liberty [Updated October 2006]  

	2006 WBC Report     2007 Status: pending 2007 GM commitment
Todd Treadway, VA 2006 Champion Offsite links:	Event History 2003    Evan Seary     18 2004    Bruce Reiff     43 2005    Bruce Reiff     25 2006     Todd Treadway     30 Block Party Event History 2004    Ric Manns     19 2005    Bruce Reiff     18 2006    Ric Manns     12	Laurels Rank Name From Last Total 1. Bruce Reiff OH 06 114 2. Ric Manns IN 06 49 3. Barry Smith NY 06 45 4. Nick Benedict CA 06 42 5. Todd Treadway VA 06 30 6. Evan Seary NY 04 28 7. Mark Miklos GA 05 22 8. Rob Taylor MI 05 21 9. David Metzger NY 05 16 10. Tom Thornsen NY 06 12 11. Mike Sims IN 06 12 12. Pete Stein OH 06 12 13. Ted Drozd IL 04 12 14. Jack Morrell NY 03 12 15. Bill O'Neal NY 05 12 16. Stan Hilinski MD 06 9 17. Terry Hollern OH 05 9 18. John Coussis IL 04 9 19. Damian Mastrangelo PA 03 8 20. Joe Pabis VA 06 6 21. Patrick Duffy VA 03 6 22. David Metzger NY 06 3 23. Charles Stucker IN 06 1
2006 Laurelists Nicholas Benedict, CA 2nd Tom Thornsen, NY 3rd Stan Hilinski, MD 4th Joe Pabis, VA 5th David Metzger, NY 6th Past Winners Evan Seary, NY 2003 Bruce Reiff, OH 2004-05 Life, LIBERTY and the pursuit of Wood! It is not the in the Declaration of Independence, but the Liberty tournament began in dramatic fashion as two-time defending champion Bruce Reiff was unceremoniously dethroned in the opening round by newbie Mike Buccheri and thereby gained a place of honor in Don Greenwood's Pantheon of heroes! The other highly rated players suddenly saw an open road to wood. This year also saw the first ever American victory in 1776. Todd Treadway, another newcomer, was able to clear the British from Canada in the first year, leaving them with only the West Indies as a part of His Majesties Empire.This proved to be the year of the upstarts in true revolutionary fashion. The four semi-finalists were all new to the medal round except for eventual runner-up Nick Benedict. The Final was a bruising affair as Todd played the Americans. The prevailing thought was that once you destroyed enough British blocks the redcoats would be unable to occupy enough spaces, but oh contraire! Nick and Todd threw 17 of the game's 50 blocks in the dead pile. Todd had killed many British units early, but Nick was able to defeat many of the American blocks in mid game to narrow the American advantage. It was close to the end as Nick was able to get 28 victory points, one short of victory! Todd was able to hold the lobster backs at bay for his first WBC wood. The statistics changed greatly from the previous tourneys. The Americans had always held a slight advantage heretofore. 2006 was the year the Empire struck back. The British finished the tourney with a 53-47 record. This was the first year that the Brits enjoyed an advantage. Some would argue that this would be due to a late French entry. The French were very eager this year in that 11 times they entered in the first year and on seven occasions they entered in the second year. Of 32 games played, the Americans enjoyed French entry within the first three turns. It could be that bidding was the culprit, but the bids were similar to last year in that the average bid to play the Americans was 1.3. I am not sure what you can conclude from these stats other than the tournament saw better play by the British players than in previous years. The final statistic that we tracked was control of the West Indies at the end of the game. The control had little impact on the outcome of US victories since they had control only once. The British controlled them six times with the remaining games split between the two.
GM      Ric Manns  [3rd Year]   241 Greenway Dr., Scottsburg, IN 47170    ricmanns@c3bb.com   812-754-0922