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Avi Cavale (black shirt) and Valeri Kim face off in the 2014 GeekWire Ping Pong tournament expert division championship.

Seattle’s finest ping pong geeks were out in full force last week at our annual GeekWire Ping-Pong & Foosball Championships during the GeekWire Anniversary Bash in Seattle. But after more than 100 matches, only two players walked home as champions — and a sweet gold 3D-printed medal hanging around their necks — when it was all said and done.

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Avi Cavale of Shippable won his second straight GeekWire Ping-Pong Championship.

In the expert ping pong division, it was Shippable co-founder Avi Cavale defending his 2013 title by taking down Akvelon’s Valeri Kim, the 2012 champion who couldn’t quite keep up with Cavale’s laser-quick serve.

“The only option I had to win was to get a quick lead and keep the pressure on,” Cavale said. “That’s basically what happened. Once I had the lead, he had more stress. It was the exact opposite of last year.”

In the post-match interview, Kim said that Cavale’s tricky serve was technically prohibited 15 years ago, but in the spirit of the friendly competition, he opted not to protest. Ping-pong experts can judge for themselves by watching Cavale’s serve in the highlight video below.

Over on the intermediate bracket, Shuvadeep Chakraborty of AFour Technologes came back to defeat veteran competitor Minh Le of Silicon Valley Bank in a thrilling third-game match. Chakraborty said he had to adjust his pace of play after losing the first set.

“He’s a very fast player,” Chakraborty said of Le. “I just slowed the game down a little bit.”

Check out highlights from each match below, and here for more pictures from the one-of-a-kind event that has become an annual tradition in the Pacific Northwest tech community.

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