Ticket to Ride 20th Anniversary World Tournament

[Rwain]

It' s now time to speak of the awakening of german players, a seed from Belgium, Paolo's new gift, the worst qualification ever ... and other things

Germany is a great country for boardgames. In France, we name a whole section of the boardgames sector the "jeux à l'allemande". Many renowned authors come from Germany. ESSEN Spiele is the world largest trade fair for board game. "Spiel des Jahre" is one of the most expected award for a boardgame author. Germany is really a nation of boardgames. They have plenty of good boardgame players... and plenty of very good Zug um Zug players ! And yet, after two days of round 6, only one german player was qualified for the semifinal : Batze ! This could not stay like this. And it did not !

German players took their time, but they did what thay had to do to qualify for semifinalss, making it 4 of them in semifinals. Germany is now the 4th most represented nation for the Swiss tournament (tied with Spain and United Kingdom). Moreover, the three players that qualified lately are top tier players, who will join the semifinals with the status of favorites.

First, there is Schwen84, who has already been presented here. Highest ELO of all players involved at the start of this tournament, he is now the player with the highest ELO amongst all BGA players : 808 ! Schwen84 was opposed to a solid greek player, Myrmigi, ELO 556... to whom he leaves absolutely not a single chance to win !
Schwen84 started early his control of the west side of the map, and then went very very fast to put his trains on lucrative routes. Only 9 moves to spend all his trains (but 2)... Myrmigi could not follow the rythm... when the game ended, he still had 11 trains and 1 incomplete ticket in front of him.


The n°1 of team Germany plays red here. He managed to claim five 6-long routes, and the longest path with only 33 trains as he cut his opponents'railway in two.


Schwen84 played his game perfectly, qualifying for the semifinals after this large victory 120 - 73.
No doubt that he stays the n°1 favorite for the semifinals.


The second german player who qualifies is G7 womble, who had a tougher game against an experienced belgian player, Core1, ELO 544.
G7 womble had to start with Vancouver - Santa Fe and Sault Ste Marie - Oklahoma City. Probably not the best tickets ever (the link to Vancouver might be hard to hide for instance, and reaching Santa Fe can take time)... and Core1 had the start !
Core1 and G7 womble stayed very patient, drawing blind like every experienced player do... Core1 was the first to give small information, drawing yellow and red at move 64.... but G7 womble was the first to put trains on the map : Duluth - Helena (a high rated route). Core1's answer : Seattle - Helena was not a good news ! Both players seemed to have plans on the west !
The fight had only started : to Winnipeg - Sault Ste Marie, Core 1 answered by Calgary - Winnipeg ! And so on ! Move after move, they were competing for the same spots. In fact Core1 also had Santa Fe in his tickets, and that lead to a fierce battle...
In her last moves, G7 womble had 4 blues in hand, and 2 locomotives...



Her destinations were completed... but she was only 9 points ahead... and could not hope for the longest path... she could have ended here, with Portland - Salt Lake City... but would this be a victorious move ?
She chose to make it last longer, and to compete for the longest path, with Winnipeg - Helena, and the draw of two more cards to put all her trains on the map.
Was it the good choice ? Of course, as she won ! 119 - 116, a very close game here !

had to fight to pass this final obstacle, but she will be one of the sixty semifinalist in January.

The last german qualified player is another seed : Eichi05 seed n°2 of the Eastern 1 tournament. Like Schwen84, he left no chance to his opponent of the round, ending with a large victory 120 - 57. No doubt he will be a very dangerous player in the semifinals.

As we said before, Spain will also bring 4 players in the semifinals. After acebano, daedin28 and Espidifen, they add a very good chance of having a finalist in Paris after the qualification of pegaso74 .
Seed 6 of the Pacific Tournament had a very tense finish in his game agaisnt bananasplay, winning with the shortest gap possible : 110 - 109 !

United Kingdom'new semifinalists are sonics2054 and GeoPiglet, both coming from the Central European Tournament 2. Both of them are outsiders in this competition, sonics2054 only displays 59 wins on BGA, and GeoPiglet only 15.
But they deserved their place here, ending with beautiful wins, as they both defeated the seed of their table in this round 6 !
GeoPiglet defeated seed 8, moucro by the tiniest gap : 123 - 122 while sonics2054 ended the hope of ... seed 2, tiploup, a French player with an ELO beyond 700 ! And tiploup was crushed in this game : 116 - 60 ! sonics2054 and GeoPiglet might cause some troubles to other top players in January.

Sorry, could not get to the end once again ! I leave " a seed from Belgium, Paolo's new gift, the worst qualification ever ... and other things for the next comment here !

[speedypuzzlement]

Great commentary as always @Rwain. As for tiploup's game, the replay suggests a misclick on the final round, causing both tickets to be failed.

[Rwain]

I did not take the time to watch tiploup's game... but your comment made me want to ! And the end is quite strange indeed.



At this time of the game, tiploup (in red), can complete his two tickets, and can be in the run for the longest path. He is ahead in points, everything seems quite ok for him. He had the cards in hand to claim Toronto - Montreal, for 4 points more... and the assurance of 24 points from destinations...
However, with 6 trains in his stock, he would not have launched end of game... and this would have leave 3 more turns to sonics2054. Tiploup must have feared the loss of the longest path; and a great score for his opponent with big destination. When sonics2054 claimed Miami - Atlanta, tiploup chose to try a block with Houston - New Orleans... (to prevent a Los Angeles - Miami ?) but the bet was not good and he got countered when sonics2054 blocked him by claiming Toronto - Montreal. A nice move for the british player, who cut in two tiploup's railway.



At this time, tiploup still had a chance to win. He could win the longest path and his destinations with a link between Sault Ste Marie and Toronto... but he linked Sault Ste Marie with Duluth !?! An unexpected move, that left him with absolutely no chance of victory, as none of his tickets would be completed. A missclick ? A real error, with him forgetting he had not joined his north and south railways ? Only tiploup can tell us, but he might have some big regrets here, as the qualification was only inches away... With Sault Ste Marie - Toronto, he would have ended with 116 points, the same score as sonics2054... and would have tied him in destinations and longest path... But he's out. And it's not easy to understand how it could end that way !


Let's go back to our list of qualified players. We saw that many come from "big TTR nations" like USA, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and UK, but there are also to players who will be the only representative of their country.
It's the case for Trainalot, a belgian player who will be the only one from his country in the semifinals. Trainalot joined the Eastern Standard Tournament 1, and claimed the n°1 seed with 712 ELO... and could have left it earlier than expected when he tied with JWitness in round3. He reached round 4 thanks to the longest path, but got pretty close of leaving here. Fortunately for him, his next rounds went a bit better, with two clear victories : 127 - 100 against windyan in round 4 ; and 125 - 98 against FFGouge in round 5.
For his qualifying round, he faced a british player, who seemed within his reach, LazyBore, ELO 322... but it did not go as easily as expected !
Trainalot had a nice pair of tickets : Los Angeles - Chicago combined with Los Angeles - New York... 37 points available here, but had not the start and not many locomotives... Worth was to come as LazyBore , who kept his 3 tickets, took control of the center of the map : from Seattle to Duluth and then New York - Pittsburgh, before Pittsburgh - Chicago ! LazyBore was clearly walking on Trainalot's garden ! But Trainalot stayed patient... and managed to bypass the yellow lines... even if he had to take a detour for Chicago... It could have cost him the longest path, LazyBore could have tried to compete for it... but he had lost too many times with small routes... and had not the cards and time to collect 5 blacks for Montreal - Sault Ste Marie. He abandoned this way, and tried to collect points with new destination tickets. And it could have worked. With 59 points from destination, LazyBore managed to score 123 pts ! 6 points less than Trainalot, who assured his place in semifinals.



Trainalot is the 4th top seed to reach the semifinals (only half of the top seeds managed to get there !). He certainly will be one of the favorite in the next phase !

4 others players who qualified in the last hours of the round 6 will be the only representatives of their own country :
nicoxiaozai, from Malaysia, ELO 475 ;
Diger74, from Montenegro, ELO 633 ;
EBLCar, from Australia, ELO 544 ;
AlterFas, from Israel, ELO 376

Only diger74 was a seed, from Central European Tournament, but EBLCar and nicoxiaozai might have a card to play if they keep playing serious during the Swiss tournament. For AlterFas, it might be a lot more difficult to pretend to a place in finale...
AlterFas is indeed the only player who gets his ticket by kicking his opponent out of the game... a very unglorious way to qualify, even if it respects the rules of the tournament. Anyway, his opponent can have many regrets here. AlterFas let him no chance to defend his position till the end, kicking him out as soon as his time clock showed red. The worth in here is that badboymikecool was clearly ahead, he played a far better game, and should have won if sportsmanship had been respected. And I can be sure of that, as AlterFas continued playing alone the last turns... and did not manage to beat badboymikecool's score !



It was the second time AlterFas had to expel his opponent to claim the victory. Surely not the most glorious way to reach the semifinals. It might be harder for him in the next phase, as kicking someone out won't be allowed.

In a happier way of ending, let's salute the qualifications of a second polish player, chooosen, and a second south korean, lalozzz.
chooosen had "quite a safe game" (as he stated himself) against moiam, with a large victory 104 - 28. Chooosen made comments of his own game, that I copy here :

Enemy started with Seattle-Portland [1] in 62 move, 6 vs 6 locomotives. Quite fast pace, I could finish earlier but to be safer to not connect east with west I blocked, so was 11 route claims + 1 card take.
I reacted immediately using 2 locomotives with highway Helena-Seattle, which could amaze enemy as he had 6 yellow train cars - it's good to block with locomotives such powers. Later in the game moiam showed that he want's to connect Seattle-NY by claiming NY-Pitsburgh. I continued with hightway Helena-Duluth and enemy tried to stop me using 5 pinks in Duluth-Toronto.
Bait was cought, I did not have Montreal-Vancouver
After that I blocked his continuation of routes and controlled situation and fulfilling easily my ticket goal.
Quite safe game. Enemy took couple times visible cards - I had some knowledge what he has in hand. I also accelerated taking visible highway collors to slow him down (yellow/pinks)

We might just replace "enemy" by "opponent" and it would be perfect

lalozzz' qualification was not expected as he/she faced a player with 300 more ELO. He/she created the surprise in a close game, that ended 109 - 106.

And that lead to 54 semifinalists presented ! 6 places still left ?
Not really.
We also know the names of 3 other "late" qualified... and all 3 come from the same country.
The first is a "lucky" player, who should have to win one more game to become a semifinalist, but who has "the lucky draw" in his round 6, as he will be opposed to a "duplicate player" we have already presented here, Paolo2207.
Pechnik ,ELO 476, will be an outsider in the semifinals, not like his compatriot, Olimpionik, seed 2 of the China tournament.
Olimpionik had a pretty straightforward path to the round 6... he often was one of the first to end his game... but this time, his opponent could not assure his moves in due time, and the game ended after 5 days... Olimpionik did not qualify in the best manner, as he qualifies thanks to the clock, but that does not mean he won't be one of the favourite of the semifinals.
That's not as clear for the third qualified player from Russia, Rudzin71, whose 464 ELO might not be enough to pretend for a place in finale.

Strangely, of the three russians qualified for the semifinals, none qualifies in the expected way : "winning his 6th game".

And now, we'll just have to wait 5 more days (or maybe a little less) to know the names of the 3 last qualified players, coming from the Central European 4.
For players who lost in the 6th round, there still may be some hope... I don't want to be too specific here, or to leave too much hope... but I'm still thinking of a system to replace semifinalists who woul not fulfill the requirements for the finale. Stay aware of what's happening here !

And do not forget that games still go on ! The quarterfinals have already started in many tournaments, and players will do whatever they can to become the official winner of their qualifying tournaments.

[DrakeStorm]

For the Semi-Finals, there should be some clarification about manipulating the clock for a win. It seems there will be no 'sleep' time, so seems fairly easy to stall someone out of time and boot them for a win.

[Goldeneye]

The player from Brazil, chucrute2000, has an unusual profile : only 14 games on BGA, 14 wins... and a ELO who has already came over 400. His last victory was against Larrioto, seed n°6 of the Eastern tournament. A close one 99 - 95, but still a victory. This unusual course leaves lots of mystery on what chucrute2000 might do in the semifinals. We'll know in three weeks.

Honestly, I am surprised about Larrioto - to tell you the truth, I pegged him to make the semi-finals after I lost to him in Round 4, as I had pegged him in the early Rounds to be my biggest roadblock to the semi-finals (and by extension, the road to Paris).

[Sysyphus]

Well we are all playing Russian roulette on a single game!

[Rwain]

For the Semi-Finals, there should be some clarification about manipulating the clock for a win. It seems there will be no 'sleep' time, so seems fairly easy to stall someone out of time and boot them for a win.

Clarification has been made prior to any registration in the semifinals. All qualified players have committed to respect sportsmanship's rules that have been detailed to them. Players who do not respect those rules will be considered non eligible for the final.

I have more information for you.
I have to apologize for players who were expecting another chance to qualify. I had hopes to set up a second chance tournament to fulfill the 60 places of the semifinals, but I forgot about all the legal issues that we have to respect. Therefore, it will stay like it has been presented on the first rules, and no replacement will be made. That also means that there might be an odd number of semifinalists.

About rewards, Days of Wonder cannot precise them here, as the prizes will depend on the nationality of the winner. Ticket to Ride products available are not the same everywhere in the world, and they will define the lot according to what is available in the winner's country.

[Sysyphus]

That also means that there might be an odd number of semifinalists.

I hope a system will be found for this as a player could be penalized by a "bye" gaining only a 1/2 point only, especially in the first round. And this would also significantly impact the schedule of 9 players at random (while messing up the strength of schedule tie breakers, if used, which are already really flawed to start with, as ELO on BGA is very unstable).
Tie-breakers will have to be rock solid.

[Knockando]

How many players in semi-final ? Who should have qualified but is finally ineligible ?

[Sysyphus]

Looks like Paolo's spot in Europe 4 will remain unfilled.