saint petersburg [Updated November 2007]  

	2007 WBC Report    2008 Status: pending 2008 GM commitment
Chris Robbins, UT 2007 Champion Offsite links:	Event History 2005    Arthur Field     125 2006    Anne Norton     106 2007     Chris Robbins     114 Euro Quest Event History 2005    Peter Staab     32 2006     Tom McCorry     44 2007     Thomas Browne     30	Laurels Rank Name From Last Total 1. Chris Robbins UT 07 52 2. Anne Norton NJ 07 48 3. Arthur Field SC 05 40 4. Tom Browne PA 07 38 5. Peter Staab PA 06 38 6. Tom DeMarco NJ 06 31 7. Tom McCorry VA 06 30 8. Joe Harrison KY 07 24 9. Michael Fox IL 06 24 10. Gordon Rodgers PA 07 16 11. Debbie Davidson NE 06 16 12. David Fox NY 05 16 13. Michael Kaltman PA 07 12 14. Mike Hazel SC 07 12 15. Kathy Stroh DE 06 12 16. Alan Kaiser OH 05 12 17. Perrianne Lurie PA 06 9 18. Michael Richey VA 07 8 19. Jay Fox NJ 06 8 20. Jeff Mullet OH 05 8 21. Tom Wade IN 05 8 22. Greg Rogers MD 07 6 23. Pete Stein OH 05 6 24. Tom Dunning NY 07 4 25. Daniel Eppolito CA 07 4 26 Blair Morgen NJ 06 4 27. Ted Mullally NJ 05 4 28. J. J. Jaskiewicz MD 07 2 29. Andrew Gerb MD 05 2
2007 Laurelists Joe Harrison, KY 2nd Gordon Rodgers, PA 3rd Mike Hazel, SC 4th Anne Norton, NJ 5th Daniel Eppolito, CA 6th Past Winners Arthur Field, SC 2005 Anne Norton, NJ 2006 Saint Petersburg draws well consistently in every heat and year to year with very little variance in attendance. Finalists (l to r) Joe Harrison, Gordon Rodgers, Chris Robbins and "Coach" Hazel. Always a Crowd This year the tournament had three preliminary heats, a 16-player, four-board Semi-final round, and a 4 player Final. Attendance was consistent throughout with 16 4-player boards in Heat 1, 17 in heat 2, and 15 in Heat 3. In all, a total of 114 different players participated. In the Final, Chris played a Judge in the first round, and everyone was tied for Aristocrats and Workers. In Round 2 everyone built Workers and Aristocrats to remain tied, except Gordon who still had only one Aristocrat. Round 3 saw Gordon get Aristocrat #2 and everyone gain a fourth Worker except Chris, who somehow gained extra Workers and a Worker Upgrade, pulling ahead in Green money. Mike also played an Observatory. Round 4 saw Mike play a Mistress of Ceremonies and Joe play a Judge. Gordon pulled ahead in Aristocrats by one, but lagged in Worker money. Round 5: Gordon played an Observatory and maintained his lead in Aristocrats. Chris had a lead in Victory Points, with Joe eight points behind and Mike and Gordon 11 points behind Joe. Chris still maintained a lead in Worker money. Round 6 ended the game. Gordon built three Aristocrats, pulling ahead by two, but it wasn't enough. Chris Robbins' game-long lead in money from Workers proved too much to overcome. Chris won with 93 Victory Points; Joe took 2nd with 74, Gordon 3rd with 71 and Mike 4th with 66. This was the first year I ran this tournament, with considerable help from assistant Steve Quade and also from several of the players. Running an event of this size is a challenge. The last time I ran a comparably sized tournament was a 99-player Diplomacy tournament in 1996 in Ohio. Rather than use the sign-up sheets for registration, I used a 3x5 card system. This allowed multiple players to sign-up for a round simultaneously, putting their names and badge numbers on a card and placing it in an entry box. For following heats, a player who had played in a previous round merely had to find the card in the alphabetically-sorted piles and place it in the entry box. I found this method much quicker and easier than the 'one player at a time sign-up sheet' method. I then used the cards to count the number of players and assign them to boards randomly. Team players were asked to note their team names on their cards. By marking which board number each player was on in a round, I could also ensure players did not play with the same opponents in following rounds, and keep teammates from being on the same board as well. There were a few minor glitches, but overall I received favorable feedback from the players on using this method. There has been some discussion over certain cards providing extreme advantage if obtained early in a game, so I designed game score sheets that allowed players to record when the Observatory, Mistress of Ceremony, or Judge were played. I did this to track the impact of playing these cards early in the game. Based on the data recorded, playing these cards in the first round seems to help -- 60% of the time, in the second round only ~ 35%, and later provides no special advantage. There were enough games where players who played some of these cards were beaten by players who did not play any of these cards, that it is still not certain that these cards actually do give a player an unfair advantage. Usually the Aristocrat Bonus determines the winner. There are numerous cards that yield money and victory points in addition to the Mistress and Judge. I am convinced that luck of the draw plays far more of a role than just getting these specific cards. I am considering incorporating player suggestions to ban the Observatory and Mistress from first round play, requiring that they be shuffled back into their decks if revealed during the first round. I welcome comments on this idea. 2007 Euro Quest Laurelists Thomas Browne, PA 1st Michael Kaltman, PA 2nd Mike Richey, VA 3rd Greg Rogers, MD 4th Tom Dunning, NY 5th
GM      Dan Mathias [1st Year]   NA    dcmathias@comcast.net   NA