On Wed, 24 Oct 2012, John R. Dennison wrote:

> One of the netrek folk discovered that Dan Damouth passed away September 19,
> 2010. I don't know if you were as close to him as some of us were, but if you
> were, I think you have to know.

That is indeed very sad news. I had no idea. I saw your post on facebook 
and I will say here what I said there.

I played with him for many years, both in pickup games but also on 
numerous teams. I remember him being very competitive and a very skilled 
player, especially in his aggressive CA. He could get quite angry if the 
games didn't go the way he wanted but as soon as the adrenaline had 
dropped down a bit he was a cool guy and friends with most people again.

Back in 1998 we created a team of new hockey stars (him, me, von, rizzi 
and balcerski) to beat the famous team In Cold Milk who had won pretty 
much all seasons prior to that. In Cold Milk had superstars like Ken 
Hanson, Nathan Doss, Tom Holub, Andrew Yeh, Mike Vitale, Taric Mirza, 
Felix Gallo and, of course, the best hockey player ever: Steve Franks 
(Data). We developed a new kind of hockey to counter these great players, 
where every team member was a highly skilled dogfighter and therefore 
could take on opponents in a one-on-one situation. We focused on playing 
bigger ships (one BB, one CA, 2-3 SCs) and won the season handidly.

He was always against stacking and that is probably why he took the 
initiative to create the anti-ICM team to beat the hockey legends once and 
for all. I remember him telling me time and time again I should leave the 
Jitesh stack in INL and WNL and create another competitive team. In 
hindsight, of course he was right.

Me and Dan had a similar philosophy on how bronco should be played and 
because of that we also played in the draft league together on several 
teams. We won that league too, focusing on dogfighting and controlling 
space. I remember Dan being very good at coming up with strategies to use 
aganist all other opponents. He was also very good at including everyone 
in games. Many coaches would stack their teams in the draft league but not 
Dan. He made sure everyone got to play the same amount of games.

He also did his best to keep the hockey scene alive, scheduling clue 
games. The last saved mail I have from him is from December 2004 where 
he's asking me go join a hockey clue game. I wish I would get another one 
just like that right now.

While I never met Dan other than online, I surely will miss him.

-- 
Niclas