Kyrollos Wins Favor Of The God!

Ra! had another decrease in attendance this past year. It might not have been so bad if we kept the 4th Heat. The first two Heats were awesome with 17 tables in Heat 1 and 18 tables in Heat 2. But Heat 3 tailed off with 11. The 4th Heat usually chipped in with 10 tables so that could be the big reason for the decrease in attendance.

We had 5 multiple Heat winners who received a bye into the Semifinal but only 4 could make it. We had 6 tables for the Quarterfinal so the top 2 from each game joined the 4 with a bye for a 16 player Semifinal of 4 games with the winners advancing to the Final. It actually worked out perfect.

Semifinal 1 saw newcomer Kelly Vo win by 8 over 3 guys. Semifinal 2 saw Rob Kircher beat 3 heat winner Matthew Thiessen by 12. Semifinal 3 saw Brad Sherwood beat Lyman Moquin by 6. Lyman picked up 5th place laurels for missing the finals by the least amount. Semifinal 4 saw Owen Kyrollos beat Nate Hess by 7 and last year’s champ Aubrey Powers by 8. Nate picked up 6th place laurels for missing the finals by the second least amount. So, the Final was set and Owen Kyrollos walked away with the championship with a rather convincing 12 point win over Brad Sherwood. Congratulations to Owen for winning his first Ra! Championship.

I would like to take this time to recognize and thank my long time assistants Alex Bove and Winton Lemoine. This concludes my 19th year as GM of Ra! and I believe that they’ve both been with me the whole time.

I would also like to thank John Jacoby for all the prizes that he’s donated over the years. I’m sure he’s been donating prizes for close to 19 years as well.

Next year will be my 20th and likely last year as GM of Ra!. If anyone would like to take over, please talk to me about it at next year’s convention. If no one steps forward I guess I could keep doing it but I feel like we need some new blood for a change.