A few posts back, I happily reported that I was joining a sudoku tournament.

Here, in a nutshell, is what happened: I got the boot after the first round. Was it a surprise? No. Here’s why:

There are a lot of exceptional sudoku players in here!

I really have to hand it to winner of the Sudoku Smackdown, the tournament sponsored by Sudoku Samurai and Powerbooks. (I still don’t know the winner of the tournament- I left after I was eliminated. Yeah, I’m a bad sport). During the first round of the competition, everyone had to solve two puzzles. When I was a around 25% of my second puzzle, there were already players submitting their sudoku sheets!

At that time, I frantically tried to crash my brain but it did me more harm than good. I realized I made a mistake and it was too late ot backtrack and isolate where I made the wrong move. So the moral there is try to calm in face of adversity.

To be honest, the setting was like an anime tournament. There was a diverse group of competitors– old folks, kids, guys, girls, etc. Everybody had their own “game face.” (As for me, I was chewing gum a la Michael Jordan). When I saw the first person submitting the sudoku sheet at the corner of my eye, I was really blown away. I brought my “A” game and it was totally mopped!

At the end of the day, this tournament taught me two things: a) I need to elevate my sudoku skills and b) there has to more tournaments like this.