union pacific [Updated August 2000]

UNP     
   19-20  20-22 
   
  

  Hunt

Joe Lux, NY

2000 Champion

2nd: David Fritsch, VA

3rd: Bill Edwards, VA

4th: Mike Backstrom, MN

5th: Mike Hazel, SC

6th: Steve Scott, CA
Event History
1991    None      -
1992    None      -
1993    None      -
1994    None      -
1995    None      -
1996    None      -
1997    None      -
1998    None      -
1999    None     -
2000    Joe Lux     67
AREA Ratings
 1    None      -
 2    None      -
 3    None      -
 4    None      -
 5    None      -
 6    None      -
 7    None      -
 8    None      -
 9    None      -
10    None      -

All Aboard

67 wouldbe railroad tycoons showed up to take part in the first Union Pacific WBC tournament. The event was run as a SE in one evening. The plan for the tournament had been to be mainly four-player games. However, there were only 14 copies of the game for the first round (four of those were from players sent back to their rooms to pick up their copy), so there were eleven five-player first round games. The moral of this story is don't assume just because it's a multi-player game, that they'll be plenty of copies. With 14 games and 16 people advancing, two runnerups would advance. Both of these players lost their games by only one dollar. The average winning score in the first round was 114.5 and the average margin was 10.4. The lowest and highest winning scores and margins were 97 to 140 and 1 to 22. Only one game did not complete in the allotted 1.5 hours; it had the final dividend resolved when time was called.

The table assignments for the semi-finals was random. The tournament rules were changed slightly before the semis began when it was pointed out that the GM had misinterpreted the Second Edition German rules; the correct rule was that you can only draw UP stock by trading for it, but you do get to select a non-UP stock normally before making the trade. A big surprise to the GM was that play was even faster in the semis; two of the games finished in under an hour. No surprise, however, was the close games. The average winning score in the second round was 108.3 and the average margin was 3.5. The lowest and highest winning scores and margins were 102 to 116 and 1 to 5. The closest game had the highest score while the lowest score had the biggest margin.

The Final was another tight match. The final scores were 111, 108, 107, and 104. You can't ask for a much tighter game. The players themselves frequently commented on how well played the game was.

There aren't more game specific comments since this is a game where keeping information hidden until the end is very important so there was no mid-game information available. There was supposed to be, but the GM managed to leave his dividend by dividend scoring sheets at home. The other scoring summaries available are the average winning scores and winning margins for the entire tournament for the eight four-player games, 116.5 and 7.6, and for the eleven five-player games, 110.5 and 9.3, and for the overall 19 games, 113 and 8.6.

 GM      Andy Lewis  [1st Year]   16 Gosling Drive, Lewes, DE 19958
    alewis16@ispchannel.com   NA

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