Yesterday’s game of SPUD took place in a grassy, mosquito-infested knoll in Humboldt Park on one of the hottest days of the year. If you’re following us on Twitter, you already know that the Venus Zine Office Team schooled everyone at SPUD, setting the bar high at the start of this summer tournament.

As the VZ team sized up the other teams from MyOpenBar.com, Mr. Design/Pitchfork, and WXRT, we realized we kinda had it in the bag. The other teams each had between four and six players, which paled in comparison to our team, which consisted of 11 all-star players, including our EIC, K. Tighe, publisher Anne Brindle, art director Denise Gibson, and a whole slew of staff and interns — all of us reluctantly anxious to get down and dirty.

In the end, we’re not quite sure if it was because our team was the biggest, or if it was because we kick serious ass at SPUD, (or maybe it was all the Miller High Life we downed) but Venus Zine won the first game of the season, and that’s all that matters.

Game on, guys — show us what you got!

They say that two heads are better than one. UR Chicago proved that two heads were in fact better than four. After an early first game loss to the Venus Zine ladies, UR’s dynamic duo of Jessica and Rannell rallied to take the next two games of Kubb. So much for girl power. Was it the lingering inspiration from watching Michael Phelps win 614 olympic gold medals? Did Rannell’s abundance of testosterone tip the scales in UR’s favor? Did the Venus Zine ladies concentrate too much on hurling verbal abuse and not enough on actually throwing the sticks at the kubbs? It would take a team of experts running scientific tests to ascertain for sure.

What will the last game of the season be? Will it take a keen eye or pure power? Hopefully it will not be another Swedish game. Hopefully it will be inspired by the Japanese. Like this one.