Wes Lewis stands out in a crowd since he became a Pirates fan.	The finalists go for Sunday's last wood.

Gotta Love those Tie-breakers

Sunday is travel day at WBC with Finals, packing and good byes the order of the day. There are a few exceptions to this rule, and TransAmerica heads that list. Starting Sunday morning, this event is a great last game or a way to pass the time as a friend or family member who fared better completes a Final. It's also one of the few games at WBC with a learning curve so gentle that you can attend a demo and actually be competitive in the following event.

Many consider it a disadvantage to go first in a round, so the "house rules" for the tournament require each player to go first for one round. In the case of a tie, the player who scored the fewest points when going first would win the tie. If still tied, the scores in the second round are compared, and so on until there is a clear winner. We had 12 games split evenly between 5-player and 4-player contests in the first round, with winners advancing based on their difference from the winner's score. That produced three 4-player semi-final tables, with both firsts and seconds advancing to a 6-player Final. Family members were separated in the first and second rounds.

In the first round, the lowest advancing score was a 4, earned by Dave Bohnenberger and Matt Calkins in their 5- and 4-player games, respectively. The most common winning score in the first round was a 7, occurring in three of the 5-player games. The highest advancing scores were an 11 in a 4-player game by Susan Cornett and a 14 in a 5-player game by Rob Flowers.

At the first semi-final game, it was anyone's game until Rob Flowers managed to go out first in both the third and fourth rounds. Janet Ottey managed to score few enough points in the first three rounds that she wasn't hurt too badly by a 6 in the last round, allowing her to advance also. At the second table, the last round proved decisive, with Jeff Cornet winning and Patrick Shea advancing in second by the tie-breaker of winning the round in which he went first. At the third table, Perrianne Lurie won with an amazing one point total after all four rounds, with Ken Gutermuth also advancing with a 5, scoring no more than two points per round.

Patrick, who only had advanced by the slimmest of margins, started the Final with zero points, and never fell behind. Despite doubling his points in the last round, Patrick managed to tie for the win and, having earned 2 points in the round in which he went first, to Perrianne's 3, won the tournament by resorting to the tie-breakers for a second straight game. Three players each went out twice, resulting in both fairly low and fairly high scores. Hope to see you next year!

Final Standings: Patrick 10, Perrianne 10, Rob 12, Ken 14, Janet 23, Jeff 24.

 Trans America Junior

There were 13 little train travellers this year for GM Ewan McNay's Junior tournament. Andrew Carr proved to be the best. Other accomplished train riders were

2nd: Nicole Pysuach

3rd: Bobby Weber

4th: Sean Duffy

5th: Kayley Pasko

6th: Jon Barry

Ewan teaches rugrat train travel techniques.	Move over Patrick Shea ... we'll get ya next year.