We did it!

I don't remember all the details, but I was continuously surprised by the performance of our Family Feast team.

I'm impatient, I don't always seek out the information when playing an online game. I prefer to learn by playing.

When I first learned the basics of the Family Feast game, and saw the leaderboard, I didn't have any expectations. I had no idea who would play, or how often. I had no idea how many teams would chase the lead.

Once I learned the nuances of the game, we were among the early leaders. I didn't expect that to last.

With a couple of days we were in the top 3, but clearly not the top team. I had no reason to expect we could maintain that pace.

Then a fourth team charged up the leaderboard, passing us, and turning the Feast into a four-team scramble. We were in fourth. I wondered if that was the best we could hope for.

It seemed that the top team (Animal Lovers) had a modest lead it wasn't going to give up. We bounced a bit between second and fourth. And then one night, about a week ago, I watched my mindless TV show, which I never watch without doing something else, and played Yahtzee. And played and played and played. We inched into first place. Barely.

I knew it wouldn't last, but I thought it was a moral victory, and would have been happy with that, even if we never regained the lead. I knew the Animal Lovers would bounce back. They were the toughest team out there for the first half of the Feast.

After trading the lead a couple of times, something weird happened. We built a small lead, and the Animal Lovers couldn't catch us. And the lead grew bigger. And bigger. And every time they'd cut into it by 500 points, I assumed they were going to rally. But then we'd build a bigger lead. By the final weekend we were up about 8000 points. I couldn't believe it.

And the other teams? Dicelicious was the first to fall off the pace, and they really ran out of gas. A League of our Own eventually fell off, as well, but managed to stay far ahead of fourth place. Dicelicious was passed on the final weekend and finished fifth, despite being a contender in the opening days.

Instead of having to sweat the final weekend, we could have sat on our hands. So many of you helped build that cushy lead. Thank you. It was fun to be part of a winning team.

So why did we outpace the other teams? I have a theory.

Both Flamingo and I invested a ton of rolls into games, a luxury not everybody has. And we dedicated time to converting those rolls into points. Too much time, but we did. Lots of you made a meaningful contribution. Without all of you, Flamingo and I wouldn't have done enough to crack the top 3.

I can't speak for Flamingo, but I didn't spend a dime to play the game. I had more than 2,400 free rolls at the start of the feast, and earned a bunch along the way. I estimate that between my starting total and earnings during the feast I had a bank of 2600 rolls. And when it was over I had 950. I spent over 1600 rolls, one way or another, trying to fill bags and earn points. Given how infrequent I use free rolls otherwise, the feast seemed like a perfect use of that ridiculous stash of free rolls I had accumulated. It's as if I had been saving them for months just for this occasion, which, of course, I couldn't have known.

My assumption is that the major players of other teams didn't have as many free rolls as I did, and couldn't keep up their pace of play for 10 days. And perhaps there was some burnout, as well. Some folks might have quit trying when they efforts were failing to keep them in contention for the top spot. It's all speculation on my part, but I suspect the combination of reasons I listed resulted in the downfall of every team. We were in a position to outlast them all, and we did it. Congrats to you all.

I'll have more info to share in the next few days. There won't be regular blog posts here, but it's fun to be able to write a short essay for our group now and again. (It comes easy for me, if you didn't know. I'm a newspaper reporter.) And if this blog has no purpose after this week, that's OK.

One last thing for now, I have vowed I will not go nuts if they start a new feast any time soon. And I mean it. For now, I don't have the 1500+ free rolls to carry me through a 10-day tournament at the same pace. And I won't spend money to play any Yahtzee games.  Additionally, winter might be over here in Minnesota, and while I'm not outside until midnight every night, summertime is always busier for me than the winter, and I will stay busy through Halloween. Coupled with the fatigue of the inaugural feast, I'm not in a hurry to dedicate hours to another feast, as much fun as the challenges were.

That's enough for tonight. More to come in the near future.