Recap: PLAAY Dot CON 2025
“Hey hey, the gang’s all here (mostly)!” Friday morning group photo to kick off PLAAY Dot CON 2025…
Well, another convention is in the books and I know it sounds cliche but I really DO feel like this one was "the best-ever!" I could easily fill up an hours worth of reading (or more!) with a detailed recap of the event. But it would probably take me a week to compose it! So, here's a "stream of consciousness" recollection of a blur of a week, apologies in advance to anyone/anything I've forgotten to mention...(although, I guess I can always add it later!)...
Even though the "official" convention was two days, Friday and Saturday, the festivities once again stretched across almost the entire week leading up to it. I picked up Steve Tower at the airport Tuesday (!) morning at 9am and BAM, and PLAAY-Dot-CON week was off and running. Steve and I spent most of the day fishing. That is to say, we played fishing BOARD games, four of them. Steve brought his copy of "Deep Regrets," which he has demoed on his YouTube channel, and we also played "Lure," "Wild Ahi" and, of course, PLAAY's own "Reel Time Pro Fishin' Game." Steve beat me at my game, I beat him at his and also at "Lure." We called it a draw for "Wild Ahi," which turns out is more of a souvenir for people who visit Hawaii than a balanced card game. But it was a memorably fun day, which really set the tone for the week that lay ahead.
Wednesday, the action landed at our local game store/coffee shop, "Enchanted Grounds," for our "Early Bird" get-together. We had about 30 gamers show up to hang out, drink coffee and play board games. I saw Flamme Rouge being played, and a number of other games as well. Mostly, people just visited and got (re)acquainted. We wrapped up around 4:30, with a number of folks headed to Coors Field for the Rockies game against the Dodgers and the rest of us landing at Torchy's Tacos for food and conversation.
With so many "early birds" in town, we made Thursday an unofficial "third day" of convention activities. We handed out lanyards and swag bags in an "early bird registration" block from 10a to noon, and about three-quarters of the convention's attendees took advantage of it (!).
Sample of the "Alt-Sports Games Supercard” for this year’s con.
As part of the theme for this year's convention, we unofficially, light-heartedly welcomed ESPN8 "The Ocho" as sort of a broadcast partner for our event! Everyone's swag bag included an "Ocho Alt-Sports Festival" package that featured five "unusual" sports games: Tackle Bee, Speed Ball, Competitive Lawn Mowing, Cornhole and EAGLE Competition ("Everyone's A Gladiator" Events). Every convention attendee was assigned to one of eight teams, rated for all five events, and was given their own ESPN8 "super card" included with their lanyard. I set it up so that everyone was good at some event(s), average in others. Everyone also got a set of team-colored dice in their swag bag to use with these games. The Ocho element served as a great ice-breaker during the lead-up time to the con, and we had a convention-wide competition as part of the convention's final segment (more on that later).
• For those who attended, here's the convention supercard collection for all 80+ attendees. You can use these cards with your copy of the Ocho Games package and have your OWN Alt-Sports festival!
We also expanded the pre-con game-playing space at the hotel to accommodate the crowd and as a result had quite a buzz of game activity for the entire day. For example, I played a cool dice game with Blake Wilson and the Heller Brothers (Steve and Dave), and there was a diverse collection of other games on other tables, sports and non-sports.
Brad Fowler (left) congratulates Manuel Martinez on his “Pre-Con Chaos” demolition derby win!
At noon, we held our first organized event of the weekend, "Pre-Con Chaos" with Demo Derby Smash-Down, hosted by DDSD vets Pete Adams and Rob "Catch On Fire" Gallamore. We'd played an impromptu demo derby event a couple of years ago at our "early bird" gathering and now it's become a pre-con tradition. This year was our biggest derby yet, with 24 people taking part! Rather than have all 24 cars in the same derby, we decided to run two heats simultaneously, with the final TWO remaining cars in each field advancing to a "Final Four Smash-Down" with fresh cars. Manuel Martinez, Brad Fowler, Trevor Ferril and Mark Russell were our "final four," with Manuel winning the event by knocking out Brad with a "Deep Six" move.
At 5pm the action moved to Redstone Park for our annual pre-con picnic. Great weather this year (last year it rained!) and a largest-ever gathering, over 80 people. We brought in Chick-fil-A this year instead of grilling burgers, dogs or brats--good call! It was great to not have to mess around with charcoal and lighter fluid. Plus, it's pretty much impossible to grill that much food in any kind of a short time frame. Ethan Musulin brought along a wiffle ball set-up and there were a couple of cornhole games--spontaneous sports activity happened! I recruited Bruce Berkowicz to join me in taking on Dan Garlick and his son Colin at cornhole, and it was epic: we went into "overtime" (you have to win by two), and I wound up putting one through the hole on the last round to power us to a 28-26 win.
Many thanks to Glenn Guzzo’s wife Donna for snapping these photos of this year’s picnic!
Back to the hotel after the picnic for more games. MANY different games were played, PLAAY and non-PLAAY, sports and non-sports. Paul Fay and I had arranged to play a game of Paul's 1974 Boston Minutemen (Continental League) History Maker Baseball project, with me managing the Hartford Emeralds. Honeycutt Coe pitched brilliantly, and Jim Cota slammed a three-run homer as the Emeralds won 7-1. Fun stuff!
Friday, the convention began in earnest! While we wrapped up registration for those who hadn't made it in early, there was a HUGE selection of assorted games and cards available on the flea market tables, which were filled to capacity. See illustration below, that's Ethan Musulin in the "Vanna White" role. Many thanks to Kevin Geddes and the many others who brought items for the flea market.
Ethan Musulin welcomes you to the flea market tables (only partially visible!)…
At 10am we took our group photo--usually, we forget to do this until the END of the convention, which results in many people not being included. By doing it at the START of the con, the idea was to get everyone in the photo. Alas, I short-circuited that plan by having the photo taken a few minutes early--I figured it would give us a few extra minutes for the fishing tournament, not thinking about how a handful of folks were still sipping coffee in the lobby area waiting for 10am! DOH! Thus, Mark Russell, Clay Dreslough and maybe one or two others aren't in the photo. My bad. Many thanks to Kent Gray, who took the photo with a panoramic gizmo on his digital camera. Good thing he had this, as it would have been impossible to fit everyone in the frame with a standard cell phone camera!
Brad Fowler puts the finishing touches on his championship fishin’ day, there’s all 59 pounds of his catch on display…
At 10am we kicked off the convention with out "Reel Time Pro Fishin' Tournament." We had fourteen tables filled, 56 contestants in all. We used Echo Lake as our venue, a special local lake I created just for the convention. Each table winner advanced to our finals, which was a single-event "fish-off," which was held at a different (tougher) local lake, "Lake Blue Sky," the biggest catch among the sixteen finalists would win the tournament. That honor went to Brad Fowler, who hauled in 59 pounds before his day ended, edging out Kevin Sieg who had landed 58 pounds. Biggest catch of the day was in the first round, 64 pounds (!) by Dave Heller. Honorable mention to Mike Gingold with 63 first-round pounds. (NOTE the preliminary lake was easier than the championship lake, hence the higher catch totals.)
After lunch, we held our twelfth annual History Maker Baseball "Time Machine Tournament." This year we got full-play History Maker Baseball on the game tables for BOTH conferences of our tournament, "Past" and "Future." The "Past Conference" used historical teams, the "Future Conference" used teams from our "20xx LEAP" card set, which we offered during last year's Holiday Sale (and which we are making available again for the rest of the summer). We had 36 teams from the "past" and 16 from the "future." Each team played two games of full-play HMB, and then (so that we could complete the tournament in a single three-hour segment) we switched to HMB "Express" for the playoffs. Erik Holdaway is our "past" champion with the 1995 Cleveland Indians, and Mike Gingold won the "future" championship with the 20xx New York Yankees. (I watched Erik's game against Brian Preece and the '71 Athletics--an extra-inning affair that was won with Sandy Alomar's run-scoring base hit in the bottom on the fifteenth!) We'll hold a championship game past vs. future in an upcoming YouTube stream to determine this year's "Champion of All-Time." Stay tuned!
Erik Holdaway gives the victory sign after winning the “Past Conference” title with the ‘95 Cleveland Indians in this year’s History Maker Baseball Time Machine Tournament…
After the dinner break, we welcomed our keynote speaker to the podium, Dave Gardner from the Digital 2 Dice Podcast. Dave is one of the major content creators and influencers in the sports game hobby, and it was great to have him be able to tell his story at our convention.
Dave Gardner shares his board game journey with the PLAAY Dot Con crowd…
Following Dave's presentation, we held our annual "Guest Showcase," which allowed folks like Clay Dreslough, ST Patrick, Brian Van Der Wal and Grant Fines to show their sports games to our crowd. We also set up a table for Kurt Bergland to hold a mini-tournament with his amazing "50 Years of Baseball Greatness" card set (Bruce Berkowitz’s Houston Astros defeated Mike Canestrari’s New York Yankees in the championship game). We had so many guests wanting to showcase their games, I opted to give my table to a guest and play a game of Second Season football with my old friend Michael Owens during the Friday night block. We broke out the new 1985 USFL set, Michael took the Memphis Showboats, I took the Oakland Invaders. It was back-and-forth through the first half, but with Bobby Hebert connecting with the likes of Anthony Carter, Gordon Banks and Derek Holloway, the Invaders pulled away in the second half for a 42-17 victory. That's how Day One wrapped up.
First round action in the 2025 PLAAY Gamer Open Golf Tournament…
Saturday began with the annual PLAAY Gamer Open Golf Tournament, a convention favorite. We had all sixteen tables filled with golfers, playing our version of the local Castle Pines pro course. I made a special tournament version of the course, amping up the difficulty on a half dozen holes. You can download the Conifer Chateau 2025 Tournament Course here. The added difficulty didn't seem to deter the field from putting on a sizzling display of tournament golf! Kent Gray and Chris Day each scored holes-in-one, and there were numerous eagles.
At left, Steve Heller, John Wise, Bruce Berkowicz and Pete Adams take a break during this year’s convention golf tournament. Chris Day (center) and Kent Gray (right) celebrate their holes-in-one! We had our first hole-in-one EVER during last year’s tournament, and had TWO this year!
At the end of the first round, we had about a third of the field within four strokes of the lead! That produced probably the most memorable finish in our tournament's history. Harvey Couch had shot a seven-under par 65 to take the first round lead. But a handful of golfers got hot in the second round and Harvey headed into the back nine of the second round trailing the field by a couple strokes. However, he birdied the last six holes, including an epic moderate putt for birdie on the (DAUNTING) 18th hole that forced a sudden-death playoff with John Wise. Harvey then birdied again to win the tournament as the gallery cheered. (As an aside, John had been in a similar situation two years ago, with Jeff Tomlinson forcing a sudden death playoff and eventually winning the event! Buzzard luck!)
Here’s the final standings for this year’s PLAAY Gamer Open Golf Tournament…
During the lunch break, we did an informal panel discussion on social media and the sports game hobby, featuring several of the hobby's notable content creators: Dave Gardner, Steve Tower, Kurt Bergland and James Cast. I believe both Dave and Kurt have archived video of this presentation posted on their YouTube channels, it was a thought-provoking and lively discussion.
Colin Garlick and Mike Ignatoski study the situation as the XHL mini-season action unfolds with Hockey Blast Express…
After lunch, it was time for "hockey like none other" with our first-ever XHL mini-season and playoffs. We had 36 PLAAY gamers participate, implementing the full complement of XHL rules innovations: pre-game shoot-out, two-point goals, two-point power play options, and so on. We had tables of four teams, each team played a game with each of the other three teams at the table. We awarded three points for a win in regulation, two points for a shoot-out win, one point for a shoot-out loss and zero points for a loss in regulation. Because we had nine table champions, we decided that the two table champions with he least points would have to have a play-in game. Mike Fitzgerald's Southern California squad defeated Brian Reising's Kansas City team 4-1 to win our XHL mini-season championship. Super fun! It was especially cool because Mike was wearing his Nick Concannon XHL "SOCal" jersey as he won the championship! Table-by-table results/standings are posted below.
As an aside, I was really, REALLY pleased with how the XHL rules set worked for this event! There was so much drama, and many strategic wrinkles. Highly recommended!
One of my favorite pix: Travis Jansen wearing his Nick Concannon XHL hockey jersey!
After the XHL championship game, we handed out the raffle prizes--nearly 20 of them!--and dismissed for the dinner break.
Fury Finale Action! (left), Bob Hansen, Joe Bryan, Ethan Musulin and Brian Hoxsey battle it out in Fury Football. (center) Judah Williams, Al Wilson, Paul Salzgeber and Micah Wimmer made up a table group for Fury Hardball, as did (right) Mike Gingold, Dave Jackson, Jerry Auteri and Joseph Dowell.
After dinner, we closed out the 2025 convention with a "Fury Finale!" We offered draft-your-own team options for both Fury Hardball and Fury Football, as well as an open-ended ESPN8 "The Ocho" Alt-Sports Festival. The hardball option had you draft a nine-player team with a "snake draft" mechanic (1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1), while the football option offered you a standard set of 24 players and 8 strategy cards, each with a cost between 0 and 15, with each team operating under a 40 point "salary cap." The "Ocho" option let you play any/all of the five alt-sports with whomever you wanted, with two points for a win and one point for a loss. (Thus rewarding participation whatever the outcome). Congratulations to Team Crystal which won the Ocho points championship: Tim Lucas, Jerry Auteri, Kevin Sieg, Clay Dreslough, Colin Garlick, James Hart, Brian Preece, Jay Williams, Mike Ignatowski, Jesse Cheng.
That's the recap. I’ve created a downloadable PDF of the final results from each of our official tournaments: fishing, baseball (Past and Future conferences), golf, hockey, alt-sports. This year, I’m listing just winners (in bold) rather than winners and scores, except for the golf tournament, for which everyone’s score is listed for both rounds. I have the scoresheets from the other events, it will/would just take me some time to fill everything out. The only exception is the fishing tournament, where somehow I didn’t record the championship round results for anyone except the winner (Brad Fowler) and the runner-up (Kevin Sieg).
Whew. Wow. It all went by SO fast, as it always does! Many thanks to all who made this edition of PLAAY-dot-CON truly "the best ever!" We love you guys!