Let's end it in style!

Fast, furious and unedited. I swear. Maybe spellchecking.

It has been a long, wild ride on our Yahtzee roller coaster. We lost a lot of people along the way. We found new ones. Some people were nuts, and DARN near psychotic. Others just wanted to go elsewhere. Some came back. We had fun and tried not to hurt too many feelings.

A month ago, or so, I promised a contest, with the nicest prize I'd ever offered. Didn't say what that was, but I knew exactly what it was, a $10 gift card. Nothing spectacular, but it was to be my way of thanking everyone for their support, and providing incentive to listen to episode 47 of my podcast, which I was super excited to have produced.

I never held that contest, because we decided, one time, to stretch our delayed start of the Feast, to a second day. Three people openly groused about it. You're welcome to dislike and disagree, but the gripes soured me. End of the world? Hell no. But after countless Feasts, three people acted like there was no other source of Yahtzee entertainment.

I constantly preach the idea that Yahtzee is not a job, and we shouldn't treat it like one. But every other week we've got a Feast going on. And every time a four-week "Family Games" ends, a new one starts. And there are Prize Climbs galore, and many other ways to play. And if you spend enough time playing the tournaments they run every four hours, and challenging other players, you'll amass plenty of scratchers so that you can spend more than an hour of your week trying to help us win the latest Feast. There's too much, and if you wanted to play/do more, you can spend money and spend hours to keep the dice rolling.

So I never held that big contest. And at the same time, I was feeling a bit burned out by it all. I still enjoy playing. I love the variations they have created for Feast, Family Games, the DiceWorld games and Survivor. Awesome creativity.

But I stopped playing head-to-head games a while ago, for the most part, and I was only putting in extra effort for the Feast when it seemed like there was a reason to. (I have instigated that extra effort a couple of times in recent months.) I'm still sitting on nearly 1,800 free rolls at this moment.

What does it all mean?

Life is short, and I realize it with each passing year. I'll still keep playing the game, but I might only put forth a significant effort once in a while. I have three challenge games going on right now, thanks to that new, wacky challenge button. But my days of having a couple dozen running games are behind me for a while.

We lose members, we find new ones. It's not a lot of work to keep the roster full. But even with a full roster, 12 out of 50 team members haven't played, and I'm only at 12th place on our team at the moment because I played a couple extra games over the daily free game. Several people are behind me, and not by a whole lot. Others are burned out, perhaps, if they haven't moved on and held onto their roster spot. Our Feast delay helps, but we don't have the team firepower we once had.

Clearly I'm not the only one who has lost some of the enthusiasm for the 99 different ways to play Yahtzee.

I'm not leaving, but it's time to step back, officially. I would happily add a new team captain if somebody wanted to run the team in some capacity. There's not a lot to do, but it's up to you to make it what you want it to be. You can change the team name if you want, I don't care. I'm still doing podcasts, and I still appreciate everyone who listens, but the name isn't that important. It's a tiny, tiny, tiny way to promote my podcast.

You can decide to remove the players who have disappeared into the night and recruit new blood, or keep things as they are. (I tend to wait until I recognize a prolonged absence before pushing somebody out the door, but you can have your own policy.)

And if nobody wants to do it, that's fine, just know that I won't be working hard to invigorate the roster. I will continue to leave the Feast delays to you all, whether I'm the active leader or not.

In closing, thanks all for making it a lot of fun to play Yahtzee. I hope it continues. I just won't be working so hard to make it happen. The blog is ending with this post, as well.

Above all, I don't need slaps on the back or thank yous for living out my dream of being a game show host in some small way. That's not what this is about.

But, let's have one last contest, with one last prize package. It's going to be a random contest, method of picking the winner to be determined.

I'll post the entrants and some sort of video randomly picking the winner at the bottom of the post after the contest entry period closes. When will the entry period close and the winner be announced? When I get around to it. To enter, send a private message to MikeVegas72 with the words "pick me." I may update the entry list below before I close the contest. Good luck, and have a great summer!

CONTEST ENTRANTS:
1. 71fraz (1-6)
2. GregRulz (7-12)
3. Sheila618 (13-18)
4. Spartan75 (19-24)
5. QuickSparrow14 (25-30)
6. MysticShores (31-36)

Winner to be announced one of these days.

Contest update:

It's going to be a spin of the roulette wheel to determine the final winner of the final prize package....and it's a prize package. I'm cleaning out the prize closet. Your roulette wheel numbers are listed next to your name above. When I record and upload a video, you'll see it below. The winner needs to contact me via private messaging.

We'll have a winner!

So we have four qualifiers in my recent podcast contest.

It was a trivia contest based upon episode 46 of Can't Turn it Off.

Correct answers were submitted by:

1. MandyQueen78
2. GregRulz
3. Spartan75
4. 71fraz

I used random number generation to pick the winner. I didn't feel like recording a roulette wheel video, so I used a quick, easy way to pick the winner.

CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENT: Episode 47 of the podcast is scheduled to drop on Sunday, April 19. This is my first interview of the season, and it features a crazy character who was a lot of fun to talk to. She'll surprise you, too. Listen prior to Wednesday if you want a heard start, because my goal is to run a similar contest for this podcast, you'll have one night to answer the question, posted in the group chat. Probably on Wednesday night.

How big of a deal is this podcast episode? I'm offering a prize worth $10 to the winner.

FINALLY:

I was partially laid off last month as a result of the pandemic. I work 30 hours/week these days, and hope that it remains that way for the duration. That allows me a few hours per week to watch the Goofball Bros., as their parents are both still working, and working at home. So some days I take the Goofball Bros. on a field trip, and we explore bridges over creeks and rivers, as seen below:

A couple of weeks ago.

Over the Minnesota River, April 17

See that bridge down below, over the creek?

This is it.

BONUS:
I took a panoramic shot of dozens of Jeeps lining up on a Sunday morning a couple of weeks ago, attempting to spell "Jeep" for an aerial photo before heading out on a Jeep parade to deliver donations to hospitals and pass through neighborhoods of children celebrating their birthday.

Saturday night Feast!

If you have bonus rolls banked and want to join us, a few of us are going to try to make a big push to take over the lead on the current Feast. The world is at a near standstill, so there may never be a better time to orchestrate a mass effort. It ain't about the prizes, it's about the camaraderie.

Come early Saturday evening, play late into the night, whatever works.

And, if against all odds we can win this latest Feast, there will be a fabulous prize for one participant who fills 100 bags or more. And by fabulous, I mean one legitimately worth more than $5. (A hush falls over the crowd.)

The following are screen shots from the end of recent Feasts that I have not uploaded previously:

 

Prize winners and updates

First: My latest contest was tied to episode 43 of my podcast. Two people entered the contest. Rather than draw a winner between the two, they'll both win a fabulous prize package.* It might take me a week or more to put it together, but with any kind of luck, it will bring an ounce of amusement to their lives.

As for the future of our Yahtzee group: I'm not going anywhere, and I'll play as time permits. I'm going to stop dedicating time to prize climbs and the world of dice. They're fun, but I've got a lot on my to-do list in 2020, and cutting out 10 minutes of Yahtzee per day won't do that much to help my cause. Nonetheless, I'll scale back my time in a lot of areas in order to accomplish things that I need to accomplish. But yes, I'll be around on a daily basis, collecting free rolls. And maybe putting my 2200+ free rolls to use for a future Family Feast, should we need the extra push to secure a position. Nice job to all who put extra effort into securing second place after we briefly slipped to third.

And in cutting back, I won't be initiating head-to-head challenges with other players for a while. That's not a big time suck, but again, I'm trying to cut back on how I spend my time overall. This is bad news mostly for Greg, as I'm his good luck charm. He beats me far too often, and it's because I bring him good luck. I've been drawing out our current game only because I know the inevitable outcome.

*prize package is not fabulous

Super Bowel contest

Here are the Super Bowel point total predictions. As usual, closest without going over wins. If all guesses exceed the total points scored by both teams, the lowest guess will win. If there’s a tie, a tiebreaker will be held.

Chrisblackburn 32

Lauriem324 41

Alyssajandm 42

Quicksparrow14 42

Spartan75 42

Pinksushi66 43

Gregrulz 45

Totallyquacky 49

Sheila618 50

Penguinrnbwunicorn 55

71fraz 56

Xray1989 59

Azjim1 62

Scracer 65

Dicedominatorokc 66

Jack664 77

Cheerfulelk1177 77

New year, new contest

Every year the Minnesota lottery has a New Year’s Day raffle. They sell 700,000 tickets. There are several prizes, including two $1 million prizes.

As usual, I have a ticket for the 2020 raffle. What does this have to do with our contest?

Your goal is to guess the total of the 12 digits from the $1 million winning ticket numbers in the 2020 contest. The winner receives a prize package containing at least three items on nominal value.

An example: The winning numbers for the 2019 raffle were 091593 and 442917. Add up the 12 digits for those winning tickets and you get a total of 54. https://www.mnlottery.com/games/raffle/raffle-2019

Fun facts: The lowest total you could have is 2, and that could happen several ways. If the winning tickets are 000001 and 000100, the total is 2.

The highest total you could have is 101, and that could happen multiple ways, as well. If the winning tickets are 699999 and 699998, you get 101. It also happens if the winning tickets are 699999 and 698999.

To enter: Send your guess via private message to MikeVegas by Tuesday evening. At some point Tuesday night the contest will officially close. So don’t delay, enter today.

As usual, game show rules apply. The closest to the actual total, without going over, wins the prize package. If all guesses exceed the winning total, the guess closest to the total will be the winner. A tie-breaker will be held if necessary.

AND THE ENTRIES ARE:

Spartan75 43
DiceDominatorOKC 44
Azjim1 46
Alyssajandm 49
QuickSparrow14 56
GregRulz 58
Pinksushi66 63
Sheila618 63
Xray1989 64
71fraz 71
Jack664 73
Scracer 78

Thanks for the effort

Our team won its first Family Feast, and I was amazed by that. Plenty of people have come and gone since then. Life goes on, with or without Yahtzee.

A team member came to me with a crazy idea a couple of months after the Feasts were introduced: Delay our start and get into a less competitive pool of teams. It doesn't guarantee a win, but it avoids having to compete with super teams. As we've learned, some teams will earn more than 100,000 points in a Feast.

I liked the idea, floated it in the group chat, and others liked it to. We were about to start a Feast, and I thought it was too early to expect 50 people to be on the same page, but we tried to get everyone on that same page at the suggestion of several team members, and we delayed our start long enough to give us a less insane pool of competitors. It was very encouraging.

Moving forward, I determined we needed a more organized campaign, so I recruited team "captains" to send reminders to players prior to the start of each new Feast. In addition to private message reminders, we repeat our messaging in the general chat room. It does not take hours of our time to do this, but I have spent time organizing teams twice and communicating with the captains at the start of each Feast. We all spend time trying to make sure everybody is paying attention and on the same page.

I have never made winning the Feast a team priority. I don't pay close attention to the contributions of our members. I don't set participation benchmarks that team members must reach. It's just not that important to win a limited edition dice set or team emblem.

The current Feast started about four days after the previous Feast ended. A Facebook group I recently joined noted that the Feasts were starting about 7-8 days after the completion of the previous Feast. Somehow the current Feast had to start four days after the previous Feast, and without a 24-hour notice. I think we had about two hours notice.... too short to expect the captains to send reminders to the team members. We limited the announcement to our group chat and hoped for the best, knowing everyone on our team knows our strategy.

As I said, I recruited several people to help me keep 42 other players in the loop when a Feast is about to start. We've benefited from our communication/delay effort seemingly every time, but for whatever reason, it's just too difficult for our team to accomplish our one declared goal, to wait until the following day to start playing the Feast.

I can no longer ask people to dedicate their time toward a goal we can't accomplish collectively. We've been through several Feasts using a delayed start. When I add new team members, I communicate with them and make sure they understand that we skip the first day of the Feast. They all understand that. And yet, one of our veteran players has some extraordinary circumstances that necessitates starting the Feast.

I'm not interested in pointing a finger at any one person. It has happened a handful of times now, and I have no reason to assume it's not going to continue happening.

I won't ask the captains to spend any more time reminding everyone that we have one goal, and only one, on this team. There's no 75-bag requirement during each Feast. There's no 10 bags/day requirement. There's no help points requirements. But we can't, collectively, leave the Feast alone for 18-24 hours. We just can't. And asking team captains to work toward that is something I can no longer do.

You're all welcome to do what you want to do during future Feasts. My work is done.

Yahtzee is supposed to be fun, I'm told. If being part of our group and not paying attention to the one goal our team has agreed to makes it more fun, who am I to argue?

Good luck out there!