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Santa Fe Rails (SFR) WBC 2022 Event Report
Updated November 3, 2023
43 Players Ricky Boyes Event History
2022 Champion & Laurels
 

Boyes Masters the Rails!

This year we had 43 players try their hand at the most cutthroat of all the rail games. That is interestingly 5 players short of 2019, but with more repeat players in the Heats we ran the same 18 tables across 3 heats that were run in the past tournament.

Some of the exciting notes from the Heats:

  • GM Andrew Drummond and 4-time consecutive finalist Ricky Boyes both pulled the unlikely feat of winning all 3 heats while no one else could even win a double
  • Two-time winner Kevin Wojtaszczyk had the biggest score since 2016 putting up 242 in his second heat game
  • Kevin, Andrew, and Bill Peeck all also managed to win a game while placing a 2-point city, which is relatively rare in Santa Fe Rails.

This left use with 15 unique winners going into the Semifinal. Unfortunately, only 12 of those were able to show for the Semifinal so all our aspiring alternates did not get to play. This left us with 3 tables of 4 advancing a top second place into a 4-player Final.

Semifinal 1 was a clash of the titans with 4-time consecutive finalist Ricky Boyes, 2-time finalist Sky Roy and past champions Andrew Drummond and Kevin Wojtaszczyk. Despite some tactical moves to burn out red and white long before they ran out of track, Ricky scored an 8-point win on the strength of 56 points in 7-point cities to book his 5th straight Final.

  • Ricky Boyes 118 in cities + 43 in cash for 161
  • Kevin Wojtaszczyk 120 in cities and 33 in cash for 153
  • Andrew Drummond 121 in cities and 25 in cash for 146
  • Sky Roy 109 in cities and 32 in cash for 141.

Semifinal 2 was a very short game, finishing in just over an hour with none of the short lines coming out into play. With Tom DeMarco, Adam Hurd, Joe Mach, and Steve Shambeda they were set up for a very challenging and tactical game. Tom DeMarco’s very effective use of track building gave him a 5-point win over Steve.

  • Tom DeMarco 58 in cities + 48 in cash for 106
  • Steve Shambeda 74 in cities + 27 in cash for 101
  • Adam Hurd 68 in cities + 23 in cash for 91
  • Joe Mach 33 in cities + 41 in cash for 74

Semifinal 3 was the closest, and the one that fed two players on to the final. Perennial favourite and three-time Champion at Santa Fe Curt Collins took on three players without any laurels at this event, Chris Wildes, Sara Ward, and Cherie Fox. In a game that saw every piece of track played from all 9 lines, Sara edged out Chris in a very tight game.

  • Sara Ward 132 in cities + 36 in cash for 168
  • Chris Wildes 132 in cities + 33 in cash for 165
  • Curt Collins II 121 in cities + 41 in cash for 162
  • Cherie Fox 113 in cities + 18 in cash for 131

And then there were 4. Tom, Sara, Chris, and Ricky sat down to play an epic Final table. In the early game, some tracks progressed along their expected paths with White hitting all of Denver, Albuquerque, and El Paso, Yellow heading west via El Paso, while Red deviated from normal making a U-like loop down to Amarillo and then heading back up to Duluth. Early on Chris had a bunch of big point cards he’d need to work at scoring (Los Angeles, Spokane, Butte, Phoenix), Tom had a varied set (Portland, Las Vegas, Billings, Amarillo), Sara focused in the South (San Diego, Albuquerque * 2, El Paso), and Ricky looked to the 4’s to get his points (Sacramento, Duluth, Amarillo, Dallas * 2)

By midgame Yellow exhausted itself just barely making it to Los Angeles, Red had not been branched after its Duluth dead-end, Blue had joined Red in Duluth (albeit much more efficiently) and white had 2 spurs out, but both aimed at Phoenix. Everyone had exactly 6 cards out on the table, notably Tom’s double in Las Vegas and Chris’ ambitious Canada play despite needing a lot of time to get track up there.

Nearing the end of the game, Red had been branched to Dallas and both ways west out of Sioux Falls, Green made it to Canada while also being active westerly towards Spokane and Billings, Blue was only going west to Billings and White had made it to both Las Vegas and Sacramento. At this point, Chris has pulled a ton of high point cards, and in fact has only played 6s and 7s to this point in the game, though he still had 4 with 0 points (Spokane * 2, Seattle, Butte)

With a few turns remaining, the scores were incredibly close, with only 2 points separating first and last:

  • Ricky 77 points in cities + 23 in cash for 100
  • Chris 81 points in cities + 18 in cash for 99
  • Tom 57 points in cities + 41 in cash for 98
  • Sara 74 points in cities + 24 in cash for 98

After the deck ran dry, Blue made it up to Canada to score for Chris (and Ricky played one too), and its last spur got sent away from Spokane towards Denver ending up dead-ended in Wichita. Green hooked around at Spokane and didn’t get to the Portland/Seattle combo and Red ran out of track at Casper, never even getting to Billings. But in card play, Ricky’s last few plays had set him up very well, dropping Denver, San Antonio and Canada. Chris got a Casper on the table for 10, Sara was forced into a Minneapolis and Boomtown for her two 3s, and Tom added a 10-point Bismarck.

At the end Ricky’s extra cities (including 68 points total in 4 pointers) proved to be the difference over Chris and his 84 points in 7s as Ricky prevailed to win his First Santa Fe Rails championship. Final Scores:

  • Ricky: 142 in cities + 22 in cash for 164
  • Chris: 130 in cities + 25 in cash
  • Sara: 108 in cities + 24 in cash
  • Tom: 87 in cities + 43 in cash

Thanks to everyone for playing and I look forward to seeing you all next year!

GM Note:

Santa Fe Rails is notorious for a perceived first player disadvantage. I tracked games this year and will continue for games over the next few years. This year in 8 of 22 games (36%) the start player won. That’s too small a sample size to be meaningful, but it is notable that the perceived disadvantage might not be as bad as thought.

 
2022 Laurelists Repeating Laurelists: 1
Chris Wildes Sara Ward Tom DeMarco Steve Shambeda Kevin Wojtaszczyk
2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th
 
Board Member Stuart Tucker trying his hand at rail games. Tom DeMarco on way to the Final.
Kevin Wojtaszczyk working his way to laurels. Finalists with GM Andrew Drummond.
 
GM  Andrew Drummond [1st Year]