Gutermuth Fails To Reach Final!

Craig and Cherie Fox couldn’t make it this year which left me running this year’s event. The good news in they plan to be back next year!

Six intrepid souls showed up this year – three regulars Stuart Tucker, John Emery, and Bruce Reiff along with three relative newcomers – Haakon Monsen, Steven Peoples and Jill Justice. In fact, I taught Jill the game earlier in the week and she easily dominated her board with $146,000. Kevin Keller – who was busy with another final set what, I believe, is a tournament record of $196,500 in his heat. William Kennington also won his heat but didn’t advance. Long time finalist Ken Gutermuth did not advance for the first time in written history!

The final started off like normal with very little ground gained in the first race with the favorite coming in second.

The second race had Indian Giver doing his usual and winning the race giving yours truly a small lead. The third race had Little Miss Muffet grabbing the show spot and building the lead for Bruce Reiff.

The 4th race – always a crap shoot had Bruce again padding his lead. John, Jill, and Steven were keeping close. Stuart was close to even and Haakon kept doing what he did most races and pulled $15,000 out of his pocket to pay his loss.

Bruce Reiff was able to land Cockroach in the 5th and gave all the newbies a lesson on really, really bad driving and assured that The Roach would not hit the board. It was a lesson that they may well use in the future.

So that brings us to the final race. Last year I was leading going into this race (as I was this year) and lost when Captain Ahab stormed home at 10-1. I was determined to not let that happen this year. So, I took Ahab. However, I decided that it would be prudent to back Mona Lisa since I figured that’s what my closest competition would do. I was wrong. John bought and bet Jungle Monarch and with the help of two bonus rolls Monarch came home crushing my WPS dreams for a second year in a row. I was second – for the third time this week. Jill managed to sneak into third. Final scores were John $130,500, me $108,500, Jill $93,500, Steven $89,000, Stuart $72,500, and Haakon $53,500. A great time was had by all. See you next year!!