For months now I tried to limit my spending, no extravagant clothing, accessory or electronic devices, I try to limit going out to what's strictly necessary. And, of course, I was able to get 2 days off for the ChGK Nats, because I never took any before. Ainslee and my boss are the only ones at work who ever heard of me even playing ChGK, let alone going to Nats. I saved up since July 4 for an eventual trip to the ChGK Worlds, but I will probably need to take the remainder of my vacation time soon, though, Patricia reflects on her lifestyle.

Upon arrival in Seattle in late morning, as soon as they arrive, Patricia and Sergei are singled out for more information about other intellectual games being played at ChGK Nats.

"Don't forget: while you both played brain ring in high school, the KSHSAA version of it asks questions in the same topic order. Here topic distribution isn't the same. Also, there's svoya igra. I sure as hell would not be very good at SI since it's much more about erudition. It plays out mostly like Jeopardy. If we ever made it to Worlds, there would be erudite quartet, but the time is not ripe to discuss it with you" Bohdan explains to them.

"Is it possible to register for svoya igra without committing the whole team?" Patricia asks him.

"Yes"

The good thing about American college is that you're not necessarily committed to a major right out of the gate. In a sense your education is broader than it would have been in Russia or Ukraine. But something's gotta give; you don't get the same depth. A broad knowledge base is an asset in ChGK, however, teams that prioritize subject coverage over team synergy usually don't perform very well, Bohdan reflects on how Patricia and Sergei differ from Vira's ex and the player who died last year.

At Columbia, we beat a bunch of other teams that played in Helsinki and played for more established ChGK countries; Syria, North Korea and Iran's national teams would barely compare with how this team played before I arrived. In ChGK, there are political points to score, or to deny to China or Russia, but there isn't any in svoya igra or brain ring. In the past few years, we saw intellectual games being used as part of sports diplomacy, and I remember having overheard Stephanie and Vira's ex talking about how Syria was introduced to ChGK in 2016... Patricia muses while Yakiv is driving the rental van around Seattle so they know where to go, where the hotel is, and go to Seattle Center before visiting the University of Washington. And, of course, familiarizing themselves with the layout of the campus as well as the schedule of the ChGK Nats.

Day 1 is held in Smith Hall, with svoya igra in the morning and brain ring in the afternoon. Day 2 is held in the Haggett Cascade Room. They know they don't have much time for sightseeing in Seattle, so they drive around the city and only briefly stop at the major landmarks, such as the Space Needle.

----------------------------

Then comes a conversation the following morning during breakfast at the University Inn, which is about a topic that makes people in neighboring tables a little uncomfortable:

"I overheard Vira's ex talking about a 2016 special episode of ChGK for Russian troops stationed in Syria. What makes that special episode, well, special?" Patricia asks her teammates around the table.

"The game itself wasn't special; what made that episode special is how it politically polarized the ChGK world. Up to this point, ChGK sporadically made political news, mostly in Russia, but then ChGK diplomacy became real during the Ukraine war" Bohdan explains, not suspecting that the topic of ChGK politicization is a topic making Yakiv and his relatives squirm at the table.

"I don't think this is the right time to discuss that facet of the war in Ukraine; it's one thing we'd all rather forget" Yakiv speaks on behalf of his relatives, while he gets flashbacks of life during the siege of Mariupol.

"Yeah, I get just how intensely curious Patricia is, but I think no one around us know anything about ChGK history" the sixth player retorts.

"Inter-version ChGK rivalries rapidly aligned along political lines. Of course, considering the TV version remained completely subservient to VGTRK and hence the Kremlin, so many in the competitive version of the game began to voice their political disagreements, secretly at first, and sometimes openly as was the case during the Ukraine War..." Bohdan keeps rambling.

"I get the IAMG was staunchly anti-war to the eyes of the Russian public at the time, and that ChGK was used as a political vehicle, but stop it, please!" Patricia hollers to her teammates. I really wonder what the distribution of competitive ChGK players by educational level looks like.

"Although ChGK is supposed to be playable with high school-level of erudition, it's not uncommon at the elite level for players to hold advanced degrees. Because ChGK players tend to have higher levels of education, international tournaments tend to require more erudition as well, which made it more difficult for us until you arrived" Vira comments on the question Patricia was asking.

And, of course, elite players tend to come from upper socioeconomic status. I also remember that, at least in the 2020s, higher levels of education correlated with more liberal tendencies on social issues, Patricia keeps musing on educational attainment vs ideology.

"Because you used to play quiz bowl internationally, svoya igra shouldn't be too troubling to you. I'll give you a brief overview of how competitive svoya igra plays out. You have five blocks of five questions each, each with a theme, and the point value of questions goes from ten to fifty. As with Jeopardy, you lose points for incorrect answers" Yakiv explains to her.

Why do I have the impression svoya igra questions won't look like quiz bowl tossups at all? Unless the tournament director is involved in quiz bowl... Patricia's excitement at playing svoya igra (SI) seems to fade, especially given how the rest of the team seems to have conceded that she was the player for whom SI was the best fit.

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The race is on to get the team captain to the registration desk at the lobby of Smith Hall. The team dashes through campus, to the extent traffic lights on the way from University Inn allow for it. Upon arriving at Smith Hall, they meet with the entire ChGK Nationals' organizing committee, as well as the appeals committee and the game committee.

Ostensibly these people are manning svoya igra game rooms when registration period ends. And each of the Nats' staffers man one game room apiece. The organizers knew not everyone wanted to play SI, so the total number of players allowed to sign up for SI was 88, or eight players per game room times the number of game rooms.

When the eight players are seated in Patricia's game room, the moderator of that room begins by explaining that the best 32 players after the preliminary rounds will go on and play in the playoffs. And answers may be given in either Russian or English.

"This is round one of the svoya igra tournament at the 2041 United States National Chto, gde, kogda Championship" a member of the appeals committee starts to speak, then mentions Liszt and a set of love poems in a 40-point question in Russian.

"Liebestraume" Patricia answers after raising her hand.

Back to quiz bowl we go. I feel like they are using candles from past Russian-language quiz bowl bonuses, i.e., questions that were previously used in tournaments. These questions feel awfully like KA's, except they don't have a fixed point value, Patricia reflects, while holding a 40-point lead after 1 question.

Fast-forward to the end of the first game, where the top 2 players see their lead over the rest of the players decrease because of the very content of the questions, which are medical. However, they both knew that, in quiz bowl (Mikhail, the second player, is also a former quiz bowler) medical questions were buried under an avalanche of mostly biology questions. And maybe the odd history or chemistry question.

Patricia is trailing by 50 points and the final question is worth exactly that much. Here's how she seems to understand the question, loosely translated from Russian as spoken by the member of the ChGK appeals committee moderating their game:

"For fifty points, name the class of genetic illnesses affecting only males"

Some players tend to believe the wording of the question is problematic, believing it would be more appropriate to talk about people assigned male at birth than about males in the context of genetic illnesses. Like this one, who raises his hand. At this tournament, however, protests are adjudicated only if it affects the protester's score. So Patricia must think of an answer and fast!

"Protest!" One such player shouts, holding a phantom mic on one hand, and raising a hand on another.

"Noted" the moderator signals, even though that player is not in the lead group.

Genetic illnesses on the Y chromosome? Why am I so sluggish now? I'm usually faster than this! Patricia keeps thinking when the time is almost up. Her mouth starts to open in the nick of time, and she raises her hand as fast as is then possible:

"Holandric illnesses!" Patricia then shouts in the direction of the moderator for everyone to hear.

"Virna! (Correct). We are going into overtime, and we keep asking questions at random until the tie is broken"

Hopefully, the rest of the svoya igra tournament doesn't contain more medical questions! Medical questions remind me far too much of my job, of all the suffering these addicts endure, including but not limited to Catria! A Catria whose culinary promise was cut short because of her alcoholism early in culinary school! Of alcohol poisoning, of PAWS, and other consequences that arise from drugs and withdrawal! From what I ate of her cooking, she's fantastic, but she must come to terms with the harsh reality of culinary arts. Nearly every employer that specifically hire chefs from a culinary school holds a liquor license. That usually means constant triggers, especially since high-end luxury restaurants use drinking wine for cooking, Patricia seems to have parasitic flashbacks from her work as an outpatient addiction administrator at some Kansas City psychiatric hospital.

"The overtime questions are asked in English. Patricia and Mikhail are tied at two hundred points each. Overtime question one, for twenty points: what Caravaggio painting has a sea animal in its name?"

"The Card Sharks, also known as The Cardsharps" Patricia answers.

Ah, card sharks. They are expert card players, although in Caravaggio's time, card sharps were assumed to be cheaters, the appeals committee member reflects on Patricia's answer.

"And the winner of the first game is... Patricia Halpern!"

In the past few months, I rapidly proved adept at playing ChGK, but I kept asking questions whenever something was new to me. Man was I bewildered by the culture of that game. While svoya igra might have been a game that bore more of a resemblance to quiz bowl, ugh... why do I keep having parasitic thoughts surface like this? For my entire life, I cherished my intellectual gifts, but sometimes my brain plays tricks on me, Patricia ruminates, feeling the effects of her mental hyperactivity.

----------------------------

Later games prove to be less troublesome to her, and her teammates fan out to other game rooms, scheduled at 15-minute intervals. After all, they always play together, they want to see other players before the main event tomorrow. Especially Sergei, since he, as well as Patricia, never met any of them in person before.

However, after playing the first 2 games, where players were assigned to game rooms at random, power-matching is in effect for the rest of the preliminary rounds. All that matters for Patricia at this point is just making sure she is in the top 4 brackets, so that she can make it to the playoffs. When the preliminary rounds end and their teammates come back to her:

"You now have a better idea of who the best masterminds are. Like, you know, Mikhail, whom I faced in the first game. I know, however, that masterminds are not the be-all, end-all of ChGK" Patricia tells her teammates.

"It's typically easier for a mastermind to double as an idea generator or a brainpower than as a controller or soul. Mikhail, at last year's Nats, made me feel like he was an idea generator and a mastermind rolled into one player" Vira then comments on Mikhail.

"Mikhail is the captain of the Quantum Computers, it's a name you will hear about going forward. He's out for revenge after their loss at last year's Nats, held in Chicago. But he won't suspect that focusing too much on defeating Saturday Thirteen will blind him" Bohdan adds.

"People often picture ChGK players to be more or less like you: highly educated, intelligent, quick-witted and, of course, very erudite" Yakiv makes his assessment of his captain, whose worst svoya igra preliminary game was, well, the first game.

So Vira is our controller, Yakiv our idea generator, I, mastermind and also brainpower, Sergei is our other mastermind, the sixth player, a laschtok who tries to be a soul, then Bohdan is probably the closest thing to a hybrid of soul and idea generator, Patricia keeps ruminating when the playoff seeds are announced.

----------------------------

From this point onwards, scores aren't cumulative from a game to another. So Patricia could actually take it easy for the quarterfinals as well as the semifinals. Even then, she seems to have regained the mental speed and agility she was accustomed to. Going into the final of the svoya igra tournament, she feels like she is in a good position to win it all.

But unlike the first game, where it was from Mikhail that Patricia obtained the most resistance, this time, it's another player, playing for the Harvard Crimson. They say the Harvard Crimson can pose a serious threat at Nats, now we know it's because they have their pick of masterminds. However, for some reason I feel like svoya igra at Worlds won't be anything like this tournament. Here's my chance to win this tournament, Patricia ruminates after having played several blocks of 5 questions.

The top 3 players, the Crimson player, Mikhail and herself, appear to be evenly matched going into the final block of 5 questions. However, Patricia seems to be slowing down, because she goes into the final question trailing by 40 points and the 50-point question is still on the table.

Still clinging on to her chance to win the tournament, she remains vigilant. And the block of questions being about blanks, she is shaking in her seat. Especially since she is afraid that she drew too many blanks in this game. Then again, it is the final, and it's the best 8 players, or so the people in attendance would be led to think.

I came all this way, this is not the time to draw yet another blank. I MUST buzz in! Here's my one chance to win this game! Quick! They said the answer came from an establishment whose name can be obtained by removing a letter. Yet there is only one kind of establishment I know about that can be obtained from blank by removing a letter. Bank. What could be issued by a bank and be blank? Patricia's mind races against the clock.

She presses on the buzzer like a syringe (for the final, rather than raising one's hand to signal one's willingness to answer, one buzzes in, since it's the only game with an actual buzzer)...

"Blank check!" Patricia shouts, believing the others' unfamiliarity with the history of banking might have cost them.

"Fifty, and we now have a winner: Patricia Halpern, from the Kansas State Team!"

That was too close for my own comfort, Mikhail, befuddled by the banking instruments, such as bank drafts, reflects on this loss. Kansas was a non-factor last year, now Kansas has won the svoya igra tournament? Just because Patricia has decent erudition doesn't mean these preriynaya blyady (prairie bitches) actually stand a chance, here or at Worlds!

"It seems like svoya igra question subject distribution is wider than NAQT quiz bowl. Or KSHSAA brain ring (a.k.a. scholars bowl). That's why I didn't perform as well as I would have liked, notwithstanding that it is as you said when I was first introduced to ChGK. I did expect the competition to be stiff however" Patricia comments on her experience of svoya igra. "Who wants to play brain ring this afternoon? Hurry up, there isn't enough room for everyone"

"No thanks, we want to be rested for the main event tomorrow" Vira then answers Patricia's question.