Saturday, the tournament

22 players came for the tournament which was announced as "unofficial international swiss bughouse championship", and ruled by a very stressed Erwin Reich as referee.
Although the second ranked marcusm-dagger team played quite well to come, the regular tournament was dominated as guessed by Gnejs and MiRU. They lost their only game to Gnejs-MiRU in the regular tournament was nabla and Jean-Pierre Vegh, who clinched the unofficial title of Swiss champions, but not without a fight with Tjeulesbetes and Rodolphe Francey (fourth).
Above expectations was the excellent score of the Bartholdi-Bogousslavsky team, while the performance of Marat and Marv came clearly as a bad surprise.

Nevertheless the play-off between the two top teams proved a lot tighter than expected, mainly because the partnership between Gnejs and MiRU was somewhat disturbed. Played with first to four points, the final went 1-0, 1-1, 2-1 for Gnejs-MiRU, after what marcusm and dagger won two in a raw to lead by 3-2. The sixth game was from far the most dramatic one: everybody laughed when Gnejs sacced this queen and said in the same time "Just don't get mated!", as the questioned queen provided mate in two to marcusm against MiRU. Nevertheless, Gnejs and MiRU were still up by 25 secs, and this was enough for Gnejs to mate dagger starting from a roughly equal position, with only 4 seconds remaining. After marcusm-dagger came so close to a win, at 3-3 Gnejs and MiRU won quite easily the last game, winning the tournament.
 
Some other funny moments of the tournament:

• Playing a round-the table with 3 pairs of connected tables was a lot too complicated for bughouse players. Or is it that nabla's explanations suffered from bad English? Bad French?
• Laurent Bartholdi to Quentin Bogousslavsky (his partner): "knight mates me in 3". Answer from Quentin while giving away the knight: "Ok, so you can still hold on for some moves"
• Vincent Berger is known in all Geneva for his rock-safe bughouse strategy as he was used to pile all pieces just in front of his king. Nevertheless, he now has to acknowledge François Deluermoz as a very powerful successor: the later managed in his game against Yvan Masserey to occupy 95% of the squares on his first four ranks.
• Never resigning in a lost position is what makes the really tough bughouse player, and Jean-Pierre Vegh is certainly one of them. After the tournament the two top swiss teams played a friendly rematch, in one game of which his partner nabla wanted to resign. No question about it for Jean-Pierre who then managed to even worsen his position, but declined a second resign suggestion. After a last would-be trick leaded to nothing, he (supposedly not on purpose) asked his opponents: "OK......so you resign?".
  

Second International Swiss Bughouse Championship, July 14, 2001

12 teams, double round robin, 22 rounds, final in first to four games.
 

Final:

Andre Nilsson and Robert Huber beat Marcus Mueller and Marc Deckert by 4-3.
 

Baaaaaaaaaaaack