Salle Auriol Seattle Veteran Epee

Salle Auriol Seattle Veteran Epee, Jan 11, 2015

https://askfred.net/Results/results.php?tournament_id=28370&highlight_competitor_id=91067&event_id=112380

Only ten people showed up for this one, unfortunately. Fourteen had preregistered so there was hope that there might be at least 15, making it an A1 or B1 event. But with only ten it was an E1 and so "just for fun". Even so it was a tough group: three As (John Varney, Bela Suveg, and George Raush), three Cs (Mark Blom, Johannes Klein, and Russ Redding), one D (Jeff Johnson), two Es (Joel Howard and me), and one U (Chuck Nguyen).

Before beginning Russ gathered us and asked if we ought to do something extra, to get more fencing out of just us ten. We could have done one big pool of ten but decided instead to do two rounds of pools, each with two pools of five. The results of the first round would be used to seed the second round. Then the second round would seed the DEs. In hindsight I'm not sure this was the best possible way to go—I had Varney in both my pools, for example, and didn't get to fence a couple people at all. But it was fine and better than just one round of pools.

My result was meh, ending up 8th place out of 10. But things felt better than the final result might suggest. I started out poorly but improved. I lost all my first pool bouts, then won one in the second round. I won my first DE against Joel, then, although I lost, did much better than I expected in my DE against Varney. So I left feeling pretty good.

Round #1 Pool

Started with Chuck Nguyen. I thought I had a good chance to win, but I made too many mistakes, was overeager in my attacks, missed too much, got counterattacked, and lost 5-3.

Another 5-3 loss with Johannes Klein. I tried to stay shallow and use jabs to draw attacks and counterings. I got two points that way. My third point was lucky, I attacked deeper and his counterattack missed.

And another 5-3 loss to Bela Suveg. This time I started well, getting up 2-1 before making mistakes. As with Johannes I used shallow attacks and jabs, getting a nice hit or two on his hand. He quickly wised up and protected his hand better and made some nice binding actions. I made a couple of mistakes—once exposing my hand to an easy hit, another time launching a fleche from too far and getting nailed with a prime parry-riposte.

John Varney was my last bout. I tried to keep things very slow, much more patient than when the pool began. Well I got two points.

Round #2 Pool

Started with Joel Howard. We went 4-4 and somehow I got the final point, but it was not a pretty action. A win, yay.

Against Mark Blom I tried using a lot of beats, like I did with him in Portland in October. It worked alright. But I got too close too much and he got up 4-3. Then I managed a fleche that felt good in terms of timing and distance, making it 4-4. In the final action I got confused and made a bad parry. He scored and won. Still, better than the previous pool...

My bout with Johannes was similar to the previous pool. I lost 5-3.

Then I had Varney again. This time I threw caution to the wind and tried a more pressing and attacking approach. It failed badly and I lost 5-1.

Direct Elimination

With ten fencers there were only two DE bouts in the round of 16, and of course I had one of them. It was with Joel Howard. Usually we are fairly evenly matched, but he didn't fence his best. He attacked a lot, too much, too quickly. I was able to parry and counter his attacks. Quickly I was up 4-0. At 7-2 he changed to his French grip epee, but it didn't help. I won 10-3. It seemed weirdly easy.

Since I was the 9th seed my second DE was against John Varney. I lost, unsurprisingly, but did much better than I thought I would. I went with the very patient approach, waiting for him to attack and not letting him pull me back to his end of the strip. A low score would be fine, I figured. Non-combativity would be fine. I got the first two points. He caught up and tied it at 4-4, then took the lead at 6-5. Still, that felt like a decent place to be with Mr. Varney. Maybe he began to take things more seriously, maybe my focus flagged, but he got the next two points, making my possible win remote. Then we doubled, 9-6. Then he went for a quick double to win, 10-7.

So I came in 8th out of 10. But I felt good about those DE bouts.

In other DE bouts George fenced Bela and, although George lost 9-8 he learned a good deal about how to fence Bela, such that he was able to beat him twice in the Battle in Seattle a couple of weeks later.