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Episode 150: Cayle George. Exploits!

Pinball Profile·podcast_episode·1h 2m·analyzed·Aug 28, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Kaylee George on exploits, tournament formats, and the evolution of competitive pinball.

Summary

Pinball Profile Episode 150 features Kaylee George, a legendary competitive pinball player known for discovering game exploits and exceptional tournament performance. The conversation covers George's background as a game designer for Halo, his recent tournament results at Pinnberg and IFPA 14, his observations on tournament formats (Papa vs. Pinnberg vs. pump-and-dump), and detailed analysis of pinball mechanics including exploits, flipper techniques, and game design philosophy.

Key Claims

  • Kaylee George has won two major tournaments and placed top four at Pinnberg and IFPA 14

    high confidence · Host states George 'Won two majors, almost won two more in the last calendar year or two' and references top four at Pinnberg and IFPA 14 loss to Raymond Davidson in Denmark

  • George currently works designing multiplayer for the Halo franchise at a Seattle-based gaming company

    high confidence · George confirms: 'these days I work at a company here in Seattle working on the Halo franchise. That's been super exciting... now I get to design the multiplayer for it.'

  • George lived in Utrecht, Netherlands for the past couple years, recently returned to Seattle

    high confidence · George states: 'I've been living in the Netherlands in Utrecht, which is near Amsterdam' and 'now you're back in Seattle'

  • George has not qualified for the main A Division at Pinnberg twice in the last 10 years, despite consistent tournament attendance

    high confidence · George: 'Pimberg is the only event that I've attended in the last, I'd say, 10 years that I have not qualified for in the main events. And I've done that twice at Pimberg.'

  • Papa World Championships' ticket format (pick 5 games of 10, play in one group) is the 'gold standard' tournament format

    high confidence · George describes Papa format as rewarding 'consistency and the ability to perform at a certain level many times in a row' and calls it 'the gold standard of pinball tournaments'

  • Recent Papa tournaments have mixed classic and modern games, which George criticizes as diluting the competitive format

    high confidence · George expresses frustration that Papa includes classics games alongside modern DMD machines, stating 'I think it's terrible and I think it's really silly' because it undermines the purpose of a separate classics division

  • High-level pinball players rarely shoot off top flippers on scissor flipper games unless defensive/reactionary

    medium confidence · George states: 'if you watch a lot of the top players play a game with scissor flippers, and it's very rare, actually, I think, to see anybody take a shot off an upper flipper unless it's kind of a more defensive or reactionary move'

Notable Quotes

  • “I like it for the, I think, a paragon, maybe ripping the spinner, but maybe that's just because I'm lousy.”

    Jeff Teolis @ N/A — Humorous aside about using top flippers; references Paragon game mechanics

  • “Once again, you've described my entire pinball career. Get lucky, qualify in a few pump and dumps, shell out a few bucks, have to play in the playoffs, top two advance. See you later, Teolis.”

    Jeff Teolis @ N/A — Self-deprecating humor about tournament performance using pump-and-dump format

  • “I would love to work on a pinball machine someday. I think it would be amazing to be a pinball designer.”

    Kaylee George @ N/A — Indicates interest in transitioning from console/PC game design to pinball design

  • “The Dutch pinball scene... has a pinball club that anybody can be a part of and they've used their membership fees to rent a giant 40,000 square foot warehouse where they've got a couple hundred games”

    Kaylee George @ N/A — Describes thriving Dutch pinball community infrastructure comparable to Papa venue

  • “I want to see the championship determined by the person who's the best player, not the person who gets the least house balls.”

    Kaylee George @ N/A — Articulates critique of mixing classic games into modern tournament formats; emphasizes competitive integrity

  • “You can watch any of the great pinball players play a bunch of competitions, watch how they won, watch all these little pippermose.”

    Kaylee George @ N/A — Comments on how YouTube has democratized pinball learning for new players compared to older era

  • “The good players are going to bring it at the right times... something like pump-and-dump. Somebody can have a lucky good game here, a lucky good game there, but it's pretty hard for somebody to buy their way into a pump and dump.”

    Kaylee George @ N/A — Defends pump-and-dump format as meritocratic despite perceptions of pay-to-win dynamics

Entities

Kaylee GeorgepersonJeff TeolispersonRaymond DavidsonpersonKeith ElwinpersonCarl D'AngelopersonPinball ProfileorganizationPinnbergevent

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Kaylee George confirms interest in transitioning to pinball design work, indicating potential talent migration from adjacent gaming industries to pinball manufacturing.

    medium · George: 'I would love to work on a pinball machine someday. I think it would be amazing to be a pinball designer' and notes limited job openings compared to console/PC game industry

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinnberg tournament structure and results discussed in detail; serves as competitive showcase for both modern and vintage games with match play format.

    high · Extensive discussion of Pinnberg 2024 results, game selection, Keith Elwin's performance, and format comparison to Papa

  • ?

    community_signal: Seattle pinball scene described as major hub with frequent leagues and tournaments; supports active competitive ecosystem.

    high · George: 'Seattle's exploded over the last 10, 15 years just with moving from a few machines to really kind of one of the main places in the USA... you can play a league or small tournament every day of the week'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Discussion of tournament format preferences reveals shift away from pure modern DMD 'sternament' lineups at major events. Kaylee George criticizes Papa's recent inclusion of classic games in main event as diluting competitive integrity.

    high · George: 'I think it's terrible and I think it's really silly and I don't know why they do it' regarding mixing classics into main event when separate classics division exists

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Papa World Championships' ticket-based format (pick 5 of 10, play together as unit) positioned as superior tournament structure for identifying truly skilled players versus lucky performances.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.188

0:00
It's time now for another Pinball Profile. A special one, number 150 here. And you can find our group on Facebook. We're also on Twitter at Pinball Profile. Email us, pinballprofile at gmail.com. Please subscribe on either iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play, and check out our under-construction website, pinballprofile.com, which I'm a little worried because it's under construction. My next guest might have hacked it. I know he has done some things like that when it comes to programming of pinball machines, so maybe I'm safe. We'll find out. Kaylee George joins us right now. Hey, Kaylee, how are you, buddy? Hey, it's great. Thanks for having me on. My website's safe. You don't have all my passwords? Hey, if you get the exploits, I'll find them. Yes, that is true. And, you know, a lot of people are new to pinball, so maybe they don't know about these exploits. But you, sir, are a cerebral assassin when it comes to finding these. I can only imagine programmers, when they see you go up to a game in the finals, they're sweating just a little bit, especially if it's a newer game. Actually, it doesn't even have to be a newer game, because you found some classic ones, and we're definitely going to get into that. But that aside, you're a great player. Won two majors, almost won two more in the last calendar year or two, because you were top four last year at Pinnberg. And then at IFPA 14, you lost to a guy that you really were a mentor to in Raymond Davidson at IFPA 14 in Denmark. That was a lot of fun to watch you two go at it. Yeah, Raymond's turned into an amazing player. So, yeah, you might say it was a student beats master, but he's definitely the champ now, and he deserved it. It was great. I guess if you've got to lose to anybody, that's the guy you want to lose to, right? Oh, man, yeah, it was awesome. I mean, we were having a bunch of fun. I don't like playing tournament pinball when it's super serious. I mean, I guess some people say that I seem like I'm super serious when I play, but all I want to do is goof around all the time. So there was nobody better to have in that final and to make it super fun, win or lose. We were having a great time. Now, back then, were you actually living over in Europe? Weren't you in the Netherlands last year? Yeah, that's right. That tournament took place in Denmark. The last couple of years, I've been living in the Netherlands in Utrecht, which is near Amsterdam. Yeah, so it was a short, very long trip for him, but it was great to play in Europe. And now you're back in Seattle, where you've been for many, many years, coming back. And tell people what you're doing now, because it's kind of cool. I always wonder about all the great players. When are they all going to work for the pinball companies? Well, you are working in gaming, just a little differently. Yeah, I've been working designing games for about 15 years, from PC games to Xbox games to PlayStation games. Yeah, and these days I work at a company here in Seattle working on the Halo franchise. That's been super exciting. It's a game I've always loved, and now I get to design the multiplayer for it. So that's amazing. I know we were talking with Josh Sharp, and he was talking about raw thrills and the Halo on location. You shut everything else down. You just build those machines because it's a quote-unquote runner, as he said. So, so hot with a great franchise like Halo. So that has to be fun to see the success of that continuing so many years later. Yeah, I'm sad I did not get a chance to or the opportunity to work on the arcade machine they just released based on Halo because I would love to be able to work on a more physical game. And that's why I like pinball. You know, it's still games, but it's a different kind of game. And I can go and work in front of a PC all day long and then come home and work on a physical pinball machine. And it's great. Have you ever had any pinball companies come after you and say, hey, why don't you come on board? Maybe even as a defense mechanism so that you don't attack and destroy some of these programs that have already been in place. Yeah, no, you never know. I would love to work on a pinball machine someday. I think it would be amazing to be a pinball designer. And, you know, there's only so many manufacturers and so many places to do it. Certainly not the same number of job openings as there are in the game industry, at least on PC and consoles.

  • George discovered an exploit on 'Who Done It' at Pinnberg quarterfinals involving a unique game state that Carl D'Angelo left the machine in

    high confidence · George describes discovering an exploit where 'Carl left the game in a very unique state' and George was able to capitalize on it with limited points on the scoreboard, needing a win

  • “He's got it just right, where he lets the ball make contact just enough to flip it away, and that's where the magic is on that game.”

    Kaylee George @ N/A — Technical analysis of Keith Elwin's advanced flipper control techniques on Harlem Globetrotters

    • Papa (Papa World Championships)
    event
    IFPA 14event
    Harlem Globetrottersgame
    Who Done Itgame
    High Handgame
    Jungle Queengame
    Paragongame
    Starship Troopersgame
    Blackwater 100game
    Haloproduct
    Seattlelocation
    Utrechtlocation
    Netherlandslocation

    high · George: Papa format 'really rewards consistency and the ability to perform at a certain level many times in a row rather than just having a great game here and there'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Advanced discussion of flipper mechanics as design element; scissor flippers and top flippers analyzed for competitive impact and skill expression.

    medium · Detailed analysis of scissor flipper usage on Harlem Globetrotters, Starship Troopers, and other machines; George notes top players rarely use top flippers except defensively

  • $

    market_signal: Youth influx into competitive pinball creating generational shift; new players have unprecedented access to learning resources (YouTube tutorials, match footage) enabling faster skill development.

    high · George: 'It's easier to learn these days... you can learn the strategy of competitive pinball at an order of magnitude faster than you used to be able to' due to YouTube content availability

    • 4:15
    You've been surrounded by pinball for quite some time. There's just so much in the Seattle area. And even when you're in the Netherlands, the Dutch pinball scene is quite something. I don't know much about it. Yeah, absolutely. Tell us about that Dutch scene. Yeah, Dutch pinball, kind of pinball in that part of Europe, is a bit different. I mean, Seattle's exploded over the last 10, 15 years just with moving from a few machines to really kind of one of the main places in the USA say, in terms of cities that have games on location. I mean, you can play a league or small tournament every day of the week, if not two every day of the week. And in Europe and the Netherlands, there's a lot of little events. There's a bunch of games that you can play, but a lot of it is kind of behind closed doors in people's houses and basements. There's just the same amount of thriving scene, but there's not as many games on promotion. but one amazing thing they have in the Netherlands is they have a pinball club that anybody can be a part of and they've used their membership fees to rent a giant 40,000 square foot warehouse where they've got a couple hundred games and you can go there and play their events and go on weekends and stuff and yeah it's a really awesome scene big big warehouse lots and lots of games where have I heard that before yeah right it's kind of like has some of the same vibes of Papa But, you know, still pop is the cake.
    5:41
    We saw you in the playoffs this year at Pinnberg. I know it wasn't probably the results you want. What was your Pinnberg experience this year? Yeah, I was playing pretty solid and steady in Pinnberg. I had kind of a funny last two rounds where I went from maybe, you know, seeding around three or fifth or something like that down to, I don't know, wherever I ended up barely qualifying by getting a six and a two or a six and a four in the last rounds. You got a four? I think I got a two. I would think my last round is a two. My round ten, if you go look it up, which is pretty amazing. I don't think I've ever had a two there. But, you know, sometimes, like, I mean, Pinberg is really a lot of, you know, avoiding the bris, as we say, which is a reference to Indy 500. You've got to try and kind of avoid all the issues, the bad bounces, and, you know, rulings and whatever kind of that's pinball type of stuff that goes on because you're going to play on so many different games and so many different eras. and I kind of had a perfect storm of that stuff going on in round 10 of just a bunch of different bad bounces and bad reads on my part and house balls and all sorts of stuff and ended up with, I think, just like a second on a bonsai run or something, and that was it. Well, day two makes sense to be tougher, too. When you're in A, you're going to be playing the better players, too. You started off okay in A, I guess. I mean, all six and six, but then a ten and two, there's the Kaylee we know, and then, yeah, it got a little tough. I guess Jermaine, who you certainly know, Andre, and Jim Belcedo in a group. Those two made the final four. You still pulled out an eight and four. And then I'm looking. I'm like, did he really get a two? I'm looking here. Group nine, you're with Steve Bowden, Mahesh, and Raymond Davidson. Yeah, you got four there in round nine. And you were seeded number five. So when you're seeded number five in round nine, here's who you're playing. You're playing the number one, four, five, and eight. That's a tough round. And then, yeah, you said the last one, a 2-10 against Becker, John Tomcich, and Tim McCool. And you said that almost knocked you out? Yeah, I think if I pulled a zero there, I would have been out. And I think the one was the tiebreaker or maybe the clean tiebreak because, of course, I would have been the high seed based on the tiebreak rules and won the tiebreak. But, yeah, that was pretty amusing. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, I don't know, you talk to a lot of people, and I usually play better against better players, and I play worse against less experienced players. So actually, it's a bit against the norm for me to have a bad round in a situation like that where you're playing against the top-seeded guys for the day. I can usually bring it and rise to the occasion. I'm looking at the games in that round. The Walking Dead, do you remember what you got on that? Oh, I don't know. It was something garbage and, you know.
    8:22
    Cosmos. I can't imagine I got much. Yeah. Cosmos, you can take a zero because everyone gets a zero on there. Anything you get is gravy. That's a tough game. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those games where you can just basically plunge out lanes all day if that's how the ball rolls. Yeah. Banzai Run, well, that's got some control to it. And Supersonic, you know, I guess if you can rip the spinner, but you've got to catch it on the flippers, I guess. Yeah, it's tough. You know, I mean, you've got to be ready for things on that era of games. And, I don't know, memory serves me. You remember the drains. and I think I got kind of inserted a couple times for the ball. It looks like it's going to arc over a flipper to the other one and then it hits some sort of cupped insert and flies down the middle and nothing you can do in that case. So that's kind of how it goes. I do not want to gloat on Pinbird because you've had so many successes. When you said to yourself, I got a two, I'm like, I got to check this out. There's no way. Okay, it happened, but still. No, it's funny. You look back across and if I think back across tournaments I've entered, for main events, in tournaments. Pimberg is the only event that I've attended in the last, I'd say, 10 years that I have not qualified for in the main events. And I've done that twice at Pimberg. I've not qualified for A, which kind of goes to show that it can be a tough tournament. And, you know, it's not easy even for some more experienced players. I'm always amazed to see the people you expect to be there, yourself included. By the way, I had you in that pool. That little pool, I put my money on you. I put it on Josh. I don't know why. It was probably guilt. And a couple other people. I had Chris Stevens. He made top four. He made me a little bit of a change. But it is tough. I mean, watching Colin McAlpine last year's winner, you know, just a couple of bad games, and there you go. And that's even Keith. You remember last year, too. In 2017, he went 0-0. He was dialed in. I forget what the next game was. I assume high hand. and then he came back on Andromeda and Robocop. But that was crazy. And even this year, he took a zero on the first game too on Guardians. So it happens to the best players, I guess. So to see a rough one, I don't want to gloat on the rough one. Listen, there's so many great successes. You listen to or you watch Keith play, and yeah, he pulls a zero on Guardians and then ends up going first on the next game. And it was funny listening to the commentator booth on that one because they assumed that Keith Elwin would pick fourth, And my expectation was that he would pick first because I could tell he was just pissed for not playing and just wanted to have some fun and play the damn game. So that's very, very much in the way I know Elwin, that for him to pick first there makes a lot of sense.
    11:02
    He's going to play his game and play well, basically, no matter what the state is of the other players on machines like that. So, you know, I think getting himself in the right mood there was the right choice. I'll tell you one thing that I've said many, many, many times, and I think of guys like you. When you play Pinnberg match play, the better players are going to shine. When you play Papa, the really good players are going to shine because that ticket system is so, so difficult. I mean, we all in a pump and dump can have a lucky game once in a while, but to do it on four or in the case of Papa, five times in a row, that's tough to do, and I know you miss it. I miss it too. I hope it comes back for next year. We'll see. But is it safe to say that's your favorite tournament? Yeah, I'd say that's a classic Papa World Championships, as in like the classic version of that tournament. You know, they offer the A Division, the World Championships there. That's where it's at. And that's kind of, in my mind, the gold standard of pinball tournaments. Their format is, you know, you pick five games out of a bank of ten. You play them in any order you want, but you play them all in one group. and the scores are all treated as your entry into the tournament as one little combined unit. And you can do that over and over again, but only those groupings of scores are going to be treated together. And so you really need to lay down like very competent scores across those five machines so that you can be ranked highly in the tournament. And it really is a format that rewards consistency and the ability to perform at a certain level many times in a row rather than just having a great game here and there. And I think there was really a very interesting amount of strategy to that tournament and intensity and pressure. You don't find that at a lot of other events. And it was pretty unique to Papa with the way that they would set up their games and their facility and as well with that qualifying style. It was great. And what I noticed a year ago was that the game selection in the A Division, and really all the divisions too, in years past, there was more of a newer game feel because they had a classics division. But that wasn't the case last year when Escher won it. There were games like Jungle Queen. There were games like Skateball. And it was a nice mix as opposed to the quote-unquote sternament. And that's not a knock on stern by any means. What that usually means when people talk about sternaments, meaning all new games in a tournament lineup. I like the mix of games. Yeah, you know, you go back in time in Papa, and you look, say, at Papa 9 through 14 or something like that. That's kind of like a more standard mix of what you would find in Papa qualifying. They would pick the best of the best, most competent tournament pinball machines that were modern, DMD and greater generally.
    13:49
    The last few years they've been throwing in some what most people would call classics games. and yeah, I think that's terrible and I think it's really silly and I don't know why they do it. Seriously? You see that at other tournaments. Yeah, you see that at other tournaments where what is the purpose of having a classics division where you're going to specifically have machines and they're of a specific vintage and have a competition on those machines and that classics and have the tournament there and then also have a different main event. I don't see why you have both if you're just going to mix it up. You might as well just have one event And I think that's kind of the magic of Pinberg is that they have no, hey, you have to play across all these eras and stuff like that. I love that kind of old school Papa was you have to throw down on the most dialed, tight, fast, competitive, modern pinball machines. And that's what I loved. And, you know, you look at the way people pick in classics and it's like, or sorry, pick in Papa when those classics games are there. You know, it's kind of a, it's a sideshow. You know, those only get picked when somebody's kind of trying to throw a monkey in the wrench or throw some randomization into it. And I want to see the championship determined by the person who's the best player, not the person who gets the least house balls. I'll give you that for some of the older machines. Shot fired off the bow at Papa.
    15:07
    I love you, Mark. Okay, I don't know the reasoning why Papa does that, but I would guess a couple of reasons. One, they're quicker play times. When you look at some of the newer games, you can have some long, long games. And we saw the lineups be that game's averaging eight minutes, whereas something like Jungle Queen might be three, four minutes. Skateball, three, four minutes. So maybe it moved the lines quicker. And two, it's maybe, and I don't know if they're doing this, I'm guessing, it's better for streams on some of the older games. I not talking EMs but maybe some of the solid states Hey there a reason why High Hand has appeared in the Pinberg finals many times It because when random BS happens on that game the crowd goes bananas At least that's my interpretation of why they keep using it. I don't know. I think it's a pretty garbage tournament game. Yeah, and it's certainly maybe a consideration. I'm not going to speak for those guys, but I can see tournaments picking those styles of games because they are interesting for viewership. They have a lot more randomization, a lot more crazy saves that are options for players to make. But I think it's a pretty weird thing to do to choose your games in a tournament based on how it's going to view. So I think tournaments are treading a fine line. They go down that too much. Their player base might not find that interesting anymore. Yeah, I don't get the high hand thing either because in Josh's final round, if I recall watching it, I think he knocked all the targets down, maybe left one at most, in ball one. And then all he's got to do is try to skillfully drain in the outlanes or try to hit the pop bumper and maybe it bounces into that saucer. It just seemed like, what a grind. And then even Starpool, which we saw in the finals. I mean, that was tough to catch up on. So I'm on your side in that one, Kaylee. I'm like, you know what? The great thing about Harlem Globetrotters was even though Keith rolled it at 1.1 with Andre coming up next, Andre could do it too. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And Harlem is like one of the first solid states. It's like another kind of gold standard game to show your skills on. I mean, if you're going to be playing those eras of games in a tournament, which totally makes sense for Pinnberg, then there's kind of no better game to kind of have two players go to head-to-head on as Harlem Globetrotters. And it's all about a bunch of straightforward stuff, like how are you going to trap the ball? How are you going to get control? How are you going to tap pass from right to left? or how you're going to get the ball when it's on the right flipper to the left when you want to be there. What are you going to do about hitting the gate and then opening it up? How are you going to get those drops down? When are you going to pull the trigger on shooting the upper left spinner versus shooting more drops, things like that? And also, if you go back and you watch Elwin this year, there's a lot more subtle stuff, like how do you deal with the ball when it's going to be hitting that little space right between the two left flippers, where it hits the tip of the top left flipper and it hits part of the meat of the lower left flipper. When that happens, the ball can just go sending straight down the middle, but you're also at risk for scissoring yourself if the ball flies through there. And he has, like, these perfect reads on his balls where he's got it just right, where he lets the ball make contact just enough to flip it away, and that's where the magic is on that game. So you like scissor flippers? Well, I mean, they're interesting. They add an interesting element. I mean, you know, you watch most of the high-level players play a game like Harlem, and they will probably never shoot a ball off the top flipper if they can avoid it. Are you saying the good players don't use the top flipper on scissor flippers? I like it for the, I think, a paragon, maybe ripping the spinner, but maybe that's just because I'm lousy. Yeah, I don't know. If you watch a lot of the top players play a game with scissor flippers, and it's very rare, actually, I think, to see anybody take a shot off an upper flipper unless it's kind of a more defensive or reactionary move. But on all those games, you can always hit anything from the two main flippers. But it's a great utility flipper for controlling the ball, doing a drop catch up top, and then letting it roll off the upper flipper down to a trap on the bottom flipper or something like that. Everybody oohed and aahed while Elwynn kind of did that on Harlem Globetrotters on the left flipper there, where the ball was in jeopardy of rolling between the flippers. But that's kind of like a standard move. You want to use that as a utility to gain control and give yourself the time to take a really controlled shot off a lower flipper. So I think they're great. And, of course, the fact that you can lose the ball between them makes it that much more exciting.
    19:30
    It did make for great TV for sure. Of course, he's not going to go through it, but he looked like he was right at the edge there. But I got an upper flipper for you to use. It's not really scissor flippers. Starship Troopers. Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting. It's super awkward, though. I don't like... This is going to be strange, because there are plenty of games that I like with extra buttons around the flippers, but I find Starship Troopers uncomfortable because of that upper flipper there. It makes it hard to actually use the other main buttons for me. But yeah, that one's great. You can do stuff like balls coming down an inlane where it would normally not be able to be trapped, and you can kind of slow it down with the little tiny midget flipper and get it to trap and things like that. I mean, everybody always says that you can trap a ball on the lower flipper and then use the tiny one to shoot it into the nuke hole. And I've never met a Starship Trooper where you can do that. So that's like some sort of magical mystery to me.
    20:24
    All right, I'm not using top flippers anymore. If Kaylee doesn't and Keith doesn't, I guess that's what I have to do too. But I'll give you two games where you're talking about multiple buttons on the side. Yeah, I'm not even talking about action button. I'm talking on the side here. I had to play the great Dennis Dorbman game Blackwater 100 for the first time ever at Pinnberg. and I'm like, okay, I've got to figure these flippers out. And Haunted House actually has the same thing, too, where you have to... Okay, if you're not used to it the first few times, it can screw you up anyway. And then Lexi Lightspeed, there are three on each side. Have you played that? Yeah, I mean, let's just keep rattling off boat anchors, you know? Why don't we put... What else can go on the log pile?
    21:10
    Hey, wait a second. you're working for the company that makes Halo. If you ever get to a pinball company, I know you're going to put, forget the action button, you're going to have a gun come out. And I don't mean like a handle like in Lethal Weapon 3 or Dirty Harry. You're going to have an actual gun holster. You've got to fire at the LCD. That's what's going to happen when you get into pinball. I know it. It's just a foreshadowing. Yeah, why not? Let's do that.
    21:35
    Yeah, I don't know. I mean, often that stuff is kind of gimmicky. I mean, what is it? On Blackwater 100, it's just to like launch multiball or something. Like, I don't know. it's like they didn't have the tech to have the switches they wanted there or something. I don't know. Or is it just for the upper flippers, I guess, if they have the extra buttons? I don't even remember. Yeah, I don't know. That's one of those era games that's got the carrot flippers on it. At least that's what we call them. They're a quarter inch longer than regular flippers. They're three and a quarter inch long. And, yeah, man, the throw on those flippers is so long. They just feel like these infinite trap monsters. There's a lot of other games that ship with those, like Mousing Around and stuff, that feel a lot nicer if you just throw a standard set on there. So we've talked about Papa format with the tickets. We've talked about Pinberg and match play. I don't think I've played in a tournament with you other than, no, I don't think I have, where it's been a pump and dump. I would be scared to death if I saw you in a pump and dump. And guys like you, forget it. If you get one game on it, maybe it's match play, maybe you get lucky. Pump and dump, forget it about all the great players. When they get on a few times, game over. Yeah, it's interesting. some people say that pump and dump is you know oh on a pump and dump format people are going to pay to win I mean I'm kind of deviating from your question here but I'm going to get into something else you've described my whole play yeah so they say oh well pump and dump like so and so who can't afford a hundred dollars at this tournament has a much better chance at this tournament than somebody with fifty dollars or whatever or oh somebody qualified high in a pump and dump Well, that's because it's a pump-and-dump. You look across basically any format that anybody's ever invented for competitive pinball that's, you know, say, a respected event or a higher-level event or something like that, and look at the people who generally qualify or are very close, and you're going to see a lot of the same names in there. So whether it's pump-and-dump, whether it's pop-up format with card systems, whether it's three-strike knockout, whether it's head-to-head double ELEM, whatever. The good players are going to bring it at the right times. And, yeah, something like pump-and-dump. Somebody can have a lucky good game here, a lucky good game there, but it's pretty hard for somebody to buy their way into a pump and dump. And if they do, and if that is a thing that would even happen, I'm not sure if it could, they're going to get a rude awakening in a finals format where you're forced to perform on command.
    23:52
    Once again, you've described my entire pinball career. Get lucky, qualify in a few pump and dumps, shell out a few bucks, have to play in the playoffs, top two advance. See you later, Teolis. You've just described my entire career. Thanks a lot. But there is a benefit to that because I think the school of hard knocks and pinball is in the finals. That's where you'll learn a bunch of stuff. And so you make it there a few times. Most people, once they start getting good, they might start qualifying for events and finding that they bomb out right away. They can't play at the same level they want, things like that.
    24:28
    Competing in and of itself is a skill. and then competing in finals in and of itself is a skill. Those are the things that everybody has to learn, and it just takes time and experience. It is a learning experience for sure. And again, we talked off the top about there are a lot of new people in pinball competitions or in pinball in general, whether it's leagues. Which is great. Sure it is. It's fantastic. Although too many young people. I want to get them out because they're too damn good.
    24:57
    Let some of us old farts have a couple more years of glory. then you can take over. I'm not including you in the old farts. I'm just saying. Well, it's easier to learn these days. I mean, you can go to YouTube, and you can watch any of the great pinball players play a bunch of competitions, watch how they won, watch all these little pippermose. I mean, the first time I tried to figure out how to do a live trap in a game, like I had to look at like an animated GIF somebody had done out of like frames in Microsoft Paint. And I'm like, so like the ball, it's like going to hit the flipper when it comes up to the top? Like what is this showing me? Like, you know, there wasn't a video of somebody doing those things. And now it's like, well, you can see all the flipper moves that you want to do. You can see when you should do them, maybe when you shouldn't, when they're a bad idea, when they resulted in a drain. But you can also just go up and look at all the strategies on these games. I mean, if you want to put in the time right now, you can learn the strategy of competitive pinball at an order of magnitude faster than you used to be able to, because you used to just have to go out and play with people. You know, I probably should spend some more time watching some of the tutorials, but the videos I like to watch are some of the classic matches, and you are in many of them. I talked about you being a cerebral assassin. Here's some history for those that are new in pinball about what Kaley George is all about. He discovers exploits like no one else. Elwin would be the other guy, but my goodness, let's go over some of these exploits that you found. Pinberg a few years ago, quarterfinals, let's say about three years ago. It's a classic one. I wish Carl D'Angelo was on the phone right now, but he would remember it. Who done it?
    26:36
    Yeah, and Carl was a very good sport about this, and he's a good friend. Yeah, Carl had an amazing game on who done it in the quarterfinal. He rolled the game twice. He put up over $20 billion after his last ball. I had one ball to play. I think this was probably our game two or three. I did not have a lot of points. I needed a win. I had barely nothing on the scoreboard. And, you know, I know who done it well, and I just hadn't played a great first two balls. And Carl left the game in a very unique state. There's not a lot of high-level players that had really done a deep dive on who done it. It's a game that people find interesting, but has never really been considered that competitive of a game. But I always liked it, so I picked one up a while back and just started playing it a bunch and digging through the rules and how they all work. And one of the exploits I found was that there's a situation where you can cause the center bank that moves up and down. It's very similar to Attack from Mars or what you might find on Avatar or Spider-Man. You can actually cause that to be stuck in the down state with a software glitch. And, you know, I didn't even have enough ball time to try and set that up. But Carl, by accident, on his last ball, had caused that gate to get stuck down. And it won't reset until some very specific conditions are met. And so when I went up to play my ball, I see the gate's stuck down, and I had seen it happen on Carl's game. And so I asked Kevin Martin. I said, hey, he's tournament director. The gate's down. It's a software thing. What's the ruling, you know? Should we fix it? Should I play on? He says, play on. so you know I've got 20 billion to cut back on that game I mean that's like if somebody put up 65 billion on Attack from Mars or 800 million on Spider-Man I mean that's a pretty meaty score maybe not that much but so you know I just said well I'm in for the chopping wood and just shot the center ramp probably a few hundred times to grind out pity points through a bunch of tiny multi-balls you got the elevator madness you know you probably walk away a couple hundred million from that you got the penthouse party a couple hundred million there only cashing in roof wizard modes when they were definitely going to happen, and I was confident on my shot making. You know, and whatever, 40 minutes later, came back over the top with 23 some odd billion and took the win home. So sometimes it takes a little bit of knowledge and a little luck from the other players to pull some of those exploits off.
    28:54
    Wasn't there a player that played behind you too? Yeah, and that's what, you know, that's what if you ever go back and watch that match, that's what's going on in the commentary that came in a bit late to that round, and we're kind of wondering why I was grinding away. so methodically going over the top with such a big score when it would be rare for any other player to come back on me. But of course, it was hard for the guys in the booth to see that Carl had already rolled the game twice.
    29:17
    I can't believe that Carl actually put in whodunit at Indus last year. Your name may have come up once or twice, and he was like, oh. Yeah, well, he's extremely creative about finding ways of disabling stuff. I think there are a couple people out there who have modified some ROMs. That may be something that has been modified out in a very custom ROM set. So he might have got his hands on that or figured out a way through manipulating the game physically to make that impossible. But I like that he's still using it because it's a good game and it is hard to pull off at State. Actually, he just put your face on the bash gate. That's all he did, but changed it.
    29:58
    Well, luckily, I believe, if my memory serves me correct, that Carl also moved on in that round. so it wasn't too many sour grapes. Let's go to CSI, something you did at Papa, and you found an exploit while practicing on that game. Yeah, so Papa's got however many games in their tournament, 100, but they've also got the full amount of their collection on the floor as practice games.
    30:23
    CSI is kind of from this era of Stern where they were putting games out a little bit quicker. It didn't seem like they had as much time to put into the games and as much money. and the other games are simpler but still fun, but CSI is a bit of a guilty pleasure, and one of the things on that game is that bonus X is just huge, and you have to roll through the end lanes to get bonus X on that game, and it's kind of a grind, and it's pretty well balanced in general, but noticing there that it has kind of standard valid playfield rules, and for those that don't know, games are often set up so that when you plunge the ball into play, a certain number of unique features on the game need to be hit or activated by the ball before the game considers the ball has actually been put in play. And it's a safety for ripping off customers on location. You don't want somebody to have a ball, they plunge it, and it doesn't do anything, and then it just ends their ball. Or the game's really not sure what happens to a ball that's put into the plunger lane. It thinks it there but it not sure so it wants to guarantee that the player had some action And so what that means for CSI is that the game has to hit three unique features on the playfield before the ball is considered valid and it will not give you a free ball back if you drain So on CSI, I discovered, you know, you can plunge the ball short, get it on a flipper with no switches hit, then you can alley pass to an in-lane or one of the many in-lanes that has three on the opposite side of the playfield, gets you one-third of your progress towards your bonus X, and then you can dump the ball back in the drain, get the ball back for free, do it over and over and over again, and then you can max the bonus out on that game before you even start ball one and then continue. And so I brought this up to Mark Steinman, who is one of the main guys behind the PAPA tournament that year. I said, funny thing I found. You can max the bonus out on CSI before you start ball one. And he said, damn it. I always wanted to use that in the PAPA lineup some year, and now we can't. this is terrible, you jerk. And I said, well, put it in there. We'll see what happens. But he never did.
    32:23
    That's so funny. I think I once heard a story about you. Was it a post you did talking about, oh, wait till you see what I do on Iron Man? And then they pulled Iron Man from a bank? Yeah, so this is all my personal opinion. But I felt like Papa as a tournament, there's many people behind Papa, and I'm probably putting more thought into it than is the reality. But I feel like over the last few years, they've been manipulating some games in their tournament lineups in ways that I felt like were entering an interesting ethical territory from a tournament director, where games were being modified in a way that affected a very small percentage of the competitive tournament population. So it would be like, and no specific examples, it'd be like, oh, there's an exploit on this game where this one guy we heard can do this thing, and so now for the whole of the tournament population, we've disabled such and such. And it's kind of like, well, that's interesting. If you kind of go down that rabbit hole a lot, it's like you have a game like, say, like Attack from Mars. Imagine there was two world champions that were going to be playing Attack from Mars, and we'd heard that one guy can shoot the center saucer really well and has a method for never losing the ball and just crushes that game. So as a tournament director, do you disable the center saucer because one guy is really good at it? So they weren't quite doing that, but there were some interesting things, like disabling the plunger on two different Stern games, where really good players, and it actually takes quite a bit of skill, could exploit the valid play field on the game and get some good points and some things going before the game really started. And if you put 100 people on that game and have them try and do it, I'd say a very small handful will actually be able to be successful, and the ones that attempt it and aren't successful, it will actually be detrimental to their game. So it's a really interesting risk and reward. I just saw that recently. What game was it? Yeah, so they've done that the last few years with Ripley's Believe It or Not, as well as Sopranos, which is maybe a bit more acceptable in my mind. But anyway, so, you know, for whatever reason, one day I was a little miffed they were doing that to games, so I thought I'd run an experiment, which is to pretend that I had found an exploit on one of the games in the Papa lineup that I did not like at all. I knew you did it for that reason. I knew it. See if I could get them to change something about the game, or pull it from the Papa Bank so that I wouldn't have to have the option of playing it or prove that maybe they were going to try and change something based on one player's opinion about how to play a game. And sure enough, after posting that, they wrote a new rule into the Papa Rule set, which was if a player is being found loosely to be exploiting a game in a way that is deemed unacceptable or too exploity, it's a really gray area rule, then the game can be called invalid by the tournament directors.
    35:13
    During play? Basically. It's kind of like catch-all, which is already in the rules, which is basically like the directors will do what they want to do to make the tournament great, which is good. But I think it's kind of funny that there's a rule there that's basically, in my opinion, came out of kind of a little joke I played on them in a forum. But I don't know. Maybe that rule was already in the works, and that's all in my head. In that rule, did the first letter of every sentence spell Kaylee? I have no idea. Who knows? Me and Mark are good friends, so it's all in good fun. Listen, we talked about Whodunit, we talked about CSI. Let's not forget Congo 2, getting gray for free. Yeah, there's a game, a similar classic valid playfield exploit shenanigans you can do on that game. You need three individual features on the game to be activated, minus the left outline is considered a playfield validating switch. So you can experiment with a lot of fun on that game, and you can shoot the gray shot, which is in the upper left side of the playfield. It starts spilling out gray, leading to awards with the movable monkey under the playfield. And at the start of your ball, you can plunge short to a flipper, hit no switches, shoot it up, hit the gray switch, have the ball come down, dump it in the drain on purpose, and start over again. So you can start every ball by playing gray if you are accurate enough. And in fact, you can also do it multiple times mid-ball for every lock that you make. So that can be highly lucrative if you possess those skills. There's also a very rare unknown exploit on Congo, first time world premiere, is that if you plunge the right out lane, you can do that as many times as you want at one million points a pop over and over again. The right out lane? So you plunge right out of the right ball plunge lane, dribble it out of there, right into the right end lane, and spell Zinj, which is what you spell on the rollovers, as much as you want for a million points of pop. I'm not sure how lucrative that is, because if you actually, it's considered a playfield validating switch, but because you're hitting the same one over and over again, it will still give you the ball back, and the moment you do anything else and then go out, your ball is over. So it's pretty risky.
    37:26
    I've never had the chops to try that one in a tournament. Kaylee, how do you find this stuff out? You think about how you play games. And a lot of people play games on location. They play games that are probably set up pretty nice, pretty reasonable, pretty liberal tilts. You know, a lot of operators leave their settings pretty friendly. They're going to have people coming up paying money for these games. They don't want them to run away with bad taste in their mouth. And you kind of compare that to how most tournament games are set up, which is, hey, we want to limit ball times. We really just only want to see the best players rise to the surface. We don't need hour-long games. Let's make these games more difficult. Let's tighten the tilts. Let's widen the outlands. Let's make them steeper. Those types of things. Those are the types of things you see show up in a tournament. So if you actually start playing on those types of games more, or even if you have the opportunity and privilege to own some games and set them up extremely difficult, some of these strategies start rising to the surface, maybe not plunging the outland, but when a game is set up incredibly difficult, you very quickly start realizing where the risk and reward shots are. What shots are absolutely risky and are eliminating your ball from play, and which shots are less so. And, you know, when I get a game or I'm playing games, I often try and play ones that are set up very difficult or set my own games up that way. And these kind of little things rise to the surface. I mean, you take a game and you set it up crazy hard. You put shorter flippers on it, those types of things. I've been known to put games on two-ball play or one-ball play instead of three-ball play. You're pretty quickly going to be trying to scrape out as many points as you can.
    38:59
    The three things I've noticed in tournaments where they do those kinds of adjustments to make them more difficult, the tight tilts, removing rubbers and posts, and lightning flippers. When they do all three, I think it's a little overboard, but which is the one you dislike the most? Yes, setting up games for a tournament or just in general is an absolute art. There are a bunch of things you have in your toolbox, and you can use them for good for your tournament or you can use them for evil.
    39:31
    And there's some tournament directors that have that down and some that don't. And so some of the things you have in your toolbox, you can make the game more tilty. You can change what the outlines are doing. You can pull outlines out. You can pull rubbers off outlines. You can make the game steeper. You can eliminate ball saves. You can change the rubber that's on the flippers. The biggest pet peeve I have is a poor choice, and you can actually put on shorter flippers like lightning flippers. A poor choice in flipper rubber, or what that actually means to a game, can be very frustrating. It's kind of the main place that you have a kinetic feel with the ball. And different types of rubber, kind of the standard is black rubber is less bouncy and colored rubber is more bouncy. But these days we have silicone rubber that plays like garbage and super bands that I personally don't really like the way that they play. Other players do. Things like that. But they all react differently. And you put too many of these things in place without understanding the consequences of them all, and you can basically have a game that's unplayable. Or a game that doesn't reward skill as much as it does random chance or the random luck of figuring out what kind of crazy garbage is going on.
    40:42
    That's a good point, too. I mean, I find when they put some of those massive rubbers on, I don't know if you saw it at Pinburg, but just playing some dollar games for fun, of course. I was playing mousing around. I love the game. And I thought, you know what? I know it's not the greatest shot in the world, but I can hit it every time. The center shot, once that's down, piece of cake, done. Well, I didn't notice these massive silver dollar-like rubbers that were on. And my buddy goes, what are you doing shooting that? I'm like, what do you mean? Oh, I see what you're seeing. Yeah, and stuff like that's great. You know, other things in the tournament toolbox are, you know, adding larger rubber posts to things or sometimes gigantic, weird rubber posts to things, like in the case of Mousing Around. And that can be fun. You know, there's games that have exploits that are boring or make something kind of linear strategy game. Mousing Around has been thought of to be that way for a lot of people where you just shoot the center ramp. Sometimes you'll find tournaments where they've disabled the center ramp and it plays great or added bigger rubbers like you're talking about there. Though I do think that there's been a trend in tournament and competitive pinball and the way that different tournament directors have been choosing games lately that has kind of removed an interesting part of competitive pinball, which is that games that have a very repetitive strategy have basically all been everything but removed from the higher bits of competitive pinball. And you used to not see that as much. It was more of a balance. And you'd get to see players on games where they could do the thing, which was something perhaps repetitive or perhaps that all the players were going to try and do. But the one that could execute it the best was going to be the one that won. An example of that is a game like Theater of Magic, where one of the best strategies is to just shoot the left orbit over and over again. And, you know, that can be boring. And so that game is just not used in competition a lot. But there are ways that you can set that game up where it takes an extremely high level of skill to pull that off and pull it off well or better than the other players. That it can be interesting to have a game like that in a tournament bank sometimes. With Theater of Magic, you make the slingshots really, really, really tight, where they fire with just the littlest touch, and you put bouncy flipper rubbers on it. And all of a sudden, that game turns into who can live catch the ball out of the right orbit and stick it to the flipper without it bouncing up and touching that slingshot, or else that ball goes wild and you're done. And those types of things are really fun to play. I was surprised to see that at InDisc, but I believe Jim Belsito, correct me if I'm wrong, on the left orbit shot that you're talking about, put some, not diverter in, but something at the top so that it wouldn't come out the right orbit. And that really changed the game. And I was like, okay, it's not that chopping wood that we talked about. Yeah, I know that he's had some fun ideas, him and Carl, in the past about how to take games with stuff like that and turn them into a more competitive experience or give them a bit more depth in their strategy. And I think that's great because they don't just eliminate the game straight off the bat, they kind of have tried to modify it a la Mouse and Around in some kind of interesting way. But I do find it unfortunate when even just the kind of standard wood chop on some games hasn't been used or just set up to be a little bit more difficult. Yeah, chopping wood and exploits are two different things. And again, you being the king of the exploits, some other games that come to mind. Judge Dredd. Yeah, Judge Dredd. I mean, you know, not so much of an exploit that is unknown, but more just something that, you know, a lot of players don't realizes the value of the left ramp on that game kind of just builds and builds and builds over the course of your ball to values that you know pretty much shadow every other type of scoring in that game so playing that game where you're just basically looping left ramps which is fairly easy on some on some judge dreads and maybe picking up modes along the way and timing them out by shooting the left ramp some more it can give you you know grand champion scores fairly rapidly. And for an opponent that doesn't quite understand that type of strategy on that game, if you're in the groove and you're making your shots in that, it's pretty much the only way to play. I love playing the game Jackbot. I pray to God I never have to play against you. Jackbot is one of the kings, I think, of competitive pinball and is definitely the king of valid play field. There's amazing stuff that can go on in that game. You can plunge the ball into play. You can work on the grid up at the top that allows you to get to multi-ball. You can actually make progress on that grid and drain the ball and get it back. And you have to do that very skillfully or else you might just lose your ball. You can start multi-ball in that game. You can pick up jackpots in multi-ball, drain your ball, get it back, and have not even started your multi-ball yet and play out three to four jackpots in single ball play. All right, give us some of this. I mean, some people are going, what, what, what? Yeah, so on Jackpot, you know, like, it's one of those games where it classically entices you to do something that is a really bad idea. So it's got, on the right-hand side of the play field, it's got some pop bumpers and past that there's this big spiral, and that's where the skill shot is. It's telling you to shoot the skill shot. Well, what you want to do on that game is never shoot the skill shot because it's going to put it in the pops, the ball's going to be wild, it's going to come flying out there, and you might just have a house ball down an outlay. But you can plunge the ball short and it'll kind of dribble down, and miss the pop bumpers. You get it on a flipper, and you're trapped. You're like, all right, awesome. I've got three switch hits until this ball is live. You can take that ball, and you can shoot it straight at the middle of that grid. You can pick off progress on the yellow, orange, green, blue, red targets. Hit one target. Get control of the ball before it's hit anything else. Trap it. Make sure your ball hasn't started yet. Dump it straight down in the drain. Game's going to put the ball right back in the shooter lane like nothing ever happened. But you've got points, you've got progress, and you're ready to go. So you can kind of translate that to the multi-ball in that game, where the multi-ball, you load the balls into the visor, these two locks, puts your third ball into the shooter lane. It's telling you, hey, plunge this ball. When it's in play, we're going to eject the rest of the balls. Your multi-ball is going to start. At that point, all the jackpots are already lit. So you put that ball into play really short, get it on a flipper. It doesn't know the ball is in there. Hit one of those jackpots, get your big award, dump that ball in the drain, puts it back in the shooter lane. It's like, hey, aren't you going to start the multi-ball? you can do that for the jackpot that's underneath the ramp on the left you can do it for the jackpot that on the right at the hit me target and then you can throw the ball right up the left lane into the game saucer to reload all the jackpots and start your multi right there And you've got two jackpot progress, and the jackpots in that game build, and they cap out at getting about 15 jackpots total, if I'm remembering correctly, which means that you've only got a limited amount of these that you're going to get. Most players don't make it all the way through that, and so it's like huge progress to be able to pull that off in that game. You're a sick man, Kaylee. You're a sick man. I don't want to see this happen. Yeah, these days it's tough. You kind of find a strategy or something a little cheeky in a game and you kind of only have one bullet before that cat's out of the bag. You do that jackpot strategy live on stream and then everybody sees how to do it. It's much less word of mouth. It's much less world learning. So, you know, I think a couple of the better players have a few of these types of things in their back pocket hanging out to use at the right time. Sure. So you admit it. There you go. No, no, that's a good point. You admit that you had some of these in your back pocket. You've used them in competition. And like you say, you get one crack at it and make it count. Oh, absolutely. You know, there's also like on top of that, there's actually some funny risk in doing that which can backfire on you, which is, you know, there's this weird thing in competitive pinball which is like, well if the software has a major malfunction bug, then we're going to call it such and the ball in play will be void because the player is earning a bunch of points in a strange method and we're going to kill their ball and have them restart or move to another machine, that kind of thing like that often happens like, oh, we've never seen this happen before, the game's doing something weird shut down or whatever but for a ton of software bugs, if they're known we've just all learned to be like, oh, well, we know that that's the thing. Of course that's happening. Play on because that's how the game works when you do that stupid thing. A good example is Getaway High Speed 2. There's lots of different software versions of that. I'm not going to get too deep into it, but the kind of last and, in my opinion, best version of that software, when you play a multiball, there are ways which every jackpot you make, the software is kind of thinking that you're relocking balls, and it gets into a state where every third jackpot, it restarts multiball because it thinks you made three locks. And you kind of get a ball save and a bunch of other weird things happen, but it's very unexpected and not what was intended in the original design of the game. But everybody that's played competitive pinball or played High Speed 2 kind of understand that that's a thing. So when it happens, it's not like, oh, what's happening? They're getting new balls and there's a problem. You know, tournament director, it's kind of like, oh, he did the thing. Ha ha, funny. And we continue. But you know, if that had never happened before and nobody had ever seen it and live on stage at Pinberg, last game for the championship final of the tournament, that were to happen. Somebody would absolutely be like, what's going on? He's getting ball saves, he's getting new balls, there's jackpots lit, terrible tournament director, something's wrong, let's have a ruling. So when you have a big exploit in your back pocket, and you're going to pull it out at some point, there's a fine line there where you might just get ruled against if people don't know about it, which is kind of funny, I think. I know they're talking about new code for Ghostbusters. That definitely is needed, too, because you found some things on that as well. Yeah, Ghostbusters, I mean, it takes... I like a lot of the little kind of like odd strategies that require a huge amount of skill and only a really good player can pull off. And I think those should remain and shouldn't get costed out of the game. I think that's what makes games really fun. You know, when a game's too balanced, then it loses a little bit of interest in trying to find your path to points. But on Ghostbusters, the left ramp, when you shoot that, it builds a very small award value at the left stand-up targets just below the scoop there for the proton pack. And so you shoot the ramp a couple times, it says, oh, the proton pack's lit. Shoot that and pick up your pity points of two million or whatever. Well, that value holds ball to ball in that game the award that is building from shooting that left ramp. And every time you shoot the left ramp, it adds value to that award, and it caps out at a certain point, but it gets pretty juicy at around 2, 3 million a shot. Well, if you spend your whole game shooting that left ramp, which is fairly loopable, I mean, they have loop supers, you know, you can build that up to 2, 300 million, 400 million on its own, and then cash it in. And, of course, if what you're spending your whole skill shot time trying to do is light 6x, then you can cash it in for billions. and that's definitely the highest scoring points per minute strategy in that game I think yep still don't like the game nope it doesn't make it fun I think that's one of the best integrations of theme that we've seen in a pinball machine certainly up there for me and unfortunately I think the gameplay falls flat in lots of ways and part of it is I think layout makes the game a bit uncontrollable and goofy and weird and just lends to breaking a lot, which is unfortunate. And things like magnet slings, which are a joke and just kind of a sideshow. But it's too bad because I think the game is fun and sounds interesting, but from a scoring standpoint and the satisfaction you get from achieving things in that game, it's not very high on my list. It's a beautiful game to look at. You're right, those magnet slings are terrible. The only people I know who love Ghostbusters are people who actually paid for Ghostbusters.
    52:47
    All right, favorite Kaylee moment. This came from Josh Sharp. He said, IFPA number nine in Seattle, you and Donovan Stepp going at it on Spider-Man. Explain what you did there. Yeah, Donovan Stepp, he's a good friend. I love him, but I had to take him down in one of the most annoying ways possible.
    53:07
    I've heard it referred to as doing the Kaylee thing. I'll take that. Yeah, we're playing Spider-Man, game nine. I seem to go to game nine a lot in IFPA, which for those that don't know the format, You kind of play six games. If you get tied, you go to a sudden death of two out of three. Therefore, game nine being you're both tied up, and that's for all the marbles. And, yeah, me and Donovan end up on Spider-Man. And when you really need a win on Spider-Man, you know, and you can shoot some shots, shooting that left orbit is kind of where it's at if you can live trap balls. So kind of how that works is you get yourself into any multi-ball. You put as many balls as you can on left flipper. You put a ball on the right flipper. You shoot that left orbit for the spinner. Ball goes into the pops. It comes up to the upper flipper. You don't flip with that flipper. It comes down. You live trap it on the right. Now you're back to one ball on the right, balls on the left. And you do that over and over and over and over and over again. What that does is the spinner can be pretty valuable in that game. If you're using your ball save time to hit the lock target, that's how the value of the spinner is built, so it's more valuable. You're getting bonus acts from rollovers. You're getting non-trivial points from pop bumpers. And in almost every multiball there, especially the Doc Ock modes, you're also getting little mini-pity jackpots up that left orbit. So that was my strategy going into play with Donovan. I'm going to left orbit all day and put up a really solid score with that. So Donovan played his ball one. My ball one, I got myself into Doc Ock. I can't remember if I stacked it with Black Suit or not. I started shooting that left orbit and probably shot it for 20 minutes or a half hour, which in competition is forever. and at some point in that ball, lost my one ball on the right, so I had my two to three balls on the left, attempted to cradle separate, and we realized that the transistor for the left flipper had blown on the driver board because I'd been holding that flipper trapped for so long without deactivating the switch and back on again, and all the balls dumped into the drain. So in the middle of the night after this game had gone way too long already and this round was already pressing things into midnight or one o'clock in the morning, We then had to get a ruling, which was, well, we're going to try and fix the game and transfer a driver board from something else and give compensation balls and all that. And, you know, we get something, I think, out of a Stern NBA, toss it in there. It works. Just gives me a look like don't blow the transistor again or else the game's getting thrown out and you're already up by 100 million on Spider-Man. And so what do I do? I proceed to try and do the same thing. And, of course, I mean, you know, but every couple shots, juggle the balls on the left a little bit. Let that flipper cool down and work it. Give it a second. So, yeah, Donovan was not very happy about that level of chopping wood and boredom, I think, from his perspective.
    55:52
    But I sure had fun. The Northwest Championships, something you and Eden Stam used to look after. I know Raymond and Jermaine are looking after it now. For the longest time, we loved going to pinball events. We had our favorites, things like Papa, a bunch of other tournaments,
    56:10
    It Never Drains, all sorts of great events. And we always thought of Northwest as our way of kind of giving back to the tournament pinball community. It was doing our part. It was putting on an event that we felt was world-class, where we aspired to be the events that we felt were the best, and put on an event in the way that we liked to do it. So, yeah, Northwest, always a great bank of games, great tournaments. Yeah, a bunch of the Seattle guys are kind of running it now. Eden and I are more kind of at the tournament director advisor level these days because when I was in Europe, it just wasn't possible to run that anymore. And, yeah, they've got a lineup of games. It's a pump and dump, Herb style. You can choose your games, get your best scores, have a great Papa style finals of four-player groups playing across games for the win. It's been a great event. It gets big prize pools, a lot of set stake, whopper points, all that fun stuff. And above all, it's always really fun. We've seen Deadpool now with Stern. I assume you've seen a few exploits on that already. I haven't watched any of the gameplay. I've looked at the play field, and I guess I have my one comment looking at it. I don't like to judge games before I play it, but the pinball industry does not have a good track record with having weird ramps that do not have direct access from the ball being shot at them. So I want to see how Deadpool holds up after being on location for a month or even fresh out of the box and the ball shooting around that little crooked orbit on the right and going up that ramp in the back of the play field. And when you hit that shot in a way that you would expect if that ball makes the ramp 90% of the time. So that's what I want to know. Sure, with a fresh coil, it's going to be fine. I wonder that, too. I wonder, will it rattle around? The question is, will it? I mean, 50% of Avengers I played out of the box, the Black Widow ramp was not makeable, and that was a direct shock in the flipper. It just killed so much speed, and it was so particular about the way that thing was bolted to the playfield that that ramp was essentially broken on most games for me. So I'm super excited that they did something really unique with that playfield, and I'm really hoping it works.
    58:25
    Well, I'll believe it when I see it. but yeah, it does look like it's more makeable. All right, Kaylee, we've heard some of the things you like, some of the things you don't like. We've heard the formats you like. Give me your dream three-game lineup. I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to choose the games that's the wet dream of every European tournament player on the universe in competitive pinball. We're going to pick The Shadow. We're going to pick Indy 500 and Dirty Harry. for some reason those games which all have upper right third flippers is what i always feel like is like it's my interpretation of what europe thinks high-end pinball should be played on and i would agree i think i think they are fantastic games i own all three they're all in my house and i've just moved into a new apartment and they're all going to be side by side because who doesn't want the European lineup? For the longest time, any time I go to a European tournament, it seemed like those games ended up in the lineup or in the bank. I think it's mainly because just in that Williams era, so many games were shipped to Europe. That was the heyday of shipping games to Europe, was mid-'90s DMV stuff. And for whatever reason, those runs of games I think were shipped a lot there, and so they happened to be a lot around. So I think it's more of a volume thing, but you end up getting pitted head-to-head against any European player, and don't think that they won't know how to play those games if you're picking. See, now, I haven't played much on Indy 500. I like the game a lot. There aren't any around here, so I don't get that much time on it. Well, here's the quick breakdown of strategy on those games. Oh, good. Go, go, go. Yeah, let's do this. Shadow. I can't hit the loop. Left orbit. I can't hit that loop. Loop combo. I can't do it. All there is destroy all, take names. Done. One sentence. I agree. Dirty Harry. Multiball grind modes. Okay. and roll in your playfield multiplier on a max left ramp, and you're done, which is very hard to send them done.
    60:27
    And what do we got left? We got Indy 500. So that's all about grinding out the main multiball in that game. But if you can figure out the exploit, you can stack it with Turbo Boost. What? And then every single jackpot is a super, and I'm not going to say how to do it. So that's everybody's homework. So now, oh, that's cool, Kaylee. And this is legit. This isn't you trying to get it out of a bank. This is legit. Okay. Yeah, that's one of the ones in the back pocket, and everybody's got to figure it out for themselves. But you can stack Turbo Boost, which is big points for shooting the turbo, and the regular multiball, which is big points for shooting ramps. You stack them together, and all of a sudden the ramps are lit for jackpots like normal, the turbo's lit for turbo jacks like normal, but the turbo's also lit for regular multiball supers all the time. Okay, I'm starting to tilt for him on this. People are going to hear this and go, what? So it's going on tilt forums. We've got to figure it out. But without saying the games, how many of these games, like Indy 500, do you have in your back pocket where there are a few other exploits that you haven't seen yet? No, this is a don't ask, don't tell situation. Well, there's got to be more than one. It will remain a mystery. It's greater than zero, and it's less than 100. I'm scared. But you know what? skill alone makes you one of the top players. This is just a bonus, and it's been a lot of fun talking to you today.
    61:50
    Absolutely. Stay out west. Don't come my way. We'll meet up at Pinberg and Papa when it comes back. That's where I'll take the beating. You do your thing. I'll do my little grind out and pump and dumps and pay for my wins, all that kind of crap. All right? You do it the legitimate way, and I wish you the best of luck. Hey, everybody earns it. Everybody earns it. Thanks, and thanks for having me on. Take care.
    62:14
    Kaylee George, this has been the 150th Pinball Profile. You can find our group on Facebook. We're also on Twitter at pinballprofile, email us pinballprofile at gmail.com, and please subscribe on either iTunes Stitcher or Google Play. I'm Jeff Teolas. Yeah, hashtag like and subscribe. Try to understand. Try, try, try to understand.
    62:39
    He's a magic man, Mama. I'm a magic man