When I was young and naive, I thought splitting was BAD. Now that I'm old and crusty, I think staying up til 3am is a much worse evil. What I'm really pissed off about is how weekly draws continually get later and later for absolutely no good reason. Last weekend I played in a couple 8 and 9 team draw. It was scheduled to start at 9pm, which is WAY TOO LATE to begin with, but it ended up starting at about 10pm after all those slow poke rodriguez, complete lazy fucks decided to grace us with there presence.

NEW RULE: Charge players $1 per minute, for every minute they are late. add this money to the pot. If they don't pay, they don't play.

Next, would you believe there were 4 and 5 tables with 9 teams and it goes to 2:30am-3:00am every week? Fuck, cock, bitch, I just need to swear because these wankers have such Pro-Level games that they can't play on table#2...it doesn't level right...and table#5's balls are a little too slippery...and table#1 just plain sucks. AAAUUUUGGGHHH! Fuck, my ass is too slippery, shut-up, flip a coin, and start the match, you get to pick the goddam side, just play your fucking game you little shitty fucking suck hole. I've seen at least 10 players pull this kind of crap at every DYP. Is it me, or does this kind of stuff bug anyome else? Does it only go on in my neck of the woods? Am I taking it a little too seriously?....It just drives me nuts. There is no reason in the world that weekly tournaments shouldn't start at 8pm and finish at a respectable 12 midnight.

NEW RULE: Charge player $5 if they want to change tables.

It seems that weekly tournaments follow a natural progression from great to shit in about 12-24 months. They start great, the promoters are all fired up, the players show up almost on time. Then promoters get a little more relaxed, they allow call-ins, and they allow people to show up 30 minutes late. Then 12 months down the line, the tournament starts 60 minutes late, players can show up 1 and a half hours late, and the bar owners are screaming at you to finish becuase he's worked a 60 hour week and he'd like to get home by 4am.

OK, perhaps I need to loosen my shorts, but there's tears in my eyes when I see local tournaments slide down this path to destruction. I haven't been to a dyp in 2 months where the players didn't split mainly due to the fact it was past 2am.

Let me know what you think...am I a big cry-baby? or do you have the same situation in your neck of the woods? I'd be curious to hear.

A.D. Coming Next Week Foosball Fanatic #16 the annual "How California Dominated The 96 Worlds" -> NOT It will take a statistical miracle for me to pull this one off.