titan [Updated August 2000]

TTN     

   10-23

   9-23      9-22

  9-14      18-23 

  Valley

Rich Atwater, WA

2000 Champion

2nd: Dan Strock, PA

3rd: Kevin Quirk, FL

4th: Jason Ley, WA

5th: Aaron Fuegi, MA

6th: Brian Sutton, MD
Event History
1991    Steve Rareshide      43
1992    Kevin Quirk      48
1993    Brian Sutton      58
1994    Chuck Kaplan      67
1995    Steve Koleszar      65
1996    Ben Foy      66
1997    Dave Finberg      72
1998    Jung Yueh      78
1999    Dave des Jardins     51
2000    Rich Atwater     60
AREA Ratings
 1    Kevin Quirk      6384
 2    Brian Sutton      6266
 3    Jung Yueh      6114
 4    Aaron Fuegi      5986
 5    David desJardins      5928
 6    David Finberg      5913
 7    Steven Koleszar      5759
 8    Bruno Wolff III      5727
 9    Jason Ley      5716
10    Ed Rothenheber      5589

Always a Titanic Struggle ...

This year 60 players played in 49 preliminary games of four players each. While not back to the record level of the final Avaloncon, it was an increase in the number of players, number of games and the average number of preliminary games each entrant played in, over last year. The number of informal (just for fun) games I noticed, also seemed to be higher than in the past.

This year the champion (Rich Atwater) made what is probably the most impressive semifinal comeback at the WBC. He began his semifinal game by going last from tower 1 and then recruiting only a centuar in his first two turns. He came back to a mutual win with Jeff Cornett and advanced to the final game because of his higher seed from preliminary play.

Previous champion Kevin Quirk returned this year after not being able to attend for several years. Kevin ended up finishing third in the final. Hopefully we will see Kevin again next year.

For the second time since I have been running the event, one of the semifinal games ran over the allotted eight and a half hours. The only other time this happened, the last two remaining players were in a titan on titan battle and we were able to use the half hour left before the final to finish the battle. This year there were three players left. One player was likely to win, one had some chance to win and the third needed some very good fortune. We ended up resolving the game using blitz play. This did not sit well with anyone.

For next year, I will write up some rules for using a Chess clock for semifinal or final games that are running especially long. I was thinking of setting time checkpoints at say four, five and six hours into a game; at which point if there were still a certain number of players than a clock would be used for the rest of the game. Rather than use total time, there would just be limits on the time used for each turn to make sure the game kept moving. This should almost always prevent the need for adjudication.

I will also need to make some notes on how the adjudication should go. In particular I would like to see a rough estimate of each player's chances made, and then a die rolled to determine the winner. I think this is a better fit with Titan than determining who is the favorite and awarding them the win. This method also shouldn't encourage players to play differently near the time limit unless they have very small chances to win.

David des Jardins took notes (as a spectator) of the finals and I have a preliminary draft (minus battle details) available on the web, along with details on players exact finishes. See: http://www.uwm.edu/~bruno/titan/results00.html

 GM     Bruno Wolff III  (7th year)   1615 E. Fairmount Ave., Whitefish Bay, WI 53217
   bruno@uwm.edu   (414) 961-7055 Home    (414) 229-5646 Work

Previous (Old) Yearbook Page
View the Icon Key