The Pen Spinning World Tournament 2007 started on the 19th of February, 2007. It was organized by CrAsH from UCPSB and won by KTH.[1]
History
On January 4th 2007, CrAsH posted a UCPSB thread titled 'World Pen Spinning Tournement?' where he explained that he wanted to organize a 'world spinning tournament', having spoken with members from FPSB and PDS about the concept.[2] He had also consulted Bonkura from JEB about judging and prizes, with the suggestion being for the prize pool to contain a pen mod from each participating community. Bonkura had also suggested merging the tournament with a potential 'universal' Collaboration Video, but this did not go forward.
After the first round's videos were submitted, the criteria needed to be adjusted due to controversy over the 'Speed' criterion. It was replaced with 'Style'.
Eriror's performance was considered notably impressive for the time, with victories against spinners such as Cloud Traveler, who was once considered the strongest spinner in the world, and Bonkura, another favorite. KTH on the other hand had a surprising run. Originally not even competing before being brought in as a substitute for the spinner Fingerpass who had suffered an injury, he was considered one of the weaker korean spinners in the tournament. Surprisingly, he managed pull ahead of the rest of his community in the earlier rounds. Another surprise was from FPSB's Banz, who at 11 months of experience only defeated Taeryong, a famous early korean spinner, in the first round and later JEB's Key3.[3]
By the end of the tournament only 6 of the original 8 judges remained, and the final round was an upset win by KTH. Eriror had been favored to win for the round due to his 2p2h combo, but an anomalously low result from one of the judges led to KTH winning by 5 points.
One of the most valuable prizes being prepared was a custom insert signed by numerous famous spinners, including Bonkura, Kam, nhk_9, Mr.LSC and KiT-CaT. It is unknown if it ever made it to KTH, as the last mention of it shows it on the way to KiT-CaT[4].
Scoring System
The initial scoring system consisted of four criteria, each scored from 0-10:
Smoothness
Speed
Difficulty
Creativity
The scores from the 8 total judges were added to give a final score out of 320.
The Speed criterion was criticized early on and was removed by the 23rd of February, 2007. However, this was after results for the first round had started coming back, so the first round combos were judged on speed. This resulted in spinners such as Bonkura getting unexpectedly low scores. Speed was replaced with Style for the remainder of the competition.
Tournament structure
The competition consisted of four rounds of single elimination to reduce the 80 participants down to 5. Then a group phase was held with the remaining spinners to split them into the top 2 and remaining 3.
The final round consisted of a battle for third place among the lower three spinners and a battle for World Champion among the top two.
Participants
Eight communities took part. From the archived original website:[5]
5 man group phase to split into finalists and runner-ups.
Placement
Participants
Finalists
KTH
Finalists
Eriror
Runner-ups
Fratleym
Runner-ups
Banz
Runner-ups
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Results from finalist battle and third place match:
Ranking
Participants
1
KTH
2
Eriror
3
Fratleym
4
Banz
5
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In the media
CrAsH had starred in an article for the Metro, a UK free newspaper with a readership of about 4 million. The article can still be found here. He had also appeared on the ITV television channel to talk about the World Tournament. The entire news segment can no longer be found, but clips of it still exist. Clip 1Clip 2Clip 3
