I would like to take a moment to tell everyone how disgusted I am with the entire pente community. The turnout at the "world championship" was pathetic. More people turn out for watermelon seed spitting contests, or those contests where people are trying to throw pieces of dried cow sh_t long distances. We could probably get a larger turnout for a tiddlywinks tournament.
It's very nice to be a "world champion" of a meaningless game that no one has ever heard of. The whole thing ends up being a punchline to people. When they find out I am "world champion" they say "Oh, how many people did you beat?" When I tell them 14, they laugh. then they make some wiseass remark about how they are world champion of some game or activity of their choice or creation, such as "Oh yeah, well I'm the world champion @ss scratcher" or something like that.
I put a lot of time and effort into this tournament. I talked to a lot of people, e-mailed people, and generally spent a lot of time that could have been better spent elsewhere, TRYING to drum up support for this tournament. The popular thing to say was "Oh, if it's in VEGAS, I'll go." This turned out to be a crock of sh_t from most people who for whatever reason didn't attend. Whatever the reason is, it's clear the game has little or no future as anything more than what it is now. I won't spend any more time wasting my efforts on any tournament, either live or online, because the bottom line is that people just don't give a sh_t. I think I saw someone suggest more online tournaments as a "solution" to the problem. Yeah, that's grand. Except last time I checked, the turnout for the online tournaments is pathetic also.
But what's more pathetic than anything is the loser attitude that many people have. "Oh, I'll never finish in the top," or "I can't beat Dmitri or rich" or whatever other sorry loser bullsh_t people babble on about.
I am fed up with hearing defeatist crap like that. I played a lot of pente before I was any good at this game. What do you expect, to just suddenly be good???? I spent HOURS and HOURS in the database studying. I played hundreds of game at 3 sites. I moved stones around for hours on end. But when I suggest to people they examine games in the database, they have little or no interest.
With a mere few hours of study, anyone could research 50-100 games of any particular top player -- Gary barnes, Krasnonosov, rich3, myself, virag, whoever. But instead of doing so, people continue to play the same pathetic moves that lead to terrible thrashings, then they whine and moan about how "I'll never be able to beat Dmitri or rich or whoever"
What a bunch of crap. I am sick of it and I am sick of the complete lack of effort on anyone's part to manke anything out of this game.
So, I will no longer take any role in anything. If someone tells me when the tournaments are happening, I'll play to defend my so called "world championship". Other than that, you all have fun.
Message was edited by: dmitriking at Aug 21, 2004 3:10 PM
Message was edited by: dmitriking at Aug 21, 2004 5:33 PM
Posts:
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From:
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Re: tournament turnout
Posted:
Aug 23, 2004, 7:36 AM
Dear Dmitriy I understand your feelings. That was happend with me when I was won world championship title in Renju by mail in 1980. No one in former USSR don't know this game that period, but I became organizer of Russian Federation and spred this game at former USSR, now we have Federation which is recognized by STATE, member of World Renju Federation , we have real World Championships and so on. That is real result of my (and not only my) efforts. It takes above 20 years that you get the result (but it is not means that you will be champ this case). This way which you describe for all is hard work to investigate databases, investigate some variants and so on.... You have to understand that not all players able to be DAN players. I mean DAN players (Japanese black belt) that able to compete on high level in Pente or other games (Renju). For easy example Dan players are like "Jidays" from Lukas "Stars Wars), they can easely beat 10 ordinary players and really they fight only between each other. All good players from Russia are Dan players in Renju, Virag now also became Renju player , seems he is rather strong among other Renju Dans. Try Renju , I am sure you will became Dan player there, too. It will not be easy, and you will not be N1 after 3-4 years, but you will meet other seriouse players there. Hope you will try, you can always stop, and return to Pente if you want. Became student in On-line Renju class ! http://www.renjuclass.com Regards Alexander Nosovsky
Re: tournament turnout
Posted:
Aug 25, 2004, 6:48 AM
very nicly stated novos. DM it takes time this federation some people are triing to start in pente has only been up for less than a year. keep heart DM your championship means something to us if not to your freinds. sorry i was not able to attend but family comes first before any competition of any sort no matter how bad i wanted to go. i think of myself as a good player or DAN as novos put it but i would have loved to have played ya becuase you are human and will make mistakes and eventually i could win-lol. i am going on about nothing and my only point is keep heart DM it will get there in time you just can't quit after the first couple of so called failures or were they people did show after all even if it was a small crowd. Rob
ps snut we have to get together and start doing something with pente in the portland any ideas?
Re: tournament turnout
Posted:
Aug 26, 2004, 6:37 AM
Dimitri, Dimitri, Dimitri!
I doubt seriously that bitching people out for not showing will entice them to show up for the next OTB (live) tourney. Why don't we just assume they had good reasons for not coming and encourage them to come next year? Having read your past writings/ramblings in the forum section, I was anticipating meeting you in person. I must say I was pleasantly surprised at what a nice guy you were. You were not only a tenacious winner (which I expected) but also a very gracious loser in the games that were taken from you. You were genuinly complimentary of the players who took games from you and never did I hear any patronizing B.S. such as "damn, I screwed up." It's a shame that attitude doesn't carry over into this forum section. Reading your latest posting, I'm suspecting that some, if not many, would assume that you're a bit anal. That however, is not the person I met in Vegas.
Instead of focusing on the negative, let's accentuate the postive. It's true that the turnout was a bit less than anticipated but I'd argue that the quality of the field was quite high. The final four of you, up, dufus, and scott represented four highly skilled players, and even if you can't walk down the street without being mobbed by adoring fans , you can be justly proud of besting a quality field. And while there are some kinks to be worked out regarding game time and field format, I felt that Tom and Patricia did an admirable job considering it was our first shot at this in many years. And as nosovs pointed out, this is just the beginning. It will get better and as it does, participation will increase.
On a personal note, as an intermediate player I'd encourage other players such as myself who are not experts to participate in live tourneys if possible. It's good fun getting to meet people we only know in a computer screen. Dimitri was actually a really nice guy Patricia was as quirky and delightful in person as she is online. Scott (snut) was pretty nice for a devil-worshipping heathen (lmao and thanks scott for the $5 loan!). Guys like Gaylan (Galeenster), John (iamsam), myself and others had fun even though we had no hope of winning. And for you experts out there, I'm confident that the best in Vegas would provide an ample challenge to anyone (here that richard!! LOL)
Well, after many homebrew (this posting is taking on Up2ngian proportins), there is my two-cents worth and I hope to see everyone I met in Vegas again next year along with many others.
Re: tournament turnout
Posted:
Aug 26, 2004, 7:03 PM
fair points. However, I will retort with the following.
I believd that in life, people do what they want to do. I hear hundreds of excuses all the time, but ultimately, if someone doesn't do something, it probably is because he didn't want to do it.
Maybe I am not the most optimistic person out there. Maybe I am not good at putting a positive spin on what I view as a negative occurrence. But at least I was at the damn tournament. Now from my perspective, there are two possibilities:
1) of the 35-40 people who expressed genuine interest and possibly even gave a near definite statement about attending, it just happened to be that 26 of them RERALLY wanted to go but gosh darn it, just couldn't make it for various reasons;
or
2) most people just didn't want to bother going.
I'll go with option 2.
Now, anyone who spent as much time as I did trying to promote this tournament has a right to take issue with my negative attitude. Those people know who they are, and I commend them for being able to maintain a positive outlook. But for the great majority who did not spend as much time as I did trying to promote the tournament, they have little basis for being critical of my attitude. As I stated, I put in more effort than I really should have, only to discover that people's actions do not back up their talk.
Message was edited by: dmitriking at Aug 26, 2004 1:04 PM
Re: tournament turnout
Posted:
Aug 27, 2004, 10:52 PM
Here is my opinion on this topic, speaking as one who played in Pente tournaments dating back to 1978.
Yes, the turnout was a little disappointing compared to what it perhaps could have been. But actually it was not bad as a first attempt and learning experience for the WPPF. The first Pente tournaments in the old days were sometimes disappointing too. But we stuck with them, and kept organizing, knowing that the effort would eventually build. And five years later we had a $100,000 championship in Boston that was a real world calibre event (see the book I've written about it).
Pente tournaments lost all their momentum after Parker Brothers mishandled Pente in the 1980s. But the experience of the early days shows what Pente is capable of when it is given a chance.
Now the internet has given the beautiful game that chance at a second life. All we have to do is organize it -- plant the seed in fertile ground and let it grow for a while. It has a good chance to grow into the kind of internationally respectable game that Renju is now, if you give it some time. The key at this stage is to better coordinate our scattered online community; (it amazes me that there were experienced online players who didn't know of the event). So, please support the WPPF's efforts as much as you can.
One other thing. Most of you come from an online background to Pente play. You've always played online and are used to it. Old timers like me come from over-the-board (OTB) play, which I think is much richer in its content and challenge. For the time being most of our efforts will necessarily have to be with online tournaments. But I suggest that you make the special effort to support OTB tournaments with your participation -- they are simply better, more fun and more real. One weekend at a hard-fought OTB tournament is more exciting than a dozen online events, I would say.
The 1983 championship in Boston was one of the most exciting sports events I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot, of many kinds), because it was so hard fought and so tense -- yet full of human personalities and mistakes along with brilliancies.
I wish you all could have experienced it like I did. If you had, you would have jumped at the chance to come to Vegas -- note, for example, that one of the Vegas participants was Peter Hudson, a veteran of the 1983 event, who hadn't played in 20 years but when he heard about the WPPF event in Vegas (by accident) he was compelled to come and play. That's because he knew what OTB championship play was like, and wanted to experience it again.
Online championships are fine, and I think we should do a lot in this area. But OTB events are the real deal! Don't worry if you feel you can't compete yet with the top players. That takes time too. What is more important than winning is playing a good quality tense game with a worthy opponent that sets your heart to hammering! We had some games like that in Vegas, and it was great to see! I feel sorry for all of you who missed it!
Posts:
751
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From:
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Age:
43
Re: tournament turnout
Posted:
Aug 28, 2004, 12:46 AM
I guess the direction we (the WPPF) are going needs to be determined by the officers and the community we support, but at this point in time I do not see how the WPPF could sanction online tournaments with the cheating opportunities that are available in this medium.
Posts:
542
Registered:
May 9, 2002
From:
Northeast USA
Re: tournament turnout
Posted:
Aug 28, 2004, 2:12 AM
I have to say I agree very much with Tom and Patricia on this topic. I had not played on a real board since I was a young child. I developed my skills through frequent online play over the course of a couple of years. But to me, the tournament in Las Vegas was the most fun and interesting experience I've had with this game yet. I really appreciate those who have contributed their time or money to putting together and sustaining an organization that has already hosted one official event, and a couple of unofficial events that attracted great players from all over the US and Canada. This is a great accomplishment and hopefully it's just the beginning.
I agree with Patricia that the WPPF should probably not specifically sponsor and run any online tournaments involving cash prizes, etc since the pure and true test of one's skill at the game is via over-the-board play. But the WPPF resources that have already been developed such as playpente.com can certainly be used to keep track of sign up sheets, posting announcements, rules, etc for any major online events that come up.
Hey, thanks for the headsup on the studying the database. I'm also a former champion, Stillwater regional. Those other three folks didn't know what hit em. I just recently discovered this online pente community and I'm glad to see there is still some interest in the game. I've been playing for uhh twenty some years, growing up in Stillwater and all. I look forward to playing some of you folks in the near future after I brush up my game a little. I tried to play at work the other day, The Hideaway, and I realized sadly enough that we had oversized pieces, which as you know are useless. I will be giving them to the plants tonight. To all of those putting in the hours to keep this thing going, Thanks, Todd
Posts:
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Registered:
Jan 23, 2002
From:
Forest Grove, Oregon
Age:
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Re: tournament turnout
Posted:
Sep 16, 2004, 5:13 AM
Seriously so what on this post! Damn man who cares. I love pente, few people can say they've played as much as the Snut and I. it's about having fun and enjoying the game, if someone doesn't feel like competing I don't begrudge them one bit. I love snowboarding but I would never compete in it. If I feel like playing in a tournament I will, sometimes I don't. There's nothing wrong with that!
Time, priorities, and life in general (oh yeah, more of those famed excuses) are always there for me to weigh everything else against. I don't know about anyone else but it's damn hard to balance a life and be pente 150% of the time. I've even played over 40+ hours a week at times...it's not my thing, it burns me out and makes the game seem less cool to me. However, I DO love the game, play it a sh*tload, no one epitomizes the Soul of Te' more than the Snut or I (well maybe ilurath, also another excuse maker apparently) I donate, teach new players, and try and give back in my own way to this game. The people I've met through online play & over the years are cool. if I went to a tournament I'd be just stoked to meet those people. playing performance and turnout are minor things considering just being able to meet a higher caliber player who decided to make the trek for Te' in the first place!
I'm sorry I wasn't one of those people this time, I missed out on putting some names to face's and just meeting some of the more dedicated members of the community. Rest assured though, had I gone I wouldn't be pissed at everyone and sh*ttalk my "championship" due to lack of turnout....that's just petty to me Dmitri, what's Kevin got to say about that? I'd be interested to know.
I know Snut would have been F*ckin super stoked to come back and tell me he'd won that tourney. and had I went I would've felt the same way. So don't go getting all pissy just because the voice of pente wasn't able to browbeat the world into submission. Lay off the thick drama and accept that more than likely if there is consistency to live tournament play more and more people will show over time. Hell I'd probably go next year just to take your damn title belt, outdrink your ***, and make a dmitri sandwich with the Snutter (it's like a 3 in a row blocked on both sides dmitri, you'd dig it!)
you made some good points, but I was annoyed mostly with those who indicated they would likely be there but weren't. In your case, you made it fairly clear that you would not be able to makie it from the get-go, so that didn't really bug me.
Again, I was just disappointed. I realy hoped for more than 14, because being "world champion" of 14 isn't that big fo a deal. I do hope the tournamnets grow in the future, and I'll always be there to meet whoever else is.
but now that I think about it, I shouldn't let the small turnout diminish my accomplishment -- if anyone else thinks he is more deserving of the title, he should have gone tovegas to prove it.
Message was edited by: dmitriking at Sep 16, 2004 2:15 PM
I think part of the problem is that the WPPF called it a "World Championship". Was it really? I think the WPPF tried to go from sitting to running full speed without learning to crawal, then walk first. Perhaps it should have been called the "US Championship". Then your title would have more cred.
I applaud the WPPF for it's efforts, but I think better execution could get it a lot farther. Perhaps they have taken a step backwards, but can learn from it and take two steps forward from here. Let's hope.
perhaps the wppf could have better "executed" if a few more people had been a little more helpful. Instead, people besieged Greg with complains while offering no ideas or solutions.
, you can be justly proud of besting a quality field. And while there are some kinks to be worked out regarding game time and field format, I felt that Tom and Patricia did an admirable job considering it was our first shot at this in many years. And as nosovs pointed out, this is just the beginning. It will get better and as it does, participation will increase. 