Tennis Tournaments

Tennis Tournaments (often referred to just as tournaments) are are special tennis events held by the community, often the staff, where players "compete" against one another by playing matches to determine a winner. Tournaments can go as long as a single season to over a year, depending on their scale. Anywhere from eight to forty-eight plus players will duke it out to see who is, subjectively, "the best"; but as competitive as these may be, it is important to never forget the Golden Rule: No one wins at tennis, ever!

The golden rule of tennis.

Forum sites will often have accolades for participating in tournament matches and a rarely-given one for if a tournament is won; on the YouChew forums it was usually a micro-sized render of a standard real-life tennis trophy, having been used in its most familiar form from July 2010 until September 2018. Since 2019, when dani_phantump designed a new version of the award for YTPMania, the "Golden Cube of Victor" has gone to the tournament winner, with this being expanded into including "The Silver Cube of Second Best" for tournament finalists and "The Bronze Cube of Admirability" for tournament semifinalists, which were added to YellowTealPurple on June 17, 2025. Expanding on a YouChew-era award of a "silver wreath" for completing 10 tournament matches, various "precious metal"-themed tennis racquet badges also go to players who have won (or later on, participated in) enough individual tournament matches, now accounting for 1, 10, 25, and 40 tournament matches played. Even if players end up winning more than a single tournament, every winner only ever receives one maximum.

History

The official tennis 'canon' can be viewed in the List of Tennis Tournaments.

The Beginning

A sense of competition pervaded the aura of video tennis from the time it was first concieved. Conrad Slater made note to stiplify in the first ever wanted thread for a casual match, eventually answered by Miss10, that the match was to have "no winner". Being that he was inspired to adapt Photoshop Tennis to the medium of video, he could have observed this competitive element in the existing Photoshop Tennis communities of the time. Nonetheless, it was considered a standard in tennis' very early days that most tennis matches usually had a poll where viewers could vote on which of the two players won. Due to tennis still being seen as nothing more than a curiosity, as well as the sense of "winning" never really amounting to anything, this ultimately became phased out of general tennis conduct very quickly.

At a certain point during Conrad Slater's reign over the YouChew forums however, when the site had its deepest investment in chronicling the progression and growth of YouTube Poop as a whole, Conrad actually stipulated a requirement that those who wanted to be "featured" as a creator on the site had to participate in at least one tennis match as a requisite. This system became abolished fairly quickly, as this ended up happening towards the end of his era of prominence. RabbitSnore in particular was known to champion much more of a laid-back approach to community operations, especially regarding tennis. Amusingly, while Conrad was immediately against the idea of tennis ever being organized as tournaments, Rabbit was by contrast welcoming of them, seeing their potential for bringing the community together in a spirit of fun.

The first tennis tournament was hosted by Gallers in late 2007, based on a billiards league they played in at the time. RabbitSnore played a big hand in allowing this event to even take place - he had at that point already become a figure Conrad trusted, and was able to convince him to let it take place, along with assuring his own participation. There were only four players, with the other three being SushieBoy, Misslaineous10, and PapaGonzales, who ended up being the (unwilling) winner of this event. While there were yet to be any such trophies for winning tennis tournaments yet, subsequent award implementations on future versions of the forums always featured a trophy for this achievement, and it was always given to PapaGonzales as his only site award. Gallers would be responsible for starting what are now credited as the first four "official" tournaments to occur on these forums, though his participation and commitment would lessen with each one.

YouChew era

The proper YouChew era of tennis tournaments is considered to have begun with the Tennis Cup. It was the first tournament to occur during the Rabbit/TINS era, and the first tournament where the tennis staff had become established as a central element to the tennis community. All members that would be on the staff during the event participated, and one(NS2) even made it to the final match.

Up until about the end of the Tennis League 3, an ill-fated event which became considered failed after only a month, competitive tennis was seen to have been at its most freewheeling, with players clearly participating out of a sense of mutual enjoyment. As the initial events mostly took place as a way to bring people together and play matches entirely, there was no clear "meta" for victory in competitive matches up to this point; players clearly engaged matches in the ways that they felt most comfortable, and whether or not they won was purely by fortunate happenstance. A clear moment when this began to change can be identified with the beginning with the Doubles Cup 1, the first tournament in which the tennis staff assumed control and influence over their taking place. The match of Terrorist + Nuthead vs. GameBop + MycroProcessor(2008) ended up failing after only 4 rounds, with no collaborative rounds being made, due to Terrorist finding tennis becoming "more competitive and serious than it is fun" and subsequently deciding to retire from it:

"I don't like the way Tennis is now, Effects everywhere, Videos flying around, and just [loud distorted audio] with it."

"Fun: Making the Previous round funnier, Better, and more enjoyable.

Competitive: Making the round have loads of Ear rape, Lots of effects, Making the round more Non-enjoyable." -Terrorist, December 29, 2008

Tennis staff member Crash2991 was in agreement:

"Well, it has sorta become competitive. Several players have made it become competitive and made several others think that it was supposed to be the uptight thing, rather than just playing around with each other's videos and showing them to each other."

From a modern perspective, while the original nature and spirit of tennis was well embodied and understood in this period, the frontier of what could be achieved in terms of finding one's unique editing style still had an immense amount of unexplored territory, and these sentiments seemed to surface as a reaction against styles that were unfamiliar and potentially abrasive to those unaccustomed to them. This is supported by posts made by Moogle in this conversation, where they were more embracing of the different ways that people were finding their own fun in the ways they played tennis:

"I don't think there's any clash between "fun" and "competitive" tennis in the league. [GameBop] and Mycro are certainly enjoying remixing videos in their preferred styles. The only clash to speak of is the one between styles, and there's no need to remind that, despite each style having its own things to be adored, that the kind of style GameBop has is a lot more difficult to respond to than yours, and it gives the other team a big advantage in the match.

It's sad that you and Nuthead aren't willing to continue what to me was the most interesting match in the tourney, but don't blame it all on those doing the complicated editing."

Whatever the case, a schism began to develop for the first time here, and the community at large began to ascribe many of their own individual values as to what made a good tennis round, especially with regards to this developing competitive context. The final match of the Doubles Cup 1 became AjaxCubed + Aesaun vs. MycroProcessor + GameBop(2009), a lineup composed entirely of high intensity, high effect players, three of whom were still relatively new to the community as a whole. It can be argued that the reason that AjaxCubed and Aesaun won this tournament was entirely due to the execution of a 3D visual effect in Final Cut Pro 7 by the former player almost never before seen by the community at the time, gaining them their votes purely from the impression. In the early posts of the Tennis Theory thread on YellowTealPurple, this was a theory posited by dani_phantump as she began to attempt to chronicle the journey of tennis to the present day.

At some point during this early period, an image macro containing the phrase in impact font text "NO ONE WINS AT TENNIS EVER" began to get posted and circulated around the tennis section. This has since become embraced as the Golden Rule of tennis, a foundational principle upon which to remember to allow players to remember that fun, above victory, is what matters most in tennis. dani_phantump has subsequently referred to the very concept of tennis tournaments as the "Great Riddle" of tennis, outlining the question "How do you win in a game where no one wins?", with the answer intended to be that there isn't - or shouldn't be - any strictly defined way to do so.

Ultimately though, the readiness of the community at the time to fully and truly embrace this philosophy was either slow, scattershot or questionable at best potentially due to the social competitive nature of the rest of YouChew itself. 2009 in particular is seen as an era where the constituency for "simple, classic" tennis competed directly with the "complex, effect-based" constituency for attention across multiple tournaments that took place that year, though it was almost always done out of a positive, good-natured spirit. The Windows Movie Master, Tennis Season and Grey Tennis Tournament all saw matches played separately in both camps of style preference as well as matches with a player each representing either side becoming directly matched with each other, leading to exchanges of near diametric opposite approaches such as piodx vs. RAKninja(2009), GameBop vs. Emperor Ing(2009), and vvaluigi vs. MycroProcessor(2009). Around this same time, complex and heavy editing began to very definitively take over the very nature of tennis itself, as players such as CorruptionSound, rapskallionxyz, Skrimpish, DanielRadcliffe777 and Sploltoen either entered into the community already steeped in this language of editing out the gate or began to truly become prominent as they took on many elements of this language of editing that became part of their signature. During this era, older players such as TangerineImpz continued to express grievances with "what tennis has become" in regards to their own disenchantment. From late 2009 onward, a lot of these earlier generations of players would leave the game behind entirely.

The turn of the 2010's now saw competitive "metas" for tennis fully setting in with regards to how the continued influx of players was now interpreting it; as a result of many older players withdrawing from the scene marking a decline in their school of thought around tennis, a sizeable portion of the community was coming to believe that a prowess with cutting edge and well-presented visual/audio effects and dense, intricate editing was the way that "good" tennis was played, at times regardless of how the previous round was used at all. The Grey Tennis Tournament, 3-Way Tennis Tournament and the Doubles Cup 2 all saw their final matches make up players who advanced that far at least somewhat embodying this.

The final match of the Grey Tennis Tournament(piodx vs. GameBop(2010)) and the final match of the Doubles Cup 2(dani_phantump + robochao1 vs. ChrisGendo + AshcrementVII(2012)) were instances where an important distinction around this approach prevailed in regards to both match's winners; it was not how well the previous round was edited by the winning player, but how the previous round was "used" in and of itself, in terms of the ideas created/responded to and the overall creativity of the responses themselves. Even through the gradually increasing misconceptions magnified through a competitive lens, enough players still existed in this era with a passion and a knowledge for tennis to know how to engage with it like they believed tennis should be and how they remembered it being played in years previous. As the tennis community entered into the 2010s, it was these older players who led the community and hosted subsequent tournaments, with ChrisGendo, AshcrementVII, and trepmaws being particularly prominent as figures of influence between 2010 and 2013. Under this collective of like minded players and staff members, a balance attempted to be struck with all styles being united in an exploration towards playing the best, most quality matches that could be played, which was explored throughout the Doubles Cup 2, Tennis Cup 4 and the Triples Tennis Tournaments. The Tennis Cup 4 saw a number of older, memorable players return for one last time, making for some of the more enduring matches of the tournament - its final match, CorruptionSound vs. GreatBritishTurd(2012), was made up of two players who either embodied or had come to embody a cohesive, creative and dynamic mixture of the modern editing tricks and the more classic, fun sensibility of responding to ideas in fun, humorous and especially inventive ways. Despite these high moments, the community continued to dwindle in size, as certain older players and others with simpler styles continued to withdraw feeling unable to match up to the competitiveness that seemed to fully exist and not stop growing with regards to the intensity of the complex editing sported by largely newer players.

A pressure point occurred at the end of the Multi-Way Tennis Tournament in late 2014, an event that went through many replacements and moments of organizational chaos before finally having both a newcomer and replacement player, LaVie CestLol, come out winning its final match. AshcrementVII, a fellow replacement and one of the final match's players, let his full unabridged feelings be known at this point, regarding the state of tennis itself as it had come to encompass regarding the competitive match he had just played:

"...but let me take a moment to address something I find the most saddening and discouraging thing of all – whether or not a person feels like they are being shoved into a rapey, color soup style of tennis. Just the thought of me, or anyone else playing tennis or thinking of trying to play tennis, even THEORETICALLY feeling that way because I can’t make crazy shape constructions fly around predetermined courses in synch with one another and do “visual rape” style is both hysterically ludicrous and shockingly frightening. It almost presents the idea that, that’s all tennis is, just rapey color splooge hitting fans at 20 million miles per hour … or carefully constructed shapes moving around for god knows what reason. This aspect of tennis makes up such a small percentage of what tennis is supposed to be, it could almost be considered a footnote. Yet apparently, this is how tennis is perceived from newcomers and casual lookers. And that’s just upsetting."

-AshcrementVII, October 29, 2014

This post started a significant discussion and acted as a wake-up call for the community, who were now becoming more aware of its diminished size as it became coalesced mostly around a small amount of regulars isolated from the greater world of YTP itself. It inspired a wave of motions made by dani_phantump and other members of the active staff at the time, TheChutley especially, to try to connect with the rest of the YTP community over tennis including discussions that were had and engaging them in simple matches. Soon after, this created the tournament of the Tennis League 4, an event not structured around eliminiations that provided a platform for a handful of new or inexperienced voices to try their hand at competitive tennis in what aimed to be a low-stakes environment. This was furthered by the tournaments "silly, tomfoolery" nature perpetuated by both its organizers and particular new players of prominence. While it was initially successful - players more known in YTP proper such as ThemOldaBoys and NationOfOranges696 joined - multiple players the event was geared for ended up dropping out due to being almost immediately faced with players operating in heavy, complex editing styles such as GameBop, NataliaHTTPS and intergalacticdeathrape and seeming to become subsequently disillusioned that their preferred simpler methods of approach did not seem to be embraced in the ways they wanted. A few players from that world who had bigger imaginations though, including CheeChee, TheShadzify, ravinrabbid123, Nineroe, valkiriforce and Peskeh (the events winner) would end up sticking around as regulars in this era, infusing competitive tennis with the freshness and the inventiveness that it needed to sustain itself; many of the best matches played between 2014-2018 would feature them as participants.

The final years of YouChew saw its tennis tournaments sporting a relative renaissance in terms of the quality of matches that were played. The Match Voting Tournament allowed players to directly focus on the quality and the enjoyment of their matches entirely, while the Doubles Cup 3 allowed for probably the purest, most seamless degree of collaboration ever showcased in a Doubles event, with some of the most showstopping Doubles matches ever played in terms of entertainment. For these years, it seemed like the way forward in terms of recapturing tennis at its essence and bringing it into the modern day was found again.

YTPMania era

The end of YouChew created a complete system reset in the tennis community, with many people calling it quits with the site, including the entire lineup of active tennis staff. As a result, new members of staff were chosen, with much of the mentors from the previous era simply were not there or choosing to not be very outspoken. Supported at least in part due to certain favoritism toward the highly technical matches of old by members such as mrdoognoog, a distorted view of tennis developed that focused much more on competitive behavior than before - younger members once again dominated the community with few elders present to provide a historical context around how tennis has evolved into the present. The tournaments created in this era - The Tennis League 5, Match Voting Tournament 2, Doubles Cup 4 and the Tennis Cup 5 - became very grandiose and long-going, with turnovers becoming much larger as rounds became much more complex and designed specifically to impress viewers rather than to use the previous round in creative ways. The collective attitude was also much more prone to drama and negative sentiments due to unchecked competitive behavior, and is thusly considered to be a relative dark age for the medium. The Tennis Cup 5, the final tournament of the YTPMania era, whilst announced on the forum and discussed there to some extent, there were very few threads created for the matches of this tournament. Whilst there were very few major arguments, this tournament is seen as a general low point.

As the TC5 concluded, a wave of old tennis regulars including NESfanboi, TheChutley, dani_phantump, trepmaws, and TheFXexpert returned to the community, inspiring the additional return to video craft by players such as Metroid998, GameBop, fiv95, Sid, and even AshcrementVII from the fringes. dani_phantump in particular returned to an outspoken role regarding discussions, theories and dissections around tennis where and the journey it has been on across its history, leading to the return of more critical thought than was previously present in the community. This would set the stage for the events and the era of tennis that was to follow.

YellowTealPurple Era

The first tournament hosted on YellowTealPurple was 3-Way Tennis Tournament 2 primarily by dani_phantump.

The next tennis tournament's planning phase began relatively early, right in the middle of the second set of 3WTT2. On March 30th, 2025, it was announced that the next tournament would be decided based on a vote from the people rather than internally; the first of its kind. The three options were a third Match Voting Tournament (MVT3), a second Tennis Season (TS2), or a second Triples Tennis Tournament (TTT2). While the Tennis Season 2 initially jumped from a close to a clear lead in votes, some votes ended up pivoting to the last minute to the Match Voting Tournament 3 as the next "official" event (not accounting for other side events that could take place concurrently). This was reasoned to be for allowing a focus on match quality to take precedence to allow the newer community to truly embody the full "spirit" of tennis as its long been understood, along with allowing time for another Season to fully develop as an event.

The 3-Way Tennis Tournament 2 proved to further reveal various tensions and frustrations with the current state of tennis - with deep-rooted problems surfacing or coming to light for the first time in the community. In both the Tennis Theory thread and the tournament thread itself on the forums, very thorough and passionate posts were made in which various members expressed these feelings, whether about what they observed in tennis in general or about what they observed in specific matches they played - recontextualizing the previous tournament as a general low point, and cementing the word "trapezoidium" into common tennis jargon

dani_phantump was the writer of the majority of the longest posts, in addition to reviews written for each match of the tournament in which she expressed her initial thoughts, in an effort by her to chronicle the exact current state of tennis and where it could go while taking in the input of other community regulars. Whilst the 3WTT2 was seen by some as an improvement over the previous tournament, allowing for more fun than the low, slow burn of TC5, it was apparent the overall experience remained a turbulent one, and so ultimately, due to observing that many players in the tournament including herself were feeling exhausted and stressed from the competitive pressures that had come to pervade this side of tennis, an "Intermission" period of one month was instituted by her into the tournament to allow everyone to cool off and relax, lasting from May 6 to June 6, 2025. This pushed the start of Set 3 of this tournament a month in advance to allow the chance of refreshment for all still involved.

The Future

The future for tennis tournaments remain uncertain. As modern tennis becomes more and more complex and intricate, it is hard to sit down and create something "competitive" in less than a week. This led to longer turnovers, which led to longer sets, longer tournaments - and much greater burnout.

To contemplate for these changes in the meta, many have considered the abandonment of tournaments altogether towards more "friendly" events. On the contrary, tournaments are one of the driving forces of the community as, well, they're exciting; many people from many eras coming together to create cool stuff. If tournaments do indeed continue, it is likely to see many more Match Voting tournaments and others that emphasize working together, rather than out-doing your opponent.

Tournament Types

There have been six major types of tennis tournaments, with all minor types being derivatives of one of these formats.

Tennis Cup

The 'vanilla' tournament - a bracket of 2^n players face off in a regular, 6 round match. People vote, and the winner moves on. Last man standing wins!

Tennis League

The 'OG' tournament - players are split into 'divisions' where they play everyone in their division, usually to four rounds. Winners get 3 points, ties split at 1 point, and losers get none. After everyone has been played, a multi-way "final match" occurs with the winner of each division. The winner of that match is the winner overall!

While the league format has had the most iterations (alongside cups) at five, it has largely been criticized in modern times due to its length and creating lack of drive to continue after losing enough games. It likely will never happen again in its known iteration.

Match Voting Tournament

A newer, but more popular type of tournament - you are given a random 'partner' to work with, to create a match of your vision (usually 6 rounds). When complete, voters choose their favorite matches out of everyone in the set. Depending on the setup, the lower slice of matches are cut off, and everyone else continues. You are then assigned a new random partner. The 'final' usually consists of 3-4 teams. The highest voted match of the final wins!

This has been popular as it encourages cooperation and creativity to achieve a much more re-watchable match and enjoyable experience for the players. There have been two of them so far.

Doubles/Triples Tournament

Similar to a tennis cup, however involving "teams" of players that face off each other, with varying formats. This usually means the first rounds of the match are solo works, showing off each player, before transitioning into collaborative rounds. See Team Tennis for more information about this format.

X-Way Tournament

Bleeding the lines between a Tennis Chain and a regular match, X-Way Tournaments involve long strings of players partaking in a much longer match. In shorter X-Ways, only the top voted player continues; in longer ones, one player gets voted out instead (think Survivor).

This is another tournament type that struggles with length and remains unlikely to happen again.

Tennis Season

The most bizarre type of tournament that likely will remain a one-off unless heavily refactored. "Teams" of players competed throughout "gameweeks", similar to how football works. A player was chosen to represent their team for that gameweek, and then a particular match would play out against another team. Each player also had certain abilities that they could decide upon at the start of the tournament. Teams would build up points for winning matches, with the team with the most points at the end winning the tournament.

Achievements

The winners of each tennis tournament can be found in the List of Tennis Tournaments.

40+ Wins

GameBop - Due to the amount of tournaments GameBop has participated in, while winning most of the matches they participated in, they have the most wins by far out of any other tennis player.

10+ Wins

mrdoognoog

dani_phantump

Archive

The Archive Masterlist is the main spreadsheet for keeping track of tournaments, past and present.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10cpwoIfVKUZLDYPYNmOMH6X3oG5g3D4Q6O3JDCcfyf0/edit?usp=sharing

A similar list also exists for unofficial tournaments and other notable tennis events. See Tennis Archives for more.