The past two Saturdays  were “trivia  Saturdays,” with me and my team playing in a semifinal game, winning a finals spot and playing in finals. Well, that chapter  is officially  done – we won a bit of cash, and are free to move about  the “trivia cabin.” And get some shopping  done (including buying  a  new  laptop).

We did very  little work to qualify  for semis, only playing  four  games. Winning the tourney cash  did take a bit of work and involved a bit of nail biting and finger crossing, so it all balanced out. Scores were  tight  among the top teams, with only three points dividing my third place team and the first place  team.

We borrowed  our fourth player  from a rival team. It’s  pretty  standard  for me to have to borrow  players  for every  trivia  tournament, either  because  I don’t  have enough players  – or in this case, I didn’t  have enough available players old enough for a MTL tourney. MTL questions  skew older for the most part, so your best  bet  is to have an older roster (no players  younger than say..38). I really, really didn’t  want to have to sub out my younger player, but  I wanted  to hedge  our  bets. Considering  how well we did, I’d  say my strategy  paid off!

On a sad note, another  reason  we had to borrow a player is because a guy who played  with us previously in many, many trivia tournaments passed away in August. I’ve  dedicated  the most recent trivia  finals to his memory for a couple of reasons – one, the last time we played  a  tournament  in that bar (February  2018) he  was  on our  team, and two, our tiebreaker  question  allowing us to win $ was about Harley Davidson   (one of his favorite  topics). We did this for you, Archie! ☺

Now a player  from the team we borrowed  from is starting  to make noises about  try  to qualify  his own team for MTL tourneys. He’s  squawked about this before, so it’s  probably  just talk – but I would love nothing  more than for this  to happen. I’ve  even offered sincere advice  for him in making  this  happen. We’ll  see!

Next week’s  plans…

With the last two Wednesdays  falling on holidays, we’re  pretty much just playing for fun until January. We’re  playing this coming  Monday at Sticks, and will have  FOUR players  for this game (a rarity  for  a Monday  game). Evan  usually  can’t  play  Mondays, but will be joining  us for this game.

I’ll  also be joining  Kim for a music trivia game Thursday, December  26. I’ve  been itching to play a music themed game, and since  she will be on holiday break  from her teaching  job, I’m  sure she’ll  enjoy  getting out, too. I can use a night away from “the boys!”

As for 2019? The weekly trivia  games will continue  at Tower Inn as long as the place offers trivia. It’s  a good night  to get a decent  team  together,  and isn’t  too far from home. We’ll  also play Sporcle Live games  from time to time, but won’t be committing  to those  on a weekly basis. Twenty-one week seasons just  didn’t  work for us! Also I think us getting  to state championship  games is pretty  impossible. Know your strengths, hedge  your  bets, yada yada…

The Pods, like  The Dude, will abide  in 2020!