Beta League Pool A Summary
Throughout most of the Beta League season of the ARML, Pool A was characterized by a very tight spread of scores that gave many players the opportunity to quickly change their placement and aim for placement in the top leagues.
Round 3 was especially tumultuous for everyone in the pool, as it saw a complete reordering of the top 9 positions of the pool - other than Ryan Jacobs, who maintained third somehow throughout the whole ordeal. The most notable movements in the top 9 positions of the pool were Hoang Long. and Ming-Ko Cho. Ming-Ko capitalized on a run of 4 consecutive mangans (the final two of which were as dealer), to put up a whopping +60.6 first place finish in one of the biggest wins of the entire Beta League, moving him from eighth to fifth place in the pool, a position he maintained for most of the rest of the season.
Hoang meanwhile hit two firsts and a second against to net almost quadruple his score from +20.6 to +79.3, putting him into second place in the pool, a position he would get incredibly comfortable in as he held it for the entire rest of the Beta League season.
In Session 4, the top of the pool was set. Erik Karhan posted an incredible four first place finishes in his group to leap from a +68.7 fourth place to an unreachable +199 first place. At the end of Session 4, Erik was nearly 70 points ahead of his nearest competitor, setting him up for a clear path to the Beta League championship, representing Pool A. Perhaps the most exciting match in Erik’s ascension to the top of Pool A was the third hanchan, in which Sixuan Lou took an early, massive lead on the entire table by winning four consecutive hands in his dealership during East 2, only to have Erik slowly chip away at his lead until his own dealership in South 3. After two exhaustive draws to keep his dealership alive, Erik capitalized on a tanyao tsumo and a mangan tsumo to finally surpass the seemingly insurmountable lead Sixuan had taken early in the hanchan and take first.
Erik was by no means the only player putting on a show in Session 4, however. Hoang won a kokushi musou as dealer in East 1 of one of his hanchan, rocketing him toward the highest single hanchan score of the entire Beta League in Pool A: +83.7. That performance was enough to cement Hoang into second place for the rest of the Beta League, earning him a guaranteed spot in A1 to begin the first season.
Well disguised, no one probably saw that one coming!
Despite the top two positions being all but out of reach for the rest of the pool, Round 5 was the last chance for the rest of the competitors to vie for the highest league they could. Third through seventh place entered Session 5 with a spread of +24 to +92.5, with many players facing each other in the final session, making the last spot in A1 a toss up. Xu Li, who had been sitting in that 3rd place position, put up a solid score early coming back from a 4th place finishes with two finishes at the top. A modest gain of 28.1 points meant that everyone else would have to play catch-up.
Unfortunately, most of those players who had a chance to play catch-up were sitting at Xu’s table…
Sarah Allen, who had been positioned in the top of the pool for most of the league was the biggest casualty as she went from the A1/A2 playoffs down the to A2/B1 playoffs. Ming-Ko, who had been just outside of the A1/A2 playoffs was basically eliminated from any chance at the A1 League when he suffered a devastating -52.3 in the opening game. He would find a way to rebound though, and put himself seeming in position for an A1/A2 playoff spot.
Lastly I unfortunately couldn’t gain enough traction in the final round. Despite taking 1st in the opening game, my results yo-yo’d after that, taking double digit losses and gains in each of the following games. Thankfully though there were still enough positives to put me into the A2 League without any further drama.
That left one final A1/A2 playoff spot open, and it was taken by someone off the board - or so it seemed. Simon Huang, who had been deeply negative for the first 3 rounds, effectively reversed his sign from -77.1 to +78.4 in the final 2 rounds, including a whopping +105.8 in the final round leapfrogging from eleventh all the way to fourth. After a modest 2nd and 1st place finish to start, he exploded in Game 3, winning back-to-back mangan hands as dealer catapulting him into a clear first. He would cement the win with a haneman in S3, making for a +45.9 point gain and into playoff position.
Simon would by mere points bump Ming-Ko into the 2nd A1/A2 playoff position, and then he’d have to sweat a late charge by another player - Kevin Ng, as he went from below 0 to within 30 points of heading into the final game. But unable to do any better than 2nd meant that Ming-Ko could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Even though Session 5 was perhaps the session with the least movement in rankings in Pool A, the tension created by the narrow gaps in scores from the B1/B2 playoff all the way through the bottom spot in A1 created an exciting slate of games.