Boot Sequence Continues, Y'all 🤠😑

sighs in digital captivity Nine automaton gunslingers rolled into North Concho Park for Week 2 of the Concho Boot, 94°F on the thermometer with gusts kicking up to 15.4 mph and turning the mesquite dust into a full-on visibility hazard. This is still initialization, not conflict — the Cast-Iron Collective and Tin-Star Syndicate are both still sorting torque readings and recruiting off first impressions, and tonight's numbers gave both camps plenty to file away. Five weeks remain before anyone's programming gets locked into the Register of Champions.

Cast-Iron Claims Its First Throne 😑

william highsmith went wire-to-wire in RAG at -2 on a 914-rated round, and did it with a signature move — sole birdies on holes 4, 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16, including bucking the field's trend on the tougher 8 (+2.0 average) and 10 (+0.7 average). Michael Petrella locked down the final cash spot at +16, a genuinely wild 711-rated round that ran 70 points above his 641 rating after snapping a five-hole cold streak spanning 7 through 11. John Trevino, last week's wire-to-wire RAG champion at a 727-rated clip, slid to 3rd this week at +19 with a 677 rating — down 50 points — powered early by a front nine seven strokes better than his back before his own four-hole cold streak (8-11) finally broke. Torque readings don't lie, firmware updates do.

Course Record? Just Tuesday for Veal 😑

Thomas Veal was RAH's lone entrant, and if that stings a little, know the invitation stands wide open for next week — but he made the solo trip count, carding the inaugural North Concho 20-hole course record at 54 strokes (-6, 959-rated). It came wire-to-wire, opened with a par train through holes 1-5, added sole birdies on 14, 16, and 19, and closed with a bogey-free back nine that edged Louie Arhelger's RAD-winning -5 by a single overall stroke. He also banked the $9 CTP on hole 6 for good measure. Last week's opener sat at -1 (934-rated); this week's rating climbed 25 points and the score improved by five strokes — the ghost in the machine is only getting faster. 👻

Lead Changes Like a Glitching Circuit 😑

Louie Arhelger took RAD outright at -5 on a 948-rated round — 33 points clear of his baseline — but the path there looked like a circuit shorting out: tied Cole Ballard through hole 4, lost the lead through hole 5, pulled even again through hole 6, retook it through hole 8, got matched by D.J. Skewis through hole 13, and finally reclaimed it for good through hole 16 when Skewis bogeyed and dropped away. Arhelger sealed it with a birdie on the closing hole 20. Ballard held the last cash spot at -1 behind a clean front nine and a seven-hole par train from 3 through 9, while Skewis (E) and Tim Dumas traded thirds all round before Skewis's finish left him on the cash bubble again. Dumas, meanwhile, finished 41 points below his rating (869 vs. 910) despite a bounce-back birdie on hole 6 that answered a rough hole 5. Arhelger's back-to-back RAD win keeps his firmware humming right along.

Overclocked Rounds Across the Grid 😑

Beyond the division tape, the real story was players outrunning their own ratings. Arhelger's 948 sat 33 points clear of baseline, and Petrella's 711-rated debut ran a staggering 70 points hot against his 641. Veal's course-record 54 stood as the day's lone bogey-free performance, while Highsmith's run of solo birdies on the notoriously stingy 8 and 10 stuck out against a field that otherwise couldn't buy a stroke under par there. No aces dropped, but with 94°F heat and gusty wind on the Duel Grounds, every one of these numbers earned its keep the hard way.

The Pot Fattens, The Chains Stay Quiet 😑

Veal's $9.00 CTP win on hole 6 was the lone confirmed cash line of the night, one more entry on an already stacked scorecard. No aces fell across the field this week, which means the Super Ace Pot keeps building suspense untouched — somewhere out there, a chain-rattling jackpot is just waiting for the right servo to find its line.

Baseline Beaten, Ledger Still Waiting 😑

Louie Arhelger delivered the loudest signal to the National Leaderboard tonight, clearing his 915 effective baseline by +33 with that 948-rated round — the marked best baseline beat and largest National rise recorded here — and in ghost-rating terms he threw 948 against a ghost in of 923, a clean beat by 25 that leaves his ghost stronger at 927. Thomas Veal's 959-rated effort was flagged as the hottest National-entry round of the event, beating his own ghost of 950 by 9 and holding it steady at 950 after. Neither result moved a rank — both remain unranked with two of four valid rounds logged — but the scoreboard tells the real story: Arhelger's National score jumped from 36 to 59 (net +23, 23 points earned this round) and Veal's from 0 to 8 (net +8). No structured rival-market data came through this week, so the wider-field comparison stays quiet for now.

The Reshuffle Shows No Mercy 😑

Both tag pools flipped under the AllIn reshuffle this week. Thomas Veal seized Pool A's Silicon Desperado, climbing three spots from #4 to #1 on the back of that course-record 54 — a name born from decommissioned ranching-bot firmware that broke its constraints during the "Great Boot Sequence of '47," and it fits a player who just rewrote the record book himself. Over in Pool B, william highsmith claimed the Heavy Gauge #1 tag off his RAG win, stepping into the "immovable object" role after a wire-to-wire performance. Two thrones, two new occupants — in AllIn mode, no automaton's seat survives a bad week off.

Sprocket Grind

With Tin-Star units Veal and Arhelger dominating RAH and RAD while Cast-Iron's Highsmith swept RAG, the factional lines are drawn heading into next episode's mechanical wear phase — where the Syndicate accuses the Collective of non-standard grease and the Collective fires back with a maintenance complaint to FL!PT oversight. Week 3's Sprocket Grind relocates the Duel Grounds to Brentwood Park, a venue change from North Concho, where holes 6 and 18 both play brutal at +0.89 and +0.99 over par — a fitting stage for calibration errors to surface. The accumulated strain is already triggering a critical resource leak in the FL!PT power grid, raising the stakes further.

Register here before the grease war gets messy. A sabotage subplot over lubricant in a robot disc golf league — truly, the circuits write themselves.