Back to WSC 2009 Live Coverage

WSC 2009 Commentary: Round 18

[ ]

Go to: Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4, Round 5, Round 6, Round 7, Round 8, Round 9, Round 10, Round 11, Round 12, Round 13, Round 14, Round 15, Round 16, Round 17, Round 18, Round 19, Round 20, Round 21, Round 22, Round 23, Round 24.

Board 1 this round features 13-4 Pakorn Nemitrmansuk (THA) vs. 10-7 David Eldar (AUS). Eldar, the top player at 10-7 has only a minimal chance of qualifying for the finals, but was paired with Pakorn because the first two rounds were paired based on standings at the beginning of the day. Beginning with the next round, we will pair round by round.

Pakorn beat Eldar 493-358, though Eldar out-bingoed him 3-2 with TOPLINED, GELANDE and IODINES to TRAinEE and OUVRIERS. That's Pakorn's 11th consecutive win. One more and he'll tie David Boys (CAN) 12-game streak earlier in the event; two more and he'll tie Matt Graham's all-time record of 13 consecutive wins, set in 1997. A couple more and he won't have any cause to complain about playing only 24 games; he'll be in the best-of-five finals.

One game behind Pakorn now, at 13-5, are Nathan Benedict (USA) (beat Naween Fernando (AUS) 439-374), Dave Wiegand (USA) (beat Jason Katz-Brown (USA) 453-408) and Panupol Sujjayakorn (THA) (beat David Boys (CAN) 469-432). Still with an outside chance with six rounds to go are 11 more players at 12-6.