Weekly Tournament at the Standard

58 people competed in the Open tournament, and 49 in the Classics tournament. Strong turn-out! And folks really put a lot of work into their qualifying entries. You had to put up some hot scores in order to make it into the final rounds.

And then once the final round started, oh man, things got shaken up fast. Some big names got eliminated in the first round of the finals.

And through it all Robert Gagno emerged victorious in – get this – not one, but BOTH tournaments! He swept it! No easy feat. He played great throughout the tournament. And when crunchtime came, in the final rounds, he pulled it off like a champ. He came down with this parents, Kathy and Maurizio, and they all basically operated as a team throughout the weekend. Team Gagno. (On a personal note: I got 2nd place in the Open, and while I felt like I played pretty well, I’m not sad! It was totally cool to watch Robert sweep the event. Major props.)

Nice showing by Portland players in the event. All our constant playing and competing must be paying off… with DIVIDENDS! Whatever that means. Nice showing by the core CFF contingent, too. But there were some notable absences (Replay!).

Here are photos taken by Robert’s dad of the winners line-ups. Check out their flickr page for a lot more great pictures.

Classics Division Winners. l-r: James Edes (4th), Cayle George (2nd), Robert Gagno (1st), Aaron “Dropshot” Nelson (3rd).

Open Division Winners. l-r: Fred “Fred” Franken (4th), Robert Gagno (1st), Steve Lampros (3rd), Ryan “ROM” Gratzer (2th).

Eden Stamm was top qualifier in the Open. Cayle George was the top qualifier in the Classics. Zoe “Legs” Vrabel was the top female qualifier, and she also won the PBR skateboard in a mini-tourney (thanks PBR!).

Big thanks to Aaron, Jake (Revtest), Fred, Eric, and Noah for organizing the event. And thanks to Slabtown for providing a rad venue. Mega thanks to Ricochet for their tight tournament machines, and for their really awesome mini-game machines. Here’s a video of Jeri from Ricochet showing off the NES Light Gun game.

Danny Backglass won the Time Machine reverse-flipper tourney, and Mike Smith won both the Tommy Bad Cats and the Star Trek NES Zapper tourneys. Way to go! Also, thanks to Quality Entertainment for their machine. Thanks to Chris Rhodes for bringing in Aztec, and for everyone who brought in their sweet machines. The line-ups were nice. Very well-rounded and interesting.

Check out this page on the message board for the full results.

Lastly, some pictures: