St. Pierre Becomes 18th Different Ticket To Ride Champion in 19 Years Of WBC Event!

Ticket to Ride this year continued under GM Katie Gray. While the golden and silver choo-choo awards did not return, each heat winner won a train themed wrist band that was different for each Heat. The first Heat brought in 180 players with subsequent Heats averaging about 140 players. Thank you to Andy Latto for the GM spreadsheet that made it easy to manage the large amount of data from this large event. Most Heats had about an even number of games played between the 1910 Mega expansion and base Ticket to Ride. Each Heat only had 1-2 tables of Europe. Due to the dwindling number of Europe players this version will be retired from the tournament and just 1910 or base will be available. All advanced rounds were played with Ticket to Ride 1910 to help decrease shutouts and losses due to poor ticket draw.

We had a total of 271 unique players up from 261 last year. Throughout the tournament a total of 172 games of Ticket to Ride were played. Jay Fox was the only player that won all 4 Heats and therefore a complete set of the 4 different wristbands given out to winners. Unfortunately, he was beaten in the Final and came in 3rd.

Another notable occurrence was during one of the Heats. A game of Ticket to Ride 1910 Mega had all 4 players tying for globetrotter with 8 completed tickets resulting in all 4 getting the 15 point bonus.

Out of 106 game winners in the heats 69 showed up for the Quarterfinal to allow for a full 64 players to play with no byes given. This year the Quarterfinal, Semifinal, and Final were all played on one day. A second table occurred at the Final, made up of the second place players from the Semifinal, who played for 5th and 6th place plaques and Laurels.

The game for 5th and 6th was played by Jim Fry, Brownyn Woods, Henry Allen and Andrew Freeman. Henry won, earning him the 5th place plaque. He had the fewest tickets taken in his game with only 3 but made them all. He also had the highest route score of 82 and scored the longest train for the win. Bronwyn came in second securing her the elusive sand plaque for 6th place in the tournament. Jim Fry came in 3rd with Andrew Freeman coming in 4th.

The Final was played with Peggy Ng as the randomly assigned start player followed by Jay Fox, Robert St. Pierre and Andy Latto. Andy came in 4th with 63 points. He kept all 5 starting tickets and made 3 of the 5. Jay came in 3rd with 98 points. Jay made 3 of his 4 tickets and had a strong route score of 72. Peggy came in second. She completed all 3 of the tickets she drew at the beginning of the game for a ticket score of 28. She also had a strong route score of 78 that also brought her the 10 point longest train bonus for a final score of 116. Peggy was also the player that triggered the end game.

Unfortunately for Peggy, Robert's high ticket score allowed him to turn what appeared to be a close game into a 37 point lead. Robert took the win with a total of 153 points. His route score was only 2 higher than Peggy’s at 80 but completing 5/5 tickets had his ticket score at 58 points. He also secured the globetrotter bonus as none of the other players completed more than 3 tickets.