Triples Tennis Tournament
The Triples Tennis Tournament or The Triples Cup was a YouTube Poop Tennis Tournament that took place between February to September 2013 on the YouChew Forums. It was the second and final to be organized primarily by ChrisGendo, but hosted for the majority by trepmaws and later AshcrementVII; it is the twelfth overall tennis competition. The layout was a further extension of RAKninja's original Doubles Cup idea, extending the teams from pairs to groups of three and also incorporating team names for each group. To date, it is the only Tennis Tournament to use the Triples Tennis format, and the only occasion in which Triples Tennis has been played entirely. The eventual Winning Team of the Tournament was a team made up of MycroProcessor, GameBop and eletricalmonkss under the name of The Complex Triangle, significant in that it would be the first tournament that MycroProcessor would finally win after having made it to the final match in two previous tournaments, and GameBop would become the first tennis player to win for a second time. This was the third of four tennis tournaments to use the voting account "Gendo Ikari", in reference to the character from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
It was the first tennis competition to feature CreepahWeegie, iamoutofideas1, cyclejunkie, and Cornflakes, and the last to feature RAKninja, ChrisGendo, Rillion, and lordbababa. It is also the only tennis competition to feature ArsenioGut, FishTitan, XxRobotChaoxX, SaturdayNightCleaner and LoveForLogos, the latter whom infamously never contributed any actual videos of their own.
Background
The Triples concept had been a pet project of ChrisGendo's since 2010, and there was in fact a previous attempt to turn this into a tournament on the YouChew Forums in June 2011, originally set to have been the follow-up competition to The 3-Way Tennis Tournament following a 4 month period of competitive inactivity within the Tennis Section (GameBop's Tennis Shuffle was put into place to alleviate this wait, but it proved overall to be ineffective as the only matches that really finished took most of the rest of the year to do so). The teams that signed up for this incarnation of the tournament would have been:
MAD MACHINE ZETTAI RYOUIKI, made up of ChrisGendo, AshcrementVII, and djninjalovemistake, potentially the first tournament for the latter two players. ChrisGendo and AshcrementVII would subsequently play as a duo in the Doubles Cup 2.
Team Q T Q, made up of Metroid998, superkoffee, and dani_phantump, largely organized through skype and potentially dani_phantump's first tournament. Metroid998 and dani eventually teamed up as a duo in the Doubles Cup 4 in 2022.
TFALL ZONE ACT II, made up of GameBop, MycroProcessor and TheChutley, which was noted at the time as an immensely stacked combination of players. GameBop and Mycro had previously played together as a duo in the Doubles Cup 1 and TheChutley and GameBop would subsequently play as a duo in the Doubles Cup 3 in 2017-2018.
The Computer Jesus Refrigerator Tennis Team, made up of at-the-time all members that had been banned from the YouChew Forums: DoctorEggman, NESfanboi and RobochaoXX.
Splolteon FC, made up of Sploltoen, CorruptionSound, and Kurkop, regarded similarly in combination to that of TFALL ZONE ACT II, since all three of them by this time had made the tennis community highly aware of their abilities. Sploltoen and CorruptionSound would subsequently play as a duo in the Doubles Cup 2 and the Doubles Cup 3.
Weeaboo's From Hell, made up of CaptainStringCheese, BMATF, and trepmaws, potentially Captain's first tournament. CaptainStringCheese and BMATF would subsequently play as a duo in the Doubles Cup 2.
vel 17 (known then as TheRaz0rEdge), vvaluigi and sanemurzu potentially also formed a team, although a name was never chosen and participation between all three was never officially confirmed. It would have been the first tournament for Verity and sanemurzu at the time. vel 17 and sanemurzu would subsequently play as a duo in the Doubles Cup 2.
The official 8th team to sign up was one made up of members who had mostly been active on other parts of the forum, and had all collectively tennised very little; a moderator, Intermission, and two other older members, RideTheCatfish and cantflyman. Upon noticing two then-recently banned members having joined the tournament, Intermission suddenly and unexpectedly became very vocal, ordering them to be removed.
At the time, the YouChew forums had been reeling from the aftermath of "The Oz Incident", a saga of events in early 2011 where an unknown named Oz had manipulated and bribed his way into complete control of the forums, creating a massive infection of keylogger viruses within the forum software in order to impersonate staff members and sow discord all in an immensely convoluted attempt to deliberately destroy the site. Ultimately this led to the complete removal of his influence, sacrificing three months of irretrievable posts stretching from February to May 2011 due to no recent backups. This was a time when paranoia and concern of site safety was high and the moderation staff had become a lot more quick to jump onto potential offenses than usual as a result of it. They were under the suspicion that both of the recently banned members (NESfanboi and DoctorEggman) had associated very heavily with Oz during his forum seige, and were currently considered still dangerous and highly unwelcome due to the fact that superkoffee's account had been hacked very recently by them.
A schism occurred at this point, as ChrisGendo stood firmly in the position of believing that anyone, including banned members, should be able to participate in tennis tournaments (there was prior precedent of this as well) and Intermission stood firmly in the place of believing that this should not be the case with activities sanctioned officially by the YouChew forums. Arguments and tensions escalated and lasted for many more posts until the thread was closed following magmalord posting a video of King Harkinian saying "ENOUGH" for 10 minutes. A number of non-contributive posts were deleted right before.
The dispute carried over out of public sight and for a period there was a noticeable rift between the tennis staff and moderators. The tennis section would return to business as usual, although with a noticeable amount of less people present. In efforts to make amends, DaftPunkYoshi was promoted to moderator to provide a positive bridge between the two staffs and a few other moderators, namely Probo, Whelt and Smonge, would pay friendly semi-regular visits to the Poop Tennis Cafe thread. The original Triples Tournament thread would however never be reopened, and in it's place a Doubles Cup 2, with primary input from a recently returned RAKninja, would unfold, followed by the Tennis Cup 4 that further pushed the Triples Cup to a later date.
Finally in February 2013 the Tournament was officially re-announced for signups, starting with a clean slate due to the community having majorly evolved, with a number of players having either left or gone on a competitive/complete hiatus from tennis. This version of the tournament would see success through its end, though at this time be hosted mostly by trepmaws.
Teams
Super God Masterforce
trepmaws, Fujiyama Gangsta Breaks(ChrisGendo), RAKninja
The Aphotic Trio
Mashu(replaced by djninjalovemistake), CreepahWeegie, vel 17
Fox Box Ang Clan
HollowTheGuy, ArsenioGut, FishTitan
The Complex Triangle
ElectricalMonkss, GameBop, LoveForLogos(replaced by lordbababa, and then by MycroProcessor)
Fredryx's Carmel Gang
iamoutofideas1, CorruptionSound, cyclejunkie
Triple Baka
Bloodis, dani_phantump, Rillion
The Superb Optimistics
Cheedle, Foghorn Scorpio, Metroid998
Cornflakes Murdering Ash Cream
AshcrementVII, Cornflakes, MAZZ0Murder
Matches
Set 1
Fredryx's Carmel Gang vs. The Superb Optimistics
Initial volleying order: cyclejunkie, ZACHTOMCAT, iamoutofideas1, JacobketronCT, CorruptionSound, Metroid998
The Aphotic Trio vs. Triple Baka
Initial volleying order: djninjalovemistake, Bloodis, TheRazorEdge(vel 17), Rillion, CreepahWeegie, dani_phantump
Cornflakes Murdering Ash Cream vs. Super God Masterforce
Initial volleying order: MAZZ0Murder, ChrisGendo, Cornflakes, trepmaws, AshcrementVII, RAKninja
The Complex Triangle vs. Fox Box Ang Clan
Initial volleying order: eletricalmonkss, FishTitan64, lordbababa, ArsenioGut, GameBop, XxRobotChaoxX
The only match of the tournament to not complete. Initially set to have HollowTheGuy/MaggedRat make Round 2, his dropping out of the tournament necessitated that FishTitan64 cover for him, with XxRobotChaoxX eventually selected as a replacement. LoveForLogos was originally set to make Round 3 until the video he submitted for it turned out to be a stolen version of Round 9 of Luioigi vs. Funacceptable vs. NESfanboi from the 3-Way Tennis Tournament, and he was subsequently replaced by lordbababa. Things continued somewhat smoothly until GameBop's Round 5 was posted, at which point Fox Box Ang Clan accumulated enough consecutive late penalties to be disqualified from the tournament. Well into Set 2, XxRobotChaoxX finally posted a Round 6, but the match was never continued.
Set 2
The Complex Triangle vs. The Aphotic Trio
Initial volleying order: GameBop, djninjalovemistake, MycroProcessor, CreepahWeegie, eletricalmonkss, TheRazorEdge(vel 17)
MycroProcessor entered to replace lordbababa in The Complex Triangle starting with this match.
The Superb Optimistics vs. Super God MasterForce
Initial volleying order: Foghorn Scorpio, ChrisGendo, Cheedle, trepmaws, Metroid998, RAKninja
RAKninja was unable to participate for Super God Masterforce's final collaborative round, making it a one off duo collaboration between ChrisGendo and trepmaws. SaturdayNightCleaner replaced Cheedle in The Superb Optimistics starting with their collab round. This was the final tennis match to be played by RAKninja.
Set 3 (final)
The Complex Triangle vs. The Superb Optimistics
Initial volleying order: eletricalmonkss, Foghorn Scorpio, MycroProcessor, SaturdayNightCleaner, GameBop, Metroid998
This match primarily focused on the episode "Cyber-Butt" from Beavis and Butthead, involving themes of the early internet and "going inside the computer". A lot of moving back and forth between "screens" from many different pieces of media occur throughout. The Complex Triangle came out with the win, winning the whole tournament.