Fortunes made and lost with a roll
of the dice ...
86 players tried to score the most points in four turns of
the dice-rolling game of $Greed. This was the second
year for the revised format where each player rolls the dice
twice and the top 10% of the players (in this case, eight) advanced
to the final round for two more rolls of the dice.
The players were split among three different tables, with
order determined by random card draw. Jeff Mullet put the first
scoring attempt to qualify for the second round on the board
by scoring 1050 points at the third table. Doug Gallulo put up
a 1450 from the second table as the fourth player at the table.
The first table then finally put up a decent score with its
fourth player, Thomas Browne, with a 1700 score. None of these
players made it to the second round with these scores, however.
After all of the players had rolled the dice for two turns,
the players who had qualified for the second round were two players
from the third table: Malinda Barnes and Gordon Elgart, who had
the highest qualifying score of 2650 points; two more players
from the second table: Paul Risner, who had the lowest qualifying
score of 1900, and Bill Crenshaw; and four players from the first
table: Brooks Beyma, who tied Gordon's score of 2650, Richard
Curtin, Scott Buckwalter and in a complete surprise, the GM,
Pete Staab, from the first table. This broke the GM's seven-year
streak of scoring zero.
Other highlights from the first round included three players
rolling no scoring combinations on all six dice, five scoring
combinations of $Greed by Brooks Beyma, Jeff Bakalchuck, Paul
Risner, Robert Kircher and Gordon Elgart and four scoring combinations
of four diamonds by Thomas Browne, Richard Curtin, John Coussis
and Bill Crenshaw.
The order of rolling for the final round was determined by
going from the lowest qualifying score to the highest score.
The players thus proceeded to roll in the following order: Paul
Risner, Scott Buckwalter, Bill Crenshaw, Pete Staab, Malinda
Barnes, Richard Curtin, Brooks Beyma and Gordon Elgart. The set
of third rolls saw a lot of points scored. Paul started the
scoring frenzy by getting 500 points, giving him a subtotal after
three rolls of 2400 points. Then Scott rolled the combination
of $Greed and a total of 1200 points on the third turn, giving
him 3200. Bill was next and managed to get another 900 points
for a 2950 total. The GM then continued his scoring streak getting
1100 points for the turn and tying Scott at 3200. Next up was
Malinda, who was the first person to fan on her third turn, leaving
her at 2400. Richard Curtin stopped with 400 to give him 2850
and set himself in striking distance for the last turn. Brooks
went next and posted 1300 points for a 3950 total after three
turns and a 750 point lead. Finally, our leader after two rounds,
Gordon, fanned and remained stuck on 2650.
The fourth set of dice rolls saw a reversal of fortune for
most, as points became hard to come by. Paul led off and fanned.
Scott then scored another1450, including two sets of silver
for a 4650 final score and a 700 point lead over Brooks. Bill,
Pete, Malinda and Rich all fanned, although Malinda managed 850
points before missing on her fourth try. Then Brooks stepped
up to the table. He managed 750 which placed him 50 ahead of
the finished Scott and 2050 ahead of the last remaining player,
Gordon. However, for some reason Brooks felt he had to roll
one die (with a two-in-six chance of scoring) to score more points.
Brooks did roll one of the two scoring rolls and followed that
with the forced roll of all six dice. Once again, he felt the
need to roll five dice for even more points. One more scoring
combination later, he quit the turn with 1000 points and a total
of 4950. All the extra rolls proved an unnecessary risk as Gordon
fanned on his first try, making Brooks the winner.
Scoring was higher this year with 1900 needed to qualify for
the final round. The number of players scoring continues to
rise with 30 players (34.9%) scoring in the first two rounds.
The format change seems to be having the desired effect as more
players are scoring and players can actually make the decision
to stop rather than having to necessarily beat the highest score.
Once again I would like to thank my assistant GMs, Bruce Reiff
and George Sauer, and the people who helped me record the scores
at the tables and on the poster board at the front of the event:
Richard Irving, Ken Good, Bruce Monnin and Thomas Browne. Come
join us next year for another good time of dice rolling in $Greed.
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