Written by Mike Weltevrede
The Maastricht Open is a semi special tournament to me. It has given me a mixture of positive and negative experiences in a weird combination. In the first year that I went, it provided me with my first judge break. However, I had left before the break because I thought “there was no way I’d break anyway”. In the second year, Nikolai and I were doing well and drew OG on a motion discussing the special ties that the US has had with Syria. I thought that was fine, because we seemed to know a bit about the subject and OG is my favourite position anyway. Nearing the end of prep, the door opened, and the other teams walked in. It might be safe to say that we were not necessarily the most confident after they entered, because those other teams consisted of Lennart van Laake and Nina Ramaswamy, Jeroen Wijnen and Romée Lind, and Roel Becker and Ben Shaw. Nonetheless, we still gave good speeches and spent way too much time on Roel’s POI, asking Nikolai “what the Vatican would think of this policy”. In the third year, namely last year, the legendary “Highest, lowest”-meme was born. I spoke one of my best tournaments up to that point, speaking a 77,8 average if you do not count round 3. However, in round 3 I choked and spoke a 66. That brings me to this edition of the Maastricht Open, having taken place on the 21st and 22nd of April.
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