This past weekend (August 24th - 26th), we held the first (hopefully
annual) West Coast Titan Championships in Seattle, WA.  The tournament
was hosted at the Dragonflight gaming convention, which is held every
year on the weekend before Labor Day.

The tournament got started a little after 10 am on Friday morning, and
all games through Saturday at midnight were tabulated to determine who
advanced to the Final game, which started Sunday at 9am.

A total of 41 players played in the tournament, and a total of exactly
40 games (including the final) were played.  All games except for the
final were 4 player games, while the final had 6 players.

7 players played only 1 game, and another 6 played only 2.  Most of
these 13 players were at the convention for other reasons and just
stopped by to get in a game, though a couple of them were good local
players who simply had other commitments for the weekend, who came
primarily as a show of support for me (since I had been aggressively
beating the bushes to get the better local players to come).  The
majority of the remaining 28 players were people who came to the
tournament intending to play Titan for all or most of the weekend.  

The most number of games played by any one player was 10; the runner up
had 9.  The average number of games played per person was almost exactly
4; excluding the 13 people who played in only 1 or 2 games, the average
was 5 per person.

We had 2 players from Boston, 1 from Minnesota, 1 from Vancouver, 2 from
Sacramento, 1 from Portland, and 4 from San Francisco.  All of these
players except the one from Minnesota traveled to the convention solely
to play in the Titan tournament.  To the best of my knowledge, the
remaining players were all from Seattle or the surrounding area.  

The tournament was won by David Finberg, of Boston.  The other 5 players
in the Final were Aaron Fuegi from Boston; David DesJardins and Barry
Eynon from San Francisco; and from Seattle, Rick Middlebrook and Kyle
Moore (who was the runner-up).  I would have been in the final game, but
chose not to play, freeing up room for one additional non-Seattle
player.  David desJardins had the highest qualifying score, winning 4 of
the 5 games he played, and tying for 2nd/3rd in the other.

The scoring system that I used was atrocious, and I promise to figure
out something better by next year.  Looking at the scores, there was an
obvious and natural break between the top 6 players and the rest of the
field.  Unfortunately, due to the fact that I had reserved two spots for
the people who scored best on Saturday, and further due to a
questionable algorithm for tiebreaks, only 5 of those 6 people would
have made the final.  I was able to at least partly rectify the
situation by surrendering my spot, which at least meant that the 1
deserving person that got bumped out was also the person who came up
with the scoring system in the first place.  

The major problem with the scoring system, however, was that it
encouraged people to stop playing games if they won their first 3.
Three different players accomplished this feat (Aaron Fuegi, Kyle Moore,
and myself); fortunately, although all of the players recognized that it
would assure them of a spot in the Final if they simply stopped playing,
all 3 continued playing games.  I'm grateful to Aaron and Kyle for not
choosing to take advantage of my blunder by ceasing to play after their
3rd game.

I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all of the players who
participated, and in particular for the folks who made the trip from out
of town.  I had a great deal of fun, and met a number of people whom I
look forward to seeing again (which, to be honest, is my primary
"victory condition" for any gaming event).

I hope that people will send me comments and suggestions, so that I can
make this a successful annual event.  I am open to suggestions of any
kind, from details of the tournament itself (scoring system, format,
etc.), to wider issues (location, timing, etc.).  I felt that the event
was a success, and would be happy to run something similar next year at
Dragonflight; but I am more than willing to make significant changes if
that's what people want.  (It would be particularly helpful to me if the
out of town folks could let me know if it was worth their while to make
the trip, and if they would anticipate being willing to do so again).
                                                                                
--
Andrew B. Gross