Thanks guys.
I came in fairly unprepared as I'm busy with work these days and have lots of things going on in my personal life. However, after 2 days of playing DK in the high score seeding portion, I was in reasonable shape. I still felt like the underdog. Heck, I barely qualified for the top 8 bracket. I shared a room with Robbie and kept telling him I was going to leave for NY as soon as I got eliminated lol. That plan didn't work.
For the bracket, I faced Wes, Dean, then Robbie.
My plan with Wes was to run boards and let him make the first move. It seemed he was point pressing from L5. He gradually lost lives and although I was behind him on pace I had a full rack of lives and knew I could catch up. Ironically as soon as I started grabbing the bottom hammer, his game ended. We finished ~6xxK.
I think my matchup with Dean was the luckiest. I knew he could outpace me, so I was point pressing from L5. I died twice early (neither related to point pressing-- one careless mistake and one wall jump over a potential xx_x followed by a wild barrel). So Dean was ahead of me on lives and pace. Then a miracle happened and Dean had back to back deaths on conveyer screwings. Dean ended at 3xxK. Unbelievable.
I wasn't sure how to play Robbie. I think ordinarily we'd be pretty evenly matched, but I was totally out of shape so he definitely had the edge. I just played it by ear. Robbie in his first 2 matchups didn't lose a single life (I think both matches were played to about 6xxK). 1.2M point without losing a single life. Talk about intimidation. I had a really great non-point pressing start against Robbie thanks to some cooperative rivets. ~114K. So I could afford to take it easy most of the game and point pressed just enough to stay ahead of Robbie's pace. I died first. That's never a good feeling. For most of the game I was ahead on pace and he was ahead on lives. But before I knew it Robbie's game ended at 6xxK.
