FPSB
The French Pen Spinning Board or FPSB is a Pen Spinning Community based in France, but accommodating French speakers from other nations, including Belgium after BPSC closed in late 2011.
FPSB v1 was initially created by Radek on February 8th 2005, but closed in late 2005 after being hacked. Soon after FPSB v2 was opened, and the first FPSB Tournament was held in 2006, won by spinner A_Qui.
History
The earliest reference to pen spinning in France was a commercial from Bic for a four-color pen in 1970.
In 2004, PenDolSa 1st was shared on the Cube forum, a site for Super Smash Bros players. Most users did not believe the video to be genuine, but user Radek decided to learn the tricks in order to prove that they were wrong, and started a small community on the forum also interested as he did. With more people joining in, he decided to launch a forum of his own.
FPSB V1
On the 8th February 2005, FPSB V1 was launched with some of the earliest french spinners such as Fratleym and gollumsk8 registering. The first French pen spinning team, "SpowasH" was formed by A_Qui, Scelus, Skatox and Sorez. In late 2005 the FPSB V1 forum was hacked, and the site shut down with a temporary board being put up while Radek worked on FPSB V2.
FPSB V2
The community continued to grow after FPSB V2 opened, and spinners began to benefit from international trading becoming more popular, allowing French spinners to acquire mods such as the Comssa and the RSVP MX. The first FPSB Tournament was held in 2006 and won by A_Qui, and the board released the FPSB "Hall of Honor" collab[5], edited by Fratleym. Collaborations with other boards also began to emerge such as "FPSB-UKPS", "FPSB-Penzone" and "PDS-FPSB". Several FPSB spinners participated in the Pen Spinning World Tournament 2007 with two reaching the finals. The first FPSB Gathering was held in 2007 and the "Laboratoire", a research group similar to UPSB's Research Department, was also formed. Later, FPSB V2 was hacked and started a migration to a newer forum.
FPSB V3
Now moderated by Picool, FPSB V3 started off with initial weak performance in the competitive scene. In the Pen Spinning World Cup 2008 the FPSB team was knocked out in the second round and in the Pen Spinning World Tournament 2009 only Fratleym made it to even the quarterfinals, a stark downturn from their strength in 2007. In 2007 the Bic Pen Spinning Awards was held in France, the first tournament to be hosted by a pen brand. This was won by German spinner Puddels Kern. The French community had much more success with their collaboration videos, with FPSB 3rd, FPSB Hope 3rd and FPSB Anthology being well-received. It took until 2011 for FPSB to reclaim their early standing on the world stage, with S777 winning the Pen Spinning World Tournament 2011. In late 2011, the Belgian board BPSC closed, with the members from BPSC joining FPSB instead. After some disagreements between staff members, the decision was made to move to a new board.
FPSB V4
FPSB continued its success on the competitive side of the hobby by winning the Pen Spinning World Cup 2012. In order to avoid having to close the forums altogether like UPSB did, the decision was made to make a new, beginner-friendly FPSB site.
FPSB V5
The current (as of Feb 2021) iteration of the French community's forum. Not as active as it was intended to be as the old base no longer uses the forums for the most part.
Collaboration Videos
FPSB has a long history of Pen Spinning CVs, both official and casual. The most well known is the community's official series starting with FPSB 1st (Originally titled FPSB the beginning)[6] in 2006. Since then, there have been 11 total official community CVs from FPSB, with the latest being FPSB 12th on March 5th, 2023[7].
Research
Competitive Spinning
FPSB has a long and titled history in competitive spinning, producing World Cup Champion teams twice as well as one World Champion in the World Tournament.
FPSB Tournament
The community has been holding a yearly member's competition since 2006 to decide the strongest competitive spinner.
List of tournaments and winners:
- 2006 - A_Qui
- 2010 - Gollumsk8
- 2011 - Fel2Fram
- 2012 - Fel2Fram
- 2014 - Gollumsk8
- 2015 - Megas
- 2016 - Gollumsk8
- 2019 - TheBeyGeek
- 2021 - TheBeyGeek
- 2023 - TheBeyGeek
- 2024 - LeftFinger
World Tournament
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament
FPSB has submitted numerous spinners to compete in the World Tournament, winning in World Tournament 2011.
2007
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament 2007
Participants included Banz, Fratleym, Gollumsk8.
Banz and Fratleym achieved fame by making it to the finals, with Fratleym placing 3rd and Banz 4th.
2009
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament 2009
S777 was defeated by the world champion that year, Spinnerpeem in round 3[8][9], with Gollumsk8 also being knocked out the same round by Supawit127.
Fratleym would make it the farthest before losing in round 4 versus Minwoo, who would come second place in the competition.
2011
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament 2011
Participants included S777, GollumSk8.
S777 won in 2011, becoming the third World Champion for a World Tournament and first from FPSB after defeating HKPSA spinner Kin at the finals. His run was particularly notable for the ease that he acquired scores from judges, outpacing all of his opponents by a significant amount of judge votes, making his victory one of the most one-sided and crushing of all time. In the first round, his combo with what appears to be an unmodified, tipless and gripless comssa was shocking and caused speculation as to whether it was internally weighted to allow him to perform the difficult sequences, and is frequently cited as one of the greatest combos of all time.
As for the other 7 French competitors, Fratleym made it to round 3 and A13x to round 4, while the remainder of the team struggled and were eliminated in round 1 or 2.
2013
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament 2013
FPSB dominated the attention of spectators in World Tournament 2013, with A13x, Fel2Fram, Leftfinger and Gollumsk8 all pushing through to round 3. After that, Gollumsk8 would be defeated by JEB's ctionist that round. Later on in round 4 Leftfinger lost to BPSC's Ivabra and perhaps most controversially of all, Fel2Fram lost to Sutomo from JEB after submitting a highly experimental combo consisting of many i-o charges.
A13x with a tried and tested hard trick approach would make it all the way to the final round, before struggling to complete his combo within the deadline and failing his finisher in his submitted video. After refilming, he had a clip with a successful finisher filmed and uploaded, but as it was past the deadline the video was deleted and the refilmed combo retracted. This led to an embarrassing defeat that surprised spectators, coming second place in the tournament.
2015
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament 2015
2017
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament 2017
2019
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament 2019
2021
- See also: Pen Spinning World Tournament 2021
The French had a shaky time in 2021. In round 1 their team of 6 spinners was reduced to only Kara-T-J and Gollumsk8, with Kara-T-J being knocked out in round 2 and Gollumsk8 losing to i.suk in round 3.
World Cup
2008
- See also: Pen Spinning World Cup 2008
2010
- See also: Pen Spinning World Cup 2010
2012
- See also: Pen Spinning World Cup 2012
Team participants included Anikis, Fel2Fram, Futhark, Gisele8, Ivabra and Lindor.
The FPSB team won in world cup 2012, defeating UPSB at the finals.
2014
- See also: Pen Spinning World Cup 2014
2018
- See also: Pen Spinning World Cup 2018
2020
- See also: Pen Spinning World Cup 2020
FPSB entered with two teams, FPSB X and FPSB Y, but only X qualified with Y coming 9th place. The FPSB X team participants were Ark0nix, Gunter, Ivabra, Tchus, TheBeyGeek and Leftfinger. FPSB won a world cup for the second time in 2020 with FPSB X, defeating JEB's Dawn Wanderer team at the finals.
2022
- See also: Pen Spinning World Cup 2022
FPSB entered WC22 with the team FPSB Z, but failed to qualify after coming 11th place. Their team comprised of Colin d'Alaska, Lu00, S-RoK, Mamba, Eshor and Kara-T-J.
References
- ↑ FPSB v2 announcement thread on FPSB v2 archive (French)
- ↑ FPSB v3 announcement thread on FPSB v3 archive (French)
- ↑ FPSB v4 announcement thread on FPSB v4 archive (French)
- ↑ FPSB v5 announcement thread on FPSB v5 (French)
- ↑ Collab Hall of Honor FPSB
- ↑ | FPSB the beginning
- ↑ | FPSB 12th
- ↑ | Spinnerpeem WT2009 Round 3 vs S777
- ↑ | S777 WT2009 Round 3 vs Spinnerpeem.