Till Wiechers, playing under the screen name Robinson, has won the 2006 Arimaa World Championship. On January 13, Robinson defeated Adanac in the eighth and final round, their third meeting within the tournament. As one would expect between two stars of attacking play, the championship game exploded into tactical fireworks after only half a dozen moves, with Adanac launching a horse into Robinson's territory. By the fifteenth move all four traps were in play in a seesaw opening which seemed to favor first one player then the other. Just when Adanac was apparently about to win a horse for only a rabbit, he slipped under time pressure on move 18, and ended up instead winning a horse for a rabbit, a horse, and a camel hostage. A few moves later the dust settled with Robinson up a camel and a rabbit for only a horse, with no compensating weaknesses in Robinson's camp. Adanac tried valiantly to create counterplay, and did manage to conjure up some dangerous-looking goal threats, but Robinson created a goal threat of his own which proved unstoppable by move 44.

All in all the tournament was a huge success. Sixteen participants was a record high for the World Championship. The six different countries represented reflect the truly global nature of Arimaa. And the games themselves were testament to the richness and excitement of Arimaa play. More than 23000 games have been played on arimaa.com, yet no single strategy or style of play has emerged as dominant. Defensive and offensive strategies seem equally viable. Finally, the kibitzing in the chat room showed that even experts couldn't agree much of the time on who was winning the game in progress, or what would constitute a good move. The unexplored territory of Arimaa strategy seems bigger than it was a year ago, as new knowledge merely raises new questions.

In the prediction contest Karl, in third place before the round, incorrectly made a moderately large wager on Adanac. 99of9, who was in fourth place, bet the maximum on Robinson, and the passed Karl by a large margin, and indeed almost passed Adanac for second place. Meanwhile Karl dropped to fourth place and out of the money. Katie was the only player besides 99of9 to correctly back Robinson, and as a result rose from eleventh to ninth. Were it not for a couple of "nothing to lose" bets in rounds six and seven, Katie would have finished fifth. (Which, alas, would have paid the same as fourth or eleventh.)