The attendance and the level of competition both increased this year. The latter was due, in part, to the number of good players (such as Lucimara Martins, Andrew Greene, Lauren Vessey, and Barry Shutt, among others) who played in multiple heats until they finally secured a win. I had intended to limit the semi-final to a field of 20, but this changed after 21 games were played over three heats.

Three hour time slots were maintained this year, as some five player games can tend to run long. Unfortunately, with tournaments starting on the hour, it's difficult to accommodate these 2h 15m games without then permitting players to go for the full three hours. Adding to pressures this year was the fact that in all three heats there was a popular Euro starting two hours later. I tried to compensate by getting the heat games started as quickly as possible, and nearly all of the games were completed in time for players to go to their next games. I have a couple of ideas to streamline the sign-in process, and quite likely will try and enforce a two-hour time limit next year.

The semi-finals saw five full tables compete for spots in the final. Yoel Weiss had the only big win, with a lead of 13 points. All the other tables saw first and second place separated by a few points, including John Poniske besting David Gantt by two points with a final score of 62, which is one of the lowest winning scores I've ever seen. All games went well except for one which became very tense and emotionally charged within the first two turns. 2001 champion Jason Levine deserves extra commendation for good grace in a difficult game when he came up two points short of the leader.

The final was populated by six first-time finalists and was characterized by a number of unusual early occurrences. First, the four-card Royal Advisor appeared on Turn 2, which greatly reduced the risk for playing the 1-13 power card combination in later rounds. By Turn 4, all three mobile scoreboard actions had come out, ensuring the region scores would be stable for the rest of the game. Yoel Weiss got off to a decent lead by mid-game, helped by his locking down Old Castile with only two (!) cabs in the first scoring round. But in the end Yoel and Jay Fox were still battling for first, when Jay played his 13 on Turn 8 to use a "score the 5's" action to gain 14 points. Jay easily hung on for the win in a rather large victory of 116 to Yoel's 104.

It was Jay's first wood which was appropriate for an event which has seen only four players return to the final round in six years.