Ep 405: Norm Do, Hans Pieterse (March 16, 2012)

Rounds: Here.


The chat with Norm is pretty contentless tonight, as it was last night.  I don't really feel that we've had much chance to learn about him at all.

Tonight's challenger is Hans Pieterse, a sales manager.  He works in the bearing industry, and points out (with some prompting from Richard) that an awful lot of things today depend on them.  As he puts it, "everything that moves or rolls uses a bearing", so (amongst other things) there would be no power or transport without bearings.


Norm is in very good form tonight -- it's easily the best he has played -- and left very little chance to overtake him.  Hans found some good words, but they were just short of being long enough, and Norm kept scoring the points.  Norm did well on the numbers also, and very much against form it took the conundrum to stop him.  He steamrolled his way to a 62 to 6 victory, and becomes a retiring champion with a total of 369 points.  Last series that would have put him in second place, and I'm predicting that he will be either first or second this series.

I actually had a good game also, but I just could not get away from Norm.  There were chances, but they certainly weren't easy ones.  I had an eight point lead going into the conundrum, which was very nervous territory; it proved too difficult for me also, and I was fortunate that Norm was likewise stumped as he has been excellent throughout on the conundrums.  So a tense win by default, that could easily have gone another way.