Preeliminations / The Finals
The Catan World Championships are presented by: 
  The preelimations began with over an hour of waiting for the participants, because of a serious traffic jam of the main motorway into Essen. Over 60 percent of the participants were stuck in it. So all of the tournament was behind the timetable for the whole day.

But we were very fast on that day and we were able to leave the hall only a little bit lat (about 15 mins) at the end of an exciting day.

As well as we waited for some participants that were late, we waited for participants that didin't show up at all. Therefore we had to determine some players that were lucky and slipped into the tournament.
After some time it was clear we wouldn't have any participants from Portugal, Romania and Scotland (because the scottish player was actually from Northern - Ireland). Russia was only participanting with one player instead of two.
The players that luckily were able to participate were from Georgia, U.S.A., Netherlands and Germany.

The preelimination was very exciting due to the rule that 16 players moved on to the semifinals, so nearly of the players had a chance to qualify for Sunday even after 3 games played.
The World Champion Jacques Kieft from Ireland wasn't able to qualify for the semifinals, but the vice-champion of 2002 Michel Hirschfeld did.
Remarkable is the fact, that in game three these two players competed against each other but none of them won. The both were beaten by the very stron playing japanes player Yoshinori Takagi, who was the second best players on day 1. Only Lasse Rintakumpu from Finland was better then him, winning 3 games and finishing one with 9 VPs!

At about 07.00 p.m. the very exciting first day of the World Championships was coming to an end with the announcement of the best 16 players who were qualified for Sunday.
 
 

Rank Name Country WG VP Quot.
1 Lasse Rintakumpu Finland 3 39 127,50
2 Yoshinori Takagi Japan 3 38 114,66
3 Antonio Valerio Italy 2 35 122,67
4 Markus Welbourne England 2 35 119,90
5 Tino Hertzsch Switzerland 2 34 109,31
6 Katerina Duskova Czech Rep. 2 34 105,54
7 Michel Hirschfeld Germany 2 34 104,59
8 Angelina Wenger-Brügger Switzerland 2 32 114,55
9 Robert Tetrault Canada 2 31 103,43
10 David Ferreira Spain 2 29 101,78
11 Tanya Fox England 1 36 113,17
12 Fumiki Watanabe Japan 1 35 111,11
13 Gunnar Johannsson Iceland 1 33 112,45
14 Samuel Fuentes Spain 1 33 111,08
15 Michiel Goethals Belgium 1 33 105,71
16 Peter Gergely Hungary 1 33 101,65
17 Andrew Tobolski USA 1 33 100,47
18 Johan Osbjer Sweden 1 32 109,48
19 Jürgen Hoffmann Germany 1 32 106,39
20 Claudia De Koning Belgium 1 32 104,31
21 Carole Menut France 1 31 103,64
22 Robb Effinger Canada 1 31 101,92
23 Markley Ligon USA 1 31 98,83
24 Aurelien Delambre France 1 31 98,38
25 Kin Yip Kan China 1 31 98,20
26 Anastasia Vinogradova Russia 1 31 97,74
27 Jaqcues Kieft Ireland 1 31 94,90
28 Gerald Spah Austria 1 30 101,72
29 Uros Petrovic Slovenia 1 30 95,86
30 Ladislav Smeijkal Czech Rep. 1 29 105,28
31 Baldur Mar Jonsson Iceland 1 28 100,84
32 Finco Steffelaar Netherlands 1 27 87,88
33 Tamara Bunjes Georgia 1 27 85,15
34 Colin McKenna N-Ireland 1 25 91,89
35 Lee Jae Hyuck Rep. Corea 1 25 86,90
36 Olle Hansson Sweden 1 25 85,87
37 Gabor Dybisewszky Hungary 0 32 104,20
38 Herman Mentink Netherlands 0 31 91,54
39 Thomas Sander Germany 0 30 104,67
40 Casper Hyong Netherlands 0 29 96,65
41 Wilfried Meinecke Germany 0 28 97,51
42 Kim Kyoungae Rep. Corea 0 28 93,47
43 Klaus Karki Finland 0 26 87,67
44 Robert Hofstätter Österreich 0 23 81,60
45 Primoz Meh Slovenien 0 23 81,13
46 Joanne Crofton Ireland 0 21 76,20
47 Heidi Tobolski USA 0 21 74,07
48 Andrea Bonoli Italy 0 20 76,55
 
The Finals
  The finals began with the semifinals on Sunday in the morning. It were very tough games, with several surprises.

One of them was Fumiki Watanabe from Japan, who won his semifinal game with his tactic, that depended a lot on development cards. His win was surprising, because for me Tino Hertzsch looked like the winner most certainly. Quite similar surprsing was the victory of Smauel Fuentes were I thought Katerina Duskova would win this game.
Not that surprising was the win of Lasse Rintakumpu, was had a tough fight with Robert Tetrault at his table. Robert made 9 VPs and would have won the game in his next turn.
The victory of Michel Hirschfeld wasn't surprisding me at all. Well known as a good player in Germany, I thought he could beat Yoshinori Takagi, who won against Michel Hirschfeld in game 3 in the preeliminaries, but Yoshinori Takagi wasn't able to repeat his excellent performance of day 1.

After about one and a half hour the four players for the final game were determined. All of those excellent players:
Lasse Rinatakumpu from Finland,
Michel Hirschfeld from Germany,
Samuel Fuentes from Spain,
Fumiki Watanabe from Japan.

The final game was very exciting. At the beginning Fumiki Watanabe from Japan took the lead. This was the reason why all the other players began to play against him, and in end the reason he wasn't able to win this game. After that Samuel Fuentes looked like the winner. He had a very good position on the board, where nobody could really block him spreading his fiefs. But Michel Hirschfeld was able to perfom some very good turns (where even he has to admit that the dice fell in his favor!) and consequently win the finals.

So in the end he surprised everybody with his final turns and became (after being Vice-Champion in 2002) the World Champion 2003.

The final results of the World Championships 2003:
 

Rank Name Country
1 Michel Hirschfeld Germany
2 Samuel Fuentes Spain
3 Lasse Rintakumpu Finland
4 Fumiki Watanbe Japan
5 Tinon Hertzsch Switzerland
6 Robert Tetrault Canada
7 David Ferreira Spain
8 Tanya Fox England
9 Yoshinori Takagi Japan
10 Markus Welbourne England
11 Katerina Duskova Czech Rep.
12 Peter Gergely Hungary
13 Antonio Valerio Italy
14 Angelina Wenger-Brügger Switzerland
15 Gunnar Johannsson Iceland
16 Michiel Goethals Belgium
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