The 2008 British Open was held on 5-6 April, 2008 in London, England. Organized by Steven Trezise, it was the 7th British Table Championship. Sixteen entrants from seven different countries took part. The trophy will travel up the M1 motorway to stay with winner Rob Morton.

1. Place:  Rob Morton ITM (UK)
2. Place:  Mauro Lazzara (ANG)
3. Place:  Ben Polman ITM (NED)

Full Results

After arriving mid-afternoon on Friday, my girlfriend and I spent some time with the other early arrivals just chatting and playing a game that I am sure Mauro made up on the spot! We then headed off to a comedy club on the other side of London. To cut a long story short we ended up missing the last tube back. However, having played many a game of Monopoly in my life, I knew that if I followed the "light blues" it would take us back to where we needed to be.

My first game was with Vincent, and having received quite a beating from him recently in the World Champs I was glad to escape this one with a draw. From that point on things went on a downhill slide, losing convincingly to Rick, Barbiko and Tizz88. As it was Grand National Day, I spent lunch break in the bookies which might not have helped.

After 6 games my record was: won 2, drawn 1, lost 3. I was well down in 12th position and quite rightly so. The last 2 games of the day went my way to be just about over 50% TPs for the day.

In the newly refurbished and freshly painted Strada the meal was a little disjointed, to say the least, but a good time was had by all. Back to the accommodation, most stayed up playing random games until just before midnight. A pretty early finish as opens go.

A couple of nice wins to start the day against Julia and Grandpere moved me up to into the top half. Then a close loss to simon dropped me down again. I knew that I had to win all my games to be in with a chance of a medal.

I had a few crunch games in a row with Petra and Mauro. I managed to win both and it started getting very close at the top. Two more wins took the final round to a very exciting climax will all sorts of possibilities of who could win.

Mauro lost his last game and Simon was held to a draw. I scraped a win against Typo. I knew that if Benopi got a sizeable win against Julia then he would be the champion. He won by 3 which was just not quite enough.

The weekend was very enjoyable for a couple of reasons in my opinion. Firstly, it was an all-play-all tournament. The second was that there wasn't even a mention of mistake penalties.

I hope to see everyone there again next year.

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