Searching for NTN bloggers
At the moment I'm searching for NTN bloggers...or, better still, an NTN blog. Here's what I'm finding.
Clara*s Victory Dance:
Friday I met Maria for drinks at the Flatiron. Ah, beer. Now that I don’t drink at home it’s so much more fun going out for beer. Anyway we played NTN and I won the BATMAN round. Since I just saw Batman Begins and you all know my feeling about Christian Bale I feel this somehow means we are meant to be together....
Pua:
We'd had a pretty rough week and so were looking forward to Pub Night on Friday. Charlie and I always try to get there early on Fridays. There's no crowd until later, and the dynamics are less bar-like and more restaurant-ish. The older regs are always in their usual barstools playing NTN, and as always, when we walk in the door, we get the "Cheers" greeting; "CHARLIE! PUA!" and then the drinks show up without so much as our asking. That accomplished, Roz (the owner) gets to the business of making sure I have a charged up NTN Playmaker.
For the most part, I keep a pretty low profile when I play. I don't sit at the bar with the regs. Charlie and I always take a table somewhere in the restaurant. That way, I can watch a hockey game on another tv and still see the NTN screen at the same time. I play under a nickname instead of my own name; I guess for a sense of anonymity. Or at least, if I have a really bad game, then no one will know that the bonehead loser is Pua. :o) I've had my good and bad days. Days where I couldn't answer a question for the life of me, and proposed no threat to the barfly regs sitting at the bar. These guys are Players Plus members with MILLIONS of points to my mere 82,000. It's pretty obvious that they burn a lot of hours sitting at that bar drinking beer and playing the game. But last night, I was a force to be reckoned with. It started out slow; me against 7 men, and for the majority of the first game, I held strong to seventh, or last place. But on question 14 (every game consists of 15 questions), an inquiry regarding Canadian government came up. What the hell do I know about Canada for goshsakes? I guessed. I hit paydirt and suddenly found myself in 2nd place. Suddenly, mumbling starts in barfly reg country. They turn and start scanning the room for this surprising upandcomer. With no satisfaction, they turn their attention back to the screen for the last question. "What producer gave us Agent James Bond?" Well crap. I'm playing against a bunch of middle-aged and older men. What chance do I have to pull this one out? Zero to none. Guess again. I had Broccoli for dinner. I literally ate them alive because for some reason, they went the actor route instead of the producer route and they either answered "Sean Connery" or "George Lazenby". Boys, eat your veggies!
So, by the first hat trick (three wins) with my name flashing on the screen as gamewinner, I could tell the Barfly Boys were positively seething. And Charlie and I, happily hidden but with them delightfully in our view, enjoyed watching as they kept looking around for this infiltrator. I honestly think Charlie was having much more fun than me just watching their reactions with every game I won. SIX games later, the frustration evident and no longer tolerable, the Barfly Boys got up from their seats, split up, and actively walked around the restaurant looking for a chick with a Playmaker. Finally, one of them, saw the Playmaker at our table, looked at me, approached our table....
Barfly Boy goes back to the bar and resumes his place for the next game. I turn mine off. It's time to go and it's always better to leave the table when you're ahead. I think Kenny Rogers said that...right? Anyway, Charlie goes to say goodbye to our friend Jerry, the manager, and close out our tab, and I walk over to Bilbo and the rest of the Barfly Boys....
They all turn toward me, smile, say their polite pleasantries about how it's nice to know me, when I know for a fact they all hate me right now. One of the them, he goes by the handle "Bullitt", says to me..."So YOU'RE the one. You're good. You're damn good." I thank him; "Coming from you, that's quite a compliment."...
As we walk out the door, Charlie says, "Wow..did you see how happy they were you were leaving? That's gotta feel great!" Any other time, a remark like that might make me cry. But this time, I was elated.
Pokeramarama:
Anyhow, last night. My friend, Twanner(short for Anthony, but how, I'm not quite sure), went out for our weekly NTN trivia battle at William's (?). We finish up at about midnight with the usual outcome-the ass-kicking of Twanner, by yours truly-and head over to Old Chicago because it's karaoke night....
Watching Myself Gavotte:
Friday, November 19, 2004
Wednesday night I ended up playing and finishing second in the law school Trivial Pursuit tournament at Leopold's....
Trivia games (and trivia questions, for that matter) can range on a wide spectrum from impossibly hard to absurdly easy. But the distinctions are more complicated than that. I would argue that any trivia game has two competing factors that determine what kind of outcome you want: do you want to reward knowing more obscure things ("knowing"), or do you want to reward figuring out more commonly known things ("reckoning")?...
I think the proper reckoning/knowing ratio for a good trivia game is a highly subjective thing; most people would never want to play a game with the level of knowledge required in quiz-bowl, because most people just don't have that kind of factual knowledge. On the other hand, many quiz-bowl people disdain reckoning questions, except insofar as they have to choose from a small set of answers they know that may fit the early clues to a question.
For me, CBI Regionals was always just about right--a fair amount of factual knowledge required to do well, some other analytical thinking skills useful if you want to do really well. NTN also has a nice ratio, because the questions generally require some knowledge, but because they are multiple choice, there's also a reckoning between answers aspect. Trivial Pursuit and harder versions of academic quiz-bowl are too far away from my ideal point for me to want to play them regularly; I enjoy them on occasion, but would probably get irritated with them if those occasions came more than about once a year.
Pokerist announced the availability of Texas Hold'Em on NTN.
P.S. Here are my current stats:
Personal Profile
Handle: OEMPER
Sex: M
Member Since: 2/19/2004
Last Played: 6/24/2005
Career Games: 102
Career Points: 94800
Home Location: Tequila Hoppers and Grill
Which, incidentally, appears on the display as "TEQUILA HO." So, when I was number 2 in the entire NTN network, I was OEMPER...TEQUILA HO.
In just a second I'll tell you why that was ironic...
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