six seasons. Even Kurt Shilling has a 44-3 record. True, against college competition, but it's hard to compile a record like that playing anything, even ping pong against a child.

My point is these players are awesome. Every one of them is used to winning. A lot. As mentioned, ten of them have won the championship at least three times in the last decade. Imagine winning with that kind of regularity and not even making it out of the first round of this Tournament!

It's going to happen because something has to give. There are only 8 second round berths and ten players with at least 3 titles. A minimum of two of these big time winners are going home without even advancing to the second round. The last time Ezor, Kerrigan, Sallor, or Crydom failed to advance past the first round they were in high school. Kim Jong has NEVER failed to get to the final round, at any level of competition (he was 60-1 in college, 44-0 in high school).

And what if one of these dominating players with the gaudy records fails to win a first round game? Imagine if Kim Jong goes 0-4, matching his loss title for his entire LIFE? Or Blake Ezor goes 0-4, when he's only lost 20 out of 185 professional games?

I've heard a lot of people talking about how interesting it will be if the best players advance. I've even heard talk of an undefeated Ezor playing an unbeaten Jong in the final (it is very unlikely they would have not faced each other before the final, by the way) ... but the Tournament will get interesting for me when a player used to winning early and often faces serious adversity for the first time in his or her career.

[Mary Parker is the only CIG player in the world to have won Championships in more than one country. She won two in Canada, immigrated to England and won a title there. Following that she moved to Australia and has won the last three titles there. Her career mark of 306-51 would be the record for any country in the world if she had stayed in one place. She was not allowed in this first World Tournament because her international experience was considered too much of an advantage.]

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