Catalan winner, Hungarian finalist at the 2024 Carcassonne World Championship!

Learning from last year's experience, this time we booked our accommodation in a flat 5 minutes' walking distance from the venue, so that we could arrive at the competition more relaxed, wouldn't have to worry about the traffic conditions in Germany, and could get there comfortably for the pre-start registration announced at 9:00 a.m. Not so the Swedish player, who did not arrive at all, so the former German champion Kolja Stratmann got the chance to play in his place.

Of course, the reigning champion Matt Tucker was present, and former world champions Pantelis Litsardopoulos (Greece) and Vladimir Kovalev (this time under the flag of the “International Carcassonne Community”) were also there. The 2019 world champion Marian Curcan also appeared on the scene, but this time he only accompanied his brother, Bogdan, this year's Romanian champion. The two finalists of this year's Mind Sports Olympiad, Krišs Kauķis from Latvia and Otto Ikonen from Finland, were definitely among the contenders for the title. Ukraine was represented by Oleksandr Nosik because this year's champion Serhiy Zakharenko could not come. In recognition of their efforts organizing the World Team Carcassonne Online Championship, the Catalan community was allowed to send a player under their own banner, Daniel Angelats.

The length of the pre-elimination phase increased from 5 to 6 rounds due to the large number of players. What didn't change was that eight players could advance to the single elimination play-offs. Of course, chess clocks were used in all games, giving each player 15 minutes of thinking time.

In the second round I met Stefán Jónsson from Iceland, who came to the competition wearing a beautiful vest crocheted by his wife. Stefán cleverly chose the strategy of trying to put me into time trouble, and unfortunately this plan worked: while he spent only 3 minutes on his clock during the entire game, I had to make my last moves almost without thinking, so as not to run out of time . Unfortunately, this resulted in horribly bad decisions on my part (I attacked the field with my last two meeples, even though it was not necessary - but of course, I didn't have the time to calculate this...), so I managed to lose a winnable game this way. Too bad. I was a bit haunted by the past, the mistakes I made in previous world championships.

In the meantime, Klaus-Jürgen Wrede, the creator of the game, arrived on the scene, and of course he was asked for lots of autographs and photos, so at this point there was a short break in the tournament. We also lined up for a big joint group photo in front of the building.

Overall, after four rounds, only three players were undefeated: the Argentinian Santiago Iñiguez, Vladimir Kovalev, who was in great shape again, and Ning Ding from China. The match between the latter two players was the highlight of the 5th round, and ended with a victory of the Russian player. Meanwhile, Daniel Angelats beat Santiago Iñiguez, leaving Vladimir Kovalev as the only unbeaten player after 5 rounds.

Meanwhile, Csilla also got her first victory against her Norwegian opponent (the former world championship semi-finalist was having a very bad day). 

In the last, sixth round of the preliminary stage, I faced Mikhail Lapushinsky of Belarus, who also had four wins. The stakes were high: the winner would go through and the loser would most likely be eliminated. It was a very close match, with my opponent having a slight advantage throughout, but with a bit of luck (pulling out the road monastery at just the right moment) I managed to turn the match around and win by 1 point. (Just like we did twice in the quarter final vs Belarus at this year's WTCOC.) My opponent looked very disappointed, while I was a bit disbelieving: I am in the top 8 of the world championship, which is something that no player from Hungary has managed to do in the last 10 years.

Then came a long counting process: it was certain that players with at least five wins (there were five of us) would qualify for the quarter-finals, but there were no fewer than 11 players with four points, several of which were decided only by the last tie-breaker (the total points difference). In the end, Santiago Iñiguez, Otto Ikonen and Bogdan Curcan were the lucky ones to hear their names called when the quarter-final pairings were announced.

My next opponent was the Croatian Zvonimir Vlaić who held the unique record of having played the most Carcassonne games on BGA of all the partcipants in the last year (more than 3,000!) We had the opportunity to play a preparation match against each other in the days before the world championship where I lost to him.

Surprisingly, Vladimir Kovalev didn't make it – the curse of the preliminary winners is still alive. He lost to Bogdan Curcan, who qualified for the playoffs in 8th place. (Considering that I have quite a bad record against Vladimir, this was a positive development for me.) Otto Ikonen also lost, he was beaten by Ning Ding from China. Daniel Angelats also advanced to the semi-final by defeating Santiago Iñiguez for the second time on this day (having already played each other in the preliminary stage).

I played the semi-final at table number 1, which meant that I was included in the broadcast for the first time (this table could be followed on Spielezentrum's YouTube channel throughout the day, with expert commentary on the play-off stage from the excellent Brazilian player Melvin Quaresma). 

In the other semi-final game, Daniel Angelats from Catalonia won 97:87 against Ning Ding from China, so I could play him - my goodness - for the world championship title! 

All the other players stood around the table, watching the action with bated breath. Dani was the starting player and I got to choose a colour first: I decided to stick with yellow, the colour which brought me luck in the semi-final. But this time, unfortunately, it didn't. 

Third place went to Bogdan Curcan with a 113:81 win over Ning Ding, completing the family's medal collection as his brother Marian has already been first and second in the world championships.