 Okay, I'm Eddie Bursan, I've been in the hobby for 40 years and this is the world diplomacy championship 2007 to determine the current champion. We have presently people from all over the world including on the champion level. You have Rob Stevenson from Australia who won the world championship when it was down there. We have three Frenchmen who won the world championships respectively in Berlin, England and Denver. Oddly enough, I think a Frenchman has never won the world championship in France. You also have Chris Martin American who won the world championship in 1997 or 1998. You have amongst here you have North American champions. There's at least six or eight of us including myself. There's also three European champions including myself and two of the Europeans. You have several Canadian champions. You have a champion from Italy, a champion from San Marino, the champion from Netherlands. We have this is the collection of the best face-to-face tournament players in diplomacy in the world. So this is the 17th world championship? 17th world championship and the 40th dipcon which is the North American championship. When did us start? 40 years ago? 40 years ago. It actually started in 67 and has been continuous and it is the dipcon as it's called. Moves around North America and then as the it was the original only championship diplomacy tournament that ever mattered until the hobby became more international. Then 17 years ago we formed the international world diplomacy championship to move around the world. So last year was in Berlin this year it's now in Canada at beautiful Vancouver and next year we're going to be in Austria. We will decide at the end of this meeting at the end of here where it will be two years from now. In the past it has been in Paris, in Newmore, in Gothenburg, in Birmingham, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in Washington DC, in Denver and there's been multiple occasions in various of those cities. Alright, anything else I can do for you? I should be exciting no? Yes, we're looking forward to it. This will be my 12th time to the 13th from the 17th that I've been here and of the 40 dipcons I've been the 30 of them. Were you there from the beginning? I was in the second one. Oddly enough we didn't decide until the second one that the first one was the first one. Alright, and in the first dipcon there was just five people and in the second one we started with seven and then became ten and again we started with diplomacy but then when three other people came we put the diplomacy board away and we played Youngstown which is a ten player variant and it was actually held in Youngstown in Ohio and it wasn't until the third dipcon that we actually played a game of diplomacy at a dipcon. The dipcons were created as a social gathering of the postal hobby. People played diplomacy postally because they found it difficult to meet seven people for an all-day game. So the dipcons were created as an excuse to go travel and meet the people that you were already corresponding with postally. So the very idea of a tournament at the dipcon was alien to the initial purpose of the convention which was a social gathering and there was a on the third dipcon there was a tournament and the first winner was John Smite. On the fourth dipcon they went back to the social thing and then on the fifth from then on there's always been a tournament of some sort of structure and there has never been in all the dipcons there has never been the same scoring system used twice. And that sort of reflects the diplomacy hobby in that there other than winning the game there is no consensus of what achievement is if you don't win the game. Is it better to have 12 supply centers and being a three-way drawer or to have 10 supply centers and have more supply centers than anyone else and have seven people alive is it better to have a four-way drawer with six centers or a three-way drawer with three centers. No one can agree to those basic fundamental differences other than the ultimate win which is which is to have 18 centers or have the players concede the game to you and even in that we are not there's no consensus there is no consensus as to how many non-win results equals a win result. There are our two two ways as good as one one win some people who say yes some will say no is in Europe they play with no concept of drawers which can explain why Europe has been a hotbed of wars for so many years because they they insisted somebody win and therefore six people must lose in America so 18 18 18 centers someone must get. Yes yes 18 centers but with the Europeans when they play in their tournaments they play to a certain deadline and then they say whoever has the most supply centers wins okay in North America the principle American concept of drawers include all survivors and all are equal therefore if we have a three-way drawer and I have five centers and you have 14 well we both are in a three-way drawer. This is a fundamental difference in approach to gaming and approach to life as reflected in gaming between the Europeans and the North Americans and this is reflected all around the world doesn't matter whether you're where you go in South Africa Brazil the national bias in terms of relative position it may be a class thing it may be a if you're Marxist it's a class thing if you're not a Marxist then it it's a cultural divide in terms of where you approach your self-evaluation as a country or as a group well to the other groups all right if you come into society where people say you have more therefore you are better and more is being defined in a materialistic way then you tend to see people playing on the basis of supply centers rule where you come into a society where there's less of a class difference or less of a fact that the divisions of the people between the people it doesn't matter that you can go bowling 10 times a week as long as I can go bowling twice a week as far as I'm concerned we're all equal all right then you'll find that those that society will have drawer-based systems because they're less conscious of the inequalities on a materialistic thing anyway that's my spiel as to where it goes it's also added in that in Europe there is no country in Europe where its neighbor in its history was not at one time its most mortal enemy and at another time its most its greatest savior whether it be Germany and France fighting together or fighting against each other England and France were mortal enemies for many years until they fought the Germans all right the Germans and the Russians all right the mortal enemies in World War 2 and World War 1 but prior to that in the Napoleonic period it was the Russians who saved the Germans against the aggression of the French all right in North America we have none of that such experience because all we have is nice good all Americans and nice good all Canadians all right and Americans and Canadians we get along great there is no interplay of multitude of historic content okay does that help give us a good intro thank you