It's over. It took six judges, eight pizzerias, eleven hours, damn near 20 pizzas, and innumerable, yet-to-be-seen hours at the gym, but we did it and it's done. Here's how it happened.

We met at noon yesterday, the three original members of the Pizza Tour, Elliot, Dan, and Scott, as well as our most tenured guest judge, Kait, our once-original Pizza Tour cohort, Reaves, and Elliot's sister, Allison. We went to John the Baker, Hope Pizza, Ridgeway, and Remo's and asked them simply, "give us the best pizza you have." Then we took a much needed break because most restaurants interpreted our request as, "give us a bunch of really good pizzas and let us figure out which one is the best." Needless to say, by the break, we had a considerable amount of high quality leftovers.

After the break, we visited Stamford Pizzeria, Colony Grill, Amore, and Sergio's* Springdale with the same request, "all we ask is that you serve us the best pizza you've got." Again, most places found this to be as hard as a mother picking her favorite child and showered us with several phenomenal pizza pies (except for Colony, they gave us one). Seventeen pizzas later, we convened at Pizza Tour HQ in a scene straight out of Twelve Angry Men, arguing on behalf of the truth. The six of us ranked each restaurant's showing individually from first to worst, with the best receiving 8 points, and the worst receiving 1. These points were then totaled, giving us a clear winner for Best Pizza in Stamford in the Stamford Pizza Tournament.

Over the next week, we will count down our findings beginning with numbers 7 and 8 today and ending with numbers 1 and 2 on Thursday in hopes of filling the dining rooms of these establishments on Friday night with customers clamoring for one of the very best pizzas in town.

* Sergio's declined to compete, wanting nothing to do with the Internet, presumably due to the likes of Y2K, Napster, and the elf bowling virus.