# Final Round Pinball Podcast Ep 72: Big

**Source:** The Pinball Network  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2023-08-28  
**Duration:** 103m 21s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFz_cANeEh0

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## Analysis

Final Round Pinball Podcast Episode 72 features an extended discussion on running large-scale pinball tournaments. The hosts cover tournament formats (pump-and-dump, match play, card-based), logistical requirements, machine testing and modification strategies, and lessons learned from recent major events like The Beast. The episode emphasizes practical advice for tournament organizers including venue requirements, machine counts, game tuning, and community engagement.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] The three best tournament models to emulate are Indus, UK Open, and Yagpin based on scale and execution quality — _Host states: 'Those three. Okay. And I know you can't comment on this, but I would say you could add Brisbane Masters to that' - listing benchmark tournaments seen firsthand_
- [HIGH] Pinberg had approximately 400 machines for 1,000 players (40% ratio) — _Direct statement: 'Yeah, they had almost 400 machines in the banks. 400 machines for 1,000 people. Correct.'_
- [HIGH] The sweet spot for limited entry tournaments is players getting to play every game twice (acceptable), three times is ideal, more is gravy — _Attribution to Bob Matthews: 'The sweet spot, I've been told by Bob Matthews, is if you get to play every game twice, that's fine. Three times, you're laughing.'_
- [HIGH] The Beast tournament generated $15,000 in main event prizes and $10,000 in classics with winners receiving $3,000 and $2,000 respectively — _Direct statement: '$15,000 in cash and prizes... $10,000 in the classics... $3,000 in Maine, $2,000 in classics'_
- [MEDIUM] Stern Pro Circuit finals exclusively feature new Stern machines, not other eras, serving as a marketing tool — _Host opinion stated: 'It's always new Sterns. There's no other way to put it. It's a marketing tool for Stern.'_
- [HIGH] Over 100,000 unique players are now registered in the IFPA — _Direct statement: 'Yeah, we're over 100,000 unique players in the IFPA. That's pretty incredible.'_
- [HIGH] Foo Fighters was tuned too tight for The Beast tournament, receiving consistent feedback as being overly difficult — _Host reflection: 'The one game that kept coming back was that we made Foo Fighters too tough. But that was it.'_
- [HIGH] Centaur had persistent multiball trough confusion issues requiring multiball disable during The Beast — _Host states: 'consistently has a problem with multiballs getting confused coming up through that trough... So Adam Becker, you know, when we played, we tested these machines... We actually turned off the multi-ball.'_

### Notable Quotes

> "My goal with this show, and I'm not joking, is to be maybe the definitive podcast, this one episode, for listening to if you want to run a big, big tournament."
> — **Host (Jeff Teolis implied)**, ~4:30
> _Sets the episode's purpose as practical guide for tournament organizers_

> "Every single dollar that went into the pump and dump went back to the players in prize pools."
> — **Host**, ~18:00
> _Explains the economic model that makes pump-and-dump formats viable for large prize pools_

> "If you've got 100 people, that's 25 games you need to have at a minimum for everybody to be playing at the same time."
> — **Host**, ~25:00
> _Key logistics metric for match play tournament scaling_

> "Have more machines in the bank. Find a way, make more machines in the bank. you will actually make more money and put more money in the pool that way."
> — **Host**, ~42:00
> _Core advice for pump-and-dump organizers to maximize revenue and player experience_

> "If you have a long playing game and you have to bastardize it so much so it's a short playing game, I guarantee to you it is not a fun game."
> — **Marty (guest)**, ~45:00
> _Critical insight on balancing tournament competitiveness with player enjoyment_

> "I still remember the first time I was in a tournament where there was no ball save. Oh, my God. That was fucking nerve-wracking."
> — **Marty**, ~52:00
> _Reflects on player psychology impact of tournament machine modifications_

> "Do what you want, but have more machines in the bank... you will actually make more money and put more money in the pool that way."
> — **Host**, ~42:30
> _Direct advice to Cleveland tournament organizers (Cleapin)_

> "If you want to start a tournament, reach out to somebody that does tournaments and get some advice. That's your first step right there."
> — **Host**, ~71:00
> _Foundational guidance for new tournament organizers_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Jeff Teolis | person | Host of Final Round Pinball Podcast; tournament organizer who ran The Beast tournament; has run Pinball Profile World Tour and Played in America Tour with 1,000+ unique players |
| Marty | person | Co-host of Final Round Pinball Podcast; organized Melbourne Silver Bowl tournament in Australia; has experience with multi-day tournament formats |
| The Beast | event | Multi-day pinball tournament organized by host; featured pump-and-dump qualifying format, 15 games in main, 11 in classics, 9 in women's division; generated $15,000 main, $10,000 classics prize pools; received positive community reception |
| Melbourne Silver Bowl | event | Australian tournament organized by Marty; used pump-and-dump format (8 machines, need 6 scores) with standard match play finals; had Terminator 3 queue issues due to lack of pre-testing |
| Pinberg | event | Benchmark large-scale tournament with 1,000 players, 400 machines, match play format at Pittsburgh Convention Center; considered one of the three best tournaments alongside UK Open and Yagpin |
| Yagpin | event | Benchmark tournament held in hockey rink-sized venue; featured multi-day match play format with approximately 200 players and 80 machines; listed as one of top three tournament models |
| UK Open | event | Benchmark tournament using card-based format where players select 5 games for best combined scores; benefits better players through consistency requirement |
| Brisbane Masters | event | Highly-regarded Australian tournament not personally visited by host; consistently receives praise from attendees; organized by Lambo and Jimmy Nails |
| Stern Pro Circuit | event | Stern-sponsored tournament series with finals using only new Stern machines; considered marketing tool rather than neutral competitive format |
| Texas Pinball Festival | event | Tournament using limited entry format due to time/facility constraints |
| Cleapin | event | Cleveland-based pump-and-dump tournament in September that host has attended multiple times; identified as needing more machines in bank |
| Jason Zoller | person | Former number one ranked player; won The Beast main event for $3,000; described as top-tier competitive player |
| Raymond Davidson | person | Former number one ranked player; won The Beast classics event for $2,000; described as top-tier competitive player |
| Escher | person | Competitive pinball player who won Brisbane Masters; received significant IFPA points from event |
| Bob Matthews | person | Tournament expert cited for optimal play count benchmark: players should play every game 2-3 times in limited entry formats |
| Adam Becker | person | Tested machines for The Beast main event division; involved in pre-tournament machine setup and troubleshooting |
| Bruce Dengel | person | Tested classics division machines for The Beast tournament |
| Lambo | person | Co-organizer of Brisbane Masters tournament in Australia |
| Jimmy Nails | person | Co-organizer of Brisbane Masters tournament in Australia |
| Josh | person | Named as laughing at host's decision to remove ball saves from tournament machines; appears to prefer ball save settings |
| Foo Fighters | game | Stern pinball machine used in The Beast tournament; tuned with extreme tight tilts, tight slings, virtual locks; received feedback as being tuned too difficult |
| Centaur | game | Classic pinball machine used in The Beast; had persistent multiball trough issues; multiball was disabled during tournament |
| Star Wars | game | Stern pinball machine discussed as requiring ball save for tournament play due to exit-heavy design; noted as having plunge-to-flipper capability |
| Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines | game | Machine used in Melbourne Silver Bowl that played too long (45-minute queues) due to lack of pre-testing and tuning |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Tournament format strategies (pump-and-dump vs match play vs card-based), Logistics and machine requirements for large tournaments, Pre-tournament testing and machine tuning, Prize pool structures and player investment, Tournament organizer best practices and lessons learned
- **Secondary:** Tournament rule standardization (PAPA/IFPA scoring), Game-specific mechanical issues and solutions, Player experience vs competitive integrity balance

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.78) — Hosts are enthusiastic about tournament organization and share constructive lessons learned. Tone is informal and profanity-heavy but not hostile. Critical feedback on specific machine tuning is presented as constructive improvement for future events. Community feedback on The Beast is characterized as overwhelmingly positive.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** Tournament organizers receiving requests from new communities (Quebec) wanting to start leagues and tournaments, indicating growing grassroots interest (confidence: medium) — Host: 'I had somebody reach out to me from Quebec, and they really want to start a league'
- **[event_signal]** The Beast tournament received strong community reception with multiple players praising it on Facebook as 'an amazing tournament' (confidence: high) — Host: 'I just saw on Facebook so many people mention that the Beast was an amazing tournament.'
- **[competitive_signal]** IFPA now has over 100,000 unique registered players representing significant growth in competitive pinball participation (confidence: high) — Direct statement: 'Yeah, we're over 100,000 unique players in the IFPA. That's pretty incredible.'
- **[design_philosophy]** Star Wars Pinball requires ball save preservation due to exit-heavy playfield design despite general tournament trend of removing ball saves (confidence: medium) — Host: 'I think Star Wars would definitely need some sort of ball save... That game's very exit-y.'
- **[product_concern]** Foo Fighters required excessive tuning (extreme tight tilts, tight slings, virtual locks) for tournament play, resulting in feedback that the game became less fun when over-tuned (confidence: high) — Host: 'We went a little overboard on Foo Fighters... The one game that kept coming back was that we made Foo Fighters too tough.'
- **[manufacturing_signal]** Host recommends using Pro-tier Stern machines in tournaments rather than Premium/LE models to avoid having to 'bastardize' machines with excessive modifications (confidence: medium) — Host: 'put pros in tournaments, not premiums and LEs, but again, it's what you've got access to'
- **[design_innovation]** Centaur consistently experiences multiball trough confusion problems; requires multiball disable during tournament play (confidence: high) — Host: 'consistently has a problem with multiballs getting confused coming up through that trough... We actually turned off the multi-ball.'
- **[competitive_signal]** Pump-and-dump format with increased machine bank (15 games for 100+ players) generates larger prize pools while reducing queue times and improving player accessibility (confidence: high) — Host data: Over 100 players, max queue of 3, generated $15k in prizes; Cleveland example: 11 machines insufficient, need more machines to increase revenue

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## Transcript

 The Pinball Network is online. Launching final round pinball podcast. It's player versus player and player versus machine. Welcome to the final round. Marty, you screwed it up once before. Do you want to give it an intro? Do you want to try it again? No. And it's not because I got it wrong last time. I just don't care. And I would rather you do it to save me having to think. You're implying I care. I am certainly not implying that. Well, I'm just going to be quiet until someone talks. Okay. Well, we've already talked. It's episode 72. All right. That's good enough. In case. Yeah, that'll do. My hands were crossed. I wasn't saying jack shit. I wasn't saying a damn thing until somebody piped up, and you're the only one on the phone, so... It's pretty hard for anybody else, considering this Skype call is between two people. So, yeah. It's like when the teachers in school say, I can wait as long as you can. oh my god like no you can't no you lose nothing nothing more than the determination of a student to fuck over a teacher we got more patience so okay i promise we will think about talking about pinball at some point did you know i was once a teacher no wait wait i knew you were once a comedian right there it is yeah yeah So between, it's late 90s. So still doing stand-up too. I was a professor teaching a writing course at college. And I did it for four years. Okay, shut up. Swear to God. Shut your fucking mouth right now. Yes, anyway. Wait, wait, wait. Okay. Hold on a second. A professor? A professor. It was 12 hours a week. So it was part-time because I still had my main job. The reason I wanted to do it was because, one, it paid really well. And secondly, I told work, I said, hey, this is a good in to see future students that we might want to hire. You never know in an interview, but I'll know through a course of eight months if the students got the chops or not. So they said, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Fine by me. Twelve hours out of my job, twelve hours getting double dipped. And it was fun. Anyway, that aside, it's true. I just want to clarify. Fuck. Was it, were you teaching written or oral language? Because one of those you're probably good at. It was a combination. Let's go back to the beginning of this podcast for my evidence. It was a combination of both, really, because you have to write as you, you're using your audio senses to hear what is being written. It's writing for radio and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, the point is, you fuckwit, we're three minutes in and I'm trying to tell a story. I had a class that was just so, so, so disruptive and just, you know, they're college students, you know, they're probably high and all that shit. There's 36 of them and they're just, they're not paying a cent. I hate raising my voice at all costs unless there's like a fire or something. And I wasn't going to tell the class, come on guys, they're just going to laugh at my face. So I just stopped talking. And finally somebody kind of clued in. After about, I don't know, seven minutes, the class just kind of shut up. And then I finally went, you know, I feel really bad for most of you here because you really want to learn. You really want to graduate and get a job in this field. The problem is there's about four or five of you absolute fucking assholes that are ruining it for everyone else. But don't worry because you're all going to be kicked out at the end of this semester when all of us teachers get together and say, who are the shit disturbers? So don't worry, good students. Oh. Did you kick them out or did they... Oh, fucking totally. No. Beat it, nerds. They're gone. Like, how... Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Snicker swim, baby. All right. Were you talking pinball? I got some notes. Some of it's pinball. Some of it, you know, we'll have to do our regular movie review. Ooh. You know. Yeah, yeah. What did you see? We'll get to that later. I don't want to forget that because I saw a good one. All I'm going to say is I saw something that you told me to say. What? What? That's crazy. Okay. Here's a hint. It's not Godfather. Keep going. Okay, right. Let's talk pinball. Let's talk tournaments because didn't you just host, and I say great tournament because I just saw on Facebook so many people mention that the Beast was an amazing tournament. Thank you, Marty. It was the... Well, you don't have to thank me. I didn't say it. I was just reporting what other people said. It was better than I expected. I was thoroughly pleased and this is the topic of this show today. In fact, I'm going to do a disclaimer we never do disclaimers, maybe somebody's listening for the first time ever, so if you've never heard Final Round, if you don't like foul language, I'm really fucking sorry. I apologize but you're going to hear a lot of shit on this show it's going to offend some cunts, I'm telling you but maybe we refrain no, we're going to drop everything yeah, I think at episode 72 to those people that don't like swearing, they dropped off a long time ago. But what if they're just clicking on, they're fans of other TPN shows? It's possible, don't laugh. Yeah, okay, sure. And they find ours. Hmm. Yeah, I'm sorry, guys. Yeah, okay. Anyway, there's going to be a lot of that, but it's just who we are, and we do it because it means nothing to us. They're just words. Correct. There are no feelings. In fact, if there are any feelings, it's a sign of affection. There, done. That's the disclaimer. My goal with this show, and I'm not joking, is to be maybe the definitive podcast, this one episode, for listening to if you want to run a big, big tournament. Because I'm going to go through a lot of the stuff from the beast and tournaments in general. So for me to run the beast and put this all together, I have seen years and years of different tournaments, different formats and stuff. And thought, okay, what can I do that I think is the best and for the right reasons? So I want to share that. And you've done this too, Marty. You've done as big, if not bigger, with Melbourne Silver Bowl and whatever else is done in Australia. So, this should be a fun show. Okay. Big tournaments only. We're not talking about just doing a one-night thing. That's fine, whether it's a strikes tournament, a frenzy, quick match play. We're talking multi-day tournaments here. Okay, so can we start with that? What are we saying is the criteria? Are we saying over a certain number of days and a number of people? To put things into perspective, my goal of putting on the beast was to do something that, not right now because it takes three years to do so, but have the caliber of a Stern Pro Circuit event. Big scale. Not as big as Indus, not as big as the UK Open, and not as big as Yagpin. And I mention those three because in all of my travels, those are the best three tournaments. They are the models to watch. Those three. Okay. And I know you can't comment on this, but I would say you could add Brisbane Masters to that had you been here. You know what, from what everyone says. I might have quite unseen that one, yeah. That's true, and I haven't been there, so I did want to clarify the ones I've seen, but everybody I know that goes to Brisbane Masters, and congratulations to awarding Escher a billion points once again. But I heard it was great, and so Lambo and Jimmy Nails and all you guys that put that on. You make people come from across the pond and many hours because it's such a great event. So you're right. I haven't seen that one. So someday. Someday. Yeah. So first things first is you have to figure out, okay, I want to do this over how many days? Got it. And what type of tournament is it going to be? And that includes what format or formats? And I've said this on this show before, and Marty, we've talked about it. For people, I think, to have to travel to a show, they need to have options. and the options can simply be multi-tournaments. So one tournament, the only place I could pull that off, and even they had multi-tournaments, was Pinberg. You've got an event, you had 1,000 people, you had replay with hundreds of machines, a dedicated staff, a fun event. They could have done just Pinberg, but you know what? They even added WIT and they even added Intergalactic. So they actually had three events, but originally it was just kind of one. So I think you need multi-events. So that was always on the table. When you did Melbourne Silver Bowl, I assume it was more than one. Well, it was only two. We had the main event, and then we had a flip frenzy. Two is more than one. That's my point. It was mainly because it was at a pinball event that was only over two days, so I had to squeeze everything into two days. What was your format? Pump and dump. Now, I have heard from several players, and I wouldn't even put my hand up in that category, too, is pump and dump is not my favorite kind of tournament. And let's go over why Pump and Dump is successful and why it is a deterrent to some. Okay. Shall we explain what it is first? Sure. So this is where you have, let's say, a row of machines, and you need to qualify a score on a number of these different games. And if you get the highest score on a particular game, it's worth 100 points. How am I going so far? Not bad. We're talking over qualifying over a certain period, which could be several days even. Correct. And the reason why they say sort of pump and dump is that you can usually, if it's unlimited, you can try as many times on that particular machine. But usually you have to have scores on a number of different games. So I think at Melbourne Silver Bowl, we had eight machines, but you needed to get a score up on six of those eight games. And so you then add those all together and it gives you a rank from top to bottom and then top 8, top 16, top 32, whatever you want, will then go into finals. And then the final format can be different. We had standard match play, which we will get to, but that's just the qualifying is the pump and dump. You don't have pump and dump finals. The advantages of it are for those people that aren't necessarily the best players, you can put up a shit score and just go straight back into the queue and try and try again. Basically, it's as deep as your pockets go. That's a deterrent to some people. It's like, okay, the rich get richer perhaps, or it's going to cost me a lot of money. Yes, if it takes you that many times to play the game. Correct. And I would argue that this does not affect the top players. It affects the middle players and the not-so-good players because they're the ones that are likely, the lowers are likely to get a push up and the mids are likely to be done out of a spot in the finals because they're pushed down, if that makes sense. But usually the top players do, you know, play a game on each of those machines and go, yep, I'm done, I'm going to qualify, I can walk away. So I'm going to give the scenario of the beast. The beast, we took the top 24 players, the top eight would get a buy. So you wanted to be in that top 24 to advance to the playoffs, which was group match play. You're in a group of four. You're playing three games. It's PAPA scoring, which is 4-2-1-0 scoring. The top two after three games advance. You need to do that, actually. You need to do PAPA scoring or IFPA rules, which is the 7-5-3-1, if you want to make your event certified. Certified is just a nice way of saying you want the tournament to be worth more whoppers, the magical pinball points. So I did want that to happen, and that's why I used the PAPA format. But, again, the deterrent of that is you're going to your pocket. You're spending a lot of money, perhaps. Now, the positive of that, every time there's a negative, I can give you a positive and vice versa. The positive of that is, if you're running the tournament, such as I did, every single dollar that went into the pump and dump went back to the players in prize pools. Yep, yep. That's why people do pump and dumps. It builds big prize pools. In my main event, $15,000 in cash and prizes. When I say prizes, I'm talking a few hundred dollars for trophies and stuff. but the rest was all cash. $10,000 in the classics. Those are huge, huge pots. People were so thrilled when the winner got $3,000 in Maine, $2,000 in classics, and that would be Jason Zoller and Raymond Davidson, respectively. So congratulations to those two former number one players. Big, big, big bucks, but that's why you do it. And so some people are like, I don't care that I'm putting in a lot of money. I'm investing hopefully in myself. I get that back if I make the playoffs. Other formats you can choose for a big tournament. We talk about the match play tournament, and Yegpin does it, Pinberg does it. It really, really, really requires a lot of machines to do something like that, to do it properly. I mean, there are smaller versions of Pinberg style where they would have one newer machine, one mid machine, one older machine like an EM or an old solid state, and they would do that each round. It's most people's favorite format. The problem is, logistically, it's so hard to do. You have to have so many machines. You have to have backup machines in case some go down. Timing of the games is really, really important because you don't want groups sitting around waiting because this bank of machines is taking forever. So in a smaller venue, it's tough to do. Whenever you see these big-scale match play tournaments like a Pinberg, think of where they are. They're at the Pittsburgh Convention Center, which was, you know, football field size. It was that huge. Yeah, Yagpin, which was the indoor hockey rink size. And you just need a lot of machines, a lot of text and stuff. It's why you don't see more of it. So you see a lot more pump and dumps or card-based formats. Yeah, because if you think about it, if you've got Maxplane, you've got groups of four. Every group needs to be on a machine at the same time. So, I don't know, do the math. If you've got 100 people, that's 25 games you need to have at a minimum for everybody to be playing at the same time. When you had Pinberg, you had, what was it, four machines per group? Is that right? Yeah, they had almost 400 machines in the banks. 400 machines for 1,000 people. Correct. Yeah. So that's what it is. So that's why match play as a full tournament, you're right. You've got to have a big venue and you've got to have a lot of machines. And that narrows down the opportunity because there's not that many locations that have got that many machines. So think about it. 1,000 people, 400 machines. I can't remember what they had at Yagpin, but they had 200 players. I would say they had 80 machines. So 40%. Whatever player number you would like to achieve, you need about 40% of those players in machines. You want 100 people, 40 machines? How many places have 40 working machines? That's tough to do. Of different eras. Yep. Well, it doesn't have to be of different eras. That's something that makes it nice. But no, you don't have to have different eras at all. You don't have to. And the reason we do different eras, I believe, is because it encompasses all that is pinball. Stern Pro Circuit, when you have the finals, it's always new Sterns. There's no other way to put it. It's a marketing tool for Stern. It's not who the best pinball player is. It takes all these people from the top 20 Stern Pro Circuit events and bring them together, and you're playing games that Stern's trying to sell. I get it. It makes sense. I would do it too if I was Stern. I think that's a bit of a bit over cynical. No way. No way. Because there's usually only one or two games that they can sell at that particular time because everything's already out of production. It's all new modern Sterns. Yeah, but a lot of them aren't in production anymore, so they can't sell any. A lot. Less than half of them. No way. I've been to them. I've seen them. They're amazing. I've watched them. I've watched them. I know. What I'm saying to you is that, yes, obviously it's a marketing exercise because why would Stern do it otherwise? There'd be no reason for them. But to sort of go, well, it's only a marketing. No, it's more than that. And, okay, we're talking about the definitive discussion about pinball tournaments. I would say I've enjoyed Sternaments. That's a nickname given to tournaments that only have Stern machines and tournaments that have got games from all eras, I find them just as enjoyable. I have absolutely no problem being in a tournament that only has Stern machines. So you've got to then look at your audience and determine what they would like. And I think when you do go to the old era of games, like even if you go to EMs and Solid States, I think there's something nice about introducing those games to your audience because a lot of people that are now into tournaments and into pinball are only recently into tournaments and pinball, so they don't know the old stuff. That's true. Yeah, we're over 100,000 unique players in the IFPA. That's pretty incredible. It's a tremendous growth of competitive pinball. I have run tournaments that have featured over 1,000 unique players with the Pinball Profile World Tour, the Played in America Tour, and it's overwhelming the people that do not prefer Sturmance. I would absolutely disagree with that. No, no, no, no. This is the fact. Of the 1,000 people, Sturmance were not preferred because it's just you're playing fewer games, they're playing longer, you don't have a chance against the Eschers and the Jason Zollers and Raymond Davidsons and all the top players whereas lesser players feel, and they're incorrect, They feel, oh, I've got better chance on an EM or a solid state against a better player. That's not true. It's just a perception. And also, it doesn't take an hour to play one game. That's a fact. Actually, I'll tell you what it is, first and foremost. It's what machines you've got access to. You might not actually have access to older games. And also, one thing to note, if you have older games in your tournament, they are more prone to breaking down. So you've got to make sure you've got techs on hand that can fix those immediately. But back to your point, I just think you've got to look at your community that you are bringing together and decide what's best for them. I agree with the last thing you said about older machines. More likely to break down, especially EMs. Maybe it's a score reel. Maybe it's a pop-up or not firing slings, whatever. You definitely have to tech and shop those older machines that are 30, 40 years old. but the modern machines, and I know you work for a company that sells modern machines, you have to bastardize the machines for tournaments. So are you really making, and you have to find the sweet spot. How much are you doing to a machine? You know, I know with the Beast, we went a little overboard on Foo Fighters. We made it very difficult. Extreme tight tilts, tight slings, virtual locks, so you couldn't even lock in the Overlord. You know, it came right back out. It was like, whoa, what's that? Virtual locks. Things like that. We wanted less mechanical failures on machines. Yeah, which is very sound advice to anybody. I guess you could say as well with Stearns, put pros in tournaments, not premiums and LEs, but again, it's what you've got access to. True. Now, that being said, I just said, well, we changed it. In the pump and dump, you can't change the state of a game during the pump and dump, but once the finals start, we can make adjustments, and we did that. We made the tilt a little easier. It was more playable, if you will. Oh, yeah. But you don't want long playing games in pump and dumps. Think about it. Why? Not at all. You want those queue lines to move. So if you're running a pump and dump, and we had top seven games in Maine counted, but we had a bank of 15, and we had over 100 people. I don't know if I ever saw a queue larger than three people. And that was rare if I saw even three. There were games available. Yeah. Now, classics, there were 11 machines. Your best six counted. When the classics qualifying is nearing ending, Of course, you're seeing a bit of a rush, and maybe it would go four deep, five deep, but for the most part, one or two deep the whole weekend because there was, and that's my advice to you if you're running one of these, have more games available. I think of the money we generated, and I think of a pump-and-dump format that I'm going to in September, Cleapin. I've been there several years. I wish, and if anyone from Cleveland's listening, this is my advice to you, do what you want, but have more machines in the bank. Find a way, make more machines in the bank. you will actually make more money and put more money in the pool that way. You don't want long, long queues. Get a few more games in there. That is the best advice I can give you. Yeah, and I'll add to that. And you sort of touched on it before, but I just really want to put a nice yellow highlighter over this, and that is test your games. Play them before. And it was the mistake I made with the last Melbourne Silver Bowl championship in that, you know, we had eight games. There was, you know, there was AMs, there was solid states, and then there was some sterns as well. and we had to set up the bank and start the tournament on pretty much the same day, and I ran out of time and didn't get to play test one of the games, and it was actually Terminator 3, Rise of the Machines. It played so long that I think it had like a 45-minute queue, usually seven or eight people in queue, and two to three on all the other games. What it meant was you can only queue on one game, So if you're queued for 45 minutes for one game, you couldn't queue on any of the others. So it was a big regret that I didn't have enough time to just toughen it up. We did for finals, like you said. But one thing I just wanted to add to that as well, and you sort of touched on it as well with Foo Fighters. I won't name names, but if you have a long playing game and you have to bastardize it so much so it's a short playing game, I guarantee to you it is not a fun game, and it will mean that there's less enjoyment in that tournament. If you've got all games that you've had to do that to, you might have a very competitive tournament, but people aren't going to have fun playing games along the way. Well said. I agree. Yeah, there's got to be a sweet spot. And in surveying the people at the Beast, you know, again, 11 games in the Classics, 15 in the Main, and we even had nine in the Women's Top Five games. The one game that kept coming back was that we made Foo Fighters too tough. But that was it. We had Centaur, not the lovely one that I've ordered from Haggis, the Oblivion. We had the original Centaur, but that's a game that consistently, and I'm sure Haggis is on this, consistently has a problem with multiballs getting confused coming up through that trough or whatever it is. So Adam Becker, you know, when we played, we tested these machines. Bruce Dengel tested all the classics, and I tested the women's and Adam Becker tested the main. We tested them all. Going back to your thing in Melbourne, Silverwall, if you get to that point where, okay, the tournament's going to start, I didn't test this one machine, turn that machine off and bring it in once you have tested it. That's what I would have done, and maybe you could correct that for the future. If you never got around to it, just lay off it until you're ready. That's it. Yeah. It was sort of like you. At the end of the tournament, I looked back and I wrote down a hundred different things, a hundred things that I would do differently the next time. Yeah, I have 27 on my list for the beast so far. And that was the day after. And they're all little things, but easy fixes. But, again, Centaur, yeah, we actually turned off the multiball. And there was a sign on there. So when you change a game, by the way, whether it's virtual locks, whether it's removing ball saves, every new Stern game, we removed all ball saves that were possible. Josh is going to laugh because he knows I hate that. But we did. We left the multiball ball save relatively decent. and we turned it down a little bit so it's not... Some games are really, really long. I think Mandalorian would be a long one, but we turned them down a little bit so you've earned it. You get a little bit of ball save, but on Rush, you have to earn it. And there's a chance to do it. There's two skill shots right there. Three, I guess. Other games, you can earn some ball save, but we turned all that down. Can I just make a statement? I still remember the first time I was in a tournament where there was no ball save. Oh, my God. That was fucking nerve-wracking. because you could just not get a flip and it's ball over and it's going over. It's like, what the fuck? That's quite nerve-wracking for people to have that tournament. So my advice to people before you go to a tournament is, if you've got a game at home, turn off ball save. Have some practice. Oh, make the tilts tight for sure. Absolutely do all that kind of stuff. Yes, absolutely. But some games require, I think, ball save. Like I think Star Wars would definitely need some sort of ball save. I know you can plunge and plunge to a flipper, but I would still put it on there. That game's very exit-y. But a little bit of ball save would make people, again, enjoy their time more. So Centaur, we turned off the multiball. Other games, we did virtual locks. An old game like Bobby Orr's Power Play. I don't know if you see that in Australia. It's kind of a hockey. Yeah. Okay. We disabled the center post Okay So all of these changes you have to have signage on the screen so people can see if extra balls are off or what they were things like that Oh by the way make sure all your extra balls are off in any turn Yes. Yeah. Yep. And also, if you, on the older games, you can't turn extra ball off, make sure it's very clear what the rule is, whether you punch the ball out or whether you play. If you cannot turn off extra balls and that game has to be played, My advice to you is play extra balls because you're not going to be able to police. Yeah, I put a sign up there. Yeah, one flip or plunge extra balls. Who's policing it? No one's policing it. Yeah, it's just too hot. We'll get back to policing in a second. So, again, multi-day tournaments, pump and dump was pretty attractive. Card-based format, so that's in this, that's UK Open, where you're trying to get your best scores on five games, but you don't get to go back to that game over and over again. It's whatever five games you pick, that's your combined score, so you have to be consistent. A lot of people, especially maybe weaker players, are not fans of that because it's very, very difficult. I find that tournament really benefits the better players. You don't have to put up GCs by any means, grand champions. You just have to be consistent, and that's a fun format, but that's nerve-wracking because maybe you got a great first game, you got a great second game, You shit the bed on the third, and now you're desperate to get something decent on four and five. So that's a nerve-wracking format. But, again, it's a form of a pump and dump because you can buy multiple tickets. There's also limited entry. Texas Pinball Festival does that. And there's a reason for that, and you might have to do that too. Maybe time is of the essence. You've got to get out of that building facility at a certain time. So limited, like I think Allentown is like that, another Stern Pro Circuit event. There's a definite place for that. The sweet spot, I've been told by Bob Matthews, is if you get to play every game twice, that's fine. Three times, you're laughing. Any more than that is gravy. So think of that when you're running a limited tournament. How much time, Marty, did you put in before the tournament started for organizing it? Look, I was also assisting with the organizing of the whole event. So for me, it was six weeks. Six weeks, that's it? Yep. almost six months for me for this. So this one little weekend tournament, and there was no show to it, like Melbourne Silver Bowl. Sure, okay. But remember, this is the third time I put on this event, so a lot of the stuff I had to work out for the first time I worked out. Ah, yeah, yeah. So the first time probably was more in the months as opposed to weeks. Oh, gotcha. Absolutely. When you're putting together a tournament, you have to hopefully answer every question that could possibly be asked. Mm-hmm. And think of that before you start the tournament. Experience in being in a lot of tournaments certainly helps. I had somebody reach out to me from Quebec, and they really want to start a league, and they were asking for some advice, and I gave them my advice, and they had mentioned that they had never played in a tournament or in a league before, and I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, better walk before you run. Do that first before you start running a league. What if there are no leagues, though? You have to start somewhere else. I showed them the IFP calendar, and within an hour drive, At worst case scenario, you'll probably find some sort of tournament or one-off event on the IFPA calendar. That's a must. You've got to see how things are scored, for one thing, how the TDs work. The TDs, anybody can be a TD, but you should really read the IFPA POPL rules. Have to. So, can I just make a full-stop point right now? And that is exactly what that person from Quebec did. if you want to start a tournament, reach out to somebody that does tournaments and get some advice. That's your first step right there. I've got notes. I'm not going to miss anything, but there'll be some jumping back and forth. I just mentioned about the rules. And after the beast, there were a bunch of us that had dinner and it was brought up by, we were all friends. A friend said, you know what would be a great idea? And I agreed with this person. It would be great if TDs had to pass a test. And it's simple. All the information's on the rules and just be TD certified. I thought, that's not a bad idea. Someone's got to administer that, and I don't know who could do that. So I'm talking about the theory of the idea. I like the idea of it, but, you know, the logistics, that's for someone else to figure out. But I thought that was kind of neat, to be able to be qualified, if you will, to be a TD. Yeah, I kind of agree. I think there's a merit to that. However, finding TDs that don't want to be in a tournament, is slim pickings to begin with. So it's a way to let down, you know. Keep going. You probably got another point about that. Well, there were two points at this dinner table. They were all complimentary of the beast and whatnot, and the one person was very frank and said, it was a well-run tournament, but the one thing I wish, and I wish this of all tournaments, not just yours, I wish tournament directors and techs were not allowed to play in tournaments. And before I give my answer, they said, you know, I explained this to someone who's not in pinball, and they couldn't believe, what? You policed your own thing? and there was a matter of can this ever be taken seriously if you do that? And I said, you know what? I can't disagree with you. The optics of it are questionable for sure. The logistics of it, good luck. Because I'll tell you right now, I'm not running the beast and going back and forth over five months across a country, like to a different country to set up this event if I don't get to play in it. I don't get paid for doing this. Okay, that was going to be my point. My payment is I get to play in it. Yep. And I say that because every year, you know, I have a small, small part in helping the crew at InDisc. And my number one thing I say every year, Carl will admit it, Jim will admit it, is that I wish Carl and Jim played in InDisc. They're putting on this wonderful event and they don't play in it. Carl's just too worried about making sure everything goes well. That's the utmost respect for that. but it breaks my heart that hundreds of people come to this wonderful event that is now a major, and they don't get to participate in it. And I would never question any kind of legitimacy of the tournament because we all know these people, and I'm fine with TDs playing in it. They just can't rule on their own games. I would say if you're then going to say TDs and techs shouldn't be able to play in the tournament, then they should 100% be paid. Yeah, that was the deal. Yeah, for sure. The person at the dinner table said, I would like to see a tech and a TD be paid. Maybe it's $300 a day to do this. And it was just a number out of the top of my head. There was no rhyme or reason. And I said to the person, I said, I wouldn't do it for $3,000. Sure. I'm serious. Like, I wouldn't put the months of putting this together. No, you know I didn't play in mind as well for exactly that reason, because I didn't want to be, let's say, I was playing a game, and something happens to the tournament that I'm running and I can't fix it. You've just got to be on the ball. Yep. So I come back to my point, though, which is where do you get these people? Who are these people that are going to travel miles and miles and miles to come to an event and just get paid for it? And what sort of money would you get paid for it? It's not a lot of money. I just don't think you'd find people. And where does that money come from? It comes from that $10,000 and $15,000 that I'm playing the players. Correct. That being said, I said, I agree, the optics don't look good. There could be questionable things. All you can do is be transparent. And there were multiple TDs, multiple techs, and I just said, you know, when it comes to techs changing the games, we've said, here are the changes that are made. So in a pump-and-dump format, even if you, wow, that felt weird, you can always play it again. Limited entry? Okay, maybe there's some questions there. And I said to the person who said, we should have TDs be paid and run tournaments. And I said, sounds great. Do you know that's available right now? That can be done. Not too many people are doing it. Very few are doing it. Eric Thorne, who does incredible work at District 82, runs massive, massive events. And, you know, he plays in it too. He doesn't, I don't know if he plays in all of them, but if he does, he's, anyway, runs a tight ship or whatever. But there are lots of TVs and stuff, and I don't ever question that kind of stuff. I can imagine to somebody outside of pinball, they're wondering, how is that possible? If it was baseball, you have neutral umpires and referees and football and soccer, but that's what we do. But again, what you're sort of talking about is that it's this really weird situation where we want it to be governed like a proper sport. It's not big enough, and there's not enough money in it to be governed like a proper sport. The big, big, big events in disc, Carl's doing that. My God, Papa and Pinberg, the staff that they have. They don't exist. But they don't exist. So we're talking about today. They paid their, you know, they compensated their staff members, and that's great. And so they should be if they're not playing. But smaller events, it would be tough to do so, and that would... That's what I'm saying today. And when we're talking about big tournaments, and if you think about how many really would fall into that category, there's probably, what, would there be 20 tournaments? Not even. Yeah. You know what I mean? Five. So I just think it's a fair comment to make where people say TDs and techs shouldn't play. The reality is this is still a dinky hobby. It is not high-stakes sport. It's just not yet. Maybe it never will. Yeah. The solution would be the money's got to come from somewhere, and right now, because the money isn't big, we give it back to the players, and I'm fine with that. I remember years ago. I remember years ago, and maybe the tide has shifted somewhat, but there was a big tournament that I went to, and someone was paid as a tech, and there were some people bitching about it in the corner, going, oh, that could have been prize money. Are you fucking kidding me? Somebody. Do you know who bitched? I'll tell you who bitched. Somebody who's never run a tournament. Correct. Guaranteed, the people who bitch the most have never volunteered, or maybe volunteered, but never run a tournament, never put this together, and put together the balance sheet. I'm looking right now at my balance sheet for the beast. Do you want to know what the surplus was? And by the way, I showed every single person at the dinner table. I said, here, I don't mind showing you this. The surplus was $8. So I made $8 on this. Well, that was more dollars than I made. Eight bucks, baby. You fucking paid me. I remember I used to tell you, when I had the Melbourne Silver Bowl League, so this was before we had the championship, It used to cost me $100 to $200 every month of my own money in prizes. Now, that being said, I was running this. I made a balance sheet. I had an admin fee of $80, and people asked where the $80 went. And I said, well, think about it. And I explained. Up your nose, obviously. Yeah, a little in the bum. Anyway. Now we're going to play depository. Oh, we're back. We're going to run around. Ah, you got me. No. Okay, where did the money go? Where did the money go? Well, I ran a tournament at a wonderful venue called Pocketeer Billiards that is a coin drop place. And we agreed, Barry and Cindy Gluckstein, that for me to run it there, these cannot be on coin drop. I don't want people putting in Canadian quarters, fucking up the machines or coin boxes getting jammed or things that can happen that can slow down the process. I wanted them all in free play. So we negotiated a price based on per player to turn these on free play. They were happy. I was happy. It was all good. But that was the bulk of the $80. And that's between them and I. I wanted some artwork done. You can't expect that stuff to be done for free. And I gladly paid for that to be done because here's another thing. You want a tournament to be big, you better look big. Yeah. Like, really? You want to look big. Yeah. Well, that's it. You got to think about the promotions. So there was the printing of the posters and whatnot. We had to deliver a bunch of machines. I wasn't going to ask people to deliver this on their own. I mean, some did that were local, but some were from far out of town. There were 10 machines brought in. I made arrangements with those people, what do you need from me to bring these machines? If it was a price I could agree with, we were good. And that went into the mid-fee. You know, there are supplies and things, little things you've got to account for. You've got to pay the IFPA for all your tournaments. I had five. What else did we have? We had little knickknacks that we gave people, so a little bit of merch and stuff. Not a lot, but just a little something to remember the tournament by. What else? You get dinged on Venmo. You get dinged on PayPal. Maybe it's a buck or two a transaction. It's stupid, but that's what happens. Had to have a bunch of signage and banners. And, oh, here's where I did something. And they didn't know they were getting this, but I had a core staff of about four or five people. I gave them money for food for working Friday, Saturday, and that came out of the admin fee, and I had no problem doing that. They didn't ask, and I had it budgeted, and I felt good about it. They are more likely to probably come back next year, which is really important, because hopefully they had a good time, and they were looked after. They didn't ask. I was doing it anyway. Shipping fees, what else? Yeah. We understand. We understand. Look, there's nothing to it. Like, when I developed Super Bowl, I was probably $500, $600 in the can myself, right? Yeah. It's one of those things that you've got to understand. There's two sides of this. If you're wanting to do a big tournament like that, there's just an expectation that you won't make any money. You'll probably go grey in the process. You might lose money on it, but you'll have the satisfaction of running a great tournament. Then there's the players. Can you just appreciate the people that are putting these on? That no one's sitting there having a fun time. They're all on edge trying to make sure that this tournament runs as smoothly as possible. And we always say, particularly in Melbourne Super Bowl, there was so much behind the scenes that was going wrong. But as long as the player doesn't see it and they just think they're having a great time, that's all that matters. So appreciate the likes of you, not me anymore because I don't do them, but people that put on these big tournaments. So you talk about Jimmy and Lambo. Oh, I mean, if you saw social media, you can understand there was some fallout from that because the tournament directors, the people running it, it's a high stress. I look at a name names, though it's hard not to know, but I remember when I was at TPF and I was, you know, happened to be walking past the tournament area and happened to speak to, let's say, one of the organisers who was like, I am fucking sick of this, never again. This is fucking too much. Because right in the storm, it's really hard and it's really stressful and you have no return for this. Just understand that. There's no return. It's faintless as fuck. You know, a little known fact. before he, and you're not talking about this person, but a little-known fact about Colin MacAlpine, I think he listens to this program. I wasn't talking about him, but sure, definitely not. No, no, no, absolutely, 100% not, definitely not. I know, but he, before TPF, he was 6'4 with a flowing mane of hair, and look at him now, folks. So that's what TVing does. That's all I'm saying. And he's been killed twice on this program by Marty. So there's those things that have weighed on poor Colin. Anyway So anyway I'm not saying it was Colin MacAlpine But I just remember looking at that person's face And what they were saying And I just thought to myself I know exactly how you feel And there's only a handful of people in the world That would know exactly how you feel But again Actually Colin was a good source for me For running this beast Because he's used to running big, big tournaments I leaned on a lot of people Derek Thompson of Yagpin for sure. Carl D'Python Anghelo for sure. And I hope I'm not forgetting too many people, but people that I know have run big events, I asked a lot of questions and they gave me a lot of great advice, but they too, all of them, are answering these questions that are going to be asked in the tournament and therefore it's going to be less stressful for them because they know they can anticipate it. So that's the advice of doing that. But yeah, so are you running the tournament for whoppers? Are you running it to generate money? Are you running it for good times? The perfect tournament is all three. Sometimes it's not possible. I wanted all three. In fact, the thing I cared the most about, and I think I told you and I know I told other friends, is all I want is when people are done this tournament, they had a good time. Yep. Because what you would hope is that if people are having a good time, those other things should follow if you've got your eye on them as well. Yeah. And that's what we were saying before about if you set your games up too rough, people won't have fun. If you set them up too long, people won't have fun. If the points aren't worth enough, some people won't have fun. If you don't give recognition or if you don't have prizes, some people won't have fun. Some people will have fun. Some people just love being there and just flipping and talking and that's all they need. It's a good point. I had a lot of good feedback on things to do for next year I'm going to do. I didn't have a B division and so you made the main tournament and I didn't have a B division, but I had a three-strikes tournament for those that didn't make the playoffs. So in my ways, that was the B tournament. But that's a lot of money invested, and some people think, I'll never make the A's. I'll never make the top 24. So I am going to add a B division next year. It might only be the top eight, and I'll still run the Sunday three-strikes tournament. But then, you know, you don't have to think, okay, I'm putting all this money in. Now I've got a chance at something, a playoff, some bucks. And I'm glad to do that next year. But that was one of the things I had to figure out the logistics of how I was going to do it. I didn't want the Bs and the As cluttered playing the same time, but I've found a way to make that happen. But we keep talking about me, me, me, and I don't like doing that because I had to have 80 volunteer shifts covered to make this seem like, you know, there's always somebody available to help out, whether it's on the booth and texts. and, of course, TVs. That's a lot, and you can't do it without volunteers. It's impossible. So you have to give volunteers something. And a lot of tournaments, and I just didn't recreate the wheel, will give, here's some free entries based on how many hours you cover. Here's a window where you can play before the main people play. A volunteer hour. I think those are important things you can give volunteers. And I gave them extra raffle tickets, too. I had these huge raffle prizes. Again, you volunteered, you rise to the cream of the crop. You helped me out and you helped everyone else out, you get a little something something. How do you manage the different personalities that you have at these tournaments? Because usually it's a TD or it could be a score taker that are in the firing line. And I say this because, for the most part, people are good. You know what? In general, most people are good. There are, however, some people that are a little bit unruly for a number of different reasons. So I wanted to get your thoughts on how you prepare for that. That is so funny that you say that, because before the tournament was started, I sent out all my volunteers' texts and TDs a note thanking them and explaining the compensation that would be done. But I also had a column called Conduct, and I'm going to read it verbatim. To all of you, please note sometimes players get upset and a small few of them can even be rude. I will not, as the TD, tolerate any behavior that is of extreme nature to anyone helping with the beast. If you should encounter this, please say to the player, let me get Jeff to help you. I'll take the complaints from there. I'm lucky that didn't happen, but I did put that in there. And conversely, I wrote this. For this event to be successful and grow annually, the most important thing to me is that all players enjoy their time at the beast and pocket your billiards. Complaints can go both ways. I know this goes without saying, but please make sure you are polite to each player. They may ask questions that seem simple or dumb, but please try your best to assist positively. You are not only representing the beast, but also Pocketeer Billiards and Pinball Profile. I don't want my fucking brand wrecked, okay? Sure. Let's start it off. But remember, the players are stressed by their play. They are traveling, they are spending good money, and they are evaluating their thoughts on whether they enjoyed the beast. A positive experience will help this event grow. So I actually sent that to all my volunteers because it's exactly what you, and you're right, it can go both ways. Someone's going to get bummed out by a ruling in a TD mates, right? It's obviously going to affect one person one way and the others another way. So all you can do is be consistent with the rules. You have to be consistent. Use the IFPA. Use the PAPA rules. Then there's nothing, there hopefully isn't any gray area. Yep. Good. So as a player, if you come up against someone that's unruly in a tournament as well, it's an interesting position because what tends to happen is these people, in a way, they twist it to make you feel like you're in the wrong and that their behavior is acceptable because they're possibly a good player. So if you feel uncomfortable in a tournament because of somebody's behavior, don't talk to a TD. Don't talk to an organizer. that just go and just bring it up, have a conversation. It doesn't have to be, oh, I'm complaining. It can be just in the line of, hey, is this normal behavior? I just want to check to see if this is okay. There were a few incidences where maybe the game screwed them or something or somebody made a noise and it disturbed them and they kind of brought it to my attention or whatever the case may be. I've listened to the story and I thought, my goal is to make them understand what happened We can address it. We can fix it. But I want them happy. And sometimes it's like, hey, can I give you a free game for the one that you just got stressed out? It doesn't cost me anything. You get another crack at it in this format of tournament, and I would do that. It didn't happen a lot, but I know they came away happy. That's one part of it, obviously, making sure that everybody has a good time. But how do you make sure that the person doing that behavior knows that that behavior is incorrect? And I'll give you an example. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, how do you continue to improve the culture so there's less of it in future? And one of the things that I note as well is usually when people go off, they are affecting people not only in their group, but also other people that are playing machines at the same time. And it's just, it's distracting for a lot of people. And it's just, sometimes it's very unsports-like. Had that happen twice, and I pulled them aside and I said, I just want to talk to you about the outbursts and maybe the shaking of the machines. This isn't a warning. This isn't a yellow card. But I'm going to bring it up to the other TDs to watch this behavior because it is affecting other players. And if you can just tone it down a little bit, that would be great for us. And, you know, we're very fortunate to be at this venue, and a lot of people brought their machines, and we just want to have a good time. And they were wonderful with it. They were fine because, you know, they weren't punished, but they knew I knew. That's how I handled it. Yeah, good. Excellent. And then I went and sent a message to the TDs and said, watch out for this fucking cunt. This fucker. Yeah. No, no. Yeah. All I was going to say is sometimes, sometimes when you turn up a tournament and there's one person that's always a complete cunt and they turn up and you just go, oh, this is going to be interesting. I noticed one player, I'm not going to mention their name, and the next person, but they, on four games within a short period of time, complained about this, this, this, this, this. I flagged that person. Okay, guys, this guy's just nonstop bitching and, you know, just keep an eye. Just trying to get an edge or whatever, and maybe a lot of times this is a location pinball. So imagine you're there all the time. You're there all the time, and you're used to everything being such and such. And we come in there, and we change the settings. It's going to be, whoa, whoa, what happened to this game? I thought I knew, like, the back of my hand. It's something like that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, you have to have software, and you have to be knowledgeable of software. Correct. There are two that I think are elite. And, of course, never-drained software is used in a lot of these pump-and-dumps. That is Carl D'Python Anghelo's. You see it at the Eggpin. You see it at INDISC. A lot of the major Stern Pro Circuit events. That is what we used. We also used Andreas's wonderful MatchPlay software, which is just actually a lot better than Next.MatchPlay events. You probably haven't even been on it since he revised it. It's really good now. Yeah, no, I haven't. And when I was doing monthly competitions or tournaments, Match Play was the go. The big Melbourne Super Bowl championship, because of the number of players, Neverdrain's was better. Actually, I'll tell you the reason why Neverdrain's is better, and maybe Match Play is like this now, but Neverdrain manages the player registration and also the monetary side of entries as well very well It elite for that And in fact, it has a prize pool function that a lot of terms don't use, but I advertised that I was going to show people, and I physically showed at least 10 different people, here's $20 for entry, look at the prize pool before I enter it. And then, okay, I'm going to enter it now, look at the prize pool. Oh look, it went up by $20. I showed that aspect. I thought that was pretty cool that Carl had that. And MatchPlay is great for, it helps the streamers a lot too. Like I wanted to make sure we had streaming and the wonderful people at TPN, the pinballers, the Castlemans from Ottawa did a fantastic job. Their first big, big event. They stepped up their gear and their equipment, and I can't be more happy than what they did. They're already on board for 2024. But the MatchPlay really helped them with their software too and being able to link that on the stream. A couple of tournaments I ran, and that would have been the three-strikes tournament on Sunday and then the Thursday warm-up, I had it set up so that players can enter their own results. You don't have to put in scores, but who was first, who was second, who was third, who was fourth. A godsend. It was absolutely great, and that's one of the benefits of match play. Yep, absolutely. We talked about changing the machines. I've got it written down here. You really do need to do that, and you have to think of, if you watch any IFPA big events, especially on EMs, when you get to that playoff, if there are four different score reels for an EM, like we had on, say, bow and arrow, we actually played them as one-player games. It is a lesson learned from years ago. You would hate to see a tilt-through affect somebody. So we do it for that reason. We also do it for the biggest reason, I think, and Adam Becker told me this, is I know score reel number one is working. It's been working all weekend. I don't know about score reel two and three and four, and what if we get to player four and it's buggered up? So that's another reason they do the one-player EMs. Make sense? Yep. The changing of the software, we talked about mechanical things, if you can avoid anything mechanical that could possibly screw up. Virtual locks are an absolute must. Now, some people don't like games that have ball ceiling, a game like Sorcerer. I'm fine with games like that. It's not going to affect the game when you're playing the pump and dump, but you need to make sure if you have a game like that, that Marty plays a game and he leaves two balls in the lock or the Powerball is the next one to come up on Twilight Zone and the next person comes up there, all right, I start with the Powerball, or I've got two in the lock, it's going to be a lot easier. You've got to think of if games like that make sense to play, in the pump and dump, or how do you reset the power cycle. Correct. It's also, again, knowing your audience. If you've got the top, top players, they're all going to understand the strategic side of lock stealing. There were some players that just won't understand it because they haven't experienced it. I learned something at the Beast I didn't know, and I bet you didn't know this, and anybody who's a TD should know this. Somebody asked me, is it okay if I use Insider Connected? And I thought, oh, yeah, what's the big deal? And quickly, it was abolished. In fact, we took the dongles out of the machines that had it because on some games, especially Venom, and we're going to talk more about Venom, by the way, later in this program, A game like Venom, you can have progress on your Venom machine at home and apply it to wherever you're playing. And I think Turtles does that too and some other games, which, by the way, is a great feature for a home game. I think that's pretty cool that you can do that. I know I can go play Rush anywhere and bring on the special songs I've unlocked on any machine, which is kind of fun. But there are point advantages, so you have to disable that kind of stuff. I didn't know that. Yeah, there you go. Yep. I haven't played Venom yet. I've watched a lot of the streams, and again, we're going to get more into it. But I do like that kind of feature. I think if it's really, really hard to get to this whatever level and you can just keep progressing every time you do it, isn't that kind of like a video game? Yep, yep. I think it's a great idea. So all these things we talk about. Oh, you have to have equipment too. So I've got a lot of volunteers. I've got a lot of scorekeepers. I had to get a bunch of tablets, you know, to make sure the software is being used. I can't ask people to use their phones and their data and all that kind of stuff. Do you have monitors for cues? Do you have a laptop for administration or for, again, showing these cues? These things are all really important. Do you have a lot of cords for charging? Is the equipment out of people's way? Things like that. The last big note I had was, again, transparency. And you don't have to show a balance sheet to everybody. But, you know, you have to explain where the money's going. And sadly, Marty, there are a lot of tournaments, not a lot, there are a few, and there are Stern Pro Circuit events that every year get questioned about the transparency. And they're not doing themselves any favor by not being transparent. People will show up anyway, but transparency just goes so far. And again, if you're paying a tech, if you're paying delivery, if you're paying a TV, great, no problem. Just let people know because people can add up the entries and figure out how much money is going into a pool and they wonder where the hell it's going. Okay. Here's the question then. Is there a problem putting on a tournament to make money? No, as long as you're transparent. But David, if you're not transparent, like what does it matter? I think it's optics. I would imagine that there's not that many people that truly care. As I said before, I think that most people are just there, put their hat in the ring, have a bit of fun. Maybe they'll do well. Maybe they'll get into the finals. But I don't think the majority of people care. I think it's the top players and the people that stand to earn money. I think that's important to them. But the reason why I bring that up is I think that there's a stigma that people think that you should not make a dime in a tournament. And I know there was a tournament a few years ago that is no longer, that might have been near where you had yours, that was criticized because they did make money. I don't care if that's what you want to do. If you let people know beforehand, that's great because you can make the choice whether you want to go or not. You know, when you go to a Stern Pro Circuit event and you go to Pinball at the Zoo, which is in Kalamazoo, Michigan, you know that every dollar minus whatever the admin fees are going into charity. Okay, great. Got it. Piece of cake. I know that. Eric Thorne, again, District 82, you know it costs this much, and he tells you this much is admin. It covers the wonderful facility and maintaining 100 machines and teching and parts and power and all that kind of stuff, buying trophies. And then this is the money that's going into the prize pool. You know that going in, and you can choose to go or not go. And again, I cannot stress enough, transparency is the key. It just takes all the weight off your shoulders. People then can do what they want. If you still complain after the transparency, well, that's on you. I mean, you knew about it going in, and you can choose to go or not go. But I don't think you can bitch about it. I've seen some tournaments wrongly get criticized for being transparent. I think that is ridiculous. Yeah, I agree. And look, again, no one's buying a Ferrari from these tournaments. And if they are making money, I can tell you now, it's probably to cover the expenses that they've already had three months leading up to the event. So it's coming back to my point. I don't, me personally, I'm only one person, I don't care whether someone makes money and I don't even need transparency. It's not a fucking public company, you know. It's just a fucking tournament. It doesn't matter. You don't need to be screening. You don't have to open your fucking books. I think that's bullshit. True. But, do you know what I mean? Like, this is just a hobby. It's just a hobby where people are having fun. But if you know that certain practices put people's noses out of joint, don't do it. There's that. And you're right. The best way to do that is to be transparent. It's just advice. My number one goal was for people to have fun. So I wanted to eliminate any question of a doubt where any dollar was going. I didn't want to make a cent off this thing. Any money I made was that I earned by playing in the tournament. Oh, but you're a TD. You shouldn't be playing. Yeah, fuck off. That was my payment for I'm going to play in the tournament whether I'm running it or not. And if I'm not running it, the tournament doesn't exist, so fuck off. There. Did I say that? So say yeah. Anyway, I think you made a mistake. I mean, maybe you're just a better person than I am. I don't think you should have paid. I was not ever going to pay a cent out of my pocket for this. To do this, my payment was a lot of time. Same with the profile tours I did. I didn't want to make money off it. I just wanted to cover all the costs I have and keep the costs as low as possible for the player and give back as much as possible. Everybody got a shirt. They got something out of it. A lot of these prizes. You know, I made the value what I think was good, and I did the same for, I believe, The Beast. I think a lot of better shows, you know, like there are shows that have, you're paying an admin fee, but you're also getting to go to a great show like Brisbane Masters, like Yagpin, or games are on free play. You know, there's big value in that too. But you have to decide as a player what is worth your time and money. And again, it's available right now for any TV to create a tournament where they don't play in it and they pay themselves. It's available right now. Very few do that. Very few. We've just covered so much stuff. And, you know, we're trying to be the definitive view. All of it is recommendations. It's advice from you that's just recently had a very successful tournament. And I know that, as I said, I've seen so much positive feedback. The tournaments that I ran, I had really positive feedback. Okay, very, very little negative at all. So we've also been in a lot of big tournaments as well. So I think we are well-versed in this situation to give you some good advice. So it is just advice. Take it for what you will. Do we talk other things now? That's enough. Yeah. So let's talk about Venom because we recorded the podcast, I want to say maybe two days before it was revealed. And I don't necessarily want to talk too much about Venom, because it is what it is. It's interesting because, from what I've seen, it hasn't sold as well as the likes of Foo Fighters. And the only thing that I can really put my finger on is, one, the theme. I don't think Venom is a theme that's for everyone. I mean, I still haven't seen any of the films, and I don't think, I personally don't think Venom is an A-list superhero. There you go. I've said it. But I've read a lot of people's thoughts, and people will sort of say, oh, you know, the theme's not for me. But also the one thing that people keep bringing up is that it's a fan layout. And I wanted to talk about that because there has been some negative connotation with fan layouts. First things first, we're getting into the fan layout. The theme, my thoughts, I think it's a great theme. I think it's perfect for pinball. I love the comic book edition. I love that Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti) did incredible artwork on it. It looks pretty deep. It looks fun. I'm dying to play the game. I like that there's, on the premium and the LE, three unique kind of play field settings. That's pretty funky. Yeah. That is really, really cool. Really cool. I mentioned about the Insider Connected progress. That's awesome. I sent Dwight a text. I said, this is going to be a homeowner's delight. But I get the fatigue of, oh, fuck another superhero. It's the same with seeing movies, right? There's a lot of freaking superhero movies. That's all Hollywood can make nowadays. And I get that fatigue, but all I care about, I've never cared about theme, although a lot of people do, is does it shoot well? Is the code going to be good? For the eyeball test, yeah, on both counts. Now back to the fan layout. I'll just double down on that in that I think the code looks really inventive. Just twice as trying some new stuff, and I think it's going to land quite well. I also like the look of that. I was sort of saying I'm a bit fatigued with the comic book art. With this, in particular, the side art on the LE, it just looks amazing. I think they've done really well. But the reason I wanted to say same layouts is because people were just sort of saying, oh, you know, all the shots seem the same and everything's right at the back. I think some facetious comment was it might as well be a multi-morphic game because it's all at the back quarter of the game, which... First of all, multi-morphic games are fucking awesome, so I don't agree with that. Yeah, well, and even if so, it's a compliment, so thank you. But then I just thought to myself, I wonder how many fan layouts are in, let's say, the top 25 or so on Pinsight. And you only have to go to number two, which is Medieval Madness. People made it as a fan layout. Yeah. Does it feel like you're just shooting all these things at the back of the playfield? I think the saucer is kind of mid-playfield, a little higher up, closer than the back end. You've got the side catapult shot. You know, the trolls and they come up there mid-playfield. Yep. Okay. I can see the fan layout argument, if that's a concern of yours, but it doesn't bother me. I mean... No, my answer is that I like fan layouts. I like them. Listen. And the Foo Fighters really was a game changer, right? I remember seeing it. I'm like, wow, you know, you look at a game like Radical, and you're like, that's fucking crazy. And Foo Fighters was the first game that reminded me of Radical. And when I told Jack that, he said I couldn't pay him a higher compliment, right? And I was sincere. And so to go from Foo Fighters to this, yeah, you're going to maybe perceive like, oh, we've gone back as far as layouts. but, I mean, look at how many great fan looks there are. Tons, tons, tons, tons. Okay, so in my list, right, and some of these might be debatable, but this is going from top to bottom. So Medieval Madness, yes. Attack from Mars, yes. I'm going to come back to Deadpool. Elvira House of Horrors. Monster Bash. Cactus Canyon. Lord of the Rings. Wow, all turds. They're great games. Metallica. What else have we got? Stranger Things. Well, Stranger Things is controversial because it's the same designer. Batman 66. ACDC. You're a fan layout fan as well, aren't you? I am. But the reason why I wanted to name all of those, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, let's say 13 out of the top 27 or so. Nice round number, 27. Nice job. 27. Well, I should have said 29. But I didn't go down to Skidstiff, which is also another one. but what I wanted to make the point of is that none of these games play the same. They just don't. So just because you've got two flippers down the bottom and all the shots towards the back or some of them have, a fan layout is not the same game. Especially with Venom, the way it changes from player to player or ball to ball. Correct. So what you've got to understand about pinball in general, But fan layouts, fan layouts, it's all about, it's about the speed. It's about the cadence. It's about the pace in which you hit a shot and when it comes back to your flipper. What are you going to do next? A lot of the fan layouts are on the fly and it's a lot of flow as well. What's interesting about Venom is it's got all these ways the ball comes back differently, which I think makes it interesting. Again, love the layout, love the variety, the code. You're right. I think Dwight's got it. You know, he always wants to put a lot into a pinball machine, and he has put a lot into a pinball machine. And the trick is always, okay, can I balance it so people aren't always choosing the same path? I think this is going to be a good one. Yeah, agreed. Yeah, that's the only reason I wanted to bring that up, because I just, when everyone was saying, a lot of people were saying it's just a fan layout. I just went, well, why is that said as a derogatory term? Like, fan layout's a good game, guys. Hmm. So, there you go. I didn't hear those complaints. I don't know where you saw them. Was it just Facebook, Pinside? What is it? Social media. So, all of those. Facebook, Pinside, wherever you're going to get complaints. X? We haven't even talked about it. How fucked did Gene X Wong get? Gene X Wong got absolutely stitched up. Didn't even buy him dinner and got fucked. No, I didn't even lube him up. Just straight in. But I did say, I mean, it was, I don't know, it was news for maybe 24, 48 hours, and I did see like an interview with him that a news station did. Gene was just, I mean, awesome. I mean, I've met Gene, you've met Gene, Gene's awesome. But he was just sort of like, yeah, I expected this would happen. That's all right. We were talking in Edmonton, and I said, what do you want? Like, is it a Tesla? 100,000? Like, was there a number here? and the number was a lot of zeros, just not a one in front of any of them. Yeah, it was with a decimal point, but it was past the one. Poor Gene. Oh, well. Yeah. Did you see the handle they gave him? Yes. What was it, like, one, two, three, seven, six, nine, four, five, six, nine, X? Hey, Elon, you're not naming your child. This is a guy's Twitter handle. It's exactly like that. Fuck. Oh, well. For those people that don't know, Gene X Wong, who is a fantastic person and pinball player and also does Orange Photography, so please support Orange Photography, he had the Twitter handle at X. When Twitter was then changed to X by Elon Musk, they took the at X from Gene X Wong with an email that said, hey, we're taking it, but compensation for you having this for 16 years and us stealing it from you, we will give you merch, some merchandise that you can select, and a tour of our office. Are you kidding me? Oh, he was rogered royally. He really was. Oh, as I said, there was at least four fingers there. That was a double fisting. Poor Gene. Poor Gene. Oh, that sucks. That sucks. And by the way, Gene, yes, the pinball player, he's part of the Indus crew. He's the official photographer of Indus. It's not like he's just got a few followers. He has 28,000 followers, too, because of his work he does. He's like the go-to person for female bodybuilding. What's that wonderful pinball machine, Hardbody? Sure. Is it Rachel McLeese or something like that? Like, he's filmed her and stuff. Wow, okay. Anyway, so, like, he's a big, big, big wig in that world and other things that he does. So, anyway, poor Gene. Oh, well. I'll never talk to him again because I can't find his ex-handle. It was good to see you in that interview. and also every photo that you see of him, it's either shown that he's got an orange photography T-shirt on or it is mentioned. So at least, hopefully, it's good PR for his business. Yep, for sure. Anyway, poor Gene. Imagine if you had that handle and you were a movie reviewer. Oh, so good. It's late. It's like 1 o'clock in the morning here. I stay up late so that you can stay up in the afternoon and have a few sips of gin. What time is it? It's one o'clock in the morning. You know I'm not a big drinker, right? Right. I know that, which really surprises me. It's funny. Oh, I gave blood, which, by the way, you should do. It should really help out. I gave blood, and it had been a while, and they asked, well, how many drinks do you normally have in a week? And I went, a week? I said, I think I've had maybe five this calendar year. It's not something I do. But that's not saying I don't enjoy it. I just couldn't remember any this month. And then so me and my wife, Ann, and another couple, we went to a German restaurant because I was talking about my trip in Germany, and it was so good. This place in Hamilton, Ontario, God, it was good. And it kind of reminded me of being in Germany and the schnitzel and all that good stuff. And everyone's got a drink. I'm like, ah, fuck, I'll have a drink. I wasn't even driving. And I saw the first name I recognized, and I can't remember what's in the drink, except the first thing I saw was gin. I'm like, yeah, I'll take that. I'll take that. I ordered a Tom Collins. Sure. Do you like those? Too fruity? Too sweet? No, I actually do like sweet drinks, but I don't really do cocktails. If it's gin, it's just gin and tonic. That's it. Gotcha. Well, I had a Tom Collins, and my wife laughed at me. She goes, whatever you had that. I go, maybe the last one was in Vegas. So my trick was whenever I go to Vegas, I would, okay, if I'm in Vegas, you're seeing a drunk Jeff. I'm just letting you know right now. Why? Because they're giving it to you for free. I know. It's the best. Yeah, my friends from Italy, Flavio Wolfgang, they were going to Vegas. I'm like, here's what you do. This is what I do, and I've been 12 times. You go, you sit down at a bar that has video poker. You put $20 in, and they see you're playing a dollar game or something like that. What can I get you to drink? The drinks are free because you're playing. So that's my plan, just to get a quick buzz on. And when I say quick buzz, I'm fucking schnookered by noon. Much to the delight of Ann and anybody I'm with, but it's fun. It's good times. I'm not hurting anybody. I'm a fun drunk. Anyway, but I don't really know what to drink. I can't just order fireballs. That's a shot, and that's for shits and giggles. So people would come up and say, can I have a Tom Collins? I'm like, yeah, let me try one of those too. Like, not knowing what it is. First time I ever had a Long Island iced tea, I'm like, somebody said it. I'm like, sure, I'll try that. They're now like some of my favorite drinks. And I never get them at home or anywhere else. Oh, there's one I want to try. I think it's gin. I can't remember. Fuck, I don't even remember. French 75, have you heard of that? No. I'm looking it up right now. Have you had a Mejito? Probably. I can't tell you what's in it, but it sounds good. I like the name. French 75. Somebody was telling me about this. Yeah, okay. So it's a cocktail made from gin, champagne, lemon juice and sugar. So that's very similar to a Tom Collins. Tom Collins doesn't have champagne. Okay. I'm in. I'm dying to try these French 75s now. Yeah, okay. Mojito. Go on, Mojito. What's in that? You'll... Alcohol. I'll tell you. I'll tell you. I'll tell you. It's a traditional Cuban punch. consists of five ingredients, white rum, sugar, lime juice, soda water, and mint. I'm in. Yeah, it's great. Sounds good. I've got to tell you, it's really good. Well, so we're drinking and we're reading at this restaurant and I'm like, you know what, I think fucking Marty's robbing off of me and Dr. Penn too. I really like gin. Yeah. And that's because for many, many years gin was shit. But in the last six, seven years ago, like when the gin renaissance happened, gin's got good. When was it shit like beef eater gin, that stuff? Yeah, when really you had a choice of beef eater. What's on the tange? What's a tange? Tanqueray. Yeah. Tanqueray 10. And it was like, oh, you know, Hendrix or Hendrix. No, it's still also shit. But it was when they started really adding some nice botanicals to gin, that's when it became good. I think this is a gin. Bombay Sapphire? So Bombay Sapphire, yeah, again, it's still a pretty... Okay, here's what I'll say. Gin is great no matter what. Even shitty cheap gin is still fine. But, and I would say Bombay Sapphire is sort of your entry level-ish. Right. You can step up from Beef Eater and Gordon's, but it's still your entry-ish level. Everything I've heard about that is the first one is okay. The second one, now you're in trouble. Not for you. You've got no soul. But, I mean, like for normal people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can just do better, is what I'm saying. Okay. But if someone says, oh my God, Bombay Sapphire is my favourite gin, I'd be like, good for you, well done, it's fine. So anyway, I'm just happy the more people drinking gin the better. Anyway, so are we going to talk about movies? No, we're not really. Just, you mentioned last time we spoke that you saw three movies and one of them was a surprise and that was The Flash. Yeah, I said Indiana Jones was shit and Mission Impossible. It was fine. You said it was fine? Yeah, but yeah, okay. So I decided to watch The Flash. And I don't want to give too much away, people, but let me just say this. I thoroughly enjoyed it, by the way. If I'd only watched the first 15 minutes of it, maybe even the first half an hour, I would have been put off. I think the more you watch it, the more you understand how clever clever it is to have the multiple characters on the screen at the same time through the entire movie I just thought it was a very very clever movie and a very clever story I cannot believe it bombed at the movies. I think probably the actors were through with that. Cancer culture. Cancer culture. That's a shame because it's a really good film. Yeah, I liked it. I've actually seen it a fourth time. I've seen it at home. So I wanted to watch it. There you go. I'm going to watch it again. That's funny, but the first 15 minutes didn't do it for you, and I will spoil it. There's a scene where the Flash has to save a hospital, and six newborn babies are flying through the air. One's about to have acid poured on them. The one's got knives coming out of it. The other one's about to be stabbed. It's crazy. That is, it was like, am I watching the boys? This is awesome. Yeah, there was definitely some boys-like feeling towards it. I tell you, the reason why I said the first 15 minutes is his personality is quite jarring to begin with, but not only does his personality change throughout the movie, you know, he becomes a lot less dorky, if that makes sense. Yeah. I think they were trying to play up to the dorkiness too much too early. Fair enough. I get it. Good story. I'm glad you liked it. Yeah. Thank you very much for the recommendation. I also watched, even though I've been out for a couple of weeks, I'm going to try and relate this back to Pinball. I also watched, which came out a couple of years ago, Mortal Kombat. Okay. I've never seen it. Okay. So there were two Mortal Kombat movies that came out ages ago. They were really ordinary. This one is a solid B. A B plus if you can stretch it. Actually, it has a lot going for it. The lack of good actors is probably the thing that's going against it. It is sort of a B-grade movie. But I was talking to somebody at work that's sort of getting into people going, Why haven't they done a Mortal Kombat pinball machine? How many times have we mentioned video games? It would be great for you. I know. Yeah, I agree. I don't even know another movie. I know there's a Sub-Zero character, and I forgot the other one's name. What's this? Scorpion. Scorpion. Yeah, Liu Kang. But think of Transformers. You pick the Autobots, or what's the other one? Decepticons. Decepticons. Why couldn't you do that in this? Are you Team Sub-Zero or are you Team Scorpion? Oh, for sure. You decide good or evil. Absolutely. I mean, the closest we've got to it, obviously, is the Street Fighter pinball machine, which... Every second shot's a multiball? No, that's terrible. Yeah, I know. I am so in the minority here. I find Street Fighter, the Gottlieb Street Fighter game, fun. I do. It was in this last year. There you go. But, you know, those Gottlieb Premier games, it would have to have been a Jim Belcito game. He has all of those Gottlieb Premier games. It has to be. Oh, for sure. Oh, because I remember when we had Barbed Wire, when you were in disc, the next year we had Waterworld. Come on, Jim. So, anyway, there you go. Bring it back to pinball. Come on, someone do a Mortal Kombat. Do you know what it is, though? I think if that Mortal Kombat movie had been an absolute blockbuster, then I reckon you would see a Mortal Kombat pinball machine. Which company is more likely to do Mortal Kombat? To me, I think it's Spooky. Oh, yeah, I think you're right. Because, again, they don't need to make 20,000 of them. They just need to make 1,500 or 2,000. But I think the best format, easily, would be multimorphic. Yeah, I agree with you on that. Like, you want a video mode? Here you go. Yeah, you want a fatality? So is it. Yeah. Three buttons on each side? That would be insane. Yeah, good video mode. What do you reckon? Mm-hmm. Anyway. Okay. So there you go. So, next show, what movie do you want me to watch? I'll think of that while we're talking here. I'm going to have to figure out what you haven't seen. But I saw a movie. In fact, I tried seeing it two weeks ago. It had been out for a week. We bought tickets. We went, and there was an hour lineup, not for our reserved seats, for popcorn. I said, can I get a refund? I'm not fucking waiting an hour to get popcorn. And we left. The theater's five minutes from my house. I said, we'll come back on it. We came back on a... You've got to be careful. I might have been off work one day. We went at three in the... Yeah, I thought that's where you were going to go. Three in the afternoon. But, yeah, I went three in the afternoon. I don't know, Thursday or something like that. Saw Barbie. Okay. It's really fun. It's a good movie. Yeah, I've heard. I've heard. It was really good. I've heard it's quite fun. And it's a real event. I mean, the reason it was lined up is... And it wasn't all young girls by any means, But it was definitely a, hey, let's get a group of people to go. And the majority of them were girls. And they had a great time. And so did I. It was, that's a fun movie. Ryan Reynolds steals every scene he's in. Your boy, your favorite comedian. Ryan Gosling, you mean? Oh, fuck yeah. Damn it. Yep. Ron Ryan. Yep. Ryan Gosling. Yeah, he's great as Ken. And Michael Cera is so awesome as Alan. And, of course, Margot Robbie, perfectly cast and good on her for getting this movie done with Greta Gerwig. It's good. I recommend it. A lot of fun. Good messages, too. You learn something. How do you feel about Wes Anderson films? Hit and miss. I think if you love them, you love them all. Some of them were like, okay, I'm lost. The hotel one was my favorite one. Grand Budapest Hotel. Yeah, I like that one a lot. Absolutely my favorite. Moonrise Kingdom was also fantastic. I, two nights ago, watched Asteroid City. Oh, that's a new one, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No good? Beautiful to look at. Swing and a miss. Oh, it's, um, I don't know. I don't know. I think he's trying a bit too hard with this one. Wow. Anyway, but I don't know if you've seen, it's hilarious the amount of AI videos out there of people turning movies into Wes Anderson films. That's probably why we have a stag strike and other things. because of AI. But you actually, you can look at like, there's like Lord of the Rings, and it's done like as if it was a trailer, Wes Anderson doing it. There's lots of them. They are hilarious. There you go. Better than Asteroid City is what I'm saying. Fine. You want me to give you a movie? Yes. I want you to see a comedy that you haven't seen. Mm-hmm. So let's go with some classics. I'm not saying they're the best movies, but I'll name some, and you tell me if you've seen them or not. Okay. Have you, first of all, have you seen Anchorman? Yeah, we talked about that a couple of episodes ago. You loved it. Okay. You said not to watch the second one, which I won't. It's not, actually the second one's not bad, but it's nothing compared to the first one. Have you seen Dumb and Dumber? Yes. Okay. Fantastic, loved it. Oh yeah, because of the Australia scene. Isn't it? The very opening scene, where are you from? Austria. Oh, put another strip on the bar. Okay. Okay Have you seen the comedy And it might be the last great comedy That's ever been in a theater Because they don't make comedies anymore We had this conversation Everything everywhere all at once But keep going Yeah but that's rare This is the end Have you seen that spectacular movie What It's called This is the End Never heard of it Fuck me Go watch This is the End And tell me what you think Okay Will you do it Yeah absolutely This is the end. It is just, wow. Perfect. Writing it down right now. It's possibly cancelled because of James Franco's in it. Oh, darn it. Separate the actor from the artist. Fuck, I hate cancel culture. Anyway, whatever. I do too, but I mean, I get it. Yeah, for sure. I've got other comedies, but that one will do. Okay, this is the end. Okay. That's a good one. What shitty movie do I have to watch of yours? No, no, no, no, no. You've seen lots of movies. I haven't. That's the whole thing of this. Fine. I guess we had a show here because you sent us an email. We were not going to do this if you didn't put your fingers on the keyboard and send us some love. So we did get some emails. Marty, who wrote? What did they say? And do we do the show again? Okay. So the first one is from Corey Hulse. Hi, Corey. So send him my email text So that you don't shut down the podcast And he said With the recent discussion of curse words And your increased usage of them in the past few episodes I wanted to pass along a Freakonomics podcast Which talks about the history of cursing Can I tell you something? Yeah, go About cursing We're going to get to this, Corey Hold on, you get your fucking email read Do you know that I was conscious of trying not to swear Whenever I did stand-up comedy? Do you know why? Because you had no jokes No No Because And I hope it doesn't come across this way in this program It's a cheap laugh It's the making somebody uncomfortable The shock value It's not clever No that's right No well that's a given Hello Fuckity fuck fuck fuck Yeah and I think there was a UK comedian and he at one stage said I am no longer going to be swearing because along those lines it's like it's cheap and I don't feel I need to resort to swearing to get a laugh. Yeah. However for you and I, we've absolutely got to resort. It's the equivalent of fart jokes really. Anyway, so the big link is speakanomics.com slash podcast slash swearing is more important than you think. And he says The basic gist is that words that were previously considered taboo were related to bodily functions and body parts, like your beloved cunt. In recent times, these types of words are more commonplace and accepted. Australia, Canada and the UK have definitely embraced this quicker than the US. Meanwhile, words that are derogatory to groups of people are now more prominently... are now more prominently cursed as compared to 10 or 20 years ago. Yay! So switching to tournament and leagues. Jeff, you are understandably pumped to win your league. What makes a good league? Format, vibe, etc. I think we covered that today. Sure. So let's say you're at a tournament. the three games of finals are revealed what three games are you jumping for joy about and what three games make you cringe they make me cringe because I'm not good at them so here you go come get me I want to learn it I don't know how to play turtles you want to beat me play turtles yeah what a yeah Star Wars used to be it but I'm learning it a little better so I think I can get by in Star Wars now I don't know you know what Carlos Delicerta gave me good advice a long time ago, and he's like a top ten player in the world and a great guy. I used to cringe when I would see a game in a tournament, and Carlos said, those are the games I go and practice right away first. I'm like, that makes sense. Make them become your friends. So there are less of them now. I just don't ever get to play a turtle, so that's why I said turtles right off the top of my head. I can't think of anything that I made sure I learned a lot of Foo Fighters. I bought a Rush to learn Rush. Yeah, I don't think there's anything that really scares me. And there's a lot of games I like. Give me a good spinner. Like, you know, Stargazer was in this bank. There were three of them. That was kind of fun. I've always liked Space Shuttle if it's got a juicy spinner. Any with a juicy spinner is fun. That's it. Yeah. For me, not that you asked, Corey, but for me. He didn't ask, so let's move on. He didn't ask. No, but Star Wars for me is number one. That makes you cringe? Just cringe because it's just over. The game is just unfair. and speaking of unfair, my number two is Ghostbusters. Again, that used to be there for me but I've kind of figured it out. Yeah, I just still I mean, I haven't had a lot of time with it recently but I just remember in a tournament it used to just destroy me and the third one, strangely enough in a tournament is Attack from Mars. Just in a tournament, because usually Ball Save is off and usually if you miss a shot, fuck, it comes back. You're going to be very, very quick with your reactions. Do you know what game was killing me, and I like playing it a lot, it was killing me at the Beast, but I couldn't survive the one shot. It was a game I'm confident on more than most games. Whirlwind. The reason Whirlwind was so tough was because... Right, so-so? No, the seller kicked it out like, here you go, fucker, take it away. It was hard to live catch. You couldn't hold up the flipper. You couldn't bounce fast. It was like every ball I lost basically was because I couldn't survive the cellar, which is nuts. And you've got to go in there. All the time. I like to because, yeah, anyway. So it depends on game setups. There you go. Thanks, Corey. For me, any game without a ball safe. There you go. Next email. Brandon. Brandon B. writes, Hi, Jeff and Martin. It was my first time listening to Final Round. Holy shit, we do have new people. And I just switched on the Beast episode. Y'all's dynamic was awesome. That's never been said in an English sentence ever. Y'all's dynamic was awesome. I like it. The movie review segment was entertaining despite straying away from pinball. Guess what? It's fucking a new staple. We've dumped out the spots of the week. We occasionally make Marty kill some people, but fucking movies? You got it, baby. Thanks, Brandon. I'll be continuing to listen in rotation with the Pinball Party podcast as well as the pinball show. Now, the one thing I'd love to see from any podcast would be all tournament talk. Brandon, the show is dedicated to you. I didn't even read that before. We were doing it anyway. For some reason, I guess people don't like it or what have you. But that's all I look for in pinball podcasts. Oh, Brandon, boner up on this one, dude. We had the most talented competitors to ever play pinball, and they aren't being discussed. Jason Zoller, Escher Lefkoff. Do you realize if you look at them, Escher's number one, Jason close behind at number two. They have 2,500 whopper points. The next closest person has 600 less. They are in a league by themselves. It's ridiculous. Go look at it. I paid pinball.com. Personally, I would love it if your podcast took up the responsibility. You lost us right there, Brandon. You're getting nothing, dude. You get what you get. Dude, in episode five, we were piss drunk or something like that. We fucking bailed on that immediately. It was COVID. We were like trying to report out the windows like a shotgun. But yeah, as we sort of said, Brandon, this podcast started as a tournament talk podcast and COVID happened and there were no tournaments. So it just evolved to whatever the shit sandwiches that we've got now. I would like to bring some much needed respect and dignity to a sport, not a hobby. You're right. It is a sport that these competitors put so much time and creativity, passion and so much. I appreciate. Oh, thanks very much. Very nice, Brandon. And a new guy, too. That was nice for someone to reach out. A lot of people can bitch, but when people take the time to write something nice, it means a lot to us. It really, really does. Fuck Twippy votes. I couldn't give two rats' asses about a fucking Twippy award or nomination. Don't even vote for us, honest to God. Like, fucking give it to the people we're begging. Derek wrote, Writing in to say I love the podcast and I hope listeners are taking pity on these two cunts. We only say it because the listeners say it. That's why we're just trying to speak the language. Marty, after he destroyed his beautiful BMW in a ditch, has been working at Haggis in a penal colony. It's a bit of an old joke there, Derek. Come on, buddy. Step it up. Damien and crew work hard at Haggis, with parts hard to come by at times. They're located in a strange ancient land, that is affected by time dilation, a mysterious smoke monster, and surrounded by sharks. Hopefully Marty's original game is Rocco's Modern Life. What's that? Rocco's, say, it's a content. I also find it so nice that Jeff makes bi-monthly video calls while Marty is serving time. Sure, his jokes fall short compared to Jim Carrey, and he isn't as handsome like Ryan Reynolds, but he gets the job done, I guess. The poor guy, though, is a Blue Jays fan, although absolutely devastated by getting swept by the Red Sox. Jeff can't come back in sports after the Boston Bruins. Okay, enough Boston, Homer. Quit the honking. Seriously, you guys are the best. Wish you all the best in life and work. Hope to see you at Pinball Expo or whatever. I'll be there, Derek. Derek, I would love to see you again at some time. So, yeah, best of luck, man. Rick Demmel wrote, what did he say? He said, love your show. Have you listened to it, Rick? I mean, I question it. Makes my commute somewhat enjoyable. People must wonder why I'm laughing as I drive by. It was nice that Jeff did not dwell on his first league win. Did I? I know. Did we talk about that? Shut up. It was the TCPL, yeah. It was the 90 league. That's right. Yeah, we had to bring it up. I won. Yeah. He said, I agree with Jeff. It gets old talking about my seven league championships. Fucking braggart. Shout out to the Capital Corridor Pinball League in Northern California. Another challenge is finding a place to put all these trophies. Oh, it must be. So tough for you, Rick. A question for Marty and Jeff. Are there any words in Canada or Australia like the C word in the United States that make people go ballistic and immediately let's fight mode? I mean, it's just a word, right? Well, Rick, for me, yes, there is one word, and it's... Yeah, I'm not going to say it. There's one word that bothers me too. Which moist? You hate the word moist? Moist. Oh, you say moist. It gets some people just go, oh, moist. Hold on. Let me put spit in my mouth when I say it. Wait. That's just absolutely disgusting. No, like words about body parts and shit like that, that doesn't bother me at all. Words that are racist, offensive, and derogatory, you'll never hear those come out of us. I mean, those are swear words. Those are the bad words, not fucking anything else. Yeah, I think that's really what it is. And it goes back to that other email as well. I think words that are about body parts, and it really is everywhere. Let's call it a colony of the UK that doesn't find these things. But if it's derogatory to a person, a place, or a culture, then we probably won't like it. Out of bounds, for sure. For sure. We won't read this email, but it came from James, that Cardona Pinball Designs approval for Black Rose sequel. Well, that's pretty cool. An upgrade kit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I met James at, it would have been at TPF, and it was playable there opposite our booth. Hmm. Yeah, it looks really good. So look it up. Black Rose, what's it called? Black Rose. Scull and Bones. Scull and Bones, yeah. Okay. You know where we didn't get an email from? You know how we ask for emails? What if we specifically say, you must, like a specific person, they have to send us an email. And if they don't, the show is done. We've still got one more. I know, but I'm saying Ed, who we gave that glowing review last time and described the gargoyle that he was, didn't write back to us. No, didn't even let us know that he was offended. So that's disappointing. What a dick. I think he did send me a note on Facebook. He liked it. Last one from a fellow podcaster. You might remember the old original pinball podcast. Good old Jeff R. He sent us a note. There you go. You got an email. Pinball Podcasters Solidarity. On a serious note, it is always fun when you bring on Ryan. Well, Ryan was, is it? Is it? Are you sure about that? We love having Ryan on. Trust me, we do. He was recently in Indonesia. Ask him about learning how to ride a scooter. Do you know about that? Yes. Anyway, he sent me pictures. Dude. Oh, well. I'm glad he's fine. You have all the chemistry of secret lovers. I'm saying the pinball tension is quite infectious. I don't know whether it's secret, but I like it. Yeah, there's videos. Did you not see, like, look carefully at episode 69? There's, like, footage. Don't tell him I said that. He needs to keep thinking that. I look down on him. All right, Ryan. He's not listening. Marty, nut up and watch The Godfather. Ha ha! I nearly did, you know. I nearly did. It's on a streaming service, so I can watch it at any time. So keep going. You've got to sit through it. You can't be distracted. I will. It can be considered slow. It's a masterpiece. You're like my friend that never ate pie into his 30s, and it was actually part of his identity. Eric, the guy who never ate pie. Don't become the godfatherless guy. Jeff, I think you should probably name drop more. We're barely beginning to understand that you might know people, and you're well-liked in this community. Keep my name out of your mouth, though. Sorry, Jeff. I'm sorry. I miss you both. One more than the other, but you can sort out who that might be. Oh, yeah. Good show. You're top notch. Okay, Jeff, let this be known, and I wrote back to him, I have not had a piece of pie since I was five years old. Swear to God. Put me in that category as air. I actually don't eat dessert ever. Yeah, I don't ever eat desserts ever. That's me. That's all of our emails. What if somebody wanted to email us? Where would they go, Marty? Well, I hope they would because we actually have had a lot of fun with these emails that come through. So, finalroundpinball at gmail.com. Please email us. You'll get a response. Sometimes it'll just be a reply saying you're a cunt. But email us anyway if that's what you want. You can... Fuck X. We're at finalround... Fuck X. Fuck X. Fuck off. Are we on threads? Oh, I didn't even think... You know, we should. Oh, now some fucker's going to steal our thread. Or do we have divs? Do we have divs? I don't know. Yay! I don't know. Because it's that final Ramping Ball podcast at Instagram. So, yeah, let's do threads. Before this airs, you better fucking sign up for our threads. You do have to do that. I don't know how to do it. I don't either. Yeah. We're old. Facebook's for us. Exactly. So you can message us on Facebook. That's another thing. Where can they fax us? Send us a telex. A smoke signal. That's a decent show. It'll do. Not bad. Not bad. Not great. Not a lot, but again, well, I would say, you know, after the tournament talk, it wasn't great, but I'm editing this, so I will listen back. And I just think there's so many good nuggets in that discussion, not just about these big tournaments, but I think a lot of it can also lend to any tournament or even just a competition that you're running, be it weekly, monthly or whatever. As I said, they are opinions, but they are particularly Jeff, who runs tournaments, and I haven't for many, many years. It's valid information, and you should take it. It was pinball related, because I promise you, it is my promise to you, there will be one podcast within the next calendar year, within the next 12 months, where I will not talk one bit of pinball. and Marty, you won't either and we'll just release it and people are like, what the fuck was that? And they'll like it or they'll hate it. That's what they call one for us. Just be warned, it's coming up where there's zero pinball talk. We have to, apparently, but it's coming. Just letting you know. I can't wait. I look forward to it. And when we get females back saying, that was great. Death to pinball. Alright, that's it. I'm out of here. All right, I'm out of here, and I've just got one more thing to say. I reckon the bubble has burst. Do you really? What the fuck? We're not done. Fuck you. We're done. Okay, thanks, everyone. See you later. See you next time. Whoa, bring it back there. Rewind. You just said, I think the bubble has burst. I just saw a Led Zeppelin Pro in Canada for sale, home use only, $4,900, which is about maybe $4,000, maybe even less than that. $4,000 American for a home use Led Zeppelin? I was like, what, what, what? Have prices come down? Again, it was the used market we were concerned about. Yeah, it is. The LEs, are they flying off the chart? Have they hit the ceiling? How many bond LEs are out there? How many are sold? Go on. How many 60th anniversary bonds can they raffle off? Hey, that's a sign, man. If they've got them available, that means they're not being sold. Ask your distributors what they've got. Oh, And, hey, listen, it's good they've got inventory. I'm sure the distributors don't want to be sitting on it. But it's not like it was a few years ago. It's got to come down. Marty admitted it. I didn't say it has. I said think. What are your thoughts? I don't know. I reckon it's a very curious time. I think right now, right now is market correction time. And what that lands at, I don't think we know just yet because we're not at the other end of the correction. To be continued. To be continued. All right, now we're going. See you later. Okay. Bye, guys.

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 35264659-bf8b-4d87-85f0-855bf03a5e0e*