I’ve been
attending quite a few World DipCons in recent years.
This is a situation I’ve been able to pull off thanks to two
different stints as a postdoc at a European research institute: first in
Heidelberg fresh out of grad school, and then more recently in London.
With a point of departure in Europe, it was easy for me to attend
WDCs in Namur in 1999 and in Berlin in 2006, in addition to all the American
WDCs over that period (and the 2004 WDC in Birmingham).
When Vancouver won the bid for WDC XVII I was pleased, not only
because I know the organizers and felt they would do a good job, but also
because I have family and friends in Seattle, and I could combine a gaming
vacation with a visit with people I had not seen in a long time.
So, come August
9, Stephen Weingarten - a Dipper from Portland, Oregon - picked me up at my
aunt’s house in Tacoma. We made
the run for the border, and after getting Taco Bell, headed up to Vancouver.
After a few hours of driving, including a delay of about a half hour
at the border, we arrived at the site.
WDC was held at
the campus of the University of British Columbia, with rooms reserved at the
Gage Towers complex, and gaming taking place at the Campus Center.
The rooms were a good deal: for $39/night, I got a single room with a
shared kitchen and bathroom area.
I wasn’t planning to cook, so this was more than enough for me.
For me, the fun
of an event like WDC is seeing familiar faces and old friends, reliving past
games and laughing about the past.
Then there’s the competition.
But it’s the mix of personalities that really makes the game for me.
I have played a lot of other games and have found that, even when the game
is fun - like Puerto Rico or Carcassonne - I prefer playing it with Dippers
who bring their own flair to the competition.
My first-round
game featured a lovely board assignment: Austria-Hungary on a board with Edi
Birsan as Russia. I thought Edi
would cause me problems, but my main problems came from the other side, as
Len Tenant argued that the only way for Italy to grow was in Austria.
Now, at this point I am sure that I don’t have to say much more about
the game. About the only really
distinguishing bit in the game, which featured the gradual abandonment of
any idea of Austrian autonomy, was my incursion into the Ionian Sea during a
Spring move, which gave me access to an undefended SC in Naples.
So over the course of the game I took Naples, then Rome, and then
finally Venice from Len, while Edi raced to an enormous SC count.
It was a weird feeling, trying to make sure Tom Kobrin (France) and
France-May Martel (Turkey) didn’t cough up a first-round solo.
Ultimately, I think Edi could have soloed this board, but since it
was only the first round, he didn’t make a big push to try to do so.
About an hour
after we finished, Mike Hall soloed as Russia.
As quickly as that, Edi lost any hold he had on Best Russia.
As I’ve said,
this was my eighth WDC. I think
this gives me a bit of historical perspective on the ebbs and flows of
participation in the hobby from different areas.
I started playing Dip in college in the late 80s, but the hobby
really grew during the 90s thanks to the Internet.
Ken Lowe’s Judge program made it easy for thousands of people to play
games with other Internet players from all corners of the Earth.
In the mid-90s, I started doing more face-to-face gaming.
I think there was a growth in the FTF hobby in the late 90s and early
00s as many online players started enjoying the human interaction of live
gaming. At the time, there were
booming hobbies in England, Sweden, France, Australia (and New Zealand) and
parts of the US including the DC area, the Pacific Northwest, and North
Carolina. My first WDC was in
Chapel Hill in 1998. That was
the year Chris Martin took home the top prize.
I finished 11th that year, and have not finished so high
since!
I woke in plenty
of time for round 2. Got a nice
power assignment: France. Former
World Champion Rob Stephenson is England.
Rob’s opening negotiations are fascinating.
He says he’ll be friendly but anybody who crosses him will inspire a
furious vengeance. I don’t know
quite what to make of this, but when Germany and Russia cannot get their
negotiations in order, they start fighting.
So I team up with Rob, go south, and invade Italy with little
difficulty. I’m topping the
board when the game is called.
So far I have one good result and one bad one.
After an
uneventful break, which included watching the last moments of Yann Clouet’s
solo as Germany, we got our third round assignments.
At this point I’m starting to run low on gas and am not looking
forward to playing my second game of the day.
So I get Italy, my least favorite country.
I get Dave Maletsky, a solid player in Turkey, and a 12-year old kid
in Austria. And then there’s a
Western triple. When the kid
demands that I leave Venice empty in 1901, I’m just baffled.
The whole game is a disaster for more reasons than I want to go into.
So after three rounds, I have a board top, a 1-SC survival, and an
elimination.
My third-round
game raises the question of who should be playing Diplomacy in tournaments,
especially major tournaments. I
am all in favor of bringing new blood into the hobby.
And I think that any tournament should have possibilities for playing
for anybody who wants to, regardless of their experience level.
But I think that it is undesirable to allow complete newbies to play
in what is ostensibly the World Championship.
The nature of
Diplomacy, in particular, requires a minimal level of competence from all
players. Yes, influencing,
convincing, and dominating weaker players are key aspects of Diplomacy
skill, and it is completely legitimate to want to keep an “open” nature to
Diplomacy tournaments. But even
at open golf tournaments, they don’t let people walk in off the street that
have never played golf before.
I don’t think
that the play of Narek in my third-round game was decisive to my result.
Given a Western triple hitting me from the West, and Dave Maletsky in
Turkey, my Italy was likely to be in trouble regardless of who was playing
Austria. But it is something I
didn’t want to have to deal with at that point.
There are many
different reasons people play Diplomacy.
I prefer playing with more experienced players who have interesting
ideas about the possible lines of play.
I don’t find it very interesting to hone the skill of openly
manipulating complete newcomers.
I’m not saying I’ve never done it, but it’s an aspect of the game that does
not appeal to me. The ability to
play mental games with the uninitiated is not something that I want to spend
my time optimizing.
Anyway, having
said all that, I enjoyed my drinks Friday night with Michael Pinder, the
German on my board who was eventually betrayed by England and France.
In each round at
Vancouver, the organizers selected one of the boards to be featured on the
“big board”, which included a large running SC count for everybody to
follow. I woke up Saturday in a
foul mood and told Matt Shields that I really didn’t want to play, but would
play if I was needed to fill a board.
It turned out that I was needed, so I played.
Happily, I got a seat at the big board.
It was a nice
board with a lot of people I knew well.
I landed Austria, Dan Lester was Turkey, Ike Porter was Austria, Yann
Clouet was Italy, Adam Silverman was France, Jack Twilley was Germany and
Todd Lawson was England. Todd
was the only player there whom I had never played with before, though it had
been a long time since I had played in Boston with Jack.
Ike was looking for a fun game, so we opened with a RAT triple.
The motivations
in this game were simple: since Adam had soloed in the third round, he and
Yann were going to be targets.
The result of the opening negotiations were an A/T going after I and a E/G
going after F. A problem with
this thinking was that, as Russia, I had no target.
I did what I considered to be an innocuous opening, moving to Ukr,
Bot, Bla, and Lvn. The last move
really upset Germany and England for reasons I still don’t quite get.
So, we had
probably the worst-disguised RAT in history.
In 1902, E & G pulled away from France and started to harass me in
the North, having been warned by Yann and Adam that a major RAT would sweep
the board otherwise.
But the EG vs. R
took a strange turn. On a move
where Germany was trying to outflank me by moving to Galicia, Austria moved
his armies to Venice and Tyrolia.
The net effect was to leave Budapest completely undefended.
In addition, Ike had left Serbia undefended, with the idea of
trusting Dan not to make a 1-dot stab.
The combination was disastrous for Ike, and led to a 3-power feeding
frenzy in the Balkans. At this
point, F & G were turning on England, and I faced a choice.
Either I could turn on Turkey, and probably work with Italy against
him, or I could turn on Germany.
I felt the former path led to more growth for Russia, so I sailed into the
Black Sea and took Serbia.
Then we had a
lunch break. Dan Lester spent
the entire break pleading his case to Jack and myself, and I have to say
this weakened my resolve. So,
after a bit of mucking around after the break, I pushed the idea of a draw,
even though it was probably premature.
Part of my thinking was that I could pursue one of two strategies
that could tip the balance between Dan and Yann as to which of the two made
the top board. With two bad
results already, I didn’t think my odds of making the top board were very
good. I didn’t like the idea
that my decision about how to play the remainder of the game would not be
enough to get me into the top board, but might be a deciding factor as to
whether Yann or Dan made the top board.
(Indeed, after ending when we did, both Yann and Dan made the top
board, as well as Adam.)
After Round 4, I
was thoroughly tired of gaming.
I find the usual DipCon schedule of four games in three days to be more than
enough, so the idea of playing six games in four days struck me as being too
much. So Ike and I took the
local bus to downtown Vancouver to play some Texas Hold ‘em.
I’ve become very
interested in Poker in recent years, especially in Hold ‘em, which has
captured the imagination of gamblers around the world.
I’ve enjoyed friendly games a lot, and often have done well at
Diplomacy cons, but I’ve never really broken through at casino play.
Indeed, casino play can be depressing compared to a nice, friendly
house game, since you really meet some extreme personalities at casino
tables. Usually there’s a mix of
tourists and locals, rubes, pros, and people who think they are better than
they actually are, but annoyingly hit a lucky streak at an inconvenient
time.
Poker makes for a
nice contrast to Diplomacy, since it requires deception, bluffing, and a
good deal of reading people, but it has nothing remotely resembling alliance
play. But it was not my day for
poker. I blew through the money
Ike had staked me in less than two hours, while he profited nicely when he
flopped a straight on a board with a flush draw that never drew.
My only criticism
of the Vancouver experience was that there were no organized outings.
I suspect that, had the organizers put together a trip to see
downtown, or an excursion into the mountains, it would have been
well-attended by gamers who didn’t really want to play six games in four
days.
The final round
started with the announcement of the top board.
Six players had soloed, and five of them made the top board: Doug
Moore, Yann Clouet, Adam Silverman, Jake Mannix, and Chris Martin were on
board, joined by Dan Lester and Tom Kobrin.
Mark Zoffel, who was second heading into the final round, decided to
pass on the opportunity. As a
consolation, I got a board with two former World Champions, Vincent Carry
and Nicolas Sahuguet. I landed
England and Vincent was Russia.
Anna Binder (Germany) bounced me from Belgium in 1901 after having promised
it to me, and I started out worried about an F/G.
I decided to work
with Vincent in the North, giving him Norway in return for his support into
Denmark. The German position
became untenable shortly thereafter, as I convinced the French player, Ryan
Blaney, to share the Low Countries with me while Vincent hit Anna from the
other side. Anna suffered the
fate that many Germanys have in Dip of being attacked on all sides.
After Germany fell, I was faced with the choice of hitting Ryan, and
risking a possible AIR board-sweep, or hitting Vincent, who had been loyal
to me from the start. Partly
based on the encouragement of David Norman, who was playing Italy, I decided
to go after France. This worked
out well when Nicolas decided to do his part to counter the reputation
French players have for never stabbing each other.
He was quite happy to stab Vincent, which led to an endgame where R
and I were tangling in the East while David and I broke down the French
defences in the West. I ended up
topping the board with 10 SCs.
It seems curious
to me that the two boards I topped featured former World Champions, and the
other board I did reasonably well on featured a lot of strong players.
I definitely prefer playing with stronger players, as I find it hard
to play with people who do not see the long-term implications of their
moves. This is admittedly a
weakness in my playing style, but I’m not sure I care enough to try to
become a better exploiter of foolish players.
As for the top
board, Doug had come in with the tiebreaker of being in first after five
rounds. The championship was
reserved for whoever topped the top board, even if said person’s total score
for the tournament was not highest.
Doug also drew France, which is a good power to play on a top board.
Yann drew Austria and was apparently smothered right at the start.
He was gone before I noticed it.
Jake Mannix (Turkey), Tom Kobrin (Italy) and Dan Lester (England) all
seemed to be doing well at various points in the game, but as time ran out
Doug pulled ahead to the victory.
Congratulations
to Doug Moore, the first American World Champion since Chris won WDC in
Chapel Hill in 1998.
The following
weekend I attended HuskyCon on Long Island, hosted by the Woodrings.
I really like the informal atmosphere of this house con, but given
that it was only a week after Vancouver, I really was low on enthusiasm for
Diplomacy. This gave me time to
think about the hobby.
Participation in the hobby seems to occur in waves.
Every few years there is a bunch of new players who have discovered
the game and enjoy playing each other, and then a few years later a bunch of
players disappear to family obligations, or just simply reach a point where
they feel like they are getting nothing new from the game.
I have reached a point where certain kinds of games seem very
repetitive to me. When I’m
playing a game with a certain group of players who are opening in ways that
I’ve seen dozens of times before, I can feel fairly certain I know how the
next five years of the game will develop.
And if I see a great disparity in the respective skill levels of the
players I think will be around after those five years, then I could even
prognosticate further in advance.
I remember one game where I told everybody in earshot in 1902 that
Edi Birsan was probably going to solo a certain game.
Several hours later, he did exactly that.
(Or rather, since it was Edi, he simply pointed out to the other
players that he was going to solo and convinced them to save time and
concede the game to him.)
What interests me
at this point? Games where each
player is trying to win, at least at the start, and people do not get bogged
down either in alliances or in stalemate lines.
Alliances are intended to be temporary measures to advance each
individual player towards the goal of a solo victory.
Of course, tournament play can be a completely different animal,
especially when the round is due to end after a certain number of game
years.
There were a lot
of good games at WDC, and for the most part the players I met were trying to
do as well as possible. I think
that six rounds is a bit too much Diplomacy for me, and hope that future
cons will ease away from the recent trend of offering as many rounds as
that. (Either that, or they will
find a way to ensure players are not penalized for missing a round or two –
but this would be a bit of a trick.)
In terms of future cons, I am excited at the prospect of seeing
Bangor, Maine, host DipCon in 2008, and hope I will be able to attend WDC in
Vienna in 2008.