Ep 354: Kerin White, David Armstrong (January 5, 2012)

Rounds: Here.


Maybe it's just coincidence, but after SBS sorted out their issues with the previous episode on the website, I actually managed to get this current one in appropriate time (i.e., no freezes or timeouts).  Hopefully this signifies something having been fixed, as opposed to a once-off fluke.

Kerin has two sons, aged eleven and thirteen, and they like to compete against her when they all watch Letters and Numbers.  When they beat her, particularly on the numbers, they certainly let her know.

Tonight's challenger is David Armstrong, a traffic controller and competitive pool player.  He's been playing competitive pool for around six years and enjoys playing in the Victorian pool competitions.  His team won a grand final "last week" in the Eastern District Pool League.  (It's a bit difficult to find results properly given online; his team is the Manhattan Eightball Club, but I don't know which division he was referring to.)

David adds that he feels very fortunate because in Victoria they have some of the best pool players in the world and you can just go down to a local pub, meet a world-class player, and learn something from them.


It's a bit of a messy game today; no contestant gets longer than six in the letters rounds (admittedly two of them were just that hard), and the target is only reached once in the numbers.  Kerin gets off to a fast start, and is up by twenty-two points after the first three rounds.  David manages to get a little back at the end, but it's too little too late, and Kerin's excellent conundrum solution rounds out her victory, 56 to 31.

I felt somewhat off my game today, although in retrospect I did mostly keep up.  The two letters rounds where I dropped a point (relative to David) were quite gettable, so that makes them stand out more.  The conundrum eluded me within regulation time as well, but I was still enough ahead by that point to take the win.

Obviously David Armstrong's name is going to cause difficulties in the following, as I can't even use initials to distinguish between him and David Astle.  (It's a minor relief that he did not win, although that's selfish of me.)  I'll be resolving this by using David Astle's full name in the following.

As usual, details after the jump.