STATO Stamford Tournament June 25, 2005.

Final 6
First ........Kevin Gill “Dr. Wizard”....530 points.....40 Master Points
Second.....Stuart Kaplan................470 .............34
Third........Betty Hatfield...............460..............27
Fourth......Mae Lougheed..............420.............20
Fifth........Elka Benik Freer............400...............13
Sixth.......Shirley Airdrie................240...............7

The top 2 spots were won by U.S. men while the next 4 were won by Canadian women.

Synopsis

The Westin hotel provided first class accommodation to all who were staying as guests.
The fun began in the “Wizard Suite” on the afternoon of Friday June 24. Frivolity and practice games continued until midnight when the last reveler departed.
Early risers awoke to find that all power in western Stamford had been lost. Showering, shaving, etc in the dark posed no challenge for Wizard players.
Power was restored in time to enable a belated start of the tournament in the ballroom. A total of 40 players took part: 18 Canadians, 21 Americans and 1 player from Japan. The air-conditioning kept the room at temperatures which required a number of people to wear coats during play.
Round 1 consisted of 8 tables of 5. Round 2 consisted of 4-player games which took much longer to complete than anticipated. Consequently the champion wasn’t decided until shortly after midnight.
Two of the “favorites”: Mr. Wizard, and merlin made it to the 3rd round but failed to win first place at their table of six in order to advance to the “Final Six”.
Congratulations to Kevin Gill (Dr. Wizard) of Brockton, Mass. on his well-deserved victory. Stuart Kaplan of “U.S. Games” lost the championship when he failed to make his final bid in the final hand. Stuart not only played in the tournament but acted as a gracious host. Soft drinks, juices, hot coffee and a variety of buns and rolls were available for free. Every entrant received a unique Wizard pen and a baseball cap embroidered with the Wizard logo. Other prizes and give-aways included Wizard T-shirts, the new leather-bound Gift edition of Wizard, and the new Wizard bidding coins. The majority of the out-of-towners also were treated to a free dinner compliments of U.S. Games.
A reporter and cameraman from the Stamford Advocate were on hand and a large article titled Wily Wizards appeared in the Sunday paper.
In short a good time was had by all.

The following article appeared in the Stamford Advocate the day after the tournament. (Minus the photographs)
Wily wizards: Players try to conjure up a winning hand
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June 26, 2005

STAMFORD -- At the Westin Hotel yesterday, next door to a bar mitzvah and down the hall from a christening party, 40 people from as far as Canada and Japan converged in a banquet room to participate in another sort of milestone: The second annual International Wizard Card Game tournament.

The enthusiastic Wizard community is dedicated to the rapidly growing card game, invented in 1985 by Canadian game developer Ken Fisher and licensed by local game company US Games Inc.

The Stamford-based business owns about 400 different games and Wizard is one of its most popular with more than 1 million sold, according to Chief Executive Officer Stuart Kaplan. His company also makes custom card decks for birthday, wedding and anniversary souvenirs, but the special playing cards emblazoned with the presidential seal kept in ready supply at Camp David and on Air Force One, and manufactured by US Games Inc. might be Kaplan's most instantly recognizable work.

Wizard is a hybrid of other card games in which bids are made to predict how many "tricks" can be made, or hands won. Players lose points for going over or under their predicted bid and use a special 60-card deck which includes wild-card jesters and namesake wizard face cards that automatically win any hand. The parlor game is easy to learn but difficult to master, which makes for a good fan base, its creator said.

"Card games are particularly hard to get into the market," said Fisher. "If you can get them in though, they have a lot of staying power."

At first, he put the game out on his own.

"Game companies wouldn't touch it," Fisher said.

Today, his hobby has become an international sensation. It is licensed in Germany and Italy and will debut this fall in Japan.

"It's just very gratifying to see so many people who like it," Fisher said.

Many players yesterday showed their love of the game by wearing wizard and jester hats. One woman fashioned a crown of stapled Wizard cards. As the players made bids and shuffled cards in the hushed banquet room, the game's inventor told the story of Wizard's genesis.

A former high school teacher and writer of the syndicated newspaper trivia game, "Isaac Asimov's Super Quiz," Fisher, 68, said he came up with Wizard to fill the quiet family evenings at his lakeside cottage in Ontario.

"We needed something more friendly and flexible than bridge," said Fisher.

So he invented something that drew from strengths of classic popular card games.

"It's got a lot of familiarity to it," Fisher said. "In the game development world I say that if it's new, it's probably not good and if it's good, it's probably not all new."

The game is most popular with women over 45, said Kaplan, 73, but players of all ages enjoy it. The youngest player at the championships yesterday was 12-year-old Sarah Gudino of Stamford. She had learned the game two days before.

"I'm planning on playing next year," said Sarah. "I'm already teaching my little cousin."

One of the more seasoned players, Keith Gill, of Brockton, Mass., goes by the nickname "Mr. Wizard" in the online Wizard card community and is such a fanatic that the moniker has carried into daily life. The 19-year-old, who learned the game from an aunt and now teaches his college friends, has attained the level of "Earth Wizard," a distinction shared only by the game's inventor, Ken Fisher.

Gill and his friend Ryan Cappola, 16, both said the game of trumps is very addictive.

"We're just really hooked on it," Gill said.

He hosted a tournament last year, which drew a large hometown crowd, he said.

"Our entire city and all our friends know the game," Gill said.

The sole out-of-towner at that tournament, George Wellsbury of Toronto, ended up the winner, further fueling a long-running friendly rivalry between American and Canadian Wizard players.

"We hate them and they hate us," Gill said, grinning.

At yesterday's tournament, Wellsbury bested the Americans again with a self-styled wizard hat covered in blue velour, moons, stars, and Wizard logo that won the contest for best homemade hat.

The tournament was slated to continue late into the night last night, but win or lose, Gill plans to keep playing for a long time.

"We'll teach our kids, everyone down the line," he said. "It's just a really fun game.