The first week of the group stage of the Chili Bowl tournament proved every bit as exciting as we’d hoped. Here we’ll take a look back at how the ties played out and also see what Week two has in store for us.
As a reminder this group based tournament consists of four nationwide conferences, each comprising six teams of eight players. At the end of a round robin league two teams in each conference will go through to the knockout stages. Only the best will survive.
But you guys already know this right? Let’s get on with the Week one match reports.
Gameweek 12 Review
Conference A
It was a bad day office for Conference A. The teams in this division managed a  combined total of 1215 points. That is a full 76 points behind the next lowest. There were three teams in this group who scored less than 200 points.
Nevertheless, there were highpoints as well as low points in this conference. The Washington Presidents deserve top billing here racking up a 36 point win against the Los Angeles Vipers 220-184.
The Vipers posted the lowest score across all of the Conferences this week and will be looking to up their game next week when they play the Boston Hawks.
The feathered friends from the East coast  are also pointless after being edged out by the New Orleans Contes in a tense encounter, which finished 213-212 in favour of the Contes. The Cajun outfit were led by their captain Jazz! Who joined the team of the week as the third high scorer overall on 53 points. Boston also had a top performer in Chucky who scored 52 points and was fourth highest scorer this week
The final match in this conference saw the Miami Magicians take on San Antonio Ravers. This was a cagey affair, which saw the Ravers record the win despite both sides showing a solid defence and keeping the score down to 192-194.
Miami now need to go to Washington DC to face the divison’s top scorers after the first round of fixtures to try to turn their fortunes around.
Conference B
In contrast Conference B saw points aplenty across the board and it was comfortably the highest scoring group, with a whopping 1330 points.
No less than three members of this week’s team of the week come from this division, including star performer of the week Vinayashwin, who put down a marker with 57 points for Philedelphia Sentrymen.
Philadelphia didn’t just have Vinayashwin though, they had the second highest scoring individual of the week with Narcos, who also put in a very tasty 55 points and is hot on the heels of Vinayashwin at this early stage to be MVP.
It was all too much for Austin Powers as the twin attacks from Vinayashwin and Narcos led the Sentrymen to overpower the 1960s based dandies by 229-212.
So with two players in the team of the week, surely that has to be the biggest scoring match right? Wrong!
The Cleveland Steamers steamrolled The Mississppi Hillbillies and in the process notched the biggest score of the week overall bringing home the win 248-203, despite not having any players in the team of the week. This is quite a feat and shows the quality across the Steamers side.
The third match in this conference saw the Chicago Bull Sitters face the Phoenix Philistines and once again this was a points fest with the Bull Sitters coming home winners 234-204, led by their team of the week member Lord, who was the fifth highest scorer across the board with 51 points.
Next week Conference B sees all of the sides who won their first match facing teams who all lost their first match. It will be a long way back in this very tough conference for any team that loses two in a row.
Conference C
In Conference C it was a tight affair with the biggest win being only by a margin 25 points.
The biggest of these being San Jose Holebas who took a convincing victory over Seattle Salad-Dodgers. The green leaf shunning Nirvana fans were left diced and sliced by Holebas 235-210. In Week two the San Jose side, who are top of the table, have a local derby with fellow Californians and another of this week’s victors, San Francisco Bulls Deep.
The Golden Gate gang side beat Las Vegas Lemmings 215-198, leaving the Nevada team languishing at the bottom of the division.
It could have been even more humbling though for the desert gamblers as the San Fran side left the tournament’s top scorer of the week resting on their bench, with Rhinos scoring a massive 59. If played he would have comfortably been the highest overall scorer of this week. Bulls Deep will need to stop making these errors if they are to succeed against tougher competition.
Due to this Rhinos makes it into the team of the week as our first Alternate of the Week.
But don’t take it too hard Lemmings you have everything to still play for and you have great chance to get off the mark next week when you face the group’s next lowest scorers the New York Tommy Guns.
The Tommy Guns misfired this week against the San Diego Casuals, who nonchalantly beat The Clash song influenced team 219  to 209.
Conference D
This group provided the  second and third highest scoring teams across the Chili bow,l but it was also home to the second lowest scoring team as well.
It will come as no surprise that the biggest win of the week was in this Conference. The Waikiki Beach Raiders well and truly plundered the Utah Polygamists, taking a massive 57 point win (243-186).
Incredibly, it could have been even worse. The Hawaiian side benched another top scorer, Heels over Head, whose 54 point haul was seven more than their next highest performer.
Heels over Head therefore becomes our second Alternate of the Week.
That leads us to the second highest overall scoring team of the week, Albuquerque Shaolin, who caught the Jacksonville Jamaicans off guard. High kicking them where it hurts, the Shaolins ran home winners 244-207. This was in spite of Jamaican Lateriser12  rolling up an impressive 51 point stash.
The final match in this rundown features Indianapolis House of Pancakes and Denver Does Dallas. This was the closest match in Conference D, and saw the Lent snackers dispatch them 210 to 201.
Denver will need to turn this around when they face the Division’s top scorers Albuquerque Shaolin next week. Whereas Utah and Jacksonville face each other next week, affording both a great opportunity  to get off of the foot of the table.
Team and Manager of the Week
Vinayashwin (PHI) 57
Narcos (PHI) 55
Jazz! (NO) 53
Chucky (BOS) 52
Lord (CHI) 51
Lateriser12 (JAX) 51
Alternates:
Rhinos (SF) 59
HealsOverHead (WB) 54
The presser award for the Chili Bowl gameweek 12 goes to Tony Hibbert, from Denver Does Dallas with his with his mammoth tale of his route to the tournament and why  he was much the worse for wear on arrival (which may explain Denver’s result).
A full run down of the All Star Points and  captains award positions can be found here along with the rules.
The Manager of the week award goes to Ronhaar who successfully benched the two lowest scoring players from Austin Powers. Sadly it was not enough to help them clinch a win.
THE SQUADS AND THE FIXTURE LISTS
Please see this spreadsheet for details of all the squads (with links to each players FPL history) and fixtures.
Ziro has also created two further spreadsheets in google docs.
The FCB Differentials Spreadsheet allows teams to identify which players will be key in this week’s scoring. The instructions for using it are:
1. First, make a personal copy using the ‘File’ menu options (this will enable you to edit the cells)
2. Enter the GW no. in the blue-coloured cell on top.
3. Enter the FPL IDs of your six team members and the six IDs of the opponents’.
4. The sheet picks up the live FPL points of the players on each refresh, and the total for the team is displayed in green.
The FCB Next GW Scouting Spreadsheet will allow teams to pull in the previous week’s FPL teams for all 8 of the opposing teams players to allow scouting of the squads. The instructions for using this spreadsheet are as above except the fpl points are no longer valid.
SIDE ORDERS
Further previews and nuggets of information will be posted within the comments throughout the week, but the important things to know are as follows:
- Captains must email the FCB mailbox (fantasychilibowl@gmail.com) with their decision on which two players they are benching this week before the deadline of 11:59pm UK time on Friday night.  11:59pm UK time on the night before the FPL deadline will be the deadline each week.
- Remember this is a FFS community competition and we expect all teams to have some presence within the comments on these articles.  If we see some teams not participating on this front, we will start enforcing rules to ensure this does happen.
- The full rules can be found here  – this includes details of the all-star game, and other individual/team awards.
If you have any further queries, feel free to ask below in the comments or email us at: fantasychilibowl@gmail.com
As a final request, please do try and keep the FCB chat to the comment sections of our articles.
On behalf of the FCB committee (Jarvish, BabyB, Ziro, Adam West and Cheese)
