Dave Platnick and Barb Flaxington on the Nile but fail to advance this time.	Eric Freeman ponders a move as Alfred Smith and Matt Calkins wait their turn.

For the second straight year, an alternate advanced to the semi-finals with a second place finish and then won the entire tournament.

Heat 1 filled nine tables. One table saw very aggressive bidding as early as Round Two (Thebes 10, Edfu 10, Amarta 6, Buto 6, Mendes 0). Unfortunately, very slow play plagued two others -- when 1:20 had elapsed and neither had finished Round 4 (leaving less than 30 minutes for the final two rounds), both tables were directed to end their games after Round 5. A more robust method of resolving slow-playing games will be developed before the 2009 convention. Heat 2 managed to put together ten tables, and for the first time in three years there was difficulty finding enough sets. Please remember to bring your copy, even if we don't expect to need it.

With 19 table winners, we established five 4-player games to create a 5-player Final. When four of the winners failed to appear, we took all five alternates who stuck around rather than drop to a 4-player Final - proving yet again the value of persistance.

Alex Bove was first Pharaoh, a position he would hold for four of the six rounds but one that he could not effectively exploit. Rich Meyer opened a 16-13-9-8-8 lead in the Old Kingdom on the strength of two power cards and economical bidding (while Eric dropped the -3 all three rounds, Rich bid 1 all three rounds netting him four free farmers towards the 9-farmer power card). Greg's consistent 3 bids got him the Pharaoh for Rounds 3 and 4, and after the flood a bid of 21 with blocker got him Avaris already with three pyramids, and when he also snagged Damanhur for 21 in Round 5 he was able to score two power cards of his own and 33 in the New Kingdom for a 41-34-33-32-30 win.

Having the Most Pyramids (11-10, 40-39 four-year) remains a more reliable path to victory than Most Cash (8-13, 27-52 four-year) or the halftime lead (7-14, 34-45 four-year). Four-player games were played with the same three provinces removed before the game (Abydos, Amarna, and Kharga). Due to the removal of
the 4-power-card province from the game, the requirement for the Power Card bonus card was reduced from 7 to 6 in those games.

WOJTASZCZYK WINS AMUN RE: Kevin Wojtaszczyk emerged triumphant over a field of 30 players in our first on-line Amun Re Tournament. The 30 engaged in a round robin format of six five-player games to ensure that each player played everyone else once in the six-round preliminaries. Tom Dunning emerged from the Preliminaries with the top score of 47 followed by Kevin in second with 43 points. The top 12 scorers then engaged in a three-round semi-final, again playing each other once in three four-player games which proved to be very close - one game being decided by a total difference of just three points between first and last. This led to a five-player Final for the title. Mike Kaltman (6th in the preliminary round) took second followed by Alex Bove (5th), Eric Freeman (4th), and Tom Browne (3rd). Tom Dunning fell to sixth.