Stepney Green.
Just before the purists object, may I point out that both SG and West Ham were opened in the same year, 1902, and ‘same year opening’ is of course one of the three known exemptions to the Straddle rule (four if you count a sliding Bunt around the Fairlop loop, which obviously doesn’t apply in this case).
Paddington
Hmm. A tricky position. The merest falter by either side could easily result in one or both of them falling into knip. I haven’t had time to fully analyse it, but I think that Green Park allows me to safely take the first bi-lateral. Have at it!
Bit of a mistake there. I’ll play Canons Park, and in case it’s not obvious, let me point out that a DH Loop is a clear possibility.
Let’s keep the game interesting, but not too exotic. I think the current rules allow Theydon Bois.
Only if you don’t take the Bakerloo Line into consideration. I believe this opens up Maida Vale.
Maida Vale. Maida Vale. *Maida *Vale. Maida Vale.
Hmmm.
As the licence fee is currently frozen, I’m going to essay a Lord Reith Two-step and play White City.
(Incidentally, it’s one of the game’s great tragedies that the old boy never saw through his plan for the Mornington Crescent Hour on the Home Service. Informative, educational and entertaining, certainly - but perhaps his fears of a loss of national productivity as workers downed tools to play along were not entirely without basis.)
Very smart move there, Giles. Cunning, calculated, yet fair and ambitious in a good way. However, Maus and Stanislaus are clearly equal to the task of defusing your attempted shunt across water.
As Stanislaus has kindly opened up the Central Line ‘west of the pink’, as we say, I will go North Acton and declare dib.
Paddington.
I guess that you’ve all recognised that I’ve pinched my strategy from the article Ianzin pointed me to, which for some unknown reason I had failed to fully appreciate: Straker’s article on the Jade Gambit in the Spring '09 edition of MC Quarterly Review. I am really going to give this a good go.
Ha! You’ve all fallen for the classic gambit last employed at the 2003 Bay Area MC Invitational.
Russell Square.
This, of course, opens up soles on tables.
Maus - do you want to re-think that? Note that Lynne has completed her triple repeat play, but this was completed after I had declared dib. Just saying… you may want a re-think.
Not at all. A lot of people thought Kenneth Patterson made a mistake when he made a similar play seven years ago. I don’t have to tell you how that turned out, do I?
Today is a pretty famous day in MC history. It is the 25th Anniversary of the of the first (and last) televised Mornington Crescent Championship Match on the Beeb.
On Sept 27th, 1975 the BBC televised the Mornington Crescent Commonwealth Championship for the first time.
It was disastrous.
The main reason that the matches had never been televised before, of course, was that matches had been known to go on for days, even weeks, frequently not ending until someone said, “Right, then, I’m off to the pub.” or “It appears my dog has died because I have not fed him since we started.”
But what started out as a regional time-waster amongst the London glitterati grew quickly into national phenomenon, culminating with the creation of the MCCL, the Mornington Crescent Commonwealth League in 1972. Of course it took another whole year before the controversy over whether reference to Piltdown Man would create a afternoon rounder or not, a debate of course which had been going on for several years prior to a final agreement at the Blackburn summit that standardized the rule in 1973 (of course there are still places that play the more traditional Bulwer-Lytton rules, but mostly for the preservation of history’s sake).
With that settled, the sport really exploded and the Rules Committee was approached by the BBC to see if something could be done to make the game more compatible with the constraints of TV. Thus was born Rule 43, Section 12, Article 5, also known famously as the Beggar’s Rule. The rule specifically forbade an Up&Down after a Holiday Run, thus making the naming of Mornington Crescent required after a Swinger.
The rule itself was quite controversial, as one can imagine, and even more controversially it was to only be applied to televised matches. The most outspoken was defending champion Elanor Brastlewaite, who wrote a scathing op-ed piece in the Times. The establishment was not pleased and suspended her for one match.
Nonetheless, in a remarkable string on victories Miss Brastlewaite made it to the Championship match against legendary Northern Irish Player Sean O’Flannerybrian. The BBC blocked out three and half hours for the match and the enthusiasm across the country was unprecedented.
After brief 15 minute pre-match show the match preceded. O’flannerybrian started quietly with “Edgware”. Then Miss Brastlewaite stunned everyone with the famous words, “I do this not because I can, but because I must…Mornington Crescent.” And that was it, the match had lasted all of 2 minutes and the BBC was left with hours of air time to fill. Despite attempts to see if it was a legal play, nothing could be done, it undoubtedly was. Mr. O’Flannerybrian put out his hand and said, “well done.” and television screens across the country cut immediately to test screens.
The incredible events split the country down the middle, notably causing a rift amongst the Guardian editorial staff so severe that two editors were exiled to a small island in the Caspian Sea. To some Elanor Brastlewaite was a hero, to others a villain. AS far as the BBC was concerned, it didn’t matter, they were never going to televise another MC match and in fact destroyed the tapes of this disaster (although several years later they did create Mornington Monday, one of their most popular shows). Sean O’Flannerybrian seemed unaffected by the whole affair and two years later won the Championship he had so famously lost.
And Elanor Brastlewaite never played a public match of Mornington Crescent again in her life, once telling the local Bath paper that she didn’t like the politics. However, according to her friends, she does like to play with her grandchildren, where she is as competitive as ever.
Brastlewaite was not an asset to the game, in my opinion. Fair enough, she knew the rules very well, but I feel she never really grasped the spirit and soul of the game. A technician, really, rather than a player.
Contrast her with, say, the old Argentinian devil Esquivel. Never won a major tournament, frequently his own worst enemy, and famously adrift on most of the finer rules (which is why he so often snatched defeat from the jaws of victory). But my oh my, what a player! The fun, the flair, the passion, the sheer love of the drama of the game! His famous attempted bi-lateral switch on a west-facing station - sheer folly, of course, but he so nearly made it work! And the tantalising madness of his flamboyant bunts across water when all that’s sane and holy would counsel a cross-play maintaining line parity. These, I feel, are the sorts of players the game really needs, and I’ll take one mad, fierce Esquivel over ten dull technicians any day of the week.
History schmistory.
Dollis Hill.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
I’m just kibitzing this game but thought to mention that the Balgioll-Smythe Analysis Software claims that, after this brilliant gambit at Dollis Hill, MC in 3014 moves is now unconditionally forced! The software isn’t very good so this probably means an even shorter forced win is available.
(Unfortunately the software supports only the ruleset in the 1936 edition of Bethlem Hospital: Recreations for the Patient, the only ruleset I could make sense of.)
Didn’t Gundyayev prove in the Summer 2009 issue of International journal of game theory that, given any logically consistent rules for Mornington Crescent, and given the current topology of the London Tube system, no game of MC can last for more that 1,729 moves? (1,729 being coincidentally the Hardy–Ramanujan taxi number.) I don’t remember the details of the proof, but it did use some of Heesch’s work proving the Four-Colour Theorem.
And I think Bank at this stage reduces the number of possible moves by several hundred.
On, it is on now.
Oval
I thought the license fee was frozen.
Well yes, but you’ve added Aldwych Station to the 2009 topology, no?
Anyway, I think both Gundyayev and Balgioll-Smythe assume that stirrups, if reversed more than thrice, cannot then be revoked. Such a vicious manouevre wouldn’t be tolerated at Bethlem Hospital. How about here at SDMB?
As to Bank at this point … I’m not sure. It looks to this novice like a clear blunder … but …
Oo…oo…ooh! Oval !!! I picked quite a game to kibitz. 