# IFPA 2018 National and Women's World Championships - Part 8 of 10 **Source:** IE Pinball **Type:** video **Published:** 2018-05-13 **Duration:** 112m 3s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NiJVI8_S1U --- ## Analysis Coverage of IFPA 2018 National and Women's World Championships (Part 8), featuring semifinal and quarterfinal matches across multiple games including Metallica, Game of Thrones (Premium Edition), Iron Man, Sorcerer, and Barracuda. Notable competitors include Escher, Colin McAlpine, Kyle, Preston, Carrie Wing, Karen Kaiser, Louise Wagonsoner, and Hannah Hatch. The broadcast includes detailed rules commentary and gameplay analysis. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Escher claimed he's never broken six million on Metallica that day — _Tim Sexton commentary during Escher vs Colin Metallica match_ - [MEDIUM] Carrie Wing is a former circuit champion, won at Cactus Jacks — _Broadcast commentators discussing Carrie Wing's background during women's semifinals_ - [HIGH] Ray Davidson defeated Tim Sexton decisively in earlier match — _Tim Sexton's post-match commentary about his loss to Raymond Davidson_ - [HIGH] Ball saves were not enabled at Nationals per tournament rules — _Commentators discussing ball save settings on Iron Man: 'Nationals, it's safe to assume you do not have ball saves'_ - [HIGH] Sorcerer is a two-ball multiball game with always-lit locks — _Rules explanation during Carrie vs Karen Sorcerer match_ ### Notable Quotes > "That's the game I want to play. If you tilt it out, it kicks out another ball for you. Reward you for being handsy with the machine." > — **Commentator (unnamed)**, Early match commentary > _Commenting on Barracuda's insurance ball feature as a unique design element_ > "You know what I don't like about this game? I'm too short to see if I still have ball save." > — **Tim Sexton**, Iron Man practice/match commentary > _Humorous observation about Iron Man visibility/ergonomic issue_ > "Barracora is one of the best solid state Harry Williams games. It has rules that make absolutely no sense, which makes it fun because it's like nothing you've ever seen before." > — **Commentator (likely Bowen or experienced rules expert)**, Barracuda match introduction > _Characterization of Barracuda's unique and obscure rule set_ > "If you lose with that [1.2 million], you just shake your opponent's hand." > — **Commentator**, Tim Sexton match recap > _Comment on competitive balance and scoring expectations_ > "Back in my day, these kids used to respect us old guys, and now they just beat us up at tables. I guess we have to live with it." > — **Tim Sexton**, Metallica commentary > _Self-deprecating comment about generational skill differences in competitive pinball_ > "I like how this Metallica setup... I like the disabled drop targets a lot. Yeah, I like that as well. I feel like it's safer." > — **Tim Sexton and co-commentator**, Metallica match analysis > _Technical commentary on tournament setup choices_ > "Super jackpots, these are the things that win you the game [on Iron Man]." > — **Commentator (likely Tim Sexton)**, Iron Man strategy discussion > _Core strategy insight for Iron Man optimal play_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Escher Lefkoff | person | Competitive pinball player competing in IFPA 2018 Nationals, playing Metallica against Colin McAlpine in semifinals | | Colin McAlpine | person | Competitive pinball player in IFPA 2018 Nationals, playing Barracuda and Metallica in semifinals | | Kyle | person | Competitive pinball player in IFPA 2018 Nationals, playing Aerosmith and Iron Man; involved in tournament bracket management | | Preston | person | Competitive pinball player (noted as Louisiana State Representative) playing Iron Man in semifinals against Kyle | | Tim Sexton | person | Stern programmer and pinball rules expert providing commentary; competed in IFPA 2018, lost to Raymond Davidson in earlier match | | Carrie Wing | person | Competitive pinball player from Kansas, former circuit champion (Cactus Jacks), playing in women's semifinals on Sorcerer | | Karen Kaiser | person | Competitive pinball player based in Sweden, playing in women's semifinals on Sorcerer and Game of Thrones (Premium Edition) | | Louise Wagonsoner | person | Competitive pinball player, advanced to women's final four, playing Game of Thrones (Premium Edition) in semifinals | | Hannah Hatch | person | Competitive pinball player from Seattle, advanced to women's final four, playing Game of Thrones (Premium Edition) in semifinals | | Raymond Davidson | person | Competitive pinball player who defeated Tim Sexton decisively in earlier IFPA 2018 match, advanced to final four | | Adam Becker | person | Competitive pinball player in IFPA 2018 Nationals, playing Barracuda in semifinals against Colin McAlpine | | Chris Stevens | person | Competitive pinball player advancing to round of eight in IFPA 2018 Nationals | | Karl D'Angelo | person | Louisiana State Representative and competitive pinball player advancing to round of eight after defeating Preston | | Metallica | game | Stern pinball machine used in IFPA 2018 tournament; disabled drop targets noted as tournament setup feature; playing surface praised by commentators | | Game of Thrones (Premium Edition) | game | Stern pinball machine used in women's semifinals and final four matches at IFPA 2018 | | Iron Man | game | Stern pinball machine used in semifinals; features Monger mechanic, soft plunge strategy, easy drains, slingshot sensitivity; no post at top of plunge lane | | Sorcerer | game | Harry Williams solid-state pinball machine used in women's semifinals; two-ball multiball with always-lit locks, left ramp primary strategy, 5x playfield multiplier in multiball | | Barracuda | game | Harry Williams solid-state pinball machine; rules described as making 'absolutely no sense'; resettable drop targets, individual lane controls, three-ball and two-ball multiball options | | Aerosmith | game | Stern pinball machine used in semifinals; noted for difficult-to-read display on camera | | IFPA 2018 | event | International Flipper Pinball Association championship tournament with National and Women's divisions; broadcast coverage from Part 8 of 10 | | IE Pinball | organization | Broadcast organization providing coverage of IFPA 2018 tournament | ### Topics - **Primary:** Competitive tournament play and strategy, Game rules and mechanics (Metallica, Iron Man, Sorcerer, Barracuda, Game of Thrones), Player performance and match results, Women's division competition - **Secondary:** Tournament logistics and bracket management, Playfield design and machine modifications (disabled drop targets, LED additions), Broadcast production (camera issues, display visibility, player photos), Harry Williams solid-state pinball legacy (Barracuda, Sorcerer) ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.75) — Tournament coverage is professional and enthusiastic. Commentators are engaged and appreciative of gameplay quality. Occasional frustrations with technical broadcast issues (visibility, bracket updates) but generally constructive. Community is collegial; Tim Sexton shows good humor about his loss to Raymond Davidson. ### Signals - **[sentiment_shift]** Tim Sexton positive about Raymond Davidson's skill despite losing decisively; gracious loser attitude supports competitive community health (confidence: high) — Tim's post-match commentary: 'He's a good player, so I guess he deserves it' despite acknowledging decisive defeat - **[competitive_signal]** Metallica tournament setup includes disabled drop targets to increase safety of Grave Marker shot; enables Crank It Up advancement without drop target danger (confidence: high) — Tim Sexton and commentator discuss disabled drop targets as tournament setup choice, noting safety improvement for first drop target - **[competitive_signal]** Sorcerer strategy centers on left ramp multiball access as primary scoring path; short plunge technique viable for drain avoidance; 5x playfield multiplier critical in multiball (confidence: high) — Rules explanation and match play showing emphasis on left ramp locks and multiball as dominant strategy - **[competitive_signal]** Iron Man meta emphasizes bogey scoring before Monger activation; soft plunge strategy to avoid Monger spinner; super jackpots and Monger raises determine game outcomes (confidence: high) — Detailed strategy discussion showing both Kyle and Preston pursuing identical bogey scoring path before Monger activation - **[design_philosophy]** Barracuda characterized as Harry Williams solid-state with intentionally obscure and counterintuitive rules; drop target order resets praised for creating unique gameplay dynamic (confidence: high) — Expert commentary: 'It has rules that make absolutely no sense, which makes it fun because it's like nothing you've ever seen before' - **[event_signal]** IFPA 2018 Nationals logistics: women's final four advanced (Louise Wagonsoner, Hannah Hatch, Carrie Wing, Karen Kaiser); nationals and women's divisions ending same night; Pin Masters tournament (Stern circuit event) beginning next day (confidence: high) — Broadcast announcements of women's final four advancement and next tournament schedule - **[technology_signal]** Tournament broadcast management issues: camera malfunction prevented player photo documentation; reliance on IFPA profile pictures as workaround; bracket tracking software coordination with broadcast display (confidence: high) — Repeated commentary about camera malfunction, use of dated IFPA profile photos, requests to update bracket display --- ## Transcript All right, so we have Carl and Preston on Aerosmith. Carrie and Karen are coming to Game of Thrones. Adam and Colin, Barracora, where would you guys like to go? Let's let the fans decide. And while we're figuring that out, I think we can announce the final four for the women's division. And we've got, no, yeah, we've got all four now. Louise Wagonsonner just claims the final spot, along with Hannah Hatch from Seattle, Carrie Wing from Kansas, and Karen Kaiser, based in Sweden these days, I believe. All right, the chat says Barracora, so. We saw Barracora, though, didn't we? Oh, well, that's what they wanted. It's a different group. It looks like Colin MacAlpine is player one on Barracora, and he soft plunges. Oh, interesting. you don't validate the play field if he's soft-plunged, and then you can just make sure you can pick off some targets. So he's post-passing. So Adam's player one, correct? Colin. Or Colin, I'm sorry. Looked right at him. He did not manage to collect his bonus or lock a ball, but he does get four and six lit. There is the lock. So now he's got the insurance ball up there, meaning that even if he tilts that, or not tilts that, that would be different. Even if he drains out of single ball play, it will kick out a round, but there's no gate to stop it. That's the game I want to play. If you tilt it out, it kicks out another ball for you. Reward you for being handsy with the machine. It's funny, we were talking earlier on Total Nuclear Annihilation has a mystery award. That it won't actually award, but it says disqualify other player. Something to that effect. It says DQ the other player. That's funny. Oh, misses another chance to collect the bonus, which is getting pretty big these days. He's got all the lights. The chat keeps asking for Iron Man. I'm not showing anybody currently playing Iron Man. We're really limited in what games are available to us right now. I have Colin and Escher on Metallica, Carrie and Karen on Game of Thrones, and Adam and Colin on Barracora. He just wants to see the Iron Man play field. What does it look like? Just stare at it. Yeah. And we have Carl and Preston on Aerosmith. Keep in mind that we have the different parts of the bracket going at slightly different paces. So Raymond is a little bit ahead of Adam and Colin, which is the winner of whom is going to be next opponent. They all want Colin and Escher, so give the chat what they want. That was Metallica, right? while we are changing games i will also put a fresh voice in your ears um tim sexton is going to join you and i'm going to take a break so here you go oh tilt there unfortunately tilt there for usher welcome to the booth the new stern programmer tim Sexton. He's had a great match against Raymond Davidson. We were saying 1.2 million. If you lose with that, you just shake your opponent's hand. Yeah, he really rallied on ball three to come back and get the points there. We had a good matchup. We both had bad games at the same time and good games at the same time. Who are we watching now? This is Escher and Colin. Looks like Escher is player one. So how'd the rest of your day go? Pretty good, because I made it to the top eight. Yeah, it looks like you had a familiar match with Alberto. Yeah, we were both representing New York through different states. Funny how that works. And a nice seven-game match with Chris Compton. Chris, I play a lot, too, because he was on the East Coast. And now we're seeing... I like how this Metallica setup... I like the disabled drop targets a lot. Yeah, I like that as well. I feel like it's safer. The first drop target can be nasty. Unfortunately, that won't come out in Ball Search. It's nice because... You know, people are afraid to go for Grave Marker normally. and it's a lower scoring multiball than Sparky. So it kind of gives you two reasons to avoid it, but now it's worth going for because you can use it to light crank it up. Exactly. Did you guys try backhanding that long shot? To Gravemarker? Yeah. Yes, it is pretty easily backhandable. Okay. Yeah, I was doing it. It's very early. It's like right after the post pass, but it's a nice return to the left flipper. Right flipper was fine for me, too. I was shooting neither flipper. Yeah, I went with the forehand every time. Yeah, it's not quite right ramp on Ghostbusters early, but it's pretty early. So what's the, so Esha's up 3-1 now? Yes. Yes, for Representative Brian Shepard here. Ball stuck. Okay, and he will get that back thanks to fine CERN programming. Thank, I don't know who to thank. Thank our system engineers. This location has some very beautiful games. Some of them are modded out nice. You can't really see it well. Well, maybe you can. The LEDs on this one that highlight the plastics above the sparky and the gray markers. The X-Men has some LED lights in places as well. Beautiful games, well maintained. Now, this is a pro, too, but it has the running light of the limited edition, right? those long lights on the side those strips I think those are LE features that were added to this Pro don't know what I'm talking about I see what you're saying but I never noticed that a lot of modifications a lot of LEDs but it plays nice and Colin has started his grave marker multivale So he did, first he went to light the Adaball. Yep. And not going to get it back. So he needs snakes, which that helps, and he needs coffin hits, which aren't crazy dangerous on this. Yeah. I barely pulled it out, though. So Escher's back up. He was claiming he's never broken six million on this game today. Interesting. Escher's like one of the players that the more he plays, the quicker he adjusts to it. So that's kind of surprising. All right. The chat room said that's the Creeping Death Light mod. It's not part of a normal LE. Still pretty cool. The women are going for the short plunge. The women's Final Four is underway. Both groups are playing Game of Thrones. They're going to be playing Game of Thrones. Carrie and Karen are on it now. Louise and Hannah following them. So we have a long night ahead of us still. two more rounds of women, three more rounds of nationals. More pinball, it's better. Very nice. Asher going after Gravemarker as well. I like that strategy. I think, especially when you have, when you need 15 hits to start Sparky, and it's, I think, five to start Gravemarker. Like you said, I mean, it advances, crank it up, which is extremely valuable mode. You need one just to light the grave markers for your crank it up and then just seem to flow from there. The beat out of it was so nice. The nice thing is you don't lose any progress if you drain in the middle. It's one shot left. It's one shot left. So he's got his head ball ready on the snake. Oh, man. There's really no grace period on the add-a-ball, so if you miss it, it's gone. And danger undone. Can't see his score. Yeah, it's too dark. There's all these mods to put lights in the game, and the score is the thing that we can't see. So these two, Escher is 15 now? 14? 14. 14? And Colin is 15? Sounds right. You know, back in my day, these kids used to respect us old guys, and now they just beat us up at tables. I guess we have to live with it. I'm fine with it. As long as more people keep playing the game, go ahead, beat me up. I'm old. Saquon has a decision here. He could go for a multi-pull, or he could just wail in his coffin. And with that post-pass, I'm not sure what he's doing. It looks like he's trying to... He has a plan in mind, and it looks like Sparky. Yes. Wow. That should be gone. But too dangerous. It's a stern. They don't tilt. Yet. Yet. Letting that tilt. Letting that settle. That was a big move. See, I wish I could see the DMD to see how many hits were required. He just took one shot at it. Yeah, that's good. There it is. And this crank it up slip. How he's going to get it, that's how you draw it up. Metallica letter bonus. That's the way I like to go. I like to crank it up before any multiball because crank it up could be worth so much more than any multiball. Plus you could use the multiball after it to get to the next one rather quickly. But because he's so close to Sparky, I think he really wants that to happen this game. Yeah. And this locks him out of that. But he's hitting shots right now. Oh. Isn't that, yeah, unfortunate you get into that. really wizard mode. And... Still puts a lot of pressure on Escher here. Yeah, because Escher played his multiball already, right? So he's not really close. I mean, he has six shots to another grave marker, which is always worth considering. He has six more shots to his snake, I think. He may have backhanded snake. Yeah, it looks like he's going for snake multiball. And he hasn't hit it yet. He's going for it with every possible way he can. There we go. I lied about how many snake shots he had left. he has to open it three more times, four more times, something like that, and hit it. Well, there he's finished the snakes for crank it up. Sparky. There it is. Okay, he's definitely going for crank it up. I like this strategy. I mean, he's kind of in jail otherwise. He doesn't have a whole lot of progress anywhere else. And Only four shots per item. It's not too bad. Oh, nice, Dave. Boom. It's lit. Oh, and then the scoop gets so tough to hit. Oh. And the walk of drain. The walk of drain. That'll make it 3-2, Escher Where are we going to go? Game of Thrones? Let's go to Harrison Carl and Preston appear to still be playing it So we'll Not going to watch the women's semifinals? They're getting close Yeah, Carrie and Karen are coming up on Metallica Oh, on Metallica, okay So Luis and Hannah are playing Game of Thrones now So let's look a little bit at the final group of, what is it, the group of eight? No, there's still a group of 16. Chris Steven still waiting to find out who his opponent will be. Oh, yeah, Carl and Preston are still playing. Okay, so they will be going to a game seven. So do we want to find out where they're going and follow them? Yeah, let's do that. That looks like about how bad Adam Becker beat me earlier on that game. About $100-something million to $5. That was fun. Wow, look at these great attract modes and stern pinball machines. Buy one today from your local distributor. Just remember, when you couldn't read the displays on Aerosmith on camera, this one's gotten better. Yeah, the Carl Zoom In Cam helps a lot. Okay, Carl and Preston are going to Ironman, so that's where we're going. Ironman. Ironman. They'll have their warm-up time here, 30 seconds each. So what kind of game is this? Iron Man. An easy one? Who manufactures this again? No, I wasn't going in that direction. I was just going to go for a rules overview. I played it once. I didn't play it well. It punishes you for missing, like every Iron Man. Actually, yeah, punishing me for missing. Actually, all two of my three Janes were half-left ramp shots and went back down the middle. So luckily this is practice, so Preston's showing off how the game drains very easily. And now Carl's going to practice here. So these games do not count, but players are getting a feel for the soft plunge because... Why do people go for the soft plunge? I don't actually know on this game. There is no post up at the top, so if you plunge, it's going to go all the way around. The soft plunge, how do you choose to get your control? Do you want full plunge or half plunge? We need to put the names up. Oh, yeah. Let's do that. We're still not sure who's going to be player one. Let's see who steps up here. And it's three to three. Preston will be player one. So Preston must have chosen it. So there's usually two things people start for on Ironman. It's either shoot the ramps to get the bogey scoring round, or shoot the orbits, the spinners in the orbits, to get the ironmonger up. Can't tell which one Preston's going for yet. He's just trying to get control here. The slingshots are super sensitive, and the outlands are always huge on every Ironman. I see them really at canyons. Nice move there. Takes two, but still got a ball. And even when he beefs it into the side of the spinner, as long as it spins once, it gives him a Monger letter. So going around the orbit to start doesn't... You don't need to go all the way around the orbit to make progress towards getting the Monger up, but you do need to go around in orbit to actually raise him up as they hit a switch in the back. So it looks like he's trying to get now his bogey scoring going before he brings the Monger up. When the Monger's in the way, you can't shoot the left ramp. Almost impossible. But here it is. Oh, no, one more. Yeah. Gone. Good progress, though. It is good progress. Halfway to bogey. Monger ready. We'll have to be careful on this plunge not to start the monger. The certain plungers will hit the spinner and count it as a shot. Right, no ball stays at IFPA sanctioned tournaments. Unless you're Black Rose. Right. I don't know if it's a setting, but the Ironman we have locally in Minneapolis, you have to hit the center to open it. Is that... It is a setting. It's not enabled on this one. Yeah. Although sometimes it flashes brighter than the others, or it looks like it does. So Carl's also going for his bogey scoring before he breaks his ball. Wow. He's in the exact same spot as Preston. Same number of points, same progress on his multiball and his bogey. If he goes out right out line here, they might be tied. No, he brought the monger up. Okay, so he would need three right ramps at this point to bring bogey in. He's just going straight for it at this point. Yeah, that magnet could do crazy things on this one, too. In the games that I've been watching, I think I've only seen one drain off a monger. This one's not terrible. he is hitting it towards the side instead of head on. Brings his monger up right away. You know one thing I don't like about this game? I'm too short to see if I still have ball save. So I just never know on Ironman if I have ball save. I also stand pretty low. Kyle doesn't have ball save, so you will not get that ball back that went out the left out lane. Okay, that's three. Yeah, Nationals, it's pretty safe to assume you do not have ball saves. Pretty much at all times, yeah. And if you do, you shouldn't. Okay, one more to light super. Nice cradle separation. All right, light super, drops monger, up the middle for three million. Beef. And do it quick. Double beef. Oof, wow. No three million for Carl. Ooh, but a nice left ramp. Okay, he has bogey ready. Oh, it's not going to stay in. It's all right on this Ironman. Seven million. Good start. That was his ball one. Yeah, so there was no post there, so that ball went all the way around. And that'll bring up the moment. Right. Another reason I generally like shooting for monger up the center rather than the orbits is, especially if you have both of your war machine drone targets lit. if you miss their center, you will hit those and make progress on one or the other. I agree. If I was Crazy Levy, I'd be much more excited while calling this game. If you want, Tim, that is a touch screen. You want to touch things on it, light important shots. How do I clear? That's up to me. Oh, boom. I shouldn't have said boom. He beefed. All right. Carl drains out quick. Did he start his bogey scoring? I wasn't paying attention while I was drawing on the screen. I don't think he did. Okay. So he has that available. He needs a quick million or so. It's a good way to get it. Preston needs four hits. He has no ball save to get one or two real quick. He actually has to... Yeah, it'd be interesting to see what approach he takes here. He's only one away from Iron Man scoring if he wanted to do something unique. Fortunately, Iron Man scoring doesn't really win you games of Iron Man. It helps, but it doesn't win you the game. Super jackpots win you the game. Super Jackpots, Jerichos, these are the things of one games. Okay, Monger's up. Three more hits. Two more hits. Do or die. One more hit. And you don't have to care about where the shit hit is. Boom! Alright, he gets the Monger back up somehow. which means he can start hitting jackpots. Yeah, sometimes with that post not being there, you can trick the game with the plunges. Right. It seems like it just puts it back up for you no matter what. Okay, he's got one hit left to light the super, and I think if he hits the super here, he might move ahead of Carl. He's got a little bit of time to try it, and no, he's got an out lane. Five. Nope, that's going to put the end of it. Great run there by Preston Monclo, the Louisiana State Representative. Carl D'Python Anghelo will move on to the round of eight to play Chris Stevens. Yeah, that is the round of eight. And where are we in our women's tournament? She's in the semifinals. We are in the semifinals. We got Luis and Hannah are still playing Game of Thrones. But let's go check out Carrie and Karen on Sorcerer. They must be in their practice time as they only have one player going. As soon as I know which player is one and which is three, I will update the names here. You don't even know if this is practice or not yet. No, it's got to be because they're only playing one player, so this has to be the practice. Uh, Karen is up three games to two on Carrie. So where are Karen and Carrie from? Chat will know. I know Carrie's a former circuit champion. Hey, which one did she win? It was Cactus Jacks? Yeah, the southern ones. I think it was Cactus Jacks. Put the name that's in and fix them if I'm wrong. If you guys don't know how to play Sorcerer, what you do is shoot the left ramp. Then what do you do? no comment there's nothing else there's other things that flash and you can shoot them but you should shoot your left ramp too alright so Carrie's from Kansas uh Karen no information help us out chat room it might scroll past on Carl never thing So would you say that the ramp, basically multiball, is the strategy? I've also heard rollovers, multipliers, spelling sorcerer to increase your spinner, rip the spinner. I think those are all good things to focus on in multiball. In multiball. But I think if you're not in multiball, you should get to multiball. If you're not in multiball, do that. Yeah. If you are in multiball, do something else. Step one, lock a ball. Step two, don't leave it. Right. Yes. Although I've heard a few people say they locked two balls and left them. Wait. I don't know how that works. It should start multiball. Is it the two ball? Two ball multiball game. I think there's only two balls in the game. All right. Maybe that's not what they said. All right. Here we go. So there's one ball locked. and you don't have to qualify the locks in any way. The locks are always lit. Oh. Quick drain there. So, like Petey said, you shouldn't leave the ball in the lock because player two just has to hit one more ramp shot to get the multiball started. And it was very soft plungeable to get control to hit that shot. The player two plunge off there. as a reminder they play as player one and three so that you can't tilt through. Can't tilt through easily. Good point. You especially don't want to have two balls locked because then you have multiball. Yeah. You don't want to leave the opponent with two balls locked. That's for sure. So in the background, we have Adam Becker listening to music. Oh, here comes the ball. All right. Yep, there's a post pass right up the left ramp. So we're seeing our first multiball on Sorcerer. Now during multiball you can keep hitting the ramp everything is increased scoring I believe if you keep hitting the ramp more you increase the playfield X even more I think that's the rule I'm not sure but I heard it's a good idea to keep shooting the ramp because I awarded like 50,000 points Well the ramp also gives you multiball Yeah So now the 3X is solid so I think it's three times scoring until that multiball ends, which is way better than one X scoring. And now it'll be back to the left ramp, probably for both of the players. As we said earlier, whatever you do, don't lose your ball if you already have a ball locked. Mm. Confucius. So we are down to the final four in the women's bracket, and we have Hannah Hatch and Louise Wagons-Honor in the other match, and you're watching Carrie Wing and Karen Kaiser. And it looks like, yeah, it's three to two. Oh, that's a bad outline. Brutal. Right, so the multiplier during the multiball goes up to 5x scoring. Player 2 makes no effort to flip and doesn't exist. Player 2 has been playing really bad at this game all night. Yeah, I think so too. I don't know, I've seen games where Player 2 or Player 4 has done better than Players 1 and 3. That's always fun. Oh, the plunge game is beating me. Oh, nice save. Nudge it back into play. Oh. Yeah, so trying to get that ball cleanly on the left flipper isn't easy. Post-pass isn't easy. There's nothing that really feeds the ball down there, because if you hit it up that right spinner, it's going to go down the middle. There's a nice lock. Oh, nice save. And no tilt warnings. Does this game have warnings, or is it just tilt? I think it does have warnings. Something, maybe the way the play field flashes or something. I'm not 100% positive. Any news on Aerosmith? Yeah, they're going on tour this summer. The brackets should be updated, Jeff, but I'm not 100% sure. If they're not, you can blame Josh. Someone ramp here with star multiball? Nice shot. Boomed it? Smooth and easy. So there was talk earlier today that Josh wanted to take out that big silver piece where the multiball is and basically disabled the multiball. How would you guys have approached this game if the multiball had been disabled? Probably would have asked someone who knew how to play it if they had any ideas. Oh, that was a quick multiball. Yeah, multiball dream. However, she's still got a good commanding lead. So is this Karen player one? Is it Karen or Carrie? I'm not 100%. See, Carrie doesn't have a picture. No, she does. On the bottom there. Yeah. It's just far away. Picture of pinball machines, yeah. Basically what happened is the camera had a malfunction, so we were unable to do pictures of the players today. So Carl went ahead and borrowed their IFBA profile pictures. So some of these may be dated pictures, as was Escher Lefkoff's earlier. Yeah, I think he's like eight years old in that one. Yeah, I think that's what you were saying earlier. So that's why you're not getting clear pictures on some of the players. There's a nice lock. They're in Puppin Ball. Yeah. This is about 50-50. I think some people were able to get their picture taken here, and others, is there IP? Yeah, but I don't think Carl was using them. He didn't use any of them? I don't think, because I don't think he would have been able to, but I'm not sure. I don't know much about his software. So this is Karen. Yeah, it is? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Somebody had the names backwards. Our apologies. I blame Petey. I do, too. And Petey stepped away because I was whiny and needed food. And, yes, I was too lazy to go get my own. Okay, here's a nice chance to start the multiball and get the lead. Oh, on the fly. Nice shot. Nice shot. So during multiball, yeah, the first thing to do is shoot the ramp another two times to get up to 5x play field. The last thing to do is drain out the left out lane, but still starting at its good points. Yeah, I know. I mean, yeah, she's... Oh! Now, with bonus it may... Yeah, but even so, Carrie still has another ball to play. Right. So unless she, like, plunge drains... Which I did twice on this game, so I believe it's possible. Yeah, I think... I think there... Can you short plunge on this one? You can. You can, yes. Yeah, I think there was... According to my friend who's rapid-fire texting me, that is the strategy. I did not play this game today. I played it a handful of times. Actually, they've had this here for quite a while, so I did play it in 2015 at the March Madness tournament. I played it in the Buffalo Pinball Summer Open. It's a great game. Yeah. I've played it in Pittsburgh a few times, but it's escaping me at this point in the day as to when I did play it. Wow, that's really close now. So with bonus, I think Carrie would get it. Just don't tilt. Right. So I see four white lights. There's five. And it's... Oh, there it is. Yeah, there we go. So it's going to go to seventh match, so I think we should follow this one. Okay. Well, let's wait and see where they're going to go next, and we can go from there. It may take a minute or two to, well, we may have somebody going to. Brian, do you want to see where they're going next? I don't want to talk to them. I'll wait for them to come up. Okay. Meanwhile, in the other news, oh, wow, we finally have some people that have advanced to the final four in the nationals. Maybe we won't be here until 4 a.m. You can go to the Nationals bracket here. No, you can do it here. Okay. So, yeah, you can see Escher has moved on. Raymond has moved on. They're currently waiting for Adam Becker and Colin MacAlpine, which, let's see, that one's 2-2 if the brackets have been updated, and Chris Stevens and Carl D'Python Anghelo. And Draft, I don't know which one to root for there. I'm rooting for everyone to win. I'm rooting for myself to win. Oh, wait, I didn't play today. Next year. Except for Raymond, because he beat me. Yeah, that looks like a very decisive victory, too. The numbers only tell half the story. It was even more decisive than that. Raymond wins in Las Vegas too much, in my opinion. But he's a good player, so I guess he deserves it. So, what, do you think the bookies are... betting him to win or were? Let's go over-under on Raymond Davidson right now. I think you lose money if you bet on him. All right, we are going to Barracora because we are going to follow Carrie and Karen. So what can you guys say about Barracora besides its Barracora? Barracora is one of the best solid State Williams games. It has rules that make absolutely no sense, which makes it fun because it's like nothing you've ever seen before. Drop targets are all resettable individually, so when you hit them not in the correct spelling order, they come back up, and they're a huge part of the game. You want to drop your drop targets in order to light the locks. If you drop the left three, you light the saucer right next to the pop bumpers for a two-ball multiball. If you drop the bank on the right, you light the top lock, which can be a ball save or it can be a start of a three-ball multiball. It's really good to get that one lit, but it's really hard to get it up there and get all those targets down. They're a lot more protected by that rubber on the bottom. And the lanes are individually. The right flipper controls one, two, three. The left flipper controls four, five, six. You have to go through a lit one, two, or three lane to actually light four, five, or six below it. And those don't increase your bonus acts. No, no, they increase the value of other shots on the play field. They never return to the style of game at Williams where things do what you don't expect. But, yeah, it's awesome. The Nationals and the women's both end tonight. Tomorrow starts Pin Masters, a Stern Pro event, circuit event. so you'll be able to stay tuned and see some of this. Witty Kitty, we are actually on Carrie's game. This is just practice right now. Yeah. Each player gets 30 seconds practice before a game, and that went throughout the whole tournament. So I believe Carrie will be player one, and it's three to three, so we should update the computer to say that. I can't reach it. You're so needy, Tim. All right. So we have three to three. My curiosity question is, what are they listening to, or are they listening to anything? I've heard both sides of it. Some people listen to music. Some people just have them so that they're not distracted. They're listening to the Barracora theme song. And how does that go? I don't know. The only one I know is TX, so I can't do any others. That's only because it's in my basement and I hear it too much. I'm thinking the techno or death metal version of that. Oh, so Karen's going first. They're getting jacked up. So the order's wrong again. Karen's first. And she's going for her left target bank there to, like, bar B-A-R-R. getting three bars in a row will pay jackpot on winning lines here in Las Vegas and it also advances you to the two ball multiball which can be started in the left scoop the Williams targets on this game will go down unless you hit the sides of them then they just brick and stay up That's what I was hearing earlier. You just played this. That was your experience, too, is the targets have to be hit just so. They're not a challenge necessarily, but you get confused sometimes when you hit them and they don't go down. They're not like valley targets where you hit the front of them and they don't go down. So that lights the two-ball multiball. And it also advances the bonus X at the bottom. So you can see that one below the word super, there's a yellow 2X lit now. Oh, really close. Can you show us where the two locks are, Kevin? Yeah, so the one that you just shot at right above the top left pop-up bird, That's the lock that she can take right now to get the – oh, yeah, I can draw on the screen. Yes, we do have drawing abilities. Illustration. Yes. Okay, that's the first one. Now what's the second one? The second one is you have to shoot it all the way around here into the back to get the lock, but it also acts as a ball save. So even though Karen didn't collect that lock there, she will have it ready for her next ball. And it acts as a ball save because the lower eject hole will start a two ball, whereas the upper one, you still need to lock that lower eject in order to... Right. So the lower one always starts multiball when it's lit. The top one never starts multiball. Kind of a cool feature. Yeah. Different. So here's Kerry's first ball. The only thing really to go for at the beginning of the game is the targets on the sides. I mean, there's other points up top, but... Oh, gosh, that's a powerful sling drain. Sling, sling. Your score really increases exponentially on this game, because bonus becomes the biggest thing at some point if you have a long ball. That plunge ball was not happy. Every time I come, I run your city sling sling. In case you haven't noticed, it's been a long day. We've been here since 11 a.m. Pacific time. And both Ben and Tim did a lot of playing today. I wouldn't say I did a lot of playing. I was at the table a lot. I think I played a ball in this game for an hour and still lost. So that was a quick two-ball multiball. But Karen relit it again due to hitting the targets on the left side. Yeah, it appears that a lot of people have been just going after the left targets. I don't know if those were easier. Was that your experience? The right flipper is a little stronger than the left. The left is a little soggier. And, yeah, it's generally easier to just kind of take the multiball that's there. Even if you just go up top, you'll probably land in it sometimes. That's a saucer. It's pretty easy to land in. The pop bumper helps you out? Yeah, it does a lot. So can you not then lock a third on the top once you start that two ball? Right. Once you start a multiball, you can't lock the third. Wow, that was a nice save. Very nice save. That was like a three-flipper save. If only that third flipper were there. Oh, wait. Right, so when you go around that little loop at the top, it makes a huge light show, and it gives you, like, 5,000 points. It can be worth a lot, but you have to hit those targets in the middle that are not worth aiming for. And there's a rule where if they match, it's better. There's a lot of rules that, you know, if things match on this game, like, you're the same level of multiplier, you have the same level of whatever the pyramid thing in the middle is, you get better stuff. But, yeah, just play your multiballs. Light shows are cool. Yeah. There's music. Well, which game was it that had the light show underneath? I don't know. Yeah, one of the games in there had, like, this. Oh, the under-cabinet mod? Yeah, the under-cabinet mod. I've seen that on Star Wars. I mean, Spider-Man a lot. Yeah, but there is one in there. I don't remember which one it is. So inlanes are one bonus advance each. You're like, okay, whatever. That's 1,000 points. But you can get up to 25x multiplier. Wow. Oh, no. If you're looking for the brackets, you can find them at ifpapinball.com. They are live. Ifpa. Ifpa. Okay, so we're on ball three here. Karen has the lead. Has a multiball lit. Trying to get her lanes. Yeah, they're impossible. Pinball profile would never understand. Oh, man. That lipped out of the saucer. Usually it's been sticking in the saucer very nicely. All right, so for completing one, two, and three, the value of hitting that saucer is an additional 60,000 points now. Nice. Nice. Oh, so close. Yeah, there was some violent movement on Sorcerer from Carl. Oh, that's tough. All right, so is 76 to 245 still very doable on this? Yeah, I would say carry really needs to start with a multiball. A three-ball would be sweet, but a two-ball would be enough to get to it. And in the multiball, you do want to work on the targets on the side because you want to get your bonus multiplier up. So the right targets give you the green bonus X, which goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 2, 3, 4, 5. And the left ones give you yellow, two, three, four, five. They multiply together. So if you get five and five, it's 25. Oh, but that's it. Oh, that's tough. So Karen moves on to the finals. Finals. And that means we have one more semifinal match between Louise and Hannah. Oh, man. Let's see where we're at. Let's stop in and see where they're at. Yeah, they're currently 2-1. And let's see, Adam and Colin are 2-2. So congrats to Carrie. She's been playing since the start of the day. Yeah. Winning one, two, three matches to get to the semifinals. It's not easy. We haven't seen it enough today, and let's feature our – They're playing four queens. We're going to go to four queens. Four queens. Yeah, we are going to go to four queens. We will watch Carl and Chris. We'll watch half of Four Queens. Oh, yeah, it's a little out. Well, Carl's been busy playing today. Yeah. It's been a pleasure to actually watch him get to play. What you're not seeing right now. We can watch more Barracora where Louise and Hannah are going to play. Or I can try to move the camera. This may be their practice still. So you might have time to do that. He seems pretty casual. Oh, yeah, could be, yeah. Are we going to go on Boyer Court? Yeah, I knew. Okay, so are they? Yeah, they're 2-1. What you're not seeing right now is Chris has the flippers closed. Which kind of makes things a little bit easier. Yeah, this is their practice. And I hope someone's timing it. This is the regulation 30-second practice. and Carl should know that right somebody better be timing him than him there you get super negative bonus points if you go over 30 seconds we did watch some players today who timed their actual practice I guess we are following or we are switching over to Bear Cora watching Louise and Hannah I wanted to talk about Four Queens. The boss has spoken. The Nationals will be going for four more hours. Well, I don't know if we've been going. We're getting close. You never know. All right. So, okay, we are now going to watch Lee Sin Hanna back on Barracora. It's a fun game. I love this game. I don't think I've ever played it long enough to appreciate it. I think once you collect a sweet, maximized bonus, and then build it up again and collect it again, you go, wow, that was a lot of points. I like this game now. Once again, you've got to play it long enough to do that. So who has two and who has one? Let's see. Currently, Louise has two and Hannah has one. Okay. And Hannah is practicing now. So Louise and Hannah both started with buys at the start of the day which means they're what the top 8 ranked women in the world probably If they both had buys it would have had to have been the top How do the brackets work? Was it top 4 or top 8? Top 8, there are 24 players No, there was 16, weren't there? Not this year. They had the eight wild card spots. Oh, so they did drop them? Yeah. Top six got five? Okay. Yeah, the wild card spots for the... Oh, right, right, right. So have I been announcing that wrong all day? What's that? Did they do 24 or 16? No. 22. I know. Number of players total. Bear with me because I thought they did 16. Apparently, it was 24. Okay, my bad. So it looks like Hannah is starting now. For those listening to me earlier today, I apologize for screwing that up. It's the first B. You can't actually announce what the correct letter of the target is because there's several A's and R's. Yeah, it's odd. Right. So the multiball is lit, and that's a power outlay. This game does not let you relax at all. you're forced to hit these side targets and then it just goes into slingshots and rockets towards the outlanes. This is player two here. This is Louise not playing the correct player. And we're in the other room, so we can't tell her that this ball doesn't count. But this ball doesn't count. This is player two's ball. She's getting some nice warm-up, I guess. Yeah, Louise isn't playing her She's playing the player two Yeah Yeah, it looks like it Yeah, you don't want her to This is always upsetting because She's having a good ball Yeah And Brian let her know Oh, that didn't count Back to zero points Alright Now the score is flashing Yep no harm Well for her it might be You know, because who knows what... Right, so you usually get a plunge drain in this kind of situation. Hopefully not. No, I don't think so. Nice save. So far she didn't have any targets down. She hit that target back twice, but the drops will reset if you don't start with the A on the right side. That will almost knock the A down. It pushed it back, but it didn't knock it down. And, yeah. Oh, man. Very nice. Good saves, but... Just digging them. Just digging out every... Just missing the targets. Wow. So she hits her loop through the pop-up. That loop shot, oh, if that went around, it would have been good points. Okay. Through the spinner. Which comes into importance later in the game. Right now, not worth a lot. Nice, babe. Boom, there's the B. Nice save again. And she got the A on the right side, too. So good progress now. A went down, so you hit the corner, then it went down. She needs the double R target. Oh, man. But her multiball will be lit. Hey, she had a nice fall considering she played fall too. Yeah. Now, in all fair and square, do you have the intabera in order? Mm-hmm. So the targets would be those PKRRs, but you also get Zoom. In case you guys didn't know or in case you're just tuning in, we are not actually in the tournament room right now. We are outside of it, and we have an audience watching a large screen TV in front of us. So you may hear some questions and comments in the background. Yeah, and so lay off, guys. Lay off. I can take boom as loud as I want. They won't hear me. So Hannah starts a two-ball multiball. During this multiball, nothing particularly special is lit. There's no double scoring. Some people said there should be, but trust me, there shouldn't. The targets are still the thing to go for. You're going to build bonus multiplier. You're going to build bonus. And you want bonus multipliers, the key to victory on this game. So one more target on the right, the A, which he tried to backhand there, I think. And there's some points that you can't actually see. Oh, no, you can see them. I was looking at the wrong screen. Doc SS, if you have an issue with the rankings, take it up with Carl and Josh. I'm not sure how his software is pulling the information. Through the IPA API that Brian Shepard wrote. Oh, so we can blame Brian for it being wrong. Louise is really good. Oh, right out the left out lane. But I think, will the lock on top carry over? Will the top lock carry over for her next ball? Yeah, but she didn't lock it, but it's lit. Will that carry over? Okay. So Louise is up. She has her two-ball, multiball lit. She has big points available if she makes that little U-turn above the top right drop target right here. Because these two targets are at the same level. Starts her two-ball, multiball. The sound of delivery is making up on the microphones. Hang on, uh, alright, I'm going to step back out and turn this over to Pete because, well, you know, food. So, it's been a pleasure commentating and maybe these guys will actually give right facts considering I've been giving wrong facts all day. So, thanks guys, have a good one. Thank you. So, player four is being plunged off here. And it's a close game of Barracora. So Hannah still has that top lock lit. She can't plunge it. She has to shoot up here to actually lock the ball. Oh, that's tough. Yeah, that is very tough. So Luis needs what? $80,000. It's not easy. You don't have $80,000 available anywhere on the play field. You have... Yeah, you have like 20,000 on this target. You have a 1,000 bonus collect lit up there, but not much else. Really, to get these points, you would like to shoot the targets on the left or do that. Oh, it's not a lock, though. So that answers that question. It does not hold. She didn't light it. I don't think. I think Hannah lit it. Oh, but she did win, so. There's that match. That is a third win for Louise. She needs one more to move on to the finals against Karen Kaiser. and we will see what they're going to do next. There's other matches going on but this is only the national championship. Women are doing the world championship. It's interesting that they're both in the same venue. So you know where they're going yet? Chris and Carl. Or do we want to head over to Chris and Carl on Ironman? Someone's giving Carl bits. Thank you, NT Hits. Looks like Chris just got a super jackpot. Can't tell much on the scores on this game, but I can see a three million pretty well. Who are they going to Torpedo Alley? Barracore? That's where they get scores, so... Still thinking. Brian says Colin and Adam are 3-3. Oh, that's Colin MacAlpine. X-Men! Did Hannah defer? What's that? Hannah deferred the pick? No. Or not Lisa, sorry. Okay. They have Colin and Adam haven't picked the game seven yet. Okay, here we go. It is going to be Sorcerer. Game seven, we will go to that. All right, I'll be stepping out to get some dinner now. I realize I hadn't eaten yet. So good luck, guys. Thanks for sitting in, Tim. So this must be practice. Yeah, this will still be their warm-up session. 30 seconds Yeah, once this game finishes, we'll go to X-Men and catch back up with Luis and Hannah. Also going on right now, we saw briefly Chris and Carl were playing Iron Man. We have Karen waiting for the winner of Hannah and Luis in the women's. we have Ray waiting for the winner of this game seven and Escher is waiting for the Chris Carl winner don't worry Chad I heard you so Colin McElpine Pinberg 2017 winner Adam Becker 2016 winner is that correct I don't remember what year it's been 2015-2016 two very high level players game 7 I think all that ramp shot, I mean, if you can't hit it, it gets so tight, it's like the visor comes down, the lane closes up. Right. I mean, it is a little bit tougher with that rubber, wider rubber on the post there, but it's not terrible. It's been popified. 186 on his first ball. Good plunge there for the player to plunge. Adam Lefkoff is lobbying for a two-day event. We'll certainly pass that on to the Sharp brothers. I guess it was doing just fine. But in the age where we're squeezing two tournaments into one location in a few days, two days certainly makes it a little bit harder. Yeah, these guys that are making it to Final Four and the finals, it's rough even if you're in the 1 o'clock tee time tomorrow. I mean, you're really gassed out doing this much competitive pinball. So that's why I purposely flamed out early. That was my strategy. I really wanted to just do well at pin masters. Yeah, that's what happened. Good block shot there. I'll make sure he wants to get this so that he doesn't leave before Colin. He's going with the short plunge strategy. Oh, nice. That was pretty. On the fly. What do you think Adam Becker is listening to? I'm not sure. The chat is asking why the game is played as players one and three. The reason they do that is you can't tilt through that way. On some of these older games, it's really easy to tilt through, and that would result in an instant disqualification for the player that does it. This alleviates that. If you tilt through, you're tilting through a player that isn't in the game. provide some protection from the players. It's bad enough to lose your own ball on a tilt, but to be disqualified, if it can be avoided, it's better. Especially at this stage here. Coming into the booth, the booth is one of our final four combatants, Raymond Davidson. Hey, hello. Hey. Oh, man. Spirit, airline woes, let me tell you. I just had to cancel my flight, book a new one, and then right after I did that, they told me the original one was delayed three hours, which would have worked out if they did that a little bit ago. Oh, man. Yeah, but at least I get some sleep tonight. Probably rooming with Chris Chin. So you are not playing in Penmasters? No, I got to get back home. I did not get a spot, and, yeah, I just kind of dropped the ball on that. Yeah, it built up very quickly. Let me ask you this. When you were on the phone with Spirit Airlines, did they do a comedy routine? No. I feel like every time I'm on a Spirit flight... They usually do, yeah. Their thing is like... It's pretty funny. I've got to give them that. It's pretty good. I'm like, do they hire people directly from the comedy clubs? And they're just like, hey, come try your routine in the air. It looks like they're talking about the one in three players and the Kaylee rule and all that jazz. I guess they just really don't want tilt-throughs. Oh, I guess I should change the players, huh? So we got Colin as player one. And also, the other reason they do it is so that you don't get DQ'd for playing someone else's ball. Like, it reduces the chances of it happening dramatically. Because if you play the ghost ball, nothing happens. And it's understandable. A standard objection would be that you don't get that in a four-player game. In a four-player game, you tilt through, and that's pinball. So, you know, you can see it from both sides, really. But I think it's problem consistency and, you know, you just, when the tilts are this tight, it's just a decision tournament directors will make, I guess. I'm not sure if pinball profile is serious, but I actually do like Spirit in general. Like, they get the job done, and I can fly to Vegas pretty much whenever for, like, $130 from Seattle. So they're efficient. It's just you can't really change things. As you can see in the foreground of the group there, Hannah and Luis are playing X-Men currently. They are in the middle of game six. Are you guys bouncing back between the Open and the Women's Finals? Yes. So we got Colin and Adam. I get to play the winner of them, so I'll be playing a previous Pinberg champion. Yeah, previous Pinberg champion versus a previous Pinberg champion. I mean, against you, it would be the current world champion, right? Oh, yeah, that would be exciting. High-level players here. Watch us just completely fall apart. No scores. Will you guys just do a three-player battle royale? Can we just call it that? They're tied. Let's just do a three-way. Oh, man, these solid states are wearing on me quickly. Like the Barakora Slog and the Sorcerer Slog. They're taking a while. I had to play for like 15 minutes to catch 10 balls. Yeah, we had that game. Wonderful comeback. Played remarkably well in that game. Like 47 two-ball multi-balls later. Yeah. Can you just hit the jackpot and end this? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Apparently I was, I didn't really know, I need to learn my varicora better, but I finally did the right thing and got all the points. It was like they all came at once sort of thing. Do a ball to get Colin. Oh, no. 450. All right, so all he wants to do is shoot that ramp to start multiball, and the first thing he wants to hit is that sorcerer target to light the spinner. Then he can go to town getting 2x, 3x, and 5x, 2,500 spins, which can boost your score in a hurry. So there it is. That's the info I was looking for earlier. What do you do once you get into multiball? Yep, see how he hit that last little... So now he's got his spinners ready, locked and loaded for 5,000 a spin right now. If he shoots the ramp, they will be lit for 7,500 a spin. And if he hits it again, they'll be lit for... Math. 2,500 times 5. 6 something? 1,200. 1,200. 12,500 a spin. Got there. Oh, boy. All right. So if he was player two and he needed to catch someone, you would just kind of shoot spinners here, but he probably wants to pressure and maybe shoot the ramp to get his play field X up. Oh, no, he's just cashing in. He's just taking his 5Ks. Says he doesn't need any more. That's pretty cool. Oh, he saved it. Wow, that was nice. I didn't know you could save that. Pretty good. Hmm. There's points. Ooh, so now he's... So I wonder what prompted him to go for the ramp, and now he has 3x. Maybe get some padding first, you know, get some score, and then really put on the... The pressure. Colin is just so methodical when he plays. He has a very clear goal in mind to just crush all opponents. Looks like he was going for another ramp there. Let's see what he does. Maybe I do not want to pick this against him. Look at that. Juicy. All right, ramp. Come on. I'll see the 5x. Boo. A little forward and backward spinner action there. Yeah. He's averaging about 100k a shot, which is good. Now, if I were him, I would just shoot spinners. I wouldn't even try to get back to multiball, because then you're leaving a lock on the table. Yeah, look at him go. That left spinner he likes better than the right for some reason. I like the right, because it takes you up to the top to the lanes. It adds his bonus axe to it. Mm-hmm. Although, he's almost maxed his bonus axe. No. No, he's maxed his bonus almost, but he has no axes. So I would really advise shooting that right orbit. Bonus multiplier. He's thinking, giving it some good thought here. Oh, nice. We've got a question from the chat asking if some players like to play more on the fly during multiball and not trap up as much, and the answer is yeah. It's actually a good thing to do, especially at the beginning of a multiball with ball save. You just kind of, you know, shoot away because your time is precious. But even, you know, even on these games, it definitely helps to trap up. But if you know what you're shooting on the fly, you know, you can be pretty good at it. Chris and Carl have moved on to Metallica. They are now 2-2. Colin finishes with just under 2 million. I was a fan of the short plunge. Well, I was kind of on him. Yeah. Yeah. The worst part is, you know, now he has to wait for Colin to do his thing before he can redeem himself. I'm not sure if the chat was... Oh, the chat must be lagging. Wow, what a ball. After that Adam Becker ball. Sick burn. What's your favorite and least favorite here, says Pinball Profile. Whatever one I'm doing best at, clearly. I don't know. I love Black Rose, but this one plays like a... Game of Thrones, I put up a huge score on. Sorcerer is pretty fun All good choices No torpedo alley I just could not hit that Darsh Garn spinner I had it lit like And I missed it like five times If I ever find that spinner shot Be good to go on that game Alright Adam's up A lot of work to do Colin didn't leave him any locks So he's going to have to Do all the work himself I mean the door is kind of open 1.8 million. That's doable. One 5x multiball. Maybe like four or five x multiballs. Going to go with the short plunge again here. See, I don't really agree with that. He's so far behind, he kind of just needs to get whatever points he can get up top. I don't know. I guess it's fine. Usually when you're behind, you can take more risks sort of thing. Nice. There we go. Unfortunately, we're in a different room, so we can't see what's going on in the other games. From the foreground photo there, we can see that they are still playing, but that's about the best we can do for you here. Oh, man. That's tough. Is that it? Is Colin moving on? Yes, sir. Congratulations to Colin MacAlpine. Moving on to play Ray. What? I've got to get revenge from Tinberg. All right, we'll go head on over to the scoreboard. The X-Men game here and see what they're up to. I see Jim Belcido is in the building. All right, what do we got? This fence is killing. And we can't see the score, so... If they go somewhere else, it will be a game seven. Real good. Yancy B. was catching on with what I was attempting to say. Oh, just heard my name called. Good luck. Good luck, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Well, we're not sure what's going on with Luis and Hannah. The only game currently going on right now is Metallica with Chris and Carl. Looks like they may have just finished X-Men. Yeah, the game ended, but I'm not sure if that was Luis's victory or if they will be going to a game seven. Brian, is that victory for Luis or are they going to a seven? Hannah won. Hannah won. Gallons, they're going to seven. Okay, Hannah won that game. They will be going to a game seven. As soon as we find out what it is, we will head to it. I like it. A lot of matches going the distance here. 3-2, Luis. 3-2, Luis. Okay, it's not game seven. Correction. I thought that was 3-2 before then, but all right. So it looks like Carl has his crank. it up and he will take fade to black. Now making shots on this slowly dims out the play field blades and increases in value. increases in value. QC Profit, you're asking why there's women and men separated in competition. Technically, in this case, they aren't. Women can qualify for the IFBA U.S. Nationals. It's based off of winning your state or provincial championship. This year, no women did it. They also have a tournament for the top 24 players and women's that's going on at the same time, whether for convenience sake or whatever. It could be that someone could qualify for both and play in both. That did not happen this year. But Helena Walter was saying earlier that she hopes to do that next year. but yeah as the chat room is saying there are women's events to help spread the game to women our game seven is going to be our game six is going to be Torpedo Alley for Luis and Hannah so let's head there now So it's good to ask questions. This is how we learn things. I'm glad you're here watching the event. We haven't seen much Torpedo Alley today. This should be fun. Okay, they've had their practice time, apparently, because they got the four-player game started. And we're underway. Looks like... That is not Colin McElpine. Yeah, you can expect here I'm a little bit slow. So general strategies from what I understand on this is you want to... You got your banks of torpedoes indicated by the lights in the center You want to hit those three banks to light the locks And the locks are right there That was one where she shot around the orbit, and that lock's upper left. Reject. And then what's the other one, the ramp? Yeah, so ramp on the right side underneath the flipper. That beats that middle thing there. And that's also the jackpot, correct? The jackpot is that right ramp. Not sure. What do you mean? Okay, player two plunged off here. Yeah. We got funky fresh Fred Richardson coming in the booth. Listen. He was only coming on if we had the women's match. Seriously. We're down to Final Four, and you guys keep bouncing back to eighth place. Guys, matches. Hey, a game seven's a game seven. I hear you. Where are we at, gentlemen? I just got back to the house. We are playing Torpedo Alley. This is game six between Hannah and Luis. Unfortunately, we can't fade out those beautiful blue LEDs. Keith, who's got three at this point. Luis. Luis. Boy, Hannah's just been on fire today, hasn't she? Oh, my gosh. Oh, man. I have never seen her play and got introduced, realized she was part of the Seattle gang. And she's been up there playing, I guess, you know, with Ray and Chris and all those guys. And arguably the strongest scene in the country. here's the scene yes total group of players first or second to Chicago when you look at the Illinois State Championships that was the in my you know the strongest 16 you know in the country and unfortunately they were not represented here so am I getting controversial Maybe I need a drink. I don't think so. That's the beauty of this, opinions. Yeah, for sure. Everyone's got them. No, Seattle is an amazing scene. I was not knocking it at all. I just wanted to make sure I didn't say something out of turn. I love it up there. And as far as scene-scene goes, they have some of the best places in the country to play. And that's more what I'm, kind of my metric is just, you know, overall interest in pinball and competitive and location. I'll tell you what. And Add-A-Ball and Flip Flip Ding Ding are two of my favorite places in the country to play. Absolutely love them. And obviously you've got the history there at Shorty's. Been around for a long time. That ice cream parlor that I went to, I apologize for not remembering. The ice cream place, great location. Games played wonderful. You know, of course a great collection of great players. I remember sort of when Kaylee was kind of the guy up there kicking everybody's butt. Okay, anyway, I'm talking while the ladies are playing, so let's get back on the game. Louise is making a lot of shots here. She's just not sticking any locks. She hit one up the orbit, and it just didn't stick in. It was another one, not going to make it. That happens on this game. It's such a long shot. But, you know, it's the entire length of the game as well as wrapping around and dropping in that hole. But she is grinding out lots of points here just off of all the work. Well, she had a lot of good saves over there on the right and ultimately was. It's going to be a 20,000-point game or 40,000-point game here on one ball to play. Space City Pinball, at the state championships, the winner earns a right to come to this tournament. If the winner cannot come, it passes down to the second place finisher. They're the only two players that can represent the state for the tournament. That is correct. The Illinois representatives were Keith Elwin and Joshua Joshua Henderson. And while I can't say for sure why they weren't able to come, I imagine work and school. Correct. Correct on both. And that's what happened. And you know what? It's a good rule. And I'm sure Ben here can attest. I kind of stuck my nose in on the page in Minnesota when they were all getting ready to commit to your event. and I let you know that I wouldn't be making it this year and said, listen, guys, you know, if you're going to go play in this tournament, make sure that, you know, you can go to nationals. And I don't know. You definitely want to send a representative. Yeah. That's what we work for all year. Yeah. You make the top 16. You win the dang thing or you get second. I mean, do you have any idea how Josh and Zach Sharp feel right now sitting over there at that table not being able to play? They've already expressed that they're not really loving it. Yeah. All right, let's get back on this torpedo. They're doing an excellent job, though, running this event. Yes. A lot of fun. They could run it and play. One of them play, no doubt. And they're such a good team together. Again, did not go all the way around. They had to build up a lot of points here, though. She was racking that upper flipper. Oh, that was nice. You can do a two or a three ball on this, correct? Correct. Might be a good time to abandon the trying to hit that orbit block. That doesn't seem to be sticking. And kickback. Nice laser kick. She's working up her bonus up top there. I don't know what's coming up. Okay, so it was a very good ball. Ball two or three? It was two, wasn't it? Yeah. Or is it three? Yeah, 1.5. See, now they were doing it different than us. So when you play a match and you're playing players one and three, and you've got dead balls on two and four, and the reason we do this, of course, is so there are no tilt-throughs and no problems with that area of game that would affect the next player. The thing about it is I like it when you're done with your ball, you walk away. The next player comes up, does the plunge. They have to be aware, make sure they know it's not their ball. They do the plunge and do the faulty dead plunge and then play their ball. The reason I like that is simply just because, and we established this last year when we were at Nationals, we would do it that way because then that way you kind of get the feel for it. You're making sure you play and looking like we're over because we're putting scores up. So there's added kids in that? 3-3 now. Looks like Hannah. I never knew that. And the reason simply is, Virginia, is because then that way you're there. You're kind of getting that plunge. It's like a little practice. You get that plunge, and then you play your ball. Okay. And then when you're done, you walk away. And let them do their. Yeah, I know some ladies. And it might have been the game was over. But they were doing the, they played their ball and then they plunged. I'm not about that. So, are we taking a poll? Is that what's going on? Hi. No. All right. All right. So, Hannah won that, it looks like, and it's 3-3. Oh, love it. You know, it's like every round. So, Louise will get her pick. Going to seven. Going to seven. What has she been picking, do we know, throughout? I have Black Rose. I agree. Black Rose. Outstanding. All right. So let's go to Black Rose. Why don't we take a look? It looks like Raymond and Colin, Final Four, Escher. Fred, you had a beautiful game on Black Rose earlier today. Oh, thank you. I did. I forgot to watch that. That was a wonderful game. You know what? When that happens, when you're on screen and you have a good game, that's nice. Because too many times you're on screen and you don't. So, yeah, I'll take it. I enjoy it. Okay, here we are. Louise picked it. That means she's going first. I'm sure many of you have been here all day, so you've heard us explain the rules. But we'll give you a quick little run-through on this game. Fun nugget. Remember when it came out? Loved playing it. A lot of fun to it. I don't know why we didn't see it in tournaments. A little flaky. The cannons don't really work. The locks and ramps popping up and open. And the way that the ball, if you look at that circle right above the flippers there, that looks like a cannon. You can tell on it. I know. He's got to tell us later. Okay, so here, let's talk real quick. So this circle right here, the ball will come down and get caught in these ridges. and so a lot of times if you watch the match I play or other people play, you'll see the ball kind of get in there and do some funky stuff, so you have to be ready for that. Yeah, ruffle severages your pinball table should not. Correct. Sometimes they do, like we have a Harlem where the miler is a little bit flaky. So what happened? You have a miler on your Harlem? I think so. That might be the incorrect term. They are doing a 30 second warm up. Oh, they're doing their warm up. Of course. Okay, so let's talk rules real quick before they get started here. So rules and strategy. All right, you got four return lanes here. They spell L-O-C-K. You can move them. So of course, you can hit the return lane. One of the common practices is to go ahead and hit this whirlpool ramp right here, feed down here and spell your letters on lock. By doing that, you're going to qualify this shot right here for a locked ball. It lights up. You go ahead and hit the ball in there, and you're about to go into a two-ball multiball. During two-ball multiball, typically I'll fire it out fast. It goes up this ramp. You set it up. You've got time to try and keep hitting that ramp. Unfortunately, in my match, the lights blinked so much, I had a real hard time getting that on there. But during two-ball multiball now, you can go back up into this shot, lock one ball. You're going to get a short timer that's going to allow you to get a second ball locked up in there, and then you can get a three-ball multiball. That's a little bit of a strategy on that side. So the reason we do that. Oh, quick tilt. Ball one tilt. Ouch. I thought they were still practicing. No, it is extremely tilty. I got two double dangers. Fred, you're not one to talk about tilty. I am known for my gentle touch. There's no lie about that. Gentle. Feather Fingers Fred, they called me in grade school during our pinball tournaments back then. If you guys didn't watch some of the featuring we did on Fred earlier, Fred would get that double danger and then somehow just play that ball out and not always tilt out because just he knew how far he could push it. So skill shot on there. Hannah hit that. It's a three bank of yellow lights right there. It opens up your shot right here. I'm sorry I keep doing that. I just want everybody to know where we're going because I don't know the proper names. That locker opens up. You go underneath it, and it feeds your cannon. And that is when you get a chance to shoot that. Every time you get in there, you're collecting one of the modes that is on this strip straight down the center. I don't want to draw because she's playing so well. She's lighting her lock. One of the things we noticed on some of the players is they would hit that skill shot, let the ball drain because there was that ball save. Yes. And then they would fire it back up and hit Davey Jones' locker. So Hannah just went ahead and locked her first ball. She's going to get two ball, multiball. She didn't make it up that ramp. It will release. Once she hits, I don't know, I'm going to say three switches or so, it kicks out. I've never seen it stay in there that long. That's pretty crazy. Yeah, the reason there's a ball save fall time around there is because you cannot shut it off. I asked Josh about it, and that's what he told me. Okay, looks like she's probably going to go ahead and try and, yeah, drop in there. Lock her two balls. It's a nice cradle, and she should shoot from the right flipper and go. Well, what she's doing is she's hitting the ramp to collect letters in sink shift. This is really the main goal right there. You spell sink shift after your multiball is over. You're going to try and sink them. 20 mil is your first one. 30, 40, and that's where the game really starts to separate. His textbook, he is dialed in. Yep. And now her ramp is worth a million. She's on that whirlpool ramp. So there it is, one mil. And you can sit there and cycle that. It will time out when you miss it, but as long as you keep making it, you get a million on a shot. Not a bad backup strategy. That's good. Good nudge. Yeah, there's been some beautiful nudging today. So she is spelled lock. She can go ahead and lock up. She's also one letter away from sink ship, and that's really kind of what her goal is, go ahead and lock it. Catch. Did you see that little funky down there on the flippers? Yeah. You kind of got to just let it do its thing. Yeah, it's fun. All right. That was a good ball. She finished up with 11 mil. So, all right. Louise just needs to calm down, start over. Got two choices here. Well, you got three choices. You can either go ahead and hit that three-spot target for your skill shot, which will open up Davy Jones' locker, and you can go into a mode. Or you can hit it really hard, just like that. Of course, hers was open. That's why it went in there. Now she's going to get a shot from the cannon. I keep wanting to say bangerang. That's a different game. That would be hook. Yeah. Okay. She went for that center shot. It's the same ship shot. It's pretty tough. It comes out of that cannon hot. And so I realized that you kind of have to knock it a little bit going in there for it to land. And I got pretty lucky and was able to hit a few of those in a row. If you hit it too clean, it bounces? Correct. Correct. Because there's a cliffy on there, so it's knocking out. She's going ahead and trying to get her letters. You can also spot a letter too hard. Don't just let it go. Catch, catch, and settle down. Exactly. you can also shoot it into that lock shot and it will spot you a letter for your lock. It's actually a pretty safe shot, to be honest. Look at that. That's what she did. So now it will be lit. Comes out not too bad. It looks like it's coming out hot. I had heard my friend Adam Lefkoff talking to his son saying, you know, careful, it's coming out pretty hot. But to be honest, it's not bad. I mean, it looks fast on screen. You said sun? Sun. It's getting hot in here. Oh, good. Oh, yeah. Oh, look at that. Look at that. Nice little backhand. Wouldn't you miss that? Sweet. Great shot. There's a conversation going on in the chat about going first. I know John Replogle talked the other day, for example. There are some games you may want to go first. For sure. Twilight Zone, you want to check out whether or not the Powerball is in the top. She had two dangers. She had those two dangers, and she did a hard time. But Louise is definitely a physical player, and sometimes you lose track of the two. And honestly, she was in multiball, so there's not really a need for that. But she'll regroup. She's an extremely strong player. And then going first, someone in here mentioned the pressure. They don't like the pressure, and you can feel that from both sides. I mean, if you're player two and having to come back from behind, I mean, that's one kind of pressure going first. But really all you have to do is put up a big score, put a big number. Hey, if player two gets it, my hat's off to you. You know, and it's just two schools of thought. I think most people definitely prefer to go second, though. But there are some games, like I was starting to say, Twilight Zone. If the Powerball's in the trough, you're going first. Yeah, you're going first. You do not want to give that to someone else or hope that they drain that Powerball. So it depends on the game. Absolutely. Hannah is going to go ahead. There she goes. She made it all the way around the ramp. Oh, you're kidding me. I didn't even see the dangers. Again, during multiball. Did the game maybe not settle? Maybe, yeah, because she came back in the room. She may not have seen Louisa's tilt. It was kind of a push flip. It was a push flip. I didn't really see the danger, danger, unfortunately. She's going to get 60 seconds to let that game settle down. I know. I was going to say that. Could that have been a result of Louise's tilt? It absolutely could. You know, we call it the ATF, the accumulative tilt factor. Yes. And it just kind of sits there sometimes. Trademark. Trademark. And that's why you always, like Louise is letting the game settle, that's why you always let the game settle because that can happen. IPA has a rule, Papa. We are all one big family now. We have a rule, and it's 60 seconds, I believe. I see a lot of players. Two minutes. Is it two? It could be two. I don't play in very many. As long as you want, Josh. As long as you want. There we go. Okay. Yeah. Josh said she can wait as long as she wants to, so we're good with that. No, you'll see a lot of players put their phones up on the glass with the timer to go ahead and wait. Okay. So, Louise will be staring down a 13 million player two. She's walking into the ball with just over two mil. on a game like this, you know, to be honest, it's hard to get quick points. We're not seeing anyone go for the double broadside, though. Can you explain? Is that just getting started with the problem with it sticking? Has it been too difficult to go that strategy? A little bit, but I'll tell you what, and the reason I ended up having to score was because both my left and right flipper were hitting that hole, okay? And by flipper, this is hitting pretty well. By the cannon, it's coming right out. Okay? So here's the thing. You can collect your modes and your broadside and double broadside from going up in there and doing that. The only thing that you need to be concerned about is when the ball feeds and comes back down here. At first, my first ball, I didn't do anything because I let it kind of come off and see where it's going to hit. And it was a cluster. It was not nice. But if you hold up that right flipper, it'll come and it'll roll up that return lane. I'm not going to say you're going to hit the switch. I mean, I hit it like once and six, seven times. But hold that flipper up. Normally, I wouldn't because I'm scared of it jumping. But it wasn't at all. And it just came back and it fed real nice. So it was actually feeding to a trap. It would roll up the lane. Not a trap. Nah. Just a little control. Yeah, a little control. A little control. All right. I think we're coming up on two minutes here. So, no, I mean, with $2 million and $13 million, it's, what, three or four broad shots? You know what? I'll tell you what. You'd almost rather be down by $60. Right. You know, you'd almost rather just say, okay, I've got to go in there. I've got to spell some sink ships. I've got to sink two of them. I'm going to go out there and I'm going to work. Well, that's what I was saying earlier. Actually, it was down by, I think, $2 million. I said, you know, it's never a position you want to be in. You don't want to have to make just a few shots. If I have to make 30, I know what I'm going to do. Chop wood. All right, Josh, put on the lumberjack hat. I'm ready. Go ahead and let her know. She can start. There we go. All right. We back up to the plunger here. This is game seven, ball three. skill shot looks like she's lining up yep that go that now lights uh opens up her locker look at that you can hit that shot it's in there's your double broadside let's see if she goes for it she does and it doesn't stick and it drains right down the middle and what i uh that's a tough one that's what i actually what we were talking actually shoot for when I have it in there is that right there. Because it's nice and safe. And it goes in and it spots you a letter on sync ship. Okay. Well, we saw in that game that you still have about 170 in that game. I think so. I don't even know. And just three or four multi-balls. I mean, it's real safe. I left a ship on the table, though. I had a sinker. We have our final two for women. It'll be Hannah Hatch against Karen Kaiser. Karen took out Gary Wang. Wow. And as that's the finals, we will follow that through all seven games. Good. Wow. Kerry Wing is a phenomenal player and took me out in Oklahoma two years ago and then took our friend Donovan out and won it. And I think she was the first female Papa Circuit champion. She is an outstanding player. I have nothing but love and respect for her. But she's real fun to watch. She's just tough. She's a grindhouse. So that tells you Karen Kaiser is obviously an extremely strong player as well. I haven't seen her before this. You're talking about Tilt Bob cams in the chat. Was that Indisc? Yes. Yes, it was. The Tilt had a camera on there. Yeah, people definitely were just stopping and looking at the Tilt. Yeah, it's cool. I think it's awesome. If I could see that while I was playing, are you kidding me? Apparently, yeah, while people were playing. I mean, it's really rocking and rolling, too. You don't really realize how on the edge you always are. Yeah. Luis and Kerry will be playing a third-place match. That will be a best-of-three. Good. Well, just like last year watching Heliana win, I'll tell you what. I don't know if I should be embarrassed about this, but I definitely knew many more women playing here today than I did a lot of the men in the state championships. And I'll tell you what, the group in the field was just excellent. So it's been some great play. Well, we're waiting for the women to decide where they are going to go for their first game. Here's some Iron Man between Ray and Colin. Colin's on the deck playing. and looks like he's got his ramps going. He's got a bogey. And I'll tell you what, those ramps are not easy to hit, so even getting that far. And he shook it like it was a ball three, so it might have been. Nope. And it didn't tilt. Yeah, it was a ball three. Would you say that he shook it like a Polaroid picture? No, he shook it like a ball three. Okay. Where you just don't care and you throw your hands. Yeah, yeah. Somewhere. Born isn't going to get you there. Might as well. Yeah. It's like we got Mr. Chris Stevens over there. Yeah, let's take a look at this. Aaron Metallica will go there for a minute. Wait a minute. Colin Escher's over there playing, I believe. Isn't he playing Carl? Escher is waiting for the winner of Chris and Carl. Ah, it's Chris and Carl. Okay. That was my side of the bracket. Yeah, we definitely got, my match went four hours. I'll tell you what, one of the toughest matches I've ever had, and I played against a gentleman I had never met, but Preston, what is it, Monclo? Monclo, yeah. I'll tell you what, he's outstanding. He played great. And I did not lose, he won, and that feels good. You know, you did your best, and the guy grinded it out, and I know he took Carl to seven. He had Carl against the ropes at 2-3, and Carl came back on the last two. Yeah, I think Preston is a previous Hamburg B Division champion. Oh, is he? He plays very well. This is his third consecutive year here. He had won Texas two years ago, won Louisiana last year, and won Louisiana this year. So he was out here and played great. So here we are on Metallica. This thing's a monster. had a setup like we had it in disc where Sparky's on hard, 15 hits to get him going, yet the crank it up is actually easy with only five of the four tokens needed. I thought it was four of each. I think it's five. But it's only five crosses, five Sparky hits. Well, not five Sparky hits, excuse me, on the shots. snakes and coffins. The only thing that plays in that's kind of tough is that your crosses in the graveyard there, the inline targets are gone. So you actually have to go all the way up and hit the spot behind there to qualify that shot. I actually liked that. I thought that was safer after... Yeah, it's got some pluses and minuses. You know, the minus is you don't have the easier inlines to hit. which I tend to hit on the fly on the return from the right orbit. But you didn't have to grind through them if you wanted to start another multiball like you do, you know, out on the field most of the time. So, yes, only five to get to crank it up. And so you should expect to get at least one of those in your match. Is he in fade to black right now? Yes, he is. Well, it's fading to black. Yep. He's doing. Needs some crosses. Looks like value is at 46 million right now on the collect. Oh, he might want to go in there. What's his time? His time is fine. This is one of the longer modes. There it is. He's going to take it. Yep. plus the 5 mil for the extra, 2.5 for the extra. Add a little bonus to it. Boink. There you go. Give you another two. Oh, we're going to go ahead and take that. Boom and in. And that must have been a walk-off. I was going to say that must have been a walk-off. Look at that. Got a 118 on there. Yeah, he was player two, ball three. So, nice job, Mr. Stevens. Very impressive. Well done. Amen. _(Acquisition: youtube_groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 28f1e5e4-8139-428a-9bf4-e89fc712b032*