1st Charles Reinke corrected course after a slow start to the club season with a dominant 4-0 +490 record and a 507 per-game average. He came away with a win against Helen Flores in round one, scoring 472 to her 387. Helen put some fear into him with bingos of DANGLIER and ADORNER, although he struck back with FACTICES and FLURRIES. Charles showcased more of his patented bingo brutality against Steve Hartsman, deploying four bonus plays (RONDEAUX, MONAURAL, TRIBUTE, RENEGADO) to prevail 526-409. Rewarded for his 2-0 start with a Collins-lexicon bout against familiar foe Thomas Reinke, Charles won again 474-397, bingoing with BURTHEN and EPIGEOUS. In a clash of undefeateds where only one player would get to keep their title (unless they tied), Charles finished his clean sweep by steamrolling Bryan Benwitz 557-436, once again playing four bingos: WOOLENS, ANTIQUER, NITROGEN, and BANDIES.

2nd Andy Bohnsack used his home-field advantage to great effect, finishing 3-1 +245. He just barely lost his first game, felled by Thomas Reinke 401-409, hitting on SMALTITE and UNHOLIER while Thomas had PORNIEST and CANONISE. It was another close game in round two, as Andy got a ten-point win against Richard Lauder, 381-371. Game three was a little better for Andy, but still nothing resembling a blowout, as he got past Dennis Lloyd 403-377 thanks to SECTORS and ORIGINAL (Dennis had STAINED, further cementing that bingo as the club's second-favorite word in ADEINST, behind DETAINS but well ahead of SATINED, which has only been played once). Andy unambiguously entered "blowout" territory in the final game, as he took down Carol Ormand 478-261, rebuffing her TRAINED with his own SOBERING and BELIEVES.

3rd Bryan Benwitz finished 3-1 +169, although his scores displayed a clear downward trend from round one to round four, giving us some hope that by mid-April he'll be scoring in the 100s and the rest of us will have a better chance of beating him. He beat James Rollins 506-374 in the opening round, getting ENCOMIA, MAESTRO, and MOTIVED to James' SENARIUS and STRAYING. Observant stats-hawks will note that Bryan played the same word of ENCOMIA against James last week, so it seems a precedent has been set and Bryan will play ENCOMIA every time he plays James (not sure how this reconciles with Bryan presumably scoring in the 100's...). Bryan matched up against a fresh-from-vacation Dave Kinzer in the second game, and pulled no punches, unleashing VANITIES, BARLEYS, AUTECISM, and NETTERS in a 482-314 win. He slowed down a bit while defeating Carol Ormand 407-327, countering her SUNRISE with his find of DEPICTOR. Losing to Charles Reinke 346-557 in the fourth and final round spelled the end of his hopes for an undefeated night.

We welcomed five new players into our ranks, which is probably some sort of record, if you don't count the first night the club met in 1984, when every player was technically a newcomer. Blake, Loden, Alex, Mike, and Lynn all made their club debuts, with varying levels of success (most of them won a game!) but (we hope) invariably high levels of fun.