| Semi-finals | More photos of the 2012 Nationals |
| 1 vs 4: Matt Vinar 45-19 Paul Hubbard | |
| 3 vs 2: Robert Girardo 20-44 Phil Cairns | |
| FINAL | 3rd place playoff |
| Phil Cairns 12-52 Matt Vinar | Paul Hubbard 43-21 Robert Girardo |
| 1: | 5 pts | [461] | Matt Vinar |
| 2: | 4 pts | [406] | Phil Cairns |
| [364] | Robert Girardo | ||
| 4: | 3 pts | [401] | Paul Hubbard |
| [351] | T.J. Hatzi | ||
| [337] | Samuel Milankov | ||
| [331] | Mathew Cairns | ||
| [303] | Dylan Milankov | ||
| [297] | Sarah Harris | ||
| 10: | 2 pts | [302] | Hongkong Nguyen |
| [294] | Shauna Milankov | ||
| [280] | Andrew Thornton | ||
| [272] | Jo Broom | ||
| [266] | Lachlan Vinar-Hendrich | ||
| [265] | Nicole Dixon | ||
| 16: | 1 pt | [256] | Kim Chandler |
| [234] | Christopher Hubbard |
Tournament Report from our New President
Well, what an exciting event! We had 17 players, all different ages competing. This also broke the previous record of 14 players in Sydney; with a good mix of new players and more seasoned competitors. The South Melbourne Town Hall played host to the Australian Othello championship and it was just big enough to host the amount of players we had (I might have to organise a more tables and chairs next time).
We had 5 rounds each and at the end of the five rounds the top 4 players ended up as shown below:
- Matt Vinar
- Phil Cairns
- Robert Girardo
- Paul Hubbard
Due to the large number of players it was a unanimous and democratic decision to play semi-finals between the top four players to see who would play off in the grand final.
- Phil Cairns beat Robert Girardo
- Matt Vinar beat Paul Hubbard
This then meant that Phil and Matt played off in the grand final. Quite fitting as they were the two top ranked players.
Matt managed to beat Phil to eventually win the Australian National Championships, congratulations Matt you played a great tournament, not losing once throughout your 7 games.
We also decided that there would be a third place competition between Paul and Robert (this is a bit distracting because I would have liked to have watched the grand final). In the end Paul beat Robert to claim the third and final place on the podium.
So as it is in Olympics style; Gold went to Matt Vinar, Silver medal went to Phil Cairns and Bronze to Paul Hubbard :).
We had a couple of other awards including the rookie of the year award going to Sam Milankov (congratulations Sam you played a great game).
And to our youngest competitor a young boy of 6 years old Christopher Hubbard I nominated him the Cookie Monster award (well done young Christopher) I am sure you will be a star of this game in the future and may be able to rival even Matt one day.
To all the other players who turned up: great effort, I really appreciate your assistance with helping me set-up and then clean up the room. It seemed everyone had a fun time and there was definitely a good vibe and it was good to catch up with a few old faces that I only email once in a while.
Massive thanks goes to those that travelled from interstate to compete, and also huge thanks to Matt Vinar for running the computer software to determine who plays who in each round.
And the biggest thanks go to you George Ortiz, just to let you know you received the biggest clap from the participants when we mentioned your name, you deserve some sort of medal due to the service and dedication to the sport of Othello in Australia 🙂 15 years of presidency that must be some kind of world record.
I hope everyone made it home safely and if it was your first time I hope you can make it back for more tournaments.
Kind Regards,
Robert Girardo