The number of ladies who graced the field rose from 17 to 25. Women seem to be more inclined to try abstract games and WBC ladies and families are on the rise.	GM Pete Stein gets carried away and makes his own Final for the second year in a row before reverting to form and finishing last in the Year of Andy Latto who won again.

Last year attendance was good enough to qualify for the Century, this year it was over 60% better at 131. Like last year ,most games were 4-players, with a handful of 3-player contests as needed. We again had to scramble to get enough copies of the game. BRING A COPY OF THE GAME! It makes it easier to get things done in time and I don't have to turn anybody away.

Fortunately, most of the games were under the one-hour limit. Which was a good thing for the Thursday 10PM heat, since at 11PM there was going to be a Circus Maximums Demolition Derby held in the same room. Talk about a culture clash! When GM John Jacoby saw me setting up for Ingenious, he came over and said (if you know John and Circus Maximums, you can envision him saying this), "I see you're setting up for a tournament. You might not want to be here in an hour!" No problem, I broke out my own version of the whip and got everybody out before the carnage began.

This year we had 47 games and 44 winners. OUCH! The format that worked well in 2007 will need to be adjusted in 2009 to either encourage or perhaps require people to play in at least two heats to advance. But that's for next year. This year the only two-game winners were Ken Samuel, Andy Latto and Peter Stein. Fortunately, Sunday morning semis has its own way of reducing the field so I got down to 16 players without too much pain.

Semis Table #1 was an easy victory for Andy Latto as he missed a perfect game (18's in all six colors) by only two. Semi #2 saw Bruce Reiff squeak out a victory over Olin Hentz and Sarah Beach. Semi # 3 had Rob Winslow edge two-game winner Ken Samuel. Your friendly GM was able to get a victory at Semi #4 and make the Final again to claim the only returning laurelist hnors.

That set up what I figured would be an interesting Final. Andy had already won three events that week. Bruce is the Plaque Man. I was at the Ingenious Final for the second time in a row and I've played enough games with Rob to know he was not going to be a pushover. I was correct as it was a close game with what I thought were few mistakes. I fell behind about two-thirds of the way through as I had trouble drawing Green tiles, but the rest stayed close until the end, with all three winding up with scores of 11. Andy pulled out the win with a second score of 14, Rob took second with 13 and Bruce third with 12. A good tense game that I was not embarrassed to lose. And somehow Latto found room for a fourth plaque in his suitcase.

Once again we kept track of scores for statistical analysis. Ken Samuel gets a tip of the cap for winning both his heats with a perfect score. Other perfect games were accomplished by Eric Landes, Ivan Lawson, Nathan Wright and Mario Veillette. This year three players (Arthur Field, Kathy Stroh and Sue Ellsworth) were able to win games without being a Genius (no scores of 18). The average winning score was a little over 13.5, up by almost an entire point from last year. The winning player on average had a little over three scores of 18, about the same as last year. This year the favorite color was Red at an average score amongst winners of 16.5, though as you might guess all the colors are pretty close to each other.

Last year I was concerned about the number of victories by the first player. That's no longer a concern. This year the third seat was the best with 19 wins, with only14 for the first seat. Odd stat was that in the three 3-player games the third player won out.

I'm pretty sure I'll still have at least three heats next year at the same times, the 10PM slot works well. You'll probably need to play in at least two heats to advance next year, but I don't think too many will mind that. Feel free to write me with your thoughts.