In a Futurama episode, people get to find out answers to various “what if” questions by using Professor Farnsworth’s aptly named “what if” machine. It’s probably just a fancy AI generator that does video simulations!

Short answer to the question I posed in the blog title? We’d be contenders, for sure! Would we be guaranteed a spot in semifinals? 🤔

I really can’t say that for sure! Ideally I’d like to have at least 1-2 other players playing with us each and every week. That would be a tall order!

Fourteen weeks have elapsed since the start of the current My Trivia Live season. Though we have not been there for every game, my team does have fourteen weeks of scores to compare to McShane’s scores!

Relax…this is JUST a simulation! It’s hardly fair to compare scores from two different venues at two different times, is it?

Fair enough. But playing enough games does give a picture, if you will, of average scores for my team. We’ve also had several past successful MTL seasons qualifying for semifinals by playing every week, from 2016-2019.

Now that we have an actual league number (59000 for inquiring minds) in the My Trivia Live league, I’ve been able to see how we are doing compared to the other teams at McShane’s. And we compare pretty favorably!

I do solemnly swear on all of my dead relatives’ graves – that I have no plans now – or in the next season – to make any serious bids for semifinals/finals. I would consider being a “hired gun” with the right team if my schedule allowed. And I felt like it 😂

If another MTL spot opens locally that works well for us…all bets are off!

All of that being said in front of a UPS store notary (LOL), I thought I’d do my own “simulation” to find out if we’d measure up at this bar if we played at least once a week.

When figuring out our “average” score of 59.4 points (a “perfect” score is 74 points), I included scores from the past 14 games we’ve played from June 2024 to February 13, 2025. If you’ve ever been in a bowling league  you can’t help but be obsessed with average scores (maybe that’s just me and my OCD).

Those scores on which I based our team’s average score are: 67, 63, 53, 59, 60, 65, 55, 71, 61, 57, 70, 51, 55 and 47.

Our first five scores are from June-July 2024 at Powell’s Pub; next were four games played in September-October at McShane’s Pub in the previous season and lastly the five games played at McShane’s in the current season for a total of 834 points. The current top scores are 865, 801 and 780 at McShane’s (as of February 19, 2025) and all are barhop teams, whose scores are tallied in barhop standings for tournament qualifying purposes, not the overall bar scores. The highest non barhop score is 710. I haven’t figured out who they are yet, though I do know who the barhop teams are at McShane’s. If I were competing for a tournament spot, I’d be very thankful that they were barhop teams 😉

MTL’s current season ends at the end of March.

As for prizes, we’ve won prizes of some sort in nine out of those 14 games. So…more than 50 percent? McShane’s has more teams in the mix at each game than Powell’s ever had. Powell’s had to stop offering trivia nights because of a lack of players .

The important thing is – whether we try to qualify for a tournament by playing weekly or not…

I don’t want to waste my time playing at anything less than a nicely competitive trivia spot! Winning isn’t any fun if it’s too easy! So far this year we have been playing at the “Home of the Trivia Megateams” aka Corner Brewery on Wednesdays in the Sporcle Events league – or Tuesdays and or Thursdays at McShane’s Pub in the MTL league. These are easily among the most competitive trivia spots in Ypsilanti, MI right now!

This week, we plan to return to Corner Brewery. Don’t have a plan for next week yet, I’ll need to poll my players to see if I have enough to field a team at Corner (which means four players minimum). So I’ll know more on Wednesday.

As always, Go Pods!