Nick and I went back to Chicagoland to moderate for Scobol Solo this weekend. I had a pretty good time, but I wish I could have moderated some of the better matches. My room lacked particularly good competitors, with a few exceptions.

A nod, however, to Tim Ekl, for whom I moderated a whopping three times (twice as Tim Ekl, once as a phantom player) in my eleven rounds of moderating. That’s over 27%!

I saw some people I haven’t seen in a while, and a lot of people I have never seen before as well. It’s always interesting to witness the changing of the guard as the next season rolls around. Even though most of the people I moderated for didn’t know me, a few people did tell me I was a very good moderator, which I appreciated.

But I’m not going to lie; the field was not very impressive this year. As I had predicted, Greg Gauthier won, but blew everyone else out of the water in the final. Last year, he only scored 8 points in the finals, losing by two to me. Siva was the morning champion, which wasn’t too surprising; if Greg was going to lose a match, it would have to be to someone who was extremely fast, like Siva. Unfortunately, Siva made no noise in the finals after entering with the 9 points graciously provided by Greg’s current score. He simply alternated correct and incorrect answers.

As to the rest of the finalists, there weren’t really any surprises except for Tony Cao, who landed in the top four. Unlike many years, someone known won the desperation shot, Caitie Flynn, and she did decently in the finals. John Brown and Robert Sido were fairly expected; Michael Jiang and Mike Verity are good players who weren’t necessarily expected to make it into the finals.

I will likely come back next week on Friday, meaning that I can moderate at Kickoff as well.