June 3 was a record-breaking RussCon, or at least a glass-breaking RussCon! (Jay quote: "I thought if I stepped right on the center of the glass sheet, it wouldn't break..." Madness!)

Anyway, the cleanup of glass shards and vacuuming of tiny fragments only temporarily distracted the 20 of us, and we had 5 parallel tracks of gaming at one point! Die-hards stayed until 2:30 am...

We also had a statistical anomaly in that unusually many people brought snack foods like cookies and chips, but for the first time NO ONE brought any drinks, so we actually ran out of drinks pretty early. The Dr Pepper shortage was acutely felt.

As you shall see below, another statistical anomaly was Peter rating so much higher than Eric. Truly a bizarre evening.

We had visiting dignitaries Eric and Peter from Chicago. Welcome Chris (crispy) from local Kinesoft. Dr. Randy was back, and won several games. Old guard member Wendy returned with brother Josh (with whom I'd only gamed once before, at Brendan's housewarming party!).

Speaking of Brendan, he's now the proud father of a new baby, so now he has yet another excuse to avoid coming to RussCon, the bastard! He reports success using dog training techniques on the infant.

Marty will be absent for the next couple weeks, as he's off to England! Tim reports that Alfred is gone for the summer.

17 games got played! We continued the recent trend of trying some new and offbeat games, plus many of the tried and true favorites.

Marty won Euphrates.
Wendy won Settlers.
I won Loewenherz.
Dawn won Settlers.
Doug won Medici.
James won Guerilla. (The first time my copy of Guerilla was played!)
RussD won WizWar.
Peter won Titan the Arena. Yes, it's really true, I swear.
Doug won Euphrates.
Tim won RoboRally. That's 3 RoboRally victories in 3 weeks for Tim. Watch out! For the first time, I did NOT play in the RoboRally game, but maybe it was just as well since Tim is so dangerous now.
James won Downtown.
Tim won Fluxx.
Marty won Give Me the Brain. (This is the delightfully weird Cheapass game where we're all fast food workers on the graveyard shift, trying to finish our tasks and go home. But we're all zombies, and we only have 1 brain to share between us...)
Randy won Medici.
JP won Kill Doctor Lucky (another good Cheapass game).
William won Settlers.
Randy won Titan the Arena.

So Doug, Randy, Marty, Tim, and James all won 2 games each.

Titan the Arena seems to be gaining in popularity. It's a good clever little game that only takes a half hour or so. Check it out.

Rank ratings:
 0.3500 Randy (6 games played)
 0.2917 Doug (6)
 0.2000 WendyWhi (3)
 0.1739 Marty (6)
 0.1111 Peter (3)
 0.1000 JP (4)
 0.1000 RussD (3)
 0.0526 RussW (5)
 0.0476 James (5)
 0.0000 Tim (4)
 0.0000 Brady (3)
 0.0000 Clayton (1)
 0.0000 JeffW (2)
-0.1000 Dawn (5)
-0.1111 EricH (3)
-0.1429 William (6)
-0.2000 JonathanC (4)
-0.2500 Chris (2)
-0.6000 Josh (3)
-0.8000 Jay (3)

Win ratings:
 0.5888 Tim (4)
 0.4388 James (5)
 0.3286 Doug (6)
 0.2925 Marty (6)
 0.2500 WendyWhi (3)
 0.2500 JP (4)
 0.2308 RussD (3)
 0.2152 Randy (6)
 0.2000 Peter (3)
-0.0526 RussW (5)
-0.0526 Dawn (5)
-0.2105 William (6)
-1.0000 Brady (3)
-1.0000 Clayton (1)
-1.0000 JeffW (2)
-1.0000 EricH (3)
-1.0000 JonathanC (4)
-1.0000 Chris (2)
-1.0000 Josh (3)
-1.0000 Jay (3)

20 players means very messy partial ordering. People who had no one > them include: Doug, Randy, James, Tim.

(For those unfamiliar with this system, Biff >= Eugene if both of Biff's ratings are >= Eugene's. E.g. from the data above, Doug > Marty since comparing their ratings we see that .2917 > .1739 and .3286 > .2925. Where do those rank and win ratings come from? Ancient Chinese secret!)

Doing my second order partial ordering using the 2 ratings of

(#opponents you're > than) - (#opponents > you)

and

(#levels you're above) - (#levels above you)

on that partial ordering yields the following total ordering:

Doug (15, 10)
Marty = Randy = WendyWhi (12, 8)
Peter = Tim (10, 6)
JP (9, 6)
James (8, 6)
RussD (7, 4)
RussW (3, 2)
Dawn (-4, 0)
Brady = Clayton = JeffW (-5, 0)
William (-5, -1)
EricH (-10, -2)
JonathanC (-13, -4)
Chris (-15, -6)
Josh (-17, -8)
Jay (-19, -10)

Hence Doug is the Devil. In the partial ordering, Doug is > everyone except Randy, Peter, and James (who are incomparable with Doug). Doug doesn't get email, so he won't learn this unless he shows up next week. Maybe if we all concentrate real hard, he'll receive a psychic impression that he is the Devil! Being Devil of course brings the privilege of staking out the dining table and choosing the games to be played there (as long as there are players willing to play your choice). If Doug doesn't appear, then Randy and Wendy share that privilege (plus Marty, but he'll be in England).

Congratulations to Jay the Glass Man for being the evening's Angel. Hey, it's a karma thing.

And we have a rare 3-way tie for the Extra Average Award: congratulations to Brady, Clayton, and JeffW for ranking right in the center and winning no games.

See y'all next Wednesday!
Russ