Wanting to organize WSOP style tournement for RBI in Summer of 2026, in Chicago

[RBI Baseball Chicago]

Hello. We are looking to do an RBI Baseball Tournament in Chicago in Summer of 2026. Kind of a World Series of Poker style event with a Main Event and then other tourneys such as High Roller, Partners, Teams, Pitcher/Hitter, Winning Streak Challenge, etc. as well as hit a Cubs game as well. If anyone in interested email R.B.I.Baseball.Chicago@gmail.com.

We are trying to get an idea of how many people would be interested in coming to town os as to determine what kind of gaming can we establish. Suggestions of any sort are totally welcome. We have a handful of us here that play and to work on planning and establishing the event. But none of us are event planners, and the only national tourney that we ever planned was for an old school ultimate laser tag game called Photon.

Thank you.

[Gantry]

This all sounds very cool, welcome! 

If I still lived in Chicago I would be in, but given I'm in Ohio I'm well under 50% to attend. But not counting it out!

How many people are you hoping to have for said tourney? 

If you haven't reached out to Mike Beales, I would start there. He organized a bunch of national RBI Tourneys in the Chicagoland area 10-15ish years ago. 20ish? 

[RBI Baseball Chicago]

Hi Gantry.

Long time big fan of the site. Thanks for doing it all these years.

May you please forward my info to Mike Beales or provide me with contact info via DM?

Greatly appreciated.
Ken Walton

[BeefMaster]

For organization advice, I'd also recommend talking to the guys who run the Omaha Tecmo Bowl tournament - previous years included RBI as well (I actually played the aforementioned Beales in the third place game one year). Dee-Nee member TBT use to run it, and it pulled in people from around the country plus some Canadians. TBT's not active on the forums anymore, but you can try DMing him, and he might still be available through the contact page on tecmobowlnes.com or DMing him on Twitter (@TECMOBOWLvsRBI).

[Gantry]

Ken, at this point I don't have any current contact info for Beales, but hopefully you can find him via FB or another social network. He hasn't been on the forums in quite some time and I'm socialmedialess, Firefox says that isn't a word but it should be.

[TempoGL]

I live in Chicago and may attend.  I have a buddy with whom I always play, but if I am going to participate in any kind of competitive play, I am going to need to "unlearn" some "gentleman's rules" that we play by.  Specifically, we honor infield fly, only allow one starting pitching until the game has gone over 9 innings AND both relievers have been used, and also there's no "manipulate the bases to sneak a guy over to second when there's a runner on first and third."  I think the last one is something that can be prevented, but since I never have faced it, I would need to learn. Also, I almost always play as Houston, which is clearly suicide in a tournament.

Will I work on this?  Probably not...but the more this is discussed, the more the chances increase.

[RBI Baseball Chicago]

So far it is going well. Between help from Gantry, COTUT and a couple of other people that emailed or texted me, I feel good about it. In the meantime, you should DM me. We are looking to do a Chicago meet up and play amongst the locals this month. A few people in the group even have the arcade version. DM me if interested in playing too.

[Ninja Baseball Batman]

Hello. We have a very active online league and have also been talking about having a tourney in Chicago! If you are on discord we are on the Tecmo super bowl page at the bottom.

[Ninja Baseball Batman]

We play with only 1 starter and 2 relievers per game. Makes the games more intense at the end and no more 18 inning games. We ran those rules also at Omaha last year. We also do infield fly rule only allowed one base runner out. Tournament style we do coin flips with winner calling matchup and loser getting first pick of team.

[F1dl5tyx]

I'd do my best to attend, I'd be coming from Nebraska. The Omaha tournament has a strong group of regulars who are good players and might be interested. Several of them travel in from out of state. Sadly we weren't able to host RBI along with Tecmo Bowl in 2025, just didn't have anyone to run it this year and Tecmo took priority. Considering trying to do something in 2026 so at the very least I don't want to step on any toes, keep us posted.

[BeefMaster]

We should've made Karl Mecklenburg play some RBI even though we didn't do the tournament.