The Three-Way Tournament

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The Three-Way Tournament is a YouTube Poop Tennis Tournament hosted by MycroProcessor that began in May 2010 and ceased in activity in February 2011, and is the only tournament still remaining in limbo due to the stagnation of its final match, which is currently still at Round 5. Despite this, it is often hailed retrospectively as one of the most prolific tournaments in all of tennis history, due to the amount and the vast diversity of players that participated in it throughout its most active, giving noticable jumps in popularity and cult speculation to various players that entered in as unknowns. It is also, thanks to the efforts of BSP666c, one of the most well-preserved tournaments on the forums.

Layout

The tournament in its style was a one of a kind uniqueness for its time, taking the concept of a standard Cup and modifying it to accomadate a third player for each match, making it the first tournament going beyond matches in which the competition went between two even sides. This would also be the first tournament in which there was no limit on how many sources a player could add into their rounds, where in previous tournaments it was often limited to 3. Subsequently after this tournament this would become a standard.

Along with an odd number of required participants as opposed to an even, this would also be the first tournament that worked under a double elimination system, with an additional bracket of matches added in order to filter out players throughout the tournaments course (Everyone could lose once as a freebie, those who did played in this bracket to keep themselves from losing twice). Only one player would be able to go through this tournament without losing one match.

Voting for this tournament was also an entirely original system, rather than choosing a winner one would divide a 100% vote between three players, giving the highest percentage to the player they believed should advance. Half of the vote was accounted for by a panel of 8 judges made up of 5 Cafe Staff Members, including MycroProcessor himself, Gamebop, Moogle, RAKninja, and DaftPunkYoshi, and 3 regular members including Chrisgendo, AmiralMachin and JakeSteel0121(Chrisgendo would however towards the end of the tournament become a Staff Member himself, alongside TheChutley). The total calculated score for each player was a complex system that involved taking the total number of votes from both public voters and judge voters seperately and multiplying it by 100, which would then be the denominator under the total of each percentage score added when multipled by 100 (a score of .50 became 50, when voted by one person would account for a 50/100 score. if 2 people voted .25, this would become 50/200, and so forth). The two total scores given by the public and the judges under this formula would then be divided (50/200 would become 0.4) and added together, and the resulting number, which rarely ever exceeded the count of 1, would be the score given to the player, and the player with the highest score between the 3 would win the match.

Players

Amongst the season players who originally joined were MycroProcessor, Gamebop, vvaluigi, TheChutley, metroid998, trepmaws, RAKninja, Luioigi, ThaNuke, AmiralMachin and Fiddlesticks411, all having played in the last few tournaments including the Season for most. Magmalord would also join, his first tournament having just been the one previous. DaftPunkYoshi signed up again having previously played and won the Windows Movie Master in mid 2009, and Chrisgendo, wwefan3333 and JakeSteel, having first played in the season, would sign up in what would be in their first traditional tournament. Jacktron7000, Futures Passed/RobotComics and XBR4D3NX had all previously played in the first Doubles Cup but had remained mostly independant in the tennis world in the years following, and would make their reemergance here onto the competitive front.

Funacceptable was the first player to sign up for the tournament, and at this time had only played 3 other matches with AmiralMachin, hom96sar and AGSMA throughout early 2010. KlaustheWizard, who signed up second, was somewhat more seasoned but had never played in a tournament setting up until this point. This tournament would also serve to be the competitive debut of both BSP666c and CorruptionSound, both having already made names for themselves as highly technical and sought after tennisers during this time. Metzgorre came into the tournament as an almost complete unknown, the only other matches he had played at this time were between magmalord and CorruptionSound, which had both been very recent occurrances. IceSumo once hinted toward the possibility via youtube comment that he and CorruptionSound may be brothers, but this notion remains uncomfirmed. bunsbuns11, NESfanboi and evilskittlemonster were similarly unknown (though the latter as a YTPer was garnering a signifigant cult following around the time he joined, and NES at this time had just been banned, making him the first non-member to participate in a site competition) and this tournament would mark the only major tennis appearance by either of them.

Set 1 Matches

Bunsbuns11 vs. CorruptionSound vs. KlausTheWizard/Piodx was an interesting example of a match with a hard hitting player pitted in between two more inclined to the basics. Bunsbuns' style relied heavily on humor-oriented directions and difficulty was found in trying to adapt to the High technical/humor hybrid of CorruptionSounds output and the less techincal yet with considerable effort put into response output of KlaustheWizard. Often very little of the previous round was used in Bunsbuns' volleys, though on occasion it was questioned how much of the previous round CorruptionSound used, due to his rounds being of a very high caliber in effects, often clouding where signifigant peices of the previous round went either audially or visually. Piodx's replacement round was possibly the only round to rival that, despite being quite short and comparatively low-key to his previous work. The final score for the players was Bunsbuns11: 0.16, CorruptionSound: 1.23, and KlausTheWizard: 0.60, but adjusted to 0.30 when adding penalties, which in turn sent CorruptionSound to the winners bracket and the other two players to bracket 2.

JackTron7000 vs. TheChutley vs. Luioigi was a such match in which the abilities of all 3 players seemed to be pretty well matched, and conceptually the sources used in the rounds were very reflective of what was happening in YTP at the time, with an abundance of manwith10toes videos and music videos being presented throughout as a running concept. TheChutley's Round 2 sneaks in a touhou reference ("YUKA YUKA") which would later manifest itself as the inspiration for much of what would happen in a later tournament match. Luioigi's slow and hypnotic effect-heavy style would be taken notice of for the first time by many new players in this match including TheChutley himself, as his style worked out to be unusually effective. Luioigi turned out to be the surprise winner of the match, beating TheChutley by only .0061 of a point(final score for each was JackTron7000: 0.30 (0.60 without penalties), TheChutley: 0.7481 Luioigi: 0.7542)

Metroid998 vs. Metzgorre vs. Fiddlesticks411 begun as what many would believe to be a pretty normal match, until Metzgorre delivered his first volley. He posessed an incredibly high energy fast style that seemed to tear metroid998's serve apart, starting with a bass heavy noise that to some was terrifying and proceeding to edit and employ visuals of an only-rarely seen calibur at a breckneck speed, adding in an absurd amount of images that were dotted throughout. Metzgorre continued to play like this throughout the match, including an impressive data-bending trick intersparsed with an image of Powdered Toast Man in Round 5, and a very strobe heavy round 8 that also very humorously announced the end of the match on his side. What's assumed to be a couple of drawings by him also appear. Fiddlesticks411 having naturally chosen WMM as her editor of choice found very natural difficulty in responding effectively to Metz's amped up style, though she did work to make the best of it, With Round 3's TWENTYS PLENTY becoming a favorite to some. Metroid was able in turn to easily respond to Fiddle's rounds. The final score ended up being Metroid998: 0.52, Metzgorre: 1.09 and Fiddlesticks 0.05, or 0.30 with gained penalties, which made Metzgorre the landslide winner.

Futures Passed vs. evilskittlemonster vs. BSP666c was a match that started the precise minute the 3-Way Tournament began. The first two rounds presented a very basic humor-oriented approach that was to be heavily contrasted by the third round, in which BSP turned out a no-holds-barred product in his trademark high-technical style. The course of the match went naturally, with Futures Passed and evilskittle trying to effectively follow up to the sudden abundance of effects and BSP turning out more of the same. The final score was Futures Passed: 0.55 (0.65 without his one penalty), evilskittlemonster: 0.52, and BSP666c: 0.96, which gave BSP his first match won.

MycroProcessor vs. ChrisGendo vs. JakeSteel was very much a highly anticipated match due to the participants in line, although was the last match to officially start, with Mycro uploading his serve at literally the last minute. ChrisGendo's Round 2 responded nicely and also paid homage to the doubles match of TheChutley/trepmaws vs. MycroProcessor/Gamebop with its end. JakeSteel's Round 3 was a contrasting one; unlike Mycro and Gendo who were using Vegas 5, he was equipped with Adobe Premiere 2.0, in many aspects a highly different editor in its capabilities, and its attempts to match those were difficult, but the rounds still were pretty solid. Especially under the circumstances. Mycro's Round 4 would later serve to be the subject of Puzzle Peices 6, the 6th part of a set of videos displaying all the prerendered parts of his rounds leading up to its final product. This would also be the only round of the match to be uploaded on MycroProcessor, his main account, due to it being highly musical in line with the more well-known videos on it. The round does a humorous callout to the title of JakeSteel's Round 3, JOLTEON IS A DOG(named intentionally to tease Mycro), by countering with MOTOI SAKURABA IS AN ORANGUTAN in Round 4 and providing a long explanation scrolling quite fast at the bottom of the video referring to JakeSteel under the fictonalized name of MotoiSakuraba65(a running joke throughout this match) that went as follows:

"MotoiSakuraba65, you must now understand something SUPER IMPORTANT. This issue has been facing our world for over a decade now. You have classified an Eeveelution as a dog/cat when it is not either of the two. Even worse, you have classified the BEST Eeveelution as one (Jolteon). The issue here is that Eevee evolutions are in no way either of the two despite many peoples attempts to justify categorization of them as just one simply for reason of familiarity. Eevee and its evolutions are all actually foxes primarily. To be more specific the traits of fennec foxes. This should be most obvious with the proportions of the ears of an Eevee or an Eevee evolution to the rest of their head. Similarly, the eye shape generally will most closely resemble a fennec fox. Actually to be proper, "canine" would be the most "correct" due to ambiguity, but NOT dogs. Within the canidae family which does include foxes, any traits from dogs that are observed are in actuality traits of foxes just shared between the two, with the actual origin being from foxes (specifically because of Eevee itself). Now of course, because Eeveelutions aren;t even any one "real" animal to begin with and are their own species, this issue of "classification" may seem silly. However, there often are places where it is required that Pokemon be put into categories of the animals that they most closely resemble. Now, how would you feel, MotoiSakuraba65, if someone called you an orangutan just because you shared traits with other species within the Hominidae family? This is why this is a SERIOUS ISSUE that we must address. Have a good day!"

ChrisGendo's Round 5 continued the trend by putting a fake banning documentation in its description: "- Mistook Jolteon's for being dogs - An orangatun - Alt account creation - MotoiSakurabaAlt"

The title of round 6 input "I'M BACK LOOOOOOOOOOOOL" in order to follow this up.

Round 7 was done as an intentionally silly response as evident with the "My Top 3 favorite moments in Round 6" throughout the round, sharing with Round 8 the title of "MotoiSakuraba66 has back problems", with Round 8 having a more atmospheric feel than 7. Round 9 closes the match rather begrudgingly with the title of "MotoiSakuraba66 takes tylenol but IT DOESNT HELP". The matches final score for this would be MycroProcessor: 0.77, ChrisGendo: 0.66, and JakeSteel: 0.57, making MycroProcessor the winner of the match.

wwefan3333 vs. trepmaws vs. NESfanboi was likely the oddest match of the tournament, in addition to very closely mirroring the bunsbuns vs. CorruptionSound vs. Klaus match in terms of the placement/style similarity of each player. wwefan's Serve remains to this day the only video of the tournament without a single like, and not a single round of the match goes longer than 30 seconds. This would be trepmaws' second match with wwefan, having also played him in the Grey Tournament in its first Set, and deliver the very obvious strongest rounds of the match, working well with wwefans source-overlaying methods to his own use. NESfanboi notoriously responded to each round of trep's lightning fast with incredible minimalization, doing little more to each round than overt use of composite layers and deforming effects, at some times making the previous video feel too unedited. trepmaws would ensure victory with the final vote talley of wwefan3333: 0.40, trepmaws: 1.12, and NESfanboi: 0.48.

RAKninja vs. Gamebop vs. magmalord is frequently regarded as one of the best matches in the 3-way Tournaments first Set, as it would be the first and currently only time the first two players would be pitted against each other, with RAK at this time also still being an active Staff Member. His serve, simply entitled HIS BRAIN IS GONE, was the most minimally edited and yet easily became the most popular in terms of view-count of the tournament at that point. It consisted entirely of a single scene of 1960's Star Trek, frequently repeating orchaestral cues, Kirk remarking "What Happened?" "What do you mean" "C'mon Bones what's the mystery?" and Bones remarking "No, not like this" "His brain is Gone" "He's WORSE than dead", all to a humorous fashion, easily scoring a hit with older generations of YTPers and tennisers alike. Gamebop's Round 2 responded in considerably the best way a player could respond. It's additions in source were many, but it was not changed in its pace, rather preferring to work curiously with the first round in cooperation with the added footage while editing in Gamebop's highly original style. A skelaton playing a piano with "C'MON BONES" from the previous round overlayed on it was such an example of this, in addition to DK64 gameplay footage added to create "His brain is IN THE REEEDDD CORNERRR". RAKninja's "Worse Worse Worse" would be also turned into a multi-layered segment and the sound effects would also be used in intereting ways, with the ending adding a source that gave the Star Trek scene an interesting twist with its added source, which Gamebop described just as "a commercial for a British News Special". Mycro considered this to be one of his new favorite Rounds.

Magmalord's Round 3 was edited in a similar minimal style and did actually work well in building off of ideas, furthering the "worse" layered segment and the side scrolling video frames, but otherwise didn't introduce anything new, as no sources were added. RAKninja here would be given a small advantage, as his Round 4, while also edited very minimally succeeded in introducing a lot of new things. This round has been considered as one of RAK's all time best, with particular notion given to its distortion and reverbed audio sections which gave the round an intense and atmospheric feel. Gamebop's Round 5 was more experimental, switching to the unique idea of chroma keying the entire finished round under an added source, which here was Kukucska. The distorted reverb of the audio was continued here to great effect, giving the round a similar feel to that of RAKs. It was here that magmalord's editing style faced a compromisation, as his Round wasn't able to follow up to the presented ideas as easily and relied mostly now on added sources and a pace driven style. RAKninja's Round 7 fell back on his more traditonal style, with the entire video overlayed with the Transformers G1 cartoon with the previous Round making chroma-keyed appearances in the background, either through a TV screen or through a characters eyes, sometimes even through dialogue (The Autobot's "ERRRRRRRERRRERRRR" while attempting to communicate with a bird). Rounds 8 and 9 opted for a more conventional approach in order to end the match properly, though it was clear the Gamebop edited the most competently. The final score would be RAKNinja: 0.60, or 0.70 without a penalty(he would remark that this was his first ever), Gamebop: 0.92, and Magmalord: 0.38, which at this point meant that Gamebop remained undefeated with 6 won matches in a row, ahead of DaftPunkYoshi by one, who would also win his match of this Set.

ThaNuke vs. Funnacceptable vs. XBR4D3NX, a match in which all except the middle player were veterans of an older tournament, would prove to in fact actually be the springboard for an unprecented run for an entirely different player. TheNuke's serve would turn out to be the last tennis video he would ever make, since he would soon drop out and also become banned for malicious behavior in cahoots with a few others, but it was noted for its 2008 feel in its use of seemingly juvenile source material edited with WMM. Funnaceptable's Round 2 worked with the previous round with his trademark erosion-like slow style adding in composite slowed down sources and imploying background music for much of the rounds duration, which drew comparison to that of seargentbacon's style and was praised for its complete uniqueness. XBR4D3NX's response was equally unique, featuring an updated version of his old style now with more emphasis on effects and atmosphere that clashed drastically in pace with Funnacceptable's, with the highlight of the round to some being the section that employed footage of an old-time jazz performace. XBR4D3NX was at this point already at a disadvantage though as he had already garnered a late penalty.

It was here that Moogle would make his official entrance as the replacement for ThaNuke, responding with a Round 4 through a relatively unknown alt account of his that had its primary focus on the jazz section of the previous video, adding a lot of touhou footage and editing the round with effects that for Moogle seemed relatively uncanon at the time, but it would quickly become his signature style throughout the tournament. Funacceptable's Round 5 worked in his same style as before but at this point seemed much more minimal than before, seeming to detract more than it added. XBR4D3NX however continued to present interestingly with Round 6, with such tricks such as masking "WHATS UP YO" and "HELLO AGAIN!!!!" out of the previous round and working in more layer tricks/color alterations and unconventional addition of music. Moogle's Round 7 was comparatively minimal yet humorous, adding in a silly video of a concert being performed in a foreign language for much of the video. Round 8 started with the startling addition of several heads all belonging to Ms. Krabappel on top of the sprite added by Moogle previously and proceeding to once again overly a lot of composited footage to give the round a very surreal atmosphere, but Funnaccceptable had the misfortune of delivering this late. Round 9 delivered a fitting and eccentric ending to the match with the masked "IM RUNNIN OUTTA IDEAS" on top of an interesting visual display coupled with a large amount of added simpsons footage and the text "I cannot think no' mo', the end" appearing in rhythm with a piano song in the background, supposedly all made whilist XBR3D4NX was under a sickness. Many people were very split as to who to vote for in this match and some considered the match to be their favorite as of that point. The final results however were entirely unexpected; Funnaceptable was the clear winner by raw score with 0.77, followed behind by Moogle with 0.66 and XBR4D3NX with 0.58, because of penalties recieved by both the first and third, their score had declined to 0.57 for Funn and 0.38 for BR4D3N, making Moogle the winner of the match solely due to escaping penalty free.

AmiralMachin vs. vvaluigi vs. DaftPunkYoshi consisted of all veteran players that supposedly played on the lower spectrum of the technical scale, at least on a Sony Vegas aspect, but for a WMM aspect DaftPunk was in fact a high technical player. The Serve was made up mostly french sources which provided vvaluigi with much to build upon and he was able to respond very quickly, in a style much similar to Amiral's. DaftPunkYoshi's Round 3 would simultaneously kick the match up a notch and edit in style that complimented that of the previous two rounds quite well, making himself already to be the dominant player of the match, a rarity in the case of a WMM user versus two users of Vegas. Round 4 would largely introduce a hallmark source made famous by the first generation of the Tennis Staff, The ninja Z-Movies of Godfrey Ho, particularly an iconic collection of scenes between the two main characters in an office ("WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR STUFF", "IT WAS TORCHED", "BURNED?? WHO DIDDIT?", "PROBABLY THAT RENEGADE COP AND THE NINJAS", "FUCK"). In addition to its added source much of the round seemed to be a direct parody of RAKninja's editing style, chroma keying much of the previous round under what was added and editing comparatively minimally. vvaluigi responded to this by using WMM on his own end with Round 5 to continue the pace, which was furthered by DPY's Round 6, which again utilized much technical proficiency. Amiral and vvaluigi would both respond with more conventional rounds with rounds 7 and 8, both using Vegas again, and DPY would close off the match in a stylistic note by overdubbing a speech by Chuck Roberts talking about the birth of House music over much of the video, still keeping effective in its editing. The final scores for the match would be AmiralMachin: 0.45, vvaluigi: 0.64, and DaftPunkYoshi: 0.91, which would continue the winning streak DPY had accumulated previous from the Windows Movie Master, of which he was the winner.