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Episode 10 - San Francisco City Champ

Do or Die Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·54m 36s·analyzed·Jul 1, 2019
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Raymond Davidson's tournament recap from San Francisco City Champ pinball competition.

Summary

Raymond Davidson narrates his experience competing in the City Champ tournament in San Francisco, a 12-round card format event with 84 players. He details his gameplay and strategy across individual machines during day one qualifying (finishing 2nd seed) and day two quarterfinals, discussing rule knowledge, machine-specific tactics, and competitive dynamics.

Key Claims

  • City Champ is a 12-round tournament where each round consists of one game, with top 28 of 84 players advancing to day two

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson describing the tournament format at the opening of the podcast

  • The games in City Champ are selected randomly using Match Play software with some balancing to avoid repetition

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson explaining tournament game selection process

  • 8 Ball Deluxe at this venue was unforgiving and floaty, making it difficult to hit shots

    medium confidence · Raymond's personal experience playing the machine; floatiness could be venue-specific condition

  • Tales of the Arabian Nights had an extremely sensitive tilt bob, set nearly at the ring, which was adjusted after Raymond's game

    high confidence · Raymond describing the machine condition and subsequent TD adjustment

  • Brian O'Neill recently finished second at Pinball Fantastic tournament and performed well at City Champ

    medium confidence · Raymond mentioning Brian O'Neill's recent tournament results; stated with some uncertainty about exact spelling

  • Raymond secured 2nd seed after day one qualifying, locking in a bye and favorable game selection for finals

    high confidence · Raymond stating his final position after 12 qualifying rounds

  • Pirates of the Caribbean (Jersey Jack) code 1.0 doesn't exist yet; the tournament was on an earlier ROM revision

    high confidence · Raymond discovering discrepancy between Tilt Forums guide (for code 1.0) and actual code running at venue

  • The plunder shot on Pirates of the Caribbean appeared to be turned all the way down during this tournament, as nobody hit it

    medium confidence · Raymond's observation during his Pirates game; could be setting-dependent

Notable Quotes

  • “I could not hit a single shot. It was just like slow motion, and I'd flip at the left orbit, and I'd hit the drop target, or it was just all over the place.”

    Raymond Davidson @ early in content, describing 8 Ball Deluxe — Illustrates the floaty machine condition that affected his early game performance

  • “The punishment for using the upper flipper is death, so what could be any worse, right, if I just don't flip?”

    Raymond Davidson @ 8 Ball Deluxe section — Shows his adaptive strategy to a problematic machine condition

  • “I was on pins and needles now.”

    Raymond Davidson @ Tales of the Arabian Nights section — Describes the mental pressure of playing on an overly-sensitive tilt machine

  • “You've got to be able to hit the shots that are worth points, so that was a lesson in game knowledge.”

    Raymond Davidson @ Spin Out section — Key insight about the importance of rule knowledge vs. raw pinball skill

  • “It's kind of like Iron Maiden, where there's kind of points around every corner, and it just... how good your game is is kind of the sum of all of your opportunities.”

    Raymond Davidson @ Guardians of the Galaxy section — Describes his philosophy on why he loves Guardians as a tournament game

  • “Why did you go for this or that? ...Well, I just sort of like Groot and Quill. It kind of a good combination, especially if you can get on ball one and hold that Quill bonus for balls two and three because that can be massive, right?”

    Raymond Davidson (quoting himself in conversation with Eric Wurtenberger) @ Guardians of the Galaxy section — Shows collaborative, friendly competitive culture where players share strategy insights

  • “The way it works is you spell pirate, and the center button changes what award pirate will give you, and then you hit the pirate target to give that award.”

    Raymond Davidson @ Pirates of the Caribbean section — Technical explanation of Super X mechanics on Pirates

Entities

Raymond DavidsonpersonCity ChampeventAndre MasenkovpersonBrian O'NeillpersonEric WurtenbergerpersonBowen CairnspersonJosh Sharpperson8 Ball DeluxegameTales of the Arabian Nightsgame

Signals

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Raymond Davidson secured 2nd seed at City Champ qualifying with strong card-format performance across 12 games, then advanced through quarterfinals

    high · Raymond explicitly states he 'ended up locking in second seed pretty solidly' after day one, with Andre Masenkov securing top seed

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Brian O'Neill identified as rising competitive threat with recent strong finishes at multiple tournaments

    medium · 'This guy named I think Brian O'Neill, because he's on a tear lately. I think he just got second at the Pinball Fantastic tournament'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Rule knowledge and game-specific strategy proven critical to tournament success; Raymond finished 4th on Spin Out due to initial lack of rule knowledge despite strong baseline skills

    high · Raymond demonstrates poor performance on Spin Out and explicitly concludes 'You've got to be able to hit the shots that are worth points, so that was a lesson in game knowledge'

  • ?

    venue_signal: City Champ venue at Free Gold Watch had notable machine setup variations: 8 Ball Deluxe unusually floaty, Tales of the Arabian Nights tilt extremely sensitive (nearly at ring), Funhouse tight tilt

    high · Multiple detailed accounts of machine conditions and TD adjustments made during tournament

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Raymond notes design patterns across EM vs. modern games: EMs like Wizard and Captain Fantastic tend to concentrate points in bonus, while modern games like Guardians distribute points throughout playfield

    medium · 'Wizard actually, because the hole gives you 3,000 points and bonus advance, that 3,000 actually can be a deciding factor' and 'It's kind of like Iron Maiden, where there's kind of points around every corner'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.164

0:00
Welcome to Do or Die, a podcast about competitive pinball. I'm your host, Raymond Davidson, here to help you stay up to date on the latest strategies, tournaments, and happenings in the competitive pinball world, while also sharing direct stories of me as I go forth on my pinball tournament adventures.
0:30
Welcome back to another episode of Do or Die Pinball Podcast. This is episode 10, San Francisco City Champ. I think that is actually the official name of the tournament, San Francisco City Champ. So it's not the San Francisco City Championships or Pinball Championships of San Francisco. No, no, no. This is City Champ. So let's dive right in, shall we? It's a 12-round tournament, but each round only consists of one game. But, you know, there's 12 of them throughout the day. So you get plenty of time to play pinball, and the top 28 out of 84 players move on to day two. And in the finals, it's just your standard group play finals where there's groups of four, and you play four games with scoring, and the top two from each group move on, and then you repeat the process until you're down to one winner. One San Francisco City Champ. So the 12 games that you get to play are decided totally at random using the Match Play software. There might be some balancing to try to make sure you don't play the same one too many times in a row, but as you'll see, that didn't seem to help. But anyway, the first game that I played was 8 Ball Deluxe. so I've just got there 10 in the morning, kind of tired ready for some pinball and I'm like, alright, what's the first game we're going to play? and it's 8 Ball Deluxe, and I'm like, great an unforgiving classic that I need to be on my toes and make sure my slap saves are working and everything, and well, I stood up to the machine and man, the first thing I noticed was it was so floaty, I could not hit a single shot. It was just like slow motion, and I'd flip at the left orbit, and I'd hit the drop target, or it was just all over the place. So ball one, basically nothing happened, but I was able to nudge it a little bit, so I kept that in the back of my head, so on future balls I could maybe nudge it a little bit. and ball two, I was doing okay, but then I used the upper flipper and shot it directly into the out lane. Or maybe it might have bank shot it into the left out lane, but either way, it was upper flipper, out lane, and that was, I felt pretty silly. I quickly learned from my mistake, and on ball three, I did not use the upper flipper at all. I just sort of let it fall down. So I figured, well, the punishment for using the upper flipper is death, so what could be any worse, right, if I just don't flip? And luckily, it kind of came down to the left flipper, not for an easy catch, but for at least flipper contact. So I was able to at least do something with it. And so I basically employed that strategy and was able to manage that and got some good points. I got some left orbits, got some balls down, some multipliers, ended up getting enough points for second place on that game. So, you know, I was in last place going into ball three, so I was, you know, I really needed something on the board. But luckily, through the power of not using the upper flipper, I managed to get more flips, which led to more points. So, start off the day with five points for second place, and now I get to play Tales of the Arabian Nights and man, this thing I don't know, I haven't really played it in a tournament very much just because it's kind of a bad game like, let's be honest but, you know, I'm like, alright, well I guess we'll go for Genie, because that's what you do you go for the Genie to get your Genie multiball it also starts modes, and also you'll hit the lamp you know, on your way up to the Genie and on ball one I noticed that the lamp it spun like crazy just one nick off of it and it just like tons of spins so with that in mind I was like okay I guess I'm just going to go lamp all day because lightning lamp is just going to be worth an obscene amount of points but I'll also take my multi ball if it comes but I ended up tilting ball one without any real warnings. I don't even know how it happened, and I am not known for sort of flipping hard or accumulating dangers, but apparently it was so sensitive that just from the little micro kind of movements I might have done instinctually was enough to just tilt it, and so that was like, holy crap. Alright, I'm going to play on pins and needles now. I did have them look at the tilt bob, and they said that it was functioning correctly, but it was basically as close to the ring as you could possibly get. They ended up adjusting it afterwards, luckily, so that future players did not have quite as bad of a time. But, you know, that didn't affect me. I had to play on pins and needles. So, ball three, I ended up, I was down by like a million points. but the game in its infinite wisdom does not show you your total bonus on the instant info. So this was like a real puzzle. I was like, man, I only need a million points. I have a bunch of lamp spins, but I don't know how many 2x shots I need. And so I ended up, I had all my locks lit, so I was at this weird juncture where I only needed a million points, but I had, you know, three shots to multiball. I ended up going for the lock on the left orbit with the thinking that if I miss early it'll hit the orb and that'll give me a 2x which is what I wanted but I ended up hitting the lock which I thought was good and then I realized that there were balls in the lock which I should have taken into account to make my decision because on Tales of the Arabian Nights there's a physical ball lock and if there's locks in there it has to spit one back out at you after you lock one and so I was like, oh crap, alright, be nice, be nice. Luckily, the lock kick out actually went straight to the flipper, so it was beautiful.

  • “I had no idea you could do Add-A-Ball. But it worked out because Super X gave me way more points than I think adding a ball would have.”

    Raymond Davidson @ Pirates of the Caribbean section — Reveals knowledge gaps even among experienced players in tournaments

  • “The tilt was pretty tight, although it wasn't like Tales of the Arabian Nights tight, so you could move it, but you'd get warnings.”

    Raymond Davidson @ Funhouse section — Comparative assessment of machine conditions across the venue

  • “I ended up locking in second seed pretty solidly, which meant, you know, I got good game choice in the finals, and I got a nice bye, and feeling pretty good.”

    Raymond Davidson @ end of day one section — Strategic importance of seeding in tournament structure

    • Cactus Canyon
    game
    Twilight Zonegame
    Funhousegame
    Lady Luckgame
    Alien Stargame
    Wizardgame
    Spin Outgame
    Guardians of the Galaxygame
    Pirates of the Caribbeangame
    Jet Spingame
    Free Gold Watchvenue
    Match Playproduct
    Tilt Forumsorganization
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Do or Die Pinball Podcastcontent
  • ?

    technology_signal: Pirates of the Caribbean running on older ROM revision than latest code (1.0); Tilt Forums guides may be based on code that doesn't yet exist in tournament circulation

    high · Raymond discovers character abilities from Tilt Forums guide don't match actual game: 'the code we were on... All my character did was allow me not to get plundered'

  • ?

    community_signal: Friendly, knowledge-sharing culture among competitive players; Eric Wurtenberger asked Raymond about strategy choices post-game and exchanged insights

    medium · 'He was asking me like why did you go for this or that? And you know I told him like, well, I just sort of like Groot and Quill... And he was... asking some really kind words'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Venue-specific techniques persist across seasons (Lady Luck right flipper backhand at Free Gold Watch used same setup year-over-year); players benefit from local knowledge

    high · 'If you are in Free Gold Watch and play Lady Luck in San Francisco make sure you try that right flipper spinner backhand... last year they had the same Lady Luck set up in the same place the same way'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Tournament directors making real-time adjustments to machine settings (Tales of the Arabian Nights tilt bob adjusted mid-tournament) and handling ball-stuck situations

    high · Raymond calls TD about stuck ball during Tales multiball; TD adjusts tilt after his game: 'They ended up adjusting it afterwards, luckily, so that future players did not have quite as bad of a time'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Multi-ball timing and mother load mechanics in Cactus Canyon: delaying mother load shot collection increases value; jackpot progression toward mother load multiplier

    medium · Raymond theorizes on Cactus Canyon: 'I think the longer you wait before cashing in your mother load, it starts getting exponentially higher. So you almost want to avoid the mother load shot if you can.'

  • ?

    content_signal: Do or Die Pinball Podcast episode structure: detailed machine-by-machine tournament recap with strategy analysis, personal anecdotes, and rule explanations for listener education

    high · Entire episode format is detailed narrative breakdown of each game played, strategies employed, and lessons learned

    • 7:35
    And then I got my second lock, third lock, started multiball, but then, during my multiball, a ball got stuck on the inlane, just sitting right above the inlane. So I had a ball trapped on the right, and the ball stuck on the left inlane, and with the hair trigger tilt, I still hadn't won at this point. I was still down about like 200,000 points. And so I called the TD and I said, look, I don't care if I drain this, but I would like you to try to free this. I don't want to tilt. And somehow, while they were fiddling with the lockdown bar, it ended up freeing itself. So it was a little nerve-wracking because they were kind of moving it a little bit as they were tightening the lockdown bar. But I lost my multi-ball, but it didn't matter. I had enough points in bonus. So at that point, I just sort of flailed around until I drained and then won the game. But it was a little scary because if the TDs would have tilted me, I would have had to play a comp ball and needed to get a skill shot's worth of points on that comp ball. Whereas if I would have just not called a TD and just drained, well, actually, that wouldn't have worked either, right? because the ball would still have been stuck. There's no way the TD could have guaranteed my bonus points, you know, had they had tilted trying to free it. So it's kind of an interesting conundrum, made worse by the fact that that game doesn't show your bonus total. But hey, that's pinball, you know, you gotta adapt to the weird stuff it gives you.
    9:15
    Anyway, I managed to survive that and took first on that. So now I've got 12 points after two games, and I get drawn on Cactus Canyon I don't think I've ever really played this game in a tournament setting before it's been at Papa a few times so I might have played a ticket or two on it but I don't know if I've ever played in a match play scenario so I'm just thinking to myself well the only thing I know about this game is multiball so I guess I'll just go for that and well after two balls I had two locks but no points and then on ball three I managed to hit my third lock and played an okay multi-ball but I fell like a jackpot short of getting second. I ended up getting third. I think first place had like a really big score but I managed to pull out a third so just by starting my multi-ball because, you know, usually there's the one player in the group that doesn't start multi-ball so if you can at least start multi-ball you'll probably get a point. and so that's, you know, I survived with a third.
    10:22
    That game is actually pretty sweet. I really like how the ramps feel. There's like three ramps. There's the left ramp, the center ramp, and then the right ramp and I just, I love that smooth right ramp shot. Oh man, I wish they made more Cactus Canyons. The game is a really, really good shooter.
    10:40
    Anyway, the next game I got pulled on was Twilight Zone and on Twilight Zone you know how it is. You just sort of play Powerball Mania over and over and over again. Left ramp, right ramp, gumball.
    10:57
    Left ramp, right ramp, lock a ball. You go in between regular multiball and Powerball Mania. But I was lucky enough to be gifted the Powerball for me when I stepped up and converted it into 200 million. All I had to do was dead pass, shoot the right orbit, I was watching the scoop kick out. It seemed pretty friendly for everybody. So you just like, you know, it was player's choice. You could dead pass to the left flipper or you can live catch on the right and put it on your right flipper. But with the Powerball, of course, you want it to go in the right orbit. So I just dead flipped and nailed it. And yeah, that was a good game. Basically, after I came out of that Powerball mania, I just went right back towards my next one and just sort of kept grinding those ramps and ended up with like 800 million which was enough to win first place on that game and so now I've got a first a second, a third oh, two firsts I guess so two firsts, a second and a third and now we play Funhaus and the first thing I noticed was the tilt was pretty tight, although it wasn't like Tales of the Raby Knight tight, so you could move it, but you'd get warnings. It sometimes goes straight to tilt if you moved it too hard.
    12:26
    And I managed to actually start a multiball with a double danger save, but did not get any jackpots from it. but my main score was from just getting the quick multiball millions and it actually held up and I got like second place just from kind of the flail points and maybe a quick multiball jackpot and a million point shot from the mirror actually what happened was I lit my million from the mirror with multiball lit and on Funhaus if you have multiball lit it automatically gives you a million, but if you have the million lit and you start multi-ball, then it gives you two million. So that was kind of nice, and that's kind of where my points came from, because I could not hit that trapdoor to get me any jackpots. But I managed to get second, which was nice. I did tilt ball three when I really shouldn't have, and it almost cost me a point, because I had about 400,000 in bonus. On Funhaus, all your bonus points come from Rudy hits. So the Rudy hits you hit on ball one is worth triple basically Every hit on ball one is 150K On ball two every Rudy hit is 100K and on ball three every hit is 50K assuming you don tilt So in those really tight funhouse games, which there tend to be a lot of, really, just know your Rudy hits matter and can often mean the difference between a third and a fourth. so I ended up with a second and now I get to play Lady Luck which is this valley solid state game where there's a spinner on the right side and there's a captive ball on the left side and that's all that matters because the spinner is worth 2000 a spin and the captive ball it raises the spinner value up 2000 a time until you get it lit for the max value which is I think 10,000 a spin something very crucial on this game is the setting on whether or not the spinner value will hold throughout the game. Now, this one was set so the spinner value did hold, so whatever you raised your spinner value to on ball one, it would stay at that value, which meant always go for the captive ball on ball one, and then ball two, maybe do a mixture of the two, and then ball three is just cash in spinner all day.
    14:54
    I ended up getting the spins. on that one it was weird actually the left flipper when it hit the spinner it kind of lost a lot of its momentum but the right flipper had this really bizarre backhand that would just sail up there like super fast and give you a ton of spins and I only really remembered to try the backhand because last year they had the same Lady Luck set up in the same place the same way and so if you are in Free Gold Watch and play Lady Luck in San Francisco make sure you try that right flipper spinner backhand. It will give you all of the points. There's also another thing you can do on Lady Luck, which is start 10x scoring, which I'll get into later, but it's sort of a high-risk, high-reward thing where you can end up getting the spinner lit for, you know, 100k a spin, which would be ridiculous.
    15:51
    But anyway, so I got a first on that one, and then I got pulled on Cactus Canyon again. You might even say Cactus Canyon continued, but I had a very similar game as the last time, where basically two balls locked, no points, going into ball three, and managed to start multiball and get third place again. My main problem was once I got out of multiball, I didn't really know what to do. Um, I know you can shoot bonus X on the left orbit, um, or go for Stampede, which is, uh, like, total annihilation. Uh, I think that's probably what you're supposed to do, is go for Stampede. Uh, it's the safest way to get to another multiball. Um, you could also just relock balls and go for that again. Um, yeah, I don't know, I need to put some more, some more time into Cactus Canyon, clearly. But, you know, I avoided the last place. that's really all you need to do just avoid less places and get some firsts and seconds sprinkled in there, so I'm still looking good and then we go play Alien Star and I got not a whole lot on balls 1 and 2 in fact ball 1 ended by me shooting the right in lane, you know, shatzing the right in lane because when you go over the right in lane it lights your spinner for 10,000 a spin which is basically all the points in the game because you could have a good ball and get maybe 12,000 in bonus. It's so absurd that the spinner lights for 10,000 a spin.
    17:30
    But yeah, I shat the right in lane and it went right to the out lane. So after ball one I was like well, I'm not going to do that again. At least not unless there's some weird circumstances but basically on ball two I was like okay I guess I'll shoot the alien targets on the right, because when you spell alien, it lights multiball on the left scoop. And when you start multiball, you get 2x scoring, 3x scoring, or 5x scoring, depending on, there's like a light in front of the scoop that tells you how many x's you're going to get, and that changes with the spinner, but it's pretty random, and honestly, I usually just take the 2x, just because there's no guarantee that you'll be able to upgrade it, and it's a multi-ball and then during multi-ball you can shat the right in lane with impunity because you're in multi-ball and that's basically what I did on ball three, I started my multi-ball got some spinner rips got some double 10,000 so 20,000 a spin spinner rips and ended up with 1.7 million which got second place because this guy named I think Brian O'Neill just kind of crushed it and got like two and a half. I'd say this guy, Brian O'Neill, because he's on a terror lately. I think he just got second at the Pentastic tournament, and he did pretty well at City Champ as well, which we'll get into as the podcast develops. But the next game after my second on Alien Star was Wizard, which is an EM where the skill shot gives you so many points that you really, really need to find it.
    19:15
    And luckily, on this one, I employed the Josh Sharp strategy of ball one, full plunge. If it goes into the skill shot, you're golden. If not, then you start adjusting from there. But why try a weird spot on the plunger if a full plunge will just work? And that's what I did, and it worked. So I was able to get my skill shot pretty much every ball with a full plunge. And, you know, that's like a free win against someone who doesn't get the skill shot every ball.
    19:46
    And the flippers on the wizard I was noticing were in this weird, like, very shallow position. And it took some getting used to. I drained a couple balls just kind of fumbling it around. But on ball five, once I had kind of settled in and figured out how they worked, I was able to just kind of crush it, like max the bonus and that sort of thing, and got first place on ball five. But up until ball five, I was in third or second, and so I needed that ball five. But luckily I had been, you know, the first few balls I had been kind of feeling the shots out, and I figured out that you can shats the ball from the left flipper to the right flipper, which is crucial on Wizard because when the ball is on the left flipper, there is nothing to shoot at. You can technically shoot the 5K target, but it's not advised. So you really just want to figure out how to get the ball to the right flipper. And usually an alley pass shats works well, and I was able to get that down and was able to basically alley pass and shoot it up top all day. The general strategy for Wizard, I find myself, you basically up top all day until you get to maybe 10k bonus or so and then at that point you want to hit that lower left stand up target the lower left stand up target will flip the double bonus flag so that your next trip up top will give you double bonus the reason I say about 10,000 is you want to make sure you get some points on the table you don't want to die right away going for the double bonus when you don't have that much bonus to double. So, you know, you get like 10k bonus, and then now you're ready to shoot the stand-up target, which also gives you a bonus advance, and then shoot it up top, and then hopefully you get the hole, and you get three bonus advances, and now you're at 14k bonus, and then it gives you double bonus, and now you're, you know, you got your max bonus, and you're doing good. So, that's kind of the strategy on Wizard I like to do. Really great EM.
    21:52
    The only problem it has, well, it doesn't have as big problem. It kind of suffers from Captain Fantastic Syndrome where all the points are in bonus, so if you max out your bonus, there's not much left. But Wizard actually, because the whole gives you 3,000 points and bonus advance, that 3,000 actually can be a deciding factor on who wins.
    22:16
    Really good tournament game. Love Wizard. So the next game after winning that one was and by the way, there is a prize for top qualifier, so I was really, you know, I was gunning for that. I wanted to get that $100,
    22:31
    but more importantly, top eight all got a buy, so I really just wanted to get top eight, but the next game was Spin Out, which I had never seen or heard of before, and I had no idea what I was doing, and watching the other players did not help. It was just scoring random, seemingly random, 1,000 points here, 1,000 points there.
    22:53
    I was totally at a loss. And so when it was my turn to play, I saw these roto targets and I kept hitting them because sometimes that's the thing to do on those games that have roto targets. But not on this game. The roto targets did nothing. And I slowly eventually figured it out. But it was ball five and it was far too late. I ended up playing it after the tournament knowing how to play. and ended up getting more points than anyone in that group on my after game. But that's not really here nor there. It's pretty common to have a good game afterwards. But more importantly, I learned, oh, you shoot up top all day because the rollovers light your orbit shots for 5,000. And so once you get your orbit shots lit for 5,000, you just shoot the orbits over and over again, and you can really crush it. So it's pretty crazy. I ended up getting fourth place on that game. and it just goes to show you how much rule knowledge has an effect, because, you know, people say, actually, someone made a comment, they're like, yeah, but Raymond is Raymond, it doesn't matter if he doesn't know the game, he'll still, with his pinball skills, be able to win. Well, not true. I was shooting stuff worth zero points, and, you know, you've got to be able to hit the shots that are worth points, so that was a lesson in game knowledge. I guess I should have I don't know like the rule card didn't help it was like shoot A B C D for special and I'm like well I don't really want a special so what do I do and yeah so anyway lesson learned I know how to play spin out now you shoot the lanes up top to light the other lanes and then you collect over and over again so got a fourth on that but now I get to bounce back and play probably my favorite game of the whole collection, Guardians of the Galaxy. I had a great finals last year against Bowen Cairns on Guardians, and I just love that game because there's just so many point opportunities available to you. It's kind of like Iron Maiden, where there's kind of points around every corner, and it just... how good your game is is kind of the sum of all of your opportunities.
    25:11
    And so, you know, I started out with my usual choose Quill's quest and then Yaka arrow after that, that sort of thing. And I don't exactly remember how I set this up, but it's something that I try to do if the opportunity presents itself, which is playing Quill's quest with Groot. Now normally you want to play Yaka arrow second because the Groot locks feed to the bumpers and then give you Yakaero progress and so on. But on this game, because it was on virtual locks, Yakaero is still good, but it's not as great because you're not feeding to the bumpers. So I think what I did was I chose Quill's Quest again before starting Groot Multiball.
    26:06
    And man, Quill's Quest with Groot is great value, especially if you finish it. Because in Groot, all the shots are jackpots, but in Quill's Quest, like, half the shots are jackpots, and so if you're double playfield, then all your Quill shots are getting doubled, and everything's just going great.
    26:23
    And I ended up finishing with about 600 million with a cherry bomb, and I got to play against Eric Wurtenberger, I think is his name. Sorry if I botched that, but really nice guy. first time I had met him and he was telling me he was actually fourth player and he was you know trying to catch my score and some other scores and he was on his way you know he started his Groot and he had a really good Groot he passed all the other players except for me and then he was going after me next and you know he said some really kind words and was like you know asked me like why did you go for this or that and you know told them like, well, I just sort of like Groot and Quill. It kind of a good combination especially if you can get on ball one and hold that quill bonus for balls two and three because that can be massive right And you know he had some nice things to say about me It was like... But he also saw that there was an opportunity where he could have, you know, passed me if he got to his cherry bomb, which he almost was on his way to. So it was a really nice experience. And I ended up getting first on Guardians. and then for the final game I got to play Cactus Canyon for the third time. Part three.
    27:51
    But this time I actually, I think I won the game. It was a little sketchy though. I double-dangered to start my multiball but then had a really good multiball with some motherloads and was able to basically, I think I got like a five million motherload or two and a half million motherload I was slowly starting to figure out how that game works, and I think it's just your jackpots build towards your mother load, and then any time you complete maybe a set of jackpots, it multiplies the mother load. It might be similar to High Roller Casino. I'm not sure. So if you know more about how that multi-ball works, I would love to find out. You can mail the podcast, doordiepinballpodcast at gmail.com, or just hit me up in person.
    28:41
    But yeah, it was, you know, multiball. I was thinking multiball could be worth a lot, but my last couple games it never was. So I must have done something differently this multiball where my mother load was just worth a lot more. So I think the longer you wait before cashing in your mother load, it starts getting exponentially higher. So you almost want to avoid the mother load shot if you can. At least that's sort of what I was finding out as I was playing. So anyway, unfortunately, top seed was locked in by Andre Masenkov. He had a huge lead on everybody, so there was no way to take number one seed, but I ended up locking in second seed pretty solidly, which meant, you know, I got good game choice in the finals, and I got a nice bye, and feeling pretty good. So now I get to start day two, and in the quarterfinals, my first game I get to play was Pirates of the Caribbean, Jersey Jack. And, well, I ended up, I didn't know all the latest tricks on that game, so I went to Tilt Forms, and I looked at the guide and saw all the character bonuses, and because I chose the game, I had to go fourth, or actually I chose to go fourth, which is actually opposite of usually when you pick a game you go first, but this time you chose a bank of games and you get to choose position on the first game. And I ended up going fourth, which maybe was a mistake, but because I didn't know, like everyone else had taken all the good characters and I had to go to Tilt Forums and see what characters were available and I saw this one guy who said he can't be plundered and his multiballs are worth like 25% more and his gold is worth like 75% more but he can't start Tartuga Multiball and all this stuff. And I was like, okay, that sounds good because I like gold, I like multiballs and I chose him and it turns out my character basically had no text because the Tilt Forms guide is for code 1.0 which doesn't exist yet and the code we were on all my character did was allow me not to get plundered and let me tell you, nobody ever spun a plunder the entire game. I think it might have been just turned all the way down. So I probably chose the actual worst character I could have but you know that's how that goes I guess. I guess I should be playing more Pirates on location and verifying ROM revisions. But anyway, it came down to ball three as usual, and I was able to start one of my multiballs and actually lined up my Super X, and I had 3X scoring going, and I managed to get almost like 700,000 points on ball three to jump all the way into first. and it was pretty clutch, and I was super happy with it because it's really hard managing that super X. The way it works is you spell pirate, and the center button changes what award pirate will give you, and then you hit the pirate target to give that award, and the first time you do super X, it gives you 2X scoring,
    32:11
    but then your next pirate award can't be super X again, so you have to collect a pirate award for something else, and then your third one can go to Super X for 3X. And it's funny because someone was asking me after the game, like, oh, wow, you chose Super X instead of Add-A-Ball. And honestly, I had no idea you could do Add-A-Ball. But it worked out because Super X gave me way more points than I think adding a ball would have. So, yeah, I don't know how I feel about which award you should go for in Multiball. I guess Add-A-Ball you should probably go for first. but it's just kind of funny that Super X ended up winning the day for me and it basically got me all my points and I got first on the first game and then the second game we played Jet Spin and I pulled a second on that so Jet Spin is this EM game with a roto target that's worth anywhere from 1 to 5,000 and adds between 1 and 5 bonus advances So in reality, it's worth 2,000 to 10,000 points. And I managed to hit it enough times, got some nice little outling bobbles, as I call them, where it's kind of like teetering on the edge of the rail, and you sort of like push upward and kind of jiggle it upward to try to encourage it to stay in. And so I got a couple of those. It had a pretty loose tilt. I don't think anybody tilted it, which was nice. So I got a second on that.
    33:42
    And then we had to play Funhaus. And I started my quick multiball, got a couple of million jackpots, and then drained. Ball two, I did this horrible post pass that missed the hallway shot that sling drained. And then ball three, I shot Rudy to start multiball, and of course it rejected. because that's what Funhaus does apparently where you shoot Rudy in the mouth and he just doesn't take it and it outlaned and I got third. So that kind of sucked. I was a little salty about that. But it was happening to everyone all day so I was due for it I guess.
    34:23
    But anyway I got third on that so I was like now I really need to get second or so on my next game. And the next game was Lady Luck and on ball one I basically was aiming for the captive ball but I was not hitting it, which was sad. I kept missing it. Ball two, it never touched a flipper. Just straight out. And so now I'm going to ball three with basically nothing and it's this perfect doomsday scenario where even if I get last, I can move on unless certain players finish in a certain order, and then I'll be eliminated. And what do you know, stepping up to ball three, the person who I didn't want to win is winning, and the person who I didn't want to get second is getting second. And I'm like, well, okay, I need to not get last.
    35:26
    And so ball three, I just shot the spinner, I ignored the captive ball, and I was actually grinding pretty well. I was on my way, and I got enough points to be ahead of player four, which was Jermaine. And if I got not last, I was guaranteed a tiebreaker. If I could beat either player one or player two, I would be guaranteed to move on. Unfortunately, I fell short of player one and player two, but I had a little bit of lead on Jermaine. However, Jermaine stepped up. He had 8,000 spinner value. So one spinner rip and he would pass me and I'd be eliminated. But when he had the ball on a flipper, he started shooting for the center drop target bank. And the center drop target bank is how you qualify your 10x play field. So you hit the five drop targets and then you hit the star on the left, the star on the right, and it starts like 20 seconds of 10x scoring.
    36:23
    And the reason Jermaine did this was because he needed first. Getting second, third would not advance him. He needed to crush it. So his thinking was, okay, passing Raymond doesn't actually do anything. I need to pass everybody, so I'll go for the 10x. And he tried to shoot the center, and I think it went like center target, sling, out lane, and that was it. so I had new life I was in a tiebreaker because instead of Jermaine just passing me for the heck of it which he could have done if he nailed a spinner but you know it's kind of an interesting predicament right like he had different motives right than I did I needed to knock it last and he needed to win so it worked out in my favor so we played Paragon as the tiebreaker and ball one nobody flipped at all. It was three house balls, or four house, three house balls, right? Three-way tiebreaker, top two advance. But then balls two and three, I was able to basically run the table, you know, got all the drop targets, got the bonus max. I was sitting pretty with like 300,000. And so I had secured my spot into the semifinals with Paragon as the tiebreaker of death.
    37:42
    If you don't know Paragon, basically the key maneuver is either you tap pass from the left flipper to the right in order to hit the inline drops on the left, or if you're not comfortable tap passing with the left flipper, just throwing it back up top can actually be a valid strategy too. Especially if the Paragon is set to in-order Paragon letters, which I believe this one was. So, sometimes people will just throw the ball into the right orbit and hoping to get the scoops up top because both scoops are good value.
    38:15
    I went for the tap pass because this one was really easy to tap pass on. But if you're ever playing a Paragon and you can't get that tap pass down, I would shoot the right orbit. Send it up top, get some points up there. There's some good stuff up there. And if you miss the right orbit, sometimes you'll hit those little drop targets which can give you some nice little pity points. anyway our next game in the semifinals sorry the first game of the semifinals was Iron Maiden so after two balls I had basically nothing going on but I did have all my trooper locks lit which I prioritized on balls one and two because you know I don't the worst thing in Maiden is going into ball three and you're totally in jail right you want to have something you can work towards so on balls 1 and 2, whenever I had the ball in my left flipper, I would try to hit the drop target bank to try to light my trooper locks. And so on ball 3, I had my trooper locks lit, and I managed to start a trooper multi-ball, and I triple-drained.
    39:20
    But, I must have triple-drained so badly that the game felt bad for me and gave me one of the three balls back. I don't even know how that's possible. But it gave me one of them back. Not two, not three, just one of them came back, and so now I'm sitting here, and I'm basically in jail, and I need like maybe 100 million, and I'm like, okay, looking at the playfield, what do I have, what do I have? Okay, I have 2x lit. All right, so I shot, I wanted to try to shoot the right ramp, and then, you know, start 2x scoring, and then shoot the right orbit to collect my tomb treasure, which would have been 15 million times 2, which would have been 30 million, and that would have guaranteed me second place. But I somehow missed, I started 2x, or no, I missed the 2x and somehow cashed in my two more word early. So I got 15 mil, which I was like, oh man, now I need 15 more million to get second. And so I was like, okay, I guess I'll start looping it because with double scoring, the loops can be huge. And so I started that, although that wasn't really working very well, but just by hitting enough of the shots, I had sort of accidentally lit my mode, and I should have been paying more attention, but my mode was Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I was like, oh, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, that's a multiball mode. Let me, let me get that And so I start Rime and I ended up playing it super well getting a lot of jackpots My I love Rime of the Ancient Mariner because the first stage of that the lower left spinner is one of your jackpot shots and that lower left spinner lights your revive outlanes. So you should always go for that because you're getting double value. You're getting Rime jackpots and you're getting revive progress.
    41:13
    And it's even better because if you shoot that spinner and then you time out and, you know, Witness the nightmares of the sea! It will basically relight that left lower spinner again. So you can just kind of grind on that to let you revive and give you jackpots.
    41:32
    And yeah, basically at one point I looked up and saw that I had a power jackpot that was worth enough points to win, and I hit that and walked off and got first place. So, oh man, I love Iron Maiden. There's just always so many opportunities for points.
    41:49
    Um, let's see. Next we played, uh, Wizard again, and, uh, I got my skill shot every time, but I only played, I'd say, Mediocre. Like, I, you know, I didn't suck, but I didn't do great, and I got second place with 97,000, uh, which, you know, was good. but I feel like I squandered a couple of opportunities and I think I even drained one just by fumbling like I drained myself with it a couple times you can't get too cocky you gotta always remember the game is still out to get you so make sure to be able to notice when you're in danger and flip it away you gotta have those control moves, but sometimes you gotta notice and bail on a control move if it's not gonna work. Let's see, next we played Medieval Madness. My strategy for that was, if the ball was on the right flipper, I was gonna shoot the peasant ramp, and if the ball was on the left, I was gonna hit the castle. The reason was, the lock shot, which normally I would go for from the right flipper would only register about one in three times. So I was not going to risk shooting that and not getting credit. So when the ball was on the right flipper, I would shoot the peasant ramp because it's a safe shot to the left flipper, which then lets me shoot the castle. I don't like shooting the castle from the right flipper because it returns in a more unpredictable way, I would say. And also when you hit the peasant ramp four times, it lights peasant madness, which is a free multiball that you can use to hit the castle.
    43:33
    I ended up getting like 20 million, so I kind of did exactly what I wanted to do, which was just get some points on the board, that sort of thing. But a couple other people did it better, and I ended up getting third. So now I'm going into game three with a first, a second, and a third.
    43:52
    And so I just need to basically knock it last on the final game, which was Alien Star. And, well, it wasn't pretty, but the person I needed to beat basically didn't get to flip any of their balls, and I got, like, one sort of half-spinner shot, and that was enough points to get me third place, and let me move on into the finals. The first game of the finals was, once again, Jersey Jack Pirates of the Caribbean. Knowing that I didn't want to pick the same character I did last time because it didn't do anything, I ended up picking this character that gives you five times your skill shot value, just because, once again, all the other good characters were chosen, and, well, I figured, you know, sometimes a close game could come down to skill shots, and, you know, hey, I'll take all the points I can get. It did end up mattering a little bit. I ended up getting third instead of fourth, but if I would have started my Tortuga multiball, I was only like 80,000 away from getting second, but I could not hit that Tortuga multiball shot.
    45:00
    Actually, ball two, I had a couple of times where the ball was on my left flipper and I could have started Tortuga, but instead I just kept shooting the jack shot because it was lit for some mode, but I should have just started Tortuga. I don't know enough about that game, so I was just sort of like, ooh, blinky lights, I should hit them, but they don't really pay off until you get a lot of chapter shots. And it's almost better just to always be in a multi-ball rather than try to pick stuff off in single ball play. At least that's kind of how my experience has been. So that was kind of the beginning of the end for me where I sort of made some mistakes and I kind of got a little frustrated and then I just could never get the ball to settle on my left flipper to hit that Tortuga shot in ball three. So I got third on the first game. Second game we played was Jet Spin, which I just kept getting the worst luck with the center target thing. You know, earlier I mentioned it can be 2,000 all the way up to 10,000, and mine was just always at the minimum. But I ended up getting creative, and what started off after some slap saves that kind of magically found their way into the left 3,000 target, I actually started going for it, because when the ball was on my right flipper, and I could either get 1,000 from the roto target or 3,000 from the left target, I mean, they both seemed just about as easy to hit.
    46:30
    The left target, I was actually having a lot of luck just hitting that. I kind of wish I had just done that from the very beginning. But I ended up getting second place on that. Fell short to Johnny Modica, who had a really good game.
    46:45
    And so, you know, I just needed a few more of those 3,000 targets. I would have been in business. So that was kind of an example of how, you know, no one else was going for that left target because they thought it might be not worth it. But, you know, once I found that shot, it was just as valuable as hitting the roto target. The only exception is if the roto target's on 5,000 or 4,000. But the left target actually had a much safer feed. Sometimes the roto target would go down the middle. So I would say Jetspin, 3,000 target all day.
    47:16
    Funhouse was the next game, and I started quick multi-ball right away and got no jackpots. And then I found myself in the exact spot that I'd never want to be in, which is ball three, no locks, or lock lit, basically. In tournament mode, actually, you might not know this, the clock always resets to 1130 whenever you start a new ball. So even if you've locked two balls and have multi-ball lit, if you drain your next ball, you've got to lock those two balls again. So just beware about that. You don't want to lock two balls and then start getting cute with other stuff. You want to start your multi-ball. So ball three, I needed to lock two balls and start multi-ball, and it didn't happen. I think what happened was I locked one ball, and then I short plunged to try to hit the ramp to feed to my left flipper. And I think I did that, but then I missed my lock shot, and then I just slingshot outland, and that was the end. So it's kind of interesting on Funhaus. what do you do when you lock a ball? Do you short plunge and then shoot the ramp? Do you like short plunge and try to kind of bobble it on your flipper, try to catch it? If you have multi-ball lit, do you full plunge to try to hit Rudy in the mouth from the loop around? I used to be of the camp that if you have multi-ball lit, you should full plunge to try to feed the upper flipper. But I just, I don't think the numbers support that theory. I think you fail far more often in trying to start multi-ball that way, I think it's a lot better to short plunge, shoot the ramp, shoot the lock, and then hit Rudy in the mouth. So I think I've changed my strategy for that just from enough evidence of failing miserably when you full plunge to try to go for the Rudy start. I'll definitely do it if I'm just playing around for fun, just because it's a cool move to do. But I think in tournaments, I think it's just too risky. But regardless, it doesn't matter because I got fourth on Funhaus, And so now I'm playing for second place, and I can't win the tournament anymore. So on Lady Luck, I maxed my spinner on ball one. I just shot nothing but captive ball. So my spinner's lit for 10,000 a spin. And what do you know, on ball two, it never touches my flipper. It does this really weird over-to-the-left outlane area, and that Lady Luck had the loosest tilt in the whole building. But I didn't do a move because it looked like it was going to my inlane. but it just barely hit the top of the left sling and just powered out left it just barely nicked it, it was like this unbelievable thing that I watched happen before my eyes so I should have done something but I would have had to do it at the moment the ball sort of made contact with that left slingshot anyway, ball three it was do or die and if I hit one spinner shot I'm basically in second place and if I miss I'm in fourth place and I got it trapped on the right flipper. I flipped and I missed the spinner. I got it back on the right flipper. I flipped and I actually hit the bottom of my upper right flipper. The most useless upper right flipper in all of existence. The most irrelevant flipper game ever.
    50:28
    Although I will say I saw Johnny and some other people using that upper flipper to... Maybe not Johnny. Who was it? I don't know. I saw some people using the upper flipper to actually make loop shots, which is kind of funny. I didn't even think that that's what that's for, but I guess it is. But yeah, anyway, it hit the bottom of my upper right flipper and just perfect left out lane. It was just not meant to be. You know, it was my fault. I missed it. But it was also the game's fault for being so punishing.
    50:57
    So that was kind of sad, but I ended up taking fourth. Like I said, if I made that spinner shot, it wouldn't have been guaranteed second place, but it would have basically, you know, meant the other players would have had to catch me. and I don't think anyone else had their spinner anywhere near as high value as mine did. So that was kind of a sad end for me, but it was a great end for Brian O'Neill, who took first place. He had played fantastic all day and the day before. Every time I was in a group with him, like that Alien Star group, he was just crushing it. So very well-deserved win by Brian, and then he parlayed that into going to Pintastic this last weekend and got second. So congrats to him. He's going to be jumping up on that circuit.
    51:42
    I hope he goes to Northwest Pinball Championships, which is a circuit event, and I hope you all attend. Shameless plug, I know, but that is happening September 6th through the 8th at the Linwood Bowling Skate. Now you can fly directly into Everett instead of SeaTac and save yourself the 40-minute drive. Anyway, what I was getting at is I hope to see Brian at more tournaments and expect to see him on the Stern Pro Circuit this next March, I assume. And, yeah, he was a great city champ. Congrats again to Brian, and congrats to Johnny Modica, who took second, and congrats to Matthew Peterson from Portland, who took third. That was well played by everybody involved. I had a lot of fun, a lot of clutch, close moments, you know, that Iron Maiden Ball 3, the Pirates Ball 3. The games all played great. They were all functioning, felt good to hit things, and they put real rubber on every flipper before the tournament. I loved it. That was probably the single best thing about that tournament was that they took the time to put real rubber on the flippers. No, I'm just kidding. That's not the single best thing. But it was much appreciated. So thank you so much to all the guys in San Francisco who put on such a great tournament. Thanks to Jared Garvey, who took over as the head tournament director this year after a pair had to leave. I think he moved away. But Jared did a great job filling his place and ran a really smooth tournament. and thanks to also Gene X. Wong and Eric Wengensonger and Andreas, of course, for his wonderful software and Darren Ensley who helped keep the games nice and working.
    53:43
    And yeah, that was all the other volunteers too. Thank you so much, San Francisco, for hosting this wonderful tournament.
    53:52
    And that's it for me today. I don't know what my next tournament is it might be a Seattle Pinball League event in a couple of weeks but I'll definitely get an episode out next time I play some pinball but until then remember to do and don't die alright, see ya
    54:23
    We'll see you next time.