Year end awards - still contemplating

Just a quick post to say that I've not forgotten about the year end awards post - I'd normally wait until after Lakeside, so while there is no Lakeside this year, I'm not too far behind, I'll probably put something up in the middle of next week.

I can't recall if they mentioned that the Masters was expanded this season since the last post. That's kind of an interesting development, it'll open up a bunch of moderately interesting games in the opening round when they have the games between #9 and #24, although I suppose the disappointing thing is that those players between 17 and 24, at least the bottom half of them, are a bunch of players woefully out of form that won't really add much value. Getting Bunting (at least on the basis of his worlds run), Whitlock, Clayton and King is a positive, but does adding Suljovic, de Zwaan, Dobey and Lewis add anything? I don't really know. Smith/Lewis, van den Bergh/Dobey and Gurney/de Zwaan should be fairly one sided, White/Suljovic might be a bit interesting.

The other additional players throw up some interesting ties - Cullen/Bunting should be worth a watch, Durrant/King is pretty darned intriguing (albeit Mervyn should win), de Sousa/Clayton isn't bad at all and Ratajski/Whitlock gives us a great WC rematch. It's a small pity that they're only best of 11 legs, but I suppose they're limited for time.