Board Game Arena

I’m organizing an in-person Ticket to Ride tournament for 48 of the world’s top players, tentatively planned for October 2, 2027 in Amsterdam.

Invitations will initially go to the BGA Top 100 as of December 31, 2026. The main event will be 48 players, 1 vs. 1, USA map, with additional side events throughout.

Interested? It takes about one minute to let me know — there’s no commitment:
TAKE THE SURVEY [https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JQLTCJZ]

The part I’m most excited about is finally meeting the people we’ve spent so much time playing online—including some of the people who are complete jerks online but are a great fun over a conversation and a drink.

And October 2 isn’t an accident. If you don’t know why, pull out your physical copy of Ticket to Ride and check the rules.

Not currently in the Top 100? Fill out the survey anyway. Depending on interest, invitations may extend beyond the initial 100.

Hope to see you in person next year!

I'm extremely happy to see such an event! To me it's just an extremely strange format you've chosen. I've played TTR for 18 years, and while I haven't played in a ton of in person tournaments it's been close to a dozen at this point, all of which have been 4 player except I think one at 5. I'm not sure I've ever seen a 2 player tournament, at least not competitively

ohestnes wrote: ↑05 October 2026, 05:56 I'm extremely happy to see such an event! To me it's just an extremely strange format you've chosen. I've played TTR for 18 years, and while I haven't played in a ton of in person tournaments it's been close to a dozen at this point, all of which have been 4 player except I think one at 5. I'm not sure I've ever seen a 2 player tournament, at least not competitively

Yes, most OTB tournaments are 4p and I'd say it's mostly for organization reasons and/or because organizers don't fully understand the game. It's not a surprise that this announce comes from a 650+ Elo rated player. I've attended dozens of local tournaments in my country and none of the organizers had an idea on how the game has to be played to win consistenly, let alone the concepts of variance, unintentional kingmaking, etc... Yet, the only official tournament organized by Days of Wonder in the last few years was fully 2p except the grand finals which I believe they decided to be 4p because of organization (space and number of referees needed) and maybe for streaming/social media purpose since their general target is families and groups of casual players rather than competitive ones.

All of this to say that 2p is the only true competitive format: 4p is full of (intentional and unintentional) kingmaking and higher randomness, which 2p doesn't fully eliminate, but reduces by a ton. It's refreshing to see a tournament which is actually good once in a while.