2021 R.B.I. Baseball & Tecmo Bowl National Championship.

[TbT]

TBT DO YOU HAVE A PLAN IN PLACE REGARDING CORONAVIRUS?

If coronavirus wants to play me in Tecmo Bowl, I'll fuck it up like car crash.  Otherwise, no. 

However Omaha is home to a bio containment center and the CDC run tests.  We get Ebola and coronavirus people transported here.  Omaha don't coast.

[TbT]

Octofranco is in and he's from Georgia.  So...we got 10 states represented, and the province of Ontario will have at least one of the Canadians.  I think turnout is gonna be pretty stout this year. 

[BeefMaster]

TbT let the participants know the other day that he's officially postponing the tourney, probably until July or August, which made me feel guilty about glibly asking about his coronavirus plans even though he said he does not blame me.

[Gantry]

Sucks, but definitely the right call

[BeefMaster]

Gantry, this gives you more time to arrange your travel plans for Omaha.

[Gantry]

Except of course July/August is my family reunion and the Olympics. 

[Brookensrules!]

Except of course July/August is my family reunion and the Olympics.

Cross Olympics off your schedule.  Told you so.

[TbT]

The 2020 Tecmo and RBI tourney was held over the weekend.  The RBI tourney was easily the most entertaining Tecmo or RBI tourney I've ever been apart of.  Only had 11 players spread out in 3 large rooms, a warehouse, and 2 TVs/systems set up outside under a tailgate tent.  With the odd number of players it added an extra stanza of group play games.  Most of the players had played their 3 games already and could hang out and watch the last few games.  We recorded some of the games, so it led to some players watching the last few innings of a game before it was their turn to be on the stream station.  Same with the opening round of elimination games, as half the people were waiting for their opponent to advance. 

With the majority of the players knowing who the top competitors were, we knew which games to focus on if we had down time. We had a ton of extra innings games and some very surprising results. Usually everyone is just playing, but to get to watch your fellow competitors take part in extra inning games and having a rough idea how the seeds would be impacted as you watched it unfold made it more fun.

Had these poster made for the event.


Mark Bridges won the Omaha tourney last year.  He'd also won Dirt's Columbus Ohio tourney and one of Beales tourney in Chicago.  Finished 4th in another Beales tourney. He got a resume.  Also on hand was Victor Lipari.  Victor won back to back Omaha titles in 2017/2018 going 18-0.  Last year Victor lost the deciding game 3 of the championship to Bridges.  Would they play again in the title?

Nate Nate Nate has gotten better at RBI in recent years.  He knocked off Beales last year and went 3-0 winning his group.  This year he was 2-0 and facing Bridges with the winner getting a high seed.  Surely he wouldn't beat Bridges?  Nate won 1-0.  Bridges went from overall 1 seed to the 4th seed and had to play his Brother Vaughn in the round of 8. 

For the 2nd year in a row I had Victor in my group and I beat him both times.  I got out of group play with the overall 1 seed.  Not bad for a couple Tecmo Bowl players.

Mark had to go extra innings to beat his brother...and the whole room was rooting for Vaughn.  I rolled through my first 4 games without allowing a single run.  Bridges crushed me in game 1 of our best of 3 in the semi finals.  I lost 2-0 in game 2.  Victor swept Nate setting up a championship rematch from last year.  Bridges won game 1; 4-1 with NL beating Boston.  Victor won game 2 in the Houston/STL match-up.  Victor won game 3 as NY over SF by a score of 3-1 to win the title. 

Nate beat me for 3rd place.  Nate said he won 3 games Saturday 1-0 where he only had 2 hits, but hit a solo homer and shut out the opposition.

More info & pics coming soon.

[TbT]

Heres the top performers from the 5 years of this tourney.


Victor and I (Brad) have been in 4 tourneys.  I sat out the 2nd year because we were having NES issues and I wanted to be available to deal with any issues.
Beales & Curt have played in 3.
Judd & Randon have played in 2.  Both missed this year, but will be back in 2021.

We've had some others play in 2 or 3, but don't have a notable record.  Nate's record the last 2 years is 8-3.  However he was something like 2-6 the 2 years prior. 

Player finishes from list above.
Victor:  1st place 3 times, & 2nd place
Mark: 1st & 2nd
Brock: 1st place
David: 2nd place
Brad:  2nd, 4th, 5th, 8th
Beales: 3rd, 4th place twice
Randon: 4th & 6th
Judd: 2nd & 6th
Curt: 3rd, 4th, & 6th

Mark posted a 9-1 record last year.  Droped 3 games this year with group play lose to nate and then the2 games in the championship.
As mentioned earlier, Victor won his 1st 18 games over 2 years.  Went 7-3 last year.  7-2 this year.

[TbT]

Mark with 2nd


Nate with 3rd.  Spoiler, homeboy also got 3rd in Tecmo Bowl.  3rd is a bad day in Tecmo for him and a fantastic day of RBI.




The pic below has us watching Mark and his brother in an elimination game.  At this point there were 2 or 3 other games going on elsewhere between low seeds.  This was the game that was everyone wanted to see as we were hoping Mark would lose.  Especially me as I'd face him in the final 4.

[TbT]

My tired ass taking 4th


Curtis with 5th.  Dude always shows up hoping he can win "at least a couple games", then is always in the mix for a final 4 trip.


Heres video of some quarterfinal action between Mark and his brother, then we also catch the ending of a round of 16 game between Paul and his buddy Dan.
Mark is a maniac at these things. 

[ryno]

I know a Mark bridges from Bryant but not that particular one

[TbT]

Here are the 10" trophies we played for.


As for Tecmo Bowl.  Nate and I played in the opening game.  I won 16-10 with Chicago over Denver to get things started.  Nate and I met again in the semi-finals.  I called Indy vs SF, and he took 9ers.  I was in a horrible spot early in the 4th, but managed to get a stop, force a punt and got the ball with 50 seconds at my 20 trailing 7-6.  Indy is a tank of an offense that grinds out 5-7 yards a play and rolled down for a soul crushing drive and field goal at the gun.  Nate lost championship games vs me in Houston & Rochester MN, and now 2 semi-final games to me in Omaha.  4 loses by a total of 13 points.  Thems the brakes!   

Ben who beat me last year in the Omaha championship had far less adversity to face to get to the title game. He won his semi game 20-0 over a pretty solid player that was new to our tourney.  The guy he beat (Marc) actually holds the records for points scored vs the CPU in a game of Tecmo Bowl with 119.  I played Marc and won 24-3 during group play.  Marc's a stout player for someone off the street.

Rematch time.  Ben wins the toss and calls Seattle vs New York.  Tough call but I take Seattle and player 1.  First drive gets me inside his 20 but stopped on downs. 2nd drive I get in the endzone for 6 and hit the extra point vs LT.  My offense was shut down in the 2nd half, but I managed to keep NY's offense in check, not give up any huge plays.  Ben eventually runs out of time and gets picked off with a desperation throw inside my 20 at the gun.  I win 7-0, winning 4 of the 5 Omaha Tecmo Bowl tourneys and 11 of 12 overall around the US... 8 cities encompassing 7 states.



   

Ben is also 9 feet tall.

[TbT]

Omaha Tecmo records.



Brad: 1st place 4 times, 2nd
Ben: 1st, 2nd, 3rd & 5th
Cam: 2nd & 3rd
Derek: 2nd
Mort: 2nd & 4th
Nate: 3rd twice & 4th twice
Mark: 5th

We've had a few others get into 4th & 5th place through the years but they end up with a 4-3 record and get stomped in all their loses against elite players.

[TβG]

Great job, TBT!

[Darky]

TBT, awesome to see you guys pulled this off and even more awesome to see that you are still at the pinnacle of success dominating!

[TbT]

Great job, TBT!

TBT, awesome to see you guys pulled this off and even more awesome to see that you are still at the pinnacle of success dominating!

Thanks.  The first goal of all this business was to have a safe environment.  The building is huge, we wedged open the doors, had fans moving air out to the warehouse, and the warehouse has a big rooftop ventilation system sucking air up and out the roof.  With all the protocols in place I felt good that we wouldn't have a covid infested office. 

A few times for 15 minutes we'd have a gathering in the big 40 by 30 foot room of 6-8 people to watch a big game.  That room in the video was one of 2 main airflow passages with a door to the outside.  Then everyone would disperse back to their gaming area elsewhere or play outside.  There were a lot of masked people. People would get mask fatigue and remove them for a bit in the bigger areas, then put them back on to play thier opponent.

With Tecmo I still have a major drive to dominate and keep winning.  Some of my training regimens are a bit tedious, and I gotta find the motivation a week or two out to put in the work to be sharp in the passing game though.  My wife will help me with a few specific match up things or situations to prep for.  I'm 70-1 at tourneys.  100 wins ain't that far away!  If I won most of em, that's like 5 more tournaments.  Still bugged by the one that got away. 

RBI is truly the fun tourney.  Way less pressure, less expectations. The goal is the final 4., but round of 8 and a run at 5th is good too.  That's the ceiling really.  Shit don't even start in Tecmo Bowl until the final 4.

[BeefMaster]

So pissed that I wasn't able to do this - it's among my biggest "fuck you coronavirus" items.

[TbT]

Haven't gotten around to the RBI portion of the tourney, but here are some Tecmo Bowl videos.  Sorry, but a Tecmo Bowl player has his priorities.
I had a lot of fun putting thee game intro together with the old NFL on CBS pre-game music.

Tecmo Bowl semifinal game:  Nate (San Fran) vs Me (Indy)


Championship game:  Ben (New York) vs Me (Seattle)


we had a revelation during the RBI tourney.  In years past, I always had a spare player on hand who could sit in for just 1 game to give us an even amount of players for all the groups. 
Didn't have that with the RBI tourney last year. That meant 1 player had to sit out during each of the 3 games in the opening round.  That created a 4th round of games, which gave everyone 20 minutes of downtime during group play to go and watch a game.  Considering the regular already know who the top players are, you could spectate for the best game available during your time off. 

Especially good when you're off for the final game of group play and know what seeding implications are on the line.
Nate(2-0) and Mark bridges (2-0) faced off in the 4th round of group play with the winner getting an easy path to the final 4.  Outside of the 4 playing elsewhere, everyone was watching their game.  Added a nice spectator aspect to the event. Usually you're just locked into your games and not knowing what is going on elsewhere.       

[BeefMaster]

Have you done any planning for a tourney this year? If so, are you thinking of going back to spring, or keeping it in the fall?