It was the first day of what was undoubtedly going to be a long, long weekend. The setting was The Ballroom of Resorts Casino in Atlantic City. My beer pong day was just beginning at 7 o'clock when I entered the opening round of the 64-man 1-on-1 tournament. After two "nail biting" overtime victories, I dropped two straight disappointing match-ups which sent me off into the night. I had planned to just have a few beers, gamble, and maybe get some sleep. As I made my way out of the ballroom, I ran into the Barn Animal who needed a partner for the sit-n-go tournaments they were running. What is a sit-n-go you ask? They are just 4-team, single elimination tournaments.

That's when the magic started to happen. The Barn Animal and I starting taking teams... to the f*cking woodshed! No one knows for sure how many unfortunate souls ended up in the woodshed that glorious night, but we went undefeated and stayed that way until we were told that we couldn't play anymore. With all the capital that "Team Woodshed" was able to raise through our winnings, we were able to afford some pretty nice upgrades to the woodshed including new state-of-the-art squirrel traps, an actually-functioning-revolving door, and a 24-hour food court. I'd like to make a special shout out to my new interstate partner, Tone, for helping out with his fund raising efforts for the woodshed as well. The woodshed is here to stay people.

Just in case you don't understand the woodshed at this point in time, don't worry, you'll get it eventually.

I'll get back to beer pong in a second. I've been meaning to start my blog since about a year ago but haven't found the time to get it going. After The Closer was motivated enough to start his blog, I decided that I could not be out-motivated by my partner and that now was the time. I struggled to come up with a name for my blog. I was tossing around some pretty lame ideas - nothing I was really happy with. Now I have my title and my weekly blog will hopefully live on as long as my beer pong career does.

So let's get back to beer pong. This past weekend was the World Beer Pong Tour's Atlantic City Championship, the East Coast's first tournament that featured a 5-digit prize amount; $25,000 to be exact. I didn't know what to expect coming into this tournament. I've never played in a WBPT event before. I've lived some real-life horror stories and I've heard about even more from other people who participated in tournaments run by unfamiliar people. Don't get me wrong, Sam, Neil, and the rest of the WBPT crew are really nice guys and they run a good product up in New York; I just really didn't know what to expect. I guess I've come to expect the worst when I don't really know how things will shape up.

When the real action started on Friday, we were all divided up into divisions of 13 teams in which we were supposed to play each of the other teams. Our record in the preliminaries would earn the top 96 teams a berth in the final tournament. So for us MD Beer Pongers the first day was basically a short league night. This set up actually worked out pretty well. It was self governed but since everyone had to play everyone else, it was pretty easy to get all of our games in. Maryland did extremely well in the prelims with 9 teams making the top 32.

The final tournament was set up much differently than the World Series. First off, all games were actually best 2 out of 3 series which I was a big fan of. The teams ranked 33rd-96th had to win a play-in series to make the field of 64. From there is was straight on to the championship using the same best 2 out of 3 series in a standard single elimination bracket.

For those of you who have never been to a national level competition, let me just tell you that they are extremely exhausting. You won't want to see a ping pong ball for at least a week after you get home. The hardest thing to do sometimes is to keep shooting so that you stay warm while trying to maintain a "healthy buzz" while choking down food you're too nervous to eat. I carried around the same hot dog for 4 hours on Saturday because I couldn't eat it. Maybe that's just me.

My only major gripe over the whole weekend was the speed in which the final tournament was run. Competition started around noon for the opening round. The second round which was the top 32 teams' first action of the day started sometime around sometime between 2:00 and 3:00. After this the next round was around 5:00 or so. After this round there was a break until 7:00. I'm pretty sure the Sweet 16 started around 8:00 or so. If you're doing the math, we played three series in about six hours. That comes out to one series every two hours.

Foster and I played "F'in It Up" from Ohio in this round. They took the first game of the series in overtime. The second game, in no uncertain terms, we took them to the f*cking woodshed by 5 cups in regulation. The next game, irony turned into tragedy. Although their team name was "F'in It Up", it seems that it was really the A-train that deserves that title. Up 5-2, our opponents were on the ropes. We had a shaky start to the game, but were now shooting lights out against a team who had stalled almost to a halt on an unforgiving 5-rack. That's when one member of their team bounced a shot off the rim of the front cup. The ball lazily caromed up into the air. Clearly a miss that had no prayer of finding it's way into a live cup, the A-train decided that it was worthwhile playing defense on the hovering ball. On the plus side, I did deflect the ball. On the minus side, I knocked over two (almost three) cups that would come back to haunt us a few minutes down the road.

Sean didn't seem too mad at me although I'm sure thoughts of walking me down the path to the woodshed did enter his mind. Thoughts of the 2008 Spring Classic popped into my mind when the Mantis knocked over four cups during rebuttals to send the match into an overtime in which Get Mitch Or Die Tryin' lost.

I had no choice but to hit my next shot for my partner after such a critical error. After that, Sean followed suit and shot by all accounts the most perfect shot in beer pong history, crushing the last cup. It seems that the 2-cup assist from A-train was the spark they needed. They hit all three rebuttals and brought the game into an overtime. The rest is history as Projectile Dysfunction missed 3-straight at the last remaining cup to seal the most crushing defeat of my elderly beer pong career.

At the end of the day, or maybe even the start of the next day, Smashing Time won their 2nd big tournament of the year. New York has one more shiny trophy while the trophy case in the front lobby of the woodshed is still waiting for that first novelty sized check.

• The WBPT had what I would consider a very successful event this weekend. There were some things that they could have done better but for the most part everything was good. Neil and Sam are very nice guys and seemed genuinely grateful for MDBP's participation in the event. They have my vote of confidence.
• Get Mitch Or Die Tryin' is the most dysfunctional team in the history of professional sports. However, somehow they maintain their composure (most of the time) when it comes to tournament time. They are the only team in MDBP that can say they never lost a major tournament game to a non-MDBP team thanks to Dixie Normous in WSOBP V and Wet Ballz in AC.
• Speaking of Wet Ballz, I would be remiss not to give some credit to Theo for helping me take the woodshed metaphor to annoying high levels. Without him, there would be no one constantly infringing on my patented wave, but I'd also probably not have a name for my blog.
• Speaking of Wet Ballz again, did anyone happen to notice how handsome Jamie "Big Cup" Behrens was looking on the final day? I don't know if he grew an inch or two taller overnight, got a fresh new haircut, or what, but it was definitely noticeable. Warming up in my room before the tournament, he was standing in front of the window with the sun shining at his back. He looked like an angel. Not only that, but from all accounts he was straight murdering rebuttal cups all day.
• You've heard the Barn Animal talking about it for years. Carroll County is the strongest beer pong breeding ground in Maryland, if not the world. McAllister was the highest finishing team from Maryland this past weekend. The pun in the previous statement is undeniable, as is the undeniable fact that Carroll County continues to shine on the national stage. In 4 of the 5 national tournaments, Carroll County teams have finished the highest out of all the other Maryland teams (McAllister in AC, 2 Kids From Hampstead at WSOBP IV, Dixie Normous in WSOBP I and III).
• I wanted to give shout outs to Carlton Banks, Pong-a-bility, What, What? In the Cup, Who's In Your Mouth?, and WILDCARD for representing Maryland in their first national level competition. You all had a good showing and I hope you'll make future trips with us.
• I hope the ZZ-Top-style bearded Ohioan from AC is reading this. I want to hire you to do your O-H-I-O chant while I shoot at all major competitions. I don't think I missed a single time during the chant and I could really use that kind of support in the future. Please email me and we'll set it up.
• Sit-n-go Tournaments are awesome. I think we will try and run some of those this Friday at the WSOBP Satellite Tournament.

Each and every week I'll be chronicling one unlucky person/team that I or someone else has taken to the woodshed. Sticking with the Atlantic City theme, this week's recipient of a one-way ticket to the woodshed is Juliana, our waitress at whatever restaurant we stumbled into after being eliminated from competition on the final day. First off the service was terrible. The food was average at best and we couldn't find her for probably 30 minutes at one point when we were trying to get drink refills. Then we got the bill. Luckily I noticed that they had "for our convenience" added 19% gratuity. This was a little odd to me for a few reasons. First, 19% seems a little presumptuous don't you think? Second, there were only five or us, which I've never seen garnish automatic gratuity. Then the receipt that I needed to sign has an extra line for tip??? Well, here's your tip Juliana: GET TO THE F*CKING WOODSHED!

I hope you enjoyed the inaugural edition of my blog. I hope to keep it going well into the future or until I'm told that I'm embarrassing myself. It will be at that time that I take myself to the woodshed.