For more information on Titan see my Titan Home Page.
55 players participated in 46 preliminary round matches.
The following is pretty much what I have submitted to the BPA for inclusion in the Multi-player Titan Yearbook entry.
This year there were several notable statistical flukes.
The first was that this year, for the second time in the past 11 years, Steve Koleszar both won the multi-player Titan and didn't pick multi-player Titan as his team event. (Steve is the first two time multi-player Titan winner.) The other 9 years he picked multi-player Titan as his team event, but, although often doing quite well, never won in those years.
There was a second statistical fluke involving Steve this year. In his semi-final game, Andrew Gross (this year's two-player Titan champ) attacked Steve with titan (10-4), 2 serpents, 2 angels, 2 gorgons, with an angel to summon. Steve was defending in a tower with titan (8-4), 2 guardians, a ranger, and an angel. Andrew was a huge favorite, but the dice gods were smiling on Steve, and Andrew's chance to be the first person to win both events in the same year ended.
The third statistical fluke was that out of 51 official games 6 ended with two of the last three players remaining mutually eliminated each other to leave a winner who didn't get the chance to personally defeat his opponents. Normally this only happens once or twice through the course of the event.
I changed a few procedural things from last year and want to report on the results.
One thing I have done over the years is try to make the multi-player Titan tournament suitable for a variety of people, including people that wanted to play drop in games, play lots of Titan or just play to win. This year I made a change to allow people who wanted to play a lot of Titan, to get a better chance to do so. The change was to allow players to play as an eliminator after playing 6 games that counted. Several players took advantage of that this year. The most notable player to do so was Dan Strock. He played in 11 (6 normal, 3 as eliminator, semi-finals and finals) official games of multi-player Titan, several official 2 player Titan games, and several unofficial games that I noticed (including teaching new recruits). He deserves the Titan Marathon Player award for extensive play of Titan this year.
After one of the semi-final games ran over the (generous) time allotment last year and how the game ended didn't make anyone involved happy, I made of a couple of changes. One was to institute a rule for using timed turns if a semi-final or final game was running long. The other was to use an objective formula for producing a winner if, despite time controls, a semi-final or final game went over the time limit. However, this year none of the semi-final or final games went anywhere near their time limits. The time limit on the final game was new, but I felt that there needed to be some limit, as I didn't want someone to have to quit because their plane was leaving on Sunday. So, I used a cutoff of 6am Sunday, which gave 12 hours to play the finals (which is about 2 to 3 times the normal time needed).
Another change was in response to a suggestion that players start fresh in the semi-finals. Previously, in the case of a mutual between the last two players in a semi-final or final game, the higher seed would advance. This year I instituted a roll off between any players that mutualled in the semi-finals or finals. However, no mutuals occurred in the semi-finals or finals this year.
After the event, several players and myself discussed this year's changes and what we might change to make things better next year.
Even though it didn't come into play, people liked the roll off method of settling mutuals. Next year I will be using this rule for preliminary play, as well as for the semi-finals and finals.
One big topic was the seeding. I have been using an objective formula for seeding because it is hard to fairly place everyone for their semi-final matches. Two problems with this system have been pointed out. One is that it may (did) cause players to play extra preliminary games to modify who got to play who in the semi-finals, even though they were sure to be in the semi-finals and would have preferred to have done something else with that time. The other thing it didn't do was separate people who didn't want to play each other (typically people from the same geographic area).
The discussion was very fruitful, and already I almost have a complete system set up for next year. The preliminary results will still be used to decide who plays in the semi-finals, and act as a tie breaker between semi-final participants who don't make the finals and finish in the same position in their semi-final game. However, the seeding will be done by random draw with some extra constraints.
The extra constraints are a system that might be useful for other people running multi-player game events. When a player registers for Titan, they will be allowed to name a group of up to four players (including themselves) that don't wish to meet each other in the semi-finals. These other players must also list the same group when they sign up to play. This allows groups of up to 4 players to be split up if they all make the semi-finals. (If, when signing up, players list inconsistent groups, there is a simple system for resolving conflicts in a fair manner.)
Some people were concerned that a group of 4 "good" players might try to take advantage of this to arrange not to play each other. However, since the whole idea of seeding was to split up the "good" players, this seemed like it could only be a good thing. (Especially since the current seeding system wasn't doing that great of a job at this.) We decided to not force people that are part of a team to take advantage of this system. I will be prohibiting teammates of a player with multi-player Titan as their team event from playing in the same semi-final game. This won't break the splitting up of groups, but I do have a little work to do with figuring out how to select the match-ups randomly. I would like each possible match-up to be equally likely.
In spite of the success of this year's event, I am looking forward to an even better one next year!
As an addendum, I received a picture from the event from Steve Koleszar which I finally got around to putting up. If you look carefully, you can find (going from left to right) Pete Gathmann, Brian Bouton, David Platnick, Steve Koleszar, Ken Nied and Justin Childs in the picture.
Fin Sem Pre Opp Opp Opp Opp Opp Game
Name Ran Ran Ran 1st 2nd 3rd Kil 1st 2nd 3rd Kil Gam Gam Numbers
Koleszar, Steve 1 4 13 1 2 3 4 32 21 23 94 87 6 2 7 18 27 43 44
Nail, Chuck 2 2 9 2 1 1 7 25 32 13 69 84 6 4 11 24 29 30 39
Finberg, David 3 3 10 2 1 0 6 12 17 21 49 69 5 3 13 19 34 45
Strock, Dan 4 1 3 3 1 2 10 21 17 22 58 75 6 1 7 11 20 22 36 43 44 46
Gross, Andrew 5 5 5 3 0 0 7 9 9 14 27 45 3 8 14 28
Atwater, Rich 6 6 6 2 2 2 6 19 20 19 57 85 6 2 6 15 24 37 45
Hull, Bob 7 7 7 2 2 1 6 21 19 24 68 86 6 2 13 20 23 29 36 46
Chavis, James 8 8 16 1 1 4 4 24 19 19 75 75 6 1 9 28 36 40 46
Childs, Justin 9 9 1 3 3 0 7 25 25 25 85 93 6 7 12 24 29 39 43
Gathmann, Pete 10 10 2 3 2 0 7 20 14 21 59 65 5 1 5 26 42 44
Sutton, Brian 11 11 4 3 1 1 5 18 17 18 50 71 5 8 18 26 31 42
Beyma, Richard 12 12 14 1 2 2 3 20 16 17 57 74 6 8 12 21 23 28 33 41 46
Rothenheber, Ed 13 13 8 2 1 2 6 30 23 16 85 92 6 4 11 14 19 26 43
Bouton, Brian 14 14 11 1 4 0 1 18 16 23 63 74 6 4 9 17 24 25 35
Cornett, Jeff 15 15 12 1 3 1 5 22 16 22 56 87 6 3 10 19 21 25 39
Steinmeyer, Phil 16 16 15 1 2 1 5 12 14 24 42 57 5 17 27 32 33 44
Shambeda, Jonathon 17 17 17 1 1 2 6 13 17 16 41 59 5 5 9 34 37 41
Foy, Ben 18 18 18 1 1 2 4 14 12 16 47 56 4 10 31 34 37
Ackman, Cliff 19 19 19 1 1 1 3 18 12 15 54 52 4 11 16 37 42
Chung, John 20 20 20 1 0 3 4 7 11 17 32 47 4 10 27 32 38
Pustilnik, Michael 21 21 21 1 0 2 4 25 20 24 71 85 6 6 10 12 14 18 20 45
Reece, Craig 22 22 22 1 0 2 2 7 13 8 18 44 3 16 21 25
Sharp III, John 23 23 23 1 0 1 4 2 7 7 9 20 2 35 40
Pranno, Mike 24 24 24 1 0 1 0 22 27 22 66 85 6 3 6 15 21 25 26
Mozes, Eyal 25 25 25 1 0 1 0 8 6 12 27 32 3 22 31 38
Lingle, Larry 26 26 26 1 0 0 2 6 7 2 19 18 1 39
Platnick, David 27 27 27 1 0 0 0 11 9 11 36 36 2 2 20
Carisoza, Michael 28 28 28 0 2 1 2 31 22 20 80 94 6 6 8 19 23 29 31 41
Melton, Craig 29 29 29 0 2 0 0 9 5 4 22 24 2 30 42
Smith, Mark 30 30 30 0 1 1 2 11 8 12 38 42 3 13 32 45
Ticola, Peter 31 31 31 0 1 1 2 4 5 7 13 20 2 35 40
Fardette, Jim 32 32 32 0 1 0 1 3 2 4 6 13 1 15
Karp, Daniel 33 33 33 0 1 0 0 4 1 4 10 11 1 22
Nolan, Scott 34 34 34 0 0 2 1 12 11 15 40 46 3 13 18 27
Hoff, Marty 35 35 35 0 0 2 0 6 10 4 19 30 2 3 17
Scott, William 36 36 36 0 0 1 2 4 6 8 10 22 2 17 38
Lientz, Gerald 37 37 37 0 0 1 1 5 5 4 14 18 1 12
Smith, Clifford 38 38 38 0 0 1 1 4 3 2 13 11 1 5
Joy, Andy 39 39 39 0 0 1 1 2 1 3 5 10 1 16
Wolff III, Bruno 40 40 40 0 0 1 0 10 6 10 30 28 2 22 36
Ladd, Jeff 41 41 41 0 0 1 0 7 11 13 28 36 3 9 30 40
Krueger, Chuck 42 42 42 0 0 1 0 4 3 10 17 21 2 32 38
Jaeger, Brandon 43 43 43 0 0 1 0 3 3 3 7 13 1 15
Castonguay, Jim 44 44 44 0 0 1 0 2 4 3 8 12 1 33
Mason, Matthew 45 45 45 0 0 0 0 11 8 12 34 41 3 14 16 23
Nied, Ken 46 46 46 0 0 0 0 7 6 5 21 18 1 7
Samuel, Ken 47 47 47 0 0 0 0 7 4 6 21 17 1 1
Fowble, Wade 48 48 48 0 0 0 0 5 6 3 14 18 1 4
Gorr, Eric 49 49 49 0 0 0 0 5 3 6 14 15 1 28
Fuegi, Aaron 50 50 50 0 0 0 0 4 3 4 16 14 1 34
Schulmeyer, Peter 51 51 51 0 0 0 0 4 3 3 14 11 1 5
Betz, Joseph 52 52 52 0 0 0 0 2 5 5 11 17 1 41
Calkins, Matt 53 53 53 0 0 0 0 2 5 2 7 10 1 35
Beaulieu, James 54 54 54 0 0 0 0 2 4 4 8 12 1 33
Shambeda, Jed 55 55 55 0 0 0 0 2 3 2 7 11 1 30
Andrew Gross won the event, defeating David Platnick in the final.
I am not sure why Robert Barnes shows up in two first round games. It might be a mixup in the results or something odd might have happened during the event. I doubt it is possible to figure this out at this point.