Doubles Cup I

This article is about a site sanctioned Poop Tennis tournament.

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The Doubles Cup I was a Youtube Poop Tennis Tournament organized and hosted by RAKninja that served to be significant in helping to cement the popularity of the variant that would be known as Doubles Tennis. It was launched in November 2008 and continued until June 2009, and introduced many of the people that would go on to become some of the most widely recognizable names in the world of tennis, spawning two matches that are still greatly considered as some of the greatest matches ever played; seminfinal match TheChutley+trepmaws vs. Gamebop+MycroProcessor, and final match AjaxCubed+Aesaun vs. MycroProcessor+Gamebop, in which Aesaun and AjaxCubed would emerge as the winners of the Tournament. The gameplay model that was created and used in this competition would later see a revamp in the form of the Doubles Cup II.

Development

The earliest doubles match attempted was one started between RabbitSnore and Miscellaneous10 going against Furnessly and TheHappyFungus in March 2008, which as of today has not seen any progression past the serve and remains the oldest match sitting in the "In Progress" section, with every original player considerably having gone inactive long since. This continued to be a concept that was brought up and discussed frequently amongst the Tennis Staff and in the Cafe, and eventually RAKninja would begin to look for a way to turn it into a competition, originally as part of a set of quarterly events, with this being the one to happen on Winter. With nothing set in stone, he would make a thread in November 2008 asking for suggestions and additional ideas.

The original idea was set to happen as something of a "doubles league" which used an early form of the finalized doubles varient, primarily that in which each player from each side would volley round, with every player volleying once for a total of 4 rounds. FuturesPassed/RobotComics and uncleer would disagree with the idea of only one person individually due to the fact that it didn't seem collaborative enough as well as not fitting true to the spirit of tennis (in addition to the serving player never having to edit any previous round). It was suggested however that if made to be 8 rounds under this system, it would work much better. The idea recieved a small amount of support amidst a number of other people who mistook the thread as an actual tournament and mentioned signing up as a result.

RAK then came up with what would become the dominant system for competitive Doubles Tennis, which at the time was an entirely original concept of play and put a clever new twist on the doubles tennis format overall:

"how about this

6 rounds total

on a team, one pooper serves

the other returns,

the last round (for both teams) is a collaborative effort

so that way, each player on a team makes his own remix, and the last video (or perhaps any one video) is a team effort.

and instead of having a reserve player on a team, we can always have a bunch of "reserve" players"

AjaxCubed, now expressing interest in the idea, refined the explanation as:

(Team 1: Person A and B, Team 2: Person C and D)

Round 1: Person A goes

Round 2: Person C goes

Round 3: Person B goes

Round 4: Person D goes

Round 5a: Person A and B work together using round 4 to make round 5

Round 5b: Person C and D work together using round 4 to make round 5 as well

And later Bluesraph would clarify that the Team of C and D should make Round 6 and not Round 5, since this would make for a proper full match. This would become the definite standard.

For additional rules RAK wrote that "the match is scored by a review crew member, a tennis staff member, and a popular vote as the third "judge". in cases where a review crew or tennis staff are involved in a match, the match with be judged by two members of the other staff,(except in the case of RC vs TS) so if i were in a match against anyone but a RC member, i'd be judged by two RCs rather than a RC and TS...it sounds more complex than it really is."

Popular vote this time around would be as an experiment dictated using the poll function of the threads used for the matches, rather than the use of a host account.

The Doubles Cup I would also see a record number of 7 individual threads created for various purposes in regards to the proceedings of this tournament, including a roster, threads for Week 1, Week 2, Semifinals and Finals results(as well as a thread announcing Week 2 polls were closed) and the original thread which would pitch the idea.

Players

By the time of creation of the roster thread in December 2008 most of the teams that would participate had already formed, primarily that of

Matches

Set 1

Quite interestingly the matches containing the two pairs of players that would eventually make it to the end both won their first matches due to the other teams forfeiting. While Terrorist + Nuthead vs. Gamebop + MycroProcessor was able to initially make it through the "solo round" half of the match before the serving team disbanded, KlausTheWizard + RealGenericFilms vs. AjaxCubed and Aesaun failed after only two rounds. At the very last minute RGF was prevented from being able to continue the match due to family affairs, and while attempts were made at a replacement with both SesakaGenX and CommanderSky, no continuation was seen here.

FINAL MATCH

Things finally came to a fantastical heat in the match of AjaxCubed + Aesaun vs. MycroProcessor + Gamebop, which seemed to be in some ways a match as equally as even as the Chutley/trep/Gamebop/Mycro match before it, perhaps even more so.