16th International Icehouse Tournament (2005)

Struck scores are scores that did not count. Highlighted cells indicate winning scores.
Ice-Off Games Finals Awards
Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4 Round 5 Rating Games Rating
Last First 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Sum Wins Rating 1 2 3 Sum Wins Rating
A Drobina Josh 25 24 22 21 92 2 276 22 4 26 0 26 Finalist
B Mike Kreuter 24 16 21 17 78 0 78
C Forbes Craig 20 21 19 24 24 88 0.5 132
D P Orbis 17 14 17 ice 24 55 0 55
E Welton Jesse ice 22 ice 26 48 1 96 CTI
F Evans Eeyore 25 23 19 21 22 85 2.5 297.5 20 19 39 0 39 Finalist
G Davenport Jacob 25 30 18 30 25 103 3 412 24 25 49 2 147 Champion
H McGuire Ryan 19 23 23 21 22 89 0.5 133.5
I Cieslik Chris 25 24 14 24 87 2 261 14 23 37 0 37 Finalist
J Looney Andy 18 27 18 24 21 90 0.5 135
K Seiger Tim 20 26 19 13 19 77 0 77
L John Taylor 24 22 26 14 23 85 1 170
M Julian Lighton 19 24 ice 2 45 1 90

Comments from Eeyore

This year's tournament had its ups and downs. We talked our clerk from the last few years into competing to even out the rotation, but then one player arrived late due to a misprinted schedule. We almost had one or two extra judges to cover all the tables, but then two couldn't make it to Origins. A few new players showed up to play, but a few previous competitors dropped out.

Andrew "Zarf" Plotkin and reigning champion Eric Zuckerman were our referees. John Cooper couldn't make it to Origins this year, but these two are probably the next most experienced referees we could have, so I knew we were going to be in good hands. Thanks to Zarf and Eric!

As I mentioned earlier, our erstwhile clerk Craig Forbes jumped into the tournament this year, so Emily Frawley stepped up to do data entry on the tournament spreadsheet and other record keeping stuff. This made the tournament run much faster and more smoothly than it would have otherwise. Thanks Emily!

Craig jumped in because we were trying to even out the schedule to 12 players, which would have meant four rounds in the Ice-Offs. This was a good plan, but a misprinted schedule caused one player to show up an hour late. It was simple to switch to the 13 player schedule, but it meant an extra round, and a bunch of dropped scores from the first round.

Of the 13 players, four were competing for the first time. Craig and Josh Drobina have been around the lab for some time, but this was their first time competing for the scepter. Orbis and Mike Kreuter had shown up for the Icehouse demo earlier in the day. Both had some previous experience with the rules and game, so were not strictly newbies, but neither had any idea how brutal the tournament can be.

Another note concerning Orbis is that he made the IIT actually International this year, as he is Canadian. Yay! Before that, we had to count the People's Republic of Berkeley.

Another demographic note is that this is the first time since 2001 that we didn't have any female competitors. I'm hoping that there's no connection between that fact and the fact that 2001 was also the last time I made it into the finals.

I feel so totally great to have made it into the finals. I don't usually get to go home from Origins with any medallions at all, so this was a big deal for me. Jake won the tournament, but that's not news. =^> Josh played pretty hard, and I hope he's proud of his performance. Chris Cieslik, however, I hope you're ashamed! You! Ashamed!

For those who were not there, we only played two games in the finals. This is because Jake won the first two games with good scores, so there was no way anybody could catch up just winning the last game. The second game ended with one of my 3-pointers on Chris' stash pad as a prisoner. I all but begged Chris to play it in some way, but he let the timer expire with it unplayed. If Chris had played that 3-pointer icing one of Jake's pyramids, I would have won, and Chris could maybe have won the third game and the tournament.

I wish I'd thought of that during the game instead of five days later, because he maybe would have fallengone for it. I'm not really angry, since it meant the end of the tournament for Chris also. You can spend years "what if"ing the IIT and it doesn't do any real good.

Anyway, everybody in the tournament was raving about how much fun all of the games were, so hats off to Jacob for trouncing us all with such élan and style that we keep coming back for more! This was Jacob's fourth tournament win, making him the winningest ever. He's won one quarter of the tournaments!