Doubles Cup II

This article is about a site sanctioned Poop Tennis tournament.

The Doubles Cup II was a Youtube Poop Tennis Tournament organized and hosted by ChrisGendo with behind-the-scenes input from RAKninja that ran from October 2011 to February 2012, with ChrisGendo and AshcrementVII emerging as the eventual winners beating dewmann and Robochao. The gap between this Tournament and the one previous(TheThree-Way Tournament) was the longest to occur up to that point, of which it is speculated that a noticeable decline of the community in comparison to the past took place.

Development

Following Dopply stepping down from the leader's chair of the forum and renouncing his admin-ship for the first time in September 2011, RAKninja returned to the forum and the tennis section with great rejuvenation and saw to it to give the section another great tennis event to make up for the failed attempt at the original Triples Tournament in the summer. It was only spoken in hushed voices among the staff until it was unveiled in the Fall as the sequel to the famed Doubles Cup with Gendo at the helm. RAKninja had become unable to host it himself, and had stopped posting while receding once again, only making sparse reappearances in the years following until a semi-full comeback in early 2013/2014.

This version of the Doubles Cup would be identical to its predecessor with the notable difference being that for the first time the turnover time would be extended to 96 hours as opposed to the traditional 72, with 120 hours to make collaborative rounds. Otherwise, the format in terms of round order was the same:

Player A + Player B vs. Player C + Player D

Player A will make round 1

Player C will make round 2

Player B will make round 3

Player D will make round 4

Players A and B will collaborate on round 5

Players C and D will collaborate on round 6

An element of MycroProcessor's Three-Way Tournament would also resurface in the voting system, which would use the same percentage based setup that was used within that. The Judge system would also return as well as the Judge voting style, with the winner determined by a single vote given by each, added onto percentage score also like previously. Moogle, trepmaws, Gamebop, dewmann, and gimpnipples would all serve as the judges for this Tournament.

This would also be the first use of the host account under the name of Gendo Ikari, which for practical reasoning would become the constant host account for every tournament that occurred up to the Multi-Way Tournament.

Players

Unlike the 2010-esque reaction to what would have been the first incarnation of the Triples Tournament, getting participants outside of the resident people were substantially harder to obtain. ChrisGendo and AshcrementVII were naturally the first team to sign up, followed by Captain and BMATF who agreed to play together in a prior agreement. BSP666c and CorruptionSound mirrored this in that they would have originally played together as a triples team, and the rather unique initial combination of superkoffee and Gamebop also formed, along with MAZZ0Murder and TheNeopreneJunebug, the latter whom this would be the only tournament they would play in. therazoredge would join for his first time and pair up with finnish tenniser sanemurzu, who was also relatively new to the scene.

Notable is the unexpected reappearance of Pokruk, who had been considerably inactive for a good deal of months at the time, and his ubiquitous request to be paired with dewmann who had yet to find a teammate. dewmann considers this to be one of the luckiest moments of their early tennis career since at the time his fondness for pokruk's oblique and unusual style was at a reasonable high, emulating elements of it in his own videos.

Filling the remaining void was the hastily put together team of thatcomputerperson and NESfanboi, which echoed the all-banned-member team that formed in the original triples tournament.

Matches

Set 1

Characteristically all four matches that took place in the first round were all individually distinctive, with Chrisgendo + AshcrementVII vs. TheNeopreneJuneBug + MAZZ0Murder keeping a focus on primarily Japanese sources, BSP666c + CorruptionSound vs. trepmaws + GameBop(as superkoffee ended up becoming unavailable to play in the tournament) focusing on advanced editing, CaptainStringCheese + BMATF vs. therazoredge + sanemurzu focusing on a combination of humor and fundamentalism and dew + pokruk vs. thatcomputerperson + NESfanboi on unconventional editing. Match highlights included the new and interesting material that pokruk released, which was a stylistic evolution from his previous tennis material and bore similarities to what he was uploading on his main channel at the time, as well as much of what was happening with the material put out by Gamebop and especially trepmaws, who himself hadn't released anything new since the previous tournament. In addition Bematt's take on an effect heavy style was widely appreciated and noted for significance; he was by this point the oldest tenniser within the section, having played with Markie the second ever match. CorruptionSound's Round 3 of his match makes use of "window-sequencing" and is considered to be among his better rounds due to its unorthodox combination of advanced editing and humor in as smooth of a blend as it was presented, and Ash's Round 3 was similarly noted in terms of it's creativity, particularly with the "HOW LONG EAT" segment using footage of a dog eating dogfood from Neoprene's Round 2 to simulate a visual videogame. dew and pokruk's collaborative Round 5 was done as a "one-second split" where every first second was edited by one person and every other second by the next, although a total of only about 8-10 seconds was contributed by pokruk, leading to dew having to fill in a number of blanks as they had approximately 30 seconds of footage made for this idea.

The first set ended with the definite stronger players emerging on top, being that the team of ChrisGendo + Ashcrement and therazoredge + sanemurzu, with the only real head-scratcher being between the BSP/CS and Gamebop/trepmaws teams, the latter eventually winning out by a very close vote. thatcomputerperson and NESfanboi had by this point completely lost interest in their match and the latter player ended up disappearing, leading to a very rushed final round to properly cap the match with the last-minute assistance of metroid998, giving an assured victory to dewmann and pokruk who had both won their first tournament match at this point.

ChrisGendo + AshcrementVII vs. TheNeopreneJunebug + MAZZ0Murder

BSP666c + CorruptionSound vs. Gamebop + trepmaws

CaptainStringCheese + BMATF vs. therazoredge + sanemurzu

dewmann + pokruk vs. thatcomputerperson + NESfanboi/metroid998

Set 2

The 4 remaining teams in round 2 came together in two incredibly strong matches, highlighted by a then all-cafe-staff match between AshcrementVII + ChrisGendo and trepmaws + Gamebop, which proved even much harder to vote for than previously. Ash and Gendo's Rounds were both heavily MLP-oriented, with the latter featuring a YTPMV of the Gangplank Gallion theme from DKC while the other team's rounds were more varied in source. A continuous concept in between rounds was the background zooming out from characters eyes towards the end of the match(Ponies in Round 1, Nostalgia Critic in Round 2, anime in Round 3, Kukori characters in Round 4, and Ponies + anime in Round 5) as well as an ongoing progression dealing with an ending segment starting in Round 2 featuring Captain Barbossa from the first Pirates of the Carribean film. Gamebop's round 4 also attained an unusually high view count, supposedly from hungarian fans of MLP as was speculated. A number of the older members of staff also payed noticeable attention to the last two rounds, considered to be among the best collab rounds of the tournament and a fitting end to considerably one of the best matches. trepmaws commented "Good lord, this match was fun" upon finishing the match and dew commented that it was "probably the first thing [they've] ever enjoyed that had ponies in it".

The other match of pokruk + dewmann vs. therazoredge + sanemurzu featured the one of the last videos that pokruk would ever make in a tennis sense as the serve and a Round 3 by dewmann that they have considered to be "highly emotionally charged and energetically powerful but having a feeling of difference when watching in the present day". Nevertheless from this round trepmaws was introduced to dew's work and considered it "awesome", heightened by its use of Pantera throughout much of the video's length (amping the length of 30 seconds from the previous round all the way up to 3 minutes, or the maximum). therazoredge, both opponant and friend, also commented positively on the video, excited to volley it, as did CaptainStringCheese who also noted the music choice. While Round 5 is listed as a collaborative work between dewmann and pokruk(and the last they would make together), dewmann actually kept a secret until years later that pokruk only ever actually made 1 second. He describes that in a frantic attempt to make the video seem like two different styles he utilized after effects in numerous places to mirror that of pokruks style in addition to using green screen footage that at the time he was providing on his main channel following the release of his artistic epic, "Something Occurred". Surprisingly it was convincing enough that people bought it, and he managed to advance to the final match, by which point pokruk had then become unreachable. Captain called Round 5 the best round of the tournament from their personal perspective while gimpnipples commented "i think my eyes just jizzed".

AshcrementVII/ChrisGendo vs. trepmaws/Gamebop

pokruk/dewmann vs. TheRazorEdge/sanemurzu

FINAL MATCH

With trepmaws and Gamebop defeated by a very thin margin of votes, the final match became dewmann + Robochao vs. ChrisGendo + AshcrementVII. Robochao was recruited as a last minute substitute and immediately proved to dewmann to be much easier to work with, with lengthy discussion about the crafting of their collab round taking place at various times. dew's serve was praised by CaptainStringCheese as "fantastic" and "one of the best he had seen" with Bloodis also similarly praising it, and therazoredge saying "that serve was incredible. The use of Min/Max and Pixelate(?) in the beginning was very nice, and the rest of the serve was no exception." Robochao's Round 3 was similarly applauded due to it's rather unique style of editing, making a lot of usage of odd third party programs for visual work and being extensively musical.

The final two rounds were considered to be ones of incredible composition and visual spectacle, with numerous spectators commenting on how it was an awesome end and a great match to end the cup with, with ultamitely the victory ended up going to Gendo and Ashcrement in the very end due to their round showing a spirit and sense of collaborativeness that appeared to be seamlessly unmatched, and was regarded almost in a romanticisable way. Moogle called their final round "beautiful" and "a most inspired collaboration" while Bloodis mentioned that it was "remarkably wonderful" and that he couldn't even describe the quality of the match. dew was noted for their good sportedness in keeping a spirit of enthusiasm for the final results and congratulating their opponents on their win, being at the ready for whatever competition was to come next. The Tourney's end brought much anticipation to the start of the next tournament, which many people believed would finally be the Triples Tournament continued from where it last was. As many came to know however, that was not what would actually come to be....

dewmann/robochao vs. ChrisGendo/AshcrementVII Tournament Thread

2nd Doubles Cup Winners Announcement Thread

/ Playlist of Final Match

/ A selection of music used in the Final Match