The participating countries were: Japan, the U.S.A., Canada, England, Scotland, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, The Czech Republic, Slovenia, Romania, Poland, Ireland and Germany.
With the exception of England, Scotland, Austria and Ireland two players from every country participated in this event. We in the Spielezentrum thought of Emanuel Burtscher from Austria as the best player and the one who most likely would become World Champion. Regrettably he wasn't able to participate.
For him Jacques Kieft from Ireland came into this tournament, so suddenly we had 18 countries participating.

The tournament area was very impressing and so huge, that is was used at the same time for the first German Settlers Card-Game Championship. Everybody passing by this area could see which countries participated by looking at the flags of all the 17 countries (with the exception of Ireland) hanging down from the ceiling. Even the press seemed very interested in this event. Especially the japanese press was very busy and wrote protocols of every game of the two japanese players.

After a short description of the differences of the english Catan-Version to the other versions, the tournament started. There were only few difficulties through the games, although there were a lot of languages that could be heard (German, English, Japanese, Dutch, Polish, French and Czech). 

After three rounds the two German players made it to the semifals, like we thought they would do. But what we could see, was that more players than we expected were able to play at the same level the (tournament-)experienced German players did.
I was especially impressed by the Dutch player Hans Baert and the Italian player Armin Rauch, who both won all of their three games.
Eiji Ikeda from Japan showed the most impressing comeback with two wins in 
game 2 and 3 after achieving only 4th place in game 1. With this results he was the only player from outside of Europe to reach the semifinals.

Some players even brought their own fans with them. One of them was Hans Baert from the Netherlands. His first place after day 1 was loudly cheered by his fans as we announced it.

Results of day 1:
 

The best eight players qualified for the semifinals on Sunday.

At the end of the day I couldn't wait to see which players would make it to the final and ultimately become first world champion. My guess was Michel Hirschfeld from Germany or Hans Baert from the Netherlands. As you can see in my report on day2 I was wrong with this guess.

But at 11 a.m. both of the semifinals-tables started to play. At Table 1 the players 
ranked 1 to 4 on day1 played a very tough game. After this game I thought my guess of Saturday could be right, because Hans Baert from the Netherlands won his fourth game in a row. But what was most impressing, was the performance of Jacques Kieft from Ireland. He managed to really change my view of the Catan Game. He managed to reach eight victory points in with only two settlements and no cities on the board and this way he reached the final. His whole tactics in this game was about the development cards, so he managed to get the most soldiers (knights) , the longest roads and 3 victory point cards.

At table 2 Ralf Arnold from Germany managed to win and all the other players shared second place. But even this was not enough for him. He was behind so many points after the first three rounds, that he didn't make it to the finals, half a point was missing to get even with Jacques Kieft. Because of this the same players who played the semifinals at table 1 finally competed in the first World Championships final game.

Place	Name	PP-Summe	SP-Summe	Quot.-Summe
1	Baert, Hans, Netherlands	20	40	131,33
2	Rauch, Armin, Italy	16	37	115,02
3	Hirschfeld, Michel, Germany	15	36	119,48
4	Kieft, Jacques, Ireland	15	36	114,83
5	Arnold, Ralf, Germany	14,5	34	116,25
6	Ikeda, Eiji, Japan	14	31	113,78
7	Hertzsch, Tino, Switzerland	13,5	34	108,87
8	Zizek, Domen, Slovenia	12	30	99,87

The best non-european player was Eiji Ikeda, achieving place 6, who had to give a lot of interviews to the japanese press after his semifinal game.

After a short break a very close, very tough final game was following. Throughout the game every player had a good chance to win the final.

The final decision about the title was made by the tactics Jacques Kieft choose. He once again bought a lot of development cards and managed to obtain three victory points with his development cards and finally won the game.

Place	Name	Country
1	Jacques Kieft	Galway, Ireland
2	Michel Hirschfeld	Freiberg, Germany
3	Hans Baert	Den Haag,  The Netherlands
4	Armin Rauch	Mals, Italy

After his victory Jacques Kieft had to give a lot of interviews for papers and radio, a lot of pictures of him were taken, he even had to give autographs. Everybody was able to see the significance of the title to Jacques, when the first thing he did after he won, was to send a message with his mobile to tell friends and family he had won.

The following winners ceronomy was hosted by Klaus Teuber, Will Niebling (Mayfair), Yoshiki Okamoto and Ray Nakazato (Capcom), Peter Janshoff and me (Michael Bartusch-Lenzen) from the Spielezentrum Herne. A lot of press and spectators were present at the ceronomy and a lot of pictures of the four finalist with their trophies were taken. This was a nice ending of two very interesting days at the first Settlers of Catan World Championships and I'm looking forward to next year's championship.

Jacques Kieft already has shown interest to come to Essen next year again to defend his World Champion title. I personally hope it is possible to him to come to next year's event and I hope that a lot of countries will participate, so that we can be able to organise a similar event we did this year.