# Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Ep 29.5: INDISC 2023 Recap **Source:** Triple Drain Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2023-01-21 **Duration:** 80m 24s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://zencastr.com/z/IHRG2oMm --- ## Analysis Triple Drain hosts Joel and Travis recap INDISC 2023, a major pinball tournament featuring 60 of the top 100 world-ranked players competing across multiple events (Classics, Main, High Stakes). They discuss tournament structure, qualifying systems, memorable games like Car Hop exploitable meta, Keith Elwin dominant Classics 2 victory, and Carl D'Angelo's landmark Twitch partnership that brought 10,000+ viewers to pinball tournament streams. ### Key Claims - [MEDIUM] There are only three major pinball tournaments yearly: EPC (Europe), The Open, and IFPA (Germany, rotates) — _Travis estimates based on Pinberg's departure; uncertain whether IFPA is correct; notes it rotates between countries_ - [HIGH] 60 of the top 100 world-ranked pinball players were at INDISC — _Joel cites this as seen on the stream; establishes tournament scale_ - [HIGH] High Stakes tournament had 80 participants at $500 per entry (10 tickets), totaling $40,000 with $15,000 for first place — _Travis provides specific numbers; mentions prize pool of $30,000+ for top four_ - [HIGH] Car Hop (Gottlieb) was identified as exploitable with a repeatable spinner shot worth 2.5-3 million points and safe left orbit strategy — _Travis describes specific meta strategy used across qualifying; game was ultimately thrown out due to 'catch-up' mode exploit_ - [HIGH] Keith Elwin won Classics 2 finals, defeating Teolis, Johnny Mnemonic, and Jack Tadman with scores of 263 (Eight Ball), 620 (Paragon), and dominant performance on Stars — _Joel confirms with stream viewing; describes gameplay in detail_ - [HIGH] Carl D'Angelo's IE Pinball stream reached 10,000-15,000 concurrent viewers when featured on Twitch front page — _Both hosts confirm; Joel notes this is unusual compared to typical 1,000 viewer baseline for tournament streams_ - [HIGH] Carl D'Angelo achieved Twitch Partner status after multiple prior applications — _Joel confirms recent partnership achievement; notes it may have enabled front-page placement by Twitch_ - [HIGH] Travis qualified 8th in High Stakes but was bumped by Robert Byers (Top Rope Pinball) who became #1 seed — _Travis explains his close elimination; mentions having one unused ticket remaining_ - [HIGH] Qualifying requires 5 consecutive games (4 for Classics) on a single card with consistent high scores near 900-point range to advance — _Travis explains ticket system mechanics; describes point values and scoring thresholds_ - [HIGH] Keith Elwin is arguably the best pinball tournament player of all time, particularly dominant in classic EM/alphanumeric games — _Joel states as established fact; Travis confirms Elwin's excellence across game eras_ ### Notable Quotes > "Indisc is essentially the Super Bowl of tournament play" > — **Joel**, early > _Establishes INDISC's prestige in competitive pinball hierarchy_ > "It's a ticket system... you have to play good or at least halfway decent on five straight games... they maxed out the participants in that tournament too. There was 80 people total." > — **Travis**, mid > _Explains High Stakes qualifying difficulty and scarcity; $40,000 total prize pool_ > "So the whole entire game turned out to be that... it basically all but guaranteed you 1 million points, possibly even two up to 5 million if you just followed it through." > — **Travis**, mid > _Describes Car Hop's exploitable meta that made it game-state unbalanced and ultimately removed from tournament_ > "Keith Elwin... is arguably one of, if not the best, like, pinball tournament player of all time. I don't think there's any argument." > — **Joel**, late-mid > _Establishes Elwin's legendary status in competitive pinball_ > "It's getting specials left and right. He's trying to roll it. We're just all watching like, oh, my God, what is going on? This is not human, what he was doing." > — **Joel**, late-mid > _Describes Elwin's dominant Stars performance in Classics 2 finals_ > "So IE Pinball, Carl D'Angelo is streaming this whole thing. Carl got partnered on Twitch... it finally happened a few months ago. He got partnered." > — **Joel**, late > _Confirms Carl's Twitch Partner achievement after multiple applications_ > "Now, partners is a whole nother story because they limit the number of people within each category... Carl has met those requirements for quite a long time." > — **Joel**, late > _Explains exclusivity and difficulty of Twitch Partner status_ > "What it did do, though, was it kind of opened a door for him... Twitch is aware of who he is. And so I think what happened was there was somebody at Twitch working in the background that liked Carr or liked Pinball and knew this was coming." > — **Joel**, late > _Speculates on Twitch's internal support for pinball content promotion_ > "The number of people that popped into chat, I mean, it got over 10,000 people, which is normally for a stream like this type of tournament stream... somewhere right around there... But like that's the normal pinball community watching is a thousand." > — **Joel**, late > _Quantifies unprecedented viewership surge from Twitch front-page placement; 10x normal audience_ > "I know I got several messages, just text messages from different people that didn't even realize I was at a pinball tournament. But they get on Twitch all the time. They're like, you're on the front page." > — **Travis**, late > _Anecdotal evidence of mainstream Twitch audience discovering pinball through front-page placement_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | INDISC | event | Major annual pinball tournament held in January; one of three yearly majors alongside EPC and IFPA; features multiple tournament formats (Classics 1/2, Main, High Stakes, Target Match Play) | | Joel | person | Co-host of Triple Drain Pinball Podcast; inexperienced tournament player; attended INDISC 2023; participates in Classics 2 tournament (flamed out in quarterfinals) | | Travis Murray | person | Co-host of Triple Drain Pinball Podcast; elite pinball player; participated in multiple INDISC 2023 tournaments; qualified 8th in High Stakes before being bumped by Robert Byers; creating tournament tutorials/gameplay content | | Keith Elwin | person | Legendary pinball tournament player and designer (Jurassic Park, Godzilla); won Classics 2 at INDISC 2023; considered arguably the best pinball tournament player of all time; particularly dominant in classic EM/alphanumeric games | | Carl D'Angelo | person | Streamer for IE Pinball; recently achieved Twitch Partner status; streams INDISC and other major tournaments; achieved 10,000-15,000 concurrent viewers when featured on Twitch front page | | Robert Byers | person | Top Rope Pinball operator; became #1 seed in INDISC High Stakes, bumping Travis from 8th place | | Jack Danger | person | Deadflip streamer; referenced as comparison point for Stern reveal communication with Twitch for front-page placement | | Tom | person | Third co-host of Triple Drain Pinball Podcast (absent this episode); participated in INDISC 2023; qualified in Classics 2 (~25th); has date night with wife; referenced as potentially leaving for Loser Kid podcast | | Andy Rosa Jr. | person | Elite pinball player; won Target Match Play at INDISC; nicknamed 'Baby Rosa'; experienced the 'catch-up' mode exploit on Car Hop | | Jason Zoller | person | Elite pinball player; won Classics 1 tournament at INDISC 2023 | | Jeff Teolis | person | Elite pinball player; competed in Classics 2 finals against Keith Elwin; participated in Car Hop matches with Travis | | Johnny Mnemonic | person | Elite pinball player; competed in multiple INDISC tournaments; referenced as top competitor in Car Hop qualifying; played in Classics 2 finals | | Jack Tadman | person | Elite pinball player; competed in Classics 2 finals against Keith Elwin and others | | Car Hop | game | Gottlieb pinball machine used in INDISC Classics 1 tournament; identified as having exploitable spinner meta worth 2.5-3M points and safe left orbit strategy; featured 'catch-up' and 'double or nothing' game modes that unbalanced competitive play; ultimately thrown out of tournament due to catch-up exploit | | Eight Ball | game | Classic pinball game played in INDISC Classics 2 finals; Keith Elwin scored 263 (noted as off for him) | | Paragon | game | Classic pinball game played in INDISC Classics 2 finals; Keith Elwin scored 620 and made it look easy | | Stars | game | Classic pinball game played in INDISC Classics 2 finals; Keith Elwin dominated with specials and near-rollover attempt | | IE Pinball | organization | Streaming organization run by Carl D'Angelo; provides high-quality tournament stream coverage; Carl achieved Twitch Partner status enabling front-page visibility | | Ben Smith | person | Triple Drain Pinball listener; designed 'El Gato No Signal' merchandise logo based on podcast jokes; merchandise sold through Silver Ball Swag | | Silver Ball Swag | organization | Merchandise retailer; selling Triple Drain Pinball merchandise including El Gato No Signal shirts and Triple Drain hats | | Colin McAlpine | person | Elite pinball player; participated in Car Hop match where catch-up mode exploit occurred | | Eric Stone | person | Elite pinball player; participated in Car Hop match where catch-up mode exploit occurred | | Hayley George | person | Elite pinball player; participated in Car Hop match where catch-up mode exploit occurred | | Andy Bagwell | person | Elite pinball player; participated in Car Hop match where catch-up mode exploit occurred; scored 30+ million points via catch-up mode | | Twitch | organization | Streaming platform; featured INDISC tournament on front page during Classics 2 and Main events, driving 10,000-15,000 concurrent viewers; Carl D'Angelo achieved Partner status | ### Signals - **[business_signal]** Twitch Partner status for niche gaming category (pinball tournaments) demonstrates platform's willingness to promote specialized content; suggests business model expansion beyond traditional esports toward hobby/enthusiast categories with engaged audiences (confidence: medium) — Joel: 'They limit the number of people within each category on how they can get partnered... Carl has met those requirements for quite a long time... And it finally happened... a few months ago' - **[community_signal]** INDISC tournament achieved unprecedented mainstream pinball audience through Twitch visibility; text messages from non-tournament players discovering pinball; mainstream Twitch audience engagement with competitive pinball content suggesting market expansion opportunity (confidence: high) — Travis: 'I got several messages... from different people that didn't even realize I was at a pinball tournament. But they get on Twitch all the time. They're like, you're on the front page' - **[event_signal]** INDISC 2023 demonstrated successful multi-tournament format with consistent high-level competitive play; Classics 1/2 attracted top players despite requiring mastery of different mechanical systems; streaming infrastructure and community engagement set new precedent for pinball event production (confidence: high) — Joel: 'It was fantastic to watch... really well done... his production value, it's such a treat'; mentions 10,000-15,000 viewership and front-page placement spanning multiple days - **[community_signal]** Triple Drain Podcast audience engagement with merchandise (Silver Ball Swag hats, El Gato No Signal shirts) indicates monetization success and community brand loyalty; listener-designed merchandise expanding content creator revenue streams (confidence: medium) — Joel: 'We just got those in. Those are Silver Ball Swag... Ben actually took our logo and kind of redesigned it... We now have a shirt'; shout-out suggests successful merchandise sales - **[community_signal]** Carl D'Angelo's Twitch Partner status achievement after multiple prior applications validates streaming quality and signals Twitch's recognition of pinball category growth; front-page placement appears tied to partnership status enabling curator/algorithmic elevation (confidence: high) — Joel: 'Carl got partnered on Twitch... It finally happened a few months ago... It's like, oh, cool... now Twitch is aware of who he is... they put the stream on the front page' - **[competitive_signal]** Car Hop's exploitable spinner and left orbit strategies created unbalanced qualifying meta; 'catch-up' and 'double or nothing' modes introduced high-variance game outcomes inconsistent with competitive pinball tradition; game ultimately removed from tournament rotation (confidence: high) — Travis: 'The whole entire game turned out to be that... basically all but guaranteed you 1 million points'; catch-up mode allowed Andy Bagwell to 'instantly scored 30 some odd million points to catch up to Kaylee'; game was 'thrown out' - **[design_philosophy]** Car Hop's game design included unintended dominant strategies and catch-up mechanics that created competitive balance issues; demonstrates challenges in tournament balancing for classic games where meta-strategies can emerge unexpectedly during qualifying rounds (confidence: medium) — Travis: 'So the whole meta to that game was... you would plunge... it would give you basically like a skill shot that was worth two and a half, three million... it basically all but guaranteed you 1 million points'; catch-up mode resulted in 30M+ point swings - **[event_signal]** INDISC tournament structure innovation (multi-day, multi-format tournaments with ticket qualifying system) appears to have generated sufficient interest and sponsorship to sustain high prize pools; format replicated across major tournaments suggesting industry standardization around this model (confidence: medium) — Travis: 'five tournaments total... qualifying... 260 something people had bought cards or attempted... only let what the top 40 in... It was absurd' - **[event_signal]** INDISC 2023 successfully attracted 60 of top 100 world-ranked players with multiple tournament formats generating high competitive intensity and entertainment value; established as major/premier event in pinball circuit (confidence: high) — Joel: '60 of the top 100 world-ranked players were there playing in this'; Travis confirms five tournaments across multiple days - **[market_signal]** High Stakes tournament $500 entry ($40,000 total prize pool) indicates strong cash flow from elite tournament players; 80-player participation cap suggests demand exceeded supply; top prize of $15,000+ validates high-stakes competitive format sustainability (confidence: high) — Travis: 'High stakes was 500 for 10 tickets... they maxed out the participants in that tournament too. There was 80 people total... 80 times 500... $15,000 for first place... over $30,000 in prize money for the top four' - **[community_signal]** Keith Elwin established as dominant tournament player across game eras (classic EM/alphanumeric and modern); described as 'arguably... the best pinball tournament player of all time'; performance in Classics 2 finals demonstrated transcendent skill across different mechanical systems (confidence: high) — Joel: 'Keith Elwin was arguably... one of, if not the best... pinball tournament player of all time'; Travis: 'Keith excels in classics... Keith excels at everything' - **[technology_signal]** Twitch front-page algorithm placement dramatically expanded pinball's mainstream visibility (10x normal viewership: 10,000-15,000 vs typical 1,000); suggests Twitch's internal prioritization of pinball content beyond traditional esports categories (confidence: high) — Joel: 'The number of people that popped into chat, I mean, it got over 10,000 people... That's the normal pinball community watching is a thousand'; Travis: 'didn't even realize I was at a pinball tournament... you're on the front page' --- ## Transcript the pinball network is online launching triple drain pinball podcast all right here we go so um yeah today's gonna be a weird one today's gonna be a weird one this is the triple drain pinball podcast episode number 29.5.5 it's not officially episode 30 and you know what we're not going to do theme song and the reason we're not going to do theme song is there's only two of us so i just feel like the triple drain theme song makes sense when there's three people but there isn't three there's only two it's myself my name is joel and my co-host in this case travis murray travis you are you good you ready you ready to go joel your your ability to do math is very inspirational so yeah i'm definitely ready to go there's usually three but now there's two. Yeah. So no, we're just going to really just dive on in here. Tom, unfortunately. So we were recording this in the middle of the day. The three of us, the two of them were at InDisc. They just came home. Travis is traveling again this weekend for the Oklahoma finals. So he's going to that to cheer on his friends. Tom has a date night with his lovely wife. It's just trying to coordinate all these things. We're like, well, we got to talk about InDisc. When's this going to happen? The reality is it happens in the middle of the day, apparently is the only way we can get in an hour of talking. And, and Tom's a dentist and he, he's drilling teeth. So, you know, I think it's obvious Tom's trying to leave us for loser kid. I kid about it. I think he's for real about it. I'm pretty sure. You saw he was wearing their hat, right? I know. I wore our merch. I know. I know. Well, he wore their hat. He did. He's, I asked him, I was like, Tom, where's your sweatshirt? Yeah. Oh, I didn't bring it. I was like, all right. Great, Tom. Well, I see you in the video there. You are wearing a Triple Drain hat. I am. Yeah. So we just got those in. Those are Silver Ball Swag if you want to check that out. And speaking of merch, I do have to give a huge shout out to Ben Smith. Ben Smith is a listener of ours. We've been making a lot of jokes about the El Gato No Signal. Travis, it's just a way of life at this point. I feel like you fully embraced it. And, yeah, Ben actually took our logo and kind of redesigned it and made a logo that says El Cato No Signal. He sent it to us. I then tweaked it to make it more black and gray, which is what we see on screen. And now we now have a shirt. So if you want to support Travis in the poor decisions he makes, check that out. It wasn't only that. If you're watching Classics 2 finals, and this is in front of over 10,000 people, apparently it showed up on there while i was playing as well there's a screenshot of that so shout out to carl d'Python Anghelo we're going to be giving him a lot of love this episode but um carl's embraced it i think when you were announcing for part of in disc he had your um they they listed the announcer's names and then they would give you like what you're where you're from and he just wrote no signal under underneath that so um really cool really cool that yeah that That is a meme of yours at this point, and I think you're stuck with it. So, yeah, definitely check out Silver Ball Swag, and I appreciate it, Ben. Appreciate you doing that. We are definitely getting a kick out of that. Second thing, if you're watching this on YouTube, here you go. This is video number two. And the question is why. Our initial goal was to put video kind of behind a paywall. Or it was like, hey, we have a Patreon. let's let's reward the patreon members by giving them video access that was a plan i thought it was a good plan um we get roughly 2 000 plus 2 500 plus listens on the podcast what surprised us was our video got like over a thousand views so what what surprised you guys i was i kept you Yes. Okay. Can we, can we give me props? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just going to ask for nice Joel, but that, that was a huge surprise to me. I was just, and, and what's crazy to me is it didn't actually hurt our podcast numbers. So our podcast listens were still a normal amount, but then there's roughly a thousand plus additional views. So our thought is like, why are we, why are we taking that away? Why would we, um, if, if there's people out there that want to watch us on that aren't used to watching or listening to podcasts and would rather watch a YouTube video, you know, let's go for it. So we decided let's go ahead and continue to do video for free for everybody. It's free access for everybody. Now, I was like, well, I would feel bad for the people that signed up for Patreon just for the video. You know, that was my hesitation. Well, lucky us, not a single person did. So we don't it's not like I have to apologize to the one person that just started a contribution because of video. So that's totally fine. We really do appreciate, though, the Patreon supporters we do have. Thank you. Thank you for our support. I mean, if we just keep patting ourselves on the back over and over again. There we go. You know, we could do that this afternoon if you want to. I don't know. But so anyways, that's the housekeeping out of the way. So we're all swag. Check it out. And then, yeah, we're going to stick with video. So if you're enjoying the video, please, what is it? All the YouTube stuff. Like and subscribe. Leave us a comment. All that fun stuff. Smash the like button. Smash that like button. Hit the bell. Stay in the algorithm. Kerry Hardy, ding my dong. That's what he says. Is that what he says? Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't know if I want to go that far. I don't want to give people the wrong impression. Yeah, this is a very professional. Yeah, this is very professional. Like, wowstick is the line. We're not going to cross the wowstick line. All right. So, Indisc, the reason we wanted to record this episode was Indisc just happened. What is Indisc? Indisc is essentially the Super Bowl of tournament play is what it seems like. Now, I'm speaking a little out of my comfort zone. I'm a very inexperienced tournament player. So, Travis, you're going to have to answer a lot of these questions. So Indisc is considered a major, right? So how many majors are there yearly? Do you know? I want to say I think there's only three. Currently. I'll be honest. I'm not even there on that since Pinburgh went away. I want to say EPC, which is over in Europe, the Open that we just played in, and then I guess it would be IFBA. I don't know. Somebody can correct me. That's over in Germany this year. It rotates. It goes over to European countries or overseas or at least at another country that's not the U.S., and then it's back in the U.S. every other year. So regardless, it's a big deal. It's a big deal. I think I saw on the stream that out of the 100 top world-ranked players, there were like 60 of you guys there playing in this. So this is kind of a big deal. And another thing that's amazing is Carl D'Python Anghelo with IU Pinball, he streams the majority of the whole thing. And Carl, as most people that listen to this podcast know, he is one of, if not the top streamer out there when it comes to tournament streams. His quality is unbelievable. I mean, his production value, it's such a treat to be able to watch not only this high of quality of pinball players, but also to be able to watch it in such a high quality stream is just a treat overall. So this is, I know you guys traveled on Wednesday. Now there are multiple tournaments here. So there's a Classics 1 tournament that was on Friday, correct? Yeah, so actually there is five tournaments total. You got your target match play, Classics, which is on day one. Which was Thursday? Right. And then you'll still have qualifying for the main that starts during that time. And then the next day, you'll have a one-day tournament of Classics 1. You'll have qualifying that goes from like 9 a.m. until I believe it's like 4.30 p.m. And then we'd play the finals that night. And then the very next day, it'd be Classics 2. Okay. And then plus there was high stakes going on at the same time as well. So the qualifying was, correct me if I'm wrong, but is the qualifying very similar? Is this a pump and dump where you can just play each individual game or is this a ticket system or how did this work? It's a ticket system. So it's a pop a card ticket and it's very difficult. This is much more difficult to qualify for than just a pure pump and dump because in a pure pump and dump, you can go play like ass on the same game for like 15, 20 games in a row and you'll eventually break through. But on this, you have to play good or at least halfway decent on five straight games. Now, that doesn't mean you could go back and forth. You could play a couple of games in the main. Then you could go over to high stakes and classics. But ultimately, you have one ticket that leads to each individual event. So you'll have one ticket for classics, one for main, one for high stakes, whatever you're playing in. So there's no crossover in between that. They're each their own individual thing. But you have to put in five games in main. And I think high stakes was five games and classics was four games. And it's insanely difficult to do, though. And how much is a ticket? I think classics was 15. Maine was Maine was 20. High stakes was 500 for 10 tickets is what it was. So originally it used to be just 50 per ticket, which it still was. But up front, you're putting in five hundred dollars. Yeah. So just one more ticket. No, you're buying a whole nother 10 tickets. Yeah, it's like coin dropping what, like $5 a game or whatever it was, whatever the math works out to. But yeah, and then they had they maxed out the participants in that tournament, too. There was 80 people total. That was the cap. And I'm pretty sure that they reached. I know that there was a couple that couldn't make it that had signed up, but it reached 80. So it was a lot of money. Whatever 80 times 500 is, it's a lot. I'm not going to attempt to do math on a podcast ever again. I was hoping you would. No, not doing it. Even my dad gave me a hard time for that. To give you an idea, it was $15,000 for first place. And I believe it was over $30,000 in prize money for the top four. And what made high stakes even more difficult, only the top eight got in. Yeah. So, I mean, we can skip right to it because you were high stakes. So high stakes is the final thing. This is Sunday night. It's the final thing. you're saying um anybody that's that bought tickets to to try to get in this put a lot of money down to try to do it you i know going into the open we're like right on the bubble you were you were eighth i think and then our good friend robert byers of top rope pinball kept grinding away and he ended up as the number one seed so he bumped me yeah yeah an a-hole and i still had made this even worse i ended up with only one i still had one ticket left so i spent fifty dollars and didn't get to play it. Yeah, but still. So high stakes. So fast forward, this is Sunday night. The Open just finished. The top eight players are there. They're all very good players. Keith Elwin was one of them. I know that. Escher was one of them. They're all great players. They're all great. Well, here's the difference, Joel, is that, and I was mentioning this to a few other players, I mean, we were all psychotic, basically, to put in $500. Let's face facts. And the reality is there was like 30 or 40 of us knuckleheads that legitimately thought we were going to be in the top eight because, you know, math, it just made sense. But, you know, midway through that type of qualifying, you're looking at the scores and you're just like, holy shit, where is this coming from? I would put up 20 billion on Johnny Mnemonic and I would look up and it's like 25th. So back to the ticket system for non-tournament players. What he means by ticket is you have to play five games in a row and you're looking at your score compared to everybody else. So if you happen to get the top score in a game, you get 100 points, right? And then I believe it was 200 or 200. OK, but then like the second highest score goes down to whatever. It's a few points less than that. And then so you're as wherever position you are, your points are dwindling down, down, down, down, down. So, you know, in a perfect world, if you're playing five games and you get the top score in all five games and you're saying each games or 200 points, you could walk away with a thousand. A thousand could be like, that's a ranking that would be unbeatable. I mean, it's the high score. Well, looking at a lot of these qualifiers, these top scores are close to the 900 point range. So, I mean, you, it's like to qualify out of five games in a row and on one card, you better be placing like in the top 10 of each one of those five games to be ranked high. And then on the high stakes, it's, I mean, it's absurd. Like it is, you have to have five amazing games in a row just to make the tournament. It's, it's pretty crazy. So, well, I saw, yes, I saw your eighth. Unfortunately that knocked you out. So the high stakes tournament, we'll, we'll come back to that, but I think that's incredible. But you're saying just the classics. So classics tournament, there was match play on, on Thursday. And then we got to classics one on Friday. Classics one, you say four, four tickets to get in. I watched a good bit of that. That was fantastic to watch. It's kind of a great intro, fun stream to watch. I think that was the first one that Carl streamed. Really well done. I don't remember exactly with Classics 1 who came out the winner. I think Andy Rosa was really high when I checked. I don't remember who won. Do you remember who won in Classics 1? Well, I know Andy Rosa Jr. or the second, Baby Rosa as I like to call him. He won the Target Match Play. Oh, okay. I'm actually, I'm not sure who won the Classics 1 because, honestly, I wasn't paying attention to it. I didn't play in it, so I was over in the main. You're just grinding. I want to say Jason Zoller won it. I thought I saw a picture of that earlier. That's right. So that would make more sense to me. That's right. Okay, so Jason won. That's kind of the first night. Now, side note, Keith Elwin did not play in that tournament. He did not participate in Classics 1. Classics 2 rolls around. Classics 2 was another great day of fun, exciting things. Fast forward right to the end. Keith Elwin. Keith Elwin. I'm going to be saying Keith Elwin a lot. And the reason I, like, for anybody that's listening, if you're still here that you're not a tournament player, thank you. Hopefully you're learning and will appreciate some more about tournament play. Keith Elwin was arguably, is arguably one of, if not the best, like, pinball tournament player of all time. I don't think there's any argument. It's insane what Keith can do. But Keith, I mean, Keith, the designer of Jurassic Park, Godzilla, like incredible, incredible player. But he's good. We're talking classics. So classics games are anything prior to a DMD, right? That's what's considered a classic? Pretty much, yeah. So you're talking EM, alphanumeric. That's that wheelhouse. Well, Keith obviously grew up playing all these. He knows these. This is a challenge because we've got a bunch of these younger kids. with, you know, Jason and Escher. And I don't, I mean, there's a ton of young, we can say Ray Day, a ton of these younger guys, Dalton, that are incredibly good at modern sterns. But the challenge there is let's, you got to go backwards too. You got to be good with these older games with weaker flippers and more simple skill sets and whatnot. And so this is where you get these classics tournaments. Keith excels in classics. Well, Keith excels at everything, but he excels in classics. You participated in classics too. How did you and Tom do going into that? Uh, I'm not quite sure how Tom did. I know Neil, he ended up qualifying. Yeah. I think he was like 25th or so. And I ended up, I know I put in one practice card just to see where everything was at. Then I put in just one card to, uh, to get in. I put up a decent score with Paragon and Frontier. And then, of course, we all discovered Car Hop, which was freaking hilarious. So that was the low-hanging fruit that all of us were talking about. That we were just like, oh, okay, here's a game that we can all control. Here's a game that we can put up a lot of points on. And it's a Gottlieb, for those that don't know. Basically, the whole meta to that game was you would plunge, and it would go up to your upper right flipper. Then you would shoot it across the playfield through a spinner. That would give you basically like a skill shot that was worth two and a half, three million. But then the ball would come right back down to a perfect trap to your left flipper. And then you would just rinse and repeat because as soon as you went up to that spinner or you go up the middle, it'd come back to your left flipper. And then you would just go to the right side that would hit this target and then feed back to your upper right flipper. And then you would just rip the spinner again. So the whole entire game turned out to be that well until we got the finals. The whole entire game was pretty much that. So I did that and then did the cheetah meta to where we all realized that the left orbit was perfectly feeding the left end lane and that you could just rinse and repeat that shot and just bump it over. And I mean, it was a boring way to play it, but it was a safe way to play it. It basically all but guaranteed you 1 million points, possibly even two up to 5 million if you just followed it through. So I mean, that's part of it. I mean, unfortunately, it may not be the sexiest thing to watch on stream. But, you know, when there's money on the line, there's whoppers on the line, you travel out there to compete. You want to try to find repeatable shots. And if you can find a repeatable shot that does not make you be in trouble, then that's what you're going to do. You got to play safe. Now, CarHop, I was watching you on stream with that. It looks like there's some sort of mode or option where you can pick a perk almost is what it was. And it was one of those point one of those perks double or nothing yeah so it was so bizarre because again some some of the game behavior would be a little bit different if you're in a four-player game compared to a single-player game okay and what i mean by that is is so for instance for mine there was a double up feature to where you could double your score well i was aware that it was there what i'm not aware of because this the first time i've ever seen the game i was not aware of how to actually light it. I just knew what to do as soon as it was lit, as soon as it started. Well, I'm going to, you know, raise the degrees, just follow the inserts around, then eventually just start bashing the center target. So I had figured out that much. And so in my in my match with Jeff Teolis and I believe I forget the other two, but I know Jeff was in the group with me, but I ended up finding that a couple of times and used it in that way. And so So that's, I mean, that's just figuring out what's there. Now, what was hilarious is I think you're talking about the catch-up, though, I think is what you're talking about. One of them said double or nothing. Yeah, so this one didn't happen in my group. We might be talking about two different things, but this was hilarious, and this is what led to this game getting thrown out. So in another group, it was Colin MacAlpine, Eric Stone, Haley George, and Andy Bagwell. I know, a really crappy group for those scoring at home. Yeah, yeah, just horrible players. Yeah, obviously. So, no, so you have all these exceptional players, right? And you know that they are going to just crush these shots over and over again. Well, then it was seen that somebody had picked what was called catch up. It just went into the saucer. You get to pick what it was. And apparently by doing this, it would launch your score up or bring it up to the person closest to you that's still above you. Yep. So we saw Andy basically instantly scored 30 some odd million points to catch up to Kaylee. And then I think somebody else did it later on. So this was like it was just a game of cat and mouse the rest of the time But it was so freaking hilarious watching it in person I don know how it was watching it on stream No I pretty sure I was watching it at the time it was on mute because I was doing something with I think the kids were watching a show or something. But I just kind of had it on, and I was like, what just happened? Like to see him pick that, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, all he has to do is hit one more target. And now he just took over, went up a place. But the double or nothing, I swear I said double or nothing. and I think you have 10 seconds or 15 seconds to hit the target X amount of times, whatever it was. Okay, yeah, that was like the heat wave or something like that. Yeah, that's what I did. It was a little bit different than catch-up. I think I would have much – It doubled your score. Yeah, yeah, it did, but it pretty much – it was kind of scary because then you had to basically flip real quick. You had to do the thing real quick, and I don't know. I mean, I like that in a game. I don't know if it necessarily belongs in competitive pinball, but it was awfully fun to do. I swear at that moment, though, I feel like you're in second. I think it was ball three. I feel like you were in second. You were in a good safe spot. And all of a sudden he picks this double or nothing. And I was like, is this truly double or nothing? Like, is he going to lose his score if he doesn't finish this moment? Oh, that's what you're saying. It was counting down time. And you got down to like, and I see you just bashing this middle target. And then all of a sudden, like with one or two seconds left, boom, you bash the target again. And boom, your score is doubled. You're in first place. and I was like, if he would have missed that target, he could have gone from second to fourth. I think. I assume that's what double or nothing means, but just having that kind of stuff in a tie-in tournament was crazy to watch. Luckily, I don't think it would take away my score because I did fell at it once and it didn't go back. But that would have been hilarious. Oh, yeah. Yeah, if it would have truly been a double or nothing, if it would have taken away my score, I don't know if I would have tried to sacrifice two points for that. Yeah, I'm like, he's in second place. So what did you mean by points? So the way that this tournament works is once you get in, so you qualify with this card system. So you got to play consistently, you know, five great games in a row or classics, four great games in a row. Otherwise, you throw in the card out and you're going again. And that's why, like, the Open, which is the main tournament, was on Sunday. So people had all day Thursday, Friday, Saturday to grind away to try to get in a good spot for the Open or just to qualify for the Open. And I think the open, it was like 260 something people had bought cards or attempted and they only let what the top 40 in. I mean, it was so it's and like I said earlier, this there's the tops. There are 60 of the top 100 players were there. And so only 40 are making that. I mean, it's it was absurd. It was absurd. So anyways, the he mentioned points. So when you win, if you're if you're competing against four people, three people. So there's four of you when the game ends, whoever got first place got four points. Whoever got second place got two. Third place got one. Fourth place got zero. And so it's best of three games. So the most that a person could get would be 12. But you end up in some weird positions where, OK, going into this next game, we need this person to get third and this person to get first. And then there could be a tiebreaker situation. It's it's super intriguing to watch. even if you don't know about the game or don't really care, it's just watch the game. Usually the announcers or, you know, Carl has a really good setup where people can draw on the board and they're going to say like, hey, this is what they're going to attempt to do or this is what they're trying to do and try to get you in the mind of the player. It was awesome. It was super awesome to watch. So Classics 2 finished and you you got in. But how did you finish in Classics 2? Oh, gosh. I think I flamed out in quarterfinals because I got through the first round. And then quarterfinals, it was just like completely forgot how to play pinball. Probably my three worst games. I think it was the first time I ever got a zero in a round. I took last every single game, all three games. I think I was playing Josh Sharpe, Jack Tadman, and Joe Lemire. So definitely three exceptional players. These are all players that, yeah, it's insane. Okay, so classics too. But, yeah, so I know Keith Helton, he won it. He won the whole thing. That's so key. He did it in style too. If you guys haven't seen this. So he basically went to finals and I think he played, I might have to bring it up. So he played Teolis, uh, Johnny Monica and Jack Tadman. And they played eight ball Paragon and stars. And of course, you know, Elwin, he did decent on eight ball, got two 63 for him. For him, that's probably an off game for me. That's like exceptional. You know, that game plays tough. Then Paragon, he gets 620, and he just makes it look easy. It's insane. But then he steps up the stars and basically just absolutely destroys it. It's getting specials left and right. He's trying to roll it. We're just all watching like, oh, my God, what is going on? This is not human, what he was doing. It's crazy. So if you get a chance to watch it, definitely it's Classics 2 playoffs. And this was done in front of, I think, 10,000 or 15,000 people watching. Yes, we do have to mention that. So IE Pinball, Carl D'Python Anghelo is streaming this whole thing. Carl got partnered on Twitch. And what that means is it's relatively easy to become affiliated with Twitch. You just have to have like, I don't know, like 50 followers or something. And it's not in a certain number of hours. It's not particularly hard to like get to a point where you can make money on Twitch. You just got to have a pulse is what you need. Pretty much. You'll get affiliate if you have a pulse. Now, but partners is a whole nother story because they limit the number of people within each category on how they can get partnered. Do you have to there's a certain number of average viewers you have to get, hours streamed, all this stuff. Carl has met those requirements for quite a long time. And I know he's applied multiple times to become a partner. And it finally happened. It finally happened a few months ago. He got partnered. And it's like, oh, cool. That's, you know, now he has a little badge. But what it did do, though, was it kind of opened a door for him on now Twitch is aware of who he is. And so I think what happened was there was somebody at Twitch working in the background that liked Carr or liked Pinball and knew this was coming. And so what happened was they put the stream on the front page. Now, this has happened before in Pinball, typically when Jack Danger with Deadflip does like a Stern reveal. Jack has reached out or Stern has reached out. There's some sort of communication. So Twitch knows, hey, during this two hours or one hour slot, let's go ahead and put this stream on the front page. I don't know what happened with IU Pinball, but all of a sudden, boom, it's on the front page. So what does that mean? It means anybody that logs on to Twitch.com, that is going to be one of the suggested, what, six, eight videos. And the number of people that popped into chat, I mean, it got over 10,000 people, which is normally for a stream like this type of tournament stream. I don't know. I don't. Maybe 1,000. I mean, somewhere right around there. Yeah. But like that's the normal pinball community watching is a thousand. And now all of a sudden, boom, 10. I think it got over 15000 at one point. Yeah. And what's what's crazy about it is that was basically people coming in and out, too. So it's kind of hard to tell, like who all was staying there. But we do know that there was a lot of people still sticking around because you could tell the questions in the chat that we're asking about certain things. I know I got several messages, just text messages from different people that didn't even realize I was at a pinball tournament. But they get on Twitch all the time. They're like, you're on the front page. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I am. I'm at pinball. Let me focus for a second. Yeah, yeah. It's like there's a lot of different people that were discovering it. And so, I mean, for pinball, that is excellent. It was huge. Yeah, and it was happening during multiple events, multiple days, because they did the same thing for Maine, too. So hopefully they decide to go ahead and start showing at least the major tournaments. They start showing it more on the recommended page or the front page just because it's, to me, it's something that's important. I think it's something that's needed because you see a bunch of other, I guess, video games or e-sports or what have you that's on Twitch that gets that type of publicity. So, I mean, just being able to have that with pinball, I think that's crucial. And that was one of the things that I was hoping to see, too. once Carl did get partner. And even with Tom with Fox Cities is I was hoping that the ones that can achieve partner, that that's what opens up the door. And if that door opens up more, that just helps pinball even more. It gives a bigger opportunity for people to come in and sponsor because it's in front of more people. It gives more chance for discovery from a younger demographic because obviously Twitch's age, they skew younger anyway. We've talked about that in the past. So something like that is excellent as well and you know i overall it was pretty exciting to be a part of a heavily watched pinball event it's very surreal it was it was as a viewer it was surreal like i mean i've watched i just feel like pinball feels so small and close-knit that it's like to see all of a sudden 10 plus thousand people in chat first part of me is like proud like proud of carl i'm like carl earned this like he deserves this i was so proud of carl for that like for him to get all those views. But also like chat was amazing. There were so many people were like, oh, I didn't know people stream pinball and for chat to be so supportive and like, of course, you should check out pin side. You should check out pin map. You should see if there's pinball machines in your area. You know, it was just like there were pinball people in chat just like being supportive. It could have gone toxic really quick. It could have been, you know, it just it was awesome to see the chat because I know for a fact there were people that that followed Carl. So I hope they get to see many more of his streams and, and other people are like this, that you could tell these people that had no idea. We're, we're excited. We're excited and locked in and watching. So as, oh, there it is. There it is. His, his camera has gone out. It is. It's that time. Yep. I wish I could say, I just do this on purpose. No, Elgato, no signal. There it is. I'll fix that eventually. So anyways, so it is, it is great though for Carl. I mean, just to touch base on this a little bit more before we move on. I think that I hope everybody out there understands how important Carl is to the industry in general and how important he is to competitive pinball. But not just that, it's truly the industry in general, because somebody putting in that much time and effort to get the equipment out there. he is a world-class player himself and he's sacrificing his chance for a world championship in order to basically put this whole thing on a platform and to give us the opportunity to be on that platform because without Carl nobody's paying attention to this except for us that care that are there nobody's discovering and so to me just the sacrifice I hope people understand how important of a sacrifice that really is, how big of a deal that really is. And I think the last I checked, even the bots combined views, it's over a million now, which is just that for pinball. That's insane. If you go to Reddit, some of the stuff, the Escher clip, which we'll get to later that that's already gone viral. I mean, I have people, I came home and I had over 200 messages on my Facebook, just people discovering it going viral, like seeing the clips, seeing on Twitch. So, I mean, that's huge. And none of that would have happened. if Carl doesn't stream. Yeah. I mean, that's just the reality of it. A hundred percent. And he's put in the work. He's put in the work to deserve that. And I mean, there's a lot of other people that stream tournaments. Obviously, our good friend Tom. Tom Graff with Fox City streams a lot of tournaments. And it's a selfless act in that sense. And so it was amazing. It was so great to watch. And it was exciting to watch, for sure. But what I want to say, so for Classics 2, Keith shows up. I have no idea how many cards it took him to get in. Gets in, just dominates. dominates the tournament boom he gets first uh then there's the next day there's the next day so that was on um saturday so he's qualified for both high stakes and the main tournament so here we go you get into the main tournament if you qualify top eight i think you got two rounds of buy because you qualified pretty high so if you qualify top four you get two rounds of buy top eight you got a buy okay so it worked i think it might even been more than that it might have been like top 12 maybe okay i forget but whatever i'm drawing a complete blank right now i remember seeing this is the open so this is the big one this is the one that people have been grinding away for two days now the open is is any game so it's any game from a modern i think they had all the most modern i think was rush there was a rush in the in the game all the way to ems like it was everything was in the open um and i know you got in now i neil got in did tom get in i don't know tom didn't get in and neil he got in at 40th like just barely snuck in there and luckily i mean we knew that if he got in he was going to do some damage yeah in the tournament so i was happy to see i was happy to see neil get in and it is it is top 16 top 16 gets a buy so yeah well okay real quick side note i don't want to over overpass it but there was a women's tournament as well and that there were some really good high-end women players that were there i know carl streamed that um and monica your wife she placed well that's true that's true you are correct i totally forgot there is there's actual if we want to go in even deeper there was more than even those tournaments there was gauntlet for the volunteers there was a strikes tournament yeah there was a youth tournament. So yeah, I don't want to leave off. Yeah. There's a lot of other stuff going on. No, the women players are exceptionally good. I mean, there's, there's some scary players there that, that they definitely can play. If you watch some of the prospector games, they, they were blowing it up. I mean, even Monica, she got like over 700,000, I think, and lost by two or 3000 points to, I think it was Anna Neal from a hot nudge. I believe that happened in semis. And then of course you got Leslie Rockman is a, Great player, fantastic player. Then Ashley Weaver ended up winning it. That's what I was going to look up. She's a very good player. Yep. I don't know Ashley, but I do recognize Anna Neal from streaming. And then Leslie Ruckman, she streams as well. She streams pinball. So her Twitch name is El Rucko. She's on Game Time Television with Raw Dog. But it's great. It was cool to see that. It's just cool to see players that I know do well, exceptionally well. So that was Saturday morning. That was on Saturday, I think. Yeah. This is so – okay. So here we are on Sunday. You guys are in the open. I just feel Tom did make some, like, I don't want to leave Tom. I know he's not here. It's feels weird. I'm not being here. He did make, um, like, I think he threatened to retire multiple times, I think a few weekends, but I definitely know he was a proud Papa. Cause Tom, Tom made the trip, but I don't know where he, I don't know where he ended up that. Cause here's the reality of it. There was just like you said earlier, there was like 60 or 70 or however many top 100 players there. and there was only 40 spots. So there was a lot of big-name players that are known that did not make the A Finals cutoff. I mean, there was. There was a couple of former world champions that didn't make the cut. There was some upsets, some players that snuck in and got into the top 40. Then, of course, there's the normals that you would expect to see. The keys and the issues. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just – and that's the way a tournament like this goes. It's tough. It's a grinder. It's not guaranteed for 95% of us that we're going to make the cut. I mean, sometimes you just got to have the ball bounce a certain way. Sometimes you just got to make the right decision. And what's crazy about it is it could be like one spinner rip or one extra jackpot or one out of all. That's the difference. I mean, because you mess up on one game, you have a busted card. And when you bust your card, it's catastrophic because then you set yourself back five games It's to where you have to re-queue up, you have to wait in line, then you have to do well all over again. In theory, each busted card most likely will set you back, if you're playing certain games, two to four hours at a time. Because if the queue is 25 minutes to 30 minutes long for a game, you're going to be waiting for a little while. No wonder you're grinding for days, you know, essentially to try to get that spot. So you made it into the open. I know Neil made it in the open. I don't know. I did not really start watching the open until later that day. We were pretty busy on that Sunday, and I think Neil was already out at that time. Do you remember how far Neil got? Neil made it all the way to semifinals. He was on his third game in semis. He had a chance to go through, so he made it a long, long way. Maybe he wasn't being streamed at that point because I did see him on stream. I saw Tom on stream. I saw you on stream many times. Yeah, the stream was just kind of bouncing back and forth, but, yeah, Neil started in the first round, And so he won out three straight rounds and he just he got on an extreme heater. I think it was in his second round. He was in a group with Arvid and I'm going to pronounce this wrong. Apologies. Fly, fly, glare, fly, gear. I don't know. He's a European player, young kid, but exceptionally good. I think he's the reigning EPC champion, too. So I'm pretty sure he won a major just recently. And then he was also in a group with Dom and Step and then Daniele, who anybody in competitive knows about. But yeah, Neil just he did great that round. I think it was on Tron, Mystery Castle and Deadpool. And he swept the round and got 12 points. Nice. And then I think even the next round, he he was in a group with Zach McCarthy, who's the reigning open champion. And Daniele again. And I forgot who the other player was. I think his name was Gabe. I've never met him before. But Neil, he did great again. He swept the round again. So, yeah, the kid was on absolute heater. I mean, just destroying games left and right. And then he put himself into position to advance on. It just unfortunately didn't go that way for him. But I fully expect him to make it up there eventually. Yeah. Well, so I was watching that, and then I saw you were still in it. So random side note here, TNA is no longer here. And it's not that I did not sell TNA. I love TNA. I'm a huge fan of TNA. But I wanted to try Jurassic Park. and I have a guy in the area that has one and he's got a good collection. And so we decided to do a temporary trade for Jurassic Park. So I had a Jurassic Park premium that was all bundled up. All I had to do is get it down to my basement. My brother came over to help me do that. And that was our plan for Sunday evening was to unbox Jurassic Park and play Jurassic Park. Instead, I'm waiting for my brother to show up. I turn this on and I see you are in, at that point, you were in the semifinals and you were in a position where you went to a tiebreaker, I think, versus Kaylee, correct? Oh, yeah. Yep. So I'm like, holy crap. Like, Travis might make finals here. So my brother shows up right while you're in this tiebreaker. And here I am, like, standing in front of the television, you know, like, pacing in the room, you know, like, okay, where are we at? Jared's like, what's going on? I was like, competitive pinball. Give me a real, like, brief, like, this is what's going on. You know Travis. For him to pass, like, this is what we're doing. So let's watch. And that that tiebreaker was pretty intense just for you to get through it. Yeah, that was. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So it was I believe in that round. So if we're talking semifinals, I had Escher, Lefkoff, Haley, George and Jason Weirdrick in our group. And we played Congo Mystery Castle Tommy. And it was it was definitely a tough group. I felt fine on Congo. I felt fine on Mystery Castle. I just barely came up short against Escher. I wish I would have got a win in one of those I didn put myself in the position But Tommy was like the one game I did not want to play Which is I think when it started streaming was Tommy That right Oh boy Yeah Yeah. And it was so Tommy. That was probably maybe the fifth time I've ever actually played the game. And I'm not too familiar with the rule set. I know the basics of it, but wasn't familiar with the bounces. Wasn't really familiar with anything in general. I was just trying to survive. And I mean, I was fortunate with a couple of bounces just to survive in order to get to a tiebreaker. So what happened was and I was put in just the it was a horrible position to be in because here I was. I was going to face off against Kaylee George, who is one of the best pinball players of all time. And and I had pick, but I had exhausted my picks. So the games I would normally go to, I couldn't do it. I couldn't go to Rush. I couldn't go to Tron. I couldn't go to Deadpool. I used those up in quarterfinals, and I couldn't go back to Congo, to my knowledge. And so I literally ran out of games that I would have chosen. Oh, wow. And so in my head, because I had picked Twister earlier, too. And so I was thinking about the games I wanted to play, and I just kept eyeballing Flash Gordon. And to be flat out honest with you, I still remembered that game kicking the dog shit out of me at Freeplay Florida. and I instantly as soon as I just thought about that and it just crossed my mind I was like I don't care about any other game I'm gonna prove to myself that I can beat this game so as crazy as it sounds I didn't pick it because I was like oh Kaylee I could beat Kaylee at this or oh you know I think he might have like I don't think on that level I think about what can I do on a game we won't give you too much credit yeah exactly well because I had re-watched it I think somebody had mentioned to me that they thought I did it as a strategic pick, avoiding Stearns. I was like, no, I would have picked Rush. If it was available, 100%. I would have picked Rush or I would have picked Tron. I felt comfortable getting to $500 plus million on Rush. I felt comfortable getting to $100 million on Tron at that point because I had enough games on them. But with Flash Gordon, I was just like, look. It's just an emotional pick. Yeah, I'm putting up the double-barreled middle finger at it. I'm going to show it that I can beat it. And it just happened to be at that stage. I know it's psychotic to pick it for that reason. But, you know, when I really get down to it, I wasn't going to pick other games. I wasn't going to pick Revenge from Mars. I wasn't going to pick the next generation Star Trek. It's just those games I'm OK with. But in that situation, I don't know. Just something competitive clicked in me that I wanted to show myself that I could do this on this game in this spot. So, and fortunately it worked out. I mean, it's just, you know, Kaylee, he obviously had an off game. He could very easily put up two or three million on Flash Gordon. Let's not kid ourselves. But, you know, it's just, it was what it was. I was happy that the balls bounced my way for that tiebreaker. And then we got the finals. Well, so that tiebreaker, one thing that was surprising is most time during tournament play, extra balls are always turned off. It's like a point thing. But for whatever reason, Flash Gordon, the extra ball was there. And so it was you had inline drops over to the right. And it's like you have to hit boom, boom, boom. You have to hit those down and then you can hit that shot. And so it's it was like to see it's like, OK, that's what Travis is doing. He's trying to get that extra ball. And I'm pretty sure you did. And that helped. And you got through. But it was kind of a nail biting thing of like, holy crap, he just made finals. Like it's and you look at the four people that were in it. It was Keith Elwin, Escher Lefkosch, Escher. If anybody's new to this, Escher's the number one rated player in the world right now. He's 19. He's been winning tournaments since he was like 12. I mean, the kid is unbelievably good. Unbelievably good. And then Zach, I'm sorry, I don't know his last name. No, Jason Zoller. Jason. And Jason was the guy that had won Classics 1, right? Yeah, he won Classics 1, and he's been on an absolute terror this past year as well. I think he's ranked third in the world currently. So the guy that won Classics 1, the first tournament of the week, is in quarterfinals. The guy, Keith Elwin, that won Classics 2 is in the quarterfinals. Escher, the number one player in the world, is in quarterfinals. And then Travis Murry. Travis Murry. This all was finals, Joel, not quarterfinals. You're right. You're right. But it's finals. I mean quarters, as in you made the top four. But I see what you mean, though. when you look at the names, you're like, one of these doesn't belong. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, it was one of those things to where honestly, I, I had, and just kind of like a little behind the scenes, I have been like, just practicing my ass off. And we've talked about this before off of, off camera and, you know, on a Facebook messenger and everything. I I've set up my games just on death mode. All saves are off. I've taken posts completely out. If you're on raised discord, You probably saw what I did to my rush just to get prepared to where the lanes just like as wide as the Grand Canyon. I just I had to do the things necessary to try to make it to where I really focused on accuracy and I really focused on defensive capabilities of getting the ball back under control. And so it's not so much I'm used to high stress situations just from baseball and everything. So I don't get nervous when I play. That never enters my mind. And the money doesn't matter. I don't compete for the money. So that doesn't even enter the equation either. I just enjoy competing and I want to see how how far I can get. So, yeah, there was a lot of prep that went into getting to this point and a lot of hours spent just practicing. And I just I'd always wanted to try to get into a top four. And my overall goal has never been to actually win a major championship. It was just to be in the conversation about it. And if I could do that, I would be happy. And now that it's happened, I mean, yeah, it's I'm as ecstatic about it. It's amazing. It was insane. Like as a friend of yours, you know, to see you in that position was incredible. And don't get me wrong, like you and Neil and Tom and every other tournament, like high end tournament player, top 100 player. You guys are putting in work. I mean, you guys are traveling to tournaments almost every other week is what it seems like. I mean, you're you are putting in work, not only, you know, going to tournaments, competing in tournaments, doing it at home. Like, you know, just you didn't just fall into the top four. There's no you know, you had to prove that the whole weekend. Well, every single group was a grinder. If you look at all the names that were there in each group, each group could have been a final on its own. In all reality, it could have been. It wasn't, you know, tournaments like this, it's not necessarily the most skilled player that will always make it through. I mean, at times you've got to have some luck on your side. I mean, for instance, when I was in, I think it was quarterfinals. I mean, I was going into the last game with a one. And so I had to have Keith basically co-pilot my ass to the next round because I had to win and I had to exceed everybody else's score. And Keith had to finish a certain spot, too, to make the points go right. And sometimes that's just where it falls. I mean, we've we've all been there before if we competed enough. But, yeah, it's just when I look at the names, whenever whenever I go play competitive pinball, this is what I want. I want to play the best players that I can. And I want to play them as soon as possible. I mean, yeah, I want to win. Yeah, I want to make finals. But, you know, I get I I do this because I want to see how good I can possibly be. And the only way to know that is to play against the best of the best. That's the only way, you know, which is a huge plug just for this tournament in general. Like the open is open to anybody. Anybody could have walked in there and bought a ticket. So if you're in a competitive play or like, let's say you dominate your local bar, whatever, like you could do this. You could come compete in Indus next year if you wanted to, which is really cool. So here you are, the finals. It's best of three games, same system. You get first, second, yada, yada. I remember Flash Gordon was one of them. Bad Girls was one of them. What was the first? Firepower was the first one. Firepower was the first one. So like I said, I have a brand-new Jurassic Spark Premium that I was ready to play. And instead, my brother and I were glued to the television. You're watching Firepower instead. It just glued to the television. And there were some really good announcers at the time and just trying to, okay, what's the strategy here? What are we trying to do? And I remember Keith won. Keith won it. So he got four points. Where did you – I forget what position you ended with. I had to grind out just to get a third because my goal was when I played Firepower earlier in the weekend, I had shats my way to over 200,000 without even putting it back up top. So I figured, okay, I could keep it safe. If it wasn't going up and out, I'll just do that until I get it maxed out. Then I'll start going up top to collect bonus and go from there. But my first ball, it didn't go the way I planned. Then the second ball was a house ball. I feel like I probably should have saved it. I just didn't nudge it hard enough, and it went to the left out lane. So that was most likely my fault. I'll just take full blame for it. But then my ball three, yeah, I only had 19,000 points going into it. I think Zoller had about 70. I think Escher was probably at like 20 or 30 or maybe even 40, 50, somewhere right around there. I know he's a little bit above me. So I had to do some work just to make sure I at least got a point out of it because it could have gone either way. So I just switched up tactics. I decided just to keep putting it up top, get a multiplier going. And then I discovered I just didn't feel good about the spinner shot at all, which was from right to left. And so ultimately, anytime I was on the right side, I tried to shat over to the left and then send it back up top through the orbit. And I wasn't worried about lighting my kickback or anything like that. I just I didn't want to send the ball out of control ball three. I just want to try to get points, get pops action where I can, where I could and just hopefully get back under control. That was my main goal with that game. And absolutely. I mean, if you're listening or watching this, like Carl will upload these streams to YouTube at some point. But as of right now, you can go on his Twitch page and watch all of this. But go watch the finals. With the other 600,000 people. Go watch the finals. It was so awesome to watch. And I remember seeing that. I was like, okay, Travis, ball three. You've got to get one point. You worked your way up. Now, it ended with Keith winning, so that was four. Escher got second, so he had two. You had one. And then shot. Am I forgetting? Josh, right? Jason. Jason got zero. So then we go to the next game. And the next game was Bad Girls. All I know about Bad Girls is people say Bad Girls is a mirrored eight-ball deluxe with some other stuff. I know the Buffalo Pinball guys love Bad Girls. They think it's incredible. I know Chuck Wirt is a big fan of Bad Girls. Gottlieb, right? So the flippers are a little different. But Bad Girls. So this is Keith, right? Keith is picking these games, correct? Yes. So Keith, and I know he likes going. He doesn't want to give you a Modern Stern. He doesn't want to give Escher a Modern Stern. I would keep in mind, too, he had exhausted a lot of picks. Because once you pick a game in any round, you cannot pick it again. So that's a big reason why you see these types of game picks as well. So here we are at the end. Bad Girls is what we're playing. And look it up. If you're not familiar with the game, look up the art. It's horrendous. but um what something very unique happened so what i was saying so just what it seemed like it seemed like the play was uh on the left side you have one through seven the balls and then you have a drop target which is ball eight if you hit that drop target then then catch it you go back up there and again that's essentially how you start your multiball and it just seemed like that was the tactic just get into multiball then do some stuff there's a very target on the right that that seemed valuable. There was Steven Bowden kept talking about the right orbit. You could kind of do that for a while and get points. So there's, there's definitely options. It wasn't a do one thing except for being multiple. Well, Travis did something very unique. Um, in pinball, there's something, there's, you qualify the play field. And what that means is when you hit the start button, it sticks a ball into the, um, shooter lane and it's sitting on a switch and you can sit there and you can plunge and plunge and plunge and plunge. But the game doesn't know you're out of the shooter lane until you've hit some other switch on the play field. And you've validated the play field. And that's validating the play field. So now the game knows the ball is on the play field. So at that point, start your ball save, or if the ball save is turned off, it understands, no, the ball is in play. If you happen to plunge and the ball can literally roll all the way around the play field and never hit a switch and it goes back into the trough, the game assumes the ball there was like a malfunction or something like and it just spits out another ball i don't know exactly the logic behind it but it will spit another ball out into the shooter lane this is very common even in modern games this is very common and you typically can do that as many times as you want as many times as you want and so typically typically Typically, yes. So here we are. My brother and I were watching. We're glued to the television. What's Travis doing? He's doing something. I didn't see Keith do it. I didn't see Esther do it or the people before you. But you were trying to short plunge so that that ball just kind of goes up in the orbit and then rolls down so you can catch it on the flipper. No, no, you were trying to short plunge it up into the pops or something. Yeah, I was trying to get a skill shot is generally what I was trying to do. And then there was something else. I'll probably have to tell you exactly what I was trying to do off podcast, but we had made a discovery on the game. Okay. So, and I feel like nobody else was really trying for it, but I was like, hell, I'm going to throw a hell Mary and see what happens. Yeah. You threw it. All right. So what happens is he plunges the ball. It doesn't do what he wanted it to do, but it doesn't hit a switch. So he like kind of caught it up on his flipper and then just like, let the ball drain. Cause there was no, it looked like the play field was invalidated. So it happened once. So he plunges again, doesn't hit his shot, lets the ball drain. It's like, okay, he's doing for this. Goes a third time, plunges it again, doesn't hit what he wants, lets the ball drain. Then he looks up at the score and what does he see? He sees the score instead of player three flashing, player four is now flashing. The game said, nope, you've tried enough. You're gone. You're done. You're done with your ball and this does not happen in pinball like he got zero points zero zero is what flashed on the screen zero zero think about it in pinball for a play field to be validated you have to hit a switch and almost every pinball machine ever made when you hit a switch it gives you some points 10 5 i don't know it depends on what the switch is it gives you some points you even score like found a way to play his turn without earning a single point. I found my way playing in front of thousands of people for a major championship against Keith Elwin, Escher Lefkoff, and Jason Zoller, and I decided to score no points. Zero points. Without tilting or anything. Ball one of bad girls. Zero, zero. That instantly become an overnight meme for everybody. If you haven't seen that hilariously. Oh my God. It was incredible to see. So, so what happened? I mean, I, so truthfully though, thank God you looked and saw that it had gone on to player four. Cause if you didn't and you plunged his ball. Oh yeah. Then it'd be even worse. Yeah. Yeah. So what happened was in qualifying that behavior was not happening at all. On a one player game, it was not happening. So it was not expected to see this happen either. That's why you saw me just kind of step back and give that look like, yeah, is this really happening? You know, that was that was in my that was in my head. I was just like, bruh. And like, no, no. So, yeah. And so I asked for a ruling and nobody really knew. Like at the time, nobody around the area knew. And then they decided, well, we're just going to we're going to play on. And of course, we were able to recreate that. And sure as shit, you know, single player game, it doesn't do it. Multiplayer game, it does do it. So I think Escher was now we know. I think Escher was after you. And he's like, do I play? Do I go? Yeah, because that was when I was consulting with Jim and Carl to see, OK, how are we going to approach this? Because, I mean, the last thing I wanted to do was literally just skip my turn with all that on the line. So I was just like, hell, I can't believe that happened. But, I mean, you know, I, yeah, I, well, I was, let's be, let's be fair. I was basically a walking meme all day long for the stream. I mean, on Congo earlier, I was in Skillfire. We didn't even talk about this. On Congo, there's a mode on there, Skillfire, right? I don't know if you know what this is. I don't know. It's so basically you get to a point in the game where you just plunge for these three stand-up targets or even the left out lane to keep getting points. It's like a timed plunge thing, right? Okay. And my dumb ass could not find the plunge the whole time. And I realized I'm not hitting it. So I even stop and slow down, try to time it. And I let it go again. Still don't hit it. I only got 5 million points. And you should get like 300 million. Oh, wow. Yeah, I got like 325 in qualifying. And then all of a sudden I just could not find it. But, yeah. So, again, walking meme. That's what I ended up being. But, yeah, I just did not expect that to happen on that game. Nobody did. I had this huge plan in my head. I knew what I was going to try to do. And I was being calm. I told myself after the first couple of plunges, I was like, let's just be patient. Stick to the plan. Don't get impatient. Just send it to the pops and be out of control. Because I knew coming out of that orbit, I could control it. I knew it was going to come from a left to the right dead bounce. So when the game does things that you expect and you feel safe, you do those things. You don't do... In that point, you don't do anything different. Now, if I was just playing at the local bar, I would have probably just said, F it, just let it fly. But, you know, at this point, it was like, no. Those three, you got to, yeah, you need all your tricks. Oh, yeah, and I showed the best trick of all. Don't score any damn points on ball one. In hindsight, I'm glad that you've, I'm glad that thinking of double zero doesn't, you know, make you fall up into a corner and cry because I'm glad you've embraced this. But it was so weird to see and we're just like, that just happened. And I know Jeff Teolis was giving you a hard time. He's like, I think there's a good chance ball two is going to be a better ball for Travis. You know, infinitely better. It's like, yeah, zero. But it was great. So fast forward on that. Escher ended up winning eight ball deluxe. Now, Escher said later on. Bad girls. Bad girls. Yes. He said later on it's like the fifth time or first time. Like he's almost, I don't think he's ever played the game. Yeah, I think he had told me before we played it it was the first time he'd ever played it. But, I mean, everybody knew the meta. You know what I mean? You just do that. Yeah, yeah. And ultimately, that was my big plan. I wanted to max out my orbit first and then start going in. Because I just wanted to get base points on my ball two. That's why I decided not to go for a multiball because I saw where Escher was at. I saw that Zahler was having a difficult time getting some points. And I saw that Elwin was around four and a half million. So I figured I need to at least catch up to that and be safe going into ball three. then I can start going multiball. But then, of course, when Escher came up and just absolutely destroyed his ball two after me. There it goes again. I just, yeah, double zero again. I just knew immediately I was just like you know I got to do something different come my ball three because Escher he played his ball two exceptionally well Yeah So that what happened was it ended up so Escher won it but there was a time where I was like, okay, Travis is looking good. You may get second in this. And then Escher just went off. And then it was like – I don't know. As a viewer, it was like Keith is Keith. Escher just went off. Travis, you got a long road to catch up. But you ended up getting third, I think, in that one, right? Yeah, but I mean, it wasn't even close. I mean, Elwin, he made a run on his ball three, and he had some fantastic moves, and he kept getting into multiball and then getting his re-rack bonus on the left drops and all that. Basically, it's almost like a hurry-up for you. Just crushing it, yeah. Yeah, so they were all doing great, and I knew going into my ball three, I would just have to go for broke and just try to catch up because I was down at the time maybe $18 million, I think, which is a tall order to get that on one ball in that game. So it just wasn't meant to happen. But I was happy enough to come away with one point and two balls. So we got to game three. So we're at Flash Gordon again. And going in, the way the math works, so Keith's at six points, Escher's at six points, you're at two, and Jason was at zero. So I was like, okay, I think it's, I mean, mathematically, Keith and Escher, one of them is going to win this. Yeah, yeah. Jason and I were eliminated mathematically. And I knew I was playing for at least second. So I was still trying as hard as I could. And it halfway crossed my mind to get out of the way and just go to second position and let them be there together. But then at the same time, I knew I was still competing for a spot. So Keith has picked. He picked the first. Why was Keith picking games? Explain that real quick. Well, because he was the higher seed. He was the third seed going in. I think Escher was the fourth seed. I was the ninth. And I think Zoller was the 19th or 18th seed. So this is all back to qualifying for the tournament in general. This is all back to the card system. So Keith was running the show because he was a higher seed. So he was driving the bus, right? So you either pick the game or you pick your position. That's the way that works. Yeah, and that's ultimately why you saw the position stay in the way that they were. Because then it went to Escher to pick a position after Keith took his pick of game. So he would go fourth. Right. Right, so Escher picked fourth, and I would take last available, which would be third, and Zahler would take first or second. I think a couple of the games he ended up taking first on fire. No, I'm not sure. Maybe it's a different time. The last one he picked first because there was a chance that you started to walk up because you were so used to playing after him that you started to walk up and then stopped and realized, no, Keith goes down. Yeah, then I realized, like, wait a second. Yeah, I caught myself, and even Keith, to his credit, he was like, Travis, no, don't do it. And I'm like, sorry, Mr. Goat. I didn't mean it. But yeah, so I halfway thought about getting out of the way to going in the second. I don't know. Maybe hindsight. I probably should have went ahead and did that. But I also felt like I was still playing for something because I was still trying for second place. My placing could have changed. But yeah, it was kind of surreal to be in that last match, though, considering what happened during it against two of the best players of all time. It was insane. So really, I mean, your play was good. I'm trying to remember. I know you got extra ball and whatnot, but you still ended up with third overall in that game. Yeah, in this game, I didn't get an extra ball, and I ended up – I mean, it was an average game. If you're going to have a solid game of Flash Gordon on this particular model, you're going to have 800,000. That's a solid game, and that gives you an idea of how exceptional of a game both Escher and Elwin had on it. Yeah, so Keith went – so Jason had gone. He didn't have a crazy great game. Keith's put up some great points I don't think he loved it But I don't think he loved the number of points That he had, he ended up at like 1.5 million But it was a great In comparison to your score And Jason's and even Escher's in ball three It was way higher than everybody else's Yeah, it was close to a top ten score Overall, that would have been unqualifying Really good Then you went and it was like Okay, Travis got third Or at least he could have had second But like, I think you were barely above Escher or I don't know. It wasn't. Well, I was what happened was, is I was actually behind Zoller. So I had to like grind out and make sure that I at least got a point at that. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I don't think it would have mattered anyways, because I think the best Zoller could have done at that point was just one point. So I think we were pretty much done. So my goal was, is I was trying just to put up as many points as I could at the off chance that that I got it for. But I think at that point, mathematically speaking, I was pretty much done for regardless. So, I mean, if I wasn't in that spot, I kind of thought about just plunging and just getting out of the way and letting them do it. But at the same time, yeah, I was just going to play it out. Yeah, I don't blame you for playing it out at all. But I remember that just the fact that Key's score was higher than Jason's. I knew, like, that you weren't – you had no chance at second. Whatever it was, it's like, okay, but you're putting up points. You have third. Your ball drained. And it's like, way to go, Travis. Okay, let's see what Escher does. Let's see what Escher does. But I thought the way it was going to play out was Escher might surpass you. It may not. I don't know. It doesn't matter. But is Escher going to catch up with Keith? He's going to have to have one heck of a ball three. One heck of a ball three. And he did. So I know Keith in that last round got an extra ball. And his extra ball, like, was really short. It just, he didn't really do anything with it. I think he had a really good ball one. He got an extra ball, didn't do anything with it. His ball two was okay. Maybe it was real quick. And then ball three was fine. But he had put up such a great score. Then Escher walks up and just hits stuff. I mean, everything he needed to do, he started doing. And I remember the way that the announcers were describing it is he hit something. It was a spinner or something. And they're like, his score is going to keep going up for a while here. Like, it's not all at one point. It's just like, watch it. That score is going up. and we don't know where it's going to end. So just buckle up, basically. And it just kept going and going, and he's playing and he's playing and he's playing, and then he drains. And everybody is watching that score slowly go up, up, up, up, up, up. And there's a clip of this. You've got to watch it. It's on Twitch. But as you're seeing it, 1.5 is what you're wanting to see. It was shortly over 1.5. And as soon as it crosses 1.5 – or it was 1.4 something was key. So as soon as we knew we saw 1.5, it was over. And as soon as he hits it, everybody flipped out. Escher goes and hugs his dad. I mean, it was incredible to watch. And here's Keith. I mean, Keith has been in this position so many times. He just walks up to the game, kind of gives it a, you know, kind of a, okay. And he lost by 6,000 points. Out of 1.5 million, he lost by 6,000 points, which is unbelievable. I mean, what an incredible finish. Incredible finish. And, you know, I know Zach Minney, he goes on a huge thing on like, why are modern games not being used? This could be such a good selling tool. You know, would this final have been better if that game would have ended that way on Rush? I don't know. But to me as a pinball person, I don't care. It was just to see that, to see the flipper mechanics that you have, the control that you guys have, the nudging, this is what you're trying to do. What are you trying to, and then it ended the way it did. I was I mean it was unbelievable to watch yeah you were there obviously yeah it made for fantastic pinball I mean it by far it's probably at least for sure the number two moment in pinball history I mean Johannes and Daniele oh that a couple years ago yeah with Dracula that was insane when Johannes put up like three billion on the last ball and I think it was the very last game for if a world title so that's a heads up thing that that was incredible and this ranks right up there with it. I mean, it's just, yeah, I think for me personally, the way that I think about this, if it's a world championship, I don't mind it being across different areas of games. I mean, to me, that's what shows, hey, here's your world champions. We have sternaments. They're, you know, Expo, and then even the Stern Pro Circuit Finals. That's going to be on all Stern. So there are tournaments out there that are sponsored by Stern with the Pro Circuit that, you know, you're going to see those types of games. You're going to see the new modern games. You're going to see games that are currently in production. But with this, I thoroughly enjoy this type of tournament because it requires all kinds of different skill sets. It requires you to have a certain capacity of rules knowledge, of flipper skills, of understanding the nudges and the nuances of different geometries from different eras. I mean, you got upper playfields. You got, you know, three flipper games. You got bigger flippers, you know, with the way that the Bally Williams play. I mean, even Revenge from Mars, you had basically what felt like a little home pin and it had lightning flippers on it. I mean, that game played tough. So, I mean, I don't mind it at all. And hopefully the people watching at home, hopefully that was a little bit more entertaining to get to see a different era of game for people to play. I think that that's overall that that's good for pinball. Now, it could be argued, you know, that maybe if they set it up to where you're required to have a modern, a, you know, a mid game or something like that. Like, I understand that. But there's tournaments out there for that. And I, you know, I got no qualms with how the how the open set up and how these games are. I think it's absolutely fantastic that you see you see people that have been in this game for 20 plus years playing against up and comers on games that might be 20 years old. They might be a year old. I think personally that's pretty cool just because it makes you see a wide variety of skill sets. I liked it just and also some of these modern games they play so long that it's like to have these, you know, that final game be like, OK, this is going to happen in 15 minutes or less. And I don't know. I loved it. I loved every bit of it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I mean, I was proud, proud of you, Travis. Obviously, that's awesome to see you perform the way you did to end up three. Obviously, triple drain, that's pretty great. But, dude, it was awesome. It was really cool to see. And I know the interview afterward, Keith and Esther have gone at it so much over the last few years. Like, it's fitting. It's fitting that it was. And I think what was really cool is you think, you know, you think your family, you think your wife. You know, the amount of travel and stuff that you and your mom, the amount of travel that you have to do to be able to compete at this level. And it takes an army or a village, right? I mean, it was pretty cool for sure. Yeah, yeah. And I wish I would have in that moment, I was trying to think of everybody I wanted to thank. And then, of course, I end up stumbling over my words. I just forget things because we were just we were crushed for time. But, yeah, I mean, even right now, it's yeah, my family, they're fantastic. And a lot of this I can't do. And, you know, and I know it. Let's do in a podcast. Our family is making a sacrifice in order for us to be able to do something like this, in order for us to be knuckleheads that are talking on a microphone away from each other and putting this out there for everybody to consume. But yeah, it's just I'm very thankful for my family allowing me the opportunity to be able to travel, to follow what I'm very passionate about. I think that for me, even from, you know, I'll get a little bit deep here, but even for me, from a mental health perspective, I need something that I'm passionate about and I need to be able to follow. And that's really my outlet with pinball. After I got done playing baseball and, you know, all the stresses in life and everything, I can turn on a game and I'm happy. And I can share that with my family. And, you know, you have kids and a wife yourself that play pinball with you from time to time. When I do that with my family, like I'm ecstatic. That's just for me. That's great. So, yeah, I'm very thankful for them. Also, I forgot to mention, too, when I was out there, I'm very thankful for Oklahoma Pinball Enthusiast OPE. So that's my original group that's back in Oklahoma with Cactus Shacks in Oklahoma City. I came up through there. They let me play there. Carolyn, big shout out to her. I know she's listening. Let me play at their facility and just learn the games, get used to playing. And, yeah, it really is surreal, Joel. I mean, when I started competitive pinball, I was watching this all on stream, and I was thinking, I want to do that. That looks fun. And, you know, I never imagined that it would come to this. I always wanted to do it and I always envisioned myself playing against the best possible players I could. So, I mean, it's it's definitely surreal to be up there with them. And hopefully it's somebody that's listening to this or watching this that is just now getting into competitive pinball or has been playing for a while and thinking about traveling, thinking about doing it like do it. Take a chance. Like, come check it out. People are very accessible. And, you know, I think I don't see myself as being the exception. So I think that there's so many excellent players out there that are undiscovered right now that are just waiting to be found. I mean, there's so much information out there with rules, with everything that, you know, I think that we're going to see the talent level in pinball rise dramatically over the coming years. And I, for one, I look forward to seeing it. Yeah. No, it's awesome. It was awesome to watch. I mean, Carl did an incredible job. The stream, the quality of the stream, the quality of the play. It was awesome. It was really, really cool. And, yeah, so right around midnight, we're like, okay, well, that's what I told my brother. I was like, there's another tournament that's about to happen with high stakes. We'll fast forward. Kaylee George, so the guy that you bumped out to get into finals, he ended up winning it. So $15,000 right there in his pocket. And who gets second? Keith Owen. So it's like that's what blew me away was Keith participated in three tournaments. And people say he's retired or semi-retired. What that means is like, you know, you and Tom, you travel a lot throughout the year. and other friends of ours, obviously Ray Day and whatnot, are very consistent at Carlos, like boom, boom, boom, hitting all these different tournaments all over the U.S. Keith doesn't do that. He doesn't do that anymore. He just hits his local things or what he wants to. So for Keith to be just fly out, show up, boom, wins a tournament, second in the next, second in the next. I mean, he's still got it. There's no denying that. Yeah, he's an exceptional player. when you're up close and you're watching the decision-making and just the thought process, you're just like, how's he doing this? They were all like that though. I mean, even in the finals, Kaylee, excellent player and Jermaine, for anybody that doesn't know Jermaine, he is an excellent, excellent player. And I think I was very impressed with his, with his overall ability and his flipper skills in finals. Eric Stone, I mean, everybody, it's like everybody, The only person I didn't see was Ray Day. Ray Day was the only one that wasn't there that I'm used to seeing stream and compete at that level. Or Dalton Dalton wasn't there either. But I'm just thinking of people that stream or people that I see consistently at these tournaments. So, hey, if you're interested at all in competitive play, check out Fox – well, Fox City Spinball for sure. But IE Pinball, check out his Twitch channel. Go back. You could start at any game. I mean, the quality of play was so high that it's like just start at anywhere in those three days of streaming, and you're going to learn stuff and see stuff that was pretty incredible. But yeah, that's basically all we had. I know this was a shorter episode than an hour and 15 minutes, but InDisc was incredible, and Travis, you performed exceptionally well, and I knew we wanted to try to knock a podcast out here while it's still relevant. But yeah, was there anything else you wanted to say about it? No, it was a great time. It was very surreal during it. I was enjoying it. And it's been just a crazy ass 48 hours since then with all the messages and everything. I just want to tell everybody out there, if I haven't got a chance to yet, I thoroughly appreciate it. I mean, I know Joel and I and we can speak for Tom here. We we thoroughly enjoy doing this podcast and we genuinely appreciate everybody that takes time out of their day to listen, especially Joel, because we all know he sucks. but yeah we just play right into that that we're feuding to the the amount of people that come up to me asking if we're okay it cracks me up trust me guys we we love to have fun we also we enjoy everybody that comes up talk to us if you see us out please come up introduce yourself we love talking pinball and yeah it's just it's a great time and you know if this podcast is out before then. We're recording this on Wednesday, so hopefully it is out. Saturday, this Saturday on the whatever date that is, on the 21st, that's when you're going to see state championships being played. So on Twitch, you're going to see a lot of different streams. And also on the 22nd, you're going to have women's state championship as well. So hopefully they have different streams going on on that day as well. So it'll be an excellent weekend of competitive pinball, if that's your jam. If it's not, you know what? Put on Twitch, leave it on anyways, then you go play pinball yourself. Yeah. No, that's cool. I would, I will say when I first got into this hobby, anytime competitive pinball came up in conversation, it was just like, nah, but the reality is once you grow that your passion of just enjoy playing these games to see people play them at such a great level is, is I don't know. I find it like motivating. And I just, I think it's really cool to see. Nah, I don't know when I'm going to start finding the time to play myself by my brother. Like my brother loves playing competitive magic. So he's like, man, he's like, I know I'm not that good at pinball, but he's like, I want to play. I'm ready to just join a league. Like, it's perfectly fine. I tell this to everybody. Yeah, you're watching world class players at these tournaments. But I promise you, you you're not going to see world class players at every single tournament, every single league. You're going to find a lot of leagues are just like pure fun and nothing else. People just having a good time, getting out on a weeknight, having a couple of beers, enjoying pinball, talking pinball, talking about life. You will find if you get out there and you find a league, it's a lot of fun. And that's what I would highly recommend to anybody, especially Joel. I know, I know. Get out there, play pinball. It's much more fun when you have other people to enjoy it. I totally get it. I totally get it. But, yeah, so thank you to all the people that send us Facebook messages, respond to our Facebook posts, all that good stuff. Patreon members, emails, all that. We really appreciate the feedback. We enjoy what we do. But, yeah, I think that's it for this episode. We called it 29.5 because Tom's not here. Episode 30, we do have some plans for that. I think we're going to have an extra ball. Should be a good time. Big plans. Hopefully that's happening next week, if not the week after. Next week, the 28th, is the Pinball Awards. The voting has happened. It's already been counted. Everything's figured out. But the actual Pinball Awards will be live on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch on the Pinball Network. so check that out that's the 28th i think it's at eight or nine o'clock at night i don't know eight o'clock i believe yeah it's gonna be awesome i think it'll be great i'm looking forward to it i'm gonna be there for the filming i'm really looking forward to that but normally we go to tom normally we go to tom i don't have my tom soundboard you have a soundboard no we should just call him right now oh no we need we're this this is supposed to be an hour and we're at an hour 20 so uh believe it or not i think i can call him hang on you're gonna call We're going to wait. Well, we can edit it, right? No, I don't edit. I don't edit stuff out of the video. Okay, never mind. Sorry, Tom. Not going to call you. You're on your own. Okay, then. So, yeah, you can have it, Travis. You can wrap it up. Good night, everybody, and thank you for listening. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-06-06 | Item ID: 5f192b88-9565-42f3-af48-72292014dd01*