June 12 2002 RussCon Report

News

Austin Go Club had an excellent tournament at Great Hall Games on Saturday, with 30 players showing up. Thanks to Rob & Bek of Great Hall for hosting and supplying prizes! I won all my games, so got the new Monkey Jump book as a cool prize.

There has been lots of interesting email about kingmaking, dealmaking, etiquette etc. Perhaps I will archive it onto a web page at some point.

Several of us will be seeing Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress at the Paramount tonight (Monday) at 7:30.

Enigma is a movie well worth seeing, vaguely reminiscent of A Beautiful Mind without the Ron Howard syrup.

If I know you in real life and you have a web page you'd like listed on my page of links to friends, let me know.

Meta Party Game

For next week's metagame (June 12th) we'll play something I like to call: The Clayton Game. You may have met Clayton Hunter (he's rarely missed a RussCon) and wondered: "Why doesn't this guy say anything? And why doesn't he speak louder when he does talk?"

Well, one theory is Clayton knows a secret: we're each only allotted a certain number of words in our lifetime. Clayton knows his allotment is small, and he doesn't want to run out. He's a lingual conservationist! (I don't know why he's so quiet when he does talk. Maybe he's got peanut-sized lungs or something.) So in the interest of conserving words/letters/etc. at RussCon, here are the metagame rules:

1. You have to play 2 or more games to be eligible. Playing 3+ games gives you special scoring (see #3).

2. For each game you play, you get one metapoint for each letter in the official title of the game. The official title is the one printed on the packaging of the version you're playing. Numerals, puncuation marks and ampersands in the title count zero. Example: Mu = 2 metapoints. Stephenson's Rocket = 17 metapoints. 6Nimmt = 5 metapoints.

3. For each game you play beyond the second one of the night, you get a negative metapoint. Example: playing 5 games that night gives you (5-2=) -3 metapoints.

4. The lowest score wins, because Clayton values are good values.

5. In case of ties, the person who played the most games wins. If there's still a tie, RussW can resolve in any random way he chooses.

Rank ratings:
 1.0000 BradS (2 games)    
 1.0000 MarkH (2)
 0.5263 JP (13)
 0.4545 Matt (3)
 0.2857 JonathanC (4)
 0.0000 Marty (2)
 0.0000 Daniel (4)
-0.0769 RussW (4)
-0.1429 MarkY (4)
-0.2000 BobR (3)
-0.2105 Alex (14)
-0.2222 Deborah (5)
-0.2500 Dudley (7)
-0.5000 William (2)
-0.6000 Clayton (3)
-1.0000 Whendy (1)

New Win ratings:
 1.0000 BradS (2)
 1.0000 MarkH (2)
 0.6364 Matt (3)
 0.3158 JP (13)
 0.1538 RussW (4)
 0.0000 JonathanC (4)
 0.0000 Marty (2)
 0.0000 MarkY (4)
-0.1053 Alex (14)
-0.2000 Daniel (4)
-0.2500 Dudley (7)
-0.3000 BobR (3)
-0.3000 Clayton (3)
-0.3333 Deborah (5)
-0.5000 William (2)
-1.0000 Whendy (1)