Smith Goes Undefeated In Title Run!

Saint Petersburg was back as a century event in 2025 despite the downturn, and it had a nice bounce back year. 2024 featured 72 unique players participating in 30 total games during the Heats, this year that raised to 82 unique players in 39 games during the Heats. Furthermore, we managed to have all games in the Heats and advancement rounds be full 4-player games which was awesome, the 3-player game flows very differently and so it was great fortune to not have anyone have to play those.

In 2025 we continued to use the rebalanced cards to try to help balance out the game a bit better, and these were once again well received. Or at least the players took it in stride, and generally good comments were had. Regardless, the players made the games and Heats run smoothly, which is always appreciated as a GM. Perhaps the biggest player caused issue is simply bringing a copy of the game, with an old out of print game like this, not a lot are around, and we constantly had to have players running back to rooms delaying the start of the Heats. Bring your copies next year! The biggest annoyance for the tournament happened during Heat 2 and it wasn’t player caused, the Seven Springs fire alarm went off! Many games were ongoing and players had to mill around for twenty to thirty minutes before returning to play, which led to a bit of a later night than many intended. During this time, Sam Wolff admitted his game was going poorly and stated that he felt in any game of Saint Petersburg that if he allows it to go more than five rounds, he will lose. These turned out to be prophetic words…

Before I fully dive into the action of the tournament, I have to thank a variety of individuals that helped make my job easier. Foremost was Dan Bush, who helped fully get my stuff in place and set up for some of the Heats. Others include Kieth Levy, Chad Martin, and Chris Katz, all of whom assisted with setting things out, moving the kiosk, etc. These small acts add up to helping to make the life of a GM that little bit easier.

As for the tournament, we started off as always with the demo where a handful learned the game, and a few others were just glad to brush up on the rules again. Everyone headed off to the Heats. The Heats were well attended this year, and we should safely be in the century once more, if not pushing back to a fourth plaque. Much of the bounce back this year can be attributed to the return of the Israel contingent.

The games were as varied and interesting as ever. In that Heat 2 game Sam Wolff was lamenting go past five rounds, it was the only game of the tournament to do an unlikely thing in a four player game: It went to 7 rounds. Randy Buehler emerged victorious with a whopping 141 VP, while Sam and Scott Saccenti logged the next two highest VP totals from the tournament. In the pool of the more normal results, those being 5 or 6 round games, Richard Shay set the high water mark with a 97 VP effort in Heat 1. This year the winner with the lowest number of Aristocrats came in at three unique, which was a feat logged by five players: Reid Barkell, Sam Wolff, Erel Warzsewski, Marsha Hamel, and Kyle Smith. On the other end, Mike Shea won with the most unique, hitting the bonus for 9. Roger Jarett and Aaron Blair were the only two brave enough this year to try to win with 2 unique aristocrats, but neither got the win.

Otherwise, they had at least three at the end of the game. We had six players this year take the -5 VP for being stuck with a card in hand at the end of the game. Four of them took dead last, while Dan Bush managed a close 2nd. Patrick Maguire was the lone winner, taking down the GM on the first tiebreaker, having three more dollars left over.

We tried to collect a variety of stats, which most tables returned. I’m still hoping to find time to do more analysis on them, along with the 2024 stats, and the bevy of online games from Chirs Wildes’ excellent PBEM events that have been happening the last several years. The rebalanced cards once again seemed to help keep the balance a bit better as first aristocrats was more in line with the other “good” seats. The issue this year, and the issue online is that first workers has been shown to be kind of bad, although the performance was putrid in the Heats: a mere 3 out of 38 tables were won by the player first in workers. First aristocrats fared best with 14 wins, while Buildings and Upgrades had 10 and 11, respectively.

Intuitively I know this result confuses some, first workers must be good; you start with a few extra dollars on everyone else. In most of the Euro style games at the convention, starting with a few more resources over everyone else is very powerful. It turns out in Saint Petersburg though, while more money is good, it’s most important to get the best cards. It doesn’t matter that you have more money if you can only invest it in an Author, while someone else is getting to play an early Judge or Bank. The online stats have also been backing this up, although not to the extent of how badly first workers performed in the Heats this year.

At the end of the three Heats, we had 29 unique winners. This is a number where a Quarterfinal would almost make sense, but based on the data from last year, we eliminated it. Therefore, the cut to make the Semifinal this year was you needed a 1st, 2nd, and a 3rd place finish or better to guarantee you were in. Only one player made it in with a 1st and a 2nd, and we turned away some others, including the 17th seed and last year finalist, Patrick Maguire. Somewhat surprising too was that all of the top 16 ranked players did show up to the Semifinal, so we took no alternates.

The only change for the Semifinal round was to allow players to bid for the seat position they wanted, given the online stats and the continued stats collected this year, it felt correct to allow players some control over their starting spot.

Semifinal

In the first Semifinal we had former champions Ray Wolff and Chad Martin squaring off with past Laurelist Steve Shambeda, and newcomer Itamar Hocboim. Itamar didn’t care what the stats say, and wanted first workers, and got them for the bid of 1.5 VP. Ray won first aristocrats for a mere .5VP while Chad took buildings for 0 and Steve wound up with Upgrades for 0 as well.

This game went on for six rounds, and all the players ended with six or seven unique aristocrats, but Itamar got to spurn what the stats say and took down the other former laurelists to make sure he would be getting his Saint Petersburg laurels. Chad Martin managed to make it three years in a row for earning laurels by snagging a 6th place finish.

(For all these games I am listing the players in order of placements, then laying out how their victory points were earned between those directly produced during the game, the unique aristocrats bonus at the end of the game, points for remaining money, points lost to the bid, total victory points, and then laying out what their initial token was, and in what relative seating order they were in relation to workers being considered first seat):

• Itamar Hochboim 90.5 VP= 71 + 21 bonus + 0 money -1.5 bid (Workers, 1st seat)
• Chad Martin 86 VP = 65 + 21 bonus + 0 money - 0 bid (Buildings, 2nd seat)
• Ray Wolff 85.5 VP = 64 + 21 bonus + 1 money - .5 bid (Aristocrats, 3rd seat)
• Steve Shambeda 68 = 40 + 28 bonus + 0 money - 0 bid (Upgrades, 4th seat)

The next table saw four former laurelists for Saint Petersburg, including 2nd all-time and former champion Randy Buehler. He was joined by Allan Jiang, Andy Latto, and Sam Wolff. The bidding at this table was mostly around who would take first aristocrats which went for 2.5 points, while the other seats were half a point or free. Sam wasn’t about to allow Randy to get a 7 round game against him again and made sure he could end things in five rounds this time.

This meant Randy’s big observatory game could “only” get to 7 unique nobles, while Sam needed the game to end given he was working with a meager 2. It was just enough though and Sam was able to ensure he would earn St Pete laurels for a 2nd straight year.

• Sam Wolff 51 VP = 48 + 3 bonus + 0 money - 0 bid (Buildings, 3rd seat)
• Randy Buehler 47.5 VP = 20 + 28 bonus + 0 money - .5 bid (Upgrades, 2nd seat)
• Andy Latto 41.5 VP = 23 + 21 bonus + 0 money -2.5 bid (Aristocrats, 4th seat)
• Allan Jiang 35 VP = 27 + 6 bonus + 2 money - 0 bid (Workers, 1st seat)

The third Semifinal table saw past laurelists Richard Shay and Kieth Levy taking on Reid Barkell and Marsha Hamel. This table saw muted bidding, with just one VP paid for buildings and aristocrats, while the other seats were taken for zero. This game also went on for six rounds, with all players getting a good number of aristocrats. Keith’s balanced play along with a good first round aristocrat allowed him to get a smooth win and return to the Final:

• Keith Levy 89 VP = 60 + 28 bonus + 2 money - 1 bid (Aristocrats, 2nd seat)
• Marsha Hamel 81 VP = 53 + 28 bonus + 0 money - 0 bid (Upgrades, 4th seat)
• Reid Barkell 73 VP = 53 + 21 bonus + 0 money -1 bid (Buildings, 3rd seat)
• Richard Shay 66 VP = 37 + 28 bonus + 1 money - 0 bid (Workers, 1st seat)

The last Semifinal table saw former laurelists in Kyle Smith and Marcy Morelli taking on Brad Sherwood and Aran Warszewski. The last Semifinal table saw the fiercest bidding, with first aristocrats going for 4 points to Kyle Smith, with the other seats going for free. This game also went on for six rounds, with the players being quite equal with aristocrats, and nobody getting that many given it went on six rounds. Kyle Smith managed to get the win and a trip to the Final, with Marcy snagging the 5th place laurels for a close 2nd place:

• Kyle Smith 83 VP = 66 + 21 bonus + 0 money -4 bid (Aristocrats, 3rd seat)
• Marcy Morelli 80 VP = 58 + 21 bonus + 1 money - 0 bid (Buildings, 2nd seat)
• Aran Warszewski 76 VP = 61 + 15 bonus + 0 money - 0 bid (Upgrades, 4th seat)
• Brad Sherwood 68 VP = 53 + 15 bonus + 0 money -0 bid (Workers, 1st seat)

The Semifinal on the whole largely followed the pattern of the stats from the heats, first workers struggled, taking last in all the games except for Itamar’s win. First aristocrats took down two of the tables, while first buildings got one win. The finals were set. Sam Wolff, Keith Levy, and Kyle Smith would be adding to their laurel totals. Itamar Hochboim would be earning his first Saint Petersburg laurels. One of them would be a new champion.

Final

The bidding at the Final was also somewhat subdued. Itamar continued his desire for first workers and got them for a bid of 0. The other players bid up first aristocrats a bit, with Kyle Smith getting it for 3 points (Last year’s champion Rick Miller bid 7 VP for first aristocrats and got the win). The other seats also went for 0 with Kieth taking first buildings and Sam taking the Upgrades. The order then was Itamar with workers, Sam with Upgrade, Kyle with Aristocrats, and Keith with Buildings.

None of the exciting buildings flipped in the first round. Several players made sure to open a slot so they could get a noble, but Sam did not. The flip and played nobles were a Controller for Kyle, a Warehouse Manager for Keith, and an Administrator for Itamar. The Upgrades flipped a Harbor for Sam, while Kyle took a Tax Man. Players made sure to reserve other cards so they could buy a worker in round 2, with Sam making sure he was going to get to buy 2 workers, a move you often see from stronger players in 2nd seat.

During the 2nd round Sam made sure to get down his Harbor, but once again didn’t bother to open up a slot for a noble. This strategy can work, but Sam was once again hard lining a five round game. If you can just earn enough points directly, you don’t need many bonus points from your aristocrats. If you allow the game to go to a sixth round though, usually players are earning too many bonus points from their 7th, or 8th, or even 9th aristocrat, and you will lose. Sam’s prophetic words were ringing in my head: “If the game goes more than five rounds…”

During the third round both observatories flipped. Kyle bought one and began to plan for a big noble game. None of the other players wanted one of the observatories, deciding they had too much money and hand size issues at the moment to make good use of it, despite a Warehouse also flipping at the same time.

The game gave out a lot of strong blue upgrades, at one point flipping out a Peterhof, Smolny, and Hermitage. Sam was happy to play this sort of big blue game, although he did still take the Judge that he was offered. Entering the fifth round it was fairly clear that Sam needed the game to end, the others would be earning too many bonus points off their nobles if the game continued. None of the other players particularly wanted the game to end though. Kyle had the observatory and at this point really wanted more time to boost his count of unique aristocrats. Itamar and Keith both decided their early money and hand issues would be better resolved if the game went six rounds, and so nobody partnered with Sam to help end the game.

This allowed Kyle enough time to get upgrades and more unique aristocrats to make for a big noble push. At the end of the game, he managed eight unique with a Mistress, Controller, Secretary, Warehouse Manager, Administrator, Author, Tax Man, and Chamber Maid. He also had the Observatory and a Warehouse along with a Winter Palace and Catherine the Great Palace. He had Wharf and five other workers.

Kieth’s tableau had a Fur Shop along with 7 other workers. He had two Customs Houses, two Firehouses, and a Hospital. He had five unique nobles consisting of an Author, Administrator, Warehouse Manager, Senator, and a Czar.

Itamar possessed a Wharf, Carpenter’s Workshop, and only two other workers. He had Pub, three markets, a Bank, the Smolny Cathedral, and the Academy. He had five unique aristocrats with two Administrators, a Warehouse Manager, a Secretary, and Author, and a Judge.

Sam ended the game with six workers. He had a lot of blues with a Pub, a Market, two Customs Houses, Peterhof, Hermitage, and Harbor. He ended with just three unique aristocrats, those being a Judge, Patrician, and Secretary.

The scores were added up and it was a game befitting a final, 1st and 4th place were separated by only eight points. Sam was correct that he couldn’t let the game go on six rounds, if things end in five he likely wins, but Kyle was able to overtake him on the back of the big aristocrats bonus:

• Kyle Smith 76 VP = 43 + 36 bonus + 0 money - 3 bid (Aristocrats, 3rd seat)
• Sam Wolff 74 VP = 68 + 6 bonus + 0 money - 0 bid (Upgrades, 2nd seat)
• Keith Levy 70 VP = 55 + 15 bonus + 0 money - 0 bid (Buildings, 4th seat)
• Itamar Hochboim 68 VP = 52 + 15 bonus = 1 money - 0 bid (Workers 1st seat)

Congratulations to Kyle Smith on joining the ranks of Saint Petersburg champions! Kyle didn’t lose a game this year, taking down a lot of strong players along the way. (The GM laments his one point loss to Kyle in the opening Heat) Now for the next challenge, becoming the first repeat champion in the event's now 19 year history. Congratulations as well to all the other laurelists on their fine play and accomplishments in a veteran field.

A big thanks once again to all those who help make this event run smoothly, including the players themselves for making the GM job pretty easy. Although a reminder to bring your copies to the heats!

On that front, one change I am considering for next year is to run more of the event in a continuous style, this is one small way to alleviate having to lug the copy back and forth, as the Heats could just be back to back. As always I’m open to feedback though on anything related to the tournament. I do think we’ll at least try to condense the schedule down just a bit more.