adel verpflichtet   

Updated Nov. 23, 2012

2012 WBC Report  

 2013 Status: pending December 2012 Membership Trial Vote

Ray Stakenas II, CA

2012 Champion

 

Event History
1991    Ray Pfeifer      23
1992    Terry Tegler      34
1993    Tom DeMarco      55
1994    Ralph May      49
1995    Beth Zhao      65
1996    Ray Pfeifer      32
1997    Thomas Stokes      54
1998    Marc Geary      64
1999    Ray Pfeifer     46
2000    Richard Irving     40
2001    John Pack     58
2002    John Pack     47
2003    Thomas Browne     60
2004    Marc Houde     52
2005    Ray Pfeifer     35
2006    Mark Geary     31
2007     Tom DeMarco     51
2008     Louis Gehring     64
2009    Philip Yaure     47
2010    John Pack     58
2011    Derek Landel     35
2012    Ray Stakenas II     43

PBeM Event History
2008     Ken Gutermuth     34
2009    Curt Collins II     40
2010    Tom DeMarco     33

 Laurels

Rank  Name              From  Last  Total
  1.  Tom DeMarco        NJ    12    141
  2.  John Pack          CO    12    121
  3.  Ray Pfeifer        MD    07    104
  4.  Thomas Browne      PA    11     84
  5.  Mark Geary         OH    12     64
  6.  Marc Houde         VA    10     63
  7.  Nick Henning       CT    05     36
  8.  Alex Bove          PA    09     33
  9.  Abby Cocke         MD    05     33
 10.  Ray Stakenas II    CA    12     30
 11.  Philip Yaure       PA    09     30
 12.  Curt Collins II    PA    09     30
 13.  Louis Gehring      IN    08     30
 14.  Ken Gutermuth      NC    08     30
 15.  Richard Irving     CA    00     30
 16.  Derek Landel       NJ    11     29
 17.  Greg Thatcher      FL    10     24
 18.  Ben Foy            MD    02     24
 19.  Shea Lawson        MD    08     22
 20.  Jeff Cornett       FL    12     18
 21.  Sharee Pack        CO    08     18
 22.  Anne Norton        NJ    07     18
 23.  Greg Crowe         VA    05     18
 24.  Tom Stokes         NJ    01     18
 25.  Scott Cornett      FL    99     18
 26.  Steve Cameron      PA    10     14
 27.  Joshua Githens     SC    10     12
 28.  Raphael Lehrer     CA    10     12
 29.  Pam Gutermuth      FL    09     12
 30.  Brittany Bernard   PA    08     12
 31.  Luke Koleszar      VA    07     12
 32.  Karl Henning       CT    06     12
 33.  John Weber         MD    04     12
 34.  Patrick Mitchell   DE    03     12
 35.  Robert Voisin      NY    12      9
 36.  Haim Hochboim      is    10      9
 37.  Bob Hamel          CT    10      9
 38.  Jessica Hardesty   MD    09      9
 39.  Kevin Wojtaszczyk  NY    08      9
 40.  Carolyn Brown      NJ    03      9
 41.  Alan Moon          MA    99      9
 42.  Kevin Breza        VA    11      8
 43.  Frank Cunliffe     PA    03      8
 44.  Philip Livingston  DE    11      6
 45.  Jessica Foster     NY    10      6
 46.  Jonathan Izer      MD    09      6
 47.  Keith Layton       NJ    09      6
 48.  Beth Zhao          TX    08      6
 49.  Harald Henning     CT    04      6
 50.  Jean DeLattre      bg    00      6
 51.  Eyal Mozes         NY    99      6
 52.  Rob Brode          MD    10      3
 53.  David Rynkowski    NY    09      3
 54.  Anthony Daw        UT    09      3
 55.  David Meyaard      CT    08      3
 56.  Frank Arndt        MD    01      3
 57.  Wendy DeMarco      NJ    00      3
 58.  Christine Frattali WA    99      3
 59.  Robert Davidson    IL    11      2

2012 Laurelists                                                Returning Laurelists:

Jeff Cornett, FL
2nd

Tom DeMarco, NJ
3rd

Robert Voisin, NY
4th

John Pack, CO
5th

Mark Geary, OH
6th


Past Winners

Ray Pfeifer, MD
'91, '96, '99, '05

Tom DeMarco, NJ
1993, 2007

Ralph May, SC
1994

Beth Zhao, DC
1995

Thomas Stokes, NJ
1997

Mark Geary, OH
1998, 2006

Richard Irving, CA
2000

John Pack, CO
2001-02, 2010

Tom Browne, PA
2003

Marc Houde, VA
2004

Louis Gehring, IN
2008

Philip Yaure, PA
2009

Derek Landel, NJ
2011

Ray Stakenas II, CA
2012
 

Zachary Frank is outnumbered by a horde of Gutermuths - including one with a questionable taste in t-shirts.

Ladies Tamara Houde, Alyssa Gumkowski and Devon Miller conspire to keep Nick Henning from advancing.

 Two-time champ Mark Geary can't outbluff Marc Houde as the Roby Rally GM gets in some R&R.

 If Ernest Czyryca and Eyal Mozes believe that, John Pack has a bridge he'd like to sell them too.

Last In, First Out ...

A return to Friday night provided some bounce from last year's dramatic drop. It wasn't enough for a return to the Century, although there is always hope of being granted Legacy status. The Demo (one hour before the tournament) was once again well attended with seven players learning or relearning the game. Six former champions and 16 Laurelists were in the field. To advance to the semifinal, points are awarded based on the finish position in each game played (1st=5, 2nd=4, 3rd=3, 4th=2, 5th=1). The players with the highest totals after three games advance, while the number of contestants who advance is determined by the number of players who are still playing after the third set of games.

There was a small gaffe during setup for the first set of games as the GM assigned table numbers two through ten to players who brought copies (thinking that he was reserving table number one for his own copy of the game, but forgetting in the rush that his lovely spouse had taken their copy to be set up as Table 9). But I then shuffled five each of cards numbered one through nine for the players to choose from for their table assignments (because there were only enough players for nine tables). I soon figured out the misstep, and the players with card number 1 took over the table formerly assigned as Table 10.

Jeff Cornett had the best finish among the winners of the first games, finishing nine spaces past the finish line and thus leading in the first advancement tie-breaker criteria, followed by young first-timer Aiden Czyryca at eight spaces, and GM Tom DeMarco at seven spaces. Also winning were Rebecca Hebner and Eyal Moses at six spaces, Michael Deacon and Mark Geary at five spaces, and John Pack and Philip Livingston at three spaces.

Three players dropped out before the second set, yielding eight full boards. John and Tom both won again to lead with ten points, with Tom edging John on the tie-breaker, 15 total spaces past the finish to seven. Rebecca, Michael, and Mark each took a second place to follow with nine points. Joining them at nine points were Marc and Tamara Houde, Robert Voisin, and David Meyaard who each won. David got the tournament "Leave-em-in-the-dust" award, beating second-place finisher Jim Vroom by 11 spaces. Tamara had the tie-breaker edge for third place in the race to advance with nine spaces, followed by Robert and David at seven spaces. Nick Henning and Seth Kirchner were the other two winners this time, and joined Aiden at eight points.

Four more players left before the third round, which now consisted of four 5-player and four 4-player games. (In 4-player games, points awarded are: 1st=5, 2nd=4, 3rd=2, 4th=1.) Tom cruised to his third victory, leading the pack with 15 points and 23 total spaces past the finish. Tamara, David, and Mark each won to finish the qualifying rounds with 14 points, followed by Rebecca and Michael at 13 points. Laurie Voisin got a third-time's-the-charm win, and joined John and her spouse Robert at 12 points. Zachary Frank and Marc finished at 11 points. Due to the number of players left after three games, 15 would advance to the semifinal. That left ten players with ten points vying for the last four spots in the semifinal. The tiebreaker winners were Ray Stakenas II and Jeff with 13 spaces, followed by Aiden with eight, and Eyal with six. Nick just missed advancing with only five spaces. Pam Gutermuth and Tim Packwood had third-game wins, but that only got them to nine points. Tim's win was an almost-perfect 12 spaces past the finish (13 is the maximum possible) but it was worthless without a tie to break. The average score for the 15 semifinalists was 12.07 points. Last year, with only ten advancing, the average was 12. In 2010, with 20 advancing, the average was 11.5.

With 15 semifinalists, the three winners and the two best runners-up would advance to the Final. John won his game over Jeff, David, Laurie, and Marc. Ray surpassed Mark, Rebecca, Tamara, and Zachary. And Robert vanquished Tom, Eyal, Aidan, and Michael. Tom and Jeff had the two best seconds, relegating Mark to sixth-place laurels.

The Final got off to an unusual start, with everyone except Tom going to the Castle on the first turn. Tom led for much of the game, using the Run-run-run strategy usually championed by John. And as is common, the runaway leader stalls near the finish (getting cold feet from having had cards stolen when exhibiting). Tom stumbled only two spaces from the finish as Ray caught him and triggered the end of the game at one space past the line. Jeff, who was seven spaces from the finish, had the best set, albeit with only six cards, to get the end-of-game bonus of eight spaces to finish at two spaces past the finish. But Ray, with only a five-card set, had the second-best set and advanced four spaces to win his first ADV title at five spaces past. Two games earlier he had to win a tiebreaker to even advance to the semifinals.

Two points to consider if you'd like to give Adel Verpflichtet a try next year:
1. The Adel Verpflichtet Demo was run right before the main event. There have been players who have gone to the Demo, and then were able to advance all the way to the Final table. Some people have told me I am a good game explainer; but Adel Verpflichtet is actually a very easy game to learn and one of the few at WBC where a new player can be competitive from the start.
2. It is possible to advance to the semifinal even if you do poorly in your first game. With a threshold for advancing to the semifinal of ten (as it was this year) or even nine points (as it was a couple of years ago), you can still advance to the semifinal with a decent finish in the remaining two games. So don't think if you don't win in the first set of games that you won't be able to advance.

Dave Bohnenberger get advice from two-time champ Tom DeMarco.

GM Tom DeMarco oversees his art thief finalists.

 GM      Tom DeMarco [6th Year]  720 Wood Lane, Cinnaminson, NJ 08077-3976
    TomAnneTim@comcast.net   NA

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