Game Players’ Contests Aren’t Trivial Pursuits : Competition: Five thousand players in 450 bars and hotels in the United States and Canada match wits electronically with free, interactive video system.
Every Tuesday afternoon about 5:15, intellectual warriors gather at the bar of the Rusty Pelican Restaurant in Encino.
They are a curious group of urban guerrillas who have gathered in this yuppier-than-thou lounge not for social contact but for a war of wits.
These masters of miscellany assemble here every week--as about 5,000 others do in bars across the United States and Canada--to compete as individuals and as a group against each other.
Their games are played on a hookup to 450 bars and hotels and involve a number of different challenges that get harder and faster as the evening progresses.
They have learned about these free games from friends or by wandering into an establishment where the action is under way.
“Basically, our society is so bland and boring, the overeducated need a place to exercise their gray matter,” said John Leuthold, one of the regulars who come from all over Los Angeles to play at bars in Encino, Woodland Hills and Glendale.
Since 1988, when a group of Carlsbad businessmen and former jocks dreamed up this way to exercise people’s minds with interactive video, bar after bar across North America has paid the $5,000 plus $500 a month for the television monitor and computer pads that allow people to come to their establishment each night to play a variety of games.
At the Rusty Pelican, Tuesday is strut-your-smarts night, a trivial pursuit, perhaps, but it keeps the pesky intellectuals off the streets.
Each player has a game name, and Loanpro is the leader of the pack in Encino. He has earned the title because he has been at these games since they were introduced in these parts in 1988, at the Glendale Rusty Pelican. Loanpro is a quiet man, with a quick wit. In civilian life, he labors in the financial world as venture capitalist Leuthold.
Then there is Dingo, a Mad Max lookalike complete with long hair, earring and handcuffs hooked into his leather jacket. He’s an Australian import, otherwise known as Stefan Mayer, who says he holds a master’s degree from UCLA. In this country he works as a stunt double, sometimes for Mel Gibson.
And Phigg, a slight, cheerful, 27-year-old, could be a junk bond salesman or a particle physicist, but is, in fact, Jim Berkowitz, a history teacher at Oakwood School in North Hollywood.
The rest of the Encino regulars include a television comedy writer, a senior marketing representative, a puzzle maker, a law student, a property manager and a man who runs a heart-lung machine during open-heart surgery.
On this Tuesday evening, as 5:30 rolls around, members of the group that numbers about 15 punch their names into their play boards and wait for the first questions.
During the first round of questions, answers are called around the bar and chewed over cheerfully by the players. People take their time inputting their answers into the keyboard.
Some of the questions are about geography, film, science or body parts. Others are from the Bible or off the wall.
Debra Weiss--known to all players as the Trivia Goddess--keeps a staff of graduate students churning them out in Carlsbad. She also gets a stack of mail each week from hard-boiled eggheads who disagree with the selection or variety of subjects--or the answers.
Most of the questions are fairly straightforward. At least at first.
Question: What can’t you insure with Lloyds of London?
Possible answers: Career, jewels, body parts, homes.
Leuthold says homes, but there is some disagreement. After the time is up for the answer to be recorded, the monitor shows the answer to be homes. Leuthold shrugs his “I told you so’s.”
The first game’s easy opening pace allows for lots of interaction around the bar, but after 20 minutes or so the tempo picks up and the players settle down.
Toward the end of the games--which are variations on final exams in anything and everything--there is a time when players are rewarded 12,000 points if they respond correctly within one second, descending to only 1,000 point in five seconds.
By then, most of the interplay is restricted to breaks between games--which last about an hour--when a drink may be ordered or food brought in. Scott Lutfi, manager of the Encino Rusty Pelican, acknowledges that his liquor sales increase substantially due to the games, particularly on Monday and Tuesday nights.
But almost no one seems to eat or drink much during the six games a night. This is, after all, a kind of war.
“Everyone comes to have a good time,” Mayer said, “but everyone’s keen on winning, as well.”
There are different games every night, and they can be played from midafternoon until almost midnight.
On Monday night, Mayer goes to El Paso Cantina in Woodland Hills for a change of faces and games. Monday night is football night during the fall season, and QB1 allows players watching a nationally televised game to guess what the quarterback’s next call is going to be.
Other games, available on different nights, involve hockey and baseball during the season, and other kinds of trivia. There is even a game called Nightside, about sexual trivia, that is played after 11:30 p.m. at the Encino Rusty Pelican.
Curiously, Nightside is one of the least loved games, according to Bob Klosterman, brother of Don, the former general manager of the Los Angeles Rams. He doesn’t know why, except that maybe people take their trivia too seriously.
Both Klostermans are among the founding fathers of NTN Communications, which developed and produces the games. Bob Klosterman is head of marketing.
Although the bars that have installed the games sometimes report a 150% increase in business, Klosterman said selling the game is not as easy as it would seem.
“It’s a hard concept for people who don’t know anything about interactive video or who are not game players,” he said. “And, in spite of the fact that the television show ‘Cheers’ is so popular, there really is not a tradition of neighborhood bars in the United States, in the way that the English have their pubs.”
Klosterman thinks the games could be a factor in changing that.
History teacher Phigg, a k a Jim Berkowitz, a graduate of Brown University and a three-time “Jeopardy” champion, likes being on the other side of the questions once a week. And, for him, the games are a family affair.
“My brother plays in Philadelphia, and I look to see if his name comes up on the screen at the end of the games as a North American winner of the week, and he looks for me.”
Theoretically, anyone can walk into the Pelican or other bars offering the games and sit down to play, but it can be daunting.
On Tuesdays they’d better get there early before the regulars grab all the play boards.
“We encourage fresh blood,” said Pop, a k a Steve Faber, the puzzle man. “But,” he said, “some people are intimidated.”
Reilly is a regular contributor to Valley View.
