Kelly Czyryca, Cally Perry and Thomas Browne.	Canadian Glen Pearce, Nick Henning and Kevin Breza.

The schedule change from Friday to Saturday apparently was a mistake as attendance dropped 40%. Perhaps some other big event or combination of events swept up a lot of the folks looking for a quick and fairly easy Saturday night tournament. So next year we will go back to Friday night. Saturday generated but 32 Adels, including four former champs and ten laurelists, for the first round, necessitating three 4-player and four 5-player games. Eric Wrobel and two-time former champ Mark Geary each had the best wins at their respective boards at nine spaces past the finish line (the first tiebreaker). Phillip Livingston was only five spaces past the finish at his table, but 11 spaces ahead of runner-up Anne Norton to get the leave-em-in-the dust award. The other Round 1 winners were Glen Pearce, Rebecca Hebner, Derek Landel, and Tom DeMarco.

Round 2 saw ten folks leave, while gaining only three reinforcements, thus filling five boards. Phillip, Rebecca, and Tom each won a second time, with Thomas Browne and Chris Trimmer gaining their first win. Rebecca was now in the lead with ten points and 13 spaces past the finish (she also had the best win of the tournament at 11 spaces past the finish out of a possible 13). Phillip and Tom each had ten points and nine spaces, but Tom had the edge with 18 cards in his final sets over Phillip with seven total cards (the second tiebreaker). Thomas was next with nine points, followed at eight points each by Eric (ten spaces), Mark (nine spaces), Derek (six spaces, 13 cards), Robert Davidson (six spaces, nine cards), and Anne (five spaces).

Six more players retired for Round 3, and one returned for four complete boards. Rebecca closed out the swiss portion in fine fashion with her third win giving her 15 points and the top spot into the semi-final. Mark and Glen each got their second wins, while the fourth game was won by Ashley Collinson. With only 20 players left, exactly half would advance. Phillip, with a runner-up finish to Glen in the third game, took the second seat with 14 points, followed by Mark (13), and Glen (12). Six others finished at 11 points, led by Tom (nine spaces, 28 cards), Thomas (nine spaces, 24 cards), Derek (eight spaces), Ashley (seven spaces, 26 cards), Robert (seven spaces, 20 cards), and Kevin Breza (three spaces). In the 2010 20-player semi-final, the average semi-finalist score was 11.5; this year's average, with only ten semi-finalists, was 12.

Rebecca picked a bad time to end her winning streak. Mark won the first semi-final, followed by Thomas, Derek, Glen and Rebecca. Phillip won the other game, vanquishing Kevin, Robert, Ashley and Tom. Derek's third-place finish (two spaces) was better than Robert's (-4 spaces) so Derek took the last Final seat while Robert had to settle for sixth-place laurels.

Derek got off to a quick start in the Final, and led all the way past the second corner space while Mark lagged far behind. As they moved into the home stretch, Thomas was able to pass a little ahead of Derek. Derek, however, was able to go to the Auctionhouse alone and acquire the ultimate tiebreaker 1468 "A" mask card while everyone else participated in a Detective convention at the Castle. Finally, Derek resumed the lead on the final space before the finish line. Everyone went to the Castle for the next play, knowing it was probably the last turn (barring another Detective convention). At this point, Thomas was two spaces behind him, Kevin and Phillip were right behind Thomas, and Mark six spaces further back. Kevin, Thomas and Derek all played Exhibit, Mark played a Thief, and Phillip played a Detective (he had four pieces of art, but no set). With a thief in the mix, the three Exhibiters considered carefully before choosing their cards to show. Kevin showed a best set with seven cards, getting +5 spaces (now at two spaces past the finish). Derek showed a set of six cards and moved +3 spaces (now at three spaces past the finish), while Thomas showed less cards and did not move. After Mark's Thief stole a card from the three exhibits (including the 1468 card from Derek), Phillip's Detective moved up four spaces for catching Mark's Thief and being in fourth place (now at one space past). Then it was time for the final exhibits and scoring. Due to his Thief, Mark had gained three cards to finish with a ten-card exhibit, so he moved up eight spaces (now at two spaces before the finish line). Thomas had the second-best exhibit at eight cards, so he moved up four spaces (now at two spaces past). At three spaces past the finish line, Derek became the 2011 champion for his first ADV title and sixth overall. Thomas & Kevin were one space back, but Thomas had a better set to win the tie for second place.

Two points to consider if you'd like to give Adel Verpflichtet a try next year:

1. The Demo was run right before the main event, and was attended by half a dozen players. There have been players who have learned the game at the Demo, and then been able to advance all the way to the Final. Some people have told me I am a good game explainer; but Adel Verpflichtet is actually just a very easy game to learn.

2. The threshold for advancing to the semi-final was 11 points this year and nine points the two years before that. Josh Githens missed the first round last year, and was still able to advance to the semi-final with a first and a second place finish. So don't think if you don't win in Round 1 that you won't be able to advance.

Whose showing collections at the refrigerator?	Matthew gets his plaque from GM Ashley Collinson.

In the Juniors event ten kids reported to Ashley Collinson's artshow to swipe the best refrigerator crayon art. Matthew Roizin-Prior proved to be the most promising young art collector and made hay during his last year in Juniors competition with their championships. He was followed in order by Dacey Collinson, Lucas Holmquist, Jasmine Mann and Maia Parauda in the Final game.