The Handy Handicapper

The entries are in the starting gate. The Handy Handicapper has posted the odds for this year's competition. For the results of the 2000 race, see http://www.boardgamers.org/teams00.htm

And DOWN THE STRETCH THEY GO. This is Stuart Tucker and it is June 12th, only two weeks until the start of the World Boardgaming Championships. The mass scramble for the coveted Team Tournament Championship is about to begin. Last year's handicap column seemed to instill a bit of competitive zeal, so here we go again. Last year at this mark we had 50 teams registered. Get your acts together, folks. This year we have but 39 teams registered. If we are to approach last year's final level of 66 properly-registered teams, the rearguard had better step it up!

The odds quoted herein are only preliminary, and will lengthen as more teams register, but they already show some clear favorites. Yet, I see a number of former championship teams haven't yet registered. Today's favorites may have some familiar company before the convention starts. Of course, the odds quoted below are for purely recreational interest. As always, how you choose your recreation is your business.

I detect that last year's odds discussions have engendered some efforts this year to piece together some legitimate contenders out of whole cloth. Exhibit A is the new Baby Seals (26-1), a team loaded with talented gamers who already have earned seven Woods on their way to defeating 370 opponents in those games. "To heck with tradition," they must have said as they dumped former teammates on other losing efforts. In all, over one-quarter of the field contains newly-formed teams.

Roughly half the field has been teamed for five or more years, so the old favorites are still in contention.

The Manly Men (14-1) once again carted home more than a fist-full of Woods, but no Team Championship last year, having placed only ninth. This year we
start them off as the favorites, particularly with the return of Bud Sauer to their lineup. This team's players have earned an incredible 34 Woods. This may be the year at long last that they choose their entries correctly. But they'll have to get past Peripheral Reach (22-1), which was a close second last year. If Bill Cleary can beat Bruce Reiff for the Football Strategy Wood this year, they could secure another team championship.

A Bear by any other name is what I call the two-state hodgepodge Show Me First State (19-1). The Lewises (from Delaware) have dumped the Cousins (from team Black Bear) in favor of a strong couple from Missouri. Their toughest opponents in Merchant of Venus (and their other entries, for that matter) may be their own teammates.

True to form, The Old Guard (31-1) bounced back last year to capture third. Alas, only two of its members return this year, costing the team some heavy
firepower. Still, the replacements aren't too shabby.

The vaunted AHIKS Europe (29-1) managed sixth last year, without a point from stalwart Oleson. They should be tough again this year. Band of Fools (26-1) are hardly fools, having switched one of their teammates to the game he designed. They also managed to score points last year in all four of the events they've entered this year. Of course, picking the year you win can be as hard as picking the game you'll win.

The Games Club of Maryland crew, GCOM Express (32-1) seeks to improve its chances this year by entering games mastered last year. I expect to see them knocking off a good number of opposing teams in the German games as well.

Last year saw some new rivalries created, but others may have fizzled under the pressure (as have their odds to some extent). The Boyz N The Hill (not
registered yet), Beltway Banditos (55-1), and Boarding Party (90-1), all creations of former AH employees, all managed to earn zero, zip, nada, niente
piu. In fact, the AH bragging rights were quietly grabbed by Don Greenwood's new team, last year called the Over the Hill Gang, which scored . . . well, two
points is still better than none. This year they've opted to be called We Ain' Dead Yet (29-1), perhaps pointing to those two points as their primary evidence.

We are not without developments among the long-shots. Three of the Prez Con guys have formed Have Not a Clue (65-1). Maybe their switching around of
entry events will give them a clue, but I'll wait to see results. I guess team points are a burden to Misery Burden (75-1), who have switched OUT of events that earned them 23rd last year. Surely, the underperforming Da Pretzel Boys (200-1) will break out of their slump soon.

In what turned out to be a three-horse race, MAWS (Mid-hudson Area Wargaming Society), a 55 to 1 quasi-favorite claimed the top prize in the Team Tournament competition for upstate New York this year with wins in Age of Renaissance and March Madness supplying all of the firepower for the quartet in edging the Reservoir Dogs by virtue of 56 more entrants in the total entrant tie breaker. The wins were the third wood for Rich Curtin and the sixth for Dennis Nicholson in the eleven-year history of the convention. The Dogs, for their part, made a strong showing after being shutout last year and more than justified their 80-to-1 odds. Coming in a strong third was the Central Florida Game Club just a point and a tie-breaker off the pace. Last year's champs, The Avenel Hill Game Company, made another strong showing but fell back in the pack and had to settle for 11th place.

Also beating the odds by finishing in the Top Ten were longshots Misery Burdens which finished 10th at 130 to 1 and the stalwart handicapper's own Beltway Banditos who rode the coattails of young Rebecca Hebner's Grand Slam to claim 7th, also at 110 to 1. But the Banditos may have had the last laugh, winning our first Team Uniform contest with the outfits modelled at right by Rebecca and Stuart. The Banditos featured a bandolier of bullets bearing the three digit codes of the events they entered and stood out in a crowd beneath their distinctive sombreros. Each lugged a new Hasbro game home for their efforts. Lights Out, a California team complete with a close order drill routine finished second, ahead of Reservoir Dogs and the Central Florida Game Club.

The Polish Lancers won the award for consistancy as the only team to have all four members score points, but lacked a champion and finished 16th.

At the other end of the spectrum were the following "favorites" who were among 30 teams that whiffed without scoring a point: Show Me First State at 25 to 1, the 1998 champs, Barbarossa, at 40 to 1, The Old Guard at 49 to 1, Will Game for Food at 55 to 1, and the South Jersey Game Knights at 60 to 1. Team Tournament handicapper Stuart Tucker was nonetheless vindicated with his ratings as eight of the top ten teams were among his indicated favorites (if being quoted at less than 100 to 1 odds makes you a favorite).

The Central Florida Game Club settled for third but posed with their wood while awaiting the results of the scoring (from left to right, Scott Cornett, Doug Galullo, Jeff Cornet and Craig Reese.

2001: MAWS: Dennis Nicholson MMS 8, Jim Eliason 5FT 0, Roberto Sanchez 0 POG, Rich Curtin II AOR 9 = 17 [168]

2000: Avenel Hill Game Company: Henry Richardson III ACS 4, Pat Richardson WAS 8, Andy Gardner VIP 8, Henry Richardson Jr B17 0 = 20 [250]

1999: Me & Three Stiffs: Michael Rinella BKN 8, Brian Smith EPB 0, Marvin Birnbaum WTP 8, Marc Giddings AOR 0 = 16 [259]

1998: Barbarossa: Fred Minard ABN 9, Steve Shambeda ACQ 0, Clifford Smith TT2 0, John Wetherell ACS 4 = 13 [336]

1997: Pillage, Then Burn: Scott Pfeiffer AOR 0, Dave Gantt BRI 8, John Emery UPF 8, Earl Anderson PXB 0 = 16 [212]

1996: Jerry's Kids: Byron Stingley TPS 6, Michael Arrighi BKN 0, Joe Bellas HCR 7, Jeffrey Otto RTG 0 = 13 [102]

1995: Black Bear: Sean Cousins KRM 8, Michael Neal ACV 8, Andy Lewis MOV 1, Caleb Cousins RKL 0 = 17 [163]

1994: Team Dixie: Ralph May ADV 8, Randy Cox SSB 7, Bobby Laboon ASN 7, Roger Cox DUN 0 = 22 [125]

1993: Before Team Names: Bruce Young ATS 9, John Emery UPF 3, Dave Gantt ACQ 2, Earl Anderson BRI 2 = 16 [218]

1992: Before Team Names: Wes Erni VIP 9, Peter Wilke BRI 4, Bruno Wolff TTN 3, Tom Mueller ASL 0 = 16

1991: Before Team Names: Byron Stingley TPS 10, Jim Falling RFT 10, Joe Bellas CVW 2, Jeffrey Otto UPF 0 = 22