Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Trivia Contest was a Big Success

by Crazy Ivan

Well we just wrapped our first Wednesday Night trivia game and judging by its popularity I think we'll be having another.  Things worked out great and the only thing that would have made it more fun would have been more contestants.

We had four players this week but several more showed up a little late and couldn't quite make it into the game.  Smaster had to leave right when we started, Rotscale and Jake showed up a little too late to make it in, Downtown was having some computer problems, Phil couldn't stay on long enough...

All that being said, even with only four players it was mad fun.  MMFL, Mantis, CMC and Kickstand all went head to head.  I'd written 25 questions for the night, 12 for round one, 12 for round 2 and 1 for "Final Jeopardy".

The questions were divided into three categories in both rounds.  In round one we had Series, Moves & Grooves and Myachi History.  Since Mantis showed up earliest we let him start things off.  The questions in the first round were pretty easy so it was more about who typed fastest than who had all the answers in that one.  MMFL, as it turns out, is a heck of a typist so he jumped out to an early lead.

By the beginning of the 2nd round it looked like MMFL might just run away with it.  Mantis was keeping close behind him, but Kickstand was lagging back and CMC couldn't beat anyone to the punch through the whole first round.

The second round changed things significantly.  The categories were Myachi Masters, Pakisacks and Myachi Stores and the difficulty level went way up on those ones.  That gave everyone a chance to even up the scores so by the end of round two we had a pretty tight 4 way race.  CMC managed to answer a couple fo the high point value questions and wound up in 4th place with 1000 points.  Kickstand went on a late rally and got 2300.  MMFL was in 2nd with 2600 and Mantis managed to sneak into the lead toward the end with 3100 points.

There were some problems along the way, of course.  It was kind of weird how Tinychat wouldn't all show us the same screen so on Mantis' screen it might have looked like he answered first and on MMFL's screen it might look like he answered first.  We decided that to make it fair we'd have to go with whatever was on my screen so there was a little suspense after each question while everyone tried to figure out who actually won the point.

To make matters even worse, if two people answered at the exact same time, one of the answers wouldn't appear at all.  This left a few of the guys thinking they'd answered even though the only person that could see their answer was them.  Made for some frustrating moments for people who probably really deserved the points but we got it all worked out in the end.

So we reach the end of the 2nd round with 2100 points separating 1st and 4th.  We did it Final Jeopardy style where everyone pmed me their wagers once I revealed the category: "Myachi.com".

Took a minute to get all the pms together and once I did, I gave everyone the question.  Everyone pmed me their answers and then I went from 4th to 1st and did the slow suspenseful reveal like they do on Jeopardy.

So the question was: "The first version of Myachi.com was created by which Myachi Master?"

Unfortunately for them, our 3rd and 4th place finishers got the wrong answer.  CMC guessed Butter and Kickstand guessed The Deacon.  Both very solid guesses, but both incorrect.  Butter and Deacon combined efforts to fashion our 2nd website, but neither had a hand in the first one.

That left MMFL and Mantis, both giants in the game of Myachi.  Mantis went into the final round leading by 500 so we went to MMFL first.  He'd gotten the correct answer (Kid Myach if you're curious) and bet everything so he did as much as he could.  His score doubled to 5200 points meaning that if Mantis (a) got the answer wrong or (b) wagered less than 2100 points, MMFL would be our winner.

Unfortunately for MMFL, Mantis is good at Myachi trivia and he's also pretty good at math.  He got Kid Myach as his answer and wagered exactly 2101 which put him in the lead by one point.

It was a great game with a great one point finish and I'm willing to speak for everyone when I say we all had a lot of fun with it (even the guy who had to write all the questions!).  There's no doubt in my mind that we'll be doing it again next week as well.

So if you're up for it, hit us up on tinychat next Wednesday.  We'll be on from 6 to 9 but we won't be starting the trivia game until 7 O'clock.  The more the merrier and remember, if you're a regular reader of this blog you're already in a good spot to win.

And in case you're curious, unlike Jeopardy, Mantis doesn't actually get $5,201 and MMFL, Kickstand and CMC don't get any fabulous parting gifts.  Mantis did win a 5.0 of his choice, though, and not even Watson won one of those on Jeopardy.

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