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