Saturday, 10/23/2004:

As in the last two years the Catan World Championship started on saturday with the preelimination rounds. Again there were 48 players from 24 nations competing for the title of World Champion. I was very pleased by the fact, that nearly all players really appeared, for a lot of them had to cover their travel expenses on their own. We only needed two replacement players this year and we managed to get a player from Romania and another from Taiwan.

With an almost tradtional late start finally round one began. One table had to wait even longer, becuase one of the Italian players' train was late and he arrived more than three hours later than he had planned.

When finally all participants were playing their first game the look of the tournament area was great - which was caused by the Catan World Championship 2004 T-Shirts we gave out to participants to wear during the tournament.
 

All of the games were played in a very friendly atmossphere and the participants enjoyed to play against so many players from different countries.
This positive atmossphere even could be seen when Katsumi Takahashi from Japan was giving away a japanese fan to every player he competed against.
At the end of the first day the resukt were partly surprising, partly what I had expected.

I was very pleased by the progress players from France, Hungary and the Czech Republic made (where I expected this progress from the czech players - the potential was already visible in the last year - but France and Hungary really surprised me).
Not to be forgotten was a whole group of four players from scandinavian countries (Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway) that reached the semifinals.

What I really didn't even notice were the players Francesco Ferrari and Colin McKenna that moved on to the semifinals. They did no extraordinary performance but just good, solid play. But both should get their oppurtunity to show how good players they really were.

Sunday, 10/24/04:

The semifinals were played on sunday morning and most of the games were thrilling. The players I would have said to be the best didn't make it though, which was bit of surprising to me. Former World Champion Michel Hirschfeld (Germany) lost to Colin McKenna (Scotland) and came 14th. Juilan Gapihan (France) lost to Katsumi Takahashi (Japan) and cam 13th. Jan Buchta (Czech Republic) lost to Francesco Ferrari (Italy) and came 9th and finally in the closest match Einar august Baldvinsson (Iceland) lost to Claus Sorensen (Denmark) and finished 5th. Remarkable is the fact the Robert Tétrault (Canada) finished 6th the second year in a row.
 

This game was tight, very tight indeed, the toughest final in a World Championship so far. And this again is, I think a sign of the quality in this tournament.
At the beginning it didn't show who was to make a good start, only for Colin McKenna (Scotland), the game was over pretty soon. He finished rank 4.
In lead there a duel between Katsumi Takahashi (Japan) and Claus Sorensen (Denmark) seemed to develop. It looked like one of these two players was to finish every minute. Nobody would have bet on Francesco Ferrari (Italy) at this time of the game.
But exactly this situation was very cleverly used by Francesco Ferrari. From there on he was involved in almost every trade done at the table, and nearly all of the trades were in his favour. He then managed to surprise everybody with a great finish and won the game!