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Total games: 29, including 2 skunks
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The 2004-2005 Season
Even Zach and Jonathan would probably have been surprised if they knew in early September 2004 the pure volume of games they were going to undertake their senior season. Jonathan managed to snag a room in the elite senior year housing of Chadbourne House, while Zach was in for another year of survival within the riff raff brick walls of Greylock. This was not all for the worst, however, as Greylock and Chadbourne’s doors were but a couple of hundred yards apart, the closest the friends had lived since freshman year.
The number of games reflected this proximity, as an incredible 154 games were played in the 225 days spent on campus from September through May. All told, probably over 50 hours of cribbage was played between the friends, perhaps hurting their academic performance just a tad. Jonathan continued to have the edge in skunks, collecting 13 to Zach’s 8 as his ever more aggressive play continued to pay off. When leading games big early double skunks, or winning by 61 points, were often trash talked about, but neither player could amass that large a margin of victory by the end of any match.
As the year wore on, it was clear the early training in life by his father and grandfather had paid off handsomely for Zach, as he waltzed through the season with Jonathan in his rear view mirror. The return to focus on cribbage, and less distractions such as bridge, Go, and Ms. Pacman, were certainly a factor in Zach’s excellent year. Another possible reason for the season’s result was it was Zach’s second year in a Greylock dorm – it certainly became a comfort zone for matches and perhaps reached the point of an unfair home-field advantage.
After four years of learning each others tendencies and styles, the duo could play in almost any environment with the same rhythm to the game. Music, especially in Jonathan’s room, was background to almost every contest; Marc Cohn’s Walking in Memphis and Dexy Midnight Runners’ Come on Eileen were just two among many favorites. Playing in front of the TV became more common, especially if the MTV show Boiling Points happened to be on. To be honest, the friends often scheduled game sessions specifically to coincide with showings of Boiling Points.