2002 HOBBY AWARDS ANNOUNCEMENT

The new announcement for this year is the institution of a new award. We are going to call it the Kathy Byrne Caruso Lifetime Achievement Award and unlike the other awards it is going to be awarded by the Committee – you know, like in the Academy Awards – but all of you are eligible to nominate people for it each year. This award is being named in loving memory of one of the greatest player personalities the game has ever seen, who also happens to be a woman. Kathy Byrne Caruso died in August 2002 from complications in her battle with lung cancer. In issues #263 and #264 of The Abyssinian Prince, you can see her picture and remembrances of her and her career. The qualifications for the Kathy Byrne Caruso Lifetime Achievement Award are that the awardee must have been: (1) Active in the Diplomacy Hobby in at least Three Separate Decades; (2) Multidimensional in their Contributions to the Hobby (e.g. writing, playing, publishing); (3) Taking Retirement or Semi-Retirement from the Diplomacy Hobby; and (4) One of the Hobby’s Unique Personalities Worthy of Being Remembered as Long as THE Game Continues to be Played. Now to the awards: thanks to all of the nominees, even though who did not win received plenty of support from the more than 75 voters. I still hope that we can have even more participation next year. Thanks as well to those who contributed money toward the plaques that all of the winners will be receiving in the mail soon. Recall that you can look at all of the nominees and the entire Ballot on the web. And now to this new special lifetime achievement award and all of this year’s awards (note that there were TWO ties and that those two awards each are being awarded in duplicate!):

There cannot be a more appropriate winner of the first award, especially in light of the worldwide expansion of the scope of the hobby and the Hobby Awards, than Richard Sharp. Richard’s szine Dolchsto¢ began thirty years ago and has been a workhorse of the British Diplomacy Hobby, until recently being in semi-suspension due to Richard’s own battles with cancer. Luckily, I hear from him that he is doing better lately and we hope he is with us for many years longer. Richard also has produced one of the great books on the strategy and tactics of Diplomacy, The Game of Diplomacy, which is still widely consulted on the Web today by novice and experienced players alike. Richard’s letter columns and commentaries also always have a great deal of bite to them as he comments on events from a conservative point of view. For more detail on all of this, my interview with Richard for Diplomacy World fleshes all of this out in much greater detail.

Chad is the founder and webmaster of the Redscape site for the play of Diplomacy. The Redscape site started up in 1998 with just Chad and one other volunteer hosting games by hand. It then added a Redscape Forum structure in 2000 that allowed any member to host a game for the community. There are currently 68 games of Diplomacy being played and arround 220 games concluded since the site inception. There are 1767 registered profiles, but Chad estimates around 400 members are active at any one time. Chad currently is working on a major redesign of the site, but this award shows how people already value what he has created to date. It seems to me as an observer that games fill with enthusiasm and with lightning quickness as Chad has built a great Internet Diplomacy gaming community.

Glenn is receiving this award for his article on Stable Two-Way Draws in Standard Diplomacy, which appeared in the Spring 2001 Movement Issue of The Diplomatic Pouch. Note that in the original ballot this article was listed as a joint authored article between Glenn and Karlis Povisils. After nominations, I was informed that the article is Part I of an intended two part article on this subject where Part I was authored solely by Glenn Ledder. Karlis informs me that he is working diligently on the Part II article now and we all hope to see that in print as well soon. Glenn’s article addresses a subject that the voters clearly want to hear more about – advice on how to deal with the endgame in Diplomacy – where mistakes, as Glenn notes to me, are irredeemable.

Joe is receiving this award for his article on How to Solo, which appeared in the Fall 2001 Movement Issue of The Diplomatic Pouch. Note that this article also deals with the endgame and provides loads of practical advice on this perhaps most important endgame strategy from a player who has pulled off lots of solos. This award also is richly deserved for someone relatively new to the writing ranks (he only wrote What is a Newbie and came off that designation just two years ago), but with lots of future potential.

Cyrille is receiving this award for winning World DipCon XI in Paris last summer to become the first Two-Time World DipCon Champion. This continues a trend where the voters are putting a great deal of emphasis on successful FTF Tournament play and the Paris World DipCon arguably has the deepest and best roster of any tournament in the last five years. See Edi Birsan’s commentary on how Cyrille won in Diplomacy World. Today, Cyrille actively is trying to improve his play-by-E-Mail skills.

Brian is receiving this award for his play in a wide variety of forums, including finishing with the most total points at World DipCon XI in Paris last summer and losing the overall championship in the tie-breaker with Cyrille Sevin. One could have hoped that the voting could have provided another answer to that Final Board tie and in a sense it did. Brian also won E-Mail games in 2001 where he has been proficient as well.

Tom is a GM at Redscape, the Diplomacy gaming community started by Chad Schroeder, who won this year’s Don Miller Award. Like last year’s Fred Hyatt Award winner, Doug Burgoyne, Tom Reinecker is the GM of a very large world variant of his own design that he GM’s by hand. WW IV, depending on the version, has either 29 or 30 players. The latest game opening by Tom for this variant, that was opened recently on Redscape, filled in a day and a half. This is direct market testimony to how players think about Tom’s GM performance. You can become a member of Redscape and join new versions of this large variant.

Richard Sharp, Norton House, Whielden Street, Amersham, Bucks, GREAT BRITAIN  HP7 0HU (richard@dolchstoss.com)
Chad Schroeder, 1110 N. Puente St., Brea, CA  92821 USA (gmchad@redscape.com)
Glenn Ledder, 825 Oldfather Hall, Dept. of Math and Stat., PO Box 880323, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE  68588-0323 USA (gledder@math.unl.edu)
Joe Brennan, 4 Terminalia Street, Redlynch, Qld, 4870, AUSTRALIA  (jgbrennan@iprimus.com.au)
Cyrille Sevin, Turkenstr. 21, D-80799, Munchen, GERMANY  (Cyrille.Sevin@eurocopter.com)
Brian Dennehy, 8 Parkgate Place, Parkgate Street, Dublin 8, IRELAND (denno88@yahoo.com)
Tom Reinecker, 97 Lyndale Drive, Rochester, NY  14624 USA  (treineck@rochester.rr.com)

Respectfully submitted, 
Jim Burgess, burgess@world.std.com , 664 Smith Street, Providence, RI  02908-4327  USA
Chairman of the Hobby Awards Committee