84 would-be railroad tycoons showed up to take part in the third Union Pacific WBC tournament; up seven over last year and shows the event is still increasing in popularity. The event was run as a SE in one evening. The first round consisted of 21 four-player games. The number of tables forced me into adding a fourth round, but which I definitely want to avoid next year so I think the opening round may be five player games. I want to thank the participants who brought their games. For the first time we had more than enough boards for the first round. The second round was another story as most of our game owners were eliminated. We had to borrow copies to have enough to play so please keep remembering to bring your game.

The second round was going to be eight 4-player games so all winners plus a number of second place finishers from the first round would advance. The number of runnerups advancing changed as the results came in. The reason for the change was that we had two games in the first round where two players tied. The number changed again when one of the game winners decided on another activity. A lot of the winners in the first round games won by comfortable margins so second place only had to be within $10 of the winner to advance.

Of the 8 second round games, three were won by first round runner-ups. The average winning score in the second round was 128.8. The average margin of victory was 10.0 . The lowest and highest winning scores and margins were 116 to 134 and 1 to 22.

The semi-finals were two 4-player games with the top two from each game advancing. I wasn't sure how this was going to play out since you didn't necessarily have to go all out for the win. It didn't appear to be a problem. As the results were similar to the previous round with the winning scores being 131 and 125 with the winning margins being 8 and 9. The problem that did arise however was that there was a tie for second place in one of the games, so the tie-breaker came into effect. Davyd Field edged out Evan Davis to make the final. I could have gone with a five player final, but I had announced it as a four-player final, all previous games had been four player and the game dynamics change too much with five players to spring that on people for a late night final. I appreciate Evan Davis' understanding.

Bruce Young, Scott Pfeiffer, Davyd Field, and Stu Hendrickson were the four finalists. There were some interesting stories behind these players. First, Scott and Davyd had finished second in their first round games so sticking around to see if you're a qualifier is important. Second, Davyd and Stu had played in the same first round game - what a strong table that must have been. Third, all but Stu are all members of the Greenville Mafia - their games at the club meetings must be intense. We did correct an error in interpretation of the 2nd Edition rules - I was caught up in the double negative; the correct ruling on Union Pacific is solely that you can not take its stock with your free pick-up; you can only take it by trading stock for it and this trade is in addition to your free stock pick-up each turn. Glad we finally got that straight. This led to a quicker, lower scoring final since stock was going out of the game faster. The final proved to be competitive as Davyd led by two with 25 over Bruce and Stu after the second scoring train. Davyd increased his lead after the third train to three over Bruce and nine over Stu with 61. Bruce however pulled out the win in the final scoring with a relatively comfortable 11 point win over Davyd, 111-100. The key for Bruce was that he increased his score from 35 to 53 between the third and final scoring while Davyd only managed an increase of three to 39. Union Pacific was a pretty big non-factor in the game as Stu, Scott, and Bruce all tied with six shares apiece throughout the scoring.

We hope to see y'all back again next year. Remember, we'll be back to only three rounds again and the games will be a little shorter with the correct UP stock rule in effect. We will also be playing with Alan Moon's obsolete track rule which allows a player at the beginning of his turn to discard out of the game from his hand any track card which is no longer playable.