$Greed broke the century mark this year, with 107 competing to make the highest score over four turns. The tournament used the same format that's been in place for two years, where each player rolls twice, and then a number of players advance to the final round for two more turns. This year, the maximum of ten players advanced to the final round. The game was run at four tables with turn order randomly decided.

The first attempts to get on the game board were by James Bell (with1400 points on the second roll after busting on his first turn) and Stuart Tucker (with 1450 points). These scores were doomed to fall short though as John Pack immediately responded with a score of 1600. Even that would not hold up though, as by the time the first round was over, there were eight players with 1900 or more, and a three way tie at 1850. With only a maximum of 10 players advancing though, Richard Curtin - the only player to place more than once in this event during WBC - was eliminated by the tie breaker of being the last score reported.

The distribution of the advancing players was unusual with each table advancing a different number of players: Anthony Musella (with 2250) and Derek Lander (with 2050) advanced from the first table; Jon Macomber with 2100) was the only player to advance from his table; Sean Larsen (1850), Robert Kircher (1900) and Devin Flawd (2200) constituted the advancing trio from the third table; and the final table yielded a quartet of finalists - Mike Coomes (2050), Josh Githens (2200), Tom Dunning (1850) and Ken Rothstein (2150).

Other statistics from the first round included six players failing to score on rolls of all six dice, five rolls of $GREED by Rolinda Collinson, James Bell, Anthony Mussella, Derek Lander, and Mike Coomes, and only a single roll of four diamonds by Ken Rothstein.

The order of rolling for the final round was determined by going from the lowest qualifying score to the highest score. Scoring in the finals was a lot tougher than it was in the first round though. On the third turn, Tom Dunning moved into an early lead with a roll of 900 points to give him a 500 point lead at 2750. The next six players all busted in their attempt to catch up to Tom. Devin was the next to score with 500 points, for a total of 2700 and second place behind Tom. The leaders weren't going to have any of that though as Josh responded with a solid roll of 800 points, and Tony Musella scored 450 points to put him in a tie with Devin.

After three turns, Josh now led the field with 3000 points, Tom Dunning held second with a score of 2750, and Devin and Tony were in a tie for a close third, just 50 points behind at 2700.

Tom Dunning started the fourth round with a bang, building up a total of 1150 points, which would have given him a total of 3900 - but afraid of Josh rolling after him, he opted to keep rolling, and busted, leaving him a score of 2750. This set the stage for the rest of the fourth round as the leader, Josh Githens, was the only player to post a score on the final turn (700 points for a total of 3700), giving him the 2003 championship and his third championship wood of the 2003 WBC.

Competition was definitely tougher this year with 1850 needed to qualify for the final round, but with the highest score being 400 points lower than last year's. In addition, the final victory score was over 1000 points lower than last year. Also, the number of players scoring again seems to be improving with 43 players scoring some points in the first two rounds, which was 40.2% of all of the players.

Once again I would like to thank those who ran the game tables: Bruce Reiff, and Peter Staab as well as Kaarin Engelmann who not only volunteered to run the fourth table we ended up needing, but also took it upon herself to teach the game to new players.

Come join us next year for another good time of dice rolling in $Greed!

There were 14 pint-sized contestants for Greed Junior on Sunday morning. When all the dice had been thrown, Lisa Rennert of Gaithersburg, MD had soome wood to hang next to her dad's collection. The six finalists were:

1st. Lisa Rennert - MD

2nd: Carolyn Strock - PA

3rd: Jordan Flawd - PA

4th: David Pack - CO

5th: Katherine Sudy - VA

6th: Jacob Hebner - CO