When I first began throwing every Thursday at Buns, like most any weekly gathering of holers, we always had a great time and usually played a blind draw to keep things fair.  Attendance never seemed to grow much, little spikes here and there, but it was great to see our friends, throw some bags, and catch up on what had happened that week.  Who was in trouble, who was moving in, out, on, up, etc, but often the topic would land on why we didn’t have more people showing up since we played at a local restaurant-carry out and anyone was welcome, and the fact that we would all like to see a bigger figure in the money pot, as well as get more folks to come out to help the owner since he let us gather at his place each week.

     There were usually around 10 folks on a slow night, and I'd say maybe 18 on a good night. 8 to 10 of them would be the same people that always showed up.  These were your Die Hards.  Your Corn freaks.  Your Hole Headz...   And, these were of course the better of the participants in attendance, and were all what we consider "A" players.  There were also another 6 or so folks that would show up as well, that came once or twice, and by the time we could remember their names, we'd never see them again.  And they were noticeably "B" or "C" level players.  There was always another new face to replace those that left us each week, but it just seemed to me that we had this revolving door of B & C players.  Folks that would come try it out, and either not get hooked, not really dig the atmosphere, or heck... maybe we were just that damn mean to them.  But I doubted it.  There was also a small handful of other B & C's who were somewhat regulars, but they were a relative or friend of one of the A players and had no choice but to give into the Corn Maniac in their life and attend occasionally.

     Something else I was noticing was that when we would draw teams, the winning teams that always took home the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place cash, were of course 6 of the A players who were lucky enough to be matched with another A player.  And your teams that never made it into the money spots, well, they always had a B or C player matched with an A, or even worse luck, two B & C players paired together.  Now don't get me wrong, and that we think all B & C players are a plague and should all be shot.  We were ALL D players when we started, worked our way up to C, B, and then if you hung in their you got pretty darn good.  And everyone can't devote their life to Cornhole and realize that Cornhole is life!  Just stating some facts I noticed at our blind draw on who comes regularly, why, and what we did to change it.  We wanted to get more people out each week and decided to try a little twist to our blind draw to see if it would help. 

     So one week, once we got all the names listed on who was playing, we put everyone into 3 categories.  A, B, or C.  Now that can be a little tricky and subjective, and some lower end A's become B's, or maybe some higher end B's become A's.  But stay with me here...  The C players, all though they didn’t like being labeled a C, quickly liked this format, because next we did a random draw that paired each C player with an A player.  Now there was no chance of two C's being together and or a C and B being placed together.  After C match ups, we took the B players, and did a random draw with them and the remaining A players, again guaranteeing that they too were with an A player.  Now you had no two B's paired up as well.  If there were still a few A's left to match up, they were really lucky and still were probably gonna win for the night.  But... the top 3 teams were not going to be 6 A's.  The C and B players would get into the money spots more than likely, and if the bags fell just right for them, they might even be on the 1st place team.  Well of course if you are an A player in this situation, your gonna get a little grimace at first.  Cause you know your not going to get paired with another dominant player, but you still have a chance.  And if you’re A player, your also addicted to the game, and are going to show up each week no matter what the circumstances, because your there to play mane!  And here's the point of all this.  If you’re a B or C player, your gonna win half of the time now! 

     So we went with it.  And we listened to some of the A's complain, however that quickly ended because they started seeing more entries each week in our draw. $$$ :-)  Our 5 to 8 team get together quickly became a fat crowd of 15 to 18 teams, and is still growing.  And although I thought that the larger crowd and the bigger prize money was going to be the best part, I realized it wasn't after a few months.  The awesome part of the new draw system, wasn’t just watching some of these revolving B & C players stop revolving and start becoming regulars and more folks showing up overall.   It was watching them now show up early, stay late, with their game face on, practicing during the week, adjusting their stance, adjusting their throw, and form, and best of all... Seeing the look on their face that first time when they get paired up with a new face who is a "C" player and they ask,

"Who the heck did you put me with, they ain't no good, what's up?"

"Well my friend, your now an A player."   

THE CORN DAWG