It was a grueling few days in New Jersey as 26 of Maryland Beer Pong's finest took center stage and competed for a piece of the $50,000 prize pool at the Atlantic City Championships.

Several Maryland teams made quite an impact in the early going. Before the preliminaries even began, Shannon lost a tough overtime match to finish 4th in the Ladies 1-on-1 Tournament. On the male side, Mantis, Jordan, and Kyle all placed in the top 10 of their respective 1-on-1 tournaments.

In preliminary action, it was Projectile Dysfunction that led the way with a perfect 12-0 record and +55 cup differential which was good enough to land them a #2 ranking heading into the final day. Right behind them and also undefeated were McAllister (#6) and Double Tap (#8) . The highly anticipated debut of Change of Plans was an impressive one as they were able to win their first 11 games before dropping there final contest which dropped them to the preliminaries highest ranked 11-1 team (#12).

The final tournament was a 128-team, single elimination, with best 2-out-of-3 matches throughout. Many highly ranked Maryland teams lost prematurely while other rose to the occasion. Several finished in the top 32 including Projectile Dysfunction (17th), Double Tap (18th), and Change of Plans. Also in the top 32 were two underdogs that knocked off highly rated opponents in order to advance from the 2nd round. Who's In Your Mouth? defeated Mexicali and Serves You Right defeated the Usual Suspects.

Far and away the top MD performers of the tournament were the McAllister brothers who seemed invincible as they rolled into the final four. It appeared that McAllister had earned a spot in the finals as they left Drinkin' Smokin' Straight West Coastin with a 5 cup rebuttal which they needed to hit to avoid elimination. Unfortunately for the brothers from Carroll County, Mike Seivert (a.k.a. Sonoma Joe) hit all five which led to the eventual overtime loss for McAllister.

Here are the final standings for all the MDBP teams. Please help fill in any blanks as the final results have not yet been posted...

McAllister's performance this week in Atlantic City is definitely the best performance by a Maryland team on the national stage. They were a missed rebuttal away from a finals appearance where anything could have happened. All in all, Maryland performed relatively well considering the adverse conditions and level of competition at the event. I hope the record number of MDBP teams that made the trip to AC will make it to the WSOBP in January. If anyone has pictures or videos from the weekend that you would like to share, please send them to me. Until next time...