Among my friends, we often think of little side bets to run when we go to large tournaments, just to give us an extra element of entertainment outside the game. I find that it helps keep things a little lighter, and I don’t get as down on myself as I’m plummeting towards the Bean Bracket tournament after tournament. So we throw a dollar into the pool and keep track of things like how many times we rawdog a Roar of the Wurm at Regionals, or how many times your opponent says "Mise" or "Tight" during the course of the day. You know, simple wagers among gentlemen.
At Grand Prix: New Orleans, I thought it would be fun to run one with Jim, so on the plane I figured out the whole Over/Under on "Women in the room as of round three" thing. Originally the bet was just between the two of us. Gamers tend to be gambling men, though, so I mentioned it to a few more friends and they hopped in on the bet as well. Next thing you know, I’m mentioning it to Ferrett and he’s suggesting that I start polling all the Pros to see what their answers are. What started as a simple wager between friends blossomed into a goofy little contest article (and four extra bucks for me).
Well, now it’s tradition.
The bet for Grand Prix: Atlanta is pick ’em style this time (Over/Under doesn’t work on percentages…), and the topic, is "Percentage of Women who describe themselves as ‘single.’"
My theory is that many of the women you find at Magic tournaments are there simply because their boyfriend is also there. Yes, some pick up the hobby and play at tournaments completely on their own, but most do so because some testosterone-filled friend got them into it. With the Grand Prix surrounded by Dragon Con gamers of all types, and with a possible attendance for the Grand Prix: alone of a thousand people, I figured the question was pretty interesting.
However, when I initially proposed the idea, Ferrett wasn’t so sure. He was worried about whether people would be offended by the question and not answer (which we can also track), and the skew we might get from how the question is asked and who actually does the asking.
You see, we might get a few different results if Ferrett asks the question, or if we have Ed Fear or Brian Kibler ask the question instead. As an attempt to compromise, I suggested that we have Mary van Tyne ask instead, but that opens up a whole other can o’ worms about gamers in comfortable shoes and such.
So in the end it was decided that I, wearing my wedding ring and StarCityGames polo shirt, would ask the silly question. The theory being that I am normal-looking enough (stop your snickering) that I can ask the ladies if they are taken without skewing answers either way. We’ll do the usual polling throughout the day of both Pros and the lovely ladies and then publish our results, with props to the folks who got close (and any random prizes I can wring from P Diddy Hoefling’s wallet), and a distinct lack of booby prizes to those who didn’t.