# The Ray Rae Show, Episode 5: State Pinball Championships & the Asheville Pinball Scene!

**Source:** Poor Man's Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2023-02-08  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://poormanspinballpodcast.libsyn.com/the-ray-rae-show-episode-5-state-pinball-championships-the-asheville-pinball-scene

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## Analysis

Rachel Ristel and Raymond Davidson discuss their recent pinball tournament experiences, with Rachel highlighting her trip to the Asheville, North Carolina pinball scene where she witnessed her friend Mike Tallmarks win his first tournament at Level 256, and Raymond sharing details about competing in the 2022 IFPA Illinois State Pinball Championship at Interium in Schaumburg. The episode covers multiple tournament formats, venue discoveries, and community dynamics while emphasizing the social and fun aspects of competitive pinball.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Raymond participated in the Chicagoland Pinball League, an exclusive Chicago collector's house league where he played at a collection with 50+ classic games, most with new playfields and high-tap flippers/pop bumpers. — _Raymond Davidson, discussing his recent tournament activities_
- [HIGH] Raymond played in the Illinois State Pinball Championship (2022 IFPA qualifier) at Interium in Schaumburg, where he and three other players (Andy Bagwell, Steve Bowden, Dave Heggie) were considered the 'big four' and finished top four. — _Raymond Davidson, describing the Illinois state championship_
- [HIGH] The Asheville, North Carolina area has multiple dedicated pinball venues including two separate pinball museums (Appalachian Pinball Museum in Hendersonville and Asheville Pinball Museum), plus Level 256, Retrocade, and Silver Ball Subs. — _Rachel Ristel, describing her Asheville trip_
- [HIGH] Mike Tallmarks, a newer competitive pinball player (playing for ~1 year), won his first tournament at Level 256 in Asheville with only one strike remaining in a four-strike knockout format. — _Rachel Ristel, detailing Mike's tournament victory_
- [HIGH] Mike Tallmarks tied for first place but finished second overall at the Wednesday night Retro Cave weekly tournament in Asheville with 19 players, qualifying first for finals. — _Rachel Ristel, describing Mike's earlier tournament result_
- [HIGH] Mike Tallmarks finished 5th out of 55 players at the Fellowship of the Silver Ball house league in Woodruff, South Carolina. — _Rachel Ristel, discussing her South Carolina tournament experience_
- [HIGH] Level 256 in Asheville is hosting a James Bond Pro High Stakes Knockout Tournament on April 9, 2023 with a $200 entry fee, 10-strike format, and the last player standing winning a James Bond Pro machine. — _Raymond Davidson, announcing the upcoming tournament_
- [HIGH] Raymond played in 11 states last year and qualified in six or seven of them for the IFPA State Pinball Championships. — _Rachel Ristel, noting Raymond's accomplishment_
- [HIGH] Andy Bagwell, the tournament director for Illinois States, streams matches on Ray Day Pinball (Raymond's Twitch/YouTube), and the entire 16-hour Illinois finals broadcast is available online. — _Raymond Davidson, discussing the streaming setup and production_
- [HIGH] The Illinois State Pinball Championship is a 'super state' with a 24-player cutoff for the finals bracket. — _Raymond Davidson, explaining the tournament structure_

### Notable Quotes

> "And one of my goals for this year is to just have more fun with playing pinball and be less, you know, I'm always competitive. But, you know, the league, it's not going to be worth it. It's not going to go on my IFPA resume."
> — **Raymond Davidson**, ~3:00
> _Reflects a shift in player priorities away from purely competitive play toward community and social aspects of pinball_

> "So if you're a person that's going there for the mountains and for the nature that's there or for the craft breweries, there's a whole bunch of them in the area, or for whatever else, the hiking, you can definitely find pinball on a rainy day because I certainly did."
> — **Rachel Ristel**, ~22:00
> _Highlights how pinball communities can integrate into travel and tourism opportunities_

> "He had this great game on godzilla wow it was pretty amazing he finally lost in star wars premium i didn't get a chance to coach him on the game but he ended up winning the game with a little help from his friend, and he would admit that too, on Batman 66."
> — **Rachel Ristel**, ~38:00
> _Describes the culminating moment of Mike's first tournament victory with strategic coaching_

> "Because I wanted him to win more than anybody else there. It was just a really cool experience just to see that progression of someone that all weekend he continued to play better and better and better."
> — **Rachel Ristel**, ~40:00
> _Emphasizes the community aspect of pinball and supporting newer players_

> "And so I cheer just as loudly when, I don't want to say the underdog necessarily, but when someone that's new to pinball is able to win, I've got to cheer big and loud."
> — **Raymond Davidson**, ~41:00
> _Reflects the supportive community culture in competitive pinball_

> "It's just you versus them. High score, you know, wins the game. And the high seed gets the first pick, so that means if you're high seed and you win on all your picks, then basically, like, you only have to beat your opponent on their picks three games, so you can win four to three."
> — **Raymond Davidson**, ~60:00
> _Explains the mechanics of head-to-head tournament format used in state championships_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Rachel Ristel | person | Co-host of The Ray Rae Show; pinball tournament player and community organizer; involved in competitive pinball and Fox Cities Pinball League |
| Raymond Davidson | person | Co-host of The Ray Rae Show; competitive pinball player; participated in Illinois State Championship and Chicagoland Pinball League; content streamer (Ray Day Pinball) |
| Mike Tallmarks | person | Newer competitive pinball player (~1 year experience); won his first IFPA tournament at Level 256 in Asheville with one strike remaining |
| Andy Bagwell | person | Tournament director for Illinois State Championship; competitor noted as one of the 'big four' contenders; Chicago-based player |
| Steve Bowden | person | Competitive pinball player; finished in top four of Illinois State Championship |
| Dave Heggie | person | Competitive pinball player; finished in top four of Illinois State Championship |
| Sean Scott Smith | person | Tournament director at Retro Cave in Asheville, North Carolina; known for welcoming approach to participants |
| Harold Van Patten | person | Pinball player mentioned in prior Free Play Florida episode; appreciative listener of the Ray Rae Show |
| Adam Gates | person | Operator/collector associated with Level 256 Classic Arcade Bar in Asheville; maintains pinball collection in immaculate condition |
| Anna Gates | person | Co-operator with Adam at Level 256 Classic Arcade Bar in Asheville |
| Brian Merritt | person | Tournament director for Fellowship of the Silver Ball house league in Woodruff, South Carolina |
| Don Featheringill | person | Private collection owner hosting Fellowship of the Silver Ball house league in Woodruff, South Carolina |
| Nate Grant | person | North Carolina/South Carolina pinball player; travels to District 82 events |
| Ken Grant | person | North Carolina/South Carolina pinball player; travels to District 82 events |
| Kim Martinez | person | Competitive pinball player met by Rachel at Fellowship of the Silver Ball |
| Jason Werdrick | person | Pinball player; competed in Wisconsin State Championship and commentated Illinois State Championship in same day |
| Stanley | person | Local Chicago pinball player with buy into Illinois State Championship; arrived late to roll call at 11:34 |
| Appalachian Pinball Museum | venue | Pinball museum located in Hendersonville, North Carolina; housed in renovated movie theater; features Creature from the Black Lagoon |
| Level 256 | venue | Pinball arcade bar in Asheville, North Carolina; operates as public pay-per-entry venue ($15-20); hosts tournaments; immaculately maintained machines |
| Retrocade | venue | Pinball venue in Asheville, North Carolina area |
| Silver Ball Subs | venue | Restaurant with pinball machines in Asheville, North Carolina area |
| Fox Cities Pinball League | organization | House league in Fox Cities/Wisconsin area run by Tom; hosts monthly events at different collector homes |
| District 82 | organization | Pinball tournament circuit in Wisconsin with upcoming 3x Winter event; qualifier for nationals; hosts regional championships |
| Chicagoland Pinball League | organization | Exclusive Chicago-area house league featuring visits to private collector homes; monthly events with high-quality classic games |
| Ray Day Pinball | content_creator | Raymond Davidson's streaming channel (Twitch/YouTube) where he broadcasts pinball tournaments including full 16-hour Illinois State Championship coverage |

### Topics

- **Primary:** State Pinball Championships (2022 IFPA qualifier), Asheville, North Carolina pinball scene and venues, Tournament formats (match play, pump-and-dump, knockout, house leagues), Newer player development and mentorship (Mike Tallmarks' first tournament win), Community dynamics and social aspects of competitive pinball
- **Secondary:** Tournament organization and logistics (roll call procedures, streaming), Pinball venue discovery and travel planning, Chicagoland Pinball League and exclusive house leagues

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.88) — Both hosts express enthusiasm for their tournament experiences, celebrate newer player success, and emphasize community and fun. Strong positive sentiment around venue discovery and mentoring relationships. Some minor logistics concerns (roll call timing) but quickly resolved. Overall tone is celebratory and supportive of the pinball community.

### Signals

- **[venue_signal]** Asheville, NC is established as a significant pinball tourism destination with multiple dedicated venues including two separate pinball museums, public arcades, and active house leagues within 2-hour radius. (confidence: high) — Rachel documents Appalachian Pinball Museum (Hendersonville), Asheville Pinball Museum, Level 256, Retrocade, and Silver Ball Subs; notes Fellowship of the Silver Ball house league in Woodruff, SC is less than 2 hours away
- **[community_signal]** Strong community culture of supporting and coaching newer players through tournaments, with experienced players actively helping newer competitors develop skills and gain confidence. (confidence: high) — Rachel's detailed account of coaching Mike Tallmarks through Batman 66 strategy, explaining multiball mechanics, and supporting his progression from second place to first place tournament win
- **[sentiment_shift]** Established competitive players (Raymond, Rachel) are intentionally shifting focus from IFPA rating optimization toward fun, social connection, and community engagement as primary motivations. (confidence: high) — Raymond: 'one of my goals for this year is to just have more fun with playing pinball and be less... I'm always competitive'; Rachel similarly emphasizing social connections over competitive standing
- **[event_signal]** Level 256 in Asheville is hosting a James Bond Pro High Stakes Knockout Tournament with $200 entry, 10-strike format, and machine as prize on April 9, 2023. (confidence: high) — Raymond: 'It is Sunday, April 9, 2023 at Level 256 Classic Arcade Bar in Asheville, North Carolina. It is a 10-strike fair strikes tournament. The last person standing goes home with a James Bond Pro.'
- **[tournament_format_signal]** Pinball tournaments employ diverse formats (match play, pump-and-dump/qualify-finals, knockout with strikes, house leagues) to serve different player preferences and tournament objectives. (confidence: high) — Rachel discusses playing in multiple formats across venues, notes Delaware Pinball Collective's inaugural pump-and-dump format, and discusses strike-based knockouts at Level 256
- **[operational_signal]** Tournament director communication about roll call timing and buy-in procedures can be ambiguous, leading to conflicts; recommendation for explicit clarification in tournament materials and direct TD communication. (confidence: high) — Raymond's issue with Stanley not being clearly informed about 11:30 roll call despite having a bye; Andy Bagwell committing to clearer documentation next year
- **[content_signal]** Ray Day Pinball (Raymond's streaming operation) broadcast full 16-hour Illinois State Championship with multi-camera setup using HDMI splitter, wireless headsets, and laptop-based production. (confidence: high) — Raymond describes umbilical cord rig with mic stand, three cameras, HDMI cable to streaming booth, and technical solutions for extended coverage
- **[competitive_signal]** 2022 IFPA Illinois State Championship at Interium (Schaumburg) had Raymond, Andy Bagwell, Steve Bowden, and Dave Heggie as top four finishers; all modern Stern-heavy game selection. (confidence: high) — Raymond: 'we had Andy Bagwell... and Steve Bowden and Dave Heggie were kind of the three. And then I guess myself were kind of the big four names everyone was kind of like scared of. And I think we ended up finishing the top four.'
- **[market_signal]** Exclusive collector house leagues (Chicagoland Pinball League, Fox Cities house leagues) are growing, featuring multi-hundred-game collections with meticulous maintenance and pristine condition machines. (confidence: medium) — Raymond's description of Chicagoland League visit with 50+ game collection, all with new playfields and high-tap flippers; Rachel's participation in Fox Cities house league visiting different collectors monthly

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## Transcript

 It's Raymond and Rachel, Rachel and Raymond, tournament pinball is what they really know. It's Rachel and Raymond, Raymond and Rachel, giving all of the info for the travels we go. It's like free college and the sharing the knowledge, so if you don't listen you won't know. It's the Ray Ray Show. Hello friends, welcome to the Ray Ray Show, episode 5. I am your co-host, Rachel Ristel, along here with my pinball pal, Raymond Davidson. Welcome to it. Yeah. So, Raymond, it's been a little bit. Tell me about what's going on in your pinball world. Yeah, a lot of stuff has happened. A lot of tournaments. I'm actually pretty excited. I just got to play in my first ever Chicagoland Pinball League event, and that was really cool. It's kind of almost an exclusive Chicago waiting list. You go to fancy collector's houses and play their collections. And the first one was at this guy's house who had at least, I mean, I didn't even count them because there were so many, but it was probably 50 or more. It was like rows and rows of these minty classic games. Everything from Slick Chick with gobble holes all the way up to Eight Ball Deluxe. and everything in between. And he had all the games had a new playfield, if you could find one. Most of the games had new playfields, and the flippers and pop bumpers were all high-tap, so it was like playing a modern Stern, but with an EM playfield. It was like playing Beatles. It was kind of bizarre. Yeah, it was really snappy, real zippy. Yeah, but it was really cool. That sounds like a dream collection. Yeah, it was really, really cool to experience that. And one of my goals for this year is to just have more fun with playing pinball and be less, you know, I'm always competitive. But, you know, the league, it's not going to be worth it. It's not going to go on my IFPA resume. And, you know, it might even hurt my rating or whatever if I do bad. But I'm just kind of like, you know what, I'm going to go back to what made pinball fun and just hanging out with people and enjoying that aspect of it. So I'm really happy I got into the league. And so now once a month I can kind of just visit all these really cool collections. So I'm pretty excited about that. I love that so much. I am also, and I would call it a house league in the Fox Cities Pinball League, and I absolutely love that, going to somebody else's host every single month. You get to see their collection, what really trips their trigger in pinball. It's such a social thing, just so much fun. And I might be with you. That's what my goal is also for 2023 is to just have more fun. I am competitive. Absolutely. But the fun factor and it's really the people in pinball that keeps me coming back. Yes, I want to win and play better. I want to have a good game. But man, I sure do like to get to know the other people I'm playing pinball with as well. Yeah. And so after that was on Saturday and then Sunday, the day after was it's called the O.R.D. Club, which is this um just like a a club basically where people have their games and it's in elk grove village and they run a tournament last sunday of every month and somehow this is the first one i've i've actually made it to in my two years and i i'm such a bozo it's literally down the street from my apartment like like four minutes down the road like i can't believe i I hadn't visited this place. And, you know, I kind of got my butt whooped a little bit. But that's, you know, I actually was able to stay pretty calm and get through it. I got like 17th out of 29th, which for me feels like, oh, man. Like I was slapping the face a little bit. Because I started off with like, you know, last, last, third, like that sort of thing. Oh, yeah. But I tried to just stay fun, stay happy. And it was cool because I got to talk with a lot of the same people that some of them were at the league on Saturday. A lot of them were at Interium for the Interium Monthly. So it's kind of cool just kind of integrating yourself with the scene and seeing the same faces and talking to them and stuff. Yeah, so that's what I've been up to. And then, of course, States was the week before, which we will get into. Yeah, absolutely. So what else do you have coming down the road for you in terms of pinball tournaments? yeah so uh looking pretty busy as always the uh i think the next uh event is actually the district 82 3x winter 3x yes and it's a circuit event that'll be that'll be good and there's i think there's some like 200 you know there's like a main tournament and then there's like the the nightly knockout sort of thing so you get a little bit of everything i'm really looking forward to that it's just really nice to be so close to district 82 just zip on up there and you know get the cheap super eight hotel is always good for me yep yeah i know that he is working with a hotel in the area there if you check out district 82 page two that uh i can throw some love that way uh in terms of if you're looking for a place to stay finally got a local hotel in on the gig oh wow yeah i will be there for that event i will be playing it and i'm excited is always to hop in the booth as well. Because I do sure love being in the booth. I think that's my favorite place to be in all of District 82. Well, it's the best seat in the house. I think so, too. Well, that'll be a lot of fun. Yeah, so after that, I think the next thing is actually back at District 82, which is I'll be playing in the Nationals. Spoiler alert. And the Pinmasters. So that'll be the next couple weeks later. Lots of things coming up this spring. Oh, actually, I forgot one right before that. I'm actually in Delaware. I'm going to check out the Delaware Pinball Collective for the first time. Oh, I can't wait to hear about that. Yeah, it's the first time they're doing a non-match play tournament. So it's a pump and dump style where you qualify for a day or two and then you have finals. And I was really excited because sometimes that's my preferred format just because there's less pressure, I feel. You can play the games over and over again. And then, you know, if you're making a trip out somewhere, if you're only playing like, you know, 10 rounds and you have a couple of stinkers, it can get kind of, you know, you can get upset and it's kind of stressful. And so if we're checking out a new place, I'm really happy that they're doing an open unlimited qualifying so I can kind of just check it out that way. It's my most comfortable format, I would say. Right. And you also get to play all three balls in one game at your leisure. Yes. You don't have to wait in between players. Yes, I think that is a huge advantage when you're trying to qualify. I just don't know about a pump-and-dump style, though, for me. I haven't really played a big one yet, so we'll see. We'll cross the road when we come to it. Yeah, they're easy to kind of ease yourself into because you can kind of set your budget and then work your way up each year, depending on how you're feeling. That's not to say I still like match play tournaments, too. It's good to do both. You do a little this, a little that. So that'll be cool. That's the first one. doing in that style so that'll be fun. Nice. And then I think it's like Texas is after that for me. TPS. Good stuff up ahead. Very exciting. Well I recently had an opportunity to check out the Asheville pinball scene. I traveled out to North Carolina to spend time with a friend in the middle of the mountains with no phone reception because I thought that would be a great way to reset and relax and it was. I encourage everybody to go out you know take a trip in nature when you're feeling that way. But what was great is that even though the Carl Weathers was bad, what was great is that there is quite a happening pinball scene in the Asheville area, including two pinball museums. I was able to hit up the Appalachian Pinball Museum in Hendersonville, which was in a renovated movie theater, I believe. I was really excited to get there to play specifically a creature from a Black Lagoon. Some people might laugh, but I really dig that game, and that's nowhere here in Wisconsin on location. I only think there's maybe one person that has it in their collection. So I was excited to play that, and I also got a chance to go to the Asheville Pinball Museum. Again, this is crazy to have, like, two different types of pinball museums in this very, you know, close radius. That just blew my mind. Asheville Pinball Museum? Is that the same as Level 256? Or is there yet another giant pinball hub in Asheville? It sounds like a pretty pinball populous area. It sure is. There's the two different pinball museums and then there's Retrocade as well as Level 256 which is a whole other separate place with really amazing machines there as well. It's also a place called Silver Ball Subs. So if you wanted to go eat there and play a bunch of pinball, you could do that as well. Several pinball machines on location throughout the Asheville area. So that is really neat. So if you're a person that's going there for the mountains and for the nature that's there or for the craft breweries, there's a whole bunch of them in the area, or for whatever else, the hiking, you can definitely find pinball on a rainy day because I certainly did. That's awesome. That sounds like the perfect place to vacation as someone who likes pinball. For sure. And a person that likes nature. Yeah. It was such a great way to reset because the Carl Weathers turned kind of south for part of the time that we were there. We ended up being able to play a little bit more pinball, which was, hey, fine by me. I had the opportunity to go there because of a friend of mine named Mike Tallmarks. It's great. He's kind of a newer player to pinball, to competitive pinball. But he's been playing competitive pinball for almost a year. So it's fun to see his growth as a player. And it was nice to have someone, you know, drive me around to all these different tournaments too. It was great. Anyways, I wanted to highlight not just the different places I played, but about his journey to winning his very first tournament. On the Wednesday night retro cave, which was a weekly match with 19 players, we played on a Wednesday night. it was a lot of fun he ended up tying in or he ended up coming in first place but they take the top eight in the playoff for finals and he ended up coming in second so he was a little bummed out that he didn't like actually win win even though like in my mind he did win the tournament but you know when there's finals that's a hard thing to have to go through you know what i mean oh so he qualified first yes correct he qualified first for and then they take the top eight and play off for finals. Second is still pretty darn good. Still pretty darn good, right. But it's not the first place, first place. You really want that. I think that's cool when you're able to get that in your very first IFPA on your card, on your profile. Well, that was his first IFPA event? No, it wasn't his first IFPA event. He's been playing almost a year. To get a first on your IFPA card, yes. Yeah. Well, yeah, let's try that again. It's nice getting your first first place. There we go. Yeah, absolutely. So he didn't quite get there. Pretty darn close. But it was fun. The people there were so warm and welcoming. The TD, Sean Scott Smith, he, you know, I think went above and beyond to make sure that I felt comfortable there and that I got to know other people. I ran into him several times with other things that I have the opportunity to play. I also skipped the border and I went down to South Carolina and I played at the Fellowship of the Silver Ball. Now, have you heard of this place, Raymond? No, I think the only place I've played in South Carolina is Bang Back in Columbia. Is this near Columbia? I think it was in Woodruff. And actually, it's not a place. Let's actually rephrase that. It's actually a house league. I believe that it travels through three different collections. And it just happened to be fairly close to Asheville. It was less than two hours. It was kind of a long ride on a Saturday night back, but it was definitely 100% the ride down the mountain back up to go play there. That was, I believe the collection belonged to, if I get it wrong, I apologize, belonged to Don Featheringill, and the tournament director was Brian Merritt. It's like a Saturday night house league. They had 55 players. It was entertaining because I ran into people that I had seen earlier in the week in Asheville that also made the trek up there to play or down there to play. I ran into Nate and Ken Grant, who are North Carolina, South Carolina players. They'd come up to play at District 82, and I bumped into them. So it was neat, you know, like getting to run into people that I've met before that come up to my area. I got to meet Kim Martinez for the first time, which was awesome to meet another cool pinball chick. The coolest thing, Raymond, that happened there is that, remember we talked about Free Play Florida, and there was a poor fellow that disqualified himself. Do you remember that? And our friend Harold Van Patten. Well, Harold, he was so excited to meet me, and he thanked us for chit-chatting about him. So I want to give Harold a second shout out because he was just, I don't know. Yeah, that's right. That was in Florida, right? Yeah, that was at Freeplay Florida. Yeah. And even though we talked about his unfortunate event, he was just so happy to hear us chit chat. So anyways, I just thought that was so cute. Anyways, the Fellowship of the Silver Ball, that was really a fun time. It was a match play style event, and then finals was a knockout. and it was interesting because they have their own set a very specific set of rules a code of conduct as well as dress dress conduct and behavior which i think is good because it really promotes definitely a family-friendly and a kid-forward environment cool yeah i thought it was really cool i played got leaves genesis uh for the first time i love these really weird got leave games and That one was like you're going around shooting different places, trying to collect different body parts. Oh, yeah. I don't know. Yeah, I've played that game. It seems to show up in a lot of tournaments. There's a weird Gottlieb game. It's probably Genesis. My friend Andy Bagwell, who's a Chicago shark, he crushes a lot of local events. He sent me a picture last night of him getting 48X scoring on Genesis at the club last night. I was like, holy moly. That's like going through all the body parts like three or four times. Yeah. I think I collected. I was really close. I was close to collecting them all. I was like one or two shots away. But I did really well for beginner's luck. And the interesting thing there, too, at that house league is that you weren't permitted to play any games in between. Oh, weird. Yeah, which is different for most house leagues I've played in, which was fine to each their own, their own rules. but it made it harder for games that I've never played before or hadn't played in a really long time but it was but I kind of liked that challenge it was still really fun uh what did end up happening is I think they take the top 16 to play off for finals and I think they had it was a seven way I was looking for my notes I couldn't find it but I believe it was a seven way tie a seven way tie for like two spots or four spots or whatever whatever the case was and but the game it was just interesting to note that the game was Phoenix. I don't know if you've played that game probably. Yeah, that game is kind of, I don't know. But it was Phoenix with the Powerball. Oh, okay. That might make it a little more fun. Yes, it was, but it was, man, if you're not used to playing games like that, I feel like maybe I've got to stick a Powerball in an old Eon that I have at home and play it that way and see what happens. I don't know. It's just a whole different feel. All the games I played at that league basically played like they had power balls, but they were metal balls. That's how strong and powerful everything was. Oh, wow. So anyways, my friend Mike, he played really well. Out of 55 players, he came in fifth. And that was pretty amazing, I thought. You know? Yeah. I have to tell the story because I think it's so great. And he's playing a couple games he's never played before, and we're talking strategy and stuff. and I'm trying to coach him through the games that I know a little bit of or whatever. So we're having fun. I flew out on Monday, and on Sunday we are back in Asheville, and we played one last tournament. Now, here's where level 2, 5, 6 comes into play. Adam and Anna Gates, great people. They have an alien there, a Pinball Brothers alien. This game, I don't know if you played it, Raymond. I want to mention that game. I think it just was a lot of fun. they had like some extra lighting in the back of the cab which helped to see that game but man what flow once i got into playing that game i really got into it never seen the movie you can all laugh at that i think i've only seen maybe the first one yeah see but it was uh that was really cool to play but this the games there at level 256 were in immaculate condition adam does such a great job taking care of those games especially since it's a place that's open to the public i think it's 15 or 20 bucks at the door you can come and go all day to play but they also it's a it's a bar but they also have i think some stand-up arcades but who pays any attention to that but all i really want to look at there are the pinball machines right yeah that tournament was a four four strike knockout and that one actually played the best of the entire time that i was there I had to play a I guess a murder match I don't know what else to call it when you're in a three player group the winner is going to send everybody home oh like everyone has strikes yes a murder match what do you call it I don't know yeah it's a death match a death match there we go the same difference you know you're trying to like get you trying to get rid of your opponents so I survived two or three of those I was really happy with how I played but it was fine I had a friend that came down from Tennessee to play because I was there we're gonna have a great time socializing and so I'm watching my friend Mike right I'm just watching him he's cruising along with one strike no problem he's cruising along cruising along and he goes he went seven rounds with no strikes seven wow and i'm like what is going on and you can just see like his you know if you've ever witnessed somebody just put all their effort and energy forth into themselves playing it was amazing he had this great game on godzilla wow it was pretty amazing he finally lost in star wars premium i didn't get a chance to coach him on the game but he ended up winning the game with a little help from his friend, and he would admit that too, on Batman 66. So he took the tournament and won his very first tournament with only one strike. Oh, my goodness. He had strikes to spare. Yes, he had plenty of strikes to spare. So it was really an incredible thing to watch. And I think the reason I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about that is because he would admit too that it's really instrumental when you have another person in your corner cheering you on to that success, boosting you. And, you know, and he was grateful to me, but I was just so grateful for him to, like, take me all these cool places. Like, let's, you know, I wanted him to win more than anybody else there. It was just a really cool experience just to see that progression of someone that all weekend he continued to play better and better and better. So I feel like, you know, man, I'm excited to see, you know, what his pinball future is going to look like too when he's got an opportunity to play a bunch of pinball like that so anyways that's awesome that that's really cool is the uh has a happy ending right like every tournament getting better and better right i didn't even care how i played and i'm sure you're like that too where like you you've run across people and you watch them when their first big title oh yeah watch them and yeah and it's just this amazing energy to see that because it's like it takes, we play a lot of pinball, but everybody wants to come in first, right? Yep. And it is hard. It is a hard road for a lot of people to get there. And so I cheer just as loudly when, I don't want to say the underdog necessarily, but when someone that's new to pinball is able to win, I've got to cheer big and loud. So that's a little bit different maybe for the Ray Ray Show to chit-chat about all that, but I thought it would be fun to just bring up a little bit about the Asheville pinball scene. Well, I guess we could tie it in. He needed help on Batman. Were you the one that gave him the tips? I did, and the thing is I showed him how to get his lock and encouraged him to collect all the character. I haven't played Batman 66 in a while, but I think really there, all he needed to know was how to get his multiball started and also where oh i should say in which tv mode uh which chapter or episode that he he should pick to guarantee this multiball i also told him about the game how it gives you the opportunity to like either save your points or you can you know always be going or yeah keep going keep going right as keep going so that's always the option so yeah because otherwise it basically unlights your locks which can be devastating. Yes. So, like, yeah, he just went and blew up the game. So it was a really cool thing to see. The other thing I wanted to mention about level 256, then we'll move on to the other stuff that Riesling did that was so cool. But at level 256, he's hosting a James Bond Pro High States Knockout Tournament. I saw that. Yeah. Did you see that? Holy moly. Oh, my goodness. $200 entry or something? Yes. It is Sunday, April 9, 2023 at Level 256 Classic Arcade Bar in Asheville, North Carolina. It is a 10-strike fair strikes tournament. The last person standing goes home with a James Bond Pro. Wow, that's tempting. I might have to see what I'm doing that weekend. Right? And it's a maximum of 40 players. Doors open at noon and warm-ups and the tournament will start at 1. So get your high-stakes tournament money out and go travel to Asheville. And I told you all about the other places in Asheville to go play and the museums and stuff. And tell Rachel sent you or something like that. But you can build a trip there. That's what's so cool about Pinball Raymond is that you can build these fun trips around different pockets of pinball in different communities in our country and in the world. Yeah. So let's jump right in to the 2022 IFPA North American Pinball Championship. Basically, the qualifier event for that, which is we can refer to it as the 2022 IFPA State Pinball Championship. The word state here also refers to province or district. Raymond, you got to play one. Yeah. Tell me about that. Yeah. Yeah, so the Illinois, you know, I had basically had to pick where to play because they let you, you know, play anywhere you're qualified. And since I had been zipping around the country last year, a whole bunch, basically you have to pick any of the states I went to. But I was just going to stay here since it was at the Antarium which is in Schaumburg which is just down across the way for me in Elk Grove Village So I was like well I not I not giving that up I just going to go to that Well it makes sense And I do want to submit for the record that you played in 11 states last year and you qualified in six for sure, perhaps seven, to play in. That's pretty impressive. Well, thank you, Rachel. You're welcome, Raymond. Yeah, it was a busy year. Yeah. It makes sense why you chose to stay in Illinois to play. Absolutely. But if I was you, that was a smart choice, even despite knowing that you had some heavy competition. Yeah, we had Andy Bagwell, who I mentioned earlier in the podcast, and Steven Bowden and Dave Heggie were kind of the three. And then I guess myself were kind of the big four names everyone was kind of like scared of. And I think we ended up finishing the top four. So it ended up coming to fruition. But you can't put other people out, too. Everyone's good. especially because it was at interium which is where a lot of the monthlies were so people kind of knew those games pretty well um so you were if you didn't play there very much you know you're at a bit of a disadvantage in that regard but luckily for me it's pretty uh modern stern heavy so i i got to pick not just modern stern but just modern in general they didn't i don't think they had any any game older than um funhouse i think that was the oldest game that you could play and And that worked out for me because I definitely leaned towards the moderns in sort of a do or die situation. Just because I feel like you have a little more control over what happens. You know, I don't mind classics as well as long as you get enough chances at them. But yeah, it started out, I had a buy. And luckily I was, I actually volunteered to do the streaming at the last minute. So I had to be there early anyway. So I was fine because I was there. On Ray Day's pinball. Yeah, so you can actually watch it on my Twitch or YouTube. The entire 16-hour Illinois finals is up there. That's crazy. And Illinois, I do want to mention that Illinois is a super state, correct? Right. So top 24. That's why I had a buy. And like I said, I might have been in trouble because it was it started at 1130 sharp, which, you know, 1130 a.m. A lot of people are like, that seems kind of late. Like most people were starting at, you know, nine or 10. but well interium opens at noon so you know we had to kind of work with them to to get there a little earlier and i didn't realize that even if you have a buy he was doing a full roll call at 11 30 and someone with a buy uh stanley i think his name he's a local player and he's you know he had a buy and he was on his way there he even messaged um and showed up at like 11 34 and they had already called his name and he basically wasn't going to be able to play but he uh kind of persuaded you know called Josh Sharpe and like hey i i was i said i was on my way i i you know blah blah blah and so andy bagwell the tournament director ended up saying okay you can play but you're gonna tell the 25th person that they're not playing anymore because I'm not telling him that. Right. But the 25th person was super kind about it. He was super chill. It all worked out. But, yeah, I was lucky that I was there early because knowing me, I probably would have rolled in around noon. I'm glad I was there to stream. Well, and then the question to me is, was it in the tournament notes that you received that you had to be there for roll call at X, Y, and Z? It was ambiguous a little bit. It just kind of said 1130. It didn't specify if you had a buy or not, which is why my advice is reach out to the tournament directors and ask them. Yes, I'm a paralegal. I like to split hairs, you know. So it's like that's why, you know, what's in the fine line. But I learned things, too, you know, not to skip ahead, but I organized the women's state for Wisconsin. So I've learned things for next year. They've got to take a couple show notes. Yep. Andy was very humble and basically said next year he'll put it in the email that if you have a buy, you can show up a little bit later or whatever. Yeah, right. But since he didn't have it in the email this year, he wanted to stick to what he had said. Absolutely. If you have an alternate showing up, it's kind of unfair to not let them in, play favorites, that sort of thing. So it was kind of a tricky situation, but it worked itself out. So you had the buy, you got to set up the Ray-Date pinball, the rolling rig that you must have, I suppose, for your streaming. Yeah, it was an umbilical cord rig. So it had basically, basically I had a mic stand with three cameras that went into my laptop on short cables. And then I had one big long HDMI cable that went from the laptop to the streaming booth. and then a long extension cord that powered the laptop and the cameras that went to a power outlet and then one long ethernet cord so there was basically three cords that it kind of had to you know move the move the whole rig around uh it worked out though it worked out and and the reason it worked out was the hdmi someone we were able to get two monitors and two wireless headsets so that you could just watch the action with an HDMI splitter in the booth and commentate with your wireless headsets. And that way you didn't need any more cables. You just needed the one HDMI to view and commentate on. So it worked out pretty well. Good. I'm glad. I was surprised later in the evening to see that you were streaming. I was like, what's going on? Later in the evening and in the morning. Great evening streaming competitive pinball. What's going on? Yeah, evening and morning. Jason Werdrick played in the Wisconsin State Champs, and then he was commentating on the Illinois State Champs. Yes. After a stop at the Brat Stop and a couple of games on his way home. Yeah, yeah. I thought that was hilarious. And can you explain the style of tournament for those that might not know? Yeah, so it is just head-to-head. You've got to win four games before your opponent wins four games. And you pick games, and then the loser picks a game, and so on. and, yeah, it's just you versus them. High score, you know, wins the game. And the high seed gets the first pick, so that means if you're high seed and you win on all your picks, then basically, like, you only have to beat your opponent on their picks three games, so you can win four to three. But if you're low seed, you've got to beat your opponent on their picks four games, which can be a lot harder. However, if you're high seed and you lose on the game you pick, you've now broken serve or rather your opponent has broken serve and now they're they have the advantage all of a sudden so it can change in an instant who who's kind of a favorite and it's why a lot of the matches went to seven just because both players are so good and it was so evenly matched i find it incredibly difficult to pick what game to play i found that incredibly difficult did you go into as because you had the buy round and you were the higher seed did you have a game already in your head or did you look at your opponent and say this is the game i'm going to play because of the opponent or did you just say i'm going to play the game because i want to play this game today how did you make that decision right off the game basically i had one game that i knew i was going to pick every round i just didn't know when i would pick it it usually it wasn't ever my opener it was always like my second or third game which is scared stiff because I'm very comfortable on Scared Stiff. Okay. And then basically I was fine to play any of the other modern sterns like Jurassic Park, Iron Maiden, Rush, Premium was there. And so I basically would just kind of pick one of those. I was like, okay, Iron Maiden or Jurassic Park, and I just tried not to think about it too hard because while I wasn't super confident on any of those particular games, I knew just being on a Modern Stern would be much better than letting my opponent pick a game. Because every time my opponent picked, they were picking Oktoberfest or Hot Wheels or Houdini or one of the American games. Or one of the, I think, Toy Story or Wonka were there as well. So I just wanted to make sure that I picked a game. and the only exception was in the finals i actually let andy begwell choose a game and he chose rush which was hilarious and uh some of his friends were kind of like why did he why did you do that man you could have picked like a jjp game or something you picked rush against ray day like what but that's interesting well you never know yeah i think that there's there's all sorts of strategy that goes into that is what you're saying yeah it basically just if you don't mind what you play like you truly like there's truly no landmines and then i almost will always go second i'm like whatever or if i haven't used my like like i said in this case i had scared stiff it's kind of like my nuke button uh where you know if i if i'm down by three and i need a win like i'll pick scared stiff or even if i lose one game i might pick scared stiff just to get back into the groove but until you need the nuke i often i often just kind of go second or choose games that i'm like kind of okay at or whatever yeah it can really depend on on what games are there and which ones you're comfortable on i never really think about my opponent too much just because you know anyone can blow anything up and as long as I like the game yeah so that's kind of how I roll that was my it was my first time the reason I asked that is because I it was my first time I also had a buy and we'll get to that and I really struggled with that we'll explore that a little bit later on what I want to hear is who you ended up playing against and how many games deep did you have to goal in order to advance uh yeah so i think the first round i played i think i started with jurassic park and i was a little shaky and i put up like maybe 300 million which was decent considering you know my opponent only had you know like 14 million going to ball three but then they started getting everything running and i was like oh crap and they double drained in chaos at like 280 so they were like 20 million short of me and i was like oh my god will cooper it's it's funny because it it says you know i beat him 4-0 but it was a lot closer than it looked because of that jurassic park game that he almost caught me and it was fell short and then i can't remember exactly what oh i think he picked kiss and i he put up like 100 million and i i basically grinded my way to 100 million because I uh I got in this bad situation on kiss I don't know how much you played kiss where you start love gun multiball you know with the little yes star child area and like after you get past the there's like a countdown stage which locks in your jackpot value and then all the shots are lit and whatever you hit first that is your jackpot and you have to hit it again and unfortunately the the ball locked in the left orbit as my jackpot and i just could not hit the left orbit so i got like nothing out of that and so then i grinded demon multiball and i basically just played demon until i was pretty close to him and then i think i started a new song and i had to basically just grind song points to catch up to the 100 million and yeah it was all like all on ball three but uh yeah you can always you're never too far away from multiball and kiss because you can always just shoot the star child to light another one or well you always need to be in a song so anytime that scoop is lit to change your song you have to hit it because that's like where all the points are there's kind of a funny debate where if you complete a song you'll get like double scoring for the rest of the ball and now the question is if you have multiball lit do you start multiball knowing you have double scoring or do you shoot the scoop to change your song so that now you have double scoring and a song running obviously that would be the best thing to do but if you miss that scoop and drain you lose your double scoring so it's kind of like oh man i have multiple lit do i just start multiball like and where's the ball the ball is on which flipper right i guess it definitely yeah it depends on where the ball is yeah but if you have it trapped on the left let's say where you could try to backhand the scoop or you could shoot the demon for multiball that's going to be a tough choice because i don't like to backhand it i find it really hard i find like a right right flipper shot is easier into the scoop than a backhand yeah it depends on the game so that's always a fun thing and it just depends on what kind of score you need you know if you really need to blow it up then you basically have to have to throw a song so right yeah i'm trying to think of what the other games were. I mean, I know I played Scared Stiff, and that's just the same recipe over and over again. Left ramp, lock, left ramp, lock, spin the spider, get your coffin, extender. I'll never play multiball without the extender. I mean, unless it's like ball three, and I need to start a multiball. But on ball one or two, if I have two coffin locks, I'm shooting, I'm making sure I get my spider. I don't know how much you played Scared Stiff. Yeah, I'm following along. Yeah, so basically you shoot the right ramp and that lights the spider hole. And what's nice about Scared Stiff is when you lock a ball, it goes in the plunger lane and then you can plunge into the spider hole. Yes. So oftentimes what I'll do is if I still need to spin my spider, I'll shoot the right ramp to light the spider, but I won't actually shoot at the spider hole. I'll just try to lock a ball and then short plunge and get it into the spider hole and spin it that way. Okay. But that's something you can do on that game that's really nice. Because that spider hole is a really hard shot to hit. But you absolutely need it because it extends your multiball if you get the coffin. So after you play coffin multiball, when you're down to one ball, it just kicks out two more balls. And you get to keep playing it. Nice. And there's one for crate multiball as well. So, yeah, I really like Scared Stiff. So I won on that one. You played a lot of pinball. Yeah, yeah, there was a lot of pinball that happened. so uh anyway moved out of that round then played tyler becker i think he's from the st louis area he was a really good player i think uh i put up like a huge iron maiden game like i think i got a billion like it was massive it was just one of those games where he just everything was flowing you know i got to cyborg did well in cyborg uh i had like a double scoring i think and i kept collecting soul shards like everything was just going right that i think that was my first game against him so that like that made me feel good that's a very intimidating game yeah i mean have that high of a score you know right off the gate but i was able to able to carry that momentum and then i think i like won the next game but then there was a game where he picked octoberfest and i well I had an unfortunate thing happen where I started a mode and the scoop just never kicked out the ball and my entire mode timed out until the ball kicked out so it just sat there and so unfortunately that kind of ended up costing me because on ball three I just needed like a tiny bit of points to catch him and I blew it I missed my shot and power drain so he got me on Oktoberfest that game is weird i don't know how to play that game is weird yeah it is strange it's like the stuff that i want to go for i feel like are traps because you'll light locks but the shots to lock the balls are like impossible to hit like you need it to go all the way you need it to go all the way up the corkscrew ramp or you need it to go up the side ramp and both and both of those are like just like death traps i feel so i think you're better off just playing tense and uh getting steins and just kind of shooting things, like just keeping the ball alive. Yes, I'd agree with that. Yeah, so that was a loss, and that kind of rattled me a little bit, but I think then maybe I pulled my scared stiff parachute to get back on track. Then I think the other game he beat me on was, oh, he beat me on Toy Story. He put up a great Toy Story game of like four and a half million, and I put up like two and a half million, so it was a good battle, but he was able to just keep it going longer and got some big road trip jackpots. I was grinding, but I couldn't quite get there. But yeah, Toy Story, I actually really like that game for competitive play because it seems to be very correlated with beating modes gets you points. Hitting jackpots and multiball is good points. It's very clear what you need to do, and you seem to get rewarded for doing it as opposed to some of the other Jersey Jacks that I feel are a little more esoteric. And, you know, you'll hit, like, a bunch of stuff on Wizard of Oz and have, like, 16,000 points. So I'm actually kind of a fan of Toy Story. I kind of like that game as far as JJPs go. Oh, we had an epic Guns N' Roses game where he put up, like, a big song jackpot, but then I put up a huge song jackpot and then got an encore and got a second jackpot, and that was like massive, like 16 million points or something ridiculous. Wow. Yeah, I don't fully understand that game, but I just kind of, you know, keep hitting the scoop when it's lit. Hit the scoop when it's lit, and I feel like there's, you know, 6,500 different, not quite that many, 62, maybe not that many, quite a few different multiballs on that game so like if you shoot enough shots enough times it's going to open something i swear yeah mine is just like the main multiball that's on there yeah i definitely i figured out um you can get a multiball by shooting it to the upper play field and hitting the little target up there you can get a multiball from shooting it under the flipper and you can get a multiball from getting the left in lane yeah and then there's also pyro multiball but i never seem to get that one so yeah that's how i always start off that game is i just try to get all those little booster multi balls um and then always lock balls in the guitar if it's lit getting rolling yep exactly fun so that was an exciting match against tyler i got that one for two and then i had to face uh Steven Bowden and that match i can remember a little better because it's kind of near the more recent you know finals that was the semi-finals and he picked metallica which i was like stoked about because i was like oh okay and oh my god it was so sad rachel it was like he had 25 million and i had like 18 million or not or 20 million going into ball three and i just couldn't do it i couldn't find five million points i i tried to start the the cross multiball and i just failed so that was and like i said about breaking serve if i would have won that metallica game then i just get i i'm guaranteed three more picks and i feel like i'm pretty much a huge favorite but because i lost that metallica game i'm gonna have to beat steve on one of his games no matter what yes so that kind of defeated me a little bit mentally because you know after he won a metallica i picked one of my games which i think was probably simpson's pinball party and you know i got like 100 million or something silly and he uh you know then he picked octoberfest and i had a similar situation of no needing needing just like one shot to beat him and i missed it and and drained again it was it was so close it was it was like 280 000 to 270 000 oh my goodness so so now you're starting to feel like okay i'm struggling a little bit are you Yeah, I'm like, oh, that Metallica game. I really needed to win that Metallica game. But, you know, I stuck with the plan. So I picked Iron Maiden. I put up $500 million or something good on that. You know, all right. We did our thing on Iron Maiden. I want to interject because right here on Iron Maiden, I was watching the two of you play this game on Ray Day Pinball. Go check it out on Twitch and YouTube. This is the point where I fell asleep because it's at 1030. I'm going to say at night maybe 10.30pm or so it was getting late yes the women's state was the next day so I just want to point out that's where we're at in the time frame go on after Iron Maiden yeah I might have these games in the wrong order but these are the games we played we played Hot Wheels and that was Steve's pick and I was feeling pretty good I had like 300 million or something I had like a little turbo round where I had 10x scoring and I hit a couple good shots so I walk away go to the bathroom blah blah come back and he's got like 1.5 billion I'm just like oh okay and so I'm like whatever I have a plan I need to start my victory multiball which is I have lit I just need to hit the left orbit and I hit the left orbit and I see the animation and I swear I see the ball saber flashing although I still don't quite remember but I basically put my arms up and I'm just like woo and I'm just watching and the ball I don't know it skips the magnet or it flies out of the pops or something and while it's showing the animation it goes right to my flipper right past it down the drain and I'm like oh wait oh that's okay right? right? and it was not okay the game ended my ball and the best part the the funniest part was it actually went to enter your initials for Steven Bowden so it was in game over mode it said enter your initials for Steven Bowden and then the game started kicking out multiball during the end of your initial no oh it was it was a weird unfortunate uh glitch where basically because the multiball didn't start all the way uh so the ball saver wasn't on and so it ended yeah so now i know uh don't ever take your hands off like in like like you're doing i know that feeling where you threw your arms up like yes i did the thing and then i did not do that yeah yeah uh but oh my gosh he was great about it he uh he went to his car he went to his car to get a usb drive to get the the info off of the game so he could take it to an American on Monday and try to figure out what the heck happened. Because, yeah, not what we wanted to see. I mean, I wasn't too bothered because he had like a billion points more than me, so I was kind of like, you know. Hard to catch up at that point. Yeah, but I would have liked to try. Right? Absolutely. Play your ball. But, you know, I didn't want to argue for a comp ball because my flippers were active. I just let it go right past him so it wasn't really you know a malfunction I mean it was kind of a malfunction but not sort of thing but things happen all sorts of weird things happen on pinball machines with that's either because of the player or not you know strange things happen so well that stinks yeah so after you know we go into game 7 and he picks he actually thinks about this game for like five minutes. Like we all waiting to see what game going to be picked and he really giving it a think I mean I would too You know it your game seven He finally picks Circus Voltaire which, you know, that's actually not a bad pick because I never really liked playing that game in competition because I don't like how it feels. It's just weird, right? It's not a normal layout down there at the bottom with the weird... With the outlanes? Yeah, the inlanes and outlanes and the giant slingshots. Yes. I like the game, but yeah, I agree with you. It's a weird bottom portion of the play field, yes. Yeah, and the shots just on that game feel kind of weird sometimes. I don't know how to explain it. But luckily, the game was actually very friendly, where the right slingshot oftentimes just wouldn't even fire, and it seemed like it just played very safe, where after you hit something, it would just always come right back to a flipper. It never even went over towards the outlanes. and after you locked the ball on the ramp it would just kind of dribble it out back to your flipper so i was able to basically do whatever i wanted which was stack you know get my ring masters out of the way then stack a ring master with a multiball stack my other multiball do this do that and i actually learned something which is at one point you know i'm i'm pretty far ahead but i want to keep pressing because i need to make sure i win this and i knew that game had a wizard mode where if you complete all the features, you get to join the circus. And then if you beat join the circus, you get party multiball. And so I shot my acrobats, which is the right orbit, which is the hardest shot in that game. And I was able to do it. I actually went all the way through, joined the circus, party multiball, got about 100 million. But what I didn't realize is before you get party multiball, before you do join the circus, if you keep hitting the ringmaster, there's like a hidden ringmaster battle which is like kind of like the tales of the arabian knights genie battle where it's like a switch frenzy and you're kind of tug of warring back and forth and apparently you can play that mode forever if you do it right and i think i remember seeing laser lows put up a billion in that mode just playing it like for hours sure but i didn't even know how to get that mode i just i was i thought i confused it with the join the circus mode after i was done i was pretty stoked but then i realized like oh no if steve gets the ringmaster battle i'm in trouble because my ringmaster everything is set back to square one it's like i'm pressing start for the very first time like sure you're gonna start all over right yeah mom But luckily, for me, it held up, and I advanced with my score. He didn't catch me. But that was a learning lesson, because I didn't know about that mode. I didn't either. Because it's not really advertised anywhere. You would think joining the circus would be the best thing to do. But apparently there's this ringmaster frenzy. And I think I've even seen some Circus Voltaire's have custom ROMs that cut that value in 10. like 10% scoring. Oh. Because I remember it was at Papa one time and it was like a sticky note that said Ringmaster is you know, 1 tenth. So, but this game didn't have that, so it would have been full value I think. That's pretty cool. That's a pretty neat thing. It's always neat when you're able to learn something new every single time. I love that that still happens for you. You still learn things about games. Yep. Yeah, so that was luckily you know you can learn things the easy way or the hard way that was an easy way i guess yes thankfully the easy way right whereas the uh the victory multiball starting i learned that one the hard way for sure for sure okay so you battled your way yep so now i'm playing andy bagwell in the finals and let's see he's a higher seed he picks i think he just goes out guns blazing with Iron Maiden. Or no, Godzilla. Yeah, I think he picks Godzilla. I just did not get a good handle on it. But then on my ball three, when I finally start multiball and kind of... No, I'm making progress. He has like 400 million. I have like 100 million. And then the game turns off because they turned off the power at Interium. No! Oh, so it was after hours. Yep, they flipped the switch right at midnight. And, oh, my goodness. So we, and that was right after we got a raid from, like, Joe Hill. So there was, like, 200 people watching. I have to laugh. Okay, go on. It was pretty funny. Yeah, we all just kind of laughed. I mean, what are you going to do, you know? Yep. So we waited for the power to get back on, and then we went back to the stream to see what my latest score was. So the last time you could see my score on screen, use that. give me a comp ball um but i didn't do anything on my comp ball so after all that right so then i think we went to scared stiff because like i said you know i want to get if i'm feeling rattled i want to try to you know play a comfortable game so i um i played scared stiff and this is on stream i think it's clipped i i need to so when you get to the wizard mode and scared stiff you have to survive six crate kickouts which are super scary because every time you hit the crate it kicks it out and often wants to go into the left out lane okay and so i'm like praying i'm like come on no whammies no whammy it kicks it out and it powers into my left in lane and i'm so excited and i flip the left flipper to go up the ramp to start the to life the the final you know cash out shot and and it tilts as i as it goes up the ramp like halfway up the ramp it tilts oh no oh no oh no and and it was just so like nobody expected it and it was oh my god and luckily for me you know i i thought i was in trouble because if i would have got that multiball then that makes andy get the multiball too because it's worth so many points but when andy got to scared stiff he you know how i said how when it kicks out it often goes to the left out lane you know mine went to the left in lane on his it just went straight to the left out lane and that was it so i got a lucky break after that scary tilt yes big break that's a huge break wow those are a couple of crazy games so far yeah oh yeah the finals were were a blast yeah if you want to watch him on youtube you know you can scroll through the 16 hours to the uh the last four hours of it is probably our round like our one round took like four hours it's crazy yeah so so then he chose iron maiden and he he does his thing he he blows it up puts up like 800 million wow i'm like a little discouraged but at the same time it's like i can do this too and And I actually pulled together a nice triple scoring with Trooper and Mummy and get a lot of points really quickly. I get up to about 500 or 600. And then I think I die when I did a save that went up the left-in lane and out the left-out lane. Oh, so sad. Yeah, so. You did it to yourself. That was a close game, though. That was a good one. Both high-scoring games. It was like 800 to 600. Wow, yeah. This is where I got to pick a game, but I just said, you know what? I trust you, Andy. You picked the game. Me and you both like the same games. And that's when he picked Rush. Wow. And I actually was happy to play Rush, but I was also kind of scared because he does blow that game up. He has one in his basement, and he gets billions on the regular. He's very consistent at it. And with three balls, no ball save, no extra balls, it can be a little scary. Yes, for sure. He ends up not putting up that huge of a game. It was like $250 or something, which is respectable. You know, $250 million is pretty good. Very much so. But he was hoping for a billion, you know. And so I go into my last ball, and I need like $100 million or so. I'm kind of surveying my options. and I don't know, I'm just kind of like hitting some things, kind of trying to figure out what to do. And then all of a sudden I notice I have an outlane ball save lit from hitting the rush targets a bunch. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to go for my drop target multiball because if I start that and play it well, I should be able to pass him. And now that I have my outlanes protected, because the worst thing is that drop target bank, when you hit it from the right flipper, it somehow perfectly goes to the right out lane like like like it's like a perfect angle so i made sure i had my ball saver there i got my drop targets i started the multiball behind them and then i played that really well you know got some supers and double jackpots and things and and was able to pass him so that felt good uh winning on rush i haven't noticed that feed So you're saying, I'm just trying to envision that in my head. So you're hitting the drops on the left from the right flipper, and you're saying it's going back into the right out lane? Yeah. I mean, it doesn't always do it, but if you hit it in the wrong spot, I feel like you go right flipper, drop targets, and then it has the perfect little angle to the right out lane. Interesting. Okay. I didn't notice that. I think I have to play quite a bit recently, so I didn't notice that. That's interesting. I'll have to look for that. I mean, it also probably didn't help. I think he probably had... Well, I don't know how the Outlands were set, so maybe it wasn't as bad, but if they ever remove any rubber, then it'll happen a lot more, too, so watch out for that. Okay, all right. Yeah, but, you know, once you have that Outland Ball save, you feel invincible. You're good. You're golden, right. Yeah, so that felt good. So then now we're... You know, he won Maiden and Godzilla. I won Scared, Stiff, and Rush. he picks guns and roses and this game was also really really close because he plays he gets a nice song jackpot you know gets he has like maybe eight million or so i play and i get a song jackpot and i have about six million and so now i'm going to ball three with down by like two million i'm like oh crap what the heck how do i how do i pass him what do i do how do i come up those points. Right. And I, so I actually looked through Instant Info and saw that my under flipper shot was only one shot to start multiball. Nice. And so that's, that was like, oh, perfect. So I shot the under flipper, started that little multiball, used that to light my song, played my song and it was going well but, you know, you don't really get very many points until the song ends. I didn't realize that whatever song I chose, I just chose whatever song he chose because I don't know what songs are good Oh, the past, right. Yeah. Well, the first song, I chose Chinese Democracy for the first one. But then the second one, I chose Paradise City. And I didn't realize at one point, you know, everything was going good. But then I was down to only one ball in play. And I was like, come on, let the song end. I want to get my jackpot and win. But I guess it doesn't work like that, where you have to actually progress enough shots to get to the point where you can get the jackpot. and I was stuck on a side loop shot and the upper right flipper was a little weak on that one and so here I was I was just scrounging trying to hit that side loop over and over again I finally hit it and now I just need to get control and shoot the scoop and I have to do a double danger save and it was like right there but I pull it off and cash it out for the victory but there was multiple points where it looked like I was about to come up short like if I had drained at any point there I would have blown it terrifying playing like that yes it makes me very nervous you know you've got the double danger but you still have to go on you've got a multiball you have to go no so eventually I cashed that in yeah so now he picks Ghostbusters and it's got no ball save and we're both just kind of doing awful on it he ends up draining at like 165 from a weird scoop kick out where the ball save light was flashing and it drained but it just didn't give it back we both looked at each other like what what yeah um and so all i had to do i had my multiball ready because all i had done ball one and two was shoot the captive ball to try to set up my multiball and so on ball three all i had to do was hit the left ramp and uh i plunged it came out funny i did like a a save and it somehow went danger danger tilt and that was it so did not start the multiball on ghostbusters which was unfortunate because that would have won me the tournament and all i had to do is hit that one shot and then just flail around for a little bit so then i pull out the mother of all nukes for game seven the simpsons pinball party yes after ball one and two i've got about 80 million he's got about 40 million it looks like i'm in a comfortable lead but i realize he has everything ready he has his auto mystery spot is pretty close he's got alien invasion pretty close he's got the couch down so you can just start that again so i'm like on ball three i'm like i need to freaking press this to the moon and uh yeah it worked out i basically did all the things where i you know got to alien invasion and i won that and i got to mystery spot and i won that and then i got a bunch of supers and couch multiball and then at one point i even started pretzel multiball from the left orbit wow yeah and then i got scratchy's revenge and i got all the things i got super duper mega extreme wizard mode ended with 436 million wait what's that called super duper super duper mega extreme wizard mode yeah of course you did raven of course you did okay this i'm just sitting here my mouth is like my jaws on the floor it was crazy i didn't even know existed yeah it was basically go on go on my friend go on the game was playing so nice it just reminded me that i was in my room playing my Simpsons pinball party that I don't have anymore but at the time when I had it I would just play it and I'd get to the super duper mega extreme wizard mode pretty regularly and it just felt so comfy and I had just was dialed in I was just in my comfort zone and I was just playing it like I was playing like in a you know just for fun and I love love that yeah you had zen so the zen in your head to play that this is ball three that you're playing that way yeah well yeah the beginning of ball three was a little scary i think i did like a big save to start it off and then after that it was all gravy it's off to the races huh i love that that you're in the zen mode in your head in this happy place and playing game before and that's where you played from that's amazing yeah i think i and i entered my ball three at like 3 45 or four in the morning or something and so then andy has to step up and it's like well if he catches me we're gonna be or another hour and a half. Right. But he did not catch me. I won. We went out to Denny's afterward for breakfast. Nice. And then slept in until 2 the next day. Oh, wow. Well, congratulations, Raymond. You had to work for it. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. And that was one of those tournaments where at any point, if I had been eliminated, I would have just taken it in stride. I'm like, you know what? I had my chances, and I had some good games. And, yeah, it was a really good tournament. It was pretty fun. That's good. I'm so glad. When I woke up the next day, I tried to see who won Illinois, and then I finally figured out later in the day the bracket, and I got a confirmation from you, and I was so excited that you won. Congratulations again. It takes so much effort, and again, to play until what time did you end up finishing up the tournament, 2 in the morning? No, it was like almost 4 in the morning. It was like late. I'm sorry, almost 4 in the morning? That's crazy. Talk about like endurance pinball, right? Talk about like you've got to stay awake the entire time and you have your brain be snapping around, being able to flip footballs around. Yeah, I think me and me and Andy are both pretty good night owls. So we were both kind of we were OK. But once it got to four, it was like, OK, I'm kind of glad that's over now. I love that. I love that. The 2022 North American Championship will be held at District 82 on March 9th. And I'm sure that Foxy's Pinball Stream will be there. And I'm excited to see you there for that, Raven. Way to punch your ticket. Thank you. Yeah. So, yeah, you also got to play in some things that weekend, right? I did get to play in the state championship. I played in the women's, the very first inaugural women's North American pinball championship, the qualifier. Let's call it the 22 IFP Wisconsin Women's State Pinball Championship. That's what I got to play in. The Wisconsin Open was won by Escher Lefkoff. Tom Graff came in second. Josh Sharpe came in third. And then Cassidy Milonowski came in fourth. And that was held at District 82. But the women's pinball championship, state pinball championship, I did organize it. My friend Matt McCarty, he was our TV, was held at a private location. Some friends that have a really nice, really beautiful collection about eight miles just south of District 82. So it's nice. We're still up in that area. As far as the style of event, you know, with Open, it's 24 players that are taken. In this scenario, they take the top 16 women, meaning it's the top eight women in open division and the top eight women in women's division, and then all 16 come together and play. It's the same style tournament, the best of seven. In this scenario, generally, there would not be a buy round. However, we ended up with 13 women that played the tournament. I didn't get a full 16. Part of that is I went over 30 women deep in seating. So many women that have come to play at open tournaments and women's tournaments in Wisconsin are from out of state. And so a lot of those, most of those women that qualified are already playing their home state or elsewhere, or some of them actually just didn't even respond. So we ended up with 13 women. And it ended up causing Cassidy Milonowski, Becky Meyer, myself, all with a bye round. So you talked a little bit about, you know, the choosing of games, Raymond. This is what I struggled with. I've never played this style tournament before, so I wasn't really sure what to anticipate of myself or how to make that decision. I knew going into the buy round the player that I might play against, and I figured, okay, I'm going to play games that are in this collection that I'm really comfortable with or games that I know that other players might not know that I know that I can definitely play. because anything that can work to my advantage, okay, because it's not an open collection. It's at somebody's private place. After the first round, I ended up playing a 13-year-old. Her name is Kaylee Bouldway. And with my first game, I decided to choose Tron because I like the game. I can usually get maybe two multi-balls going on the game, and that one plays pretty fair compared to some other ones that I've played. So I'm like, okay, we'll just choose it and play it and go along. Now, I just want to say Kaylee, I did shut her out and I won four games, but she was such a great competitor. Chon, I know she made me nervous every single game. It doesn't matter who I play, I'm always nervous when I play them. She made me nervous every single game. She had also a great game on Chon, but I won by just a little bit. She went on to choose the Beatles. now I thought about choosing the Beatles as my as a like what did you call it your parachute game yeah yeah you did use it later on but I had I saw that she was practicing it earlier and I figured okay you know if I play her I'm very comfortable on it so I know that she knows how to play the game so maybe she'll choose it and I was right so after I won Tron she did choose the Beatles and we went and played the game together. And I had an amazing Lazarus on that game, which never happens. Took the game by a little bit, but it was really only like because I hit the super jackpot in my multiball, otherwise it wasn't that great of a game, but it was enough. We moved on from there to Nitro Groundshaker. And I have never played that game. You and I have talked about that game before, but I've never played that game until that day. and I do like older games so I did I did uh did pre-play on it earlier in the day I knew enough just like let's just try to get it back up in the saucer I feel like this is the same thing to do in any games just to keep the ball alive and I figure usually with older games we build things and I read the card I'm like okay we'll try that well she had a very good game and but I again it came back on my ball three and I was able to you know beat her by a little bit and then she takes me to no fear now no fear is like it's a love hate relationship sometimes i get rolling in that game and sometimes i don't uh i i like how the ball always usually a lot of times the ball returns to you right on to the right flipper or feeds it right to the right flipper um so it can be a fun game she put up a great a really really great game and again it was a game where i came back ball three and i was able to win so every single game i want to say this about kaylee she was such a great contender because she was like she said things like this that was such a fun game to play I'm so glad that I got to play a game with you today I was able to learn how to do a different to you know to do a different skill shot I learned the skill shot on whatever you know and it was amazing because she was such the sportsmanship at 13 I just have to remark on that Raymond it's just unbelievable when she was so there's some 13 year olds that would be upset and angry that they lost oh i've seen i've seen that yes right yep not kaylee not at all i mean be like yeah all adults need to be like her she was just so gracious as a as a loser and that kind of match and i learned from that even personally like i need to be more like that and she was just such a positive positive attitude so kudos to her so after that round i went on to go play val voice and she plays just a district 82, and she makes me nervous as well. I consider her to be a really great classics player. She has so much patience. Decided here because I was the higher seed, and I chose the game. And so this is what I decided to do is I chose one. There was a couple of games that felt like I had my back pocket, and so I chose Rush. I knew you would like that, Raymond. I knew you would like that. It was a Rush LE, in fact. Oh, wow. Super fancy and so beautiful so much fun to play I chose that game because I know how to play the game it funny because on my way there that morning as I driving my hour up to the location I pull up and listening not watching but I pull up YouTube the baby's first tutorial on Rush and I listened to it twice on my way there because I because I knew that there's that game is nowhere else in the area and I'd have an advantage of having played the game before enjoying playing the game before having good games on it before and playing that specific one there in the collection before that I knew that I could go in there and do something. So thanks again for the tutorial. Yay! Yay! So I took the game. Vale then took me to Monster Bash and we both had terrible games. I did take it but it was only by like it was like i had 12 million points and she had eight it was they're awful like we both had basically a house ball each was just not good uh after that uh when for me she took me to total nuclear annihilation what's neat about this collection there i have to remark is that they have every single spooky game all in a row oh my goodness and it is that is a really cool thing a Spooky lane, man. So cool. Anyways, we would go to play TNA. And for the life of me, Raymond, for the life of me, usually I play that game, I short plunge, put it on the right flipper, backhand it into the lock. Could not do that. I could not full plunge all the way around, shoot it in the lock. I could not. I was not able to trap up and get it on my right flipper to backhand it in the lock. Couldn't do anything. Didn't start on multiball. Had nothing going. She left me a ball in the lock, and I couldn't add anything to it. I couldn't play the game. It was one of those where you're just like, oh. Yeah, just never got off the ground. Never got off the ground. All three balls were like that. I'm like, okay, no big deal. So I choose Nitro Ground Shaker, thinking, hey, I played it. I had a pretty good game. Why not? We'll just toss the dice. Not a good idea. Deal. Oh, no. It's hard, like, trying to figure out what to play. I wanted to play a game I felt confident and fun on, but something that also, and maybe I'm thinking too much about my competition. I don't know. So we went to go play Nitro Ground Shaker, which I lost. And she had, and I should have maybe picked something different because I know that she is a very good classics player. But I figured at the same time, maybe it's an even playing field, not to make too much of a pun there, but an even playing field for both of us if we've only had limited experience on that game. And I think that sometimes that makes it a fun game. Anyways, Val whipped me and beat that game. So now we're 2-2. I'm like, okay, I want to play skateball. There's a skateball here. Nobody else has a skateball. I know how to play the game. This one's fun to play. So we go play skateball. I have, I think, two, I had two basically house balls on ball one and ball two. So I tried to do everything I could on ball three and just couldn't make anything happen. So now I'm terrified. I have two losses she has three wins I'm like I don't know we've got to go play I've got to do something here you know let's do or die you have two wins right I had two wins and she had three okay yeah you said you had two losses and she had three wins and I was trying to figure out how that could happen yes so here we are I'm like okay we're going to go six or seven games here but let's see if I what we can do so as soon as I lost on skateball they didn't even you know i didn't take any time whatsoever to say the game i wanted to play i'm like we're playing valhalla and i just yeah and i just yelled that like the top of my lungs because i was frustrated from losing three in a row i'm like okay valhalla it's been sitting in my back pocket all day because there ain't nobody here but cassidy that knows how to play this game because it's a game that's just nowhere to be found. And I know that. And I felt really pumped up after playing it at Women's Expo in Chicago last fall. I knew that I could play Valhalla. Raymond, I know you can play Valhalla. And Andy Bable, too. So I'm like, Valhalla. So we moved to the game, and I'm like, all I have to do is just get into my mode, pick the correct multiball. that's all I really needed to get the skill shot I like getting the the um hammer shot that's in back I love that the sound or whatever it is I don't think I've ever been able to use the hammer I don't know how oh man I just think that's such a cool mech you know you have to teach me how to how to use that yeah well it's a short plunge if you short plunge to the back you know we should talk about we could talk about that for sure so I chose that too because I like to it's kind of a shorter plunge or a half plunge to get to the back and there are different inlanes and if you collect this the correct lit in lane then this cool hammer comes sweeping down on the back of it it's just neat and i can't even tell you raymond like all of the details or the exact you know i just know how to play the game in terms of i can't tell you what the shots and those things are called so anyway so that's what i like to do because i just i like the feature not that it's necessarily worth a lot of points from like whatever that's why that's how i approached the game who cares so i i was able to shoot it in the left scoop and i chose the the was it drew jiraga is that what it is there you go you get it right and i picked the correct multiball and i got that rolling and i and i'm like okay i didn't collect another weapon or anything i'm just like i just want to put some points on the board i may want to see if this like psychs her out a little bit because she doesn't know how to play the game or anything. And, you know, we played every game actually with Val. We pre-played each game for 30 seconds, which was perfectly fine by me. And I think I should mention that because that is something that is permitted, that you can pre-play every game for 30 seconds before you actually start your match. And so with that game, I felt so confident, and I played it earlier in the day. I was like, no problem. So anyway, so I was able to get into my multiball, and then on ball one i was also not just that but i was also able to light my ship multiball and locked and loaded and played that as well so i had which is the right it's like the upper right shot so anyways i was super stoked to have like i don't know eight or eleven million it wasn't a great score but and with that game unless you're actually doing things in a certain order it's i think it's hard to actually score yeah i think it's gonna be a little right a little scoring game so they all went up and she put up a good fight on her ball one my ball two was basically like a house house ball i think ball three i put a little bit more up as well waiting for her to play her her ball three and i was terrified because she had lit the kraken now if you played that game there's a hurry in there that's like 25 million it's a 30 million hurry up and she's able to light it but and she knew that she had something lit and she didn't try whacking at the shot because it's blanking but she missed it and it awarded her like 50,000 or something like a really sad small amount and uh and actually tom graph was there taking videos and stuff for the day and he and i looked at each other and we couldn't believe that that's what the game actually awarded her so i narrowly escaped her beating me by her missing that shot wow the kraken shot so i took so i was able to take the game i'm like okay that felt a little bit better now that I have we both have three wins a piece great let's uh let's let's let's go you know bring it home so Vail and I Vail's looking around she's taking her time she's like let's go play stars okay let's go play stars oh man that was your game seven that was our game seven so we went so we went and played that and she had a great ball one and I matched her with my ball one ball two you know i think we pretty much matched the same she had a rough drain on her ball three it was pretty much a house ball and on my ball three i was able to come back on ball three and take it but i had to go seven games i had to go seven games raymond wow seven games uh to the to the last ball the ball three in seven games so i mean it felt really good to win that Really, really good. But then, and Vian was such a great player. Wonderful to play against. And she and I had a lot of fun. A lot of fun just playing. Neither one of us have played that type of tournament or competition before. So it's kind of like you're learning your way by picking the games and, you know, the strategy that goes into all of that. I think it's fascinating. There's like a whole other like zen thing that you have to think about. Yeah. Yeah, I think you did pretty well. You figured out. Not too shabby. So who'd you play after that? I played the final round. Oh, okay. Next. In the final round, do you want to take a guess out of all the women in Wisconsin who I had a battle? Was it Cassidy? It was Cassidy. Dang. My girl. My girl Cassidy. and I think any of us that went into playing that tournament knew that we would be facing off with Cassidy if we wanted to take home the IFPA track in first place and all of that. She's such a formidable player. She's a tough person to beat at pinball. So with her coming into the tournament as the highest seed, she chose first and she chose Theater of Magic. And let me tell you, when I played against her in some games with Vail too, I couldn't watch. While they're playing their ball, I had to walk around because I felt like, man, like the anxiety was there. The pressure, I think, was there. I got nervous while I was watching them. I thought I was going to throw up. You know, all of these, like, I don't ever feel that way usually about playing pinball. It was still fun, but I found myself like just like it was a whole different experience for me. So anyways, Cassie and I played theater, and she put up a little over $2 billion on the game. I tilted out all three balls. Oh. Oh. She had $2 billion, and she GC'd it. Okay, well, at least it wasn't, you know, sometimes it's better that way. I guess. But I tilted out all three balls, which was okay. Even up there before I played my third ball, I'm like, I'm not going to tilt it. And then I did. So, oh, well. So then I decided, okay, I'm going to pick Rush again. Because I know that Cassidy, I don't think she's played it at all. You know, she might not be familiar with the game at all. Like, that's got to work to my advantage a little bit. She's a smart cookie, man. I have seen her play games that she's never played before. And by ball three, she's blowing it up. So I know there's going to be some risk over reward there. So we went over to that beautiful rush alley. I lit my mode, and I started bashing away at the time machine and was able to get my multiball going. I had three really good balls and ended up with only 80 million, which isn't a huge score on that game, but I knew that it was going to be enough. I just knew it was going to be enough. And I can really appreciate Cassidy because she took all the time in the world during her 30 seconds of pre-play to really look at the game, to read the card, to get herself educated with the shots. She really did study, you know, the skill shot that I used and so forth. And after I won the game, we actually talked about the game afterwards. And so I showed her what my strategy was. And I also pointed again to your tutorial, Raymond, because that was definitely beneficial in helping me win that game and for helping me understand a good strategy in playing that game. So, yeah. So after that defeat, for her, Cassidy took me to Tron. If you've ever seen Cassidy play Tron, she plays Tron like she plays Theater of Magic or several other games. Tron is one of her favorite games. She did win. It was, however, neither one of us had big scores. I think she won with 12 million, and I might have had nine. Oh, no. So basically a Coralist Tron game. So just Life Cycle, and that was it. correct i couldn't do it i have my light my uh light cycle multiball i did get through that but it was like like you say a double drain choo-choo train is what happened out of the multiball and that for me and then i couldn't get anything going ball three so it is what it is so after the win on tron i immediately it was one of these scenarios too where i didn't take any time this time to walk around and look at games and things i immediately just said the words straight shooter now straight shooter is this 1959 Gottlieb that was there. Never played the game before. Neither had she. And I figured okay, again, this might be a game that's an equalizer. We both took, I had played one solo game on it earlier in our practice warm-up time frame, and it was fun playing it, but I'm like, I had read the card, kind of understood it, but I'm like, I don't know, we'll just keep the ball alive and, you know, shoot the blinky things, you know. and so I just decided this is going to be the game. So we both took the 30 seconds to pre-play and all I did in that 30 seconds is this. I followed the skill shot, hitting the, there's a center in lane on top, hitting the skill shot and then seeing how hard I had to push a game to tilt it. That's it. I figured. That's, yeah, about all you need to know. I figured that's all you need to know. Most old games, like the skill shot can be worth so much. Getting the B in lane or getting the saucer or whatever the case may be. So I put up like $2.5 million on it. And it's such a cool game in terms of the way that it scores, the back glass, how it's lighting the score on it. Yeah, I love that. It's, yeah, light up scoring and it scores in the millions. And then it gives you a grade when you're done. It's like good, fair, poor. I got a fair. Mine was fair, my game. And if Cassie would have had one more ball or maybe two more flips, she would have taken the game. It was very close. I was very excited that I won because, quite frankly, I know how good of a player she is, and I thought, if I just win one against her, I'm going to be so happy on the day. And being able to win two, I felt like, okay, that's aces high right there. You know, two games that they're random. It was really kind of, well, straight shooter was a real random choice, but I think I made great choices in the opportunity, you know, the games that I got to choose. So after that, she took me to no fear. She took time. She took quite a bit of time looking at games and figuring out what she wanted to play. And I learned a lot from Cassidy. I have to say it again. This is my first time playing something like that. And I learned a lot from her. And, I mean, she had just taken fourth in the Open tournament the day before. I want to remind everybody here. But she has such a quality of grace about her. Stopping and thinking and looking to the game like she's almost like a pinball whisperer in terms of she's trying to, like, you know, focus that energy in on the game that's going to work well for her that day. It was just something interesting. Like, I need to take that into consideration when I'm looking at the games. Or I can learn a lot from her about how to be more conservative that way. I don't know. She's just a neat, neat person. So, anyways, she takes me to No Fear, and this is another game where she proceeds to put a GC up on it. of two billion oh no so all my strategy you know i'm like now we're kind of laying by the wayside right so i uh i have to laugh because now she's won three and i've won two i'm like what do i do what do i do raymond it's been a long day and i'm walking around looking at the games and i could play meteoric or take her to valhalla you know i could take her to dominoes by spooky you Oh my goodness, I didn't even realize that. Wait, so they have Jetsons too? Yes. Oh my, wow, so every game, not just the one they designed. Yeah, every spooky game, side by side by side, spooky role. And I could take her to all these games, and I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what to do, and it took me a little bit of time, and I figured, well, we're going to play Stars. If there's going to be a way to end it, let's end it on a game that I actually really like to play, and when I get dialed into the game I can do it. I know that Starz is there and frankly I know that Starz is a love-hate game for Cassidy. That's what she's told me in the past. That may no longer be true. Don't use that for your own advantage down the road, friends. That's not always the game. I don't think it would be a game she would choose. But I'm like, I like the game so who wouldn't play it? She got a walk-off. Oh, man. After I really bobbled my third ball. I mean, I was doing okay coming back, but I got a walk-off only by like 2,000 or 3,000 points. So it wasn't anything, you know, crazy. Excuse me. So what I have to say there is, I mean, I'm really excited and so thrilled that I was able to play as well as I did, that I got Cassidy's ranked number one woman at pinball in the world, right? So the reality is I played the best that I could against and a really incredibly great player. And there is no shame in taking second place at all. In fact, that night, Raymond, I went home and I took the trophy with me and I put it in bed with me. That's right. Did you make those trophies or get them? No, I did not. Everybody needs to look up my friend Jim Dietrich. Cauldron Falls is his company that he makes bunches of trophies for me, for Ladies' Club Wisconsin. He did it for the women's state pinball championship. He's done ones for District 82 and so forth. He's my trophy guy, my trophy-making guy. Jim's amazing. So, yeah, you know, it's hard because I want to win. You know, there's the competitive Rachel. I want to win. But Cassie's so bold, and she's very hard to beat. But, again, I had the best time ever. Really proud of her. Yeah, and you know what? You've got to make her do it, right? You can't just roll over. You've got to make her earn that victory. That's right. And I will say there were several matches that day where women had to play six or seven games. And so that's even better versus being gone in four. If you're able to at least win one and keep it going, I think it's so much fun, too. It was such a great day. So grateful to the hosts and so forth. I did mention Tom Graff, Fox News Pinball. He did not come and stream the event because he was very busy taking second place and streaming the day before. but he did stop by and he did take video and photos and stuff and he released a montage video this morning on Fox Cities Pinball stream on youtube so you can go check that out if you want to see uh yours truly playing along with uh some other the other gals that played that tournament yeah i saw he was taking pictures up every round of thumbs up and thumbs down yes yes it was a great way to have them come in and have somebody there to support and doing that because you know i organized the event matt mccarty tournament directed it but i could not i didn't want to do anything else once my players hat went on which it didn't go on until after the announcements were done quite frankly once my players hat was on i just wanted to play and focus on that so it's so great to have him there to post stuff on social media because without it stream you know it's harder for people to follow along looking at the bracket and stuff and this was just such a nice way to have that social media update so tom's awesome thanks so much thanks my tv thanks to the host i can go on and on about that but you can go to uh check out the ladies with wisconsin facebook page and there's a long post of all my thank yous because it really takes you know a community to make those kind of events happen so good job too because you said Andy, uh, big while he organized yours, correct? And he's your state rep as well, right? He's a state rep and he, uh, he was the tournament director until, you know, until it came down to just him in the finals. Then, then he appointed, uh, you know, Jason Werdrick and who is still there. Yeah. That's a long day for Jason. But, uh, yeah, so it was, it was really cool. And like I said, for that being my first experience playing something that like that, it was really awesome. So we talked a little bit before about the other cool things coming up. But I do want to mention that I am going to go play the Women's World Championship in March. And that will be in Chicago. So near you. Very excited about that. That is a tournament where the top 16 women in Open Division and top 16 women in Women's Division, they all get together and they play a Women's World Championship. Wow. Well, congratulations. That's exciting. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm super stoked about that coming down the line, too. But I'm also there right there with you. Like, I'm enjoying playing the House League and playing at District 82, just the regular Tilton Tuesdays and stuff. It's just fun hanging out with people and playing for them all is a good time. That's it. That's all I have about that tournament. So after all of that, I do have one listener submitted question. question. I think there's a couple of listeners that knew we were going to be talking about the state championships and so forth. And this person wished he may remain anonymous. And the question is this. Listen, let's pretend that you're a middle-aged, slightly above average pinball player in Kansas City. What's the most reasonable path to getting into a state championship? Are there certain tournaments to focus on or just play them all? My response to me, I'll let you respond, Raymond, but I want to respond with, go play everything. If you're a brand new player, you need to play as much as you possibly can play. And, you know, you need to soak it all in, watch streams, learn games, check out the games that are going to be at the event you're playing, watch videos on how to play those games. If you can go pre-play the tournament games, go do that. What do you say, Raymond? Yeah, I mean, the more you play, the more chances you have. So you don't get penalized for playing more but if your goal is if you can only play so much and you want to make state championships then you absolutely have to make time and take seriously any of the big premier events that happen in the state which most states have have maybe one or two uh premier events where i would say at most of the the points are kind of awarded or maybe maybe maybe like half of all points are awarded at that one event. And if you can't make whatever that big event is or you don't do as well at it as you'd hoped, then you just have to kind of go to some more weeklies and just keep grinding and get those points anywhere you can get them. That's right. Keep grinding. And play in your own state. Yeah. Well, that's all I got, Raymond. What about you? I think that just about wraps it up. Okay. well that was a fun episode I look forward to hearing you chit chat let's see I think our next episode will be about the winter 3x of district 82 but I also really look forward to hearing you report back about TPF so jelly I'm not going to be there and that's all I've got alright well happy flipping happy flipping bye Raymond, Raymond and Rachel giving all of the info for the travels we go. It's like your college and the sharing the knowledge. So if you don't listen, you won't know. It's the Raymond Show.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 80bac1a1-2e3c-4287-a2d4-d18db68dc334*