Aidan Czyryca doesn't let the long reach prevent his move as Jamie Tang awaits her turn.

Sceadeau D'Tela keeps the big kahuna in the cheap seats as Malinda Kyrkos watches.	Dave Metzger, Philip Yaure and Jeff Mullet prove how ingenius they are.

Saving Face ...

Avoiding a year of shame in Buckeye land ...

I'll start off with my annual mantra. BRING A COPY OF THE GAME. This year I had to shoo away at least 20 people from the Friday night heat (and who knows how many more slinked away when they saw the handwriting on the wall). And no the GM didn't play and gave out all his copies of the game. I can usually sneak in a few last minute players, but if you don't bring a game and you get there right before the cut off time, you're taking a chance.

Once again we had a nice mix of veterans and youngsters. If you're looking for a game the whole family can play, you ought to investigate Ingenious. The rulebook is a two-sided sheet with lots of pictures and the game takes under an hour.

This year a slight decrease in players led to a reduced number of double winners. Or maybe the competition is getting tougher and making it harder to get two wins. Either way, the current format lives to see another year.

After you've run an event with a similar schedule for several years, you spot the regulars who make their schedule to play in as many heats as possible. Then there's the players that jump in because they lost elsewhere. The more they lose, the more heats they play in. This was the story with fellow Cabbie Jeff Mullet, who this year managed to play in several heats and got two wins to advance.

Going into Sunday, Jeff was the last attending CABS member without wood. (even Stein had one). In the semis he managed to win his table edging out David Metzger, Greg Ziemba and Phil Yaure. Table 2 had Jamie Tang making the finals again and knocking out Meghan Friedmann, Lauren Bohaczuk and defending champ Joe Yaure. Table 3 saw Ed Kendrick knock out David Speyer, Cary Morris and Bruce Reiff (at least he lost to an adult in this semi). Ooh! Touche! The last table had Nick Avtges getting a near perfect score to edge Matthew Charlap (who had five 18s but not enough of the sixth), Katie Breza and Elaine Pearson.

As usual, the Final featured defensive struggles with relatively low scores. Yellow was the low score for three of the players, but Jeff Mullet wound up with the most and had just enough purple to pull out the win and avoid being the only woodless Cabbie in 2013. And that's a label you don't want to wear for a year in Columbus, believe me! Someone always seems to remind you about it. The final score was: Jeff 11, Jamie 10, Nick 8/12 and Ed 8/10.

Jamie Tang, Joe Yaure, Katie Breza and Lauren Bohaczuk	GM Pete Stein, aka the big meanie, and his finalists.
Son Joe is drafted into the Yaure family GM crew.	Tessa Lytle gets her ingenius bonafides from GM Chris Yaure.

 Ingenious Junior

Chris Yaure ran a Junior version of Ingenious for 19 budding geniuses and again the young ladies dominated - ensuring rough times ahead for the gents of future generations.

Final Standings
1st - Tessa Lytle - replacing her sister Dagny who placed second last year
2nd - Donte Saccenti - down from first last year
3rd - Holiday Saccenti
4th - Aaron Correira
5th - Ethan Shipley-Tang - holding steady after another fifth place last year and a fourth in 2011
6th - Mandy Mossman who was fourth last year and won it in 2011