Turkey Bowl 2009 Results

Final Standings

1. ThatOneGuy (Jeff Litster) - 300 pts
2. DirtyDan (Dan Wetzel) - 221 pts
3. d6Amefath3r (Brennan Litster) - 193 pts
4. angus4ever (Roger Douglass) - 149 pts
5. SpeedMonger (Chance Allen) - 145 pts
6. bomajoe (Joe Hargadon) - 144 pts
7. thundr (Jarin Blackham) - 117 pts
8. beuchety (Tyler Beuchert) - 80 pts
9. BigBadMrT (Mark Thompson) - 55 pts
10. Mando (Mandi Litster) - 41 pts
11. atholon (Walt Weidner) - 39 pts

Recap

Without a doubt, this year's Turkey Bowl was our biggest and most successful Turkey Bowl ever. I really hope it will set a precedence for future Turkey Bowls.

This year, sadly, we had to shelf Motocross Madness 2 (MCM2) due to incompatibilities with Vista and Windows 7 for many FNGers. Fortunately we had TrackMania United Forever as an excellent alternate. We raced 15 of the highest ranked tracks on TM Exchange (TMX); 2 from each environment (except Island which had 3.)

Bomajoe said the tracks were "challenging, yet doable"; and FNGers found it necessary to practice the track pack before the tournament in order to do well.

We had 11 gamers in the tournament, and the only glitch we ran into was when Atholon's internet connection failed just before the tournament began. I ended up hosting the server on my measly 6Mbit/700k internet connection, hosting 4 of the players in my own home and the rest online. No one lagged and everyone stayed connected (well, with the exception of Chance who kept tweaking his control settings, heh.)

We welcomed many newer FNGers this time around... angus4ever, bomajoe, and SpeedMonger; who proved forces to be reckoned with, taking 4th, 5th and 6th places. My daughter, Mando, also made her first official FNG appearance. We hope to see more of them in the future!

The competition was exciting; especially with 4th, 5th and 6th place being within 8 points of each other. SpeedMonger barely claimed 5th place from bomajoe besting him by a single point. I was fortunate enough to "bowl a perfect game", despite a few close calls on a couple of the tracks.

Atholon gets special mention for "keyboard powa" and "paired driving" as he was assisted by his beautiful fiancee, Kris10. The two will be married next month... congratulations y'all!

Congrats to the FNGers on the podium after the tourament: ThatOneGuy brought home the Gold, DirtyDan the Silver and my son, d6Amefath3r won Bronze.

I hope everyone had a great time, and again, I appreciate all the support everyone has given me over the past seven years of Turkey Bowls... they've certainly seen their share of problems! But the number seven must really be lucky, because this one went off without a hitch. Here's to the next seven Turkey Bowls!

For detailed race results, see the recap on the Official FNG website.