Eliot Kennedy plays in Finland

Legend Eliot Kennedy is currently spending a few weeks in Finland with the family and the finnish boys organised a tournament last wednesday to coincide with his visit, so Eliot got to play for the first time since leaving Finland in July 2007, which was great and has further fired his enthusiasm to play again in Australia, even if only semi-regularly. Eliot reports: "The tournament was played using the 'Swiss' system, where you draw names out of a hat, play the first round of games, do a league table, then 1 plays 2, 3 plays 4 etc, then you do another table and repeat the process (except you cannot play the same player twice). We had 13 guys and played 6 rounds on the day (1 or 2 too many for my old back, but great practice!). I managed to come 6th out of 13, about as expected. Won 3, drew 1 and lost 2. I did not play too badly given the long break, but the Finnish guys are definitely better than when I left, having benefitted from regular play in Finland (and for some of them in FISTF events elsewhere including the World Cup) and better figures (mainly C3 Profibase and Extreme Works figures. I was using my old Sureshot figures which are quite good, but not I think of the same quality). One indication of their progress is that I lost my last game 0-4 to a fellow I beat 2-1 just before leaving here in 2007. I was maybe a little unlucky and pretty tired, but he was clearly better than me on the day. When I was herebefore, I was in the top 2. Now, even with more regular play, I'd be very happy to be in the top 5."