German Open Mölkky Championship

On June 14th-15th, the already Seventh Open Germany Championship in mölkky took place in Erlangen. For fthe first time in history, the Czech MÖLKKY Association team participated under the name Czech Mölkky Association.  The team consisted of Lubomír Vlk, Milan Varga, Michal Antoš and Leoš Školoud. The tournament took place at a soccer training field, with surface of fine siftings. Everything was prepared with typical German thoroughness and it seemed that they apparently ordered a fine weather somewhere as well.

On the first day, all participating teams were sorted by draw to four groups by eleven (A, B, C and D).The round-robin system was used, therefore each team played against ten opponents. Each game had two rounds. Each team therefore played twenty times in the first day. The Czech Mölkky Association was drawn into the D group.

Eight best teams from every group made day 2 – the criterion was most points for victorious rounds. In case of a tie, the total number of points achieved was used as tiebreaker.

Our team put on an excellent performance on the first day and defeated one opponent after another. As soon as we realized that we are safe to make day 2 among the eight best in the group, our concentration loosened a bit and we lost the following match 0:2.  After that, we concentrated a bit more and finished with 16 wins out of 20 possible, and 4 losses, taking the second place in the D group. In total points achieved, we finished as the best of all participating teams, with score of 939:650.

Day 2 was organized as a classical elimination for the 32 teams. Each match was played as best-of-five. Our team was again perfect and we defeated each of the first two opponents 3:0. In the quarterfinals, we faced the Men O^,Mölkk team. This team won the Open German Championship two times in a row, and also won the 1^st and 2^nd Open Czech Championship. Therefore, a very good and very strong opponent. Our team became nervous and it affected our gameplay. We lost 0:3 and we were left to play for the 5^th to 8^th place. In the end, we finished on a nice 6^th place. The entire tournament was won by the German team Men O^,Mölkk, who we lost in the quarterfinals to.

I would also like to mention that one of the participating teams was one team of our sponsors, the ALBI company. Despite its first appearance here, the team finished on a nice 10^th place.  Two teams from Czech Republic and both of them in the Top 10  - a very fine result for a first time!

The tournament was overall well-organized, and thanks to the combined system of scoring also very interesting. It was a weekend full of great fun and mölkky. We got a lot of admiration from our German friends and found new friendships.

Detailed results can be found here.