You see I’m addicted? Another session of St. Petersburg at the BSW. This time it was much better: all games clocked in below 30 minutes and best took just 20 minutes. Very good!

The first game was absurd. In the end of the game, I was producing 141 rubles each turn (60 in worker phase, 5 with buildings and 76 with aristocrats). Meanwhile I racked in 62 points each turn. I had 13 different aristocrats… The final score was 253-110. It was very silly and had it been a real game, it would’ve been terminated long before it was over. The other guy didn’t quite understand the finer details of the game.

However, he picked up pretty fast. In our next game with a third player, he went and won the game. I came second, with a low margin. He got a lead in workers at the right time and didn’t make any major mistakes after that. After that game he left, having convinced himself that St. Petersburg is a stupid game. Can’t please everyone, I suppose. Gameblogger dropped by, too, sharing the same sentiment.

Anyway, the games continued with a two-player game I lost (and that was, once again, clearly visible before the game ended — the key to my loss was building phase income by my opponent — that’s a strong tool) and three-player game I won. It was an exciting game. I ended that game with whopping 96 rubles in my hand — now that was some bad play! Still, victory for me, mostly thanks to 10 different aristocrats I had.

St. Petersburg has it’s shortcomings and I think it’s within the realm of possibility that my rating will drop down to nine after the initial enthusiasm wears off, but right now the 10 rating is spot on.