vogtcd11

As for every Midwest tournament, I'm so happy this weekend is over. But also, I'm saddened that it passes by so quickly. To date, after hosting 11 of these things, MWTecmoXI was by far the most fun and smoothest run tourney. There are so many people to thank: David Fulcher for being who he is and providing representation for not only MWTecmo but for the Tecmo community in general. We were able to raise $544 for his foundation on only 28 total participants. Do the math. I think that's amazing. So thank you all. To @AJFullam AJ Fullam, who is the glue to this tournament when it comes to the group play excel document that calculates where everyone is placed in the elimination part of the tourney in real time. Derek Ruble, who provided an outstanding setup for our live stream. @allamerican1569Tom Stahnke, who not only provided his livestream for the RBI tourney, but offered up his wifi hotspot after some technical difficulties regarding hooking up to Rick's Tavern's router with a hardwire. Rick's Tavern's two waitresses Caitlin and Kaylin for wanting to continually take care of us rioters. They are always great and supportive and eager to be a part of this every year. My wife and kids for understanding that this is something that means a lot to me. My brothers for always being supportive in my directive mentality during the day. Aaron Hake for running the registration table and manning the raffle gift table. My mother Diane who ran the raffle ticket sales for the first 4 hours of the tournament and Jimmy's girlfriend Destinee who finished up the last hour of the raffle sales. Mort for offering up his stockpile of systems, carts and other equipment. Our supporters Yuengling, Ohio Valley Beer and Wine, FC Cincinnati, Cincinnati Reds, Cincinnati Bengals, Pure Romance, The Sports Gallery, The David Fulcher Foudnation, Rick's Tavern, McKinley's Pub and The Retro Sports Gamer. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

You can check out the results from everything at these links:
https://challonge.com/MidwestRBIBracket2018
https://challonge.com/MWTecmo2018Pool
https://challonge.com/MWTecmo2018Bracket

MWTecmoXI in its entirety:

Friday
I woke up and finished the final touches for prep at my house. Then took a trip to pick up the tourney TShirts and some Yuengling donation raffle items around 1 p.m. ... I left for Rick's Tavern around 4 p.m. once my wife got home from work. Began setting up equipment immediately upon my arrival. The first two dudes that arrived for the RBI Tourney/Nintendo Night were Marc Z and Brian M. Nice fellas who came from the northern parts of Ohio. We had about 14 of the 28 guys show up for the Friday night festivities, which told me that it was worth having. The predominant reason why the Friday night event was a success was because we literally had everything set up the night before and could focus on operational aspects of the tourney the day of. Saw some Master Blaster, Tetris Attack, Dr. Mario, Tecmo Bowl, and others being played. It was cool. The final four of the RBI tourney was Me, Joseph M., Matt and Mort. @bigmv54Matt beat @mort1237Mort 11-1 and Joseph beat me 2-1. Matt took down Joe for the first ever Midwest RBI Baseball title. The event lasted until about midnight and we all felt it was the right time to pack up and get some rest, which surprised me. I had a hunch we were going to be staying until last call. But that wasn't the case. Ruble crashed on my couch for the weekend. Before we hit the sack, we made sure his stream setup on his laptop was good to go. The only thing we had to do was just set his stuff up, hook up to Tom's hotspot and we are livestreaming. Went to bed.

Saturday
Loaded up the remaining items that I had in my garage, which included the rest of the Yuengling donation raffle items. My head is usually in about 15 different places the morning of the tournament but seeing the systems already up and running when I get there made for a little less tense of the time. Mort grabbed what he could from his bag o' stuff and hooked up the 3 tvs that were not ready. Registration went without a hitch. One person no-showed but informed me the night before that he would pay at the table. Would have been 29 participants. So it didn't bother me one bit. 28 players it is. 7 groups of 4. Boom. I was happy. Setting up pool play groups the week of the tourney really helps me out in terms of small adjustments the day of. Not one single adjustment had to be made except for plugging my last entry into the dude's spot who didn't show up. It didn't ruin the quality base of each group as I feel they were as evenly spread out as I could make them. I said "ef it" let's roll in Gats' group because I've never played him live in a tournament and I was an easy No. 2 seed after dissecting the No. 1 seeds in this specific tourney. There really was no separation in the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds. It was crazy. Derek and I put together a 15 minute pregame show on the livestream to give everyone a heads up on how the day would be operating and we also did some player profiles. It was fun. Fullam was ready to roll regarding the excel document and pool play groups were announced. The tourney began on time. My goal was to have the pool play groups wrapped up and the announcement for who is playing Fulcher in the charity game by 2 p.m. and at this point of the day, I looked at my phone and it was 1:57 p.m. Boom. Greg H. won the Fulcher Foundation game. We also allow Fulcher to play using the Bengals of course and the raffle winning player can use SEA, IND or NE. But Greg is a GB fan so we allowed him to use GB. Fulcher beat Greg 28-2. I will have to watch the game on the recorded stream to see how this all panned out. I think Fulcher is no slouch and could be labeled as a middle to low tier player in most tourneys. The Fulcher game raised over $100 itself. @JimSocks13won the Bucket O Liquor raffle 2 years in a row. He stated that all he wanted to do at Midwest was win that. He went home a happy camper. The raffle prizes were being announced while the Fulcher Foundation game against Greg was going down on the livestream. Fullam was finishing up the pool play results as well. It was a good transition so people weren't waiting to hear their first round game. I felt good all tourney. I went 3-0 in pool play which was only good for the 6th seed. I felt as though Gats wasn't with it during my game. But oh well. I take the win. Gats was ready for tournament play though. I could tell. The ultimate scenario played on the livestream with our last game between @RetroNathan and @diazhole. If Matt doesn’t win by more than 6, then Flo would get the 4th seed bye -- the last bye being the fact that we had 28 participants. Diaz won by 3 and missed out on the 4th seed and pushed him to 5th – no bye. We announced all of the raffle ticket winners.
A lot of great matchups throughout the day with, what, 4 overtime games on the live stream? I think. Matched up with Brian S in the first round. Super nice local guy, teaching inner city kids from Cincinnati. Had a great chat with him during game about how hard it is to be a teacher. He explained that he’s more of a parent to them than a teacher, and I believe it. Talked about the ins and outs of Tecmo knowledge and he was open-eared about taking it in. He said he was going to go back home and tell his buddies that the community is worth the trek to these tourneys. I won 31-3. Next up was Jordan (Woodshed). Such a great and close game. Wish this was on the live stream. Couldn’t believe I (DEN) pulled it out. Jordan (WAS) had me up against the ropes. Won 14-10. Elite 8 was Mort. Snatched a first-drive INT which sort of set up my momentum. If I didn’t try to do anything fancy and play straight forward, I was only hoping to keep the momentum and not let Mort’s expertise strip it away from me. And I was able to do that 17-10. On to the double elimination Final Four against Gats. I picked DET-WAS matchup as a slight bait call. He didn’t want to give me WAS, which I felt OK with. 0-0 heading into halftime. Gats get ball and kicks field goal in third. I couldn’t muster up a decent drive at all and was hoping for a couple opportunities with a deep ball and some luck. Gats was on. I wasn’t. He wins 10-0. I have Diaz in losers fourth place game. I pick CIN-WAS matchup against Diaz and he takes CIN. Really don’t remember much of this game other than I lost 21-20. I was able to call the finals with Joseph M, which turned out to be a great game as well. Gats pulls it out to take the MWTecmoXI title against Diaz. I will point out that Gats accidentally hit field goal on an early punt attempt. Diaz professionally punted it back to him. Gats got the originally planned punt off to Diaz. At this level, those two players are far more than qualified to make their own decisions regarding a situation like that for what was at stake, without having to get commishes involved. Gats was extremely humbled for Diaz’s kind gesture. And no hard feelings were expressed, assuming any other Tecmoer at this level would have done the same thing. Unfortunately, you’ve lost roughly 40 seconds of the first half because the ball was in the air when it shouldn’t have been.

Clean up ensued following the tourney. I was worried I didn’t bring any of my equipment home it was such a blur. The only thing I was worried about was our 5 Tecmo carts and 4 RBI carts. Matt has them all. I think. LOL.

The debate was where to go after the tournament. As we are cleaning up, my wife texted me and said just come home and we can sit by a fire outside and swim. I happily, and drunkingly, invited everyone over to my house. Literally everyone. Our house turned into a frat house. JoeyGats was chilling at a table eating Arbys. My bathroom downstairs smelled like piss toward the end of the night. Hendershot handed me his credit card and forced me to buy 5 pizzas from Papa Johns. They were devoured within minutes. We set up shop with a station and played team Tecmo in my living room. @Super DuperKrebs and I were a team. I forget how we did. RetroNate and Matty V were a team, and I think they won a couple straight games. I enjoyed a conversation about music with RetroNate. We jammed on some tunes in my downstairs living area. It was awesome. Pretty sure RetroNathan, Ruble, my wife and some others sat outside around the fire the entire time. Krebs and I took a dip in my pool and talked about how my brother Joey ditched up for the Manchester United-Liverpool soccer match at the Big House in Ann Arbor. We were both pissed at him. LOL.

@joeygatsGats and my two year old son were chilling on the couch next to each other, Gats playing on his phone, my son on my phone in his diaper. It might be one of the most epic photos I’ve ever seen. @tecmoninjaHendershot took the photo and said, “Look at this pic.” It melted my heart that Gavin and Gats bonded. Gavin and Gats are two of the best GOATS ever. I really didn’t feel like I had to rush everyone out the door because it was already 2 a.m. and many people had to wake up early enough to get home Sunday. I think I offered people to crash at my house if they weren’t able to drive. But there were enough people in each caravan who were able to drive safely. Ruble was the only one who snagged a couch overnight Saturday. I didn’t really know what to expect when I woke up the next morning. Woke up with my swim trunks on still. GG. Long. Live. Tecmo.

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