Most foreign players arrived on Friday the 13th (no car or
plane crash to mention), the first one being Marv (who came with
his
wife Jadranka), soon followed by Gnejs. Of course bughouse
players don't need to be told that the gathering is started to
bug,
so there has already been a session of simul bughouse at nabla's
place, between Gnejs and nabla-Marv.
This allowed us to discover the strength of Gnejs over the board
(same precision, but playing twice faster than on the net!),
but also the best way to beat him, which was to play with some
grey pieces on one of the boards. This proved to set enough
confusion to allow Marv and nabla to get an almost positive
score, while after we switched to good old black and white pieces
he turned to be unstoppable.
On the evening we moved to Tjeulesbetes' place for a barbecue,
where marcusm, dagger and MiRU later joined us. The
occasion to meet (Marv, marcusm and MiRU had already come to the
gathering the year before while Gnejs and dagger hadn't) and to
play some more bughouse in a very nice place. Many team
configurations were tried, only marcusm and dagger always playing
together, as they knew that they would partner each other in the
tournament.
Although many had a long trip to Geneva, almost all players had
announced their intention to play bughouse all night; well, when
midnight came, the beds suddenly seemed more attractive than the
boards, except as usual for Marv and MiRU.