Reidy Wins First WBC Championship!

Despite a new conflict arising in the schedule, 239 dedicated gamers braved the probability gauntlet that is the World Boardgaming Championships Can’t Stop event. With a mild delay in beginning signups to 10:45, between my 2 excellent AGMs (Sara Ward and Byung Chun) we got everyone in and playing by 11:05.

As always, the primary goal of the early rounds of Can’t Stop is to ensure that the 225 players who didn’t make the Semifinal got to go home as soon as possible. To that end, we continued to fire off Quarterfinal games as soon as 4 players were available. (And in case there is a worry that will lead to unpredictable numbers for the slowest tables, it did. However, when we realized that there were only 2 players left for the last Quarterfinal, we appointed AGM Sara as an eliminator and she swiftly took care of business leaving those winners to wish they had won their games in a more timely manner.

A callout to a few interesting results in the first round:

• Only one person this year managed the feat of going straight up the middle in the first round with Joe Romano scoring the 6-7-8 for the win
• Winning with the least possible numbers was Joe Birnbaum, with a 2-4-12 victory in round 1 that with an element of foreshadowing might have suggested too strongly to him that you only need a few rolls to win
• I was super impressed with Alfred Schnabel’s 10-11-12 win locking up the right side of the board to advance to round 2

I also, cannot emphasize enough how important dedicated AGMs are to making an event of this scope work as smoothly as it does. Particularly Sara Ward who stayed the duration of the tournament to get Quarterfinal games started, give out our new “I didn’t stop” buttons to the first round winners and be sure that we were on track through the night.

With fewer tables than usual, and 3 first round winners declaring that sleep was more important than laurels we only had 57 winners advancing through to the last round. With the tournament process of firing a round 2 table every time 4 round 1 winners are available, it meant that it got a little harder to gauge numbers perfectly. We ended up with 13 tables going and 5 players left over. We could have forced them to play a 5 player game (yuck) but instead we sent in Sara as an eliminator and she took care of business, making Riley Gleaton and Stephen Peeples wish they’d finished their round 1 games faster.

Also a callout to Dan Hoffman for repeating the 6-7-8 board center win and Brad Raszewski for the ever impressive 2-7-12 win in his round 2 game.

With the fewer tables than normal and Sara’s eliminator win, we were reduced to only 14 Semifinalists this year, meaning 2 of the Semifinal would be 3-player games, far superior to the year we needed to run a 5 player Semifinal.

The first Semifinal table saw a bunch of seasoned gamers get run over by Rodger Zou’s aggressive strategy and cheering posse. Rodger nailed a 2-7-8 victory over former Consul (and more impressively Can’t Stop laurelist) AJ Jiang, Morris family Prodigy Zachary, and perennial contender Dan Ottey. Collectively the other 3 only capped 1 column against Rodger’s incredible run.

The second Semifinal was much closer with Matt Reidy taking home a 5-6-9 against DJ Borton’s 8-10, Matt Moore’s 3-7, and Mike Murtaugh’s lone 4.

The third Semifinal table was fairly mundane as Joe Birnbaum took home a relatively easy win with a 5-6-12 against Brad Raszewski’s 2-7 and Morgan LaDue’s 4.

The last Semifinal had another set of household WBC names with 10 year veteran Brandon “Father of Tripp the true Sportsman” Buchanan rode a 2-3-7 to hold off Lumin “I’m going to do math and analysis even if it’s Can’t Stop” Sperling’s 6-8, and Dan “Why did I give up Werewolf for this” Hoffman’s lone 12.

That got us down to the 4 players who would be fighting for board gaming’s greatest prize in probability excellence. Again this year, we had a player bringing his own cheering posse as Rodney “Cap or Bust” Wu had made it to the Final on the strength of a very aggressive play style. The other finalists whose adoring followers had mainly abandoned them by the 1:45 am start time were Matt “The logical” Rieta, Joe “One Small Step at a Time” Birnbaum, and Brandon “The Dice Hate Me” Buchanan. Rodney took the green cups, which took a while to hit the board; Brandon went with yellow; Joe took purple, and Matt sat at the blue position.

The Final would be a tight affair and a contrast of different play styles.

Unlike the aggressiveness seen in the 2024 Final, 3 players got on the board in the first round. Brandon got off to a great start moving 2 up the 12s (locking in tiebreaks) while Joe timidly moved a single space up each of 11-6-2. Matt got an early start as well moving 8 of the 11 steps up the 6’s while also getting a spot or two on 5 and 10.

Round 2 saw Brandon miss completing his 12s and Rodney insisting on capping a column before stopping and missing again. Matt got his 6 completed for an early lead while Joe continued the excessive conservative approach getting 1 more 2 alongside 3 sevens and 2 eights.

Round 3 saw Brandon hit his 12 while Rodney missed again and Matt got 8 steps up the 7. Joe continued the conservative trend and capped the 2 while also getting a couple 11s.

Round 4 saw Rodney finally get on the board as he rode a 10-7-3 to the top of the 3’s. Given each 10-7-3 roll is less than 84% to succeed, this was a marvel of probability to achieve. However, it also left him in the same 8 steps up the 7 as Matt. With every other player falling off that round, the game was tight with each player owning a single column.

Round 5 saw Joe get his last two 11’s to cap a second column while Matt tempted the Dice gods by stopping one short of the 10’s. Brandon’s bad luck continued and Rodney’s Cap or Bust strategy failed him again.

Round 6 saw a ton of action as Rodney capped the 7’s to tie with Joe and Matt got his single 10 to also have 2 columns. Brandon got something more on the board with some 4’s and 8’s while Joe also made good 8 progress.

So after 6 turns we had the following board state:

• 2: Capped by Joe
• 3: Capped by Rodney
• 4: Brandon 3 short, Matt 5 short, Rodney 6 short
• 5: Matt 5 short, Joe/Rodney 8 short
• 6: Capped by Matt
• 7: Capped by Rodney
• 8: Joe 5 short, Brandon/Rodney 6 short
• 9: Brandon 6 short, Joe 8 short
• 10: Capped by Matt
• 11: Capped by Joe
• 12: Capped by Brandon

Turn 7 saw very little progress made. Everyone fell except Joe who tied Brandon’s progress on 4’s (3 away) and picking up a 9.

And then for turn 8, Matt decided to throw caution to the wind. In a display that was worthy of the name on the box he took a 9-8-5 run (86.7% on each roll) and pushed the entire length of the 8s to win the game. It was a display worthy of a champion and won Matt his first WBC shield.

Congratulations to everyone and I hope we see you all back next year.