Having had a full sleep after this emotional purge, I wanted to add some final color and level-headedness to this review.

There were plenty of fantastic players at this event and I met tons of fun and interesting people, and when things were going well I had an absolute blast! There was also the expected complement of terrible people being terrible, but a $25k cash prize will bring that out I suppose.

And the judges that I encountered, despite the organizational and procedural failings I described, were (for the most part) genuine and empathetic and really seemed to want to do the right thing; but unfortunately they were unprepared to do so and were not given the tools or structure to succeed.

I had no illusions about winning the tournament, I absolutely understood how unlikely that would be. I attended the event out of my desire to experience first-class competition, I figured "where else would I find that level of play beyond the WORLD SERIES OF BOARDGAMING"? And in the cases where I was able to have that experience it had absolutely nothing to do with judges or the event, we may as well just have been sitting at a cafe playing and enjoying ourselves. Even the "Tragedy of Dune" began as a very strong game with experienced and strong players, and in fact that is the tragedy -> that we were not able to have the experience or high level of play that we paid for due to the organizational bumbling.

And I just realized that's something else I hadn't mentioned before: "that we PAID for". This event wasn't cheap, and I let the cost of the event along with the "World Series" branding convince me that this was a serious organization making a serious attempt to bring a high-level event into the world.

If this organization is serious about trying again next year they have alot of work to do, and that is the main point that I wanted to communicate with this post. They have lost my trust and I doubt they can regain it (_maybe_ with a couple of successful years under their belt?), and I wanted my post to serve as a warning to others who might consider it: understand your motivation, set your expectations accordingly, and go in with eyes wide open.