Curtin Captures First Ticket To Ride Championship!

Ticket to Ride this year continued under GM Katie Gray. The second Heat brought in 156 players while the other Heats averaged about 140. The WBC GM spreadsheet was very helpful with registering and assigning tables to the large number of players allowing all Heats to be seated and playing by the fifteen minute mark. This year continued the trend of having approximately the same number of base Ticket to Ride and 1910 Mega games during the Heats. All advance rounds were played with Ticket to Ride 1910 Mega to help decrease shutouts and losses due to poor ticket draw.

We had 260 unique players this year, which is down from last year's 271. Throughout the tournament a total of 164 games were played down from last year’s 172. Joe Lyte and Kurt Kramer were the only two players that won in all 4 Heats. Unfortunately, Kurt was unable to make the Quarterfinal. Joe was knocked out in the Semifinal by Cliff Ackman.

One notable occurrence was during the third Heat. Glen Pearce scored a whopping 240 points with 13 completed tickets. All other players at the table had 9 completed tickets. The second place player had 161 points with the 4th place player having a score of 128.

Exactly 64 winners showed up for the Quarterfinal to allow for all 4 player games 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.

One table during the Semifinal was determined by the last tie-breaker. Both Thomas Tu and Rich Curtain had 110 points. Neither of them had received the longest train which is the first tie-breaker. Both of them completed 4 tickets with a ticket score of 30. Both of them also had a route score of 65. Thomas was the second player and Rich was the 4th player, so the win went to Rich with the final tie-breaker of later turn order. The game for 5th and 6th was played by Peter Tu, Thomas Tu, Alexander Goddard and Normal Rule. Peter Tu won, earning him the 5th place Plaque. He made all five of his tickets and had a high route score of 80. Norman came in second winning the elusive sand plaque for 6th place over Thomas Tu in the second tie-breaker. Neither of them won the longest train. Norman had completed 7 tickets over Thomas’s 4. Alexander Goddard came in fourth.

The Final was played with Chris Meyer randomly assigned the start player followed by Jeff Wu, Richard Curtin, and Cliff Ackman. Jeff came in 4th with 85 points despite tying for the 15 point Globe Trotter bonus. He took 3 starting tickets and took tickets once more for an additional 3 tickets. Chris Meyer came in 3rd with 100 points. Chris started with 3 tickets and drew once more for tickets. Unfortunately, he missed one of his original tickets as well as the one he drew mid-game. Cliff came in 2nd with 121 points after triggering the end game. On his last turn he contemplated taking tickets but ultimately decided to just draw two train cards. After game reveal of the top tickets would have given him an additional 9 points and had him tied for Globetrotter which would have given him the win. Cliff started the game with 3 tickets and did not draw any additional tickets. Richard Curtin won the game with 133 points. Richard started the game with 3 aligned east coast tickets (Dallas to New York, Houston to Washington, and Montreal to New Orleans). He drew Montreal to Chicago for his 1 ticket draw during the game. Richard was able to obtain both the longest train and tie for Globe-Trotter earning him 25 bonus points.

Given that both Final tables were played with 1910 Mega both tables had a relatively low number of tickets and only one player took tickets more than once during the game.