ZENITH 2014 - Aug 2-3 - Brooklyn, NY

[Shears]

Komo thinks we should just do one giant round robin. 56 person round robin pool. Probably wouldn't take much longer than how long we already took.

 

[KoRoBeNiKi]

Once the full results show up I'll do allllllll the shoutouts.

Later

 

[kys]

Something else came to mind that I wanted to ask you guys about.

So during the stream, there were numerous times where the commentators were talking about the bracket - who was playing next, games that happened off stream, etc. - but they didn't really know what was going on. This happens a lot, not just for Zenith but most other tournaments as well.

I'm not bashing the commentators. It's obviously not their fault as they're busy going working the games. How hard would it be for someone to walk around during bracket, get live updates, fill out an updated bracket with those updates, and inform the commentators? As a stream viewer, it would be nice to know what's going on off stream. This can't be a new idea, so why doesn't it happen, especially at bigger events like Zenith?

 

[Sedda]

They just need too have the bracket on challonge and the commentators can pull it up on their phones.

 

[Cobrevolution]

Now which part do you have a problem with?

this part:
"Average the seedings out to get the seeded list of entrants to be used"
because that doesn't get very accurate past the first 3 or 4 spots, in my opinion. like i said, 2s and 3s could easily beat each other. and there were multiple viewpoints on who should be where.

i suppose i do not understand why it's better to have a hand in every matchup, which is what this method does.


and this:
"If any of the top N + P seeded players from the same crew / region are playing each other then they can swap places with adjacent seeds."

i think that if you're going to move things in bracket, priority should be preventing people from playing others who were in their pool, and not take region into account. you've already separated pools by region, and you dictate too much by disallowing that in bracket. it's a major - let the players play. (still, same regions/crews/mu's happened...because our community is so small.)


and this:
"No more region / crew adjustments.
Do not move any players that get a bye.
Move players so that in a perfectly played out bracket, the number of people from the same pool playing each other is minimized.
When making adjustments to satisfy the above, minimize the distance that people move away from their original seeds."

because i feel these rules essentially attempt to make the bracket fulfill the seeding and thus determine the tournament with the least amount of variance. it should be the players who determine the results, with as little outside help as possible.

i am apparently alone in these thoughts. i'd like to see a top24 bracket with the random seeding as i had described, with 1 seeds getting byes but being placed anywhere, and any 2s and 3s playing each other. maybe even two or three, and then generate wins and losses by initial seeding, and see how different the results are, or if they're generally the same.

 

[Herbert Von Karajan]

this part:
"Average the seedings out to get the seeded list of entrants to be used"
because that doesn't get very accurate past the first 3 or 4 spots, in my opinion. like i said, 2s and 3s could easily beat each other. and there were multiple viewpoints on who should be where.

i suppose i do not understand why it's better to have a hand in every matchup, which is what this method does.

Solution: After each tournament, only allow the people that seeded the closest to do seeding next time

and this:
"If any of the top N + P seeded players from the same crew / region are playing each other then they can swap places with adjacent seeds."

i think that if you're going to move things in bracket, priority should be preventing people from playing others who were in their pool, and not take region into account.

This is in the section talking about how to seed pools, not about bracket. Good job on the english comprehension there.

and this:
"No more region / crew adjustments.
Do not move any players that get a bye.
Move players so that in a perfectly played out bracket, the number of people from the same pool playing each other is minimized.
When making adjustments to satisfy the above, minimize the distance that people move away from their original seeds."

because i feel these rules essentially attempt to make the bracket fulfill the seeding and thus determine the tournament with the least amount of variance. it should be the players who determine the results, with as little outside help as possible.

wat

maybe i should clairify, "minimize the distance that people move away from their original seeds." means the seed they get assigned after the pools are done, not how they were seeded into the pools to begin with.

 

[Cobrevolution]

Solution: After each tournament, only allow the people that seeded the closest to do seeding next time

and what if, at the next even, those people that seeded the closest, become the people that seeded the furthest? do we get yet another group of people that might make the same mistakes?

so, do groups of players instead of numbered lists avoid those kinds of discrepancies? can we just say, here are the 1 seeds for this event, place them in these pools with these 2 seeds and these 3 seeds? why is this an issue?

This is in the section talking about how to seed pools, not about bracket. Good job on the english comprehension there.

my b.

maybe i should clairify, "minimize the distance that people move away from their original seeds." means the seed they get assigned after the pools are done, not how they were seeded into the pools to begin with.

use an example from the bracket to explain this then, because i'm probably misunderstanding it.

 

[Herbert Von Karajan]

use an example from the bracket to explain this then, because i'm probably misunderstanding it.

http://challonge.com/zenith2014seeding64

The name of each player is
x__Py.Sz

Where y is the pool, z is the place they got in that pool, and x is their overall seeding taken from the final pool results.
Notice that challonge puts the actual bracket seeding next to where the names initially appear.
By default, winner of Seed 16 vs Seed 17 goes on to play Seed 1.
Seed 16, 17, and 1, are all from pool 1. So in order to make sure people from the same pool avoid playing each other again, we need to swap 16 and 17 with other players. The players swapped in should be as close to 16th and 17th seed as possible, while still trying to avoid same pool matchups later in the bracket, hence we used 15 and 19.

so, do groups of players instead of numbered lists avoid those kinds of discrepancies? can we just say, here are the 1 seeds for this event, place them in these pools with these 2 seeds and these 3 seeds? why is this an issue?

because its not fair for the best player in the 4th seed group to not end up in the same pool as the worst player in the 3rd seed group. BECAUSE since seeding is imperfect, the best player in the 4th seed may actually be better than the worst player in the 3 seed.
If the best player in the 4th seeds is better than the worst player in the 3rd seeds, but you use randomized pool placing, they may end up with the best 3rd seed and greatly reduce their chance of getting to bracket, even though they deserve to be there.

The important parts are the boundary cases, and the best way to ensure fairness at the boundaries is to seed it numerically.

 

[Cobrevolution]

and all of this switching comes about as a result of seeding pools in that serpentine manner, right? and making each pool reflect the seeding.

without serpentine seeding, imagine if pool 1 consisted of kero, battlecow and koro (high, mid and low seeds in pools): would kero have been placed in i position, with bcow and koro being in A? or would they have been in different places?

i know what i don't like about the entire thing and it has to do with seeding 1-55 ahead of time and building the pools/bracket in that way. if everything is going to just go 98% according to the plan, well ****...

 

[Herbert Von Karajan]

and all of this switching comes about as a result of seeding pools in that serpentine manner, right?

If you disagree with the serpentine seeding of pools, then you are actually disagreeing with this:

If N players make it out of pools, then the player who isn't seeded in top N that should be given the best chance to make top N should be the player seeded N+1.​

i know what i don't like about the entire thing and it has to do with seeding 1-55 ahead of time and building the pools/bracket in that way.

Lets not seed anyone. Let it be random. It would be great if Boom, Nintendude, Wizzrobe, The Z, Kero, all end up in the same pool.

 

[Cobrevolution]

that literally isn't what I am proposing at all. I will create an example when I get home, and I'd like to hear why it would be considered "unfair"

 

[clubbadubba]

lets say we do your random seeding for 2nd's vs 3rd's and we get:

9 v 17
10 v 18
11 v 19
12 v 20
13 v 21
14 v 22
15 v 23
16 v 24

for the first round of bracket. So what we've accomplished here is made it more desirable to be the 16th best player in the tournament than the 9th best. And more desirable to be the worst player in the bracket than the 17th best player in the bracket. You've also made it extremely unlikely that anyone of the players seeded 17th through 24th gets a real chance to prove themselves in the first round. This is a pretty bad overall setup.

Your real beef is that you don't believe people can be accurately seeded to within their exact correct spot. And you know what, you're right, which is exactly why seeding the bracket in a number system as opposed to a "these 8 players are group 2, these 8 are group 3." If we can't accurately seed to exactly the correct spot, then it is EXTREMELY unfair to have an arbitrary jump in difficulty between any 2 consecutive seeds. In the case above, the difference between between seeded 16th and 17th is HUGE, but like you said the chances that we get it completely right between which player's are 16 and up and which players are 17 and below are very small. So, expecting that seeds may be off by a couple of spots, it makes more sense to do something like:

9 v 24
10 v 23
11 v 22
12 v 21
13 v 20
14 v 19
15 v 18
16 v 17

Because, in this case, whenever you're seed changes by 1, it just means your opponent's seed changes by 1. So in fact, the best way to protect players from a bad seed screwing them over is to seed the bracket in the traditional way. In the case of these tournaments, they also try to avoid pitting you against someone from your pool in the bracket when it can be helped, which does result in some unfairness (like seed 12 playing seed 9 in losers while seed 13 gets to play seed 16) because as I said any bracket ordering that is not the traditional one will have fairness issues. However, I think people would agree that it is more desirable in our case to avoid playing the same people in bracket than it is to play the optimally fair schedule.

 

[Shears]

"That combo is not allowed in 6 states. We're lucky we're in you know New York where they don't care about morals."
-Battlecow on Boom comboing Kero in GF

 

[Cobrevolution]

clubba, that's operating under the assumption you've seeded a whole list of players.

here's what i just did: i looked at the list of players i made with people whom i considered to be "1" seeds; that is, they should not share a pool with other 1 seeds and i felt they were definitely able to beat the combined 16 other seeds. i then put that list into random.org/lists. it sorta it numerically. i then did the same thing - a list of people i considered "2" and "3" seeds who should not share a pool with other 2 or 3 seeds and who would beat the other 8 3 seeds, or which 3s would fare well against other 3 seeds.

i did not pre-seed, i merely grouped. after randomizing three lists, i received this result:

Pool A: Firo, ceasar, shears
Pool B: Wizzy, bcow, cobr
Pool C: Fireblaster, karajan, knitephox
Pool D: Z, killer, maliki
Pool E: Boom, stranded, combo blaze
Pool F: SK, revan, skyfire
Pool G: Kero, nintendude, koro
Pool H: LD, clubba, komo

there is only one instance of commonality here, and that's between steve and javi. i think separating crews is better than regions. for example, firo and ceasar are both NY, but they've never met up and played and have only been at 3 similar tourneys - both apex 2013 and 2014 and this past zenith. if it were ceasar and me, or ceasar and fireblaster, that would give me more incentive to movehim. steve would be best switched with clubba in pool h, should the desire come to switch him.

because i did not seed in a list, there is no idea of the strongest 1 seed playing the weakest 2 seed who will play the strongest 3 seed. and there is no direct transition into bracket that will further be determined by the pre seeded pools.

i assumed everything went according to plan, with no upsets. i then put the lists back into the RNG and recorded the 2s vs 3s, and the final list randomly generated brings us the 1 seed with the bye. here is where you change who played who in pools.

shears v revan, winner faces z
koro v karajan, winner faces wizzy
cobr v ceasar, winner faces fireblaster
knitephox v nintendude, winner faces sk
komo v bcow, winner faces boom
maliki v stranded, winner faces kero
skyfire v clubba, winner faces LD
combo blaze v killer, winner faces firo

this list is heavily populated with similar crew and some same pool stuff, so i would make these switches

cobr v revan, winner faces z
koro v stranded, winner faces wizzy
skyfire v bcow, winner faces sk
knitephox v nintendude, winner faces fireblaster
komo v ceasar, winner faces boom
maliki v karajan, winner faces firo
shears v clubba, winner faces kero
combo blaze v killer, winner faces LD

i built this bracket (ignore the numbers, took it off a site) and it's actually not bad in my opinion. i filled it out with how i think it would've gone down, 1st round excluded. there were only two instances of upsets i penned in. i also did not do loser's bracket, but a rule of thumb i'd use is to avoid same-pooled players from playing in W1, W2, and L1.

Spoiler

now, this is just one instance of grouped random seeding that worked out like this. of course, it takes a bit of meddling as i did above. but i think this absence of predetermination is good.

and, of course, i could always re-run the lists, and we will wind up with something totally different. and yes, wizzy could end up facing boom in W3. but that is a direct result of random placement.

the reason i think it works is, quite simply, this tournament had many many sets that could have gone either way. boom was the only definitive person who was gonna win. but could stranded beat wizzy? could clubba beat kero? could LD beat killer? could fireblaster beat nintendude? i'd answer yes to all these, and i'd hope that anyone who watched the tourney would agree with me on a point like that.

does this prove anything? not really, because this style of pools and bracket didn't happen, but it does show that it doesn't totally **** everyone up if there's no specific seeding.

the worst case scenario: boom, kero, wizzy and z end up on one side of the bracket. then you have a situation like pool 1 at apex. you have to make a change, otherwise it's very lopsided. maybe switch wizzy and z's pods for firo's and sk's. very little manipulation, much fairer bracket, no seeding involved.


and again, i'm not saying this is what we should use, cuz apparently it rubs everyone the wrong way. still, i'd like to hear why this is an objectively bad way of organizing pools and bracket.

 

[Herbert Von Karajan]

So, expecting that seeds may be off by a couple of spots, it makes more sense to do something like:

9 v 24
10 v 23
11 v 22
12 v 21
13 v 20
14 v 19
15 v 18
16 v 17

This is how challonge does it. But each one of those players are from the same pool lol

still, i'd like to hear why this is an objectively bad way of organizing pools and bracket.

(1) Because it is entirely subjective.
(2) Violates this:

If N players make it out of pools, then the player who isn't seeded in the top N that should be given the best chance to make it to the top N should be the player seeded N+1.
​

If you disagree with the view in #2, then you should just argue for purely random seeding.

When you create groups of 1 seeds and 2 seeds, etc, you are seeding people. When you transition from pools to bracket, you are seeding people 1 through N. Since you have no qualms seeding the bracket just by how you feel how good people are, just do it before the pools then let the actual results seed the bracket. It's pretty simple.

 

[Cobrevolution]

(1) Because it is entirely subjective.

seeding is only objective if you use results from tournaments. otherwise, it's all judgment. LD had one tourney result, and he got 3rd seed over Kero, who has a number of wins and good placements. to erase this discrepancy of judging who gets 3rd and who gets 4th or 5th, i place them both in the same tier.

(2) Violates this:
If N players make it out of pools, then the player who isn't seeded in the top N that should be given the best chance to make it to the top N should be the player seeded N+1.

okay, i don't get this. does it mean, if 3 players make it out of pools, then the player who isn't seeded in the top 3 that should be given the best chance to make it should be the player seeded 3+1. 4? the 4th seed in the pool? for zenith, nobody knew who half of the entrants were, so you're really just going down the list of entrants at a certain point and plugging names in as you go along. which means there's not really any care given to "the player who should be given the best chance to make it out" because pretty much nobody knows who the hell he is.

When you create groups of 1 seeds and 2 seeds, etc, you are seeding people.

but to a much less restrictive extent, and not in relation to themselves. i'm not grouping the 1 seeds together then ranking them 1-8.

Since you have no qualms seeding the bracket just by how you feel how good people are,

i'm not seeding the bracket based off how good i think people are. it's organized exactly as zenith with the exception of pre seeding. i took all of the players who got 2nd in pools and generated matches against those who got 3rd. the winners would face a 1st placer.


and yes, i am a total advocate of random bracket placement, but i know it will never be used. but still, with the example above, why was it specifically bad, if you feel that way?

 

[clubbadubba]

Cobr you can't just dismiss my example because players were seeded numerically. It doesn't matter at all whether someone actually put numbers next to players, there is still an ordered list of which player's are better. And given that some players are better than others, and pseudo random seeding like you want can result in some ****ed up **** like I posted, its bad.

Your method is basically saying to treat all 2's and all 3's equally, which is just so arbitrary. For one its just not the case that 2's will all be around the same level and 3's will all be around the same level. Bad assumption. If in your random seeding killer or stranded played boom 2nd round, that would be pretty bad. The goal of the tournament seeding is so that at each step up in placing (17th, 13th, 9th, etc.) the players get better and better. If you do random seeding, this is not going to happen. 2 players who should be finishing in 9th could play each other in the round of 13 in losers, which means someone who doesn't deserve to be tied for 9th will get 9th. Expand that example to every placing and all of a sudden the place you got in a tournament means a whole lot less. The thing about seeding correctly is that if the seeding is wrong, players will have a chance to prove that its wrong. Someone who is seeded to make it only to 13th if all goes well will get a chance to play someone who is seeded to make 9th, so it only goes according to the "predetermined plan" if the plan was based on correct seeding.

seeding is only objective if you use results from tournaments. otherwise, it's all judgment. LD had one tourney result, and he got 3rd seed over Kero, who has a number of wins and good placements. to erase this discrepancy of judging who gets 3rd and who gets 4th or 5th, i place them both in the same tier.

LD's seeding was inaccurate, and as a result he didn't get top 8. For the 1's who's seeding was good, they showed it by beating other players who had a case to be a 1 seed.

okay, i don't get this. does it mean, if 3 players make it out of pools, then the player who isn't seeded in the top 3 that should be given the best chance to make it should be the player seeded 3+1. 4? the 4th seed in the pool? for zenith, nobody knew who half of the entrants were, so you're really just going down the list of entrants at a certain point and plugging names in as you go along. which means there's not really any care given to "the player who should be given the best chance to make it out" because pretty much nobody knows who the hell he is.

24 players make it out of pools. Therefore the 25th player should be given the best chance to make it out of pools. How is this done? By putting him in the same pool with player 24.

and yes, i am a total advocate of random bracket placement, but i know it will never be used. but still, with the example above, why was it specifically bad, if you feel that way?

just 1 obvious example: stranded, killer, or nintendude may have to play z in losers, while other worse 2 seeds may only have to play fireblaster at the same juncture (which would be the juncture of getting into top 8 btw). Why should it be easier for me, karajan, or czar to get into top 8 than for stranded and killer, given that they are obviously the superior players?

 

[Nixernator]

As an interested outside observer, I'd just like to say that battlecrow did some great commentary in the finals. Get that man more mics.

 

[Herbert Von Karajan]

okay, i don't get this.

Which is exactly why im done

 

[Cobrevolution]

It doesn't matter at all whether someone actually put numbers next to players, there is still an ordered list of which player's are better.

i'm not dismissing your example but if you don't make an ordered list, then...there isn't one that's concrete. any number of plays in a group of 1 seeds could take 2nd place, and any number of players in 2 can beat the rest, and the 3s have good chances against the 2s (for zenith, anyway).

Your method is basically saying to treat all 2's and all 3's equally, which is just so arbitrary. For one its just not the case that 2's will all be around the same level and 3's will all be around the same level.

i feel like this tournament was a good example of how close in skill so many people are, and how one simple switch in bracket could make a huge difference.

If you do random seeding, this is not going to happen.

i do not think this is true, especially if you look at the bracket i made. we still have boom v kero in WS and wizzy vs sk in WS. like i said, i didn't do loser's, but those are 4 players guaranteed 5th who were seeded 5th or better initially by pretty much everyone.

someone who doesn't deserve to be tied for 9th will get 9th.

how do you judge who "deserves" to be tied for 9th or 13th or 17th? do you think ceasar deserved last in bracket? or that LD deserved 9th? if "no," they should've been seeded better, shouldn't they? and if the response is "yes, they deserve their spots because they lost to x and y," then i don't see how much different that is than stranded and firo playing in L2. you should win regardless, right?

LD's seeding was inaccurate, and as a result he didn't get top 8.

it's a strange case of inaccuracy. if he moved to the 8 spot, for instance, he would have had to have played fireblaster, then wizzy, then z. and if he played like he usually does, he would have made it to WS. and been guaranteed 5th.

but this kind of discussion can be made for practically anyone, can't it? so there's going to be inaccuracies all over the place, and it seems like players are gonna get ****ed anyway.

24 players make it out of pools. Therefore the 25th player should be given the best chance to make it out of pools. How is this done? By putting him in the same pool with player 24.

and once the 24th spot was taken, everything becomes muddled. annex was seeded 25th. and palmtrixx and slavin, both of whom i've played, i think might go even with him, or possibly even win. same with the kid who played as studstill. or swift. and if ONLY the 25th player is the one given the best chance, that seems unfair to the next 7 people who aren't given that chance.

for sake of argument, eliminate annex from this event altogether, and hectohertz as he didn't even play anyway. palmtrixx is the next highest seed. it was at this point that those who did seeding pretty much just ran down the list of entrants. so really, if you registered earlier, you were probably getting a higher seed. so who the hell is the 25th best player?

just 1 obvious example: stranded, killer, or nintendude may have to play z in losers, while other worse 2 seeds may only have to play fireblaster at the same juncture (which would be the juncture of getting into top 8 btw). Why should it be easier for me, karajan, or czar to get into top 8 than for stranded and killer, given that they are obviously the superior players?

by the same token, why should the "superior" players be treated as such and given the easier time overall? if you think a bad bracket for a lesser skilled player is fine, then you should think a bad bracket for a good player is also fine. why is it okay for someone who is on the cusp of breaking into good placements always getting shafted because he plays a 1 or 2 seed second round?


i get it. players who play well should be rewarded, and players who don't play as well as the others in the group should have a harder time. but building brackets with the express intent of giving the top players the absolute easiest time to the finals eliminates a certain sense of competiton in my eyes.

i'll stop dragging this out now.

 

[Shears]

Should the best player win?
Should the second best player get second?
Should the third best get third?
Should the Nth best get Nth?

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Bracket design isn't built from the first round to grand finals. Its built from grand finals and worked backwards to the first round. Most people aren't aware of all the math involved in bracket structure, ordering, placement, etc because even if you google for all this math, you won't find much explaining it all. Trust me, I just recently finished making bracket software and I had to learn all about the math used within it and theres a lot more than most people are aware of when it comes to bracket design. It is this math (which math is pretty indisputable except for maybe where to apply it and which set of math to apply) that builds brackets in the way they are. Answering yes to the above questions is how we build the bracket. In order for the best player to win, we assume they will win against the second player a majority of times if they played an infinite number of matches (designing things based on outliers or exceptions is foolish). So to assume these best case scenarios means winners finals should have 1v2. If we take a step back and add the next ranked players in we get 1vX and 2vY where X and Y are the two players eliminated from the round before that were worse than 2 (greater than 2 on the number scale) and better than 2*2+1 (less than 2*2+1 on the number scale) giving us X|Y=3 and X|Y=4. Now which one equals 3 and which one equals 4? Well optimal placement should put 1v4 and 2v3 because if we were to switch them then the reward of being 1 isn't better than 2 since they both have a matchup against a player ranked 2 behind them and a fixed offset gives no benefit to the better player, encouraging alting and throwing matches for bracket manipulation and getting better matchups. So we reach 1v4 and 2v3. If we keep working backwards until the bracket has enough matches for all participants, we get a bracket that looks like the brackets we have. In keeping the answers to the questions true and extrapolating it to all matches in the bracket and working backwards, we end up with the brackets we have and this is the optimal way of running them. Random seeding, or even pseudo random seeding could leave us with brackets of 1v16 in the championship which is hard to agree with. Your example might work out well but using that same logic an infinite number of times, we can get brackets that don't work out well and the idea behind math is a solution that is favorable infinity times. The pool seeding needs to done to ensure that brackets are optimal. Its unfair the 16 doesn't win any games because he always plays 1 first round when he could potentially beat 10-15. Sure, but its more unfair if the 5 doesn't win any games because he had to play 1 since 16 got to play 11.

 

[Sedda]

random seeding? isn't that what the YOLO tournament is for?

 

[Shears]

All Zenith 2014 YOLO tournament results:

http://tournaments.supersmashbros64.com/viewTournament.aspx?id=72
Random character lock
Best of 1
1 stock
Hyrule
Studstill approved items set to very high
Alcohol consumption encouraged

http://tournaments.supersmashbros64.com/viewTournament.aspx?id=71
http://tournaments.supersmashbros64.com/viewTournament.aspx?id=70
Random character lock
Random stage
Best of 1
1 stock
Alcohol consumption encouraged

Ignore the losers part of the brackets as it was single elimination. I'll change the brackets to single elim and have it remove the losers from them later.

 

[Smeagol]

So, where can I watch the finals of this tourney?

 

[Battlecow]

So, where can I watch the finals of this tourney?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1CxLxqiIkI&list=UU5WNBHwgluAwWJE5QV-5_TA

 

[KoRoBeNiKi]

I haven't seen a single koroface from this tournament

I am a bit disappointed

 

[Olikus]

loooool i had totally forgot saskes epic koroface meme from apex 2012. Someone pls find it!

 

[KoRoBeNiKi]

loooool i had totally forgot saskes epic koroface meme from apex 2012. Someone pls find it!

10korofaces

 

[Combo Blaze]

where the shoutout thread

I dont want to read shoutouts in between nerds arguing about brackets

 

[Nintendude]

http://smashboards.com/threads/zenith-2014-smash-64-results.363362/

 

[AthensHorseParty]

Hey I dunno if anybody's still checking this thread but I just wanna say: A) I'm not dead and B) even though I got destroyed in my pool I had a great time. I wanna thank @ Shears and @ clubbadubba especially for being cool and giving me a lot of advice and warm up matches and ****.

If you're wondering why I basically disappeared it's because basically I planned that whole trip out very very poorly. It cost me like twice as much money to get up to NYC as I thought it would because of all the extra time sitting in traffic and the tolls were all way worse than I thought they would be. I'm never ever taking 95 up from DC again on a Friday, holy ****. I checked my bank account after my pool and realized I was really dangerously close to not being able to make it back and I kinda started freaking out. I went to get my car out of the parking garage because at that point every dollar was going to count and I literally had to plan out the route with the fewest possible tolls to get back to GA. I really really wish I had stayed and hung out and played more friendlys and just came to watch the next day but when I got back to my brother's apartment I had literally just spent my last dollar on gas and was running on empty for like 20 miles. I had to borrow money from him for gas just to get to the house in Decatur that I'm staying at now. It was ****ing nuts and pretty intensely stressful.

I'm about to get a way better job hopefully, and I usually end up in the North East for music stuff at least once a year. If I'm in a better financial situation come January I'm definitely gonna try to make it to Apex just to spectate/train up because it really was an amazing experience playing against people who are so good. Plus I had a good time just hanging out and getting to know some of you so thanks again for being a really cool scene. I wish I didn't live so far away but I'll probably be in a way better position for traveling and stuff in a month or two.

Peace

 

[Sedda]

youre a ****ing hero dude

 

[AthensHorseParty]

Oh and I left my brother's apartment on Thursday at midnight. I was stuck in traffic on 95 from 8 in the morning in DC til 5:00 pm in Deleware. I crashed at a rest station right outside the turnpike, I got up in the middle of the night and somehow made it into Brooklyn like right at 9 in the morning. So I spent a total of like 30 hours in my van just getting there. Worth it.

 

[Shears]

Oh and I left my brother's apartment on Thursday at midnight. I was stuck in traffic on 95 from 8 in the morning in DC til 5:00 pm in Deleware. I crashed at a rest station right outside the turnpike, I got up in the middle of the night and somehow made it into Brooklyn like right at 9 in the morning. So I spent a total of like 30 hours in my van just getting there. Worth it.

You should be able to find carpooling situations for Apex. I believe @caneut made a thread for people in the south to organize carpooling and hotels and such. Apex is also in NJ so its much easier and cheaper to get to. Bring hazmat suits and gas masks though because New Jersey air is typically toxic and side effects are commonly greasy hair, a bad and sassy attitude, recklessness and the urge to fight people, spray tans, the desire to have sex with snookies, and obsessions with getting swole at the muscle factory.

 

[Cobrevolution]

and yet NYC is exponentially worse...

 

[clubbadubba]

AthensHorseParty I'm glad to hear that, well except for the money spending and the traffic... Mostly just happy to hear that the reason you left wasn't because people weren't letting you play or something. Glad you enjoyed your brief time at Zenith, hope to see you at Apex!

 

[KeroKeroppi]

Do it now, Gohan!