World Block 25

The World Block 25 was the first successful World Block in history. It happened in 25 MB, in modern day Zimbabwe

Context
The World Block 25 was originally planned by [] (then leader of Blokus Cabal) as well as many other members of the Blokus Cabal.

Purpose
The purpose of the event was to help generate publicity for Blokus, and to provide a community for highly skilled Blokus players.

Location Selection
Although [] was originally planning to host the first World Block in India with a burgeoning Blokus community, he decided against it due to travel costs. Instead, he hosted it in the headquarters of the Blokus Cabal, which was in modern-day Zimbabwe.

Advertisement
The Blokus Cabal's members and affiliates put posters and paid for promotions throughout the entire continent of Africa, which would eventually lead to over twenty thousand (20,000) spectators showing up at the event itself.

Membership
All 64 invinted Blokus players who were invited showed up to the event, the most notable of whom was then-unknown Blokus master Christian Potter.

Tournament Format
Unlike later World Blocks, World Block 25 was a round robin tournament where every contestant played against every other contestant at least once, and the contestant with the most victories overall won the tournament.

Due to the format of the tournament, the event took two weeks to complete.

Prizes
After the failed event of World Block 24 where only 7 of the 64 invited members attended, the Blokus Cabal organizers realized that they had to provide some form of incentive for the players to actually attend. In order to motivate competitors to attend, the Blokus Cabal gave the winner who had won first place a sum of gold roughly equivalent in value to 50,000$, the winner in second place would win 25,000$, and each successive place would win half as much money, until 10th place.