WTCOC Curiosities by JinaJina, szigfrid, manarori, and Mingo
Curiosities Week 5
- Week 5 is the last week of the Group phase, with 201 exciting games (85 duels) deciding which teams get to participate in the WTCOC Playoffst.
- Of the 85 duels played:
- 54 duels had 2 games (108 games total)
- 31 duels had 3 games (93 games total)
- Once again the 2-game duels dominate! Was this also true during the first three weeks of the group phase? We’ll let you know in the “Curiosities of the Group Stage” to be released by the end of the tournament!.
- Three games ended in a draw, and two of them were in the match between Lithuania and Poland…but Poland won both because the starting player was from the Lithuanian team. Poland seems to be a specialist in winning tied games, with a total of 4 such victories during the group stage.
- Lambe (Ita) vs. ohlookcake (UK)
- KurKestutis (Ltu) vs. TerranPL (Pol)
- Kreukle (Ltu) vs. pricci (Pol)
- One game was lost due to time this week…by only one second! Six other players cut it really close…each of them ending a turn with less than 5 seconds remaining on the clock.
- Unfortunately, 10 games were “no-shows” this week. It was the second time this year that LaHache (Fra) won a duel because of his opponent’s absence.
- G0dfriedvanBouillon (Ned) earned this week’s highest game score of 137 points…also contributing to the highest combined score with pavelbrin (Ukr) (137+127=264 points) with pavelbrin missing the highest losing score of the group stage by only one point.
- Ukraine’s Smile- obtained this week’s lowest winning score of 72 points
- This week’s lowest combined score was 134, which is the highest lowest combined score so far this year. (no, that isn’t a typo! 😄)
- 4 teams finished the group stage undefeated: China, Czechia, RCP and Taiwan. Only one team can potentially prolong their streak to the end of the championship, but can one of them do it? If yes, then it will be an unprecedented achievement, as no team has ever won a WTCOC without losing a match.
- 5 players managed to win all 5 of their duels in the group stage: Alexey_LV (Lat), Claudio Jorquera (Chi), HotlyHotly (Twn), Loku_Elo (Esp) and Pechitoz (Col). (Apologies to Pechitoz for not including him in the relevant stats of week 4…) But only Alexey has the flawless record of winning all duels by 2:0.
- There are 3 teams who qualified for the playoff stage for the first time in their history. These are Colombia, Hungary and Tutejšyja. The Japanese and RCP players continue their habit of not missing the WTCOC playoffs.
Feature Weekly Records:
- RamboPang43200 and felzera jointly scored a 14 point road at table #514470650 on turn 122
- migcrack and snow_island jointly scored a 46 point city at table #514076802 on turn 77
- Samuelsson and Zwollywood jointly scored a 33 point field at table #513361978
- radohu_ did not have to share (obviously) the 41 monastery points he scored at table #512982934 (2 complete and 3 incomplete monasteries)
Did You Know…?
- This is a popular season for National Championships, and most of them have been won by WTCOC players. Most recently, AnnenMay (RCP) won the German Championship on May 11th.
- This is the list of WTCOC players who have qualified for the 2024 Carcassonne World Championship (that we know of), but their number is growing week by week:
- statmatt (UK) – 2023 Champion
- krisna (Lat) – MSO winner
- Mikhail-rus (RCP)
- balala fairy (Chn)
- sakurakim (Twn)
- AnnenMay (RCP) – Germany
- martypartyouje (Cze)
- N2xU (Bel)
- GiulioTm (Ita)
- KurKestutis (Ltu)
- JohnNoordwijk (Ned)
- Esedzus (Lat)
- Don’t forget that one player from each of the top 3 teams in this year’s WTCOC will be awarded a wildcard spot in the individual Carcassonne World Championship.
- Rumor has it that Tutejsyja and Ukraine both won all of their group-phase matches that Someone_you_know streamed this year… and lost all the matches that he didn’t stream!
Fun Facts:
- A Malaysian team member mentioned that they’ve only had two female players in the WTCOC: ainunimu in 2022, and KatherynGen this year (2024), but that they both won the only WTCOC duels they played.
- This gave Mingo the idea to identify and celebrate this year’s female WTCOC players, and she found more than she expected! Teams Croatia and Greece stand out with 4 and 3 female teammates, respectively. Here are all of the other female players that Mingo is aware of, listed by team:
- The code that BGA uses to create game replays contains primarily english words…with one notable exception: Farmer points at the end of the game are called “Field” points, but using the language settings of each player. Therefore, while looking for interesting game statistics, we’ve also learned the words for “field” in 15 different languages! Can you identify all the following languages?
- The BGA player ID numbers offer some insight about how long some of us have been playing on BGA. Here’s a list of the top ten WTCOC 2024 players in order of seniority on BGA. Sorry Kaa-, maybe you shouldn’t have deleted your quaresma account. 😉 How did you all hear about BGA so early?!?!
A Clock Curiosity…
- We found a small curiosity in the week 5 game lost due to time (table #514172649), and posij118 (Cze) kindly gave us permission to publish the following curiosity because it might help players understand the WTCOC clock rules and how the BGA Clock works in general.
- posij118 realized that he exceeded the allowed time when he saw -0:01 seconds of time remaining after move #131 (shown in red after the turn ended). Posij118 then conceded the game during his next turn, as specified by the WTCOC rules.
- However, (and this is the clock curiosity) according to the WTCOC rules, posij118 had already run out of time on move #108 when his clock showed 0:00 seconds remaining after the turn was completed, but neither player noticed! This is understandable, because the 0:00 seconds time remaining was shown in green, not red like negative time remaining, but this still triggers a BGA time penalty that is visible as a red clock at the end of the game.
- So…. Don’t forget that the clock you see counting down time during someone’s turn is not perfectly in sync with the BGA server clock, and that you win/lose based on your time remaining according to the server clock… so please make sure you understand the rules and try to not cut it close!! ⏱