The shipping lanes are full as Carol Caler deals a convoy to another wolfpack in the teeming North Atlantic.	James Pei seems to want sympathy for his hand. Fat chance given all the misery he's dealt in the card driven games.

For the second year in a row it came down to the tiebreaker. The five finalists survived the usual whittling process from118 entrants who made their way into the North Atlantic for this year's tournament.

Some of the fun from the heats included:

* Joel Tamburo scoring a whopping 60 points in the first heat!
* Steve Foren and John Elliot being tied in total points AND convoy points so Steve won by having taken convoy C1
* One game where the Bismarck was played three times and it's average dice rolls were less than 5
* One game that saw the final convoy pushed three times

The Final had John Elliott, Bill Place, Rob Kirchner, Steve Scott, and Stephen Cuyler squaring off. As in 2006, things started slowly as no one wanted to put large-value convoys or ships into play. This led to a total of nine "Stein-Flushes" (discarding your whole hand) during the first five rounds, including Rob Kircher doing it three hands in a row.

At the halfway point no one had a big lead. Hand #11 was tied and led to some good points being scored when it went around a second time. The action did speed up in the second half as Stephen Cuyler pulled ahead on convoy points briefly. Steve Scott saw his big chance late in the game as he played for a 7-point convoy and took it down with little opposition.

Those seven points proved critical in the final scoring as once again the score was tied. Both Steve Scott and Stephen Cuyler led with 25 total points. Scott emerged victorious by virtue of having 19 convoy points to Stephen's 16 (those seven points late in the game proved to be even bigger than originally thought). Rob Kircher finished 3rd with 19 points, followed by John Elliot's 17 and Bill Place's 15.

Thanks again to everyone who played. I look forward to seeing everyone again next year (and I'm hoping to see everyone at the Pacific Typhoon event as well, if things go well with getting that game produced in time).