1/1/10
Waking up this morning was a difficult task. New Year’s Eve in ABQ was awesome. New Year’s Day, however, was painful. I woke up at 9:30, and was ready to head out to Vegas. I met up with Clovis’s Come Honor at the sunport, and we couldn’t wait to get to the Flamingo. FYI, if you ever fly Southwest on the 1st of January, make sure you ask about the complementary bloody mary, definitely a nice way to start a trip to Vegas.

We arrived an hour or so later, and caught a cab to the Flamingo. It was obvious right away this was the place for beer pong players. Everywhere you looked, there was another big name in the game. I felt a little bad for the unknowing tourists checking in. The old guy next to me at the registration desk: “What’s with all these drunk kids?” They had no idea what kind of vacation they were in for.

After finally getting our rooms, it was time to register for the tourney. We stood in line to get our schedule of games, then we were free to roam until the East vs. West tournament. Thanks to the guys at SoCal and Maryland for putting together the first major event at the WSOBP. Both Southwest teams competed in the tournament.

Surprisingly, Kyle and Gary of Visitng Grandma performed very poorly, bowing out at 0-2. AJ and myself (Pwn Stars) thought we might actually make a go of it, going 2-0 in the first rounds of the tournament. Unfortunately we couldn’t keep up with ourselves, and lost 2 games (including one to Paul Puszkarczuk of Foul Mouthed Whores fame. NorCal eventually took the whole thing, so good job West Coast!


1/2/10
Day 1 of the main event was amazing. Seeing so many of the big names and just so much beer pong going on in the same place…what an experience! Visiting Grandma finally got out of their rough start, but still only managed a 3-3 for the day. AJ and I, even though we got incredibly lucky draws and faced none of the big names, just couldn’t pull it together. Let me correct that; AJ was on point, and I couldn’t expect better from him. For some reason I just couldn’t make a cup. In our last game of the day, AJ sunk 8, Clawless sunk 0. Don’t ask me how happy I was at that point.

After cooling off in the room for an hour, it was time for the Singles Tournament. AJ, Kyle, and I were all signed up to compete in the 256-man double-elim bracket. Kyle and AJ had lost their touch, and bowed out after only three rounds. I have no idea how I got my shot back, but I’ve never thrown so well in my life as I did in that tournament. After a shaky first round, I went 5-0 in very short, high-percentage games. I found out later that one of my games was against SoCal’s co-founder Peter, which gave me a pretty sweet confidence boost. Unfortunately, confidence isn’t enough to hang with the big boys for long. I was out two rounds later after facing Michael Orr and Nick Manfredo.

After the tourney was over, AJ and I decided to hit up O’Sheas for some food and some pong. The games there were pretty fun, though I am just about certain they are not regulation sized tables. The general agreement seemed to be that they were about 2-3 inches too high. Not enough of a difference for a real pro, but for us terribad players, it made for some bad shooting.

1/3/10
Day 2….Day 2. I hate Day 2. Nobody prepared me for Day 2. After AJ and I lost our first two games due to malnourished shaky hands (and me just being absolutely terrible), we mentally checked out of the tournament and proceeded to make some pretty terrible decisions involving Jaeger, Vodka, and Jack. I honestly have no idea of everything that occurred on this day. Our second-to-last game, against two girls, is almost entirely a blur, and I have no recollection at all of our final game. I know we lost both games, because that’s what the stats say. Advice to my next year self: party after the tournament, not during.

We then decided to sleep off our belligerence before playing in some Pong-N-Goes that night. Unfortunately, we somehow forgot to set an alarm. Six hours later I woke up, much too late for the Pong-N-Goes. I was still extremely drunk, and wandered over to O’Sheas for some BK goodness. After wandering around the tables for a while, I decided that I just needed a full night’s sleep and went back to the room.

1/4/10
Not a single New Mexico team made Day 3, which was a bummer. We’re really going to have to work on our collective game for next year. Fortunately, Arizona was doing amazingly well, with 4 or 5 teams advancing (one of them undefeated!). Nate’s Shirts Don’t Fit was the 3 seed, so at least the southwest had someone to root for.

Unfortunately, Shirts run reached an end when it faced God Given. Now, I usually don’t make it a habit to talk trash about people or teams I haven’t met, but one particular player from team God Given probably has the most classless way of playing pong I’ve ever seen. Trash talk is one thing. It’s part of the game to get in your opponents heads and throw off their shot. This guy took his particular strategy a bit too far in my opinion. During almost every single one of his opponents’ shots, he would pass the edge of the table and walk right up to them to talk trash. Not only is this against the rules, it’s downright unsportsmanlike. Stay on your side of the table, plain and simple.

It didn’t stop there, though. Another of this player’s favorite tactics was to slap his opponent’s shot away during rebuttal. In his game vs. Nate’s Shirts, he smacked a thrown ball away, taking the one cup penalty (while seeming to forget that the player whose ball he slapped gets to choose the penalty cup). Now I can see the strategy in this (because hey, who wouldn’t get pissed?), but there’s a reason interference is against the rules. I’m a firm believer in karma, and my faith was rewarded later in the tournament, when God Given faced Gossip Girl . After making the last cup, class-man slapped the first rebuttal shot at 5 cups, taking the penalty. What happened next was a thing of beauty. Gossip Girl made every rebuttal shot, and then went on to win the game. Follow the rules and maybe you’d be $50,000 richer. Sorry for the rant, but this guy really makes the rest of us in the pong world look bad, at least in my opinion.

Anyway, Gossip Girl went on from that game to take 3rd against Since Sliced Bread, who in turn finally lost to Smashing Time, who took their second Series win in as many years. Once again, despite so many promising teams, the west coast couldn’t take the coveted title.

All in all, despite the losses, this was a great tournament. Billy, Duncan, and Skinny are awesome at what they do, and I hope they keep at it for a long time ahead. As for us in the southwest, we have a long year of preparation ahead of us. We’re gonna have to get started.

-Clawless