SGDQ 2019 Recap

	SGDQ 2019 was a heckin' BLAST!! Thanks everyone who I had the pleasure of hanging out and seeing last week for making it an amazing time <3

	Let's start with getting this out of the way first: I think my Kirby Nightmare in Dream Land run went pretty dang well all things considered. I'm used to running on a (slightly) laggy HDTV at home, so getting used to a CRT was the hardest part for me, and I think I managed to do that pretty well by the time the run came up. With how many 4 frame mixes the run has now, I was definitely most worried about missing most if not all of them. Thankfully I think I only missed the two in world 4, so that's good at least. At least 4-4 powerless movement looks pretty cool, so that's a good compromise to not having the Wheel movement there lmao. I had a pretty unfortunate death in 5-4. I think I lost almost 20 seconds from that alone, but it was my fault for being a bit risky I guess. 7-2 also had absolutely PERFECT luck, and I still can't believe that. That was probably the highlight of the run for me! :D Other that that, I think I lost time to just sloppy movement, so I'll definitely take it! I choked sub 40 on Nightmare to missing a hit, which like never happens btw so idk how that happened when it did (like I was right on him. What?...). I hope those that watched the run enjoyed it! I'll be running some Nightmare in Dream Land 100% today, starting between 6-7pm PST, for the first time in like 2 years, so I should be getting an easy PB tonight at least. Come by if you have the chance :>

	As for the event overall, I came to realize this time around that I know so many people and it's hard to keep up with everyone, because on the very final day, I learned about a lot of people who were there that I knew that I had no idea even showed up to the event in the first place. Y'ALL NEED TO HANG OUT IN THE EVENT AREA MORE OFTEN BECAUSE I WANT TO SEE YOU AND TALK TO YOU AND HUG YOU (IF YOU'RE COMFORTABLE WITH THAT). THANK YOU <3 But yeah I found myself hanging out with the HUTE crew this time moreso than my usual group. Shoutouts to Lylat, CMM, DoctorSwellman, Jess, Glenn, LennonFree, and everyone else in that group for being super cool. Was able to also hang out with my usual Rook boys this time too. They're definitely a group I feel like I can come back to consistently and have a great time with, so thanks for having me and being cool with me <3 Also shoutouts to all the Mall of America trips we had. We got to ride the HUTE (Log Chute), Leaf bought 8 Wii games for $20, and I got to eat some good food :3

	I loved the arcade this time around! Kinda wish I got to spend a bit more time in it, but the selection of games was very :ok_hand:. Spent a loooot of time on Jubeat especially, including FCing my first song ever!! (lvl3 Anti-Hero for those curious). Hoping to eventually FC some more songs, especially at a higher level too. I fell in love with Jubeat a few GDQs ago, so I hope it's back next time around! It was also fun doing stuff like beating Point Blank with both guns in hand, or playing beat em ups with people outside the room itself. There were always lines for MaiMai though, so I wasn't able to try that again in the end. Hopefully next time!

	I also got to play a loooot of Smash with people throughout the week too. Me and Leaf were in and out of the Smash Room a lot and got to play a lot of games with people because of it, which in the end actually helped me a lot with seeding the Smash tournament lol. Shoutouts especially to Naft, Glackum, and JBroadway especially for the good games! Definitely feel like I helped a lot of other people level up by playing me, and I feel like I also got a bit better while playing there too. My Greninja and Young Link especially are both getting a lot better, and I'm definitely feeling a lot more confident going into my next local now! :>

	Once again I ran the Smash Ultimate tournament at SGDQ. I tried a few major things that were different from AGDQ 2019's tournament, and I think overall that improved the experience a lot. We had 96 entrants in the end, and I think about 1/3rd of them DQ'd all said and done, but I'll get to why that is later. In order to prevent the Smash Room from being a fire hazard, the tournament running too long, and to keep the flow of matches running smoothly, I ran pools this time around through smash.gg through Top 16. This required people to register via a link online, including making a smash.gg account if they didn't have one already (it's really easy to make thankfully). I think overall this kept things more manageable and anyone who was really interested ended up showing up on Thursday in the end.

	I also had Leaf helping me the whole time with running pools, which before Ultimate came out, I was able to run all the Smash 4 tournaments by myself no problem. I learned from last AGDQ that I can't run an Ultimate bracket all by myself, and I'm thankful for everyone who chipped in to help me last minute with that once again. Me and Leaf were able to run both waves of pools efficiently this time around, even to the point of me having time to get food after my Wave B pool ended! Definitely think pools are the way to go from here on out because of all that, and I'll be using them from here on out. Shoutouts to Deathline as well for offering to help me this time around too, even though we thankfully had everything under control in the end. Also big shoutouts to Xaltis for winning this year! It was a very close and intense Grand Finals between her and Zaheer, and the whole room was very focused on the intense matches happening before them. Their sets this GDQ put them even in set count 3-3, and I'm really looking forward to their continued rivalry at AGDQ 2020 should they both go!

	Finally, after all the positives of the tournament, here are some negatives, and how I'll address them in the future:
	- Noon is a bit too early for some people, given they're on vacation, drinking the night before, etc, and I completely understand that now. I think I'll be starting these tournaments at 2pm next year with the same format. If anyone wants to run Squad Strike or Doubles at noon before Singles starts, then hmu, because that sounds like a solid idea!
	- Since I used smash.gg this time around and not challonge (I'm more used to smashgg in terms of pools stuff), smashgg requires setting a location for your event, and because I set it to that hotel, we had a few local players try to show up and join the tournament. I'd welcome that usually, but just like everyone else there, they need to be registered for SGDQ in order to join, so we had a fair amount of DQs because of that. I thought it would be obvious that you'd need to be registered to go to an event, but next time I'll specify this tournament is for GDQ attendees only in the future so locals players don't travel for nothing. Speaking of which, whoever drove 2 hours in order to join the tournament just to get turned away at the door in the end, I'm sorry for the trouble :(
	- I ended registration the night beforehand at around 10pm, and Wave A pools started at noon the day after. The unfortunate thing about this format is since I ran 4 pools at 2 different times, if someone had to be moved last minute, I had to be very careful to not switch them with someone who couldn't make it to an earlier pool, and I think this resulted in a few DQs in the end. In the future, I'm going to end pools earlier, seed them, and have them fully seeded and make it so no one can be moved before I go to sleep the night before the tournament, so no one is switched last minute before the tournament starts. I also made a discord server for the tournament so people could keep up with when their pools a bit easier and read updates on the tournament pertaining to them like when their pools are, so I hope that helped some people at least.
	- These are the main points I wanted to address. If anyone has any more feedback in general from this year's tournament, I'm all ears and will take it to heart! Also if anyone wants to help for next time, if someone has a good enough laptop or even a straight up computer and wants to help with recording or streaming future tournaments, I would love that, because I learned at AGDQ that my laptop is not good for that any more lol

	If you made it to the end, thanks for reading through this all! I hope to see you at AGDQ 2020, and in my stream some time as well <3