I went, I saw, I (mostly) conquered. 🙂

This was my third Dutch Open, and this time, I made it into the final. I’m the first UK person ever to do so, and I’m quite proud of that, and my overall performance was very pleasing, what with the lack of practise in the previous weeks, due to the upheaval of relocation.

I’ll just run through the rules and procedure, for those of you who are interested.

Everyone enters their name on a slip. This is entered into the random draw, and the pairs are drawn randomly. Your first pairing is against everyone else in the contest, and the second name called moves to the first name called. You are then presented with your two locks, and you take one each. Which one doesn’t matter, as will become apparent.

You may put your tension tool(s) in the lock before the timer starts, but not any pick. You then start, and you have 10 minutes to open the lock. Once open, you call “Open!” and note your time, which is called out to you. You pick head-to-head, which adds significantly to the pressure.

At the end of the time, you swap locks with your opponent, as well as note how he did. (Yes, it’s the honour system – you could probably cheat, but the random draw makes that really hard.) Then you go again. At the end of the round, if neither lock was opened by either of you, there is no score. Otherwise, the opener of the most locks wins. If you both opened the same number of locks, the faster time wins.

My scoresheet. If it doesn’t have a dot, it’s in seconds. And yes, my first opening was in 2 seconds of the start of the first half of the first round, and was the first lock of the competition!

This sterling effort got me to the required 5 points in the 6th round. Andre and another chap were already there, and Julian, Eric and I got there at the same time. However, the final required 4 people, not 5, so we went head to head, with 3 locks in rotation.

So here’s the back of the sheet:

In retrospect, I should have written smaller to get it on the one side!

Suffice to say, Julian (Germany) and myself (GB) got through the pick-off, beating the USA’s Eric S.

I didn’t get the times for the final in full. I lost the final by 6 seconds, putting me in the race for 3rd or 4th place, rather than 1st or 2nd. If I’d just got that last lock open… In the final head-to-head, I again lost, despite opening the high security Zeiss-Ikon in just 3 seconds. I just couldn’t get the Pffenheim. After a full 15 minutes trying, I ran out of time. (I did, however get it after another 8 minutes during the second leg!) But that didn’t count for anything, especially since my opponent opened it in under 4 minutes, to his obvious shock!

Well done to the three who beat me – André Matuschek (who was the only person to beat me on the way to the final) was third, Peter Danilov came second, but really Julian Hardt deserved to win (again!). He got a 2 second opening at the same time as I got my 3 second opening, but he opened all final 4 locks!

You can read more about the entire event, and the days before it, at Barry Wel’s blog, which is called “Blackbag” and is also found on the sidebar links.