Canes to face Caps in home-and-home

For the next two nights, the Canes will be playing division rival Washington. This is Carolina's twelfth back-to-back, and this time neither team will have any advantage as they are playing each other and traveling the same.

Tonight's game is in my ticket package, but I'm deferring the ticket for a different one later. I won't be at the game and I won't be able to write about either Friday's or Saturday's game. At some point in the future, I might try to catch up on these, but I'm busy this weekend.

I'll be down in Charlotte playing in a Scrabble tournament. Barring some strange events, I should emerge from that tournament with some prize money, and there's a very good chance that I could make a few hundred dollars. As much as I like watching the Caps eight times in one season, it's a no-brain decision to go for the prize money. Again, if things go the way they should, I will be able to improve my national ranking and move into a higher division. The only trouble is, if I falter, even a little, my rating will take a savage beating.

Not that any of you care, but the way these tournaments are played is similar to the way chess tournaments are played. The players are paired into skill divisions, and then into smaller groups. At first the small groups play round robin, then you move on to a modified "swiss pairing" style tournament. No elimination. Everyone plays all games. In this case, it's 14 games. After the first three games, you're only playing against players who are doing as well (or as poorly) as you. It's constantly a power-power matchup rather than the power-protect matchup common in sports tournaments.

Anyway, I'm off, and I won't be back until Sunday night. I'll maybe have a chance to watch Saturday's game, but tonight I won't be done until about 11:00pm.

Wish me luck.