Ultimate Fighting Game Tournament 7 was the second fighting game tournament I ever attended, and the first major. I had only joined the fighting game community a few months prior, and thus my experience led me to believe that all FGC majors were like UFGT. I have since learned that this is far from the case, and that’s too bad. One of the things that sets UFGT apart from other tournaments is that instead of exhibition “grudge matches” between various coasts, Keits prefers to hold unique casual events for everybody to take part in. Today, I’m going to talk about my personal favorite of these events, the auction tournament.

While not technically Keits’ idea–he gives credit to inkblot–he was the first to implement it full-scale at UFGT7, and boy was it successful. The concept is simple: The name of a character or set of characters is drawn from a hat by the auctioneer (Tuboware in the role he was born to play). The people in attendance then compete to buy that character. Every character is initially valued at $1 and bidding increases in $1 increments. Once the winning bidder is determined, that person pays the amount he bid to the tournament organizer, and in return he is entered into the tournament where he must use the character he bought. The process continues, drawing more characters out of the hat and auctioning them off until a complete bracket (normally 32 people) is filled.

Economists and game theorists often study auctions, as they feature participants acting in unexpected ways. Character auction tournaments are no exception. As the first Super Street Fighter IV character auction tournament proved, it is difficult to judge how much any character will be sold for. After all, a person must both desire to play that character and also have the money to continue in the auction as the price climbs higher. While the UFGT7’s auction did feature a few people artificially driving the price higher–either to prevent somebody else from gaining that character or simply to troll–this was not the motivation that resulted in the highest sale prices. In fact, it wasn’t enough to prevent many top players from obtaining their main characters. Alex Valle bought Ryu for $26, Big Marcus nabbed Bison for $16, Spriggan swiped Adon for $16, and Kineda got his mascot Akuma for $14.

The highest prices were obtained when two people with great fondness for the same character battled back and forth for the right to play that character in the tournament. This had nothing to do with how high on the tier list the character was, as much of the S and A tier went rather cheap. (Abel went for $7 while Rufus, Fei Long, and Honda–who was top tier at the time–all went for $10.) Instead, the highest prices were for beloved low-tier characters. Zangief–mid-tier in Super–went to Weapons Left for $25 after he won a bidding war with BP Amoco. Dan was bought for $17 by David A (who used few moves other than taunt in his only match). Hakan quickly went beyond UltraDavid’s price range and was sold to GBUrsine for $29.

The most notable of all the auctions to take place was the battle for Blanka. Two players went back and forth for the right to play as the consistently-low tier character. Ultimately, Blanka was won by Chapin for a massive total of $42, much to everyone’s disbelief. The only person happier than Chapin to have won the right to play Blanka was Alex Valle, but he was excited simply because the prize pool had grown that much larger. As it turned out, Chapin’s investment was fleeting. In the first round of the tournament, he took on NerdJosh’s $4 Ibuki–the cheapest character of the tournament (interpret that how you like). After a strong start for Blanka, rounds two and three were all Ibuki and Chapin was out. However, he could not have been happier to take part in the tournament. I spoke to him the next morning, and he said that it was the best $42 he ever spent. In fact, he has taken his moment of infamy in stride, signing up for Twitter with the account @42dollarblanka.

Another of the most exciting parts of the tournament was seeing various top players use characters that aren’t their mains. Some of these top players simply felt like playing someone different. Justin Wong–who can pretty much play every character in the game–opted to enter with Ken for $18. Meanwhile, Banana Ken left his main behind in order to pay $17 for Sakura (thereby giving UltraDavid the opportunity to say “Banana Sak” multiple times).

The most intriguing entrant into the auction tournament, however, was PR Balrog. While he bid feverishly for the right to play his main, he did not win the auction (and the character was later disqualified after the person that won didn’t have the money to pay). But Eduardo remained undeterred–grouchy, but undeterred. Instead of sitting the tournament out, he won the auction for C. Viper for $11. He proceeded to made it to the quarterfinals of the event, knocking out two people playing their mains (and also without doing a single link with Viper).

But enough about the auction part, let’s talk more about the actual matches. Unlike the normal tournament, the auction tournament was single-game, single-elimination, with 1st place taking the majority of the pot and the runner-up receiving the rest. The bracket was not seeded either, since your guess is as good as mine how well OMG Itz Andre can play Seth (answer: not very well). Instead, the bracket is constructed by matching up the 1st character auctioned off against the 17th character auctioned off, then the 2nd character vs. the 18th character, and so on down the bracket until the last first round match between the 16th and 32nd characters. As it happened, two of the favorites to win, Alex Valle and Big Marcus, faced off in the very first round. It was a very high-level fight for such a silly event, with Valle coming out on top.

The one-game, single-elim format was chosen in order to keep things exciting, and give just about everybody a chance to beat everyone. The biggest upset of the event came in the second round, as Justin Wong took on local Chicago player ReyArt and his $8 El Fuerte. Whether it was Justin’s unfamiliarity with Ken or unfamiliarity with the matchup, ReyArt was able to execute his turtling game-play to perfection. Holding a slim life lead as the seconds ticked off the clock, ReyArt received instruction from everybody in attendance to run away. He did just that, and a whiffed Ken uppercut with four seconds left allowed ReyArt to seal the deal with a Quesadilla Bomb. Thanks to the auction format, ReyArt was able to have his one shining moment.

In the end though, despite the zaniness of $42 Rainbow Rolls and Puerto Rican Vipers, it was the top players using their mains that were there at the end. The final four featured Spriggan’s Adon, Weapons Left’s Zangief, King Ranmasama‘s $10 Rufus, and–of course–Alex Valle. In the final match, the old man’s experience proved too much for Michigan’s best Gief, and Valle walked away with the lion’s share of the $521 pot.

I sadly was not able to witness the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 auction tournament first hand (needed to spend some time with the non-fighting game-playing girlfriend), but that one was even crazier, with sets of three characters with predetermined assists being sold off. Woe to the man who received Tron with an assist that’s not Gustaff Fire. But still, nothing will top the complete fun and good times of the Super Street Fighter IV auction tournament. From Tuboware’s disbelief as the price of Blanka went ever higher, to Kineda trying to drive the price of other characters higher even though he’d already bought Akuma, to Ranmasama being quite inebriated and still making top four, it was my favorite part of the weekend. We need more fun, casual events like this at fighting game community tournaments. Good thing that UFGT will always have them.



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