Fading Rails

30 railroad engineers competed this year. The first of the three preliminary heats filled three 3-player and two 4-player tables. The next two heats each had three 4-player games. Scoring for advancement earned five points for a win, three points for a second and one point for a third. The 3-player games drew a 1-point penalty, but still produced two of the eight semifinalists. The eight qualifiers were Jeff Jackson, 2007 champ Steve Shambeda and Jason Arvey with eight points, William Kendrick with five, Cliff Ackman with four, Rodney Davidson with three and due to numerous no-shows, Ed Kendrick and James Kramer Jr both with but a single point.

Two games were played in the semifinals. Game 1 was won by James with $115, followed by William at $112, Cliff at $102 and Jason at $100. In the other bracket, Steve won with $112 compared to Jeff at $110, Rodney $101 and Ed $90.

Assistant GM Cliff Ackman presided over the Final with the top two players from each semifinal. Jeff started by investing in Miami Southern (Yellow) and then began the race for the coveted Union Pacific stock. Jim made his initial investment in Billings Northern Light (Red). William revealed his first investment in Denver Midland (Black) as did Steve. Three players continued to build their empires on the beginning turns but Steve invested heavily hoping for an early dividend. When this did not happen, Jeff and William started investing in additional stocks. Jim built Red for four consecutive turns which paid a $7 monopoly on the first turn (the first of many), which along with his other investments marked him as the early leader. Leadership in the various stocks varied from one dividend to the next. Ed gave up the race for the UP stock early and Jim was satisfied with third place in the stock, leaving Steve and Jeff to dump seemingly useless stocks for the valuable Union Pacific. The race for UP proved to be a poor decision as the game went down to the last card in the deck, allowing big payouts for several large railroads. The Final score was William Kendrick $131, James Kramer $112, Steve Shambeda $111, and Jeff Jackson $103.