Still Representing the Home Team

Song of the Day: “Wisemen” by James Blunt

For the past four years, the illustrious Nathan Barnes has invited me to come out to his tournament WACon. Held in Seattle on the third weekend every January, I have been told repeatedly by trusted sources that this tournament is one not to miss. Unfortunately for me, this particular weekend is also always been the first weekend of the spring semester. Therefore I have never made it out there, but I have told Nathan every time that I will make it out eventually.

This year, the Nathan and his fellow directors decided to scale back on the tournament. Thus I did not receive an invitation. The crew there were not actively lobbying people to show up because they wanted a smaller tournament so they could save up money for the coming years. Because I did not receive an invitation, naturally I completely forgot about it. That was until about two weeks ago when Jim O’Kelley, one of my favorite drinking buddies and partners in crime, sent me a text message saying that he just booked a flight to WACon and that I should try to make it out. The reason? We would be playing in a bar.

So of course I had to go. The opportunity to see all of my friends in the hobby, get to play Diplomacy, and having to never actually travel anywhere to get alcohol is just too tempting for me. Carnage on the Lake is one of my favorite tournaments. Why? Because we play in a bar. Another deciding factor for me finally making the trip out is because I don’t have class on Thursdays or Fridays, so I could easily fly out Thursday afternoon and be fresh for Friday night’s round.

So Eric Mead picks me up from the airport, and we go straight to a bar. Unfortunately, the people we were meeting there had already left, so we had to go back across town to a different bar. Flying across the country with a lay over in between can make a guy a little antsy. Considering the fact that I had been primed and ready to drink my face off and play some games for the week, I was in dire need of just that. So Eric and I had a “practice” drink before heading to meet up with everyone else. The practice drink is definitely something I will be employing in the future, it’s priceless.

Needless to say everyone got very drunk and we had a great time. John Saul and I were crashing in Andy Bartalone’s hotel room that first night, and he ended up getting tanked and heading back early. So John and I arrive to his room later that night to a most peculiar sight. It appeared that Andy had gotten into a fight with a bag of Chex Mix and a bag of popcorn, and lost. It was quite funny except for the fact that I was sleeping on the floor that night; not so funny.

Instead of boring you with the details, I will summarize by saying that I had an awesome time at the tournament. I’m sure if you’re reading this, you know me well enough to know that I don’t really travel to tournaments for the Diplomacy. The game is just a bonus. I travel to these tournaments to see all the friends I’ve made over the years traveling. Really I wouldn’t get to see these people if I didn’t travel to the tournaments, and I always have a blast hanging out with them.

So the Friday night round the game went late (about 2:30 AM I believe) and, of course, I was drinking the entire time. So towards the mid to late game, I was pretty tanked and ended up screwing my position pretty badly. I was still 3rd place on the board besides my bad play, but I most assuredly would have had a better score if I had not been so drunk. Saturday morning’s round is really fuzzy to me for some reason. I placed second on the board, not too shabby but definitely room for improvement.

The Saturday night round was absolutely brutal. I was placed on a board with Andy Bartalone, Andrew Neumann, Jake Mannix, Eric Mead, and Jim O’Kelley. With this collection of some of the best players in the hobby, this board was easily the most stacked of the tournament. Amazingly enough, I topped the board. I was in Germany with Mead as France and someone at his first tournament in England. I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that the Eastern powers were not able to consolidate fast enough for someone in the West to jump to the lead. That person just happened to be me. I feel like I played a pretty damn good game, but considering the caliber of players arrayed against me, I’ll chalk most of it up to luck.

After the third round, it turned out that I was in third place in the tournament. But I was scheduled to fly out Sunday at 10 AM. If I left I would have no chance of winning the tournament (the winner of the top board wins the tournament, regardless of score). Therefore at 2 Am (quite drunk at this point, shocking I know) I called up Southwest and had them change my flight to Monday for no charge, sweet! So I got to play in the last round on Sunday and I failed to top the board. I did manage to come in second the board, which netted me these two babies:

So despite the fact that I was drunk for three of the four rounds in the tournament (and hung over in the fourth), I managed to bring home some hardware. Go me! Though I did find it a bit irksome that I was just squeaked out of third place by Brian Shelden. Shelden was on my first board, and my poor play caused him to gain a few more points after the game should have ended. If I had not foolishly decided to keep playing, I could be third. Damn you Brian Shelden! On top of that, I was just barely beaten for Best Germany by Andrew Neumann, the tournament winner. We both had 12 centers as Germany on top of the board, but the differential between him and the next highest player was greater than mine, so he got a tiny bit higher score.

Oh well, I really shouldn’t complain, and I’m not. I got to bring home two pieces of hardware and I think that’s pretty sweet. I’ve already ran out of places to put my trophies on my wall, so I have to expand to new real estate to make it all fit.

So why am I still representing the home team? Well, back in the early days of my Diplomacy career my father, my brother, and I would travel to a lot of tournaments together. This was when my brother and I were still in high school, so we had the flexibility in our schedules to be able to travel a lot. So whenever we would go to a tournament with a team round, we would be Team Woodring. We only won one team tournament (solely because of my brother), but it was still a fun addition to all of us getting to travel together. But these days, I’m the only one traveling to the majority of tournaments. My brother is off in Turkey and my father tries to accompany me, but work often gets in the way.

So it’s just me, representing Team Woodring; the home team. Considering my current string of tournament placements, I think I’m doing an OK job. I would much prefer to have my family with me, but I guess that’s just going to keep getting more and more difficult. So I guess I’ll just have to keep playing and get better so I can do right by my family name. A funny story actually, the World Diplomacy Championship was held in Vancouver, BC this past year. The only reason I decided to travel there was because my brother was home from Turkey and was going, and my father was going because he was. So instead of attending a nation-wide event through my fraternity, I decided to travel to Canada with my family. Well, both my brother and father ended up bailing on me for various reasons. So the only reason I had for going failed me, bummer. I don’t hold that against them though, it was just a little irksome, but that’s OK. I didn’t place well (barely made top 50% I think) but there are a bunch of great stories that came out of that tournament. Just read Jim O’Kelley’s account of the weekend in Diplomacy World #99, great stuff.

In conclusion, I’d like to reflect on the irony that the first time I wasn’t invited to WACon, I showed up. On top of that, I brought home some trophies, some very cool trophies. All in all, a great weekend.

Back in Action

Song of the Day: “Better Together” by Jack Johnson

That’s right people, I’m back. It’s been quite a month and a lot of stuff has happened, far too much to confine to one posting. Even if I did want to do that, it would take far too long and I would probably lose interest a quarter of the way through. That being said, over the next week I will be posting pieces of my break in chronological order (as best as I can remember). I would start this week, but tomorrow I am leaving for Seattle until Sunday. So come Monday expect to see the first excerpt from my month-long vacation.

Even now I am thinking back on all the stuff that is happened, and wow. It’s going to take a while. Well, at least I hope it will. It might turn out to be really boring and I’ll leave off writing about it. But I doubt that. This whole blogging thing has become one more therapeutic activity in my life. Though at the moment there really isn’t much stressful going on, I should make a conscious effort to maintain the things that help me through the hard times, right?

Anyway, look forward to Monday’s update. For now, check out the link below where I posted my pictures from my 10 day trip in Turkey.

Turkey ‘08

The Reigning Champion

Song of the Day: “Overkill” by Colin Hay

“I can’t get to sleep, I think about the implications.

I’m diving in too deep, and possibly the complications.

Especially at night, I worry over situations that I know will be all right.

It’s just overkill.”

I listen to music a lot. In pretty much anything I do that requires concentration, I like to have music playing in the background. Right now as I type this, I have music playing. I’ve found that music influences and inspires me in specific ways. And therefore, I’m going to begin every one of my posts with a “Song of the Day” to bring to your attention the current song that has struck a chord in me somewhere, or a song that I am just really enjoying. Hopefully you, the reader, will investigate the songs I write about and experience some emotion from it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want you to feel how I feel or try to be in my shoes or any crap like that. It’s just that I feel something strong when I hear these particular songs, and I want you to feel something too. I want you to experience the emotions that each song evokes and perhaps even get a picture of where I am at emotionally and mentally. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an optimist or an idiot (maybe the same thing?), I don’t think that just by listening to the same song as I am listening to will put you in my shoes. But maybe you can get an idea of where I’m coming from.

The excerpt from “Overkill” that I transcribed does not give a perfect picture of what the song is about, but I enjoy it a lot. But when I think about it, I can’t help thinking that it’s not what specifically the artist wanted to portray in his or her music, it’s about what the music means to you. It’s about the message or the emotions that you extract from a song; that’s what is important. To me this song is about being alone. One stanza begins with “alone between the sheets, only brings exasperation”. Mr. Hay creates a juxtaposition between the unfortunate truth of being alone in the world and the fact that obsessively worrying about it is pointless and just makes it worse, hence overkill. As he says, “day after day, reappears. Night after night my heart shows the fear.” At the end of the day, when you are lying in bed, you can’t help thinking about what is wrong with your life. But the morning always comes and that’s a fresh start.

I feel emotionally tied to this song, maybe because I can’t help thinking recently that I am alone, and that sucks. Sure I have my family and friends, but I don’t have anyone to share my life with and I don’t really know anyone I can spend time with on a regular basis here in Philadelphia. I guess I am just feeling lonely. Maybe the the pressure and stress are just continuing to build (due to my midterm on Thursday) and I’m subconsciously diverting it to other areas of my life that are not so much in the “sunshine and pretty flowers” category.

So this past weekend I went up to Vermont for the annual Diplomacy tournament, Carnage on the Mountain. In case you can’t guess from the headline, I won for the second year in a row. I felt like in the first and second rounds I played great as I was the leader on both boards. My third game I played poorly, but the combination of all three rounds gave me enough points to be the winner. I am ecstatic about winning again, let alone winning any other tournament. I guess now I might have to consider stop denying the fact that I’m actually an above average player.

All my life I’ve dealt with low self-esteem. Until recently, I’ve never taken compliments well. I’ve always instinctively, and maybe subconsciously, tried to distance myself from people that show an interest in me. I’ve always found that the path of self-deprecation is just the easier route. I like to think of myself as just not being a braggart. But I don’t think that is the case. I certainly have the ability to gloat and boast about something, and put myself on a pedestal. I enjoy the act of self-aggrandizement because it just seems silly to me, the irony being that one who puts little value on himself usually does not present the image of being self-absorbed.

Anyway, Carnage was a great time. As always the best part of traveling to tournaments is getting to see my friends that I only see on these occasions. I think that is the main reason behind my drive to travel to tournaments, I get to hang out with my friends. This tournament is hosted in my favorite venue of any tournament I have ever been too. Why is this? Because we played Diplomacy in a bar. The bar is literally 10 feet away when we are playing. Needless to say, I got drunk. Friday night was an absolute blast. I dominated my board (I think, it’s still a little fuzzy), I got drunk, and we had great after hours drinking in the hotel room. A couple bottles of wine, good friends, and raucous conversations was probably the highlight of the weekend for me. That is, of course, besides winning the tournament. Below is a picture of me with the awards I won. In my right hand is the plaque for winning the tournament last year (don’t ask me why the present it the next year) and in my left is the Best Austria and Best Turkey awards I won. Behind me is the big board that was presented to me as a result of winning the tournament. Pretty sweet, right? That will definitely be a fantastic addition to HuskyCon VI next year. That board will look great on the dinning room table at home.

So I sliced off a sizable chunk of my index finger cutting off a piece of lemon for my very tall glass of vodka and it’s starting to hurt to type. So I’m signing off. Sorry about the lapse in posts it’s just that things have been a little hectic here. My midterm will be on Thursday and then it’s smooth sailing. Therefore I should be back with my posting schedule so look forward to another entry this Friday.