Stone Age, anyone? 100 prehistoric players filled each and every heat.	Ivan Lawson gets "unlost" long enough to mess with Kurt Miller's cavemen.
Alex Henning and Holiday Saccenti wonder about a woman's life before women's lib	GM Peter Staab with his four surviving finalists after two elimination rounds had cut 67 winners down to four.

Still More Cavemen ...

Event Grows for 4th Straight Year

There were three heats with the winners of each game qualifying for the elimination portion of the tournament. In a remarkable display of consistency, each heat had 25 4-player games with exactly 100 players per heat. This produced eight double winners resulting in 67 qualifiers. The closest game of the tournament occurred during the first heat and had to go to the fourth tiebreaker in order to determine a winner.

Fortunately, only 48 of the 67 qualifiers decided to advance to the quarterfinal round, resulting in 12 4-player games with the four top runners-up also advancing to the semifinals. The quarterfinal games were won by 2012 champ Dominic Blais, Keith Dent, Yossi Dvora, Andrew Emerick, Eric Engelmann, Scott Fenn, Derek Glenn, Paul Klayder, 2011 champ Cary Morris, Scott Saccenti, Eugene Yee and Greg Ziemba. The other qualifiers were Haakon Monsen who tied Cary Morris's winning score in his game; David Rohde with a score that was 98.52% of Derek Glenn's winning score; Greg Thatcher, who tied Jason Levine for second place in the game and won by virtue of the tiebreaker, with a score equal to 98.10% of Eric Engelmann's score; and Rob Kilroy with a score that was 97.14% of Greg Ziemba's score.

The winners of the semifinal games were Dominic Blais, Scott Fenn, David Rohde and Scott Saccenti. The seating order for the Final was randomly determined with Blais going first followed in order by Fenn., Rohe and Saccenti. The first set of cards were four "Christmas" cards. Fenn took the card for one resource which also provided one of the cultures for end game scoring and got a farm from the card while Blais got a tool and Saccenti and Rohde both got gold. Saccenti took the card for two resources which also gave two farmers for the end game scoring. He also got a farm from the card while Blais and Fenn both got tools and Blais got a brick.

The first card placed for the next turn was placed in the space costing three resources and was another "Christmas" card. All three "Christmas" cards were taken in the second turn with Fenn taking another culture card for a resource and getting a farm while Blais got gold, Saccenti got stone and Blais got wood. Blais took the card for three resources which gave two tool makers for the end game scoring and got a farm from the card while Saccenti got a tool, Blais got gold and Fenn got wood. Saccenti got the card for two resources which provided two builders for end game scoring. Saccenti got a farm from the card as did Rohde while Fenn. got gold and Blais received brick. At the end of the second turn, Fenn had already accumulated three farms and Blais had acquired three tools. In part because of the additional resources earned from cards in the first two turns, Blais, Fenn and Saccenti all were able to claim huts on Turn 3 setting the tone for a potentially fast game. On the fourth turn, Fenn tried to claim two cards. However, he only rolled enough on three dice to produce two wood leaving him short of being able to claim both cards he wanted. The fifth turn saw Blais claim one of the huts for which you can turn in up to seven resources with the third choice of the turn. He eventually used only one stone and a wood to claim the card but it did keep it away from the others. On that same turn, Saccenti claimed the next "Christmas" card and got the first roll with a distinct advantage to the claimer by getting a tool while Blais received stone and both Fenn and Blais received wood.

Turn 6 saw Fenn claim the second "7-resource" hut with the first move of the turn and spend 7 wood for 21 points. Dominic used the second move to claim the card that provides an additional farm and 1 farmer toward the end-game scoring. On the seventh turn, Fenn was looking to claim a hut and needed a brick in order to do so. He had a tool available to assist with the production and employed two workers to produce brick. However, he still managed to produce no bricks on the turn. He had a second chance to get the brick he needed because he also claimed the seventh "Christmas" card on that turn. His gift roll resulted in a tool, gold, wood and wood to be available to claim so he missed out on his chance to claim the hut for the turn. He did take the tool from the card while Dominic got the gold and Saccenti. and Bais got wood. Even though it was getting late in the game, Bl;ais got a major boost to his production abilities in the eighth turn. The other additional farm card (that provides a culture for the end game) came out in the 2-resource cost spot and the additional tool card (that also provides culture) came out in the 3-resource cost spot. With the second choice of the turn, Rohde took the farm from the village so Blais claimed the additional farm card with the fourth choice of the turn, the additional tool card with the eighth choice of the turn and the additional tool from the village with the twelfth choice of the turn. Saccenti claimed the eighth "Christmas" card during this turn as well providing him with a farm while Rohde received gold, Fenn got brick and Blais got wood. At the end of this turn, Saccenti. got to the point where he had as many farms as people and required no additional food each turn.

The ninth turn delivered the ninth "Christmas" card. Blais claimed it and got one of the best possible rolls for the card as he received a tool from the card while the other three players all got wood. Blais ended the game on the Turn 10 by depleting one of the hut piles. There were still ten cards left in the deck at game end.

Rohde had 109 points earned during play, 1 point from culture cards (1 culture card), 0 points from farming, 0 points from tools, 21 points from people (3 shaman times 7 people), 7 points from buildings (1 hut builder times 7 huts) and 4 points from remaining resources for a total of 142 points. Fenn had 78 points earned during play, 36 points from culture cards (a set of six different cultures), 3 points from farming (1 farmer times 3 farms), 0 points from tools, 7 points from people (1 shaman times 7 people), 0 points from buildings and 10 points from remaining resources for a total of 134 points. Blais had 80 points earned during play, 9 points from culture cards (a set of 3 different cultures), 4 points from farming (1 farmer times 4 farms), 60 points from tools (6 tool makers times 10 tools),0 points from people, 12 points from buildings (2 hut builders times 6 huts) and 3 points from remaining resources for a total of 168 points. Saccenti had 99 points earned during play, 1 point from culture cards (1 culture card),18 points from farming (3 farmers times 6 farms), 4 points from tools (1 tool maker times 4 tools), 0 points from people, 35 points from buildings (5 hut builders times 7 huts) and 0 points from remaining resources for a total of 157 points. So Blais ended up with an 11-point victory to become the first double winner of the event even though he started 1 less round than Blais (third place) and Fenn (fourth place).

For those of you interested in the effect of starting position, here are the stats from this year's tournament. In the 75 heat games, 16 winners started as the first player, 19 as the second player, 21 as the third player and 19 as the fourth player. There were also two games decided by tiebreakers and the losers in both of these games were the third player. In the elimination rounds seven first players won their games, three second players, four third players (including the champion) and three fourth players. There was also one game decided by a tiebreaker in which the loser was the second player in the game. So the third player managed to win more games than any other starting position, but there were at most three additional wins than any of the other starting positions so there wasn't much of an advantage.

I also asked players to indicate when the "starvation strategy" was used in a game to chart whether that strategy was still extremely strong as someone stated to me in an email conversation before the convention. In the heat games, the starvation strategy won 10 games and lost 21 times although one of the losses was by tiebreakers. In the elimination round games, the starvation strategy only won once and lost four times according to my information.