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April 01, 2009
Knockabout Tournament
Close to exactly 3 years ago, Tom Vasel wrote a negative review of one of my favorite two-player games, Greg Lam's Knockabout. Tom basically claimed the game was all luck, a not that surprising (albeit not accurate) claim of an abstract game that involves rolling dice much of the time. I strongly disagreed with him.
Well, recently David Dyer implemented an online version of Knockabout at www.boardspace.net and decided to run a tournament of the game. The tournament was 16 players in a single elimination format but playing best of 5, 5, 7 and 9 games in the four rounds to even out the luck elements there are in the game. Well, the tournament ended last night and I won with an overall record of 16 wins and 4 losses (played 1 extra fun game with one opponent which is why it is 16 and not 15), and that against some quite good opponents. Now, I think this 80% win rate was definitely lucky and all and wouldn't have expected to do nearly that well but still, I really do think this tournament pretty much proves my point in regard to the disagreement above.
Thanks to Greg Lam for designing the game (and providing prizes for the tournament), David Dyer for implementing it and running the tournament, and Doug Orleans for pointing out the tournament to me. Also, of course thanks to all my opponents for some very fun plays of this great game.
Crossposted to my blog and to BoardGameGeek.
Posted by aarondf at April 1, 2009 10:49 AM
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