In late August I hosted a Pong tournament in which 5 different teams competed for glory. This post recaps and provides a breakdown of those results. So that’s the best place to start.
The Results
Congrats to the Bethlehem Boys – Nog and BSG – for the chip!
These results being the case, the misleading thing is our totals for the Final. Our video recording stopped with the score 16-14, meaning the numbers above – aside from the score – only represent what happened in that game up to that point in time. And those same partial numbers are what we’re using for the rest of this tourney’s breakdown – the remainder is lost to history.
Three Nine Five
Something that’s not lost to history? 395’s continued ubiquity.
For years now, there’s been a running theory / superstition / gag that 395 has some sort of karmic influence over the outcome of pong rallies. The thought goes, when the score has a chance to become some combination of 3, 9 and/or 5, the rally would overwhelmingly result in that outcome. Down 2-5 Low? Your odds of winning the next point are astronomically high, since that yields a new brace of 3-5.
Obviously this passes the smell test… but does it pass a real test? Well, across the 12 games I charted, I identified 74 different rallies in which the score had a chance to become a 3-9-5 score. Of those, 40 yielded that outcome.
That’s 54.1%!! Amazing!
Perhaps not the “you’re down 15-18, you have no chance” I would have liked to see, but hey. It still beat the 50-50 odds an objective observer would project.
Runs
One other previously-unconsidered phenomenon we wanted to look at was the sequencing of points. After all, although pong is often a game of runs, we didn’t really have any data at all to try and better understand that dynamic.
Well, if you consider a “run” anytime a team wins multiple points in a row, here’s what the tourney-wide breakdown looked like:
Unsurprisingly, with a competitive playing field in a game to 21 points, you’re just not going to see teams go on double-digit runs all too often.
On a related note, in our second Pong Pod, we labeled the act of sweeping all 5 points of your Serve a “Lion’s March;” the act of losing all 5 points, a Mayflower. And satisfyingly, these things actually happened:
- Bullets went on a Lion’s March to open the game against Schmarver
- BSG (vs. Schmarver) and Sagar (vs. Tupolo) both posted Mayflowers
- Yours truly posted both a Lion’s March and a Mayflower in the same game (vs. Tupolo)!!
Badges
Earlier this year, 3x champion Nog invented and executed the concept of pong badges, in that he established a dozen noteworthy statistical performance thresholds and mailed laminated badges to each achiever. Think about these as a cross between boy scout merit badges and college football helmet stickers – but for pong.
We dove into the concept in detail on the pong pod, so here I’ll just highlight the badges that were achieved in Summer Slam:
- Champion: BSG, Nog
- 22+ Events: Kambour (24, vs. Schmarver), Bullets (23, vs. Tourbour)
- 6+ Sinks: Kambour (6, vs. Tupolo)
Congrats to all!! Getting a badge is no joke.
Stats
Sorry (or perhaps you appreciate?) that this post is short and sweet – I just didn’t have it in me to exhaustively research and write about every particular I could think of this year. If you were hoping for highlight videos, or have specific questions I left unaddressed, well… fuck off. But I would be remiss if I didn’t share what you’ve all been wondering this whole time: how’d everybody play?!?!
| Player | Hits/G | Sinks/G | Saves/G | UFEs/G | Shooting % | Save % | Avg. Net | Shot Value | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nog | 5.8 | 1.8 | 6.2 | 0.8 | 16.4% | 68.9% | 7.4 | 0.078 | 5.532 |
| BSG | 4.6 | 1.4 | 2.2 | 4.6 | 10.7% | 27.5% | 2.2 | 0.016 | 1.264 |
| Bullets | 6.8 | 1.8 | 3.6 | 2.8 | 20.1% | 45.0% | 6.4 | 0.070 | 4.650 |
| Sagar | 1.0 | 1.0 | 1.8 | 4.6 | 6.6% | 32.1% | -2.6 | -0.033 | 0.144 |
| Kambour | 6.5 | 3.5 | 6.8 | 1.3 | 18.6% | 60.0% | 9.5 | 0.099 | 5.921 |
| Tourek | 2.0 | 0.3 | 5.3 | 7.0 | 3.2% | 45.7% | -3.8 | -0.055 | -1.367 |
| Schmals | 3.0 | 1.5 | 3.3 | 4.5 | 9.5% | 43.3% | 0.0 | 0.000 | 1.134 |
| Marver | 6.8 | 0.8 | 3.5 | 1.3 | 16.6% | 46.7% | 6.3 | 0.087 | 4.397 |
| Rup | 3.7 | 1.2 | 6.2 | 3.5 | 9.7% | 53.6% | 2.0 | 0.016 | 2.150 |
| Tufts | 4.5 | 2.0 | 5.0 | 2.8 | 12.3% | 58.8% | 4.3 | 0.041 | 3.451 |
Typically, here’s where I’d give my pick for MVP, but this strikes me as a murkier vote this time around. We’ll save that debate – which will be a somewhat existential one – for the next episode of the pong pod.
Until then, ITB and RIP Saxe.