Now that the year has come to an end, the Southern California team can finally announce an obsession that occupied many of our evenings in 2010. But before I go into how the year ended (I’m sure you’re on the end of your seat), let me go back to what started it all. The origin of said obsession has its roots in last January. After finishing 2009 with around 55 premium game victories (which we thought impressive), we posted our year-end results in a Buzztime thread. I haven’t been a member of the NTN/Buzztime “community” nearly as long as the veterans, but I wondered aloud if we had amassed the most wins ever in one year. Not long after, I got private messages from several reliable players who said that in time immemorial (in this case before Don Denton’s NTN archive, which goes back to 2002), there may have been a team or two that flirted with 65 wins. I was more than a little surprised, but the revelation would only serve to spawn an odd motivation amongst our crew: 100 premium wins in 2010. Dave (MR ALE/ROONEY) and I talked it over and came to the conclusion that it was definitely within the realm of possibility. Mere musings quickly turned into some sick form of devout resolution, and over the course of the next several trivia games, we pretty much planned out our yearlong, double-pronged attack. First and foremost, play a lot. Like a meathead buying a drink for every girl in the bar, we would have to play the numbers game; simply, the more nights we could play, the better our chance of success. Second, fly under the radar. Not that anyone would really care about our quest for 100 (let alone put together a group to thwart our bid for 100), but the last thing we needed was for a team like Houston to assemble a juggernaut in December and f up 11 months of work. I will say to this point, it did help that our win total was obscured by the fact we play at different bars during the week (Showdown at Danny K’s, Spotlight at Mr. B’s, the sports games at East Side Mario’s, etc).
So after a shaky start to the year and a state of quasi-desperation around July, the team pushed forward with several hot streaks in September and October. We recorded win 100 on December 15th and kept running through the finish line. Even after we reached the hallowed century mark, it was generally agreed we wanted a record that would survive, if not forever, at least until we’re retired from the game. When all was said and done, the So Cal win total for the year was 107. Just in case anyone cares, the complete breakdown was 16 wins in SIQ, 7 in Showdown, 21 in Six Wednesday, 21 in Six Thursday (including a game with the largest margin of victory since 2002), 33 in Spotlight, 1 in Playback and 8 in STC. We topped the win leaderboard in Six Wednesday, Six Thursday, Spotlight and SportsIQ, while finishing 2nd in Showdown (one win behind Damon’s Ohio, a scary good team by the way) and 2nd in STC (one win behind 86th Street).
Lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to the team members. Without naming the sundry players on Tuesday (usually 10-15) and Friday (generally 5-8), props go to John (JOHN), Mike (HHHHHH), Barbie (BARBIE), Darrell (GAMBIT), Bob (GOGETM) and especially Dave Sr. (MR ALE/ROONEY). Nice job team… for not having a social life in 2010, your only reward (beside the satisfaction of a record setting year) is this lame adulatory write-up on a website almost no one reads. Sad to say, but I’d probably do it again.
Dave (YOTCHO, aka Dave Jr)
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