Graney’s Stout Trivia: If 9 Were 6

The fun part about playing competitive team trivia in the Capital District is that you can win some great stuff.  And by “great stuff,” I mean your could snag anything from restaurant gift certificates to cash money.  And in some instances, you can win some big-ticket items – and when I say “big ticket items,” I’m talking about tickets to sporting events.

For example – Graney’s Stout in Albany’s warehouse district is currently offering a nine-week trivia competition, with the grand prize being four tickets to a New York Jets-Miami Dolphins game.  In Miami.  With two nights’ hotel accommodations.

And even if you join in partway through the tournament, you still have a chance to claim the tickets.  See, every team gets one “raffle ticket” just for showing up and ordering food.  But the winning team each week – in addition to winning an 8-cut pizza for next week – gets a larger amount of raffle tickets, based on the number of teams that show up.  So, for example, if there were sixteen teams in the bar, and some trivia team came in first place, they would receive 16 raffle tickets.  The second-highest scoring team that week would receive half that number, and the third receiving half of THAT number.  So although any person can win the tickets on a blind draw, winning each week increases your chances and your odds.

Of course, it also helps if you make sure your scores each week are accurate.

Graney’s Stout’s trivia game is presented by Catch The Mania, a local trivia operation that hosts at several different bars and taverns in the area.  I’ve played their trivia games over at the Ruck, and I still have a Ruck-branded glass beer growler from winning there.  It’s a different game than the other two major companies in the area, Trivia Nights Live and Memorama, in that there are 70 questions each night – ten questions in seven rounds.  You get a point for every correct answer, no matter how easy or difficult the question might appear.

Last week, I played for the second week of the tournament, and I pretty much held my own from round to round.  A whole category of Greek mythology?  I got this cold.  A category on “name the album cover?”  Went ten for ten.

Now if you’ve ever seen me play bar trivia, you’ll notice that as the game progresses, I write down every answer on a small table napkin.  I also add up my scores and how far behind I am to the leading team.  I’m not doing this to be anal-retentive – I’m doing this to make sure that my score and the host’s scoring match up.  Everyone makes mistakes.  I’ve mis-calculated my totals, so it’s a good idea to have some sort of “check and balance” between contestant and host.

But during last week’s game, I noticed a scoring discrepancy.  At one point during the game, I thought I had scored seven points in a round, but was only credited with six points.  I figured I had been docked because I answered the question as “eerily,” when the answer was “eerie.”  Hey, it was a category on “name the adjective,” and I used an adverb instead of an adjective.  My bad.  I can take that.

But later on in the game, I had eight points, but was credited with seven on the scoreboard.  Hmm… Now a point here and there might not seem like much of a variation, but if the difference between first place and second place is a handful of raffle tickets for the Jets-Dolphins game, then heck yeah I’m going to make sure the scores match up.

Then came a category of “fictional characters.”  These were right in my wheelhouse.  Jay Gatsby.  Willy Loman.  This one and that one.  I finished off with nine out of ten.  And as the host read off each answer, I checked the figures against what I had written down on my napkin.  Yep.  Nine out of ten.

“So the scores, the Street Academy scored six points that round…”

What??

I quickly went up there with my handwritten napkin.  “Um, ‘scuse me … how did I finish with six points when I’ve got nine here?”

The host quickly motioned to his scorekeeper, who fished through the dozens of answer slips to find my sixth-round slip.  “You got this one wrong and that one wrong,” she said to me.

“How did I get that wrong, when I wrote ‘Jay Gatsby’ on the slip, and the answer was Jay Gatsby?”

“Okay,” the host said, “We’ll fix it.”

And fix it they did.  Had I not argued for the correct score, I could have finished in second place – and received only 8 tickets instead of the 15 I eventually received that night.  That, and the free pizza as the night’s overall winner.

Yesterday, I went back to Graney’s Stout for another round of trivia, and hopefully another chance to pick up some raffle tickets for the football game.

And again, the scoring was a bit suspect.  The category was “World Leaders,” and some of them were kinda tough – for example, does anybody know who the first woman to be elected President of Ireland is?  Not me…

However, I did get six out of ten correct, a decent score.

“And the Street Academy, with five points…”

Oh geez, here we go AGAIN!

I went up to the scorer’s table.  “Can you please double-check those scores, I know I have six.”

The scorer showed me my handwritten slip.  “You had five correct.”

I looked over the answers she said that I had missed.  One of them involved the name of the 20th century ruler of Japan, who sat on the throne for 60 years.

“This is correct.  Hirohito.  You marked it wrong.”

The scorer looked at the slip.  “That’s not right.”

“Yes it is.”

Just then, representatives from three other teams showed up at the table.

“Hey, I wrote down Hirohito for the answer, as well,” said one of the players.

“So did I,” said another.

And we were right.  GRRR

Scores were re-adjusted to reflect the correction.

In the end, however, the results were the same.  Street Academy took a monster lead on the final round of questions – fictional girlfriends was the category, and yes I was able to write down Lana Lang, Daisy Duck, Rebecca Howe, and others to go perfect in the round – and thus, I won another free pizza and eight first-place tickets.

After the game was over, I spoke with Damon, the person who oversees the Catch the Mania games around the area.

“Hey man,” he said to me, “you’re a hell of a team.  But I think we’re going to change the rules here.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Well, I think that we’re not going to let you win the prize more than twice a month.”

Huh?

“Yeah, it’s not good for business if you keep winning that prize each week.”

Oh, we’re not going down that route again, are we?

“Yeah, I think other teams would appreciate the free pizza each week, and you keep winning it.”

“You mean this is about the pizza?” I asked, quickly shoving my heart back into my chest cavity.

“Oh hell yeah,” Damon said.  “You have every right to win those chances for the football tickets.  I just think that other people should get the pizza for winning for the night.”

“I got no problem with that,” I smiled, shaking Damon’s hand.  And in fact, after I spoke with Damon, I handed my coupon for next week’s pizza to the team that finished the night dead last.

Look, pizza is pizza.  I could give away a pizza any time I please.  But when it comes to those football tickets, I want to earn my chances at that.  And if I get the answers wrong tonight, and I walk out of Graney’s Stout with only one raffle ticket, well that’s the way it goes.

Let’s just hope that when I do score nine out of ten, that I get credited with nine out of ten.  Not eight.  Not six.  Not three and a half.

‘Kay?