# Flipperception

**Source:** NYC PinPod  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2025-09-15  
**Duration:** 36m 29s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.spreaker.com/episode/flipperception--67753098

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## Analysis

NYC PinPod episode covering local NYC pinball league results, machine updates, and an in-depth discussion of the NYC Triborough Series—a nine-tournament circuit spanning 2025 with experimental formats including World Cup-style groups, PACE elimination, and a unique Texas Hold'em card tournament. Hosts Jose Garcia and Eric Sweetland discuss competitive play, personal pinball projects, and the ambitious group double-elimination finals format for the series champion.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] As of September 12, 2025, there are 345 pinball machines in New York City at 82 public locations — _Official data from Pinball Map cited by hosts_
- [HIGH] 8-Ball Deluxe uses an unusual flipper mechanism where the lower flipper coil mechanically triggers a switch that engages the upper flipper coil, rather than a two-stage switch — _Eric Sweetland describing mechanics learned during repair at Barcade Brooklyn_
- [HIGH] The NYC Triborough Series has 102 individual participants across at least one event; 32 will qualify for finals — _Jose Garcia providing series statistics_
- [HIGH] The Amazing Quads Race (June 28 at Geberts) used a double round-robin World Cup-style format with groups of 4-5 players — _Jose Garcia describing past Triborough Series events_
- [HIGH] The PACE format eliminates 12+ players at round 5 (those under 21 points), then raises cutoff by 7 points each subsequent round — _Jose Garcia explaining PACE tournament mechanics_
- [MEDIUM] IFPA has an antiquated 'Hold'em' tournament format involving points betting, discovered by Jose Garcia when designing the Texas Hold'em card tournament — _Jose Garcia citing conversation with IFPA director Josh Sharp_
- [HIGH] Jose Garcia is working on restoring a Spectra 4 cocktail table using new hardware from Fast Pinball — _Jose Garcia's pinball bullet journal segment_
- [HIGH] Jose Garcia has never reached Thanos on his Avengers Infinity Quest Pro machine despite dedicated practice — _Jose Garcia's personal pinball updates_

### Notable Quotes

> "It uses the flipper coil to mechanically push a switch for the other flipper coil. It's wild. It's a switch in a switch. Yeah. It's a flipper switch. Flipperception?"
> — **Eric Sweetland and Jose Garcia**, ~15:00
> _Playful discovery of mechanical ingenuity in classic pinball design; title reference moment_

> "I came up with a format that I actually genuinely believe that has never been played before, which is group double elimination format."
> — **Jose Garcia**, ~60:00
> _Introduction of novel tournament format for Triborough Series finals_

> "You've heard of double elimination head-to-head matches. You've heard of group elimination... I came up with a format that I actually genuinely believe that has never been played before."
> — **Jose Garcia**, ~62:00
> _Explaining innovative 'group double elimination' finals structure_

> "There are two events, but even getting two events in at this point could get you over the top 32 mark and get invited to the NYC Triborough Series."
> — **Jose Garcia**, ~75:00
> _Call-to-action for community participation in accessible tournament series_

> "I initially wanted it to be opt-in so that people would have to like click and register into the NYC Triborough series so that their scores would get updated, but that became way too much of a hassle."
> — **Jose Garcia**, ~78:00
> _Practical problem-solving in tournament administration—auto-enrollment from IFPA results_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Jose Garcia | person | NYC PinPod co-host, director of NYC Triborough Series, pinball machine owner/restorer, competitive player |
| Eric Sweetland | person | NYC PinPod co-host, pinball tournament director in NYC, casual player |
| NYC Pinball League | organization | Competitive league in NYC with Left Flipper and Right Flipper divisions, weekly matches at multiple venues |
| NYC Triborough Series | event | Nine-tournament circuit across NYC in 2025 with experimental formats; finals featuring novel 'group double elimination' format with 32 invited players |
| Barcade Brooklyn | organization | Pinball venue in Brooklyn; hosts NYC Pinball League matches; location where Eric works Saturday shifts |
| Scrapple Land | organization | Pinball venue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; hosts Scrapple League Season 4 and planned Hold'em card tournament |
| Max | person | General manager at Barcade Brooklyn who assisted with 8-Ball Deluxe upper flipper repair |
| Greg Pavarelli | person | Tournament director for Scrapple League 2025, competitive player |
| Fast Pinball | company | Supplier of bespoke pinball hardware for machine construction and restoration |
| Avengers Infinity Quest | game | Pinball machine owned by Jose Garcia (Pro model); Jose struggling to reach Thanos end game |
| Spectra 4 | game | Cocktail table pinball machine owned by Jose Garcia; requires restoration using Fast Pinball hardware |
| 8-Ball Deluxe | game | Classic pinball machine at Barcade Brooklyn with unique upper flipper mechanism |
| Pinball Map | organization | Community data source for NYC machine locations and updates |
| IFPA | organization | International Federation of Pinball Administrators; manages tournament formats and WPPR rankings |
| Josh Sharp | person | IFPA director; consulted by Jose Garcia about Hold'em tournament format |

### Topics

- **Primary:** NYC League Results and Team Dynamics, Experimental Tournament Formats, NYC Triborough Series Finals Innovation
- **Secondary:** Pinball Machine Restoration and Repair, Community Participation and Accessibility, Venue and Machine Updates
- **Mentioned:** Classic Pinball Mechanics

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.82) — Hosts are enthusiastic about local competition, excited about experimental tournament formats, and engaged with community participation. Eric's repair experience and Jose's restoration projects reflect positive engagement with the hobby. Some minor frustration expressed about tournament logistics (PACE timing concerns, match play limitations) but overall constructive and problem-solving oriented.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** NYC Triborough Series demonstrates robust community participation with 102 individual players across 9 events; accessibility model (auto-enrollment via IFPA results) lowering barriers to competition (confidence: high) — Jose Garcia: '102 individual people who have played in at least one event'; emphasis on opt-in conversion to automatic enrollment
- **[event_signal]** Multiple concurrent tournament series (NYC Pinball League, Scrapple League, Thursday Night Strikes, South Slope Pinball League, NYC Triborough Series) creating dense competitive calendar (confidence: high) — Weekly schedule detailing matches Monday-Thursday with separate league structures and formats
- **[community_signal]** Cross-venue league structure (NYC Pinball League spanning Left/Right Flipper divisions across 10+ venues) demonstrating robust infrastructure and operator cooperation (confidence: high) — Detailed league match results spanning Barcade Brooklyn, Buttermilk Bar, Scrapple Land, Rulos, and other venues
- **[design_philosophy]** Tournament directors experimenting with novel formats (World Cup groups, PACE elimination, Texas Hold'em card selection, group double-elimination finals) indicating active innovation in competitive structure (confidence: high) — Jose Garcia detailing Amazing Quads Race, PACE format, and 'group double elimination format that I actually genuinely believe that has never been played before'
- **[technology_signal]** Match Play software limitations for experimental tournament formats; Jose Garcia working around platform constraints (arena assignment, seeding logic) with manual workarounds (confidence: medium) — Jose Garcia: 'the algorithm was a little strange about giving machines, and you had to kind of be attentive'; planning Excel-based finals due to 'don't think it's going to work out very well with match play'
- **[venue_signal]** Distributed venue network supporting competitive pinball with regular maintenance and updates (machines added/removed weekly, mechanical repairs, flipper adjustments) (confidence: high) — Pinball Map updates detailing T2 additions, Star Wars Comic Art Premium placement, Godzilla replacements, and flipper button stickiness reports

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## Transcript

 Thank you. Happy Sunday, Pinfolk, or whatever day of the week you're listening. This is NYC Pin Pod, in which a panel talks local New York City pinball. I am Jose Garcia, my initials are JGN, and I haven't played competitive pinball in two weeks. Yikes. My name is Eric Sweetland. My initials are HIP, and I'm a pinball tournament director in New York City. Benjamin Furiga is on assignment. Let's get started. Ball one. on saturday silver ball saturday was held not silver ball sunday as it usually is for sunday of the month for single cut 29 at single club beersmiths five rounds of group match play with the top floor went to finals and those top four were chris cafaro matt brady cj christopher smith and boris so congratulations to you all on monday round one of the nyc pinball league was held In the left flipper division, the aristocrats met up with the mutants at solid state. Their score was 6-10 in favor of the mutants. They won the night. The pinbots met up with special when lit at rulos for an impressive 4-12 in special when lit's favor. Balls of steel took that bye week. The lesser players met up with the colliders at buttermilk bar for 7-9 split. Very close game. The colliders took that night. The Pimp Pals met with Intermission Dolores at Commonwealth for a tied 8-8, but seems like the tiebreaker went in the Pimp Pals direction. New York City Flipper Sport Association met up with the Deluxe Horses at Barclay Brooklyn with a win of 11-5. Eric, any thoughts on that night? Uh, no. Okay, fair. The two-for-oners met up with the lion persons at Barcade Fidei for a 7-9 split, and the lion persons taking the knife. Harry's hand grenades met up with Parliament at Owl Farm, where Parliament beat them 13-3. On Tuesday, in the right flipper division, the ball drainers met up with the trolls at Barcade Fidei for a 14-2 win on the ball drainers' side. Pinister Six met up with Reston Pinball, parenthetically R.I.P. at Barkay Brooklyn for an even split at 8-8 but Reston Pinball took the night. No Quarters for Laundry met up with Neptune's Treasure at Milo's Yard for a 4-12 split in favor of Neptune's Treasure. Butterballers and Danger Danger met at Buttermilk for an even split of 8-8 with Danger Danger taking the night. Scrapple Squad met up with Everybody Loves the Sunshine at Sunshine Laundromat for a 5-11 split in favor of Everybody Loves the Sunshine. I love saying that team name. Harlem Globe Flippers faced off against the Shlubs at Jack Bar, 7-9 in the Shlubs' favor. And finally, the Replays played the Pin Babes at Birdies for a 14-2 split in the Replays' favor. It seems to me like there was a lot of even 8-8s and a lot of uneven 14-2s or 12-4s. Yeah. Congrats to everyone. On Wednesday at Scrapple Land in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Greg Pavarelli and his team of assistant TDs brought you Scrapple League 2025 Season 4, the first meeting of this series. Five rounds of match play were played with the goal of garnering the most points for the series total towards the finals. Neats on Kabai, Timothy Turner, and Zach Till all picked up 27 points on the night. At 25 points, Hunter Hayden and Greg Pavarelli. And at 23 points, Adam Kane and yours truly. On Thursday, Thursday Night Strikes was held at Jack Bar, Strikes by Zach. 26 players showed up for 11 rounds of strikes. Ian Leone survived the night with two strikes. Greg Fertel came in second, and Hunter Hayden came in third. Also on Thursday, the South Slope Pinball League Season 4 Third Meeting was directed by Kate Martin. 20 players played five rounds of match play with the hopes of getting many points for their series total. Rob Wong did that the best with 29 points. Billy Vazine and A.J. Gould got 27 points. Tom Milburn and Caitlin James Rees each picked up 25. Next week, on Monday, September 15th, in the Left Flipper Division, the Colliders will have a bye. Harry's Hand Grenades will visit NYC FSA up at the Wallace. The Lion Persons face off against the Pin Pals at Skylark. Special When Lit travels to Scruffy Duffy's Tap Room to face the two-for-oners at their new home Parliament and the Mutants face off at Solid State The Lesser Players host Intermission Dolores at Gebhardt's Beer Culture The Deluxe Horses travel to Scrapple Land to see the Pinbots and the Balls of Steel will face the Aristocrats at Rullo's On Tuesday, September 16th in the Right Flipper Division Everybody Loves the Sunshine travels to Rulo's to see the replays. Danger Danger faces off against No Quarters for Laundry at Solid State. The Pin Babes will face Reston Pinball, parenthetically, RIP, at Barcade Brooklyn. The Harlem Globe Flippers travel to Milo's Yard to see Neptune's Treasure. The Schlubs and the Butterballers will battle it out at Buttermilk Bar. Scrapple's squad goes to Jack Bar to see the Ball Drainers and the Trolls and Pinister Six will meet at Skylark On Wednesday, Scrapple League 2025 Season 4 will meet for its second night and that will be starting at 8pm On Thursday, there is nothing on the calendar but we can assume that Thursday night's Split Flipper is going to be happening at Jack Bar and South Slope Pinball League 4, the fourth meeting, will happen as well starting at 8 p.m. Pinball, 8 o'clock at Buttermilk Bar. On Sunday, Jess Warren will direct Stern Army's Rob Wong Invitational. You're invited at Rillo's. Also on Sunday is the Super 7 times Stern Pinball Godzilla Championships NYC. This special event we talked with David Potluck Last week, about it, is going to be an extra Godzilla brought in for this Super Godzilla Match Play Tournament, where the winner will win a flight and accommodation to Chicago for Pinball Expo, not for Pinfest, as David had mentioned last week. Just got the convention names mixed up. That will start at 2 o'clock at Jack Bar. As of September 12, 2025, there are 345 pinball machines in New York City at 82 public locations. Thanks to the creators and users of Pinball Map for this data, here are machine updates from the past week. On Saturday, user TheBaracuda let us know that the Gilligan's Island at Commodore is still not accepting money. Also on Saturday, a Dungeons and Dragons was removed from Scrapple Land and a T2 was added. On Sunday, a Johnny Mnemonic was removed from Rolos and a Simpsons Pinball Party was placed there. Also on Saturday, user MiniFlipper was at Barcade Brooklyn and said that the right flipper button is sticky on Scooby-Doo and the left flipper button is sticky on John Wick. On Tuesday, Sunshine Laundromat gained a Star Wars comic art premium. Union Pool lost its jaws but got a Godzilla in its place and a Led Zeppelin was removed from Cellar Dog. On Thursday user Entic was at Barcade Fidei and left several comments of TX Sector they said TX TX TX Of Frontier they said Plays nice Flipper angles are set particularly high For Ghostbusters, they said, Frequent air balls when shooting the left ramp from the right flipper. And BanzaiRun leans to the left. For Taxi, Antic said, Game plays smooth, but feels a little steep and or the flippers are weak. The left ramp is very difficult to clear consistently to start multiball. more often than not, the ball will reject back down the ramp. Also on Thursday, user GeneX went to Midway and said of their Game of Thrones, right flipper sticks from time to time, and the light for the Targaryen insert shield is out. Otherwise, plays well. GeneX also visited Franklin Park and played their Game of Thrones and said, game plays well. Broken rubbers must have been fixed from previous comment. well it's time for our pinball bullet journal talk about some of the stuff we did around pinball in the last week if not necessarily competitive results but most of my week was competitive I think in this case you should just go throughout your whole week and then I'll talk about my week because like I said earlier I did not have any competitive pinball at all this last two weeks All right. Well, last Saturday, I worked the opening shift at Barcade Brooklyn, as I usually do on Saturdays. Just as it was about to finish up, the upper flipper on 8-Ball Deluxe broke. And that was a bit more of a repair than I was ready to get into right then to try to figure it out. I pulled the glass, I lifted the play field, I looked and there wasn't anything glaringly jumping out like a wire that had come unsluttered or not. So I stuck around for a little bit after work. Max, the general manager, came in to do the floor manager shift at the end. And he opened it up and I watched as he diagnosed what the problem was. eventually we got the upper flipper working and uh that was that was fun and cool to see yeah that's always fascinating just learning about how like the actual mechanics work yeah trying to figure out something like that one really interesting thing that i learned about eight ball deluxe is it has the strangest method for firing the upper flipper for you know a lot of games where you've got upper flippers you'll have a two-part switch on the flipper button so that you can stage. You push it in halfway and it'll engage the lower one and all the way to do the upper one. The 8-Ball Deluxe doesn't have a two-stage switch on the flipper buttons. Instead, when you push the flipper button, it engages the lower flipper coil. And when that coil moves, not only does it flip the flipper, it also pushes an entirely separate switch that then engages the upper flipper coil. It uses the flipper coil to mechanically push a switch for the other flipper coil. It's wild. It's a switch in a switch. Yeah. It's a flipper switch. Flipperception? I had a quiet Sunday, Monday night. Our association went to Barcade Brooklyn to see the Deluxe horses. And that's cool for me because it was Barcade Brooklyn where I work. Tuesday night you pointed out the Danger Danger and the Butterballers played at Buttermilk. That is the Butter Bowl or the Butter Brawl. And we came to a tie, an 8-8 tie, which is a pretty exciting result. The finals was determined by a split flipper game on Iron Maiden for the Butterballers. It was myself and AJ. And Danger Danger put up Carlson and Flynn. on our first ball AJ and I managed to score a powerball mania jackpot which is was really satisfying and quickly put us well over 100 points and we're like oh this is great but uh yeah no Matt and Flynn on were able to catch us up they played multiball they played strong and and and beat us there so they got the win on that you know I played competitively Wednesday night and Thursday night and that's that was my my bullet journal what did you do last week Jose I've just generally been pretty busy these last couple of weeks but of some of you may or may not know I own a couple of pinball machines and I have two things that's been happening in the last week that uh I that could be interesting to share one is um so I own an Avengers Infinity Quest pro model. I recently noticed that I have never reached Thanos on my own machine. So I spent a good amount of chunk of time trying to get to the end game and failing. I actually still haven't. I gave myself the most amount of ball safe time. I gave myself some little leeway with the configuration of the machine and I still haven't been able to reach it. So I need to figure out So turn it into a five ball game or a 10 ball game. I haven't gone that far. I still want it to be three ball, but I am playing all my extra balls and I'm getting an extra ball fairly consistently. So it's still, yeah, these gems are just, they're going to be the death of me. It's a tough game. I find it very frustrating. Give me an idea for something that I'd like to do at some point, but I'll keep that idea in mind and so I flesh it out a little bit more and then I'll let y'all know about it. Cool. And then the other thing that I am working on is one of the machines that I own is called Spectra 4. It is a cocktail table that is similar to Rotator 7 only in that it rotates. You can feel around with four people sitting on it. But when I bought it, it was completely broken. If you connect the power supply and the lights would turn on, but nothing would happen. You know, lights on, but no one's home type deal. And I've decided to fix it up. I opened it up, cleaned it out. This was a while back, but only recently did I find some time and money to spend on some new hardware from Fast Pinball. Fast Pinball creates some bespoke hardware to make your own pinball machines. Usually it's for new or refurbishing, and in this case, that's what it is. I'm using new materials to fix an older machine. So step one was acquiring the materials. Step two is now going to be moving this cocktail table that is heavy as heck and very big through my very small doorway into my basement so that I can work on it down here. It's going to be an ordeal all the way through, but I'm very excited to see what I'm going to get out of it. and I think a lot of my weekends are going to be spent fixing this machine up. Very cool. I look forward to playing it when it works. It doesn't spin around on its own. You still have to manually crank it. But right now it's so rusted over that when you do it, it makes a very high, shrill sound. And I want to get it to the point where it doesn't do that at least. And it works. Yeah. And that's it for me. And the end of ball two. Let's talk about the NYC Triborough series, which we've discussed before on this podcast. But as we're nearing the end of this series and with its director, Jose Garcia, with us, now would be a great time to catch up. This is a collection of nine various tournaments across New York City that have been happening throughout 2025. five, seven of them have happened, two are scheduled to happen, and just playing in any of them gets you points towards the series final. Last week we talked about the Pacer test at Milo's Yard from a player's perspective, but why don't you tell us a little bit about it from the TD's perspective, Jose? Yeah, excellent. Thank you so much for the introduction. I'm going to talk to you about some of the events that have happened in the series, because a lot of them have had like wacky formats yeah let's hear about it i i haven't been able to make it to all of them yeah no one no one has actually not even me yeah i've done four so just by doing four it immediately puts me near the top participating in any of them which is good news for people that haven't competed at all because with 32 people making the cutoff and the 32nd person right now only having two games it means that if you come to the next two that are gonna happen you have a good chance of getting into the the cutoff so yeah i can remember up until what point the series had already happened when I was on last But since then we had at least four more events happen maybe five And I want to talk about at least two of them that have already happened. The Amazing Quads Race is one of the first wacky formats that I was trying out. This event happened in June 28th at Geberts. and the format for this one is world cup style so if you're familiar with the world cup style of pairing you get put into like a group of four which is why i call them quads this was the double round robin event and you would play against the people put in your group uh each person twice once as first player and once a second player and uh it was a wacky format the match play does a really good job but it is a little confusing because it creates all of the matches immediately it creates every single one of the pairings uh as soon as you click start tournament and everyone's like okay wait but this one doesn't have an arena what's going on and the way that you like work around that is to just hit assign arena multiple times throughout the day as they become available Because there were like, I believe, 10 players, it was paired into two groups of 5 and 5. The algorithm was a little strange about giving machines, and you had to kind of be attentive of what machine was done from the other group to then try to assign an arena in this group. It was a lot of fun, but it was definitely a mess, which is kind of the style of what's been going on with these wacky formats. I still think that it was a lot of fun, but I think that if the maximum amount of people had showed up for what I set for this tournament, it would have lasted a lot longer. So I'm kind of happy that a low amount of people showed up. The next one with a wacky style is the Pacer Test. It's not that it's necessarily wacky, it's just that it's new. this is the uh pace format and i think you talked about it a little bit before but as a recap the way that it works is kind of like strikes eliminations if you don't meet a certain level you are cut off and the level that we had set for this tournament was 21 points at round five or by round five so when we started round six anyone that didn't have 21 points got eliminated And I think that was actually our biggest drop off. We probably dropped off, I want to say, more than 12 people, if I remember correctly. And every round after that, the cutoff raises by 7 points, which is the maximum that you can get from a group anyway. so um the next round six was you had to have 28 and the one up to that 35 and eventually we ran it until we only had four players so that we can run finals i was listening to the episode last week and y'all had mentioned like oh yeah it could have been uh we could have just played it out until the right yeah one player was uh alive and i think realistically if i run this again that is what i'm going to do but i was scared that you would we would have like a weird configuration or that it would take too long because there is a calculator out there that helps you figure out what the pace can be and how long it's going to last but um you know with the numbers as i was playing with them we would end up playing like 12 or 15 rounds or something like that and that scared me so i was like okay maybe we just drop it down to four how many did it go um i believe it was eight round eight plus finals yeah so yeah 11 11 total yeah i just want yeah i mean set when the pace goes up by seven every round yeah you know if you don't come in first place you're falling behind and even if you do do get a first place you're only staying level it seems like it would eliminate pretty quickly I would have thought. Yeah I think I should have run a little bit more experiments on it just by itself to see if that would work but I think in the end it worked out pretty well I think people were pleased with the format and I'm glad to have brought it up into New York City Pinball I think for the first time Yeah it was cool I'm hoping we see more of those because guaranteed five rounds is actually pretty good I enjoy that a lot unlike strikes where you can be out in three as versus three coming up september 28th is the read them and flip texas hold them card tournament at scrapple land and it sounds like it's a pretty wacky format how does it work this is this is pretty wild and i'll and i'll give some context i was actually looking through ifpa if you're not a tournament director you might not have seen this before but when you're picking or creating a tournament, you actually have a drop-down of a lot of formats that your tournament can be. You have, you know, main tournament, league, a whole bunch of other ones that are on the list that have basically never been used. And in them, one of them is a Hold'em format is exactly the name of it. Seriously? Yeah. I mean, I've done it many times, and I guess I just ignore the... I'm looking for the one that I know I want to fill in the form. I'm not just exploring the menu. Exactly. Same. And I kind of wasn't. I was setting up these other tournaments, and it just casually caught me off guard, or rather caught the side of my eye, and I'm like, wait, Holden, what is that? I actually messaged IFPA, I messaged Josh Sharpe, to find out what is Holden format. And I was told that that is a format that's just kind of like very antiquated at this point. But back in the day, there was a type of like points betting, I guess, where you would say, oh, I'm going to bet five points that I'm going to win this game versus my opponent. You could gain those points and they would lose those points. And then you would continue on like that until you got a whole bunch of points. I suspect that that's how that was played. And I'm going to assume that there wasn't any real money involved, but maybe there was some real money involved. wink wink. Thinking about that made me think about poker and how interesting it would be if you were to play poker with a card format tournament. So here's how it's going to work, or I hope that it's going to work. There are going to be 10 total pinball machines. Five of them are reserved as a community set of machines. If you've ever played poker, this is like the flop, the turn, and the river, right? Those are the five cards that everyone that's playing poker can share to make the best hand possible. The other five are going to be restricted to when you buy a card, which by the way, I'm going to limit to five cards maximum and $1 per card. When you buy a card, you need to draw two cards from a deck of cards. And those are going to be marked with the machines that must be on your card when you finish it. So you've been dealt a hand. And those two machines will be outside the set of five reserved public cards, and will they be from basically all of the machines at Scrapple Land? No, I think I'm going to limit it to ten total, and then those five, I'll have to choose five that I think are going to be resilient to this and maybe play a little bit faster so that we can get through a whole card format tournament in one day. But I still haven't decided which machines I'm going to pick as the 10. But from that deck of cards, you're going to be dealt a hand, essentially two cards, that will be forced to be in your final submission of a card. And the rest of the other three are the ones that you can play from the community bank. Yeah, you'll necessarily have to limit the ones that you're drawing because if it's every game in there, some of the games are only going to get played by one person. Right, exactly. That's not going to work, right? Because they're just going to get the full amount of points. Yeah, exactly. I think we need to limit it to 10. And who knows? Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe only one person draws Jaws, right? And then that means that they get all the points. But then again, that's kind of how poker is. If you get dealt pocket aces, you know, you get to win. so I hope much like all the other wacky ideas for these other tournaments that this doesn't go too crazy or too wild and that it in the end feels fairly innovative and not too unfair I think it's going to be interesting having that physicality of literally being dealt two cards from a deck that are marked with pinball machines that you going to have to play that sounds like fun yeah And then three from the community Or two Just two from the community No, so you have two that are dealt to you, right? That's your hand. And then from the community of five, you have to pick three to finish out your submission. Okay. I was just looking at the tournament on match play where it's got four games per card. Oh, okay. I may not have... Yeah, it's definitely going to be five. Yeah, it's not all set up. Oh, yeah. In fact, that's in the description. Thank you. Thank you for the call-out, though. I'll definitely fix it so that forward-looking people can maybe look at it and understand what the format is. Because I suspect it's going to be confusing. Yeah, you're going to want a lot of cards so that, yeah, the two that get dealt are going to have enough scores on them to have some meaningful scores. For it to be meaningful, yeah. we'll see we'll see how it goes uh i've capped it at i think six hours of qualifying and then uh yeah i missed the details what how many people then qualify for a finals some number that some number top x i also have between 10 and 50 of the qualifying amount yeah yes yeah exactly we'll see i think that there's going to be a good number uh depending on how many people show up and then it'll be regular finals i probably pop up very cool and then event number nine will be on sunday october 26th the finals for the selfie league at at the wallace which has been going on now for a good while i wanted to give people the most amount of time to be able to go up to at the wallace and i believe the selfie league started sometime in late July. So at this point, it's already been running for more than a month. And you still have a whole month and then some to get some scores in. Until October 26th, the finals. I'm definitely interested and I'm signed up and I just have not been to at the Wallace yet. But I will be there this coming Monday for our home team match. And that's when I'm going to start putting in some submissions for this selfie league. I figured there was going to be a little bit of a home team advantage for from NYC pinball league but hey that's what that's how it is. We already have six people I want to say that have submitted submissions. I try to make this fun by letting people just decide what their unique identifier is. So I just tell people hey there's no there's no cards there's no you don't actually have to do a selfie and take a picture with the score. Just let me know through the picture somehow that it's you and people have found some really funny ways to do that. Cool. Taking their glasses off and just showing off their glasses or showing off a particular like finger. I will have to go and check out the actual photos on the scores. Yep. Once that's done, that's the nine events and there will be than the overarching finals for the NYC Triborough Series. I haven't been able to see any detailed info about that yet. Do you know more, and can you tell us, Jose? Yes, I do know more because I just recently came up with the format. I have not created a match play just yet because I don't think it's going to work out very well with match play. I think I'm going to have an Excel sheet that's going to be everything. Oh, wow. Here it is. So, you've heard of double elimination head-to-head matches. You've heard of group elimination. In double elimination head-to-head, whoever loses goes to what is called the loser's bracket, and still have a chance to win all of your matches then to meet up with the winner of the winner's bracket at the finals. In group elimination, the bottom two people in a group are the ones that are eliminated, and you keep going that way until you get two people that will match up in the finals. I came up with a format that I actually genuinely believe that has never been played before, which is group double elimination format. And the idea is the same. You will have two chances to continue to play, as in if you lose once, you will continue to play, but all of the games are going to be group match play. They're going to be four player games. That is why the number of people that are invited to this event is exactly 32, so that you can play with four in all of the games. And the idea behind this is, at the location that we're planning to host it, there is not enough machines to do head-to-head double elimination, I believe. And where might that be? Undisclosed, private collection. Cool. Oh, neat. Very, very cool. If you get invited, you'll know where it is. Cool. I suspect most people have already gotten there. Will two people be coming out of the losers bracket to make the final four group? Exactly. The final matchup is going to be the top two from winners bracket and the top two from losers bracket. Yeah. Matching up one last time in a group of four to eliminate two more people. And the last two will then face off in a best of three. to finally decide the 2025 New York City Triborough Series champion. And in that final four, then, if someone who had gone through the winner's bracket the entire way gets knocked out, that's a single elimination for them. That is unfortunately the only case. A top four. Yeah, exactly. It is unfortunately the only case where a single elimination could happen. but at that point it'll be top four and while this tournament cannot be for Whoppers this is not an IFPA official tournament because the seating for it is not public I'm currently in talks to get a pretty ostentatious trophy we'll see if I can get it in time before the presumed November event there's always a chance that it could be pushed to like early December I'm trying to get it in before the holidays start. And if it runs well and people like it, I genuinely think that next year I'm going to do it again. Awesome. My trophy shelf could use a really ostentatious thing. I'm rooting for you. I mean, right now I am the number one player, but that's mostly because I've gone to five events. So I have a lot of points just from attending, which is another call to action to anyone out there. Yes, there are two events, but even getting two events in at this point could get you over the top 32 mark and get invited to the NYC Triborough Series. There's a good chance that if someone's listening to this, they may have already played in one of the earlier ones without even recognizing it, because you've got 102 individual people who have played in at least one event. You know, a lot of people are from out of state, but it certainly is a lot of the local folks that we know. I initially wanted it to be opt-in so that people would have to like click and register into the NYC Triborough series so that their scores would get updated, but that became way too much of a hassle. So I decided to just do a little stalking essentially and just pick up the results of each IFPA event and copy them into the Triborough series and then you know we'll figure out the rest as it comes i suspect of the top 32 some people are not going to be able to make it like i suspect there's going to be people that are otherwise busy or maybe they're not interested if it's not whoppers that doesn't have a money reward you know so hey even if you're top 40 or who knows maybe even top 50 you might you might get some contact from me telling you that you are invited to the finals so stick around That's all for this week's pod. I'd like to thank Jose and Eric for carrying the torch this week while I've been on assignment. You can always connect with us by emailing us at nycpinpod at gmail.com, and we'd love to hear about what happens in your Monday night matches or the interesting stuff that happened when you're out playing pinball. Join us next week when, in Ball 1, we'll run down local competition results as always. In Ball 2, we'll have venue updates and our Pinball Bullet Journal. And I'm not too sure what's going to happen in Ball 3, but I'm sure we're going to have something that, well, ill-interests Eric and I. Between now and then, whatever you're doing this week, go get them, Pinfolk.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 4e7b0bca-7381-4d20-9a1c-57023a615d77*