FoosTalk Live | Ep 244 | South Dakota State Recap

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[00:01:50] Visit www.original-leonhardt-usa.com and use promo code FOOSTALK to save 10% off your purchase price. We are live on Foos Talk Live. Welcome once again. I'm Tom Robinson. Episode number 244 on a very dark and cold night in upstate New York. It's 10 with a wind chill of minus 2. And now that we've had the weather report, it's time to talk about Foosball. Let's do that.

[00:02:20] Foosball, of course, we love to talk about it. And it would be great if we could talk to Randy Raposo. But no, he's indisposed this evening. He has work commitments. So, well, you know what? The next best thing, which happens to be the faces and the voices of modern foos. Adam Gilson and Clay Toomey. Hello, guys. What's up? Thanks for having us.

[00:02:48] We would rather be somewhere else, but we'll settle for this. See, I knew you'd say that. I knew you'd say that. And, you know, we're all enemies. I mean, frenemies here, so that's fine. Frenemies. Thanks for having us. It's always a good time. No, it's... It's glad we're back. You guys, damn, you guys have been doing some cruising around. The last time I saw you was at TKO. And since then, you were hanging out in, what, South Dakota last week? Is that what it was? Yeah. Oh, man. Wow.

[00:03:17] Yeah, we joked in the group chat, because we abbreviate, you know, SD. It's very high tech. SD. Yes. Yeah. And when you see SD enough, you think San Diego, if you're in California, or if you go to San Diego a lot, which he is and I do. And I was worried that it would sneak out at some point in the weekend. And like a week before South Dakota State, I was like, I kind of stopped making this joke in our little private chats. And then I only said it once, and it was the whole weekend.

[00:03:47] I don't know why I'm starting there. That was actually not important at all to know. But South Dakota State was a blast. Yeah. I'm so glad that we got to go, and I can't wait for the next one already. Can't wait for the next one. Well, the name Balcos kept coming up on the feed there. A lot of Balcos running around South Dakota. There were lots of those there. Yeah. The Balcos trifecta. Yeah, no doubt. Man, those guys are a force to be reckoned with, certainly for a state championship of

[00:04:17] that size. So, okay. This was what? Chapter two in the World Foosball Tour, as far as just, you know, sponsored. Or is this the third one? I'm trying to think now, because there was, was there one in between TKO and South Dakota? There was another one. Was it? No, this was the number two. We had two stop on the tour. Gotcha. Tour this year. Okay. Now, Wisconsin is coming up, too. So, anyway, so how did that go? What did it look like?

[00:04:49] Well, there's a lot. There's a lot to go over. Okay. Let me start at the very tippy top. That was the first solo for the commentators tournament that we've done ever. Okay. So, we were there to do the setup. Because usually, the great, as Clay says, and I co-sign, Danilo Fatal is at these. And he does a lot of that setup stuff. And the teardown. He does all of the setup. What am I talking about? Yeah, yeah. He's the dude. He's the tech guy. Yeah. Yeah. And he's incredible. The dude is a Swiss Army knife.

[00:05:16] He's somebody you can, like, you could just give him some stuff to do. And he does it. And it doesn't matter what. He's like, you know what he is. He's like the Ukrainian MacGyver. It's just incredible. Just to see him go. So, it was just us. And I know Clay and I are wildly competent people that get along very well. So, I wasn't worried about that component of it. And if there was, like, a vast majority of the people in this world that I had to do something like that stressful with. Because it's stressful.

[00:05:46] It's stressful. You're going to do that. You know, and you want to make a good product and a good experience for the fans out there. And also for the people that are running it. You know, Tim Everett and Terry Crews. Is it Terry? Not Terry Crews. Terry Crews is a famous actor. Very, very different looking fellow as well. Yeah. Terry Ward. Terry Ward. I knew it was something with four to five or six letters. It was English, indeed. Anything like Tom Cruise? I mean, is he kind of like, you know.

[00:06:15] Well, no, Terry Crews. And now you've gone full Tom Cruise on it now. Well, can I go back to Tom MacGyver? Tom MacGyver. Yeah. Brad. Anyways, the point is this. Thank you. It was a little bit stressful. It was a lot a bit stressful. And if it had been like 99% of the rest of the world, I would have lost my SH. But working with Clay was great.

[00:06:36] And even though the box was late, getting there, once we got it going and put stuff up, you know, instead of having the full setup the first night, it was this, that, and the other thing. And we're like, you know what? We're still putting the product on the table. Do what you got to do. And on the stream. Yeah. Do what you got to do. It's live. So, and we were doing it live. Do it live. Don't write it. We'll do it live. But my. It sucks. It sucks. So, my favorite.

[00:07:02] So, that was one thing for me that was just affirming the fact that Clay is so great to work with and that we were able to do that kind of stuff, just the two of us. But also, the other thing is, is that this is what I love to see and why I go to these things and take time away from my family, these foosball tournaments, to see the regional events, the state events, whatever you want to call them. Like, the vast majority of the players there were from the local area. But there's also some out-of-towners. You had some big names there as well.

[00:07:28] But you give your local players an opportunity to come to a well-run tournament in a venue that feels safe to be in and in a situation that is done far before whatever late time you might be thinking is going to happen. That is what builds foosball. So, what Terry and what Tim and their crew are doing is what builds foosball. And I was shocked. I really didn't know that South Dakota was actually a state.

[00:07:57] So, to actually arrive there and see that it's real. Like, as opposed to North Dakota? I just knew that it was below North Dakota. That's all I knew about it. I didn't know that it was real. But to see that it had, what, 160-ish? 169. Oh, nice. Oh, so it beat last year. The year's attendance was 162. And they hit 169 this year. I thought they were going to get 200. I thought they were going to. But there's a lot to cover or talk about.

[00:08:27] But that's my first initial takeaway. And I want to hand it over to Clay if he has anything he wants to add. Or subtract. Well, no. Not yet. I'm sure I will at some point have something to add. I think. Actually, just to be sure that I don't forget. At some point, I want to make sure I include this. I'll do it now. They finished early. They had more players. More player matches than last year. And they finished like eight hours earlier than they did last year. Something like that. Eight hours earlier? And a big part.

[00:08:54] Yeah, I think last year they had their last match at like 730 in the morning on Monday. And this year, maybe five hours. This year, I think they had their last match at two. Two, yeah. Big difference. A good five and a half hours earlier with more players and more player matches. So not just more players playing less, but actually more players playing more. And a big part of that was the folks we've already mentioned. And then also Karma Burfield was running. Was at the helm with the laptop and doing a lot of things.

[00:09:24] And we were asking for matches all weekend and getting what we want. Normally, that kind of gets in the way. Yeah. Because if you save a match for table one, it makes something. Somehow, they were managing to give us what we wanted and run it on time. And it was actually early. So it was awesome. So shout out to her. Like a well-oiled machine. It sounds like getting the quote-unquote ship underway and guiding it well. That's awesome. Great news.

[00:09:52] And that was something also we saw a lot in the Twitch chatter was I love having these matches back to back to back. It's like, yeah, it's amazing. We do. Yeah. Yeah. And that's actually one of those details that people in the chat don't always pick up on. You take for granted when it's match after match after match. When there's nothing, we all know. We hear from everybody about that. Where's the match? I paid zero dollars. I want my money back. All those kind of things.

[00:10:19] But people were actually unsolicited saying, wow, this is nice how much who's ball there is. Fun, as Clay and I have, hanging out with each other. Having matches over and over and over again, one after the other, is a lot of fun, too. Yeah. Well, I mean, it keeps everybody involved. It keeps you engaged. But it's those big gaps in between. I know in the past there have been times when the feed just has to go dark for a couple of hours. I mean, do you guys get any breaks at all?

[00:10:48] I mean, or is it continuous? We plan. We have a loose schedule of noon to 5, 7 to midnight. Okay. But that almost never happens. We go live at noon. We start recording before noon. And then we go until the schedule looks like it's okay to miss a couple hours. Or usually it's more like an hour break. But we're very adamant that things go down a certain way.

[00:11:17] So if it's 5 o'clock, but amateur doubles final is about to happen, we're not going on break. We're doing the damn final. Doing the final. That is a big deal. We communicate very clearly with the folks running things. We want the finals. Not just the open finals, but all the finals. And it's not possible because you are going to miss some. But it's always unintentional when we miss those. Actually, ironically, we did miss the amateur doubles final at South. We got it recorded. We just didn't. We weren't there as it happened live. This wasn't commentated.

[00:11:46] But if we see, like, open mix, I think it was. We were going to go on break. And they called a matchup. I was like, well, let's do this. But the way the matches were, it was going to be bam, bam, bam. Three more matches all the way to the final. And we were like, you just want to do it? We'll go on break two hours later and just eat it. And so that's what we did. Do what you got to do. Yeah. It's actually a lot easier to go back to back to back to back to back. When there's long breaks, that's actually, to me, more difficult. More tedious. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:14] Well, I mean, very difficult to predict exactly how to handle that, too. It's actually very, I mean, the matches are going to happen. If you're familiar with brackets and looking at these things, you can see how it's kind of playing out, which was part of the joy of working with Karma. I was literally 15 feet from where she was, and I just walk over. Hey, if we get this and then this match and da-da-da-da, can we do that? She'll say, yeah, sure. And she'll just schedule it. And then it just happens. Done. And it's great.

[00:12:44] Yeah. It's awesome. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited. Well, no. I won't say it. So never mind. Yeah. There are beans to be spilt. There's excited, but then there's excited. So let's- He's excited about something he can't say yet. I'm going to redact all that. And- What you call me? Wait, wait. Hold on a second. You don't get to do that. You just say, I'm excited about- No, this time he does. You can adapt and then redact. You can adapt again if you need to.

[00:13:13] I can adapt this. I haven't dacted in a long time, man. Wow. There's so many dacts that could be dacted right now. I just hope I drank some pineapple juice before- Mmm. Some dacts are worse than others. What the hell? It's a tough act to follow. So what, pray tell, was the setup as far as World Foosball Tour branding? What did that look like? It didn't. The Spider was not there. The Mohawk was there. Okay. There were the- So there are-

[00:13:41] So to repeat what I believe Ryan has said publicly, and if not, I'm spilling beans. There are four majors, if you want to call them that. I don't call them that. That are the World Foosball Tour anchor points throughout the year. Right, right, right. TKO, Vegas, Nationals, and Worlds. Those are the full-on, fully activated World Foosball Tour events. Can't miss it. And then there are others that are part of the tour that are promoted by people, and then

[00:14:08] Ryan supports with various things, table software, whatever. Okay. And then, so South Dakota was not one of those four- One of the four tournaments that Ryan will be doing. Okay. So it's his- We streamed on World Foosball Tour's Twitch channel. There- It was Ryan's tables. Ryan was there, actually, also. Yeah. So there was a lot of that feel, but you didn't see all the World Foosball Tour banners and

[00:14:37] the, you know, like the trust wrapping and like just branding everywhere. Okay. That'll be back at Vegas. Yeah, yeah. And there, I'm sure he's getting up for that every day before Vegas kicks off. I mean, it's got to be a lot- Pretty much. A lot of details going on there. Pretty much, yeah. And I did notice he was doing some playing. I mean, how did Ryan do, by the way? He lost. He's not very good. I don't know if you know this.

[00:15:07] Jokingly said, by the way. First of all, he didn't play singles. So if you look at the brackets, go, well, how did he not even make it to the final? Well, he didn't play singles at all. Yeah. He played mixed, and I believe, I can check the results here, Adam, unless you have those. I'll just check. I got it already. I can look. I know he played in, well, he won. He did actually win all but one event. He played five events. He won four. Oh, cool. He played Goalie Wars. Won that. He played the DYP. Won that.

[00:15:36] He played mixed. Won that. And he played, they had a Roto DYP. They call it the Billy Roto Draw. And for those who aren't familiar with Roto's, it's a doubles event. If you score, you switch. If the other team scores, they switch. And then you just play like that. So he won the Roto Draw. It's named after Billy Sumption, I believe. Is that correct, Adam? So they call it the Billy Roto Draw. Ryan won that as well. And then he took second in doubles.

[00:16:02] So he was first, first, first, first, and then second with Mike Wairowski. And they lost to Jacob Balkos and Rhodes. Joe Rhodes. Joe Rhodes, yeah. In the final there. And they three-peated. Did they really? They started their time winning there. Yeah. That's good for them. Yeah, that's pretty good. Man, that's a, it's a, you know, you got to protect your wins. You got to come back and defend your title each year. That's great. Man, good for them. Yeah.

[00:16:30] Jacob, here's a question for you both. I think Jacob Balkos. He's now considered pro master. Do you think within the next year he is going to be consistent in winning in open events? What, what say you, Adam? Oh, you're lucky you asked him first because I was coming out with the F-bombs immediately. Go ahead, Adam. F-bombs? No, just, you know me. Very soft-headed. I was going to say.

[00:16:59] Oh, now you got to, you're going to defer. He's not considered a master. He is a master. You look up the points and it doesn't say Jacob Balkos. Eh, we consider that. Pro master. No, you say he's a master. So just me being protective and partially a jerk and also knowing that that's probably okay to do here. But no, he's definitely a legit master. Yeah. He's just one, he beat Ryan in open doubles. Dang. At South Dakota State. No, he's good. He's, so I actually don't know the question. I was just, I keyed in on that. And so I'm not going to answer the question, but that's where I was starting with.

[00:17:29] Well, I mean, we think about every time, let's say Brandon Munoz or Tommy Yor show up for a competition, they're probably going to make it to the finals. Can you say the same thing about Jacob now, especially when it comes to like a tournament like Vegas? Well, I don't, I wouldn't say that about Brandon or Tommy if it's depending on who's there. So if like Vegas, you know, if Tony and Ryan show up, I wouldn't say that about Brandon. He's probably going to make the finals or Tommy's probably going to make the finals. I would have to look at the page and see who is in their way on the way to the finals,

[00:17:59] especially in the championship format where it's all about seating and pages and stuff like that. There are, you know, go back to worlds last year where you looked at Tommy, Ryan, Brandon Moreland, Brandon Munoz. You looked at where they were situated. You're like, well, one of these four guys are definitely going to make it to the finals. This is loaded over here. And then Trevor beat four, all four of them in a row. So I think, I think the conversation of will they automatically get to the final? Well, who else is there and what's the format and will they play?

[00:18:28] So if Tommy showed up to South Dakota state, I'd say probably him versus Brandon in the final. Yeah. If Ryan decided to play, it's going to be Ryan versus one of them in the final, probably Tommy, maybe not. So there's so many factors that go in. I do think Jacob is able to beat literally anybody in the room in any given match, no matter who is in the room. Do I think he's going to run through the top five players the way Trevor did? No, I wouldn't put money on it. But if he did it, I'd be like, wow.

[00:18:56] Never, you know, it's just to happen sometimes. He's, he's legit. He's not legit. Like I'm just crazy and the ball goes in. He is, he is a very, he's very physically able, but he's, he's an intelligent player. Like he works through the match in a way that a lot of people don't. And I, and I think the thing with, with Jacob is I guess if we're going to ask that question a different way, we could say if all the top players are there at any given tournament, is he in the top 10%? Is he, is he going to be in the final? You know, where is he going to be placing?

[00:19:26] And right now I still think he's not quite there yet. But as Clay said, you never know. But, but I do think that it's just not going to be there yet. If the whole field is there. That being said, I don't think he's anywhere near his ceiling. Oh yeah. Of where he can be. I think there's just so much there. There's so much ability. There's so much more for him to uncover about himself and what he can do in a tournament that he just, he's just, it's just.

[00:19:55] And it's going to be turning 18 this year, I assume. Um, cause I know that he's now seven. He's not even 18. No, he's not 18 yet. Now he's 17. When's his birthday? In fact, check this real quick. It's going to be terrifying, um, for, for a lot of those top players. If he continues to do it, if he doesn't find any of the interests of other parts of life, don't, don't take hold. If that's what it is that he wants to do, he's going to be even more good at it now than he is.

[00:20:20] And, uh, and I think that's the thing you can, I think you can watch somebody play for a match or two and get a good idea of where they're going to be placing for the rest of their life. Okay. And I think that somebody like Jacob, maybe you're looking at if the whole field is there fifths, fourth, but in a year from now, maybe even this year. Top three change.

[00:20:50] Yeah. I just, I like one of my big take. Go, go ahead, Clay. Go ahead. You. All right. One of my big takeaways that, that happened and I won't get into detail details, but I will tell you that when I saw him play open single, was it open singles? It was open singles against who's the pull shooter. Oh, that one. Yeah. Who? Who? What? Where are you talking about? Which, which pull shooter are we referring to? Cause there's a lot of them.

[00:21:17] Ball Coast was D-ing up against the pull shooter at open singles. No, it's South Dakota state. Oh, South Dakota state. Okay. Oh, it was a, yeah, no, I know exactly the match you're talking about. We had a conversation about it. Yeah. Ooh. Let's find out. How come I cannot remember that? Was he ever, I blame you. Was he having a, was it a challenge for him to D up against the, of the, of the pull? No, he handled business. He unraveled him. It was like complete ownership of somebody's pull shot. And it was impressive.

[00:21:45] And I'd never seen him have defense like that against the pull. We talked about it later. That's the conversation that Clay's talking about. And that was by design. because he realized that something that happened at a tournament before against the pull shot. You can say what that is. That's right. It's not private, the match where he got destroyed by a pull shot. He got destroyed by San Dijon. Yes. Was it Vegas? It was Vegas in pro singles. And the pro singles final in Vegas. I was going to mention that. And that's when he realized. So here's the thing, and I think this is the difference between,

[00:22:12] what I'm really getting at is the difference between somebody who you can tell is just kind of where they're at and will never get better or maybe just a little bit better and somebody who the sky's the limit are the people that have that happen to them and look in the mirror and be like, I need to change and address this and get better. That's not going to happen again. Talk to as many people as I can, do as much practice as I can, as much thing as I can to change this. And that's what he did. And that pull shot, the pull shot. I think it was Scott O'Hare. Scott O'Hare. It was Scott O'Hare. Because it was somebody who's got a really good.

[00:22:41] Scott O'Hare is a great pull shot. Yeah. Incredible. It is phenomenal. And he's smart. It's just not good. It's smart. And he deed him up in singles so well. It was so impressive. I was like, that is a different Jacob. And so you bring that kind of thing to a tournament. You bring that thing to your game. You just, there's not a lot of people that are going to be finishing in front of you. I'm curious now, you guys, you've got so many matches under your belt now.

[00:23:07] Is there a way, is there a time when you look at, let's say, the first game and you look at the way people are playing and how they're handling each other or how they're going against each other? Is there a way to tell, statistically maybe, how this thing is going to turn out? Whether it's going to go all five or is there one team that you say to yourself, damn, they're just going to steamroll this thing. Is there anything like that that happens for you guys, Clay?

[00:23:37] I have, I will bet on literally any foosball match that is about to happen. Not because I like to gamble, but because I feel like I have the inside information on all that stuff. Part of it is just because I watch so many foosball matches. So I just, the chances of somebody playing on table one that I've never seen before, it's pretty small, especially in like the open events. And some of the more obscure players, like amateur, you know, the folks that I might not know, a rookie or whatever.

[00:24:05] But for the most part, I just know the player. So I know if it's a good matchup or a bad matchup, depending on who it is. And then if I don't know them, or even if I do, and you just, you spot things very early, the way that they're handling the ball, if they pick a side for a particular reason, all the different details that go into what matters in a foosball match. There are things that you can objectively say, this matters, that matters, whatever.

[00:24:31] But there are other things where it's like, you know, it's a little bit more second or third level. And so, for example, with Jacob coming into a match against somebody like Scott, you think, well, you know, Jacob got roasted at this event playing this person with a pull shot. This is a bad matchup. Or you can go, actually, that did happen. But then a few months later at Nationals, it wasn't a problem. So he fixed it by then. So it just depends on how much do you know? And then at what point did that information either change or has it stayed true?

[00:25:01] And you can always evaluate things. And the important part is, like, just be ready to be wrong and then go with what's new information instead of just going, what? Back at the local, you know. Uncle Papa told me he don't ever lose. He taps it three times and goes pull side, and he wins every time. Then he calls a timeout and puts the ball on the second guy, not the third guy. And then I tell you what, you know, like if you just are addicted to your opinions, it's going to suck. And you're going to lose all your money to me, by the way.

[00:25:30] Oh, interesting. Yeah, there's always something. There's always something to notice. Well, I mean, and then, of course, there's always the factor, you know, the foosball factor where things go awry, you know, for no necessarily reason other than physics, you know, when you miss it or whatever the case. There's always that. There's always a reason. There's always a reason. There's always a reason. And that's the thing. Always a reason. And sometimes the reason is math. And so that's my way of saying bad luck or good luck. But there's always, always, always, always, always a reason when things happen, for better or for worse. There's always a reason.

[00:26:00] And then it's just a matter of how, dude, there's a quote by Einstein that I absolutely love. He goes, I'm not smarter than people. I just stay with the problem longer. And so with foosball, you can directly apply that here where it's like, it's not, you know, like Tony would tell you, it's not that I'm just better. It's just what I stay with and what I learn and what I pay attention to and stuff like that. But yeah, that's a really valid point, especially when it comes to in the middle of the heat of a match. And if you're seasoned like Tony, you have that time.

[00:26:29] You're given, because of your skill level, that time to really think about what you're going to do next and how to handle that opponent. At 40 years old, it's easy to say that about Tony. But if you watch a video of him when he was 18 or 19, he already had that. Yeah. He's not, he is 20 years better than he was. But, but, so that would be crazy for me to say that he's not. But if you watch him when he was 17, 18, 19 years old, he, he was already there. He, that is a personality trait that he just has.

[00:26:59] And it's part of why he was so good so fast and then has remained so good for so long. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, uh, I can't wait to see what happens in Vegas. I mean, he's being inducted and, uh, it's, it's going to be a lot of international players at Vegas too. So, uh, he's been, he's been tearing up in Europe. Um, so I'm interested to see how, how he comes back and how things change for him, especially when it comes to the, the open doubles and the singles too.

[00:27:27] Um, so, so Adam, what was your favorite match at South Dakota? What, what, uh, what did you find? How would you say, how do, what would you say was your most surprising moment, uh, at South Dakota? My most surprising moment was when Clay ordered two drinks from the server and he wouldn't finished. And she walked away. She's just like, yeah, just done. True story. Not exaggerating by the way. Right behind that was the next night.

[00:27:55] A different server did the same thing after getting the order wrong. So I'm telling you, it was wild. I've never seen that before. Like, I know why as a server, I get what's going on there. Like, you know, there's a certain point where if you're so close to the edge of a cliff, you kind of don't care what, you know, sugar free cheesecake hotel restaurant. What was, what was the, yeah, there was a hotel restaurant. Oh man. Anyways.

[00:28:22] Uh, but on a more serious note, my, the thing that surprised me, um, I don't know if anything surprised me as far as any, any foosball that happened. Like, I don't know. I, that, that's a different question. I wasn't expecting what surprised me. I, I don't remember anything really surprising. What about your match of the weekend? That's where that conversation kind of started. Yeah, let me, so the match of the weekend is a, there's a dead heat. I don't really quite know.

[00:28:51] Um, actually, you know what? No, I don't know because they're for two different reasons. Okay. So let me just give you the two that the, the, the, the, the women, women's doubles final was incredible. Okay. It was, it was the Brubaker's Tracy and Allie Brubaker versus, um, Shelly Langley and Stacey Fowler. Right. And Stacey and Shelly were coming from the elimination side and it was a near double dip situation. And Stacey and, and Shelly just clawed their way up.

[00:29:18] I thought that, I guess that was a surprise to some degree because I know Stacey and Shelly are good, but I just thought it was, it was Tracy's weekend. She already had won women's singles. She was on a roll. She's playing with her daughter, you know, but it was close and it was so entertaining. And I think I might almost give this to be the match of the weekend because of what happened afterwards. Okay. There was a buzz in the room for this thing. You know, when you watch fun foosball and when it's close like this and you think to yourself, damn, that's just good foosball. Those are the kinds of matches you want to play in. Yeah.

[00:29:48] Even if you lose to some degree. But after that match, you know, Clay and I went down and everybody's just like, there's that, that, that buzz in the room that's still existing. And we're given, uh, you know, uh, Tracy and Allie knocks. They like, they, they dug it out. They made it work and they won. And it was really good. It wasn't no slot. It wasn't like a sloppy gross game. It was just a solid game. Right. And then afterwards I brought that energy over to Stacey Fowler, who was this close, this freaking close. Right. And I don't know how many of you know, Stacey.

[00:30:18] She, I've, I've known her for years and I've got close friends with her, but I've always known her to be a class act. Yes. And I go up there to give her a knock and like great match without thinking for a second. And this is not like me. And I felt terrible about it without thinking for a second that she's still in the energy of having lost. And I felt terrible because the second I realized that was happening, she's there there. She's, she's shouting at herself. She's yelling. She hits the bleachers and stuff. She's not mad at me, but obviously that energy that she has there, she's just trying to

[00:30:48] get through it. And I'm like, wow, this is just one of those things. Like I just, I have to, I have to back away. So I just like turn around and awkwardly left because, and it wasn't her fault. It was nothing wrong that she'd done. Like I, it was just stupid on my part to go up and say anything to her. So. She wanted it badly. She wanted it badly. Yeah, of course. Right. Yeah. And, and I felt bad. She was so, so half an hour later, I go to my room, hang out and I come back and we're going to do another match. Right. And as I'm walking down there, Stacy beeline straight up to me and says, Adam, I'm so sorry. That was just not the right energy.

[00:31:17] I didn't mean to be like that. It was like, it was just completely apologetic, completely this, but also just in the reality, you know, I just had this, I just lost and left like that, you know? And I'm like, of course I said, and I was like, and I apologize too. That was not the energy I should have brought to you, blah, blah, blah. But that was just like pro master. This is in the moment stuff. Leave it off the table, come back and just be a human. And I think that's an abject or object lesson, abject. I think that's a good lesson for a lot of foosball players to realize that actual adults,

[00:31:47] if they have issues with somebody, go and talk to that somebody and be one-on-one with that somebody. Because if you just sit there and hold grudges and I don't know, post anonymously about stuff, you're going to have weird poops. It's, it misunderstandings happen all the time. And especially when you've got that kind of passion, you know, you're, you're just finishing up a match and things are, you know, didn't go necessarily your way. You're, you may not be in the best frame of mind and that's completely cool. You know? And I will say, it's not even a misunderstanding.

[00:32:16] It's just like two people taking a moment to take a break and realize, Hey, let's have a conversation. And that's what she did. That's what I did. And that's where we are. And I think that's just what adults do. And that's why I would put that in the lead for first match of the weekend, but a very close second, if not for that would have been the pro singles final. There you go. Because that was Merlin Arment on the winner side versus Mike Wierowski coming from the elimination side. And by the way, after this weekend, I was thinking it at Great Lakes Classic last year and it solidified this weekend or that, that weekend.

[00:32:46] I'm a Mike Wierowski. Yeah. Fanboy. Like he is so much fun to watch. He is so studied on the table, but he's also just such got such good energy on the table that I love it. I think more of that spread that around for food. Well, so those are my two. It's in the DNA because Brady's also, you know, following in his dad's footsteps there and Brady's just, just, just tearing it up. I think he's going to be the next ball coast when it comes to just, just advancing as quickly as he is.

[00:33:14] But, uh, it's, it's my two cents, but no. Um, so was, was there something else that you wanted to mention too? I mean, is there something else that you, uh, you found surprising? Um, not anything surprising. I, I do think though, I was very much, I very much enjoy the, the goalie wars, um, final. Yeah. I'm really a big fan. Of course. Goalie. Two of my favorite matches that I've seen in the last year have had Brian Moore in them and they were goalie wars final matches. Right.

[00:33:44] So there's, there's no surprise that that's, that wasn't enjoyable. Right. But, um, I haven't had a chance to watch that match, but I'm wondering when he's playing goalie wars, is it, is it, I just haven't had a chance yet. Um, we haven't had a chance. It's been on the damn internet for a year. Cut me a break. Um, so does he like, just kill it from your homework for this week? I know his time. Next time we talk, watch that match. You will not regret it. I assure you.

[00:34:14] Now you're going to make me forget my point, but that's okay. I, I, I'll forgive you for that. I'll forgive you for that. Thank you. No, the, the, my question is when he was playing and he won, uh, won that, uh, goalie wars, was he hitting it from the, the, the two rod pull shot or the push, or was it a combination of both? I mean, was he everything? Everything. Yeah. Yeah. He, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he approaches those like, uh, like, uh, like, uh, um, like an improv group. Yeah. Like he just, he just rolls up.

[00:34:44] And I am convinced that some of the shots he just thought of three seconds ago. Like some of it's your traditional, like rolling pool bank slingshot, funsy, this, that, and the other. But he is in like top level creative mode and also yapping the whole time, which is very fun. It is a lot. It's not fun. Cause he's trash talking. And it's just fun to see Ryan come alive.

[00:35:09] And in an event where honestly, nobody really has a chance against him. There's not another person in the world who can mess with Ryan and goalie wars on tornado. Yeah. And he just toys with people. It's so fun. Wow. Yeah. That, that banana is getting eaten from both ends and the metal. It's really amazing. Okay. That banana. What? No, it's creative. It's a great analogy. You could tell, you could tell what his matches were if you're watching out there. Cause there's a big crowd here.

[00:35:38] There's a big crowd on 40 truck and the big crowd over here, you know, it gets closer and closer to table one, you know, it's awesome. Should, should goalie wars be more of a big deal? I should there be more. Only if Ryan's playing. Only if he's playing. It's not, it's still goalie wars. If, if it's, oh, I'm going to piss people off. I'm going to say it. It needs to be said. I'm going to say it. I'm going to say it. You know, it's going to happen. I've just, I got the gun. I just don't know which bullets I want to use.

[00:36:10] Goalie wars is only fun in very specific circumstances. And those circumstances are, people are aware that they're playing a, a, a gimmicky event. First of all, it's not, it's not the world championship. Even if it's at worlds, it's not the world championship. Okay. So it's a gimmicky event and to have fun with gimmicks, you need to be gimmicky as well. And so instead of setting it up in the exact same spot, doing the exact same thing, because I have to win. No, have fun with it.

[00:36:38] If you're playing horse, don't shoot a free throw. So with goalie wars, it's only fun if people are trying stuff and they're not afraid to look dumb because what they try might not work. And so anybody can play in. Anybody can be fun to watch because that can happen with it. I don't even know how to do any trick shots from the two bar. I don't just mean trick shots, but like, I don't have a very strong, like crazy two bar game.

[00:37:05] So I would probably never play goalie wars, but if I did, I bet it'd be fun to watch. And even if I lost, I bet, I bet people wouldn't would enjoy the match that just got played. And if you set the ball in a certain spot and you're just doing the same thing and just playing high, like efficient, whatever goalie wars ball. Yeah. You might win, but nobody will care. Nobody will watch. It'll be boring. Yeah. So part of Ryan hits all the check boxes. So if he is in the event, it's going to be fun because a, he's trying to win and

[00:37:35] B, he's so much better. And he can do all the funsy stuff, the wildly impressive stuff. He also is not afraid to look dumb. Just try something. If he misses it, whatever, I'll have another chance. And also he talks like he, he lets people know, like not in a, like watch the match at a money ball last year that, that Adam's talking about the goalie war final against Kenneth Dell at money ball last year, 2024. And he, in the last game, he says, I'm just going to, I'm just going to, I'm

[00:38:04] just going to go short, short, short, short, short. And every time he hits it, there it is. It hits it again. There it is. Like it's just over and over and over. And that's, that is fun to watch. That's kind of like, so goalie wars is fun. It's kind of like Babe Ruth when he was, you know, step up to the plate and he'd point over the left field fence and that's where the ball went. Yeah. Like that's where it's going guys. I have a runner up for match of the weekend, but not for any other reason, except for the fact that it was some of the most impressive things I've ever seen.

[00:38:31] Speaking of Ryan Moore, I believe it was, was it the Billy Roto? No, it couldn't have been. It was a, was it the draw? I don't know what Ryan captain. No, no. So where he did 10 John Waynes in the entire. The only thing that was in, uh, that was in a doubles. I think. I do remember something about that. That it was, it was over and over and over and over again.

[00:38:59] But the best thing about that was, is that he shot the first one and it went in and Clay looked over at me and he said, that might be the only shot you see. And it was, he did one. The whole match. Yeah. He did a spray that didn't go in. It got blocked, but all 10 goals were a John Wayne. It was incredible. It was, it was a level of play that I think that, um, is important for people to know. Cause when we talk about people saying, Hey, you know, just keep doing what's working for you and don't stop until you need to.

[00:39:29] That just typifies it. Now, would it be valuable to say that if let's say there are some really great clips that you guys have collected, let's say over a weekend, uh, from goalie wars or something that's, that's more, more novel or more specialized, but collected those clips. And in between the matches that are happening, let's say, as you're going through the, the finals in between just say, Hey, here's a, here's a two minute piece of, uh, goalie wars for Ryan more earlier today. Let's check this out.

[00:39:57] This guy's nuts and play that to, uh, you know, to your audience while you're, while you're waiting for the next match. Is that something you would consider doing? We totally do it after the fact, uh, for the modern food socials to do it in the moment. There's so much going on that the time it would take would be greater than the benefit it would bring. Okay. I would totally be open to it. If, if, if there were, if we had like another person who could do that on the side that had spare time to do, cause for the most part, when we wake up, we're, we're either

[00:40:27] eating, doing matches or crying in the bathroom or something. I don't know, but there's not a lot of free time throughout the day. Washing each other's hands in the bathroom. Yeah. That's a, that was one of the all-time great Adam Gilson rants right there. That was the, that might've been the funniest moment in football podcasting history. That was hilarious. Uh, but now to answer your question, it's totally possible and maybe in the future. Yes. Uh, but the effort might not equal the, the, the benefit yet, but who knows?

[00:40:56] Maybe you never know. I think I love showing people these little bite-sized, you know, things of football. We do have one that's kind of, that kind of runs from previous tournaments throughout the day. Okay. Okay. We always want people to see cool stuff. Now, one of the things people to fall in love with foosball. Oh yeah. And I think the things that, you know, especially we think about something as boring as golf, right? But it's core, it's a boring, boring, you know, game to watch. Uh, but what they do to make it more entertaining is they say, Hey, here's the shot of the day

[00:41:25] or here's this, this hole in one that just came out of nowhere from some amateur blah, blah, blah, blah. And here it is again. And people are just like, Whoa. And it, and it lasts maybe, you know, 30 seconds, 40 seconds of airtime, but it's, it's like, damn. And then they get back to the action of whatever they're, they're doing. I think this is probably going to be more possible very soon. Actually. You say that about golf and, uh, I hate golf. I think it's so boring, but I know how popular it is.

[00:41:55] And what you just said, I was the reason that I can actually stomach a golf broadcast because I'm not watching 18 holes of real, but the cutaways to like the drive and it does this and they got the trailer on it and they're doing all the little that I would tell we could totally. And I see, I already know where that would be possible with us because Ryan has the two like roaming cameras people saw all weekend at, uh, at, at TKO. Those are going to be at Vegas.

[00:42:20] Actually there was one in, uh, in right in front of our camera most of the weekend in South Dakota, um, right in front of your camera there. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I'll send you a picture. It's sort of, it's sort of a joke, but also definitely happened. Here's a preview. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. But, but so as, as they get better, the, the, by they, I mean the crew who do like the roaming camera stuff as they get better at like finding these moments and just doing

[00:42:50] stuff, we could totally, anything that doesn't require editing and a whole lot of effort, we could just show it, you know, like with the replays, we do the replays immediately. Oh, sure. And, and that's a thing that we could totally, we could, we could incorporate into the, you know, Oh, check this out. But the deal is people who are watching the stream usually saw what's on the stream. So we would need something from like 30 truck. Right. To, to, to bring onto the stream. Yeah. And that's totally possible with the cameras. That'd be cool. That Ryan bought. Those roaming. He's blazed spent so much money, dude.

[00:43:20] So far. Dude. It's on stuff like that. And it's just cause it's cool. Yeah. Which I love. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the, the cool factor obviously to, to bring those who are, who are kind of away from the, from the game into it to get them involved and say, wow, did you see that? By the way, how, how are you guys doing with your, your clips that you're putting up on, on YouTube, et cetera? What are, what are the, what are the downloads like now? About a million a month. Million a month? Yeah. Get out of here. Yeah.

[00:43:49] And I'm not, nobody ever asked me this, so I don't know how to enter this conversation with humility. So. Well, don't. Adam. I think it's awesome. No. You, you could, I, I said it a couple of months ago or whenever that was, Clay does all that. He does all of that. He does the clipping, the editing, puts it on the scheduling, the tinkering, figuring out how to make it be watched. What, what Clay is doing outside of the basic knowledge, advanced knowledge he knows of social media interactions.

[00:44:17] He's fine tuning a way to make foosball of all the tournaments we go to cast as wide a net as possible of non-fooceball players, foosball players, obviously, but non-fooceball players, right? It's the biggest sortie into non-fooceballdom that foosball has ever had as far as it being part of the conversation. And I just wait and, I mean, we already had like the viral YouTube video.

[00:44:45] But, you know, I think it's just going to keep building on itself and that's all Clay. That's Clay. So it's, it's, well, I get, I get the credit for the editing, but it's definitely not all me. Like, by the way, I went ahead and looked at the analytics on our Instagram, we're 800,000 in the last month and on our YouTube were 600,000. So let me upgrade to 1.5 million a month. And a lot of that is literally because of the equipment that we have at the tournaments. It's, which I bought none of, I set none of it up.

[00:45:14] I do none of the work to make it possible to capture that stuff. And I do, I do, I freaking love foosball. So it's easy for me to sit and watch hours of foosball and then pick out like the, the, the, the reel that we're posting tomorrow is it's, um, it's Michael's all doing a far wall slingshot. I just think that's cool. So it's, it's, um, it's going to get bigger too, man. I mean, Adam nailed it perfectly. Actually, it's, I, there isn't really a desire to go, Hey, there's a few thousand foosball

[00:45:44] players. I really want to make them love us. Like they're going to either way. They love foosball. We don't have to sell them on anything. We just, they're already there. So it's not like we're disregarding them, but, but like, honestly, the content's not for them, but people who've never seen it, like Terry Ward, um, who, who, who ran South Dakota state was telling us about, you already know what I'm going to say, don't you? He came over and he's like, uh, I won't say who it was. I don't know.

[00:46:10] It feels kind of private, but he's like, Hey, so-and-so person in my life who doesn't know anything about foosball has been watching all weekend. And it's just because the way that it's presented. And this is, we hear this every tournament. Somebody says, my uncle Papa, you know, never watched foosball before and he won't get away from the screen. Yeah. No shit. Foosball's awesome. That's something right there. And you know that, that, that post that the tournament wrap up that we did at TKO with, with Ryan. Yeah. We had somebody, I forgot where it was.

[00:46:39] It was this, it was at South Dakota state, but I forgot if it was in chat or whatever, but they said they shared that with some non-fusers that were just watching it. Okay. And LOLing, LMFAOing. Really? Yep. Really. Brandon Moreland was at a poker game and somebody started talking about foosball, not knowing that they were sitting at the table with a world champion. It's not weird. One of the best in the world on Tornado and probably multi-table actually, to be honest. Yeah. And these, and these, and these, because they were talking about, well, have you ever seen darts? Have you ever seen pickleball?

[00:47:08] Have you ever seen, and somebody goes, have you ever seen foosball? And they pulled up Eric Hiltner shooting a slingshot. Are you kidding? I didn't know that two-row slingshot. And Brandon was at the table, and the dealer knows who Brandon is, but Brandon wasn't like, hey, y'all, by the way, I'm a badass. You know? But yeah. That's like the six degrees of separation, because he's seeing that thing that you cut Cliff put on there, millions of people saw it, then it just came back around. Eventually, a fooster was going to see somebody bring that up because it's out there in the wild. Right. That is fantastic.

[00:47:36] I'm telling you, the future of foosball is great. Yeah. It is. It is. There's just so much. There's just no, there's just, it's just going to be so much. It's just getting better. How about that? That's what I'm trying to say. I was just, this weekend, I'm working on a new article for a local magazine called Tavern Players. And I think, Adam, you helped me on one of those not too long ago. So the editor contacted me a couple of weeks ago and he said, hey man, I don't know what's

[00:48:05] going on, but I mean, I'm getting requests from Texas and Wisconsin and California. They want copies of my magazine. And it's just distributed throughout the Northeast. That's it. I mean, it's just a New England kind of thing. I'm like, really? Because yeah. And they're asking for foosball articles. I'm like, okay. That's interesting. That's an indication that there's a renewed interest. Either these are foosball players who want to know more or it's just people in general. Who knows?

[00:48:34] I bet you it's people who don't know about foosball and they want to know more. Probably a mix of players, but there are so many people who are like, what is this thing I've never seen? Yeah. And they're just begging for more. It's like, I just got introduced to whatever bar game, like, I don't know, take one, darts, whatever the case. And man, I really like that. I'd like to know more about it. But foosball suddenly has taken the lead. That's... It's only going to...

[00:49:04] Yeah. And no small part credited to you, Clay, for doing the hard work of getting that stuff out there, man. That is awesome. I will consistently defer to other people who do the actual hard work, like set up the Mohawk and buy the cameras. We have thousands upon thousands of dollars of equipment that I have not spent a single penny on. We have $5 parts that I don't even buy. So it is...

[00:49:29] Modern Foods is five people and all five have a major contribution to what people see. I get more credit than I deserve, frankly, because it's... I also get more hate than I deserve. We don't need to talk about that. But... Well, you know. Yeah. We're... Take the good with the shut the hell up. Yeah. Hey, can I answer a question that I see, Tom? Please. In the chat here. Is that okay? Absolutely. The question says, is there a generic video of foosball that can be shown to people that

[00:49:57] are totally unaware of something to show people the different fun aspects of foosball, all that stuff. Yeah. Just send them to the Instagram. Send them to the YouTube. People are so capable of finding what they like. And I would rather people just be shown, hey, here's a thing I bet you didn't know about. And then they'll go through and find the thing that they like instead of having a specific video that might... For me, if you send me a video, hey, man, have you ever heard of such and such? And then you send me a video, I'm not ever watching it.

[00:50:27] I literally don't. I will lie and say, ha ha, that's funny. Thanks for sharing. I will never watch it. But if you say, have you ever... Yeah, I've done that too. Adam knows. I just don't watch videos. I just don't. And I have to react and pretend. My brother's been sending me videos for a decade. I've not seen a single one of them. I don't give a good... Adam's going to die if I don't... I just don't. Dude, I have a friend who I said, LOL, that's funny, literally every single time he sent me one.

[00:50:56] And then one day, this was years. I'm not exaggerating. Seven years of LOL, that's funny. And then one day he sends me one. I said, LOL, that's funny. And he said, no, it's not. And then I had to actually watch the video. A buddy of ours had passed away. Oh! As it turns out, it's hilarious. But it wasn't the right response. Yeah. Oh, damn. So anyways... Talk about an oopsie-doo. Yeah, oopsie-dead. Not my fault. I'm still alive. Face-pring.

[00:51:25] You're like nerds. Anyways. And I see he says, let me rephrase. I'm asking for a short clip to show at work. Go to the Instagram, and there's pinned... There's three pinned reels on Instagram. Instagram.com slash ModernFoos. There's an Eric Hiltner slingshot. Yep. There is... So that's a fun... That's a trick shot. There's also a funny one with Ryan where he does the John Wayne.

[00:51:53] And I edited from a few different angles to make it look longer than it was. But he waited for like... Call it the John Wade a while. So there's a really cool one. The slingshot. There's a really funny one with Ryan. And there's like a high-level competition with Trevor scoring in the Open Singles Final at Worlds on Ryan with a two bar. So there's one for everybody there with a trick shot, a funsy, a funny shot, and a legit competition.

[00:52:22] Those are all pinned at the top of our profile on Instagram. As hard as I can, Dan. Just said he likes to show the WFT clip of TKO. That is a great... Yeah. If you go to the WorldFoosballTour.com website, that's the opening one. That is freaking awesome. Yeah, it's phenomenal. I love it. It is so good. That's a good one too. Who did the editing on that? Do you know? Not me. I believe that was Noah. Noah Rosenstein, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had a feeling.

[00:52:53] Sorry? Yeah. Stein. Stein Rosenstein, sorry. Noah. That's why I just said Noah. Yes, Noah. Yeah. I'm not brave enough. See, that's why I don't play Goalie Wars. Tom, you would be great in Goalie Wars. Could you just... If it works, it works. Yeah. No, I just played the other night just for funsies and had a blast and beat everybody at it. So I was just like, yeah, let's do that, man. We're finding new ways to bring out players and we're seeing, oddly enough, in our local

[00:53:23] scene, a big rise in attendance suddenly. It's like that everywhere. People are playing foosball. Mm-hmm. Shocker. I know. And if you stay with the positive and say what's true, that's actually not limited to your area, Tom. It's also like that where I live, which was already a good area. And everywhere else, foosball is being played. People are... It's shocker. They're falling back in love or in love for the first time with foosball. Renewed interest in it.

[00:53:49] And a few of the players that have been around in the past back in the early 2000s and all are back at it, man. They're just like, oh, renewed interest? Man, I definitely want to think about going back on the tour. You know, all kinds of talk like that going on. So that's really encouraging. And I think, again, in no uncertain... I think there's a lot of credit to be given to Modern Foos for making it more available and making it more attractive because people want to be a part of that. They want to be a part of what's happening on the screen.

[00:54:18] We all have our part and we're trying to do ours. Yeah. And the phrase, hello, Instagram, I noticed South Dakota State was picked up on by one of the players. I won't say who, but I, from behind the glass, said, hello, Instagram, because of a cool thing that happened. And then he on the table goes, oh, I'm going to be on Instagram. That is a thing. That is. And 20, 38,000 people will see you that day when that happens.

[00:54:44] What else do you think it's going to take to get more eyes on the game when it comes to social media? Are there any other platforms that we need to be on? I mean, what else is going on up there other than Instagram and TikTok? Well, first of all, I'll start with TikTok. I hate it. I'm so against TikTok that I would literally quit over TikTok. If, if, if like the rest of the modern foods guys, all four of them are like, Hey guys, Adam can vouch.

[00:55:13] I've said this in the group chat. Like I'm out if we go to TikTok, which is probably, I'm probably more severe than I need to be on that. Right. But I, I think that where we are is fine. Okay. And I don't think that TikTok would add to it. With that said, if somebody else has that itch, go ahead and scratch it. There's no, there's no place where it's a mistake to put foosball. So if they had, if they had TVs and, and prisons and jails who could play our clips, go for it.

[00:55:40] They're not going to come to a tour event anytime soon, at least, but it's not hurting me to put it there. So I think the more places you can put it, the better. I'm just personally averse to TikTok. But the main thing is like, tell a friend, share it with people, do that. And more of what we're already doing is the answer. And also avoiding a lot of negative chatter, you know, people who don't want it to succeed, no matter what they say. There are people who just believe that it's a failure waiting to happen. Right. Stay away from that.

[00:56:09] And it's, you know, there's no need for it. A favorite comedian of mine, Ari Shaffir has a standup special out right now called American Sweetheart. And in the whole thing, he's talking about what's positive with the world, which is hilarious because of how negative he has been historically. Oh. And I am kind of just taking that and rolling with it. Like, there are so many good things to talk about. So let's talk about it. Yeah. We have to maintain a sense of sanity, too. Yeah. Adam, what were you going to say? Yeah.

[00:56:38] I mean, I agree with Clay on all those points. And I also think it's just important as far as us as a community or foosball players as a community when we start getting. How do I say this? So so Clay and I and you, Tom, have been under the. Spotlight or under the magnifying glass of the foosball community for years now. Mm hmm. Right. And that's one thing.

[00:57:07] That's what a thousand, couple thousand people or whatever, not counting global, just like a couple of 10, whatever. But as the community starts getting under its own spotlight and seen by other people that are not foosers that might potentially get into foosball, might potentially show other people like, you know, there's a lot of non there's a lot of baseball fans that are not able to play at the pro level. Mm hmm. But they watch it. Right.

[00:57:34] So we're talking about looking at foosball as just a casual fan that maybe not doesn't even play. Right. And I think there's the onus is on the the the casual fan, the casual foosball player or the serious foosball player that watches to be. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of people that are not adding to the conversation. Yeah. To be a positive force in the conversation, not to subtract from the conversation. Right. And these are two different things that I think.

[00:58:03] And I go back to the Stacey thing that I said earlier that requires a little bit of self-reflection. And I guess a lot of people and maybe time just has to answer this question. But there's some people that just don't like to do that kind of thing. But I think if I were to add anything to that conversation, because I don't understand how social media works the way that Clay does, but I do understand how the people side works and what it is that's part of a community.

[00:58:30] And when we're part of a community, you want to go out there, you want to do those things. You know what? Be a Stacey. That's all I'm going to say. Oh, yeah. Be a Stacey. Be a Stacey. Yep. In my opinion. Positive, positive, positive. It's a it takes too much energy to be negative. Way too much energy. And, you know. Cheers to that. Right. So no matter how much I want to be ironic and say, no, it doesn't. You idiot. You freaking moron. Who told you that? This is your first time talking.

[00:59:00] Are you new to Earth? I agree with you. Yeah. No, it's and what's the benefit? What exactly is it? What is the end result benefit of just knocking it down? I mean, I'm sorry. It just that makes no sense to me. Have a conversation. Talk it out. Be an adult. But that other stuff. Foosball is moving away from that, whether they realize that or not. And I'm not talking to a lot of people.

[00:59:27] I'm just saying there's just a handful of people in these things. Put them in my hand. I'll solve it right now. Yeah. Oh, by the way. Put them in my hand. Put them in both of my hands. I wish I had a third hand so hard right now. If I had like a person that knows here and I could just put them in this hand. That would be. I would probably die. I would self combust. I would. If you had that set up where this came out of nowhere, I'd have died.

[00:59:57] But I do have a question for you, Clay. Yeah. I answered the matches that stood out to me or my favor or whatever, but you didn't say. I'm curious what you had to say on that. I was only there for the waitress rejections. I didn't really pay much attention to the, yeah. All right. Fine. So matches of the weekend for me were the same. Like the women's doubles final was great.

[01:00:25] The pro singles final was, it went two sets. That was great. And that went down to meatball, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that was like, everybody was shocked when it ended. So good. Yeah. It was such a good match. And then there was another match in there. I want to say it was, it wasn't the open doubles final. Yeah, it was too. Cause that went over time in the first set and that would have been a real pain if Ryan had made it to the second set. Yeah. So them shutting it down when they did.

[01:00:55] So there, there was a lot of good foosball that happened. And, and we had, usually there's a point where we can kind of walk through the tournament room and just check out what else is happening. We had so many matches on tables one, two, and three. I didn't really get to go check out anything that wasn't happening there. So, so as far as my matches of the weekend, those were it. I think I'd probably pick pro singles to be my favorite match of the weekend. And as far as like surprises and things like that, I think, I don't know.

[01:01:25] I don't know how to, I don't know if I'd categorize it as a surprise. It was, I wasn't expecting it. So maybe that's part of what a surprise is. I just, how smooth everything ran and how actually how much, how little negativity there really was there. Every time I spoke with Karma or Tim or Terry or anybody that was part of the staff there, it was always met with, first of all, it was melt. It was meth. Meth. It was meth. It was just meth.

[01:01:55] I mean, when all else fails, hit you, hit you a little bit of, get a little bump. You know, just meth it out. Method man. Anyways, I'm watching Adam die on screen. You see the time? I love that when that happens. Like, yeah, I do. Expecting something to come out of his nose. He'll squirt here in a minute. He's going to blow. He's going to spit it out, dude. It's water. Hershey blew. Spit it out. Don't swallow it. No. Anyways.

[01:02:26] So all the staff was great. The setup crew was great. Josh Sarpy and Shane Kuykendall were there every time we needed something. They were there to just be of service of some sort. It was, the whole weekend was great. It was nobody. Dude, our box. So we have the Modern Foods equipment. Not the Mohawk, but like all of our cameras, our computers, our cables, all fits in a pallet sized cube. So it's roughly four feet cubed. And so that gets shipped.

[01:02:55] That doesn't go on the trailer with the tables and stuff. That gets shipped. Okay. It was supposed to show up Thursday night. We were going to set up Thursday night, start streaming on Friday. And that showed up at like two o'clock on Friday. Friday afternoon. So we were in trouble pretty much off the get-go. We were behind immediately. And not only are we behind on the clock, but we're also, it's just stressful when things go that poorly that quickly. Yeah.

[01:03:22] And even that was like, after a day, we were like, damn, it's, that doesn't even seem like the same tournament. Cause everything was going fine. Okay. We never set anything up like that before. Yeah. So this is the first time you've actually had to do all this yourself. Yeah. And the fact that it was like, felt like good. Like my, my memories of this are now like really positive, even though that first day and a half was like not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there were, there were the, there were the obligatory, you know, people who will stand here and sit there and put a drink here and there.

[01:03:52] So I had to do all the, all the feeling hurting that I always happens. So that did totally happen. And everything was fine with every single person I encountered as the weekend went on. It's great. It still blows my mind that you can write signs that say, don't sit or don't put things here on top of a black surface with white paper. And that's all that you can see besides some tripods that have cameras and people still do it.

[01:04:22] They do it. They'll put the damn beer right on the paper. Use it as a coaster. It befuddles me. It befuddles me. You want to do something for foosball? You don't have money. You don't have time to do much. Tell your buddy before they go to the next tournament to look for stuff like that and not do it. Right. Don't be that guy. Don't be that guy. And it is getting better. Thankfully. It still happens, but it's getting a lot better. I think people are getting more afraid, which is, I love it. Afraid. Be afraid.

[01:04:48] If you come up to the steps where you can approach our space correctly, that's how to do it. And everywhere else, be afraid. We might have electric fences one day. There's this guy with a, he's got a foosgear hat on and a pair of headphones with a headset on. And he's kind of like the, you know, he's the company Pitbull. So you might chew your arm off if you do that. So I'll strangle you with your own arm. I'm not going to put it in my body. I'm going to rip it off and beat you with it. Yeah. No, that won't happen.

[01:05:18] That's not actually, we're kind of exaggerating a little bit, but people are actually getting better. There are still, you know, oopsie doos that happen here and there, but overall it was, it was a massively positive experience. It's no matter what angle we're coming from. This is just the second, the second of the year. There's so much. What, what do you guys want to reveal or what, what would you like to talk about? What would you like to see at the classic? Lost, because that's the next biggie coming up. Before that, we're doing money ball. Oh, that's right. You're doing money ball.

[01:05:48] I'll keep forgetting that. Yeah. That's, that's coming right up. Week and a half from now. Yeah. It's like literally a week and a half from now. Um, we have a contingents, um, going there from five on eight. Uh, Sammy's going to be there with, with his dad, Nino. So, uh, that'll be really interesting to say the least. Yep. They've never been there. Sam's playing with, yeah, that's about time. I mean, it's not like it's a cross country trip or anything. Well, I mean, I was talking to Nino on Fridays, like, yeah, man, we gotta, we gotta go across

[01:06:16] the country to, to money ball. Then we gotta go to, you know, the classic and dah, dah, dah. But, uh, he seemed very happy about it. So it's not like it's like a big deal. Money ball is, is near and dear to my heart. And it's my favorite tournament that we do. There's, there's, I just love it. I like the, the, the scene. I like all that, but money ball itself. And especially the way it's going to be this year with the division play, it's just going to be so much fun. Explain that. What do you mean by division play? Clay, can you explain that?

[01:06:46] Cause you do that way better than I do. You were going to do this. I thought this is, Oh, all right. We'll do a little sidebar here real quick. I can, I don't know that I could explain it that well. Oh, I literally thought this was part of what you were planning to do. I just want to talk up, I want to talk about money ball in general, but, uh, yeah. Yeah. Well, the division play, I actually, I would, I was listening for the details too. All right. So the way the division play works, and I don't know exactly how many rounds division

[01:07:14] play is, it's maybe five, but it goes through, it goes through, um, everybody's playing everybody randomly. And as each round goes, you get closer and closer and closer into a division you get put in for the knockout rounds. So I believe it's gold, silver, bronze. So open pro and semi, whatever, copper, copper four.

[01:07:40] So, but, but the reality is, is that if it was double elimination, you could be out in two matches and there's your money. And then you go and you hang out at the seven 11 across the street. But in this case, you not only are going to be playing at least five matches, you're going to be put in a knockout round where you are most likely going to continue to play because that is where your ability is. It sounds like, it is. It sounds like a Swiss, uh, format. Sort of.

[01:08:09] The, the, the qualifying is, so I pulled the flyer up. So just, you're right. It is five rounds and it is, um, but double, um, it's five qualifying rounds, two out of three with overtime and it is, it is Swiss. So the Swiss, so the winners play the winners, the losers play the losers. The middle plays the middle as it progresses. Goddish. So the point is, is that the division play for, for the singles and doubles.

[01:08:37] And I think there's a lot of confusion for people, but the reality is, is that for the singles and the doubles, what would be normally open, I keep saying semi-pro, what would normally be open, uh, expert pro or whatever is, is being feeded by this qualifying round that you might get the opportunity that you wouldn't have normally gotten to get beaten by somebody that's way better than you. And as a, as a, as a foosball player that has always wanted to get better, I want to get

[01:09:06] in there and get just destroyed. I want to get smoked because that's, we learn by doing right. Making mistakes. You know what I mean? I know what you said. I know what I said. Anyways, but you see what I mean? There's just, and that's not even the money ball, the money ball event itself, the titular event of the weekend, uh, on Sunday is just, it's, it's the same kind of concept. It's unseated on both sides. So you still do a round Robin.

[01:09:35] And I think, I don't know if I can say this, but I, there's a cap ish of how many people, how many teams can play. Right. And it's unseated. So you go in there and you play, you go through the rounds and then you go to the knockout rounds. And, um, it's, it's, it's quite a bit of money relative to the event. And I think the thing about it, um, that I'm excited about is that it, it, it happens. It's on Sunday and it all happens and plays out.

[01:10:03] And we're going to be able to see some really fascinating matches. And I'm just curious to see, you know, if we get a, what do they call that in, in, in, in, in soccer? Um, there's very little I know about soccer, but I know that I have like the field of death. The, the, we, we, is that a Kevin Costner movie? That's a, it's an amalgamation of Kevin, Kevin Costner movies. That's what that is.

[01:10:31] Could you imagine somebody going into the cornfield and then just blood and guts flying out of the top? If you build it, they will die. There goes ahead. No. Funny. Oh, Tom. Dark. Um. Oh, I got it.

[01:10:58] I saw a message in the group chat here from the boss man saying that the division play is for singles only. So the, the Swiss is for doubles at the Swiss quality. We have five qualifying rounds that is for doubles. And then singles will be division play where it's championship format. And if you lose, you go into, um, if you lose two matches, you continue in your division. Okay. So everybody starts at the same place and then it breaks off as it goes.

[01:11:28] Well, there we go. You got the, now we've got the clarification. Now. Yeah. Yeah. That's, it sounds really exciting. How are you guys going to, how are you going to, how are you going to cover that though? Are you going to be covering just random matches? What's what's going to happen there? We're going to hang out in the park. I'm thinking more about this field of death for foosball. I know. This is your honor. Oh, you like to recoil after a shot. Oh, you're dead.

[01:11:58] Field of death. It's, um, we're going to cover matches on table one as per always. And we have, um, I'll just say, as always, we always have something that we're going to do different or new or innovative or something. So we'll have the traditional table one stream all weekend. Okay.

[01:12:19] And then we're also going to, we're going to tinker with some other ideas that will, will give us more coverage, um, of other things that are happening in the room. So, so it's probably nothing, but no, but, but I will say, but, and I won't say, but I will say that thing that we talked about, Clay, I brought it up and, um, that will be tinkered with too. Um, Oh, okay. But I don't want to say, okay. You don't want to say, I don't want to say anymore, but maybe something interesting will happen.

[01:12:48] So my people are checking out. Um, and David is, is in chat. So I don't know. Um, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to speak out of school. Yeah. Yeah. So we, so, um, yeah, I was, I had, uh, yeah. Okay, cool. I don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what I'm talking about. I, I, I, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, He's telling a joke. He's telling a joke, Adam. And all these, all these jokes sure do work up quite a thirst.

[01:13:18] This is, oh, here we go. Oh, here we go. I'm sorry. Do it. Do it, Tom. It's been a while. Here we go. Okay. All right. About this time, uh, Tom and Adam and I like to, uh, have a quaffa beverage. God, that is such good music. Usually before we welcome in the, yes, but Hey, you know, we'll do it after the show tonight too.

[01:13:41] And, and by the way, this is a pure, pure upstate, you know, what do you call it? Water. I like the color of your, your bottle there or whatever that's called. It is a really nice color. Hunter green. I think. Hunter green. Yeah. This is Hunter green. This is like, you know, the forest in the, in the upstate. Yeah. Forest green, hunter green, tomato, tomato. Yeah. Hey, my favorite color. That's not a joke. Matter of fact, I can, I can tell you, uh, let's see. No, I won't do that now.

[01:14:11] Anyhow. But yeah. Tom, what's your next tournament? Great. Next tournament. Uh, we'll be, uh, Vegas for sure. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it'll be my first hall of fame. I can't wait. It's your first hall of fame. First time. Yeah. Yep. Wow. Yeah. It's, uh. You know what? Oh, go ahead. No, no. I was just going to say, uh, just to see Billy and, and, uh, and, and Tony get in. Yeah. And that's, that's going to be awesome. Yeah.

[01:14:36] It, it, that will be, although it might be speaking of anniversaries, it would probably be overshadowed by what Billy and Tony do, but that will be the 20th anniversary of me winning my first pro title at a big event. 20th anniversary. Wow. Yeah. Cool. 2005 was when I won my first, uh, major title. Well, we'll have to. Is it 2025? What the hell? What? What was that? I had no idea. I thought it was 2020.

[01:15:04] But update, uh, Jacob is 18, by the way, going back to that earlier. He was 17 at last year's South Dakota state. That's why I thought it was 2024. So it's new year, new age. And he's now 18. Officially. All right. He's now 18. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Well, that's awesome. You get to go to Vegas. Yeah. That's cool. It's a classic. No, I think that, uh, it's one of, it's been one of those bucket list things anyway, but what a great excuse just to be there to see how, you know, the very first hall of fame

[01:15:31] classic under the world foosball tour, uh, title, but that's going to be like in it. And the, the promise of, of what we saw TKO and that it's going to be better than, than what we saw TKO that by itself is worth the price of admission right there. Yeah. Yeah. They're going to keep getting better. I mean, nationals will be better than Vegas. The tournament won't be as big and there'll be some things that are obviously different,

[01:15:54] but the ability to cover and to put on the tournaments will grow for, I would say a couple of years, probably. When you do something with the amount of planning, I mean, to the tedious detail, like Ryan is doing, you're going to miss in a lot of places. And he, he could, I'm sure he could probably talk for hours about all that went wrong with TKO. Of course. That is how much, that is how much he has invested both his money and his time and energy.

[01:16:22] And Vegas is going to be better because of that experience. Nationals will be better because of both of those and the worlds will be even better. And then 2026 will be better. It's going to be, it's going to be better for a while. Yeah. Yeah. As he, as he is, I don't know if he's fond of saying it, but every time I talked to him about any of this kind of stuff, he goes, this is phase one. Yeah. Yeah. You know, he's got some ideas. Yep. He's, he's endlessly thinking about stuff, right?

[01:16:50] It's always, okay, just did this. Now I got to do this, but he's, he's, he's thinking five moves out this guy. I mean, and that's, that's typical of a top, you know, pro master foosball player thinking many moves ahead and strategizing. And it's just, it just shows I'm just so excited to see this next, this next move, this next part of the phase. I think it's just going to be amazing. And if you don't have plans to go to Vegas, what, what's wrong with you? What's the matter with you? Yeah. You know? Yeah.

[01:17:20] It's definitely a personal failure. What's wrong with you? Not money or schedule or whatever. It's like, you suck as a human. You out there who won't be there. Think about it. Think about it. What's what are you doing? There's going to be 600 people there. Yeah. There's going to be 600. I'm nobody. That's not an official. Don't quote me as that being a stat. I normally do factual information. This isn't, this is just a prediction. This is projection. Yes. I think it's going to be six, 600 players. Wouldn't it be?

[01:17:49] Wouldn't that be something though? I mean, that's, that's, it would be 600 something. Dude. That's a, that's a, when was the last time they had that many people at a tournament of any kind in the United States? Well, in Germany, that's like Tuesday. I know. I mean, their draws are pretty wild. This on the pond. No. No, in the States, I don't, it, not in the last decade. It has, it's been over 11 years at least. That's, that's when my timeline started. Okay. Yeah. I would, I would, I would say 600 is probably like probably, probably the last, probably the 20 year anniversary of that too. There you go.

[01:18:19] And Adam, are you going to do something special for your 20th anniversary? No. I love how he takes the microphone and just flips it down. I mean, I, I don't know. Can I tell you a story? Okay. Depends on the story. What is that? I think that was, that was a conditional. Yes. Conditional. Yes. Yeah. Tell us the story.

[01:18:50] All right. So here's what I might do. So that, that, that night after Mark and I won pro doubles and we beat Rob Atha and Laszlo Tiki, me and a bunch of friends and we all went out to Treasure Island to karaoke. And I was 23, 24. And like every now minus 20. Yeah. What? Now minus 20. How old are you?

[01:19:19] I was born in August. I don't remember what it was. So specifically I might've been 23 or 24. Sorry. Give or take. Mas o menos. Anyways. So the point is this, is that, so we're at the, this karaoke bar and like most dudes in their early twenties, I just automatically assumed that the bartender who is very attractive, she was flirting with me. And as the night progressed and the drinks were flowing, I thought, okay, this is a done deal. It's going to happen.

[01:19:46] So, and those of you who don't know, cause most of, maybe most of the players don't know where the Riviera was, the Riviera way down the strip. It's where most, most people that worked in Vegas went to go die. Cause the next step was to go die. And across the street was circus circus. And then right. You don't want to hear this story. I don't need to tell the story. I'm supporting your story. I am enthralled. That's me trying to help. I am enthralled.

[01:20:14] I need to, I need to hear the conclusion. Somebody is. Oh, we didn't do that. I just did. Somebody did. All right. Anyway. So the point is, is that, so, so you had the Riviera, which is a, I have lovely memories, but if those, those carpets could talk, they would kill themselves. And across the street was circus circus. And right next to circus circus in this weird little area was the best Western.

[01:20:42] No, it was a motel six is where I was staying. Okay. And, and as the night progressed and I thought this bartender was into me and I was like trying to flirt with her and everything was cool. And of course I was a, a champion. I thought, you know, it was in the bag. So at the end of the evening and it's four o'clock in the morning or so, I go up to her. This is actually embarrassing. I don't like the story, but. Oh, come on, come on.

[01:21:08] But, but, but so I go up to her and I say, and I say, Hey, when do you, when do you get off of work? And she goes, she goes, uh, six. And so I, I slap my, my room card key down. Right. And put, put it right, you know, just slide it right in the middle of the bar. And, and I, and I say, well, if you're interested and I get a ballpoint pen from her and I start writing it as I'm talking to her, um, when you get, get off of work.

[01:21:35] And as I'm writing, I realized you can't just like write the word down. Like it's just, it's cause it doesn't stick. So I'm like carving it into this thing. Like it's the 10 commandments. So I'm like writing my room number in there. And I said, if you're interested, when you get off of work, I'm in this one Oh seven and I'm quiet and generous. And I'm a serial killer. No, I just said I'm quiet and generous. And I slide the thing over and I leave.

[01:22:05] She did not show up. Never showed up. So was it, was it just your approach or was it? She likes loud and stingy. I didn't hit the right notes. Apparently not. No, I didn't. Anyways. So my point is to celebrate my 20th anniversary of that. I'm going to go back to that place and apologize to her.

[01:22:31] Well, I hope she still works there and has 20 years of pain and suffering in her, in her lead up to this. And she probably has a jar behind the bar with all these, these, these, these room cards have been carved into a whole collection of cards that she's received over the years that she never. Of people who are quiet and generous. God, I'd be embarrassed too. It's so awful. I said that I'm quiet and generous. Oh man. Pretty bad.

[01:23:01] In the act you're quiet. I mean, what? When quiet? No, dude. I thought we were going to play back game. I don't get it. What? When are you quiet? What kind of question is that? If you're saying something, I'm, this is a quality of mine. I'm quiet and generous. But during. The point is, is that I, I carved my room number into a Motel 6 key. It wasn't going to happen no matter what I said. Motel 6.

[01:23:32] That's the thing. It's the key itself. Oh, and the best part is, is that, so I get home or I get back to the room. It's like five o'clock in the morning. I pass out. I wake up because my alarm goes off at 730 in the morning. Cause my flight is at 830. Oh, I have never felt that kind of anxiety in my life. Ooh, rob a bank. I guess if I had that trump card, I would use it all the time. All the time. It's my first time today. It's my first time.

[01:24:02] You know, there was a time not too long ago when, when we were doing this, you know, before where I would hear, get this thing back on the rails, Tom, get this thing back on the rails. Jeez. We God. Yeah. Well, there's no rail. These are the rails. These are rails are at Motel 6 and they're quiet and generous. That went nowhere. Yeah. There's no, there's not a train ride. That's why it's fun, by the way. Yes, exactly right.

[01:24:31] It's fun to go off-roading. No. Anyways, no trail. That's my pathetic story. There's a Pavlovian thing here with the, with the mic going up and down. And when I see it come down, it's like, all right, well, I'll shut up and go up. And it's like my turn to talk. I need to get, actually, these are cues. Where's Robo Tom? We need to bring that out now. By the way, I sent, uh, yeah, Atlanta 5-4, please.

[01:25:00] He's going to do, he's going to do the thing. We're just, I don't need you to broadcast my amazing humor that's on the way, on deck. I thought you were going to tell my name. No, I share, I share, I will do this the rest of the time we're here. I gave Randy the link to the Robo Tom episode, by the way. Did you? I was looking forward to him showing up tonight and telling you that he heard it and knowing all the, uh, yeah, this is pre-recorded by the way.

[01:25:28] And now he's just not showing up anymore. So it's probably why I didn't come. It's your fault. You did it. It is. Back to you, Adam. Oh man. That's funny. Microphone now back in place. No, no, it's back up again. Okay. All right. Oh, Tom's wanting to get in on the play by play. Let's hear it. And there's, there it is up in the air. We're waiting. And here comes the play. Oh, he faked it. It was, it was a fake.

[01:25:57] It was a deke, a big fat deke. A deke. All right. So, um, okay. So money balls next. Yes. Money ball. And, uh, we're talking, uh, Vegas and then Florida state, Florida state. You guys are going to Florida. And then nationals, right? Nationals. Um, and I'm going to Wisconsin state between, uh, money ball and Vegas. I'm just going to play. Dang. I'm going up with my, with my son and we're just going to hang out and play

[01:26:27] foosball. I will not have a, a very good question. When was the last time you actually went to a tournament where you just went to play? Adam. Um, I don't know. Had to be probably worlds. 23, 23. Yeah. Right. Yeah. My, my son went with me there too. And I played in exactly two events and one of them was a, was a throwaway. And the other one was, no, was getting fifth place with Linda. The Dallas tournament last year. I didn't play. Did you play that?

[01:26:57] You didn't play at all? God, no. Why would I? I'm probably going to play this year. No, I didn't, I didn't go to the Dallas event last year. I will be going to Texas state and I'll be, I'll be playing in that one too. They'll be. That's actually a stop that I, I hope I can make this year because it is. Texas state is, it is like, I mean, I'm biased cause I live here, but it is definitely, as far as tournaments go, that's, that's royalty is to me. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, it's. There's a lot of foosball happening this year.

[01:27:26] And man, I, we're, we're having issues in finding a spot, a slot someplace where we can do our regional tournament here in Albany because everybody else now is getting into the act. We just like. Crazy how that works, isn't it? Yeah. It's almost like people like, it's almost like people like playing foosball and they, it's almost like they like going to tournaments. It's almost like they don't want to be home and they want to go play foosball. It's almost like that. Could be. Sort of like that. Yeah. Yeah. No, there's, um, there's a tournament. You like that sometimes.

[01:27:56] There's a tournament in Rochester and Rochester has been buried in snow for like, you know, eight, nine feet of snow for the most of the season. But people are still like, yeah, I'm going, I'm going. Yeah. I don't care. When is that? Was that coming up like soon or? Next week. I want to come to one of those tournaments, man. I want to play up there. Yeah, absolutely. No, it's, um, um, two weeks. Two weeks, I believe. Oh, yeah. I won't be there. I'll be at Moneyball. Yeah, exactly. And the same weekend of Moneyball is also Costa Rica. Right. Yeah.

[01:28:23] When we were playing in Moneyball, it's like, well, which one do we want to, you know, what's the farthest away or whatever? I don't remember. It was like the planning of that because there's Vegas, there's Wisconsin, there's Costa Rica, there's the one you're talking about, it's hard to get in where you fit in. Yeah, yeah. No, it's, it's, uh, it's just filling up like crazy. It's, um, that's a great thing. I mean, it's just, you know, and especially because we've, we've got a lot of territory in this country and you can, you can find a place to go play foosball, uh, no matter where you live. So, yeah. Right.

[01:28:53] You know, it's, it's at least a quick flight, if not an easy drive, one or the other. Yep. So, even in South Dakota. Yeah. Even in South Dakota. Yeah. I can't wait to go back next year. I forgot to ask that. We made that very clear that we want to be back. Yeah. Yeah. What is, what was the food like there guys? What, what, what was South Dakota food like? What, uh, what was their cuisine? That good.

[01:29:16] Well, um, it was what we, where we were, was it at Indian casino and the food that was there was, uh, the only thing that you could eat within a 15 minute drive. And it was about that quality. Okay. But, um, Clay is quite good at figuring out what's going to be good on the menu. And, um, I followed what he was thinking and got the Caesar and the Caesar was good.

[01:29:45] The first night I got the, the Cajun, uh, tots. No me gusta. It was bad and it wasn't, it wasn't bad that night, but it was bad the next day. Yeah. The after effects, the aftershocks, the side effects. Yes. Yeah. But you know, it was, but I don't want to say this though. And I think some people had a different experience Friday night that, that place had a seafood buffet for $50. All you can eat crab legs in South Dakota. Really?

[01:30:14] So crab legs in South Dakota is not really high up on my list of culinary, you know, to-do list, but there was quite a lot of people there. Interesting. Put the colon in culinary. That's funny. A couple of other mentions when it comes to tournaments. I was just looking at the list. Uh, we have the, the Tavern Players Magazine. They've got a tournament coming up, uh, March 22nd in Ossipi, New Hampshire. Ossipi. Oh yeah. Good old Ossipi. Yeah. Um, and the first annual, check this out.

[01:30:43] The first annual North American multi-table foosball championship with Tornado, with Bonzini, with Leonhard. That's March 27th. Sounds Canadian. It is. Three rivers, three rivers, uh, Quebec, Canada. But, uh. Won't be there. They don't allow my kind there. They don't. You can't. That's right. You can't cross the border. I keep forgetting that. Dang. Yep. Okay. But it's. No fun. Multi-table. Which, uh, which I think is, is a, is a great idea. That's a great move. Oh yeah. Texas is going to be multi-table. It is.

[01:31:12] The, uh, the portion, the ITS portion of that is going to be multi-table. Awesome. Oh, very cool. Yeah. Is it Bonzini? Is that, is that one of the tables or don't we know? I would assume they have all five. I don't, I mean, I don't actually know. I haven't been a part of any of those conversations. I just had a side chat with somebody who's very reliable with their information and I, I didn't ask a lot of questions. So I, I know Landhart will be there. I know Tornado will obviously be there. I assume that the other three tables will be there as well. Okay. Um, for the, for those, the gold finals things that they're doing.

[01:31:42] Now for the ITSF, are they bringing the, uh, the, the foosball TV guys back over from Germany? I haven't heard anything. I, I, I've seen posts on Facebook that make me think probably not, but I also know, but I also know that, you know, money talks and, you know, uh, rhymes don't always poetry. Go ahead. Back to you. Yeah. That was a good one. Rhymes don't always poetry. Yeah. That was good. No, I don't know if they are or not.

[01:32:11] Maybe, maybe, maybe somebody else knows and they can tell us, but I haven't heard, I haven't heard a thing. I can tell you we're not doing it. I mean, the kudos to those guys last year. I mean, they, they did a lot of hard work. There was a pretty good size rig there. Um, and, uh, the entire weekend working, man. They, they barely had time to do anything, even just playing pickup games. Those guys, uh, they were really, really good, really good dudes. I have to say.

[01:32:37] Um, and I think they, they felt like, Hey, you know, we're kind of in, in foreign territory here, but they felt at home pretty quickly. I think they, they did a really nice job. Huh? That's that good old Southern hospitality time. There you go. We can make anybody believe they feel welcome. And then I'll boot your ass on the way out. No, I'm just kidding. No, I know they, they, and they did, people here were very happy with, with, with their production. So I, I don't know what the plans are with that.

[01:33:05] I, I would not be surprised if they showed up. I have literally zero information other than the post that I was kind of cracking a joke about, but you know, who the people, cameras aren't hard to bring and set up. It's you could have, you could just contract that out to some random third party production company and they'd be fine. Right, right, right. And, and I don't, I don't know anything though. I'll be playing. It was, it was a, a well-placed stage. They had a nice, uh, nice arena there. So that worked out well.

[01:33:33] And from what I understand, they were saying that's their small version, uh, for, for, for that particular. Yeah. I say that too. Yeah. I say that too. Oh, you got there first. Yeah. I say that too. Yeah. Get rekt. So the rest of the year is going to be a blast. There's so much more going on. So as the, as the, as the time wears on, I, has anybody heard what the venue is? It's for Nashville.

[01:34:02] Does anybody know what that is yet? Yeah. Um, yeah, it's on the, like uncle Joe Bob's sidewalk cafe or something like that. Some weird name that I wouldn't expect to be a hotel name. I'm going to say, I'm going to type that. I'm going to world foosball tour.com and I'm going to click schedule. I'm going to click upcoming results and I'm going to scroll down past Costa Rica, Wisconsin, the hall of fame, classic Florida state, Minnesota state. We missed that one, by the way, Illinois state.

[01:34:31] And national is not on there yet. Son of a, I was just going to say, motherless goat. I thought maybe somebody had, uh, had revealed. It's public. It is public. It's absolutely public. I just don't remember where it is and it's not on the schedule yet. I know. Yeah, it is. It's just two miles off the main drag in Nashville. So it'll be easy for a dragon. The main drag queen. Oh. Um, in Nashville. A drag queen. I heard that too.

[01:35:04] Um, I don't know where this is going to, I don't remember where it's going to be, but it's definitely going to be in Nashville and that is public information. So if, if whoever knows, they post it somewhere. Um, and that's going to be awesome. I knew that, that, uh, yeah, the millennium something, something. Thank you. Okay. Millennium. It is the, yeah. Well, I can just Google that. That's actually a very helpful, let's see. Millennium Maxwell house coffee place. No, it's the millennium hotel Maxwell house.

[01:35:32] And thank you, by the way, Tom H foods that came in from the chat for those who listen, listen later on the pod cast with no video. That's not me getting the information. Somebody gave it to us. Millennium hotel, Maxwell house, Nashville. And that is the two zero two five Rosa parks Boulevard. There's two things you don't always hear together. Rosa parks and foosball. And Nashville, Tennessee. Yeah. No, and foosball should never take a back seat. Yeah.

[01:36:02] Yeah. There you go. Quality. I agree. I concur. Yeah. Never, ever. Quality. It's great. Well, I, you know. Ooh. All these crickets. I was just going to say. We need. I'm going to pee myself. All this piss sure does work up for us. Okay. Okay. Hmm. Don't you miss it, Tom?

[01:36:33] I do have a. There's a certain nostalgia to stuff like that. Now let's talk about this. Let's come on. Let's song is beautiful, by the way. It is. That is. I love that song. Let's talk about this, though. I mean, back in the day when we're first putting this whole thing together, you know, we're just messing around. It was COVID. We're stuck inside and, you know, couldn't go places and couldn't do stuff. And I was just sitting at home just trying to think of dumb things to do during the show.

[01:37:00] And, you know, that just happened to be one of them. And I think that here's my here's one of the one of the things I want to say. I think the worst feature that I conceived of at the time was the mystery guest. That was horrible. Horrible. That was just. It was not a bad idea. It went very long. It was fun at first. And then it took a while to let go of. And the let go of phase was actually the part that was tough. At first, it was cool.

[01:37:30] It was actually really good. Trevor Park had the greatest appearance ever with the mystery guest. He did amazing. And he made the feature. But after that, it was kind of like, hey, we just wish we could have Tony Bacon on every week. You know, I have a funny. I have a funny clip because I'm sure you remember we used to record before and after the show back then. And you were asked. You said, hey, let me ask you a question. What do you know? It was. I'll edit myself.

[01:37:56] You were saying what the question was, what do you think about the mystery guest? And the answer, not for me, the answer was, hmm. And I was like, there's your answer. That's your answer. And then that was the end of it. That was the end of it. There was no more after that. That was the end of it. But you know, if you don't try, you never know. Just saying. That's my motto in life. Yep. So, but no, it's, it's, those are, those are fun times because you just. Of course. We had no idea what was going to happen next.

[01:38:26] And the spontaneity of it all. But you guys were, were, were the, the breath that we needed to really keep the thing afloat at the time that it was going on. I mean, Jim and I could go so far. And then of course, Mark, and then, and then you guys jumped in and things really started to get really interesting. And I'm glad Randy came along. I think he's awesome. I'm actually, I was actually sad that he didn't make it tonight. I think he's one of my favorite people in foosball.

[01:38:54] He's, he's, he's truly gifted, not just on the table, but just as a, as a person. He's really got a, he's got a great sense of humor. He's really smart. He hides it, but he's super intelligent. Yep. Yep. Hey, you hide your intelligence. You know, if he, if he was here, he would, he would agree in a way that sounded like he didn't. That's how smart he is. Yep. He's a, he's a sharp dude, very self-effacing and that's good. You know, that's, he's, he's, he's got no ego to, uh, to, to, to, to prove here.

[01:39:23] He's just, he just wants to talk about foosball, get better at the game. He just wants to get better, you know? Yeah. And that's, you cannot fault that. Um, that's what it's all about. And he's, but I can try cause I'm a fooser. Sorry. I'm stupid. I mean, I, I, you know, one of the things that, one of the things that, uh, that really impressed me about this game is that you can be in your forties and be a really good player

[01:39:48] and have aspirations to get even better regardless of, you know, of your, your, I mean, cause you think about any professional sport, you hit 40 and it's like, it's over. Yeah. Some, sometimes it's before 30. I mean, there are, there are, when's the last time you saw a 23 year old in the Olympics doing gym gymnastics? Like they, they, they stopped competing while they're teenagers. Right. A lot of times. Yeah. 19 is 40, 40 plus. Yeah. Yeah. What's that? The 19 is over the hill.

[01:40:18] Yeah. That's a scary sentence to say out loud in public. But nonetheless, though, I think it's impressive that, uh, this, this sport, uh, we can play competitively for, for many decades. Uh, Todd Lafredo, not the least of which. Um, yeah. Like that. Just incredible. He's a freak though. Let's be fair. Like Todd is an actual freak. He's a freak of nature. Yeah.

[01:40:44] And he does give hope to the crazy people, but for the, for the majority of people, I, I would look more. So somebody like Randy was like, yeah, he's, he's only like 700 or maybe 800 points away from master. Yep. Oh, by the way, fun fact. I, cause I do, I am a listener first and foremost, most of them a fan. So I listened to all the episodes every week and I've heard, I'm kind of toss out a tiny idea. Yeah. Uh, or slash suggestion. Stop saying pro master. There are no pro masters. It's pro and then master. Just master. And that's it. Master. Yeah.

[01:41:14] It's, it's, it is, you're a new player. Then you, then you are beginner, rookie, amateur expert, pro master. And where does, where does the term pro master come from? What, why is that? I mean, the same place that most things come from in foosball is somebody heard it somewhere. Okay. And at some point, like you hear Adam say semi pro sometimes or novice or whatever, there have been periods of time where different words were used. So maybe pro master was the word at some point. I don't think it was. Or elite. Is that what they used to say? That's why I say pro master. Yeah.

[01:41:44] It's just because it was semi pro pro master pro, you know, that's okay. Okay. So it was semi pro and then pro master or semi pro pro pro master. Pro pro pro master. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that was, but it's a very long time ago. Yeah. So let's, let's. It doesn't matter. It's just, if you look in the, if you're, if you're a new player coming in, you know, you, you, you, you see in the rank rankings where it says master, but then you hear people say pro master. Yeah. So that's what we used to say back then, but we were more quiet and generous back then.

[01:42:14] He also said, who's the ball back then? I never said that. I mean, there are things that's, this is like a, one of the great elements of anything really, as time goes on, people do it because it's what they did. And so it's not that big of a deal. If people say pro master, I just always think that's not what they call it. It's just the master. It's the masters. It's, it's, um, it's like everything else. We have so many categories.

[01:42:39] I mean, from beginner to master, there's just so much in between. There's, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Is it too much? Is it too many levels? I mean, do we need to kind of. Levels, Jerry. It's levels. It's levels, man. It's Seinfeld. It's levels. No, I'm not going to do that. Well, it's not where you were going to do it. It's whether you would, whether you did it. I changed my mind. Do either of y'all get this, the Seinfeld reference here? Okay. I'll just jump off a cliff. It sounds familiar.

[01:43:08] That's what I can say. Yeah. I think the ratings conversation, I mean, if there's so many that people lose track of them, like if that bothers you, like go practice your five bar. You have bigger problems in life, you know? Like, and I am, I am into correct language and calling things what they are, but I don't really care if there's 20 different divisions. If it were up to me, if I was like running things, it'd be three. There'd be people who have only been touring their first year and that starts the year after you started.

[01:43:38] So like if I went to my first tournament summer of 25, I'd be a rookie until the end of 26. And then after that, you'd be division two. I wouldn't say rookie, amateur, beginner, all that stuff. It'd be division one, division two. Actually go backwards. Division three, division two, and then the best of the best are division one. Okay. But I also have no, um, I have no budget to worry about. I have no money that I need to make.

[01:44:02] I, I, I, my dream world is a place where there's no need to make money. So I, it's never going to happen. And if it did happen, foosball would die. If you had three divisions, you'd have a few people who were really happy and then foosball would die. It just would because people need to play and have a chance to win. And so if it takes seven divisions for the greatest number of people to do that, then fine. It's whatever. I don't play in seven events, but it's somebody who does and who fucking cares, man. It's their money.

[01:44:32] Right. And if you got, if you had turnouts of three, 400 people who all come because they have a shot at winning rookies or amateurs or, or, uh, experts. Great. That, that's so much the better, you know, I think that there's a point well taken there. Yeah. And there used to never be that back in the seventies, there was no, there was never any of that.

[01:44:56] I mean, there was, there was pro, but that was based on money, but that'll, um, what's the term? Shit the bed. Oh, shit the bed. Shit the bed. Now once tournament soccer, uh, fell apart, uh, they started trying to figure out ways to make money at these things. So they started doing, inventing ranks and having ranks and having package deals and try to make money at these things to be able to pay because before, before that and the before

[01:45:24] times it was all sponsored by a big corporate sponsor. And then once that. Big foosball. It was tournament soccer sponsored it. And after they fell apart and they were done, they, you know, they had to figure out they not tournament soccer, but like the people after that in the eighties or whatever. So anyways, back in the days, that system that we have now is based very much on just creating ranks and stuff to have package deals that pays for the tournaments, whatever. I don't disagree with it or whatever.

[01:45:53] It's just, it is what it is. Well, if you're going to be a promoter history lesson. Yeah. If you're going to be a promoter and you want to, you want to stay in it and you want to be able to basically not starve to death. You do have to have some kind of system where you don't have more people playing. And if you're at a world foosball tour tournament, I love these little stickers. Cool. I love that one. Where'd you get that one? Where'd you get that? That's just the, I don't know what, I don't know.

[01:46:23] The foos gear page. Yeah. They have the merch booth set up at South Dakota state. Dude, Clay got like some merch that I was like. I got this hoodie. I got this hoodie there. The hoodie. Yeah. That's so comfy though. And by the way, I paid full price so that I don't have, you don't have to pay me to, to, to, to language words that are friendly. I don't know. I only know foul language on this, but basically you can't pay me to tell people, check this out.

[01:46:52] Cause I paid full price. So check it out. Yeah. And I love it. Adam has felt this. The inside of these hoodies are, this is only 40 bucks by the way. It's $40 for a hoodie. That's great. Yeah. That's a really good price. I wouldn't joke about that. That's a really good price. That has no laughing matter. But the inside of it, it's quality. It has these long ass strings that you can tie up a few people with if you wanted to. But the, but the inside of this is so soft and this is actually, is actually warm and very comfortable. I wore it all weekend and I bought it. Yeah. It's what? It's fully functional. It's a, yeah, dude.

[01:47:21] If you're having a bad day, you just. I just tie oneself up and say, oh, I'm having a good day. What's you said? You said what? Oh, anonymous Facebook posts. Son of a. I just thought of a new t-shirt design. Here we go. And in fact, I can hear the audio promo for it now. It's. For a t-shirt? It's Adam Gilson. Quiet. And generous.

[01:47:52] That's, that's the, the t-shirt. That's the, the logo. You know, I share that just so anybody else out there that, that might also be quiet and generous. No, but I, I just think that anybody that might listen to this, that are at foosball tournaments and that they have a chance with, with a bartender or anybody and drop a line like that. Let this be a lesson. There, there's a lesson. There's something definitely there. I also think it's one of the funniest, like.

[01:48:22] That's a good story. It's really. I'm awesome. I love me. And I think everybody loves me because I'm amazing. So what I have these moments where, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of like on the low end of being pathetic or the high end of being pathetic. You guys are just. Don't go there. Just don't go there. I'm going to Vogue. If I want to Vogue, I'm going to Vogue. Anywho.

[01:48:52] Vogue. I do want to do a quick shout out. Yes, please. Check these out. Brandon Munoz's daughter made these pens. Ooh. And they were at that, that tournament. I don't know if you could see it. There's like a foosball man. So she's doing a fundraiser thing for, to get, I don't know where she's trying to get to, but I, but these are so awesome. Like, I love these little foosball, foosball. Now, is this, um. So if you're trying to, if you want to get you some, reach out to Brandon. Will she do like custom, custom designs or is that like a. . . I know nothing about that. Okay.

[01:49:22] All I know is there, there was a bunch of these cool pens that have like these nice designs on them. That's Brandon Munoz's daughter, you say? Yeah. Wow. I didn't know he had a daughter. Right. So, but regardless. . . I have three. Well, you have three daughters. At least. That you know of. That they know of. Anywho. Yeah. These are cool. And I'm just suggesting. That's great.

[01:49:49] If the next tournament you're at, if Brandon's there and he has those, I think that's neat and it's a good cause. Yeah. Wow. Fantastic. Well, you learn something new every day, especially when you tune into Foos Talk Live. You just never know what you're going to learn. You never know. And then you learn that and then that's the thing that you learned. Yeah. There you go. Anything you guys want to wrap. You know, let's wrap this thing, but let's wrap it in something. Something really awesome. No.

[01:50:20] That's Beatbox, sir. Oh, he's a monkey. Monkey pox. DJ Monkey pox. So, Adam, how would you like to wrap this thing up? How would you like to? What would you like to say about the future for 2025? What's going on? I think that all you have to do is just be aware of what's happening around you and you will see the future of foosball happening. Yeah. That's it. I mean, that's it.

[01:50:50] Open your eyes. Walk in and have fun. Okay. Okay. Clay. Down comes the microphone. It's a good time to be a fooser and it's good times every tournament you go to. And most people are loving it and having fun. And there are a few people who are allergic to that. And so, just let them have a rash over in the corner by themselves. Find the people who are having fun. It's a lot better that way.

[01:51:20] This is the most fun I've ever had as a fooser and I'm barely even playing. I'm just hanging out. There you go. And it's cool. And we're going to be at Moneyball in a couple weeks. There's going to be a tournament going on in Costa Rica as well. There's so many people who are having fun loving foosball. It's so easy. It's so easy to just have fun and just enjoy it. And so, that's part of what I'd say. And also, the matches, our YouTube uploads.

[01:51:48] We do a match a day on the YouTube channel. We actually have two channels, Modern Foods and Modern Foods Archive. Okay. So, we have two YouTube channels that get a match per day most of the time. And the Pro Singles event from Worlds is wrapping up this week. And then next week, next Sunday, we begin with the matches from the Great Lakes Classic. Oh, cool. And Foosball Clubs USA was, I'd say, I was going to say a big reason. They're the reason we were able to go and cover that tournament.

[01:52:18] And so, you'll see the commercial. Actually, Tom, you did the audio for that commercial. It's going to be running in every single match from the Great Lakes Classic that we upload. Oh, fantastic. And I think it's a good time to, if you have a couple bucks laying around, find somewhere to invest it. Give us your time. Give us your fun. Give us all that stuff. But also, talk to foosball clubs and ask them what kind of support they need. Yeah. And so, that's where we're going to be at for the next month or two, uploading the Great Lakes Classic matches.

[01:52:45] You know, we greatly appreciate, you know, our Patreon support. But if you really, truly want to support this sport and do the right thing, to me, the generous most, the best thing you can do is support Foosball Clubs USA. Fine and simple. So, you know, just a kind of a, like, okay, you want a future? There it is. Put a couple bucks in. Yep. Actually, and I messaged Michael Stahl today to make sure that it was okay.

[01:53:15] We're going to use their logo for our thumbnails. Oh, nice. Actually, Adam, I haven't sent those to you yet. But so, the new thumbnails for all those uploads are going to be, you're just going to see a giant. Oh, nice. So, if you see the Foosball Clubs USA in the thumbnail, that's a match from the Great Lakes Classic. Awesome. And there are so many matches that we're going to be uploading. So, all free, always free. It will forever be free to watch Modern Foos matches, whether it's on Twitch live as it happens or down the road on YouTube when it gets uploaded.

[01:53:43] And we do have a Patreon, but we don't put anything behind a paywall that you won't eventually see for free. So, that's worth noting, too. That's just the way it's going to be. Awesome. That's the way it is. That's the way it will be. Yeah. Very cool. Well, and I speak from one of our listeners here on Twitch TV tonight. And Old Foos says, Adam Clay, thank you for what you do. It's my pleasure. Our pleasure, I assume. You know what? And he says, oh, you too, TR.

[01:54:13] Yeah, of course. This is not easy. Tom, you've been at this for, what, seven years now? It's six years, eight, no, wait, six years and six months. It's October of 2018, right? Yep. Yep. Yeah. Lucky guess. I don't keep up. I'm not actually. No, you're right. You're right. You're dead as usual. So, you're rolling up on seven years of doing something Foosball Radio related, and then Foos Talk Live is five-ish years.

[01:54:42] This is not easy to do. This is a commitment on a weekly basis that people don't understand. It's actually pretty easy to show up to a tournament and then just talk about what you see on a foosball table. But to commit every single Sunday to doing a podcast is commendable. So, yeah, he said you too, and you kind of glossed over that. But what you do for foosball, I think, it matters. It's a cool thing. So, thank you. Let's put it this way.

[01:55:11] It gives a person a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Otherwise, I'd just be kind of like, ah, dang, another Sunday, whatever. What am I going to do? No, I really look forward to doing it. So, thank you for that, for the kindness. Are we going to do this again on the first of next month? I think so. I think this is going to be a regular thing. We will get together the first of the month. Unless, of course, you guys are on the road and it's not possible. But, yeah, the first Sunday of every month, this is a plan we're going to go forward with.

[01:55:40] The voices and the faces of modern foos, Clay and Adam, will be here on Foos Talk Live. So, there you have it. There's the scheme. Hey, thank you for tuning in for Twitch TV tonight. And tell everybody about the show. Download it and tell everybody else to download it. And thank you for being a patron. And, man, we're ready to rock this 2025 thing. What do you say? Cool. Well, guys, thanks so much.

[01:56:09] And I'll tell Randy how much we missed him. You know? He'll listen. He'll be back next week. Yeah, he better be. Yeah. He better be. I want to hear his thoughts on the RoboTime episode, man. Yes. You know that's one of the most popular episodes in all of foosball podcasting history, right? That was it? I still hear people at tournaments talk about, I love that episode. It's great. People loved it, dude.

[01:56:36] I think Tony Bacon still, to me, is right there in the top three. I literally hear zero people talk about that one. Really? Huh. Really. Okay. All right. All right. Yeah, that's one of the buttons, by the way, is why that's so funny. Really? Yeah. No. See, like Dan knows about in the chat there. He knows about RoboTime. I haven't seen him comment in a minute, but early in the chat there was Foos D's nuts. He knows about RoboTime. Dude, the RoboTime episode is historical.

[01:57:06] Historical. Okay. Nobody's going, man, I don't know which one you're talking about. That is the thing. It's great. It's a good thing. Well, we have to be remembered for something, right? So that may as well be it. Anyway, guys, as always, it's great to catch up and just hang like the old days. Thanks for having us, man. Yeah. Well, you know what, Tom? These are the new days. These are the new days. We're making new old days. And all these days sure do work on that.

[01:57:35] Oh, I'm so thirsty. Oh, man. And Adam Gilson, quiet and generous. But I am. Wait, if he's quiet and generous, can I be unedited and raw? Yes, I'm edited and raw. And socially.

[01:58:07] Oh, God. I think we're... What? What was that? What was that noise? From the depths of my soul. That's hilarious. All right, Tom. Thank you. Appreciate it. Love you guys. Thank you, Tom. See you soon. And stay tuned tonight because we still have Foos Talk Live's Tournament Beat coming your way. Foosball tournaments are everywhere.

[01:58:35] Foos Talk Live proudly presents a weekly update of events near you with the Foos Talk Live Tournament Beat. Here's what's up. Take your vacation with the 2025 Costa Rica Summer Beach Tournament, March 13th through the 16th, at the Amapola Resort and Hotel Jocko Costa Rica. House of Tournament. House of Tournament presents Moneyball Northwest, March 13th through the 16th, at the Crown Plaza in Portland, Oregon.

[01:59:04] The 2025 Wisconsin Foosball State Championship, March 20th through the 23rd, Mad Apple Billiards in Appleton, Wisconsin. Tavern Players Magazine presents the Hayloft Foosball Tournament, March 22nd, at the Hayloft Hobbs Tavern Brewery and Restaurant, Ossipi, New Hampshire.

[01:59:23] The first annual North American Multi-Table Foosball Championship, featuring Tornado, Bonzini and Leonhardt, March 27th through March 30th, at Three Rivers, Quebec, Canada. San Francisco Foos presents the Vegas Hall of Fame Warm-Up, March 28th through the 30th, at California Billiards, Fremont, California.

[01:59:45] The Norfolk Foosball Club presents the $4,500 Bonzini East Coast Classic, March 28th through the 30th, at Sanctuary at the Rail Yard, Norfolk, Virginia. It's the Central New York Foosball Spring Maid Events, April 4th through the 6th, at Hometown Studios in Cortland, New York. The 2025 Hall of Fame Classic, April 9th through the 13th, at Westgate Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada.

[02:00:14] RK Foosball presents the 2025 Florida State Championships, May 1st through the 4th, Holiday in St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Florida. The 2025 Minnesota State Foosball Championships, May 2nd through the 5th, Wyndham Garden, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

[02:00:32] The ITSF presents the 2025 Tornado World Series and ITSF Gold Series Finals, May 23rd through May 26th, at the Westin-Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, Dallas, Texas. It's the 2025 Illinois State Championship, June 5th through the 8th. More details coming soon. The World Foosball Tour presents the 2025 National Championships, July 10th through the 13th in Nashville, Tennessee.

[02:01:02] Stay tuned for more details. Each week, we do our best to give you the most up-to-date listing of foosball tournaments near you. If you have an event you'd like to add, send us all the details at foosballradio at gmail.com. Tune in every week for the Foos Talk Live Tournament Beat. Foos Talk Live is a product of Foosball Radio. With gratitude, we recognize our Foosball Radio Patreons.

[02:01:30] Our Foos Talk Live sponsor, original-leonhart-usa.com. And thanks to InsideFoos.com for use of their audio during the show. Tune in again next week for another episode of Foos Talk Live. In the meantime, we'll see you at Foosin'.