Game On, Dudes: The 4 Keys to Bar Room Trivia
As many of you know, every Wednesday night at Game On is Barstool Sports Trivia Night. It’s the one night a week where the average guy, the average girl, the Dork, the bona fide alcoholic and the scantily-clad model can all co-exist peacefully in the same room without well-trained bodyguards. And I must say, it’s a good time!
But the social aspect and competitive gawking is not what’s important right now. What’s important right now is why we play the game. And that, of course, is to win. And to win at Game On, or any bar room trivia game for that matter, you need to master the 4 “keys to success” I’ve identified the last few months and outlined below.
Let’s begin.
Forget answering the questions in an accurate and timely manner; the first key to success is waging, and winning, the always crucial psychological warfare.
Psychological warfare? In trivia? What are you, nuts??
Yes, yes. And yes. Like Mike Matisow said, “The kiddie game’s down the street.”
Just like in college when I dominated in NHL ’95, mind games were just as important, if not more important, than the ones on the virtual ice. Same with trivia. Let’s say there’s a ridiculously obscure question: for example, “Who was the color commentator alongside Al Michaels in the ‘Miracle on Ice’ game?” and you’re a big enough sports geek to know its Ken Dryden - what you want to do while the rest of the bar is agonizing in vain over the question, is immediately take your answer sheet, and instead of handing it to one of the lovely Barstool Sports’ “Trivia Bunnies” like you normally would; casually stroll over to the scorer’s table and drop it off yourself.
Some people just walk over normally. That’s fine. Some do the Rick Flair strut and yell “Woooooooo!” That’s okay too. My favorite is the Ray Lewis “introduction dance”, but I’m saving that for the Finals. Let me just say being on the other side of this display is completely demoralizing. You don’t even know what’s real and what isn’t at this point.
It doesn’t matter though. The bottom line is to make sure everyone in the bar whose struggling for an answer, sees that your team, and only your team, knows the correct one.
The second key is to make sure you have 1-2 girls on your team at all times.
Besides the obvious reasons (breasts), girls are important because the trivia dude always asks Fashion and Entertainment questions that no guy should ever know. Anything related to shoes, make-up, the Vagina Monologues, the actual vagina, or how many of Madonna’s kids were conceived during the filming of the “Express Yourself” video are examples of questions you’re going to need female help on. Okay, and plenty of other questions too.
I see teams of 4 guys consistently get trounced week after week. It’s embarrassing to see, it really is. You gotta make adjustments. If you can’t stop the run, you bring up the God damn safeties. Everyone knows that.
If I were devising the ultimate trivia lineup, I’d go with 1 old man (a guy over 30), 2 girls around 25, and a dude in his late 20’s. This would be like having 2 fats, a skinny and a medium in the old Nintendo hockey. You’d be unbeatable.
Without a girl on your team, you’re not going anywhere long-term. You may get lucky on a given week, but if you’re at all interested in the Grand Prize trip to Mohegan and the Red Sox tickets, its time to start asking your sister if she has any friends left that don’t hate you. And more importantly, if they’re free on Wednesday nights.
The third ingredient we’re stealing from the great Herman Edwards’ quote book. “You play. To win. The game.” Or, as my buddy Dave who likes to bet the 1st half lines in college hoops would say – “You play. To win. The 1st half.”
What do I mean, “You play to win the game?” What I mean is this – the final question is always worth 10 points. Now let’s say you’re in 5th place, down 8 points, and the question happens to be “Name the 3rd planet from the Sun.” Now I’m using an obvious question like that for effect, but if you apply the “You play to win the game” theory, you can’t write down Earth as your answer. You’ve got no chance to win if you do. Every team ahead of you is putting down Earth. You’ve got to roll the dice, hope it’s some kind of trick question, and write down something else. That’s your only chance, “To win. The game.”
Again, I’m using an obvious answer, if I had a better example, I’d use it. The point is that on the final question, in order to give your team a shot at winning, you need to go for the endzone and NOT play it safe. This ain’t horse racing, there’s no money for 3rd place.
The 4th and final component to winning is to remember an old saying from I don’t know who. Good trivia question, actually. I think it’s either Truman, Vince Lombardi, or Lou Diamond Phillips in “Young Guns”. Not sure.
“It’s better to be strong and wrong, than right and weak.”
Frankly, I’d rather be right and weak, but strong and wrong seems to be cooler nowadays.
I think the reason is because 90% of the questions come down to 2 choices and inevitably the 4 of you will argue over the better of the two. No one is really sure which to submit so you need a strong, egomaniacal Stalin-like figure as the team captain who’s willing to make the call.
Listen, the last thing you want is 2nd guessing. Come up with your best guess and hand it in; more times than not you’re first answer was probably right anyway, and then everyone just starts hating each other. Plus, who’s got time to think things through when you’ve got 15 college basketball games on TV and a table full of beers in front of you? I know I don’t!
So no matter who you are – average guy, average girl, dork or alcoholic, if you follow these 4 keys I guarantee you’ll have a much better chance against my team than you did last week. And if you haven’t been to Game On yet, hopefully we’ll see you Wednesday night.