Czech Lockpicking Championship 2019 by the Association of Czech Lockpickers.
Website: www.lockpicking.team

Report by Jan-Willem.
On Uklocksport Meastro posted an open invitation for lockpickers to compete in the Czech championship. The topic is a good read, you’ll find a lengthy discussion about the rules and difficulty of the locks. I’ve decided to join the competition and booked my flight.

The conference started on Thursday evening. I flew in on Friday and missed every easy method to get to the conference easily. I’ve haggled with the taxi driver and he took me to the conference. It took 90 minutes and was the most expensive taxi drive I’ve had to date. The Taxi driver did not speak much English and told me he was a diving instructor. From driving I understood he was a rally driver too. Just before dark I arrived at the location. The competitions had started earlier and meant I missed the padlock competition.

The conference was held at the youth camp at Nova Zivohost with many small cottages close to the river. The competition was held in a large cafeteria like room on wooden pick-nick benches. Even the most basic accommodation was more than sufficient. I’ve slept in a small cottage with bathroom on 200m.

The championship has many disciplines; Padlocks picking, cylinder picking, safe locks, and impressioning. Safelocks and impressioning where new competitions this year.

Each competition had it’s own timetable, rules, and dedicated crowd. In between the competitions there where talks on various topics, from safe locks to decoders and lock patents to locksport groups. I’ve participated in Imperessioning, group 2 safe manipulation and freestyle.

The Friday night was used to get to know each other. Each lockpicking group had a small talk on the country and lockpicking group. Many nationalities where present. Not limited to: Italian, Czech, Hungarian, German, Austrian and Dutch. I’ve done a small and improvised talk on Toool, shown off a few projects like ‘the room’ at HackerHotel. The talks took quite a while as everything was translated from Czech to English and English to Czech. I’ve Marek to thank for translating every little detail.

Impressioning was my first competition. The pick-nick benches where a bit annoying as I could not get the right angle. I’ve brought my block-o-wood vice with me and it did work perfectly. In the first round we got one lock and 5 counted blanks. I’ve opened mine in 90 seconds and proceeded to the finals. After 7 minuted eight people opened the lock, four for each final. All the blanks where counted, all of them needed to be returned.

For the finals The Czech competition got extremely difficult locks: Fab 200, Fab 1000, Tokoz tech and Evva are no joke. These locks are restricted and wherefore I was not allowed to keep a lock, a blank or a photo of the keys. It was unexpected and quite annoying. I’ve managed to open the Fab 1000 and won the competition.

I’ve entered the freestyle competition and it was a lot of fun, 5 minutes a lock. All tools allowed. Some of the locks where too hard. This included the Stealth key, Multilock and Xsecure (dimple). None of these locks opened on my table.

For the group 2 safe manipulation we had one hour to crack a S&G safe lock. Out of all competitors none opened the locks. I did not enter the Blitz (30 second knockout) or Cylinder competition. I used this time to talk with others at the conference. Many people have a story to tell if you talk time for them.

The competition was a lot of fun but there are plenty of improvements to make. For me it all comes to communication but this is likely due to the language barrier. The competitors where likely overestimated, this meant that some competitions where harder than necessary. For instance if only 2 out of 16 open than the locks are too hard. Harder does not equal better or more fun.

I would like to ask to value competitions equally. Cylinder lockpicking was the larger competition. That does not mean it takes less effort to win freestyle, padlock or impressioning.

Thanks to the Czech team for organising this event. Please check www.lockpicking.team for the next event. 2020 will be LockFest and 2021 the next championship.