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My turn to talk about the weekend I spent 14 years of my life running a yearly retro game tournament; I have the benefit of an inkling of what @halifaxand @smozomawent through over the course of the weekend. The tournament, with big help from @UltraMagnusand the generally polite and accommodating members of the community, went off without any major issues. That can only happen from hard work, dedication, and a love of doing something right for a huge group of people. Big thanks and appreciation for the work those guys put in to make the tournament a huge success. On to the boring part..... I flew in on Air Canada on Thursday and managed to get to the AirBnB in enough time to get some games in with @Scribe99 @danTML7 and Szpakman just as a nice welcome to the weekend. The Friday events were awesome and well run, due to a family issue my original partner @DanKcould not make the tournament, so I was saddled with this @angryjay93guy for Super Nintendo 2 v 2. By staying out of his way, we managed to snag a 2nd place finish in the tournament which was a nice bonus. Saturday dawned with us in the AirBnB running behind for the morning, though we made it in time for the tournament's start. I hit my goal in the Genesis tournament, sneaking into the backdoor of the King Bracket before bowing out almost immediately. But as a bonus, I got to play Smoz which was incredibly fun. In the Super Nintendo tournament, I managed to surprisingly cruise through group play taking a single loss to @TheProfessorand Bob Essensa's skate blades 4-3. I upset the future champ @Bob Kudelskiin a Rangers/Kings game that - unfortunately for the rest of the field - I was never in any danger of losing and led him to refocus his efforts. Bracket play opened against @Stantonatorand this is where I wish we had the series on stream. First game he called Boston/Pitt - I grabbed Pitt, both teams were equally matched, and I managed to pull out the game 1 win. I called Washington/St Louis for game 2 (a personal favorite of mine and @annatar) and Stanton grabbed the Caps. For most of the game, he kept me out of reach, scoring timely goals, securing his defensive zone, and playing well. I managed to claw back to a one goal deficit with 40ish seconds to go and a center circle faceoff. Stanton won it, got the puck to Bondra, and decided to (and I agree with this decision) use Bondra to just play keep away from the center of my zone and run out the clock. Somehow, Jeff Brown and Garth Butcher managed to catch that little guy and check the puck away from him. A pass to little Nelson Emerson kick started a race toward his goal. Ridley failed to square up Emerson, Hatcher and Iafrate were just out of position, and Stanton was caught between trying to hit Emerson and take Beaupre. I managed to sneak a short side deke just inside the post and hit the game tying goal with 3 seconds left on the clock. I personally thought Stanton was going to either a. have a heart attack, b. break a chair, or c. kill me . Fortunately, he refocused and won the game in overtime. Game 3 was a Rangers/Kings call, I grabbed the Rangers as I did against BobK and managed to see out the series win. That moved me on to play @koke_45 one of the more scary players to face in any setting. While I gave a good account of myself in a Montreal/Toronto matchup, I just didn't have the chops to keep up in his preferred Quebec/Edmonton matchup. I'll get him one of these days. That knocked me down into the loser's side where I won my first game against Rooster in a Winnipeg/Toronto matchup before having to face Annatar. As he said above, he has a small score to settle with me and chose a Winnipeg/St Louis matchup. My run of using big, slow-ish, skilful-ish teams ended with a 4-1 defeat to a good friend. And that is really what this tournament was about meeting all of the people I have known only as names and the occasional face/voice behind a screen. It was an amazing experience meeting Szpak, Kaze, Sebe, Scribe, Mr T, Thrillhouse, KingRaph, DanTML, Corbett, AngryJay, Annatar, BobK, Koke, Dangler, TheProfessor, Gambi, Mooney, SlipperyPete, Stantonator, Skankhunt, Halifax, and Smoz. I know I missed out on meeting some other people, but I know I will see them at the next one and the one after that and the one after that..... (Oh, and I finished 4th in the Genesis 95 tournament with UltraMagnus and Segathon pointing out who I should play next over and over again until I was done)

I wanted to write up a bit of a recap here of my SNES tournament while I still remember some of what happened, it might be boring but thanks for humoring me. If I don't mention someone, I probably just forgot to but it was genuinely nice to talk to everyone I did interact with over the weekend, and I'm sorry I didn't get to talk to everyone! Overall, it was a great weekend. Have to say big thanks to @halifax for everything he does - I can't overstate how much the community is in debt to you for putting together these live events and bringing so many of us together. It's also always a personal pleasure to see you and hang out, even though you're usually busy organizing or playing. I'm just happy I've been able to attend so many of these tournaments. Kudos to @smozoma as well who I can tell you spent a lot of time loading up his car with consoles, cables and TVs - along with doing lots of other stuff over the course of the event - to help make this thing happen. This was my second time at Waves and it is (was ) a super venue, we had all the space we needed, great setups to play and stream, and it was nice to be able to grab a beer or a bite without venturing out. Great to run into some of the old guard like @IAmFleury'sHipCheck who also seems determined to attend as many live events as possible. Love to see it and always amazing to chat even though we didn't have a ton of time to hang out. Likewise @kingraphwho is a fixture at these things and always has a smile on his face. Also wanted to shout out some of the folks who came from afar like @Stantonator who has a great attendance record representing the west coast, as well as some of my nWo buddies @TecmoJon @angryjay93 @Gambi and @koke_45 (too sweet). There was a good showing from the Maritimes too with folks like @dangler @Mooney and @slipperypete making the trip, great to meet dangler again after KO94 2 and put faces to names for the others. Mooney also showed he can put away the beers like a champ, I know you are doing the east coast proud. The community right now is just a great bunch of guys and like I said, there's too many others to mention so I'll just say it was great to meet everyone, whether it was SNES or gens people. I drove in on Friday and we did the 2v2 and it was a ton of fun. Nice to bring home some hardware with @Bob Kudelski. I don't really remember too much about our games except for the final where we sqeaked out a 2-1 win over angryjay and Tecmo with a nice passing play. I don't think it was very attractive 2v2 but we got the job done. Saturday was a fairly late start for me as I didn't sign up for Sega so I slept in and got over to the venue around noon to play some exis with @dangler and @koke_45, unfortunately those ended up being some of my best games of the day, should have saved those for when it counted! I started my tournament off with a loss to @McMarkis who always plays me tough. I can't remember the teams but I think it was a one goal game. I then got a much needed result against angryjay who is never an easy out in SNES. I won the rest but we had some bumps along the way, I was losing to The Professor's son who has come a long way with his game but managed to turn it around. I also had a 2-1 win over Yepster where he called EDM-SJ and I only barely won, lol. I think group D was a tough bunch of players, or maybe the overall quality was just really high! My other games were against Johnzors and StreetMage and I did manage to get a mercy in the last game which really helped my goal difference. But it wasn't enough, I finished 5-1 along with angryjay and McMarkis and I had the worst goal difference of the three of us. That put me on the top half of the bracket with dangler who was coming in as #1 seed. First I had to get through sickfish who had also gone 5-1 so I knew I couldn't take him lightly. He won the first game 4-3, I can't remember the matchup, but now I was definitely sitting up and taking notice. I was able to get some momentum going after that and I won 7-1 and 6-2 to ease through, but I was sweating after game 1! That meant last 8 in the winner's bracket and I had to face dangler in a 1 vs. 8 matchup. I normally play dangler pretty close but he can be so deadly if he gets hot, so I knew I'd have to be playing at my best. I wanted to call mid tier teams against him (the Mikail treatment) to try to slow the game down and we went NYI-PHI (I think) with him picking the Flyers. There wasn't much between us in the game and it went to OT and then almost to the end of OT after I couldn't bury a couple chances. He scored with 4 seconds left to take game 1, brutal. Real tough to get back in the right mindset after that but no choice. I'm already forgetting the matchups but I think it was something like MTL-WPG and I want to say I took the Habs. If you have a better memory than me please correct me. But I managed to get hot and it was a pretty easy win, 7-3 in the end to set up a decider. I went against my better judgement here and didn't pick another lower tier matchup, going for WSH-LA. I still think that's a good matchup, but he took the Kings and definitely got the most out of them. It was never really close, I lost 8-4 and got knocked down to loser's. My first elimination game was against @TheWiz84 (another guy I was happy to meet, a great new addition to the community and a solid bud) and I don't remember the teams but we both put some goals up on the board and I ended up making it 10-4 to move on. That set me up for a grudge match against my good buddy Tecmo who got the better of me in the last online King. He was actually higher seed after killing it in the RR, so I had to pick a matchup and again I don't know what teams I picked (he probably does, since he is way better than me at remembering these things). I had to play pretty tight and take my chances, it ended 4-1 and I was happy to inform him after that our lifetime record in King games was now 1-1. Now I had to wait to see who was going to be knocked down from winner's, and it ended up being The Professor who always manages to be a gentleman as well as a super tough opponent. We played on stream but unfortunately it wasn't a great game for the neutral. I picked a NJ-STL matchup, something I felt pretty confident about. I guess I expected him to give me NJ, but he didn't, and I ran into a red hot Claude Lemieux as well as Prof's usual precise play. I kept trying to get behind the net with Janney to feed someone out front and he kept reading the play perfectly. 4-2 loss and my day was done. All that remained was to see how things were going to unfold for the last 4 of Prof, dangler, koke and Bob Kudelski. Not exactly a shocking group to make it to the end, although I had hoped to knock one of them out. Dangler was on a heater and ended up mercying Bob in both games in winner's final, and probably thought he had one hand on the trophy. Bob really had to dig deep to then come from behind to beat koke in a best of 3 before playing some of the best 94 I've seen him play when the chips were down. A bunch of us got up on stage to watch the last couple games and both guys were giving it their all. Really impressive stuff. Ultimately it was Bob who edged it with some super clutch goaltending and I was happy for him. Felt like redemption for that famous Vegas final. Dangler played great and will probably win another one of these if he wants to, I know what second place feels like though bud. Was a pretty relaxing end to the night as we were about to get kicked out of the venue and I had a long drive back on Sunday so nothing much else went down. I was hoping to be top four going into the weekend and I ended T5 so I guess that's close - it doesn't feel like a total success but I also can't really complain as the top guys are just so good now and we had 7 out of the 9 guys in A league at the event. I'll be back!