PSP Chicago: Day 1

Or Day 2 if you were playing some upper division Race 2. The D1, D2 & D3 prelims are complete. Playoff rounds will begin tomorrow to get the divisions down to the semis for Sunday. (I think.) The brackets are posted. I'm not 100% positive because I only got involved at all when some D1 match-ups were apparently posted either prematurely or inaccurately--or both. It took a couple of text messages and a couple of phone calls to get everything straight. In hindsight it made sense but my excuse is it was late and I was tired and it was all raehl's fault. (Okay, it really wasn't Chris's fault but he is a convenient scapegoat.) Sac Damage missed moving on because of total match time; tie-breaker number 4. Sucks but there it is. The kids played well in a tough bracket and even without a Sunday spot this event continued the process of overall improvement. Anyway, the confusion arose mostly because of the way teams are ranked after the fact. In Damage's group Distortion was ranked above them because of head-to-head but in comparing the two prelim scores Distortion was listed as ranked 11 with a margin difference of -1 while Damage was ranked 7 with a margin difference of 0. For those of you used to this I suppose it's clear that all of those numbers are more or less irrelevant for determining who moves on and who doesn't--at least as it turned out this time. However, that said, the rules are in black & white and once understood there was no margin for error or favoritism.
On the pro field today it was another trip to bizzaro world--which you should have seen on the webcast--and if you didn't where were you? Don't say work. Or school. Or any of that kinda lame excuse. You know where you belong. In the morning session the Russians flushed Dynasty 7-0 and then took Viscious 5-4 in OT. Upton put the wood to the Ironmen then got smacked down by X-Factor. Infamous was strong as was Heat who both or their matches for the day. We opened with Infamous (followed by X-Factor) in a replay of Saturday afternoon in Phoenix. Which could either be a nightmare recreation of our unexpected failure that day or a chance to put it behind us. The Infamous match was Phoenix all over again after a solid start. For whatever reason all the positive work in practice evaporated along with our faith in each other and our ability to execute our game. It would prove to be either a wake up call or Phoenix al over. Fortunately, unlike Phoenix our post Infamous loss team talk cleared our heads and we got back on track against X-Factor 7-2. From here on out it's one match at a time and even one point at a time and until we're back playing on Sunday nothing has been resolved just yet.
Btw, for whatever reason--I an't really pin one down in my mind--the venue reminds me of Rennaissance fair. It doesn't make any sense at all, evn to me, but that's the vibe I got. Compared to last year I think the whole block of fields has been further away from CPX with the vendors mostly arrayed along the gravel track that winds past the overflow parking lots.
The weather today was exceptional with a forecast that, fingers crossed, should match it tomorrow. More of a general overview tomorrow--so stay tuned.