RedFest 2016

 

 

 

 

Last weekend at Bramall Lane, Sheffield RedTooth launched what I hope will be an annual event to combine all their major avenues....Poker, Darts and of course Quizzing! Before I go into detail, I would just like to start off by saying the event was easily the most fun I have quizzing and a credit to all involved!


I arrived late on the Friday Night so only caught the end of The Chasers vs Eggheads special contest (Jenny Ryan, Paul Sinha and Shaun Wallace vs Kevin Ashman, Barry Simmons and Dave Rainford) in a buzzer quiz. I think, in terms of the quizzing events, this was the most popular event of the weekend and seemed to go down a treat. The Chaser's won and then it was into the bar for a Late Night Show involving Paul Sinha's superb stand up and Jenny Ryan on the Ukelele. A fun night....in fact too fun as I found myself rolling into bed at 3am with a quiz the next morning.

When you get up for breakfast as see the British Quizzing Champion tucking into a Full English, then you know it could be a tough day and the room was filled with around 20 teams for the team quiz with £2600 worth of prizes up for grabs. Firstly, I must say a huge thanks to Tom Mead, Sam Roberts and Colin Daffern for allowing me to make up the numbers in their team otherwise I wouldn't have had chance to take part!

The morning element of the team quiz involved 3 rounds of General Knowledge, a music round, a picture round and a theme round (questions related to blue) and provided a stern tests. The idea being that the top half of the teams would compete for the big money and first prize, and the second half would play for lesser money in the plate. A good way to work thing in my opinion and indeed it did work very well. We qualified in third and headed into the afternoon session....

 

 

 

The format in the afternoon mimicked the morning, and we got off to a good start being in a three way tie for second at half time. Dropping only two points in the second half of the quiz (failing to identify a Hot Chip song) we knew we must have had a chance of second. Indeed, a team containing Paul Sinha took victory (by what in the end was 3 points) and we were left in a 2-eay tie for second with a very strong team containing British Quiz Champion Nic Paul and a wave of top quizzers. We decided to negate the Tiebreak and split the £1000 prize money.

A really enjoyable day, good company and a good selection of questions, with a result that we can be very proud of considering some of the teams in the room. The night was capped off with a more informal buzzer quiz, followed by another late night in the bar.


The Sunday was the individual quiz, which was 10 rounds of 30 questions over the course of two sessions. The questions were presented in a Pub Quiz style and were more Pub Quiz style than other organised events which was a refreshing change. In fact, even though my result was awful (which was what I expected given the calibre of players in the room) I enjoyed this individual quiz more than many individual quizzes I have done over the years. At least, with the questions I got wrong I had at least heard of the answers!! Fun questions, a great format, good company and again a great end to the day! I sneaked a second place in the Picture Round to add a little more winnings to the pot too!

 

Congratulations go to Nic Paul on a superb win and credit to all involved at RedTooth for a fantastic weekend!


I cannot speak highly enough of the event and, after an announcement made towards the end of the weekend, roll on Redfest 2017!