Introduction

Ahoy! Thanks for checking out my profile!

I like all kinds of games from simple traditional card games to brain-burning Euros to plastic-laden American games. As long as there's some room for strategy (or even if its a particularly fun luck-fest), I'm in.

My main game buddy is my wife Allison, so we're always on the lookout for good two player games. We've also built a pretty solid casual gaming group, but it's a bit large, so we're also always looking for good games that play 6-8 or more.

Below is a bit about me and my history in board gaming. Below that is a note on my ratings. Feel free to GeekMail me if you have any questions or comments on anything--I love getting random GeekMail!


Biographical Blurb

I grew up in Lynnwood, WA, north of Seattle. I've been playing board games my whole life. My family had a closet stuffed full of mostly kids and family-oriented games. As a youngster, I was nuts for games like Monopoly, Clue, and Mystery Mansion. My family played games almost every weekend, and I played tons of games with my sister and friends in between.

As I got a little older, I moved on to deeper games like Chess, and developed a love for traditional card games like Canasta and Pinochle. In high school, a group of friends and I played Risk almost every night for a couple of summers, maintaining online standings and developing a whole mini-subculture of sayings and jokes ("Attack Kamchatka and they'll come back atcha!").

It wasn't until I was an undergrad at the University of Washington that I was "introduced" to hobby gaming. I was at a party of sorts and some people were talking about an awesome game called Settlers. Not being the overly social type, I didn't ask about it, but it got me thinking about all of the great times playing games I had growing up. When I got home, I did a search for something like "best board games" and BGG turned up. The quantity and diversity of board games out there was staggering--suddenly my life long board gaming experience seemed incredibly shallow.

After checking out the rankings and reading reviews on BGG, I decided that I had to have Puerto Rico and The Settlers of Catan, which I think were ranked #1 and #5 or so, at the time (2004?). That Christmas, my awesome girlfriend (now wife!) Allison got them both for me, and our journey into modern board games began!

For the next few years, I frequented BGG, but only used it as a resource for finding new games, reading reviews, etc. In January 2008, I finally signed up for an account, and then got truly addicted!

I got my undergraduate degrees in computer science and creative writing, with a minor in applied math. Professionally, I've scooped ice cream, delivered pizzas, worn sandwich boards, filed papers, tutored math, corralled kids, and programmed computers. Now, I'm a graduate student at Oregon State University, studying programming language design and working towards a Ph.D. in computer science.

In addition to board games, I am interested in programming languages, linguistics, science fiction, and am an avid baseball fan. I like to play basketball (poorly) and try new foods. I am also very interested in board game design, and hope to begin developing games with Allison in the near future.


Ratings

One of my favorite features on BGG is the "GeekBuddy Analysis" tool, and thus I value (and GeekBuddy) people with high-quality and ratings and game comments. In an effort to be one of these very useful people myself, I try to keep my ratings up to date and provide meaningful commentary.

I don't like how BGG's rating descriptions explicitly tie a person's rating to a specific point in time (i.e. how much they want to play the game), which varies as the person gets burnt out after zillions of plays, or as the person gets newer, shinier games. I think a rating should attempt to represent the static quality/fun of a game. While this is probably unattainable in practice, it's what I try to capture with my ratings. Inevitably, my ratings do fluctuate however, and I update them accordingly.

Roughly, my ratings mean the following:

10: Oustanding
9: Excellent
8: Very Good
7: Good
6: Pretty Good
5: Okay
4: Meh
3: Not So Good
2: Bad
1: Very Bad