Jamie Tang and Debbie Gutermuth were just two of the 17 ladies who graced the field. WBC wasn't very receptive to abstract games but that seems to be changing. Women seem to be more inclined to try them and WBC ladies and families are on the rise.	GM Pete Stein gets carried away and tries to pull a Coussis by wining his own event in this Final, but even in the Year of the Stein, triple wood eludes him.

A healthy attendance of 92 appeared for the inaugural run of Ingenious at WBC. I'm glad to see that others realize what really is a simple game has a lot more to it once you play it. Or maybe there's something to Bruce Reiff's line: "If they see Stein running it, they'll know it can't be hard!" The 10 PM heats were intended to be the warm-up for the late night games, and all three of those heats drew well. Perhaps too well ... as a serious shortage of games developed. Next year I suspect we may have all four heats at 10 PM.

Most of the games in the heats were 4 player games, with only a handful of 3-player games when the field didn't co-operate with even multiples of four. The one-hour time limit was plenty for virtually all the games. The only problem I ran into was the Thursday night heat when I realized I had 26 players and only two copies of the game. OOPS! We had to do a little scrambling to get more copies and one or two players disappeared into the night. If you've got a copy of a game, it doesn't do any good in your room or at home.

[As usual, self-deprecating Pete is being a tad modest. Witnesses report that when Pete was confronted by his game shortage, he ventured over to the dealer's room and bought four copies. Such dedication is neither required nor sufficiently acknowledged when it occurs. Remember that the next time you're inclined to give a GM a hard time or decide to rely on someone else to bring a copy of the game. - CD]

We had two players win three games: Daniel Eppolito and Roger Taylor. There were 18 players with one win over one or more heats, which looked like it might require those pesky MESE tie-breakers rules to get to 16 semi-finalists. Fortunately, as usually happens, not all the winners showed for the Sunday single elimination rounds, so all winners who showed advanced.

With only 13 players appearing for the semis, a bye was given to the only three-time winner who showed (Roger Taylor) to allow three 4-player semi-final games. Table #1 had Jamie Tang squeak out a victory over Katherine McCorry, Steve Cameron and Debbie Gutermuth. Table #2 featured Chris Johnson just missing out on a perfect game (a score of 18 in all six colors), easily defeating Matt Calkins, Tom McCorry and Andy Lewis. Table #3 was a low scoring affair with your humble GM besting Tedd Mullally, Pierre Luc Thiffault and Shannon Beets.

With two tournament wins in other events already in my belt, could I have the gall to go from the Perennial Bridesmaid to Consul Candidate? Whoa ... easy Pete ... let's not get carried away. In the Final Chris Johnson made short work of the table. Halfway through I knew Jamie and I were out of it, and it wasn't much longer before Roger Taylor fell out of contention. If it were a prizefight they would have stopped it about two-thirds of the way. Chris won with four 18's and two 14's. Jamie won the tiebreaker for second with myself in 3rd and Roger in 4th.

Since this is the only tournament of Ingenious of any real size that I know of, I kept track of some statistics to chew on. (The first stat is 400 words to keep Convention Director happy, but that's another story). Out of 34 games played, three players won with perfect scores: Tedd Mullally, Daniel Eppolito and Matt Calkins, with Jason Levine missing that distinction by a single point. The average winning score was a little over 12 and a half, with a lot of 11s and 12s as winning scores. The winner had an average of a little over three scores of 18, with a lot of 2s and 3s offsetting the handful of 5s and 6s. Only two games had a winner with only one score of 18.

One stat that we have to look at in future years: There were a total of 25 4-player games in the heats. The first player won ten of them, with the 2nd, 3rd and 4th player winning fiveg each. Statistical anomaly or a flaw in the game? I don't know at this point. Out of five 3-player games the first person won only once, and the first player didn't win any of the semis or the Final. I'll have to pay more attention to that in the future.