Jeff Stephens was eliminated in the final, but saw more success in his four games (a solo, 2WD and 3WD) than anyone else in the field, just edging out Roger and Allen Schweinsberg (a solo, 3WD, and 4WD). Eric Hunter and Ken Lofgren were the only other players to achieve success at each level of the tournament, with draws at each level.

The final game, 'titleist' on USIN, was set up as a "showcase" game, where all the messages between players was kept and a web site is set up to allow observers, after the game ends, to read what went on behind the scenes. This showcase is initially set up at

with plans to eventually move it to

The first round is over! My compliments to the twenty-one players who qualified for the second round, and my thanks to all players who participated. We had only one player fail to complete the first round and all 21 qualifiers are going to continue on to the second round, which I think is terrific.

My heartfelt apologies to Mike Woodard, the only player who secured a draw in the first round and did *not* advance. His was the smallest in a 13-12-9 draw, and according to the tie-breaker, leaves him out in the cold.

I've created three secret games for use in the second round. I'll be the GM for all three and will be contacting each player individually about where and when to join, and which power he received. We're hoping to start the games after the new year -- I'm asking everyone to sign on now, but will start to allow press only once everyone is ready to play.

Here's some neat statistical information:

I looked at the pre-tournament (ie, year-end 1999) JDPR's for the tourament participants -- both for all games in the database as well as for just the full-press Standard games. Then I graphed them against the points won in the tournament to see if there was any correlation. Because of the nature of JDPR, the best fit line should be exponential and the equation for such a curve will be Points=a*e^(b*JDPR), where a and b are constants. Correlation factors can be computed for this curve, just as they can for straight-line best fits.

Here are the two plots:

The weighted means for the two types of JDPR are 1226 for the overall JDPR ratings and 1318 for the full-press specific JDPR's. The correlations aren't terribly strong -- R2 = 0.25 for overall JDPR and 0.15 for FP JDPR -- but they do exist and they're positive, which is nice. The FP JDPR's are kind of shaky because a player's rating is sometimes based on just a couple of games (whereas everyone's played quite a few Judges games, overall). That indicates that JDPR does predict performance, to some extent (although for a two-game sample, *other* factors, like luck, mean even more).

The weighted average FP JDPR for players who advanced versus those who did not: 1344 vs. 1114. The weighted average overall JDPR for players who advanced versus those who did not: 1462 vs 1174.

I also noted that for the Full-Press JDPR's, 8 of the top 9 players advanced to the second round, whereas 11 of the bottom 13 did not. For the Overall JDPR's, 11 of the top 12 advanced, whereas 12 of the bottom 13 did not -- that's almost eerie. Congratulations to Dale Grantham, who laughed at JDPR (he was the lowest ranked player in the tournament) and scored two draws. Of course, *I* know that Dale's a much better player than his ratings would sugguest . . .

Oh, one other thing . . .

Powers 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th
E/R    11  10   8   9   5   3   1
A/F    17   4   7   4   5   9   1
E/T     7  10   9   3   7   6   5
G/T     6   5   6  11   7   9   3
F/I     4   7   7   8   6  13   2
A/G     2   6   6   5  11   2  15
I/R     0   5   4   7   6   5  20

So 11 players chose the England/Russia pair as their first choice, 10 had it as their second choice, etc. Two players didn't specify preferences -- of those who did, *everyone* got either his top choice or his number-two choice.

Here's how those pairs actually performed, though:

Powers Win 2WD 3WD Loss Pts     Advanced
E/R     0   0   1   13  2.33       1
A/F     1   0   4   9   16.33      4
E/T     2   1   3   8   24.50      3
G/T     0   0   3   11  7.0        2
F/I     1   2   3   8   21.0       4
A/G     0   1   3   10  10.5       4
I/R     1   2   1   10  16.33      3

"Advanced" is how many of the seven players with this power-pair advanced to the second round. It looks like one of the player's favorites, the England/Russia pair, did the worst, whereas the bottom three did quite well. Since random dispersion of the advancing players would suggest 0.75 pairings with exactly one player advancing, 1.65 pairings with two players advancing, 2.06 pairings with three players advancing, 1.54 pairings with four players advancing, and 0.69 pairings with five players advancing, I'd say that the power-pairs did a pretty good job of evening out everyone's chances of succeeding in the first round.

We'll be using the EP House Rules, including the three-year draw clock rule detailed there. Send a judge the message 'get ep.house.rules' for a copy. My personal thanks to these fourteen volunteers, and to those 21 others who *also* volunteered, but weren't needed to run a first-round game.

General information about the tournament:

This is full-press, so just play the game as you would any other -- don't hold up the game unnecessarily and if you need an extension, let your GM know as far in advance as possible. Use preliminary orders with "set wait" whenever you can, then "set nowait" when you're ready to adjudicate. Check the judge's echo of your moves, so you can keep an eye open for errors. These games should move at a year-per-two-week rate, especially if the players are reliable -- and you ALL are.

All players will be ranked, from highest combined point total between both games played in the first round. Points are 7 for a win, 7/N for an N-way draw, and 0 for a survival or elimination, so everyone will end up with between 0 and 14 points. In case of a tie in the rankings (and there will be plenty), the player with the higher *combined* "game score" will be ranked higher. The "game score" for a game is simply the players SC count squared, divided by the sum of all the players SC counts squared, times 7.0. So the 10-SC power in a 16-10-8 draw would get a game score of 1.667. If two players are tied both in total points (from both first round games) and total game score (again, from both first round games), then we'll roll each of their games back one year, recalculate their game scores, and the higher total wins.

Note that survivals can still get a non-zero game score, but eliminations get a zero game score. And please remember that these are just for the tie-breaker -- the 7/N points are the main criteria for advancing or not.

The 21 players advancing to the second round will be ranked from 1-21 by score. The first three players will get their choice of power in their second round game; players 4 through 6 will get next choice, etc. So scoring higher in the *first* round increases the possibility that you'll get a power that you like for the *second* round.

The top seven player from the three second round games will advance to a third round game, again ranked by score and choosing their power in that order. Points do *not* carry over from round to round. The winner (or largest member of the draw) in the final will be declared champion.

Ask for extensions in a timely manner, don't resign from your positions, and most of all HAVE FUN.