The 2020 Stone Age PBEM tournament saw 65 participants play a total of 96 games. Likely fueled by COVID-19 induced lockdowns, this event had the highest turnout of any recent eurogame PBEM. Thank you to all who participated.
In the first round, all players completed four simultaneous games, with 24 players advancing to the semifinal. Three players earned a perfect record with four wins: Haakon Monsen, Eric Freeman, and Scott Saccenti. An additional four players each earned three wins: Sam Wolff, Antony Saccenti, Andrew Martin, and Andrew Emerick.
During the semifinal, 24 games were played to determine the seven finalists. DJ Borton and Chad Martin led the field with three wins apiece, while Dominic Blais, Andrew Emerick, and Antony Saccenti each earned two wins. They were joined in the final by Andrew Martin and Haakon Monsen, with Eric Freeman just missing out on a very close tiebreaker margin.
In the final round, the finalists played seven games to determine a champion. Andrew Emerick completed a nearly perfect final round with three wins and one second-place finish to earn the top spot in convincing fashion. The top 6 finishers were:
- Andrew Emerick
- Chad Martin
- Dominic Blais
- Haakon Monsen
- Andrew Martin
- Antony Saccenti
Over all three rounds of the tournament, Eric Freeman had the highest winning score with 239 while Chris Wildes had the lowest winning score at 95. Goran Kero had the highest non-winning score at 205. In the closest game of the tournament, Grant LaDue defeated Michael Swinson on the 2nd tiebreaker (most leftover food).
Throughout the tournament statistics were kept related to turn order at the start of the game. Seat 1 resulted in the most wins (26) followed by Seats 2 & 3 (24 each), while Seat 4 produced the fewest wins (22). Seats 1-3 each had an average finish of ~2.4, while Seat 4 had an average finish of 2.7. Lastly Seat 4 also produced a lower mean score than Seats 1-3, averaging 142 points vs 146-148 points for the others. While these are not large margins, they would seem to corroborate the idea that Seat 4 is a more difficult starting position.
Once again congratulations to Andrew Emerick and to all of the laurelists, and thank you to everyone who participated in the event.
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