The Acquire tournament began on Thursday morning in a strange new world for your GM. In all my years of coming to Avaloncon (which is every one of them) I had never set foot in the ASL room (except for the Sunday morning After Action meetings that were held there the first couple of years). As a longtime GM, I don't pay much attention to what Don sends us until the seven-hour drive to Baltimore (just kidding Don, your stuff goes right to the top!) So one of the guys in the car asks where Acquire will be held. I told him probably the Valley or Maryland rooms. He, being a first time attendee, proceeded to look up the room and promptly informed me that no, it was in the Hunt Ballroom. I, of course, snickered and told him to look again. He did, and to my shock, we were indeed going to be in the Hunt Ballroom with the venerable ASLers.

With a little trepidation I went into the room and found ASL being set up in the front of the room. I quickly went to the back to set up. Perry Cocke, the ASL GM came back and introduced himself and told me if I needed anything to let him know. Gee ... ASLers ARE nice guys! From that point everything went smoothly and if it wasn't for that 'tink, tink, tink' of the dice in the glasses we never would have known we were playing in the Hunt Ballroom. In fact, it was pleasantly quiet, as opposed to the other event I run!

Anyway, 41 would-be hotel owners found their way down to the bowels of the Marriott and the gaming began. We used Reiff's patented playing card method to randomize the three rounds. I heard no complaints.

After the first three rounds, 16 semi-finalists were left standing. The semis set up as follows: Semi #1 ­ Cliff Ackman, Steve Shambeda, Carl Walling and Tamara McGraw. Semi #2 ­ Forrest Pafenburg, Rob Flowers, Dave Gantt and Reiko McQuiston. Semi #3 ­ Justin Childs, Gary Moss, James Wicht and Cathy Kratz. Semi #4 ­ David Brooks, Casey Adams, David Platnick and Chuck Goodwin.

In the 4th Semi, David Brooks squeaked a $1500 victory out over Chuck to advance. In the 2nd, Rob Flowers had a close game as only $8000 separated first and last. In the 1st semi, Steve Shambeda had a comfortable victory while running up a semi-final high total of $54,900. The closest semi was the 3rd where 16th (and last) qualifier, 1998 champ Justin Childs beat defending champ Gary Moss by a mere $1200. The first merger was a close one and propelled Gary and Justin to the lead. Gary had the initial advantage with more money, but Justin held Tower and started it again to merge and exchange shares with Imperial. Justin was able to then come back in the end game with interests in three of the four remaining companies to Gary's two.

Justin proved that seedings don't mean anything in the finals as he ran roughshod on the other finalists with $54,300. Rob Flowers was second with $33,700, Steve Shambeda third with $30,900 and David Brooks took 4th with $28,700. Justin used Imperial at 40+ to really widen his margin of victory. It seemed that everyone else just couldn't get going. Justin said of his victory 'I look forward to returning next year to play with the best group of players in the world. Hopefully, I can draw the winning tiles again." Well said -- although wasted because Diplomacy doesn't start till Friday.