Trivia teams in the Sporcle pub trivia universe are battling it out for bar supremacy this week. This means teams in contention must have qualified by playing at least half of the required games, must have a maximum of six players or fewer. Unlike in the past, teams are not playing for coveted tournament spots. Boy do I remember what those days were like! Such craziness…But at the end, you felt like your efforts weren’t in vain.
I don’t have the players on hand to do that this week, unfortunately. Wednesday night my husband and I “might” find a spot to play just for fun. The spot we’ve qualified to play is…out of the question. That place is no longer very welcoming to teams of six players or fewer. And frankly, I’m tired of all of the megateams there. Clearly we don’t fit in.
Whether we go out for a game or not on Wednesday will be a game time decision. We will do a virtual game tonight, so I’ll have a recap posted Wednesday morning.
hebspeaks 
I miss a lot of elements of Sporcle trivia that they did away with. Having to win a championship or get in via bar hop was a big one. One issue with the bar hop qualifying was a team in Ohio was actually playing under different names for each game so they took two of the three bar hop places since they played three times a week. Winning your venue meant something when it was the way to get into the big tournament, and it was an actual goal.
I also liked the old points system where you only had one mystery round. The way it is set up now one bad mystery round can sink you. They make up a large portion of the total points than previously. I also liked when you walked slips of paper up to the hosts better as well. You got to know the hosts better and it limited cheating. I have noticed a lot more games where players answer every question right since the change.
I don’t mind the electronic answer submission, teams could cheat under both systems imo. A decent host keeping an actual eye on their rooms can help stop that. But I agree the additional mystery rounds make things rough! They’ve killed a good number of our game scores like Russian Roulette.
If you don’t know much about the mystery round, it will cost you six to eight points, which can kill any chance of winning. Any other time you have a bad category you can put one or two points on it. I also hate the “put them in order” mystery round, because lack of knowledge on one item can cost you a lot of points.
Everywhere I play the rooms are such that the host will have trouble watching everyone. Plus people can cheat on the very device that they are using to answer questions.
Taking away everyone’s phones is the only surefire way to stop cheating. Oh to go back in time and do trivia games before smart phones!