Nick Henning Races to Title!

The tournament retained former GM Angela Bender’s schedule enabling greater participation – thanks to David-John Pack who ably ran the first two heats and helped throughout the tournament. 40, 22, and 19 players participated in the three heats respectively – playing a total of 45 games.

The second heat ran into a snafu when only two copies of the game were present at the designated time. That caused the departure of at least ten players. Ironically, ten minutes later, we had four surplus copies and were able to start additional games. We’ll ensure additional copies are available next year.

Congratulations are due to Tim Packwood who scored 10,192,003,500,240 points in the first heat to become the highest scoring player in tournament and convention history. Four other players also scored over ten trillion in the heats: Doug Galullo, Joshua Githens, Bill Herbst, and Allan Jiang. These five could cover the national debt!

In fact, in trillions, here’s the over-all scoring for the heats and semi-finals:

• 10 Points - 5 Players
• 9 Points – 12Players
• 8 Points - 11 Players
• 7 Points - 7 Players
• 6 Points - 21 Players
• 5 Points - 7 Players
• 4 Points - 15 Players
• 3 Points - 10 Players
• Less Points - 13 Players

Eight trillion, of course, is automatic qualification for the semi-finals. But it’s interesting to see, while the average (6) was scored by the highest number of players, there are troughs at 7 and 5.

Twenty-one players succeeded in reaching 8 trillion. Dan Leader and Sharee Pack did it twice. 17 of the 21 showed up for the semi-final – enabling two of the six players with 7 trillion to advance. No-shows left room for one more player – and, at the end of that remote hallway, only one was available – the GM, who scored in the 6 trillion range in two heats and the semi-finals. The morale of the story is if you score 7 trillion or more, be there! I recommend the semi-final immediately follow the third heat next year.

The semi-finals used the same format as the heats – two games each. Owen Kyrollos advanced to the finals with two wins and 10,050,803,500,350 points. Nick Henning and Sharee Pack both advanced with over 9 trillion while Doug Galullo and Peter Staab edged Brady Detwiler for the last two spots 8.05 trillion to 8.04 trillion. It really hurts to come up 10 billion short!

The final saw Nick take the lead by the 2/1 mid-point and then sprint to the finish – crossing by two spaces while no one else was close. Sharee tried to keep up at the start but suffered from a severe case of bandits that terminated her set and left her dead last. Owen finished second with a set of 8 (oldest 1650) while Doug and Peter ended third and fourth with sets of 10 (oldest 1660) and 8 (oldest 1748) respectively. Nick, our champion, had a mere 3-card set at the finish (with the very oldest card, the A-1468) – but didn’t need them since he was the only one to cross the finish line! Congratulations, Nick Henning – over 9 trillion in the first heat and semi-final plus a runaway final victory to win it all!