Another Lost Cities Tournament, another great showing! Sixty-six participants arrived after dinner this year in the Valley room, normally home to those hygiene-challenged hard-core wargamers. Their goal (and mine) was simple: ending the tournament at a reasonable hour (the 2001 tourney ended at nearly 1:00 AM).

The tournament rules remained the same as the previous year. Rather than using cumulative score, a best-of-three games format was adopted. A couple participants dissented, but the majority seemed to prefer the format.

All four former champions and runners-up (Daniel Broh-Kahn, Jared Scarborough, Laurel Stokes, and Jeff Bakalchuck) were in attendance. Broh-Kahn was matched against his daughter in the first round. After defeating her, he felt so guilty that he dropped out (or so the rumor goes).

One of our youngest participants, Erica Kirchner, made it to the round of 16 before losing to Jeff Bakalchuck. But Jeff, last year's runner-up, was bounced in the quarter-finals by Rick Sciacca, wielding the ever-intimidating badge #666. A hearty thank you to Jeff for all of his help throughout the tournament as my assistant GM (yes, Gary Presser, you helped out too!).

The semi-finals featured Rob Kilroy versus defending champ Jared Scarborough (a rematch of last year's quarter-finals) and Daniel Karp versus Rick Sciacca. Rob ran into the Scarborough wall again, and #666 lost.

On to the finals! Daniel, who taught Jared the game, finally made it to an LST tourney. The defending champ was a bit nervous, admitting that Daniel had beaten him in the three games they had played in preparation for the tournament.

The result: Daniel spanked his protégé, defeating Jared in two straight games (all by 11:15 PM). Daniel opened five expeditions in the first game, but still won by 22 points. In the second game, he opened four expeditions, three of which totaled (­11) points. But the fourth included a 20-point bonus for 67 net points, over Jared's 59. An impressive result given that Jared had won 11 matches in a row dating back to last year. For his efforts, Daniel took home this year's game prize, courtesy of Jay Tummelson and Rio Grande Games.