The EPGS Puerto Rico Tournament – March 7th, 2009

First of all, thanks to everyone who participated, in particular Carl Brubaker and my wonderful wife Jennifer who both jumped in to make the number of participants a perfect 16.

The tournament was simple, single elimination style with four players to a board.  For the first round, pairing and seating positions were randomly determined by drawing playing cards.  The most humorous bit of trivia that came from this was when Barb Flaxington, 2004 WBC Puerto Rico champion sat down at my table at the number two spot and jokingly said something about already being out of the game.  (The second position is statistically the least likely position to win a four player Puerto Rico game.)

"Yeah right!" I replied. "I’ve seen your results at WBC!"  I was recalling the one score sheet of her's from the 2007 quarter finals where she scored something like 67 points on seat two.

She simply laughed and said "Not buying it, eh?"

As for the other matchups, Chris Moffa (Barb’s husband and 2006 WBC champion) made short work of his opponents.  Chris had better luck than Barb with the random seating, as he was third seat at his table, statistically the seat most likely to win a four player game.  Matt Charlap scored an outstanding 57 points to win his game, the best score of anyone from the first round.  Second place finisher Mike Kaltman remarked that he spent so much time preoccupied with his other two opponents that Matt just blew by him while he wasn’t looking.  Finally, Jim Reader scored 54 points to win a game where the lowest score was 47!  It was an interesting battle because two of Jim's opponents had over 30 shipping points each and first seated player, Bob Stibula, built three of the bonus point buildings (but didn’t get the Guild Hall, which was the one he really wanted.)  Jim’s final score was the result of a nice balance between shipping and building.

Meanwhile, in my first round game, I was paired up with Barb, Jim Castonguay, and relatively new EPGS member and excellent gamer Doug Faust.  (Given this crowd, I’m quite thankful this wasn’t a Power Grid tournament…)  For whatever reason, the second seat jinx seemed to have finally caught up with Barb, as she was never really able to get going.  Doug grabbed an early coffee plantation and spent at least two turns looking at 5 doubloons on his mapboard, not able to get the sixth needed for the coffee roaster.  For me, this was a lucky break – Doug spent the early part of the game collecting quarries and was poised to pump out some large buildings later on.  The game ended up being a low scoring affair, with me winning with 39 points.  The other scores were Jim 36, Doug 32, and Barb 30.

The final round ended up being between four skilled players, which is exactly what I had hoped would happen.  For the final round, the players bid on seat position using the chart provided by Bob Stibula (thanks again, Bob).  Speaking for myself, I just wanted to try something else besides 2nd seat – not necessarily because of its horrible reputation but because this had been the seat I had ended up at in previous games involving the bidding chart (For the record, I got squashed in those games).  After the smoke cleared, here was the seating arrangement:

1st: Ken Horan, 1 point bid
2nd: Chris Moffa, 0 point bid
3rd: Jim Reader: 2.5 point bid
4th: Matt Charlap: 2 point bid

The final was actually anti-climatic, as everything seemed to go my way.  Jim Reader had a dangerous setup with four or five corn plantations.  If I recall correctly, however, Jim ended up buying a harbor instead of a wharf.  After the game ended, it was agreed that this decision probably set him back.  One of the more common strategies in Puerto Rico is to force the player making coffee to ship it so that he or she can’t sell it for tons of money.  Here, I was shipping the coffee on purpose, in an effort to block Jim out of the boats.  I bought a factory early on, and ended up hurting Jim again when I purchased the last tobacco storage, as tobacco and corn where the only plantations he had for most of the game.  With apologies to Jim, all I was really trying to do was have my factory produce more money (Honest!).

Ironically, my game was balanced much like Jim’s first round game.  I eventually was getting five doubloons every crafting phase and kept shipping the coffee.  The end result was that I ended up with both a lot of building and shipping points.  The final score, after subtracting the seat bids, was: Ken 61, Chris 49, Matt 48, and Jim 40.5.  Chris was gracious enough to present me as the winner and I ended up giving the certificate I designed…to myself.  With any luck, I’ll be able to present the next certificate I design to someone else at the next tournament I run.

Speaking of which, if anyone has a suggestion for a tournament, don’t hesitate to contact me about it.  The more feedback I get, the more I’ll know what everyone wants. Thank you!