Windy City Weasels

I'm posting this at the request of Chris Martin, the 1998 world champion and our first Alpha Weasel.

Jim

Chris Martin here, with some exciting news for the North American Diplomacy hobby!

Over MLK weekend some of the best diplomats in North America will meet in Austin, Texas, to compete in an invitation-only Diplomacy event. To date, 67 diplomats have qualified for the 2011 Masters by finishing in the top seven results at an NADF Grand-Prix event in 2009 or 2010.

Currently, I am working with Brian Shelden, Conrad Woodring, and Jeremiah Peterson to make this a premier Diplomacy event. Part of organizing a great event is assembling fabulous talent to get the behind-the-scenes details right,and with this crew, I feel certain that the 2011 Master's Tournament will be an event to remember.

You may ask why I have am hosting an event that is not open to the general public -- a fair question. Over the years that I have been in the hobby, I have often heard (and occasionally voiced) a desire for an event that guaranteed that every participant understood, at the very minimum, the mechanics of the game, and ideally really knew what they were doing on the board. This discussion usually peaks around the times of Dip-con/World Dip-con, and during a recent online discussion of the relative merits of the title, I announced my intention to host an event where everyone involved would know, going in, that the competition would be among those who had proven themselves able to play the game. The North American Diplomacy Federation Master's Tournament is the result.

There is still time left to qualify!  7 people each will qualify at Massacre, Husky, Conquest, WeaselMoot, Buckeye Game Fest and Tempest -- will you be one of them?  I hope you will!

If you have any questions, please drop me a line at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Stab you soon,

Chris Martin

May was a great month for the Weasels. We played three house games and capped it off with outstanding tournament performances on both coasts by Peter Yeargin (second place at Dixie) and Adam Berey (first place at KublaCon).

June also promises to be an active month. We'll start things off with our 100th game celebration at Guthrie's Tavern on June 10. We're hoping for three boards. Check out the Current Games Signup List or the Meetup event and sign up.

On June 12, Sam Bassett will host another house game. That one is full, but we can always use standbys.

The rest of the month will be quiet for the Weasels, but there are two Grand Prix-eligible tournaments the weekend of June 26. I've heard Greg Duenow, Don Glass and Sam Bassett all mention the possibility of attending Origins, which will be June 24 to 26 in Columbus, Ohio.

The Boston Massacre will be June 26 to 27. Who wants to represent the Weasels? New England sent three players to Weasel Moot.

Now that I've put that song in your head, here's a quick Grand Prix update. On the strength of his DixieCon performance, Peter Yeargin has surged into third place in the Grand Prix, within striking distance of Adam Sigal. Steve Cooley is in second, but neither one of them is planning to attend HuskyCon in July, which likely will be the circuit's largest event this year.

Here's a look at the top 25 through DixieCon, the circuit's fourth leg. The list contains several Weasels. A total of 89 players have participated so far.

DipCon 2011 Voting
 
Bids are in for the 2011 DipCon, and it's time to make your voice heard. To make things easy, just email your vote to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . You have until June 13 2359ET to cast your vote. The only qualified bid is Carnage XIV [http://dipcon2011.nedip.org/]. Your voting options are:

1) Carnage XIV
2) Reject bids and start over
3) Present (abstain)
 
Eligible voters are all Diplomacy players who attended two (2) Grand Prix events in the 12 months ending at the 2010 DipCon. The qualifying events are:
 
2009 CODCon Open
2009 Whipping
2009 DixieCon
2009 Boston Massacre
2009 Origins
2009 HuskyCon
2009 Weasel Moot
2009 Tempest
2009 Carnage
2010 TempleCon
2010 CODCon Open
2010 Whipping
 
If you attended any two (2) of these events, then your vote for DipCon 2011 counts. Please note in your vote which events you have attended.
 
DipCon Committee notes on Carnage: Carnage is a long-running and stable tournament site, with a good history and no issues with rule-sets or tournament structure.  It is also part of a larger gaming tournament.  The only area of concern to the Committee is that the event site is a hotel that commonly sells out well in advance of the event, and alternate hotels can be a significant distance away. To address this concern, the Carnage Diplomacy staff assures us that there are generally enough cancellations to allow late booking, and that they have a number of other strategies for guaranteeing space for travelers, including extra reserved rooms and/or a rental house within walking distance of the site.
 
Thank You,
DipCon Committee
 

What do the four most recent Grand Prix champions -- Adam Sigal, Thomas Haver, Doug Moore and Jim O'Kelley -- have in common? No, it's not their roguish good looks, their lush heads of hair, or even that they like to talk about themselves in the third person. Those four also happen to be the four most recent DixieCon champions.

This weekend, DixieCon will once again be a key Grand Prix battleground as hopefuls from the East Coast and the Midwest descend on Chapel Hill for the fourth leg of the circuit. Steve Cooley (third place, 153.84 points) of New England is the only one of the current top five expected to play at Dixie, but Chicago's Peter Yeargin (ninth place, 77.56 points) and North Carolina's Tom Kobrin (10th place, 76.53 points) will also be there. Former Grand Prix champions O'Kelley, Moore, Chris Martin and Andy "Buffalo" Bartalone have also signed on, as have perennial contenders Dave Maletsky and Graham Woodring. Throw in Rick Desper, one of four former North American champions expected to play (along with Kobrin, Martin and Moore), and it should be a hard-fought tournament.

The players are again chasing New York's Adam Sigal, who leads the Grand Prix with 199.6 points. DipCon champion Eric Mead of Seattle is second with 160 points; Chris Brand of Vancouver, fourth at 144; and Don Williams of California, fifth at 104.98.

Four weeks after Dixie, the competition will pick up again with Origins in Columbus, Ohio, (June 24 to 26) and the Boston Massacre in Cambridge, Massachusetts (June 26 to 27). Then it's on to HuskyCon in Long Island, July 8 to 10. Husky long has been one of the hobby's favorite tournaments, but in recent years, it also has become one of the circuit's largest Grand Prix purses.

But no tournament has been more significant than Dixie. Hope to see you there.

Jim O'Kelley, Administrator
2010 NADF Grand Prix