peterbirks | MidCon

Even if I come away for just the weekend, there are many things that I have to remember put in my suitcase. May of these I end up not using. Others I don’t expect to use, but suddenly come in handy. And still others, myseteriously, I still manage to leave behind.

It’s the era of computer peripherals and bespoke connections; that’s the problem. I remembered my phone charger; I remembered my Zen charger (the Creative alternative to the Ipod). And I even remembered the mouse for the computer, but I forgot the connection for the camera.

So, any uploads of pictures will probably be later in the week.

My room, it appears, has a wireless connection; although I haven’t tested it yet. So, the Thistle Birmingham City, still known as the Angus to the cognoscenti, moves into the 21st century. It’s also a BT Openzone connection. Many months ago BT sent me a code and details of my “free” 20 minutes, but I haven’t had a chance to test it yet. Incredibly, I managed to find therequired password and usename – a combination of letters and numbers that no-one could ever memorize.

Outside, roadworks and construction, that apparently permanent feature of Birmingham since the 1950s, continue apace A roundabout, once the emblem of the Birmingham road system, has sensiblly been removed. Trafalgar Square in London set the precedent here. It was finally noticed that the traffic islands in the middle of cicular one-way systems were (a) isolated and (b) usually a waste of space. I recall that in Royston Vasey the traffic island was used for the town’s zoo. Inhabitants were a rabbit, a goat and a cat. Although my mmories might be playing tricks on me.

Whatever, Birmingham at last seems to be doing something about its old slavish devotion to the glory of the car (while, at the same time, making the road system so incomprehensible that no driver fromoutside Birmingham could understand it). Good.

So, here I am at MidCon 2007. Thus far (Sunday morning), I have managed two games, two meals, and, er, virtually nothing else. I still can’t get the hang of typing on laptops. I guess that with years of practice it would become easier, but my typing on these machines is abysmal. It’s still fast, but with only a 90% success rate on keystrokes, the end-result looks like demented Croatian rather than English.

Friday’s meal was at Chez Jules, a restarant I was slightly concerned about on the grounds that it called itself “rustic” French and talked of “long benches”. However, I was pleasantly surprised. First, there was no piped music. Second, the tables were not to closely packed together. Add to this a reasonably high ceiling and I got a nice sense of space without feeling as if I was in a church hall. The food was pleasant without being sensational – my confit de canard main course couldn’t be faulted. The “apple tatin” for dessert was a fraction disappointing, if only for its inoffensiveness. John Harrington, Steve Bibby, Paul Oakes, Peter Berlin and Richard Beattie were also there. Good value, about a third less than we would have been charged at the Cafe Rouge, which was opposite.

I didn’t get my first game until Saturday lunchtime, with Funkenschlag. I last played this a couple of years ago, but this time I remembered to get a bit of a hang of what was happening before the game started. Most people are dreadful at explaining general concepts of games, so they spend 20 minutes describing the “process” without really giving you much clue of what is going on. So you make some dreadful error on turn one and never really recover. Funkenschlag basically consists of bidding for cards. The real-life equivalent might be seen as tendering for a production contract (although no-one explaining a game would usually think of that). You then have to buy your production means (since this is a game about energy production, this can be coal, nuclear, oil, or recyclable materials). There are also some windfarm cards that do not need a resource. Finally, you have to build your factories. After these three different types of expendture, you generate income. You win the game by building 14 factories and having the resources to produce in all of them.

It’s a great little game made difficult by the fact that your position in the game dictates in what order you bid and what order you place your factories, as well as a varying price for resources. It’s all about efficient cashflow, although there is an element of luck involved in that the order in which the cards turn up (the ‘contracts’) is mainly random. Many is the time you don’t know how much to bid for a contract, because it’s dependent on what the next contract is.

I came third. Rob Thomasson won. Paul Oakes was second, I was third, Geoff Challinger was fourth.

This gave us time for a game of 1830, at which I actually get worse as the years go on. (I must take a photgraph of the board, since DY has expressed curiousity about the game).

We were six for this game (me, Beattie, Oakes, Berlin, Harrington, Pete Card). My first decision was to stop Beattie sitting on the B&O private for hours, generating income eery turn. I persuaded Pete Card to buy a couple of shares in the B&O as well, ensuring that it was floated. I also vaguely hoped to get through the game without having to run a company, but eventually I cracked and launched the Chesapeake. I ran this in my normal appalling fashion (I didn’t even remember to calculate precisely what starting price I could afford – class) but was lucky enough to get a garrison in near New York. When the diesels came in I actually had a decent run, and this was enough to get me into fourth place, a mere three points behind Beattie. Berlin and Oakes fought it out for first (Pennsylvania vs New York Central) and Berlin came out best.

I suspect that if Oakes had been able to resist dumping the Haven & Hartford (his first company) onto Harrington, Paul might have won it himself.

In the old days we could rattle through games like that every three abd a half hours, but as we age we get slower, and this was a six-hour job. This just gave us time for a 9.30pm sitting at San Carlo’s.

For once, it didn’t exceed expectations. My crab cakes (mysteriously a course independently ordered by five of the eight present) was good, my Saltimbocca less so. No criticism of the veal, but the dressing managed to be a little bit too oily and a little bit too vinegarish (balsamic, of course) at the same time. But the profiteroles for dessert were brilliant.

And, for the first time, we weren’t surprised at the cheapness of the meal. Ninety quid’s worth of wine between three people pushed it up, but even after taking that off, it still came to GBP35 a head. Mr Harrington, who had had a six quid starter and an eight quid main course, was understandably bemused when told that his share was thirty-five. Mr Card, meanwhile (one of the three wine participants) actually didn’t have enough cash for his GBP65 share. Worse, when he heard the “65”, he thought that was between the three wine drinkers, not each, so he had just lumped in a score and a bit. We got there eventually.

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It's notable that when you post about "real" online poker (i.e., hand after hand of little action)no-one has anything to say. It leads me to wonder whether any discussion of "important" decisions is relevant in the grand scheme of things. The big hands tend to even out. The money is made in the chiselling. But this stuff isn't interesting, so the "features" are always about hands with key decisions (say, that QQ I had in the blinds a few weeks back). Although discussing the right thing to do here can be entertaining, I don't think that it's that enlightening.

PJ