March 25, 2006

Last Saturday night, ten stoic, steely-eyed, poker-faced players gathered around a table for a No Limit Texas Hold Em tournament. At the same time, ten amateurs convened at our house in Germantown for the same thing! The buy-in was $10 and the top three spots paid off $10, $30 and $60, respectively. We raised the blinds every 20 minutes.

Playing were Bob and Carol Jones, Glenn and Beth Bramer, Dave and Noreen Fair, Dan Korn, Kevin Bealer, Bill Ruvinsky, and last minute addition, Jason Ruvinsky.

Thanks to Dave for providing the chips and cards, setting up and running the game. Per Dave’s idea we doubled everyone’s initial amount of chips while keeping the blinds low in order to give everyone more playing time. It seemed to work quite well as the first player out got to play for nearly two hours before busting. The game ran about four hours before a winner emerged.

There were a few highlights that bear mentioning. Glenn was the initial chip leader having taken most of Bob’s stack after Bob drew a straight on the Flop only to lose to the flush Glenn made on the River. Bob recovered when he managed to deal a similarly devastating blow to Glenn. Carol took over and was chip leader for most of the evening. Carol was a veritable killing machine knocking out four of the first six players - Bill, Jason, Beth and Glenn. By the end of the night, Dave had knocked out four himself - Noreen, Dan, Bob and Kevin. The only other person to knock someone out was Kevin who took out Carol.

The tally is as follows.

• 10 - Bill
• 09 - Noreen
• 08 - Jason
• 07 - Beth
• 06 - Dan
• 05 - Glenn
• 04 - Bob
• 03 - Carol $10
• 02 - Kevin $30
• 01 - Dave $60

Dave was the big winner and played a good game throughout. A couple of times he was down to a handful of chips but he stuck around and at the end held all the chips. He did get a couple of very lucky breaks that were really the highlight of the evening. The first was taking out Dan.

Dan versus Dave:

Dan had Q-4 offsuit
Dave had Q-8 offsuit
Pre-flop Dave was 68% to win heads up against Dan.

The Flop was Q-7-4 giving Dan two pair, Dave one pair with no possibility of a flush.
Post-flop, Dave was a 26% underdog.

Carol bet, Dan raised all in and Dave called, leaving himself with three low denomination chips if he lost. Carol folded.

The Turn was no help. After the turn, Dave was a 17% underdog.

The River was an 8, giving Dave a higher two pair and knocking Dan out of the game.


The second highlight was the last hand of the night when Dave went head to head against Kevin.

Dave versus Kevin:

Dave had about 65% of the chips in play. Kevin had about 35%.

Kevin had K-3 offsuit
Dave had 7-7

Kevin moved all-in pre-flop. Dave called.
Dave was a 71% favorite pre-flop.

The Flop was A-10-10
Dave is still a 69% favorite.

The turn was another A, putting two pair on the board, and counterfeiting Dave’s sevens. Now both players had two pair (Aces and Tens) while Kevin had a King kicker! Kevin is now the favorite. Dave is a 91% underdog. Only a seven can save him.

The River was a 7. Dave won with a full house.

Thanks to everyone who came out. It was a great time. I hope to do it again soon.

Bob

March 18, 2006

We had a full house on Saturday and played a lot of good games, including some classics. Attending were Bob and Carol Jones, Scott Percival, Dave and Noreen Fair, Eric Haas, Dan Korn, Bill, Stephanie and Jason Ruvinsky and assorted kids. Dave and Stephanie did particularly well. Thanks to everyone who attended.

Eric has posted his pictures here.

The tote board is below (winner listed first).

• Survive - Scott 19, Dave 16, Carol 11, Bob 6 (A great Parker Brothers game from 1981. I just got my copy and am very happy to have it. This is a much nastier game than the British version, Escape from Atlantis.)
• Vegas Showdown - Dave 58, Bob 50, Scott 50, Dan 49, Eric 47 (This new Avalon Hill game is a LOT of fun. Accurately described as “Princes of Florence lite”, players build their casinos and hotels after a series of auctions. Very good, even though we played incorrectly.)
• Lost Cities - Stephanie, Jason
• Die Sieben Siegel - Stephanie 6, Jason 20, Carol 28 (Everyone who’s played it has enjoyed this quick trick-taking game.)
• El Grande - Eric 96, Bob 86, Bill 77, Jason 65, Dave 59 (A very hard fought game that was much closer than the scores indicate. Well-played by Eric for the win.)
• Medici - Noreen 108, Dan 91, Stephanie 87, Carol 74, Scott 73
• Poison - Stephanie -13, Dan -19, Noreen -31, Scott -31
• King of the Beasts - Dave 6, Carol 2, Scott 2, Bob 2 (Yet another fun, quick little Reiner Knizia design with great artwork.)
• Santiago - Bill 107, Carol 78, Eric 77, Jason 67, Scott 64
• Tikal - Stephanie 131, Dave 103, Bob 85, Noreen 82 (Another hard-fought game won handily by Stephanie.)
• Railroad Tycoon - Jason 64, Noreen 63, Bob 57, Dave 53, Carol 51, Eric 45 (The closest game we’ve ever had. In the end, Jason didn’t have others screwing with him and so was able to mount a major comeback for the win.)
• Through the Desert - Dave 64, Eric 60, Bob 5, Jason 54

February 11, 2006

Last Saturday, fifteen brave souls ventured out into the impending threat of the snowstorm to join us at our house for some gaming. In addition to the Jones family, no less brave for not having to venture into the storm, were Dan Korn and Rachel Silber, Dave and Noreen Fair, Bill, Stephanie, Jason and Alex Ruvinsky, and Scott Percival. The remainder (children) of the Korn, Fair and Ruvinsky families also attended, mostly occupying themselves by playing X-Box and running about with lightsabers.

We started a bit after 1PM and ended around 5AM. Carol made excellent tacos for dinner and won three games out of the seven she played, including both games of Railroad Tycoon! The Fairs managed to escape at 5:30AM even though nearly 10 inches of snow had fallen while Alex and Jason couldn't get their car out of the parking spot and so had to crash on our couches until later on Sunday.

The tote board is below (winner listed first):

• The Bottle Imp - Bob, Carol, Dave
  • Bob: Played only one round out of three before others arrived. Great trick-taking game with a lot of strategy. Especially good for three.
• Poison - Rachel S, Noreen, Dan, Carol, Bob, Dave
• Railroad Tycoon - Carol 52, Bob 50, Dave 42, Noreen 37, Dan 33, Rachel S 32
• Acquire - Carol $33600, Bob $30200, Dan $22900, Noreen $22300, Dave $17500, Rachel S$14100
  • Bob: We haven’t played Acquire in a long time. Very few mergers meant that most players were cash poor for most of the game.
• Die Sieben Siegel - Alex (tied), Jason (tied), Scott
• 6 Nimmt - Alex 17, Bill 31, Scott 37, Stephanie&nsp;39, Dave 58, Noreen 67
• San Juan - Bob 28, Dave 24, Alex 22
  • Bob: The card game of Puerto Rico features a lot of choices and plays very quickly. One of my favorite card games. Alex put more cards in the Chapel than I’ve ever seen in one game.
• Through the Desert - Dave 79, Scott 77, Alex 75, Noreen 48
• Attila - Dan 97, Carol 95, Jason 91, Bob 86
• Streetcar - Jason, Bill, Stephanie, Carol, Noreen
  • Bob: Clearly a game in which you must pay attention to detail. A couple of sloppy mistakes (by her and others) caused some difficulties for Carol.
• The Bottle Imp - Alex 148, Dave 90, Bob 63
• Railroad Tycoon - Carol 64, Jason 51, Dave 47, Alex 45, Bob 44, Noreen 43

Thanks to everyone for coming. It was a good time.

Bob

January 7, 2006

Hey folks! Below is the gaming report from last Saturday. We had a huge group as almost all the big families made it. Attending were Bob, Carol and Rachel Jones, Dan Korn and Rachel Silber, Dave, Noreen and Andrew Fair, Stephanie, Jason and Alex Ruvinsky, Paul Bartholomew, Scott Percival and Eric Haas. Plus, we had the usual assortment of rugrats and pre-teens.

Pictures are here.

I hope to have another session in early February. Will send an e-mail around soon. See you!


The tally is below. Winner listed first.

• Blokus (travel) Bob, Dave
• Poison Dave 9, Eric 24, Carol 28, Bob 34 (This has become our filler of choice. It's quick, fun and has a decent amount of strategy)
• Verflixxt (That’s Life) Bob 16, Eric 15, Noreen 11, Dave -4, Carol -6
• Wits and Wagers Dan 240, Bob 200, Scott 140, Carol 80, Dave 0, Noreen 0, Eric 0 (A pretty good trivia party game. I find it somewhat annoying that I got right 5 out of 7 questions and still didn’t win because of the final bet.)
• 6 Nimmt! Carol 40, Bob 42, Scott 43, Dave 45, Dan 54, Noreen 74, Eric 89.
• Diamant! Dave 34, Scott 19, Eric 13, Carol 11, Andrew 11, Bob 7, Rachel J 0 (We played with the Forbidden Idol variant. Sadly, Dave took it every time.)
• Antike Scott 9, Dave 6, Jason 6, Paul 4 (An excellent “Civilization Lite” game. Nice bits, some clever mechanics and a reasonable playing time.)
• Die Sieben Siegel Paul 9, Scott 9 (tie), Dave, Jason
• Rheinlander Andrew 39, Rachel J 36, Bob 35, Eric 26, Carol 23 (Rheinlander has quickly become one of my favorite games.)
• Buy Low, Sell High No winner. Eric, Bob, Carol (Aaargh! I want to play this correctly some day. We had to abandon the game two-thirds of the way through because we screwed up the rules again. My bad.)
• Top Secret Spies Rachel J, Carol, Bob, Dan, Noreen, Eric (I mistook my red guy for orange and so helped Rachel to an easy victory. After screwing up the rules to BLSH and then this, I was starting to think I should retire.)
• Cartagena Stephanie, Scott, Alex
• Railroad Tycoon Dave 69, Bob 63, Alex 62, Carol 61, Scott 55, Paul 53 (What a fantastic game! Great theme, quick yet deep gameplay, and amazing, sumptuous bits. One of my favorites after only two plays.)
• Around the World in 80 Days Stephanie 72 days. Dan 81, Eric 81, Noreen 84, Jason did not finish
• Poison Eric -11, Jason -15, Dan -22
• Titan: The Arena Eric 12, Jason 10, Dan 2

November 12, 2005

Greetings!

Last Saturday, several of us gathered to play some games. In attendance were Bob, Carol and Rachel Jones, Dave and Noreen Fair, Scott Percival, Eric Haas, Dan Korn and Rachel Silber, and Alex Ruvinsky.

Scott, Eric, Rachel, Dave, Alex and I started with our long-postponed follow up to last August’s Wooden Ships and Iron Men game. We scaled it back considerably to finish in a reasonable amount of time. The scenario was that three Spanish treasure ships had gotten separated from their escort and were making a run for a fortified spanish coastline in the Caribbean. Unfortunately for them, identical French and British fleets found them and raced to intercept before the Spanish ships could get under the protective cover of their coastal batteries. The goal of the French and British fleets was to capture (or sink) the treasure ships and do as much damage to the enemy fleet as possible. Both fleets had nine ships, four ships of the line and five frigates. Dave, Alex and I were the French while Scott, Eric and Rachel J. were the British.

On initial setup, neither fleet sent their faster frigates after the treasure fleet, instead choosing to slug it out in the middle of the map. After several turns, multiple ships had struck their colors with the British taking the heavier losses. After this initial (and largely fatal) engagement, Alex and then Dave peeled off a couple of frigates to intercept the treasure fleet which they did just before the ships entered the firing range of the coastal batteries. The British attempted a similar maneuver but had no frigates left by this point. When the treasure ships struck their colors under fire from the French frigates, the British had two ships of the line still engaged while the French had two ships of the line and two frigates. The remaining British ships fled the battle.

We played on a really big playing surface comprised of a blue/white cloth covered by a crystal megamat. There were two islands and the coastal area to add some obstacles. The ships were the miniatures I got from copies of the old Milton Bradley game, American Heritage Broadsides which I hand-painted over the last few months. In the pictures you can see that the British have lighter decks, red flags and white stripes compared to the French darker decks, blue flags and yellow stripes. All of these elements added a great deal of atmosphere to the game. From start to finish, we played for two hours and forty-five minutes and came to a conclusive end. With two plays under our belts, the French are now 2-0!

Some time ago, Glenn put together an excellent Excel spreadsheet with templates for the Turn Order Sheets. This made it very easy for me to print out customized, individual ship sheets for each player. Thanks, Glenn!

After WS&IM was over, Alex left for several hours while we were joined by Carol, Noreen, Dan and Rachel S.

Not sure when the next session will be. I’m thinking of hosting Texas Hold ’em sometime in December. Possible nights would be the 3rd or the 10th. I’ll send around an invitation when I know more.

Bob
Tote Board

• Wooden Ships & Iron Men French: Bob, Dave, Alex; British: Scott, Rachel J, Eric
• Dungeon Twister Eric, Dave
• Tsuro Dan, Bob
• Tsuro Dave, Bob, Dan, Eric
• Wings of War Dan, Bob, Rachel S, Dave, Carol, Noreen, Eric Bob: Ace of Aces without the book. A nice, fun, easy system of WWI dogfighting which can play large numbers of players.
• Cash’n Guns Bob $135,000, Carol $75,000, Noreen $70,000, Dan $50,000, Dave (killed), Eric (killed) Bob: Basically, “Reservoir Dogs, the Game.” Fun game of pulling guns on your opponents. Are you bluffing or will you really shoot?
• Poison Eric -14, Dan -18, Carol -28, Bob -32, Dan -47 Bob: Knizia card game where you’re trying not to take cards, especially the dreaded Poison cards.
• Edel, Stein & Reich Eric 64:11, Dave 64:6, Carol 48, Bob 35, Noreen 24 Bob: Eric won the tie-breaker with Dave.
• For Sale Bob 60, Carol 46, Alex 45, Eric 35, Dave 35, Noreen 13
• San Marco Bob 66, Dave 58, Eric 58 Bob: A really excellent game for three players. Should make it to the table much more often.

October 29, 2005

Hey everyone! Just a quick update on last weekend’s gaming. Thanks to everyone who made it. We had Bob, Carol, and Rachel Jones, Dave and Noreen Fair, Scott Percival, Eric Haas, and Bill, Stephanie, Jason and Alex Ruvinsky. Tragically, only the Joneses were hip enough to come in costume. :-( We had a good time nonetheless. Carol made some excellent tacos.

Reminder, our next gaming event is next Saturday, Nov. 12 at 1PM. We plan on starting with Wooden Ships and Iron Men and then moving on to whatever. If you aren’t interested in playing Wooden Ships, you can still come and set up a side game. If you will play Wooden Ships, please let me know so I can set things up for the right number of players.

Bob
Tote Board

• King Solomon’s Mine Scott 56, Carol 49, Dave 49, Eric 31, Bob 31 Bob: An interesting game with a mechanic that’s impossible to get over if you have trouble visualizing the board in three dimensions. I had a lot of trouble easily telling which tile was on which level. Scott had no such problems.
• Finstere Flure Bob, Scott, Carol, Dave, Eric, Noreen, Rachel J
• Caylus Eric 56, Carol 47, Bob 46, Dave 44, Scott 44 Bob: Fantastic game with many roads to victory. Looking forward to continued plays of this. Watch for this to stay in BoardGameGeek’s top ten for a long time.
• Pecunia Non Olet Eric, Bob, Scott, Dave, Carol, Noreen Bob: This game is about, believe it or not, privy renters in ancient Rome. You run a latrine with three holes and you are trying to get customers to come in, get rid of their load, and pay you as quickly as possible. Very similar to Guillotine but without as many fun action cards. Notable mostly for the brown logs that represent . . . well, you know.
• Big City Dave 85, Jason 83, Carol 76, Eric 75
• Paris Paris Bill 46, Stephanie R 27, Alex 25, Bob 17
• Princes of Florence Bob 67, Eric 50, Jason 49, Dave 49, Carol 48 Bob: Still a classic. Very good game.
• Power Grid Jason 15, Scott 13:16, Eric 13:14, Bob 12, Dave 11 Bob: We played the Italian map. Very tight. The lesson learned was not to let one player alone in the south while the other three fight for space in the north.

September 3, 2005

Greetings! I hope everyone had a good weekend. I had a great weekend, especially Saturday, a day which involved spending time with friends, running through a darkened maze blazing away at enemy stormtroopers, and lots of game-playing. Thanks to everyone who came. It was a very fun day. I have attached several pictures for your enjoyment.

The group met at Shadowland around 10:00AM. Attending were Bob, Carol, Rachel and Ben Jones, Glenn and Laura Bramer, Scott and Liz Percival, their nephew, Paul and his friend, Henry, Kimberly Stern, Eric Haas, Dave, Andrew and Corwin Fair, Stephanie, Alex and Rachel Ruvinsky, and Dan and Zachary Korn. We quickly divided into teams and started the first game.

The teams were:

• Blue - Corwin Fair, Laura Bramer, Rachel Jones, Bob Jones, Liz Percival, Scott Percival, Rachel Ruvinsky, Glenn Bramer, Stephanie Ruvinsky, and Alex Ruvinsky.
• Red - Ben Jones, Carol Jones, Kimberly Stern, Dave Fair, Andrew Fair, Zachary Korn, Dan Korn, Eric Haas, Paul and Henry.

Luckily, there were no walk-ins so we had the arena to ourselves for both our games. There were some intial technical glitches which were quickly resolved and we proceeded to running around blasting each other. Dave Fair had hurt his leg earlier in the week and so was reluctant to play. He decided to go for it and his “stand in one place and not move” strategy proved bizarrely workable. At the end of the game, Dave had scored the most points followed by Rachel Jones and me. The final score was Blue Team 20,463, Red Team 20,089. Amazingly close. After we emerged from the arena, everyone was talking loudly and happily about the game so it was easy to see that everyone enjoyed it.

Since the two teams seem so well matched, we kept them for the second game. There was a bit less running around in this game as many members of both teams set up positions and engaged in a fierce firefight. Alas, the addition of the rapid fire option elevated scores considerably and produced a much greater disparity of scores. The Red Team decimated the Blue Team by a score of 44,601 to 31,381. Coming out of the arena, Dave and I agreed that I had the upper hand of him this time. To our great surprise, not only had I not bested Dave, he shot me 89 times!

Dave was again the leader followed by Dan Korn and Andrew Fair. We suspect a computer glitch for Dave the Cripple’s continued domination. :-)

After Shadowland, most of us went to Cici’s Pizza for lunch. We then proceeded to the Jones’ house for gaming. We were eventually joined there by Rachel Silber and Bill Ruvinsky. We had sandwiches for dinner and some stayed to game until around 3:30AM. The tote is below (winner listed in bold), followed by Eric’s notes.

Thank again to everyone who attended. I believe we’ll make Shadowland a quarterly event (or as often as people would like to do it). Looking forward to next time.

Bob

Tote Board

• Parking Lot Prototype Dave 46, Carol 46, Dan K 44, Eric 42, Glenn 39, Bob 32
  • Bob: This is my prototype, version 2. I tightened it up from its first version. This playtest gave me a bunch of good ideas for further improvements. Thanks for playing!
• Goa Dave 56, Dan K 45, Eric 32, Stephanie R 27
• Pirate’s Cove Bill 36, Carol 33, Andrew 31, Kimberly 30
• Australia Bob 109 (won on tiebreaker), Scott 109, Rachel S 103, Noreen 75
• Einfach Genial Bob, Scott, Noreen, Rachel S
• Guillotine Dan K 30, Kimberly 28, Carol 25
• Power Grid Scott 15, Dave 14, Bob 13, Eric 12
  • Bob: This was a great game of Power Grid. It was close until the end when Scott surpassed us in power generation and we couldn’t catch up. Well played
• Blokus Kimberly 20, Dan K -7, Carol -13
• Shadows over Camelot Carol, Dave, Bob, Kimberly, Eric, Scott
  • Bob: Also a tremendously fun game. Good was on the ropes when the Traitor, Scott, made a disastrous mistake and accused Kimberly. This actually revealed Scott as the Traitor and assured victory to the forces of light. Had Scott not misunderstood the results of a false accusation, he would have been the sole victor.
• Vino Kimberly 22, Carol 21, Bob 20, Dave 19, Eric 18