JOKR's Event Blog: May 2021

Our teams placed 2nd in Mid Division and 3rd in Lower this year! Read on to see how that happened, or check out our event videos here:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrJjrQtZSSXwhM_tbDc9VAVcyx1ec77JU

Mid Division team info
•Team name: Help, I Misplaced My Calories
•Members: 2
•Member names: Aleta Ewing (JOKR) & David Sjöstrand (Urza)
•Location(s): USA & Sweden (respectively)
•Place: 2nd out of 15 teams who submitted both Marathon and Raw Output scores (21 registered, but 6 did not submit scores for both)

Lower Division team info
•Team name: Cheese Baguette For Pleasure
•Members: 3
•Member names: Aleta Ewing (JOKR), Ilia LeRouskoff (Diablos), & Richard Dannenberg (Rinch)
•Location(s): USA, France, & Wisconsin (respectively)
•Place: 3rd out of 54 teams who submitted both Marathon and Raw Output scores (78 registered, but 24 did not submit scores for both)

Story

For a number of reasons, including the COVID-19 pandemic and Vegas dance game friends not being as active with ITG these days, I found myself without teammates leading up to this year's ECS team tournament. I'd made plans to participate with another of other people, but several of them suffered injuries or physical setbacks in that time, and all fell through. While it's possible to enter and compete the same way with anywhere from one to three people on a team, meaning it's a viable option to enter solo, it can be a lot less physically taxing with multiple people. Besides, I primarily play for the social aspect, so competing in a team tournament without teammates ideal to me. Fortunately, with fellow stamina players scattered across the globe, I was able to rustle up a few to make teams with! I'd also preemptively done some of the marathon splits in my own time, meaning there was less I needed to play in order to obtain the necessary scores to submit to participate in the tournament. The bad news: by the time I had my teams sorted and therefore had some idea of who would be handling which portions of scores and passes (marathon splits and various raw output songs) for the tournament, I had six days left to play two four-hour raw output sessions with my teams and pass one challenging mid marathon split. How that played out, by date:

5/11/21: Mid raw output with Urza
5/12/21: rest
5/13/21: 190bpm Mid marathon split attempt (unsuccessful)
5/14/21: light ITG session to keep loose
5/15/21: Lower raw output with Rinch and Diablos
5/16/21: 200bpm Mid marathon split

Mid team formation

Urza reached out roughly one week before the end of the tournament to see if I'd be interested in teaming up with him in Mid. He only had a couple of days he'd be able to play before the deadline, but between us, that would be enough to get the marathon splits and raw output done.

There were three splits to be done per division (or teammates could play the whole marathon in one go if you're able to play together in person, which we weren't). For Mid, each split had two 17s, two 18s, and two 19s (in that order) at or above the bpms given in their titles: 190, 200, and 210. Urza and I had both already done the 210 split, but he'd taken a break from playing ITG stamina just prior to doing so, so I wound up with a slightly higher score. That left us still in need of scores on the 190 and 200bpm splits. (We'd made prior attempts at these but had not yet passed either between us.)

Lower team formation

Once I found out none of the people who were supposed to enter with me this year would be available after all and after Urza and I had worked out teaming up for Mid, I made posts on social media to recruit new teammates for Lower. I got a handful of responses and wound up teaming up with Diablos from France and Rinch from Wisconsin. Neither Rinch nor I had ever met or spoken to Diablos before, but I saw that we did have a few mutual dance game friends with him.

As for a team name, we decided on Cheese Baguette For Pleasure because Wisconsin is known for cheese, baguettes are stereotypical French food, and Las Vegas is known as Sin City, so "For Pleasure" just sort of completed it. Nothing special, but we needed a name, and it worked.

As far as the three Lower marathon splits, each had two 12s, two 13s, and two 14s (in that order) at or above the bpms given in their titles: 140, 150, and 160. I'd done all three well in advance, not knowing who I'd be teaming up with and what they'd need from me, so I just left it to Diablos and Rinch to decide which of my scores they'd prefer to use and which split they'd each like to do themselves. In the end, we used my score on the 140bpm split, Diablos did the 150, and Rinch did the 160.

5/11/21 ‐ Mid raw output

Some quick info to note about this: the available songs for Mid raw output range from 17s to 22s + one 23. Each team has four hours to pass as many songs as they can, but only one person is allowed to play at a time. Scores don't matter, fails don't count, and each passed song can only be counted once per team.

I don't know about Urza, but I didn't go into this with much of a plan. With him in Sweden and me thousands of miles away in Las Vegas, coordinating trading off songs wasn't completely straightforward. He and I decided to watch each other's Twitch streams to see what song the other person was playing in order to keep track of what had been played and when so that we wouldn't end up playing the same songs or at the same time as one another and in order to total our score later. We did have a backup plan of messaging each other via Facebook Messenger if stream lag became too much of an issue to track when the other person had finished their song, but we hadn't realized that we'd basically have to rely entirely on those messages, as the lag on the stream quickly proved to be consistently bad and was wasting a lot of time. We decided to just send the word "Done" to each other after finishing our song(s) to signal the other person to take a turn. At times, one of us would get a message saying "Done" while their stream still seemed to show them with nearly half the song left to play! Urza had an incredible set on his end though and beasted 18 songs ranging in difficulty from 18 to 21, averaging at 19.11 difficulty, which was 1 difficulty higher than he's anticipated. I'm sure he faced some challenges, other than just coordinating with me and carrying the team, but he sure as hell did a fantastic job of compensating for them!

As for me, my struggles were primarily technical; I had multiple cameras freeze multiple times during my set and one camera kept falling over. The worst of the issues, however, was with the machine itself. TWICE during my set, the machine kicked the pads out and wasted a bunch of the limited time Urza and I could've otherwise spent playing and gaining points. The second of these times was worse, however, because it happened 40% of the way into an 18, wasting not only time but energy that I could've used to pass something else. I'd gone into the set playing it safe, telling Urza to expect nothing more than 17s and 18s out of me, just in case I couldn't offer more without the risk of failing and therefore wasting time. I realized a good way into our set, however, that I had it in me to do one or two long 19s for the team. Sadly, my machine had started kicking the pads out by that point, and I couldn't trust it enough to ever try. Maybe next year I'll have a backup setup to decrease the risk slightly. This year, I was limited to helping out with 16 songs at an average difficulty of 17.38.

Anyway, I had a good time, and we both got a good workout in "together" but from afar, and finished up with a total of 445 raw out output points to show for today's efforts.

5/13/21 - 190 Mid split attempt

I didn't have high hopes for the super-streamy 190bpm Mid marathon split today, but I promised Urza I'd give it a shot so we'd at least have some kind of score to submit for it by the May 16th deadline. Getting through the 17s and 18s and failing during the first 19, I actually made it slightly further than I'd expected to be able to, finishing with a failed score of 51.41%. Unlike in raw output, score is all that counts, and failing only matters in that it stops you from getting a higher score, so we were able to use my score as a placeholder in case nothing better could be achieved before the deadline.

5/14/21 - short session

I just played a quick, easy session today to keep my legs loose without burning out before Lower raw output tomorrow.

5/15/21 - Lower raw output

So soon after this week's prior ITG sessions, I didn't know what to expect from my body going into today. It's rare that I play this much in such a short period of time these days. That said, today's demands were lower. :p For one thing, the difficulty range for Lower raw output was just 12s to 17s + one 18. Diablos had already laid claim to the 18, as we'd divvied up the bpm ranges between us and it was within his, and there were only so many 17s available to play before we'd run out and have to drop down to 16s and under anyway.

With regard to divvying up the bpms between us, I had started with my recruitment post, requesting someone to do the 175bpm, 28-minute-long 18 if they did not want to play any of the 200+bpm songs, as it would be uncomfortable for me to take care of both extremes in one set. Diablos had offered to handle the 17, saying he was most comfortable at 180bpm and lower and would handle any content in that range. Rinch said he'd prefer to stay under ~200bpm, so he mostly tackled the 180 to 200bpm range. That left the 200+ stuff, so I took that. I didn't have much preference anyway as the fastest song in the pack was 218bpm, and bpm isn't too consequential to me at those difficulties.

Since we were obviously doing this remotely, just as I'd done with Urza a few days prior, I suggested using the tactics Urza and I had devised for coordinating with each other while playing. Though the difficulties were different between Mid and Lower, the format was the same. I'd sort of taken it for granted that we would each play roughly one song and then rotate to the next teammate in line though, so it hadn't occurred to me to plan the set out in detail with the guys. On the day, it turned out Rinch would need to play more near the start of the four hours so that he could leave early to help a friend, and Diablos would need to play the 28-minute 18 fairly early in the set but after warming up on another song during the set. Accordingly, we had to go into some of our songs almost completely cold. In fact, I actually waited 59 minutes between my first and second songs! X'D With those first two songs being [17][200]BE AS ONE and [17][205]Chrome Vox, I was just grateful that nothing in the pack was so insanely fast as to be impossible to tackle cold. I did have one moment of discomfort though: my third and fourth songs, [17][207]winkles twinkle '11 and [17][218]Goblin Humpa, were another 29 minutes after my second song, and that 218 was definitely a bit rough on otherwise sedentary legs. Haha I honestly couldn't complain though. For one thing, the challenge of playing that way was good tournament practice. For another thing, I really didn't have to play much during our four hours — only 39 mins compared to Diablos' 103 mins and Rinch's 85 mins! They were both so eager to keep knocking songs out, and who was I to argue with that? In the end Lower raw output turned out to be an absolute BREEZE for me. I've literally NEVER had an easier time during a raw output session, or probably any tournament, for that matter. My average heart rate during it was 102 and max was 138. Best part: this meant I might have some steam left in me for tomorrow — the last possible day to submit scores for ECS... Til then, it was time for some celebratory 151 with Sean, who'd just returned from running up and down one of the biggest mountains out here!

Some noteworthy moments from today: Rinch getting into his fancy dress for the second half of his set and Diablos doing the Stardust Curry challenge, i.e., push-ups during the long break in the song Stardust Curry. Find both in our raw output video below.

5/16/21 - 200bpm Mid split (last day of ECS 9.5)!

I woke up a bit parched, probably because of the 151. Luckily, it turned out Urza had already passed (more like annihilated!) the 190bpm split by the time I started thinking about playing today, so the 200bpm one was the only one we had left to pass! Also, I'd done so little yesterday that I had energy and felt plenty good enough for it. I wouldn't say it was easy by any means; my timing was horrendous, and I got 10.55% lower on it than I had on the 210bpm Mid marathon split. That's details though. We'd passed all three splits, which was far more than I could expected ahead of time!

Results

All said and done, here were our final numbers:

Mid marathon scores:
190bpm: 89.68% (Urza)
200bpm: 76.01% (JOKR)
210bpm: 86.56% (JOKR)

Mid points:
Marathon: 844
Raw output: 445
Total: 1289 (For comparison: First place had 1775, third had 1263)

Lower marathon scores:
140bpm: 98.88% (JOKR)
150bpm: 96.94% (Diablo)
160bpm: 99.56% (Rinch)

Lower points:
Marathon: 985
Raw output: 994
Total: 1979 (For comparison, second place had 1981, first had 1999)

Additional notes

I used the aliases our team members entered with for consistency here, but you may find them under other aliases elsewhere (e.g., Diablos also goes by diablos3000), so I have also included their full names (above).

Per ECS team tournament rules, each person is allowed to be on up to two teams per division. All three of my teammates had also entered Lower separately from me prior to teaming up with me. Urza had entered solo and placed 4th, Diablos had entered solo (under the alias diablos3000) and placed 17th, and Rinch had entered with his wife Steph/freyja and placed 7th.

As is somewhat typically the case when I play ITG, I was on my own much of the time while training and doing various parts of this tournament. Sean went to the Mount Charleston area twice this past week, for example — once during each of my raw output sessions — and climbed Griffith Peak and Mummy Mountain! (He wasn't slacking either. Haha) Danny was with me for almost all of my Lower Raw Output though, and Sean was there for part of both Raw Outputs and was also the brains behind putting all the videos together for me!

This is the first year the ECS team tournament has had three divisions — Lower, Mid, and Upper. In past years, I believe there was always only Lower and Upper, though perhaps there was only one division at one point in time? I can't say. In any case, I didn't do Upper this year as I am not yet good enough to pass even one Upper raw output song and therefore wouldn't be able to even if I wanted to. In total, 5 teams did submit both raw output and marathon scores for Upper.

A lot of this was typed as I went along through the week and just added to later. I didn't mean for it to transform into a novel. Welp.

Twitch stream links, in case you'd like to give any of us a follow:

JOKR (location: Nevada): https://www.twitch.tv/teambbc

Urza (location: Sweden): https://www.twitch.tv/urzagaming

Rinch (location: Wisconsin) : https://www.twitch.tv/freyja87

Diablos (location: France): https://www.twitch.tv/diablos3000

List of my YouTube vids from this event:

ECS 9.5 Raw Output (remote) - 2nd Place Mid Division (ITG):
https://youtu.be/n09_LTODhyc

JOKR - ECS 9.5 Mid Marathon Meme Tier High - 190 Vlad [20] 51.41% FAIL
https://youtu.be/rJxnXW09J8k

JOKR - ECS 9.5 Mid Marathon Meme Tier High - 200 Dad [20] 76.01%
https://youtu.be/oeZpn7Ot1fQ

JOKR - ECS 9.5 Mid Marathon Meme Tier High - 210 Aincrad [20] 86.56%
https://youtu.be/MefBrKtkGhc

ECS 9.5 Raw Output (remote) - 3rd Place Lower Division (ITG):
https://youtu.be/9qLkcM-O2Go