The One And Only Dominator

by Lukas Kautzsch, An der Rossweid 18a, 76229 Karlsruhe, Germany

The finals of this year's Netrunner World Championship are drawing near, with pairings for the first round to be announced on September 20. Technical problems and timing issues in Round 1 of the WD '99 IRC events have put us about two months behind schedule. This is unfortunate, but we decided that fun for the players was more important than quick determination of a new World Champion.

Seven finalists emerged from the Round 1 (semifinal) tournaments: David Bartholow, USA (qualified in Fort Collins, USA), Holger Janssen, GER (Karlsruhe, Germany), Jens Kreutzer, GER (Rotterdam, Netherlands), Richard Cripe, USA (New York City, USA), Byron Bailey, USA (Seattle, USA), Philip Harvey, UK (IRC Europe), Mark Applin, UK (IRC Europe). There are two finalists from the IRC Europe event because the Rotterdam tournament failed to draw the expected 14 players to qualify as a "double header". Thus the best second-place scorer from the three European events advanced to the finals instead. The IRC America event is still running and will eventually yield the eighth finalist (from the USA, Canada or Brazil).

The finals will be played completely on IRC. There will be a 3-round Sealed Deck tournament and a 3-round Unlimited Constructed tournament, running in parallel but independently. The final ranking will be determined by the total GMP score from both tournaments, with opponents' GMP total, opponents' opponents' GMP total and then AP difference as tiebreakers. Come and watch the Finals of the 1999 Netrunner World Championship on IRC, EFNet (or possibly Undernet if players can't get access to EFNet), channel #netrunner!

The official rules for WD '99 as well as lists of all registered tournaments, finals matches and results can be found at the WD '99 homepage.

If all goes well, by the end of autumn we will know who is the One and Only Dominator.