This was originally a post by Maverick in what once was the Tradewars Egroups forum before egroups become a part of yahoo. The post has been altered to be fit the web form.

Just to close the record, the first BOTE was held in 1998 and the FEN team dominated that first game , (check for yourself) until there was no one else left alive in it. And we're not talking about how FEN took someone's planets or something stupid like that. We're saying there was no one else left in a ship when you did the CLV. The team was CEO'd by Monday, consisted of Hosem, Cruncher, Maverik, Budweiser, and Macahan.

Zoobar and Maverik came up with the idea originally on a place called Keynet many many years ago, they had many late night battles where they would stay up photoning each other (Maverick usually nailed Zoobar 2.5 out of 3 times...(according to himself)). Then, several years ago they brought it up again on Fament one night. For the record Zoobar and Maverick came up with all the original rules and ideas of how they wanted the tournament to run, the requirements to get in, etc. etc. They then proposed the idea to Gypsy since he was (still is) one hell of a promoter, he had a web page which had a large viewing audience, and he also had access to a mbbs board.

Gypsy basically took it from there, doing all the publicity, he took care of the game settings and all the registrations, which worked out great since Zoobar and Maverik both wanted to play in it. Gypsy deserves a lot of credit, it probably wouldn't have happened without him, the idea and theory was Zoobar's and Mavericks.

Mavrik are not claiming ownership of some stupid tournament game. However, Maverick didn't want to see the idea of something which was supposed to be held sacred, above all other tourneys trashed by a couple people who just want to hold another tournament. The game was supposed to be an invitation only tournament to which any BBS who had TW could send a team of players representing their respective BBB's. How they came up with their team was totally up to the individual BBS, democracy, monarchy, no one really didn't care, just that each BBS only got to submit one team. It was originally by design supposed to be a tourney for the best of the best, where you weren't necessarily playing with the players of your corp, but where you united with your enemies to give your home board the honor and fame it deserved. This probably sounds pretty stupid, but it was supposed to be an honor thing, not many people get that anymore.

Now you have an idea what BOTE is and where it came from and why we are holding it annually.