Comments on games I played:

Puerto Rico #1 (Jake, Brian, Richard, Craig, Phil)
My aim was to get enough quarries so that I could obtain a couple of
the large buildings. I wound up with four quarries, but could never
muster enough doubloons to purchase any large buildings. Richard
bought the only large building, but was unable to place a colonist on
it. This game ended when the victory points were depleted (although
there also weren't enough colonists to withstand another ship
repopulation). Jake won despite being pooned twice by the captain
(there was no room for his vast stores of indigo on two successive
turns, forcing him to dump many goods).

Royal Turf (Phil, Paul, Terry, Vitas, Kelli, Greg)
While "Go Earl Gray" doesn't have quite the ring to it as "Go
Nougat", he was nonetheless the horse of the night. He captured the
halfway bonus in each race, and won the last two races. The first
race was won by Albino, whose only wager (mine!) was a zero chit.
DOH! I narrowly defeated Paul, with the scores being 1650, 1600,
1350, 1100, 1000, 700.

Puerto Rico #2 (Greg, Kelli, Phil, Vitas)
This time I was swimming in doubloons (thanks to San Juan Valdez
coffee), but could never purchase the right building at the right
time. My lack of a warehouse hurt me several times, and I never got
a sugar mill. Greg's five corn fields paved the way to victory.
Kelli and I managed to obtain two large buildings each in this game
(and Greg got one, too), and I wound up scoring 10 points for the
guild hall and 6 points for the city hall. The game ended when we
ran out of colonists. The finals scores were 49, 43, 43, 28.


Puerto Rico is an intoxicating game that bedevils you with its
choices. There's much to explore in terms of combinations and
strategies, and I am quite anxious to play again. My copy of PR
arrived at my house via UPS about a half-hour AFTER I left for B2O...
Hrmph.


PR RULES SCHOOLS:
Having had a chance to read the rules, here are some that were not
followed during the first two plays:
1) The hacienda extra plantation must be taken from the face down
pile of tokens, not the face up tokens. This extra drawing must be
made before choosing the regular face-up token.
2) The combination of construction hut, hacienda, and Settler does
NOT allow you to take two quarries, as the hacienda drawing is made
from the face down pile.
3) The captain does NOT grant a free victory point if you do not load
anything on a ship.
4) Each player may build each building only once.