Jim Yerkey 
Jim Yerkey
Personal Information:
Born: July 30 1952 in Baltimore. MD
Grow up in and currently residing In the Baltimore area
Married the lovely and gracious Lisa Douthat in Sept.1984.
Three
children: Jennifer - 15, Amanda - 13, Scott - 10
A
1975 graduate of the University of Baltimore, majoring in History with
minors in Political Science, and Philosophy; my greatest Academic
achievement was dropping out of Law School before it was too late.
Currently
a self employed paper broker and sales rep, I have spent my entire
professional career working in business' dealing with recycling. I
consider myself an on environmentalist with common sense.
Hobbies include:
Wine
collecting (collect then drink), Coaching youth soccer and Indoor soccer
(life time: 62-33-6) gardening, and, of course, Gaming.
Diplomacy Highlights:
Played
my first game In 1971 when Dan Mathias' brother Wayne brought the game home.
Wayne, Dan, Ken Mathias, Bill Thompson, a couple of other friends and, I
jumped in with both feet. I drew Germany and proceeded to discover the
thrill of Diplomacy by stabbing everybody but Turkey before we stopped play
several hours later.
My
first tournament was DipCon 9/Origins II at Johns Hopkins in 1976.
From then until 1996 when I retired as a competitive player, I played in 2
to 3 tournaments per year.
Awards
and Honors Received along the way:
Diplomacy
Champion at:
PenCon'78, Origins 87, Origins 90, Origins 91, Orlgins 93, DixieCon 93, PrezCon'94,
Colonial
Dip Champion at Avaloncon '95
Best
Country Awards: 26
Golden
Blade Awards: 3
Team
Tournament Championships. 2
The
"John Koning Memorial Award" for 1994.
Charter
Member of the NADF "Hall of Fame" - 2001
I
have never played regular postal or e-mail Diplomacy. Back In the
early '80s I played a game of WWIIIb (a variant of my own design) in Bob
Sergeant's Saint George and the Dragon, which I was fortunate enough to
win.
Since 1991 I have run the largest regularly scheduled Diplomacy Tournament in
North America in Hunt Valley Maryland at AvalonCon / World Boardgame
Championships.
In the summer of 2000 I hosted DipCon XXXV / World D!pCon X the second largest
Diplomacy Tournament in North American history.
The single most important result of the time I've
spent playing the game of
Diplomacy Is the friendships that I have developed along the way.
Jim
Yerkey
Sketch by Buz
Eddy
I first met Jim before our game at Columbus in 1996. Jim said he had been
traveling to Diplomacy events for 20 years and this was going to be his last
one. We played in the last round and I watched him perform some pure black is
white diplomacy. As Turkey, he ripped three dots from Russia, then convinced
Russia that he had to continue opposing England, otherwise England would take
him out. And Russia bought it. The game was a two way between Jim and Tom Kobrin.
Jim was one of the very first supporters of the ratings. He achieved something of
a coup in getting Robert Sacks to send in results in spite of the fact that
Robert described ratings as "tools of the devil". He provided 1992,
1993, and 1994 AvalonCon then disappeared into a dark cloud. I asked him
for stuff in 1996 at Columbus, he said OK. Nothing. I asked him for stuff in
1998 at Chapel Hill, he said OK. Nothing. Then in late 1999 I got 1995, 1996,
1997, 1998 and 1999 AvalonCon/WBC all in one pack. Jim is supportive, but he
definitely does things his way.
At WDC in Chapel Hill he played a full schedule. "I thought you were
retiring?" says I. "I am." says he. In directing the highly
successful 2000 WDC in Baltimore he was forced to play a game to fill out a
board in my game. He was in the draw, and I was not.
He played 1 game at Chapel Hill in 2001 and took a two way draw in what was then
the game with the highest average rating to date. I don't know, but I suspect he
played to round out the field. Will he play more? I don't know, but I do
know that if and when he does, he is as good a Diplomacy player as there is.
Jim Yerkey is a 'not very shy' retiring type.