Saturday November 28th brought LOPL to Aaron’s place for the 3rd LOPL playoffs. A total of 24 LOPLites competed including a number of members from outside of the area (K/W and Burlington). Host Aaron and reigning regular season champ Mike D got off to quick starts as did Julie. It was quickly apparent that the day would be a battle for most of the LOPL crew as people traded wins back and forth. In the end during the 13th round of qualifying David managed to defeat Mike for his seventh win to claim the last spot in the playoff round. Had David not won there would have been an eleven player playoff just for that final playoff spot as ten others had 6 wins.
Then with four people tied at 9 wins a single game playoff was required to find out which two would go to the A final and which two would go to the B final. That single game was played on AFM. Going into ball 2 it was anyone's game and then Jeff T began to pull away finishing his game with slightly less than 10 Billion points. Steve V managed to outpace Paul D to get the final spot in the A final with Paul D and Shaun heading to the B final to join David. Larry apparently fearing a possible immigration raid had left the property and did not compete in the final .
The games for the B final were No Fear, Road Show and Judge Dredd
The first two games had the exact same results; Shaun in first, followed by David and Paul D in third. This left Shaun with 6pts, David with 4pts and Paul with 2pts
In the third and final (or so we thought) game Paul D pulled out the stops and won the game with Shaun finishing 2nd and Dave 3rd. This of course meant that Shaun had won the B division but both David and Paul had 5 pts so an additional tie-breaking game would be required.
The tie-breaker was played on Monster Bash and Paul managed to continue on his streak and defeated David earning Paul 2nd in the B division (6th overall).
During the B competition the A final was also going on. The A finalists would be playing Pinbot, Spiderman and Maverick. After two balls on Pinbot both Aaron and Mike had sizeable leads on Steve and Jeff. Steve couldn’t improve on his score and was out of the running on this game after his ball 3. Jeff on the other hand continued his late inning heroics and came back to actually win the game with Aaron placing 2nd and Mike 3rd.
On to Spiderman; Mike D rebounded to take 1st on SM with Jeff toughing out a 2nd and Aaron just behind him in 3rd. Steve had a rough outing and after two games the point totals were Jeff T with 5 pts, Mike 4 pts, Aaron 3 pts and Steve 0 pts.
Maverick was played in a single player mode to help with some unbalanced scoring in multiplayer. Steve V stormed back and put up the target of just under 500 Million. Mike D decided to go second and put up a respectable 222 million, Jeff went into ball three behind and selected superpops (2 Million/pop) and after a heated struggle he ended with 224 million (one pop bumper more than Mike) at this point Mike could no longer win the tourney and Aaron would have to win the game to cause a tie-breaker. Using this knowledge of the game Aaron went to work and was able to put up more than 500 million before finishing his second ball. Another tie breaker would be needed!
The tie-breaker game would be on Dracula. Aaron having choice decided to go first to put the pressure on, this however did not go to plan as after his first two balls Aaron had amassed only 20 Million points. Jeff playing solidly put up a total of 240 Million after ball two. Aaron then managed to finesse a wonderful ball three and jumped his score to 450 Million, but Jeff would not fold. Working hard during his ball three Jeff played on but in the end was only able to add an additional 110 Million falling 100 Million short leaving Aaron as the new undisputed LOPL playoff champion!
Special thanks to Dan B who travelled to run the turny and for doing the above write up. Thanks to Aaron for hosting. It was a great time. Super thanks to all the LOPL hosts, if there were no hosts the league would not exist. Thanks to all the LOPL execs for all your hard work behind the scenes. Some days poor Steve comes home from work to 40 email exchanges between the execs
Finally, thanks to all the players in LOPL for making this the best season yet! LOPL continues to grow and improve. The players are also improving so the competition is getting tougher and tougher each year.
Stay tuned for some changes coming up for the next season which begins at the beginning of February.
Pics of the playoffs can be seen here:
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