Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • AActivity
  • +Health
  • ?Guide

v0.1.0

← Back to items

INDISC 2023 - The Open IFPA World Championship - Second Round

IE Pinball·video·2h 49m·analyzed·Dec 13, 2023
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.025

TL;DR

INDISC 2023 Second Round: Elite players compete on Congo and Rush with strategic analysis.

Summary

Coverage of INDISC 2023 IFPA World Championship Second Round, featuring competitive pinball gameplay on Congo and Rush. Elite players including Tim Sexon, Andy Bagwell, Jason Zoller, and others compete with commentary on strategy, playfield execution, and tournament structure. Tournament organizers discuss game selection, venue setup, and competitive meta.

Key Claims

  • Congo is an effective tournament game with multiple viable strategies (grey gorilla vs. map strategy)

    high confidence · Commentators discuss Tim Sexon's map strategy leading to skill fire mode as particularly effective for scoring

  • Rush is a difficult setup with zero ball save after missing skill shot

    high confidence · Commentators note Rush's punishing skill shot: 'Once you miss that skill shot, there is zero ball save'

  • Flash Gordon should be mandatory in all IFPA competitions

    low confidence · Opinion expressed by commentator: 'if I took over the championship, the leadership of IFPA, I would make it mandatory that you had Flash Gordon'

  • Top seed in this tournament structure receives game swap privileges but no other reward

    medium confidence · Zach Sharpe McCarthy exercised top seed privilege to remove Street Fighter and add another game

  • Jim Belcido's machines have unusual speed characteristics ('the magic potion he puts on these games')

    low confidence · Commentator notes Jim's machines run particularly fast compared to standard setups

  • Many Rush machines at the event have earplug mods installed to reduce tilt bob vibration

    medium confidence · Commentator confirms: 'Almost all of them [have the earplug mod]' though notes some older Gottlieb machines cannot accommodate it

  • Randy and Tim (likely Tim Sexton) and John Borg designed Rush as a tournament game

    medium confidence · Commentator states: 'Randy and Tim and John Borg really made a brilliant tournament game'

  • Kaylee George achieved a billion-point score on Star Trek Next Gen

    high confidence · Tournament standings show 'Kaylee on a billion' on Star Trek Next Gen

Notable Quotes

  • “There's a general strategy, but you have to be willing to adjust based on bounces and game progression”

    Commentator @ Early in Congo analysis — Core principle of tournament pinball strategy discussed across multiple games

  • “Once you miss that skill shot, there is zero ball save. Setup very difficult, obviously.”

    Commentator @ Rush game analysis — Key mechanic defining Rush's tournament difficulty and strategy

  • “If I took over the championship, the leadership of IFPA, I would make it mandatory that you had Flash Gordon in there because it's such a great game.”

    Commentator @ Game selection discussion — Strong opinion on competitive game selection philosophy

  • “You know you're a great event when they start doing that [Mexican wave].”

    Commentator @ Crowd observation — Commentary on event atmosphere and spectator engagement

  • “He's so good at that skill shot and hitting the consecutive super skill shots was huge.”

    Commentator on Tim Sexon @ Congo post-game analysis — Recognition of elite player skill in specific game mechanics

Entities

Tim SexonpersonAndy BagwellpersonJason ZollerpersonMatt ScottpersonKaylee GeorgepersonJim BelcidopersonTravis MurraypersonZach SharpepersonJohn Borgperson

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Tournament structure includes top seed privilege allowing game swaps (removal and addition), creating strategic advantage

    high · Zach Sharpe McCarthy used top seed to remove Street Fighter; commentary discusses this as tournament feature

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Strong community preference for classic/legacy tournament games (Flash Gordon, Bad Girls) alongside modern competition titles

    medium · Commentator advocates mandatory Flash Gordon inclusion in IFPA events; discussion of underused games like Space Station, Bad Girls, Bone Busters

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Star Trek Next Gen producing exceptional scores (1 billion+) suggesting either generous settings or design favoring high-scoring potential

    high · Kaylee George's billion-point score noted as unsurprising given game's scoring potential

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Congo demonstrates viable multiple strategies: grey gorilla vs. map strategy leading to skill fire mode, with both yielding strong competitive scores

    high · Tim Sexon's map strategy to skill fire yielded 1+ billion points; Andy Bagwell's control strategy competitive; commentary notes multiple viable approaches

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Rush designed as exceptionally difficult tournament game with zero ball save after skill shot miss, representing high-difficulty competitive design

    high · Multiple commentaries on Rush's punishing mechanics; Jim Belcido's setup running particularly fast

Topics

Tournament Strategy and GameplayprimaryGame Design and MechanicsprimaryCompetitive Pinball MetaprimaryTournament Organization and FormatsecondaryMachine Setup and MaintenancesecondaryElite Player PerformanceprimaryGame Selection for Competitionsecondary

Sentiment

positive(0.82)— Strong enthusiasm for tournament competition, player performance, and game quality. Commentators express excitement about gameplay, strategies, and venue atmosphere. Minor frustration with Rush's difficulty and some game selection preferences, but overall celebratory tone regarding the event and players.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.509

You Yeah, I'm trying to figure out what game I have three is Congo so maybe they're gonna leave the rig maybe they're gonna stay in Congo Yeah, I have to say yeah, that's right. I say that that's Tim's group. I'd be so excited to see Tim play You guys heard the list that Neil just rattled off I mean just littered with world champions and elite level players So you're going to watch some high-level pinball here for the next however long you can tune in and we are staying on Congo Excellent. It's gonna be a great game Tim Jason Scott. Ooh and Andy Andy Andy is not not mad about this choice, right? And he gets to go forth so So Tim will pick the will have picked this game. Yeah That makes sense interesting choice. I gotta go to the I gotta pop out of the booth for a second. Okay I mean, I guess we'll just see more of the same. Yeah, that's really pretty much the general strategy is to start with gray and then get your multi-balls and then the scoop along with your map and move on from there. Just kind of make adjustments. It's like a lot of games. You have a general strategy, but you have to be willing to adjust to maybe you've got a few good bounces here or there and you're closer to this phase of the game than you are another phase. So you make adjustments, right? You can change the order in which you do things based on how the game is playing and how it's progressed for you. So that's one of the keys right there. There's Tim. Yeah. Making sure everybody's good. And he's like, okay, everybody ready to play? Here we go. Play some pinball. Gives the button a little wave. Yeah. Quite often you'll slip off the bat in that moment. Shaking all the jitters out. Yeah. Let's see if we get, and apparently he's going to try for the super skill shot. He's got a spot on the plunger. He feels it'll work for him. And guess what? That's it. That ball save there. Ooh-wee. Stay away from Travacom. There you go. Get control of it. He wanted that one. Oh, look at that. Oh, that's free. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. That's a free. Yeah. He's insane. 100 million in under a minute. Yeah. And now he's probably going to go to gray, I would assume. Yeah. Oh, did he try to back in the mystery and miss it? I don't know. I thought he was trying to go for gray. Okay. There you go. Nothing wrong with this start that he's got going here. Thanks, Pete. Going to find his spot on the plunger. Anybody else ask him where that spot is, They're probably telling him it's a full plunge. Yeah. Look at that. Wow. He's got that spot down. I mean, that's just free. Yeah. He's nailed it. Yeah. I think I also feel that when I'm in a final like this, I want to pick a game that's going to go well for me and build my confidence. Yep. I get a sense that there's a bit of that here. Lovely. Keep enjoying this. Yeah. Feeling comfortable with that map shot. Bam. Didn't rely on the bounce in this time. Nice catch. Yeah, so he's not a great guy. He feels comfortable with progressing through the map. And the map will work to be really impressive the further along you get. Missed his shot. A little bit early on that. Oh, I'm going with that in lane. I'm just going to keep his left flipper so now he can shoot the map. There you go. This is a jungle jackpot. So, it starts at 40 million and it starts counting down. Oh, and he had to shoot it back in there. And a little bit of a missed opportunity for him. He's wishing he had a chance at that. That would have been huge. Yeah. $204 million. Yeah, not a bad start. Jason's going to step up here shortly with his pretty casual stance he has. He's not one of those that does the power stance that others do. He just kind of steps up there and says, okay, I'm ready to play. facing a veteran of the pinball world. What a nice guy, Matt. Yeah, fantastic. Matt, my pinball guy. We'll play next, Matt. He's doing everything I need to do. I've never played a game before. Yep. I've been Matt and Jason. Awesome guys. Oh, man. Jason representing the Bang Back Pinball Lounge. That's his T-shirt. For those of you not familiar, Fred Richardson's got a place in Columbia, South Carolina. Bang Back Pinball. Very nice setup. I'm guessing 18 to 20 games there. Setup well-maintained right there in the heart of downtown Columbia, South Carolina. Pretty good food there, too. Check it out if you guys get a chance in the Columbia area. I've seen photos of it. Yeah. Brett's got a nice setup. Brett's a great guy. Yeah, he is. Big pinballer. Probably not the same year, but running the bar is a good job. Yeah. Maybe on the top. I think Ken Masters is handled. I would be surprised. He usually puts eye pinball on the TV screens that he's on. So if you're there, Fred, we miss you. There's Scott. I don't know much about Scott. I watched Scott play in the cross-iron, you can see he's got an Indus badge on his hat, so he has won something here, maybe one of the bounties alright, time to give up on the skill shot, let's move on, that's what he's thinking oh ok That's the skill stuff, buddy. Oh, unfortunate. Yeah, it was not a smooth start for Scott. Certainly not what he was looking for. Andy stepping up with very recent experience on this game. Alright. Thinking to himself, I hope to do better than the last game. I mean, not the result but the actual score itself. Hopefully the result will pan out that way as well. Stick with the ball control strategy. He does. That's his thing, I guess. Still got a Random hits on the side. Yellow targets there, which are changing around for the skill shot. Going to gray a little early. Regretting that. That's going to hurt. Yeah. Real opportunity for him there. Him feeling good. I know his score shows 204, but you might as well count it as 229 after he gets the super skill shot that he seems to have dialed in. It's not lucking in there. I mean, it's going straight in there. Pretty impressive. Let's go. There we go. Woo! Oh, man. We lost $5 million, yeah. But, you know, that's one of those that just worked out good for them. Yeah. So here we go again. Let's go back to the conventional $25. Oh, we can get a register for it. Mystery. Look at that. Very nice. Oh, multiball. Diamond hunt multiball. That worked out for him. So really your objective here is obviously to hit the lit diamond shots so that you can collect more diamonds, which on a side note helps you with your bonus, but more importantly helps you with the amount of diamonds you need to light your log. That's what he was trying to do, was get enough diamonds to get his lock. There's those slings. Now, lock, yeah. His bailout shot is that left ramp because he feels so comfortable with it, right? So he bailed out something he knew he could hit, and then, all right, now let him line up this lock. with a multiball. Now he's trying to shoot the left ramp or the right ramp. He's feeling comfortable. I don't know that I've ever felt it. I've been in a situation where I felt comfortable shooting the right ramp. Yeah. Yeah, it's got a little Iron Maiden feel with the Iron Maiden left ramp through the pop bumpers. He may do that here since he's trapped up this way depending on how comfortable he feels with that. No, he's going to step right. That's okay. The way he shoots this, he's fine with that. He's not going to sit there and lose the ball. He's going to pull. There we go. Pull jackpots, commiserate with the amount of diamonds that he collected. It changes the jackpot value. Nice. He's in trouble. Got a pin on that one? Yeah. He's still okay. Get control. Go back to your map. He's very, very skilled at that left ram. I mean, and he's hitting it right in the center, too. So that goes to show you, you know, we talk about the gray strategy, which a lot of people do, but you could just as easily be successful shooting a map, right? And clearly he is. And, again, I mean, he's right in the middle when he shoots it. Yeah, very fortunate bounce. Yeah. Look at this. There's a bear. Look at this. Look at him. The guy can't do anything wrong, man. Nothing wrong with that. Right into the mat. That's just beautiful. And, whoo, baby. So those of you watching at home, now we know why he picked this game, right? There we go. 325. 325. Head towards skill fire here. Oh, little miss right here. That's okay. Do the map and now shoot it again. Get it this time. Oh, he knows what he messed up there. He had a chance to break it wide open. I mean, he still has the skill fire available when he steps up for ball three. I think 500 million I had for the S-trip. Yeah. It's not a bad place to be. Not bad at all. Let's go. Jason's like, ah, I've been here before, right? Going with the control plunge. Yep. Unfortunately. So, Scott is hoping for a. smoother start on ball two than he had on ball one. You still don't have skill shot? Yeah. I would. Some people like the control. I like the skill shot. It's not only the points, but I mean, even if you miss, you still have a little bit of a ball save with the twitch hits. Backhand to mystery. What's wrong with this? That's good to watch. That's nice. Oh, kicked it out and still wins the All-Illinois. Very important. Seven diamonds collected, though. Not terrible. Would have been better, for sure. One more for the road. Yep. Getting it on the fly. Woo! Is that a pole lock? Or is it a lit the lock? Yeah, it's lit. I think it was lit. He was shooting the map earlier. It's just only played half the animation this spring. So Scott gets some traction on the second ball here. Feeling a little bit better. He ain't there yet, but he's feeling better. Let's go. All right. So this is that. Very lucky. No, this is the K-league strategy I was referring to earlier. There's a certain amount of three hits, three switches, that it will automatically give you the ball back. I'm going off of memory here. So now I think I'm probably going to try to shoot Gray again, but he'll keep the ball. He'll actually play it this time. If you can repeat that shot, that's crazy. Nice points. Halfway there. Got to decide. Got to get control. Man, got the inlanes too. Man, nice shot. Only 5 million. About to hit the mid three on the fly. Those are probably spark tires. Pretty solid backhand on pretty much any convo you play. It's not a difficult shot. Choosing to hit the ball on the fly coming out of there can be dangerous sometimes. All right, little bounce in his step, multiball going. It's all right. It's like, please just line up on the left. Get one for the road. Maybe two. He's quite pulled quite a few points off that up a loop there. Whoo. How about that? But he's already at two dangers. So I mean, you just gotta sit there and watch it, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's got a groove going now. Oh, that was a bit of a long time ago. Go to Gray. He's working his way towards the jungle jackpot that Tim lost the ball on. A little early on both those shots. Flights his lock for him. Man, he shoots that really good on the fly. That's good timing there. Especially after missing it a little before. There you go. That's a little jackpot. So it's going to count down from $40 million. Trying to get it back in there. Very nice. He got the whole value of it. So now it's at $40 million for his Goat's Pride multiple. Try to get one. Try again. There you go. So on this one, instead of the ramp, obviously, you just find the tribute deck. Five to five. Ooh. Very late. Race period one. That's definitely free, as Carlos would say. Yeah. Nice control here. Yeah. And he's putting a little bit of pressure on the whole group, but Tim as well, right? Yeah. He's going to be working his way towards skill fire as well. That's fine. I mean, he wanted more, but there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, considering he had, what, 50 going into it and was able to get almost 700. And he's got some work to do. He's not scared, but he's got work to do. Invert and skill shot. Get the ball back. Get it again. Let's see if he can do what Tim did. Three. Nice. Wow. Wow. Huge. Huge. Ain't got his lock lit. Nice shot. Fun guy to play in a group with, Andy. So much fun. Here he goes. He's not even going to look. Man, what's that, six, seven in a row? The bear got him. That's all right, though. That's two. Give it a second. He's a great, really good throw up. Diamond hunt? Yep. Diamond hunt multiple has been rough. He'll get that back. It's been rough for the couple people that have been to it already. Usually it's a pretty easy one. More diamonds. Very nice. There you go, Andy. Nice playing. Stay away from Falcom. Nice. This is the main benefit of the Diamond Hunt multiple. Nice, nice. Yeah, he's got that live catch. Yeah, he's skilled with that live catch for sure. Oh. That's all right. He closed the gap some. Jason looked at all three of them. All right. He's going to go for that skill fire. Oh, he has to light it. No, it's lit. So he may skip the super skill shot just to try to get control on the left flipper and shoot the skill fire. I don't know that that's a bad strategy. Unless he just feels... Here it is. Oh. Nice reaction, though. Yeah. Good save. There we go. This is it. Oh. Bounce over. Nice. There you go. So it's lit now. Ramp over. a little early a little nervous maybe there you go so now skill fire is just a mode where you sit there and shoot the unlimited amount of balls you can for the skill shots sitting there focused trying to get all of his 25s to go there we go Nice. Oh, nice. I mean, this is why he, partly why he loves the map strategy so we can get to the skill fire. Look at that. Wow. 100 million. Huge. This is massive. Wow. I didn't know you could get that much. Bam. 45. Wow. I mean, almost. I mean, just short of doubling his score on that. He had about 600 or so going into it. Wow. More than I can score, though. Yeah. That's crazy. So this just restarts it over, okay. Okay. No such luck. Can't pull the Andy Bagwell, what, six or seven in a row. It's all right. Got over a billion. Yep. Not a terrible tournament score. Nope. Oh, Jason. Wishing he was in a better situation right now, that's for sure. But Jason's been down before. Jason's been down a lot before. I mean, it's not his first time. Walk into the cell, see what he's going to do. Probably get to a multiball. Did the super, super skill shot. Got it caught there at the very top of the lane. I don't know what the ruling on this is. This is bad news, I think. I know if it's resting on an in-lane, out-lane post. Is it in on the plate here? I think if part of it is, then he has to deal with it himself, I think. Oh, he got lucky on the bolt. Yeah, he came back. Jim just said that Jim Belcido stared at it and said, you better go back. Oh. I was very worried about what might be. This is a start for him, right? Bam. I'm trying to get it trapped. There you go. That was nice. Uh-oh. Straight on the fly. Woo! Jason having the best diving home multiple of the group. Got the ball stuck on the top left flipper. We can leave it there. Player control. Can and should leave it there until he has to move it. If he can just recycle this ramp. Oh! Oh, one more. There's his built-in ball save, and it does that to him. Yeah, he had to do that. Yeah, he didn't have enough bonus. That's how to save it. So Jason took a fourth on that for what was initially a very promising Diamond Cup multiple. That'll give the Tilt Bob a little bit of time to settle out. I think these games have the earplug mod. Oh they do? Yeah. Almost all of them. A couple of machines that have a note that's very smart. There's a few that the older Gotlabs are kind of screwed in where you can't add the earplug. I know how to load them into the classic. Helped with a guy's cat a couple of days ago. Makes a huge difference doing that. Yep. So Scott's about 300 or so behind. Certainly plenty achievable. Yeah. Oh, especially with this. Oh, yeah. And he's got this shot dialed in. Yep. And I think he's close to that skill shot mode, I think. Get with him a bit. Go skill fire. Skill fire. Yeah, he is. But he's trying to get the... That was scary. Yeah, he's just... It's not worth the rest right now. That was pretty smart with the weight. Yeah. Love birds. Love birds. 45 on the super. Oh. Got Tim a little nervous now. On the fly to the map. Let's work for him. Oh. Oh. He might have been better off just to let that upper left flipper stop on it and hold the ball, kill the momentum. Uh-oh. That's a big bonus. Oh, just short. 26 short. Andy steps up. Andy. Third place in hand, looking for first because if he can get second, he can probably get first as well. I mean, there's a small gap. Yeah, Andy can do that. We'll just push them now, but... He's good enough to catch up, just usually. I think that's... Woooo! Heh, that was interesting. Yeah. Yep. That's nice. Boom. Boom. He's happy with that. Really excited about that. Nice confident shot by Andy. Yeah. He's hoping to get one back. Yes. hoping to get one back yes we got one yeah oh we got you pretty good on these yeah looking old right and do the right ramp I hear you twice. Nailed that shot. That is awesome. Tim's starting to get nervous again. Oh! I did it as soon as I said that. Holy moly. He'll take a third. A third. 700 guy. He was making a run there. Yeah, he was. That was very unlucky. Tim escaped with four points and then Scott got second place with two points out of it. What a great way to start. So many different strategies played there. It was great to watch. And as we thought we would see more Congo, we did. Almost instantly. So yeah, you could either play the grey gorilla strategy or Tim was very effective with the map strategy. the map strategy, clearly his intent was to get the skill fire, right, because he's so good at that skill shot and hitting the consecutive super skill shots was huge. Yeah, it's tremendous points. Absolutely fantastic. That was clearly why he does that map, not only that, he's good at the map shot, right? Shooting the left ramp. And also Andy didn't get any real advantages to having just played that game. Didn't work out for him. I thought that might be a real advantage for him to have been familiar with it. Didn't make the most of it. Looks like Carl is queued up for us to potentially go watch Rush next. Oh, fantastic. You can see it there in the background. Currently we have Travis Murie playing Rush. Excellent. This will be great. Rush is a phenomenal tournament game. I hate the music, but that's just what it is, unfortunately. But Randy and Tim and John Borg really made a brilliant tournament game. I think they said Tim might come in and do commentary, which would be good. I think I'm going to tag out with him so he can. Tim Sexton. Yeah. That would be awesome. But I'm not sure. I think they said he was. I would expect that. Carl doing his mad dash. Showing off his sprinter skills. I want to see Carl's steps number on his. We need to get him one of those watches that count steps. He's running around looking crazy, man. Yep. Visit me in for the weekend. Keep him. I hear Rush. Him and others get things going. My ears are already on fire from the music. We're heading to Rush. That's our upset most of Canada. Here we go. Jim Balsito. Again, just amazing that he's playing and doing so well and running this event. Staggering. Is that 157 for Jim? Yeah, 157. Second place, and it's hard to see what ball number it is because the key is hanging. It says it. Ball three. Oh, it says it down there at the bottom. Score bit. Nice. This is the beauty of score bit. We got about three of these beautiful scores live on the screen. Great job by Jay and Brian to put all these score bits in over the set-up period. So Jim was trying for the skill shot. Once you miss that skill shot, there is zero ball save. Set-up very difficult, obviously. Yeah, and the one thing to watch out for on this game in particular on the what I would call the upper flipper ramp shot where the ball just was there's a huge yellow post there just to make it a little bit more difficult to just keep rinsing that over and over again, which some of these younger players are very, very good at. I think that's the only really big change to this game This is actually Carl D'Python Anghelo's own game So he may decide to shoot the instruments there on the left side Depending on how he feels about that. Yeah Oh, I mean, oh they're up. Okay. I'm sorry, uh because they were cycling through so he shot the orbit It's hard to see with that angle so now he's going to go to the time machine Nice starts coming so far Clearly we don't know where he stands on his progress towards multi balls. You can see it on the screen. It's very small riding though. So I mean we can't see it on this. I don't think in the upper right hand side. 30 more hits I think it says. How many? Wow. It looks like that. It looks it definitely double figures. Wow. Yeah. So he's got a ways to go on that. Obviously that that post not having a great impact but he's one to see jackpot split Quite right away. Yeah, I get this combo jackpot Very close to passing. Yeah, very good close to passing Travis. I worked out I hate that eject on the side though. Holy moly, that's so... Yeah. Unfortunately there for Jim. Good ball, I think. I don't think it was enough. No, no, no. And he's thinking to himself, he could have shook it a little bit more. Yeah, ball three. Yeah. And we've got Josh Sharpe coming in. I suspect we'll know this game pretty well. Not quite enough, yeah. So Josh at 69 million. Yep. Travis holding on to second with his fingernails right now. First. Yeah. No, that hasn't updated, I think. The scoreboard hasn't updated, but it looks like it's got 189. Okay. It's got 189, I think. Okay, I see. I was going by the scoreboard. I think it catches up at some point. Yeah. Yeah, I think it needs another pull. Nice. It's a little bit of a ball save for making that. Yeah, that is important. Flip her up. The old shadow strategy. Yeah. Doesn't get the skill shot I think now because of too many tries. Well yeah, this is the ball lock too so I don't think it's going to have one here. He's just trying to get control so he can shoot that loop up there and then get to the time machine is what he's trying to do. Misses it. Bit late. Oh! Time machine. I mean, I think he was shooting the right ramp earlier because of the speed of the ball. Yeah. Still fast. Yeah. Yeah, Jim has the magic potion he puts on these games to make them go fast. It's insane. Still a bit... Yeah, that ramp was... I struggled with it. normally I can get that shot down, but I struggled with it myself. Yeah, the post. I don't think the post gets in the way. Nice read. I don't think the post gets in the way too much, but it's almost in your head that it's there. He had it too. He knows it. That was savable. And it happens, right? I mean, you try the best you can to time the double flip, but sometimes it doesn't work out like you want it to. So Jordan from Colorado, again, another great young player. He could still easily take first here. Oh, yeah. He's a very deliberate player, too. He's not in any rush when he's playing. No pun intended there. He's just very controlled, right? He'll take his time and make sure he knows what he wants to shoot and then go to it once he gets control. So now he's just in there. All right, what do I need to do? So he's looking at the screen. He's probably laughing. He probably needs, like, 100 hits or something for his multiball. But he'll start his mode. She only needs eight more hits. Okay, that's not bad It looks like eight more hits maybe nine but They just gonna take his time, yeah, I think it's He was trying to get that right orbit, yeah That was unfortunate So we did have Jim win and Travis with second. Josh pulled third out of that. Only a short demo of rush as well which is a shame I think we will see more apart from the music but I think we see way more of this game With some big scores on it and qualifying. I was just looking to see if we had more people playing. Doesn't look like it, so I guess we're waiting for the... Yeah, that was the last game in that battle for the whole... Oh, they got a wave going! Maybe we can get the... See, they've got a wave in the background. Can we get the standings, Carl? The standings? Let's have a quick look. Thank you, Carl. We've got our lead tech guy on it. It's the Mexican wave. You know you've got a great event when they start doing that. They're excited about it. So here we go into the playoffs. So what have we got here? So we've got Neil Grafling on Tron. by a decent margin. Second round, Tommy, unsurprisingly, Jason Zoller taking that. Not surprised by that at all. Congo, we saw. Surfing Safari, what a great pick. Wow. Nice scores, too. Yeah, Bowen winning that. We just saw Rush. And then Star Trek Next Gen, Kaylee on a billion. Don't think anyone's surprised by that. Steve Second. Jared Struggle. Jared, yeah. Struggled with that one. It happens. Yeah, $113 million. When people look at those Star Trek scores, they're really low. Let me tell you, this game has been possessed by the Borg. It is pretty challenging to play. Yeah, for sure. But that was the first game of round two. We've got two more games to go. College is looking whilst the scorekeepers encourage the players to pick a game. Yep. It's an important choice. I try to give, when I'm looking after these events, I try to give players time to choose, but not forever. Yeah, let's keep it moving. People start to cool down, so Jermaine looking at Tommy, I wonder if that's where they're headed. Yeah, I don't think we'll see any Flash Gordon this round. And in my view, if I took over the championship, the leadership of IFPA, I would make it mandatory that you had Flash Gordon in every pinball competition because it's such a great game. I played it many times. That one is – actually, that one's pretty fair. Yeah. I find that I played it. Not too tight. You can move it around. Flipper strength was good. Just a tough game, basically. It is funny that it says, you know, on the back glass, it says, easy settings. Yes. Yeah. The word easy just doesn't fit in with Black Gordon. Exactly. Believe that if you want, right? I never even knew they had hard settings, if I'm honest, but an absolutely stonger of a game. The other game that's been pretty cool, we saw earlier on, Twister, a lot of fun, a real fun game. I'd like to see some Space Station or Bad Girls, stuff you don't see all the time. Even Serpent Safari. Yeah, Bad Girls or Bone Busters, as we call it. Well, I didn't realize Alice Cooper's in the bank, so that was the high thing. What was taken out? What was over there? Firepower? Yeah, there was firepower next door. It's next to firepower. What was that? I can't remember what was over there. Was it Mystery Castle? Oh, no, Mystery Castle's over there. Still over there. What was that? Interesting choice from Zach McCarthy to bring that in. I'm not sure what got swapped out. Does he get the choice of what gets swapped in, or does he just get the choice of picking something out? I don't know. I know he mentioned this game the other day when I was talking to him. I think you get to pick both which one to remove and which to add. This is nice. I mean, if you get top seed, you get nothing for that. Yeah, I'm sure. Top seed at this is crazy. It is. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, if you've gone for top seed, you need a reward for that. I mean, that in itself is insane. It's impressive, yeah. Absolutely insane. Five top game scorers. Yeah. I'm trying to remember what was over there. I can't remember. That's driving me nuts, though. Yeah. I played everything at some point during qualifying. I'm trying to think. I'm surprised. Daniele will be sitting in here somewhere. Looking for Daniele. Swirling out. Not realizing. Street Fighter is what is the game. Oh, Street Fighter. There you go. That is what is out. It's sitting right in front of us. Okay. So Street Fighter is out, which I would have liked to have seen a bit of that. You liked that. That was fun the way they had it set up. It's really well done. Bit of a shame in many respects. I think we could have saw some good battles on it. Are those the normal settings of a Street Fighter? Like if you see one of the machines out in the wild? Because I haven't played it much, but I had fun here. We had one in our club for a little bit, Pinball Republic in London, if you're a sponsor. If you're in the neighborhood. If you're in the neighborhood, you're welcome. We had one for a while, and I think it was pretty standard. I didn't feel wildly different to me. The one thing that was definitely different about it, the flippers were really nice on it. I don't know what Jim and the team did, but I felt really comfortable playing it. I didn't get a great score on it, but it was fun to play. I would have liked to have seen some battles on that game. I think it played the same as the one, the only other one I've played more than once is the one at District 82 that Eric had. Yes, that's right. It played pretty much the same. Yeah, so it's fun because, you know, you get so many multiballs. Yeah. And then, you know, you can get to the super jackpot and get to the point where you can, if you get control, I managed to get control in one of the games yesterday on Street Fighter, and you can stage and repeatedly shoot the 300 million super jackpot. Where is that shot at? So you've got to finish all the jackpots, and then the super jackpot is the little upper, with the upper left flipper. Yeah. Right. So what you do is you want to get all the jackpots, trap up on the left, stage the upper left flipper down with the right, shoot it up there, and then it brings it to the upper left, and then shoot 300 million a time. Yeah, that staging is. That's the way to play that one if you can get to that point, because 300 million is huge on that game per super jackpot. I mean, some of the scores on that game yesterday were pretty insane. Yeah, probably three or four. A billion, yeah. Is there a double or nothing feature on that or something? Yeah, I think later on, yeah. Yeah, I didn't get to that. There's also a torpedo multiball, once you spell the word torpedo, for those of you familiar with the game. Oh, yeah, that was one of the changes. I think they said they reduced the value of the torpedo or something. Yeah, I mean, just because of the range of machines here, the ladies bank was a great bank. I would have loved to have played in that. I had Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden, Stargazer, Taxi, just such a great game. Diamond Lady. Diamond Lady, a personal favorite. Fantastic game, yeah. I love it. So we're still waiting for decisions to be made, but I think we're getting on with it. We did find Daniele. We're waiting to see. Rick has not moved from Rush yet, so it could be we're staying with Rush. interesting see yeah which those things sort of groups have picked anything here so you have some of the top four players show up I saw Eric's over there on the high stakes bank keeps you as well and I thought what's happening right okay we've We've got a moving rig. Uh-oh. Are we going to miss the castle? No, I think we're going to start. Are we going to start? Oh, Tron. Tron. Tron. All right. This is the main. We're going to watch some more Tron. I can't say I'm surprised, actually. Fun game. Yeah, and I think we'll see a lot more. Oh, we're following the same group, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This Tron plays absolutely sweetly. Yeah, and Tim's picking, so he's going first. on it. Carl will take the rig. He's all set up and he's going to switch on over to watch some Tron. Tim really wants to get on with it. I think people are trying to plan the gem shot there. he wants to thank Lyman there I think he got a bit of grace he got a real bit of grace period there very lucky gotta deal with that kick out differently I know some people are letting it bounce the double bounce come back to the right flipper yeah the rubber switch in the pure league games game the fancy rubbers really make that those fastball fit more challenging to control I think you're missing Jason stepping up trying to recover from the fourth place that he took on Congo I'm going to try for light cycle first. It's a Cora guy. All right. Hold on. That's the funny thing about it. I've noticed that, too, about pinball players, how we always move the machine and then we take our hands off like we didn't do anything right. Oh, it wasn't me. I mean, and it's universal. It doesn't matter. Any pinball player that moves the machine and gets one or two dangers is like, I didn't do it. You kind of look around and you don't even see that. So now he's going to go to the scoop for his life cycle. Ooh, missed, and that cost him. Yeah, he knows it, too. He's like, ah, man, that was my opportunity right there. So Scott's stepping up with plenty of achievable scores for ball one. Trying to get away from that target shot up there. Either go to the left or three times he's hit that target. It's frustrating. Oh, nice. Oh. See how he handles the... There you go. That's the best way. Yeah. Got a danger. Oh, almost got it. That would have been legal. Yep. All right. Here's Andy's opportunity. Yeah. Three, one, and two. If he can get somewhere in the 10 to 15 range, you know, maybe play his light cycle and make good progress to Cora. That's kind of what he's shooting for right here. Unless he's a Cora guy right from the beginning. I like light cycle. It's a pretty easy multiple to start. Do you need three ramps or something to start it? So you need to finish. It depends on the settings. I think on this one you're going to need, I don't want to say for sure, I didn't play Tron all that much in qualifiers. There's three more for light cycles though. Four shots. So he's either going to have to shoot that... Oh! There we go. So this is basically a two ball game here. Everybody had what Tron was doing to most people over the past few days. days yeah treating them like that you're a mystery castle going off I mean Tim picked it his best score was 85 I had a taken it. Yeah. Jason wasn't super fix it at all. Oh really? He didn't put any energy into it? Yeah, he probably played it. Obviously he did, right? Because he was letting it dead bounce coming out of the scoop. He just maybe did not submit his card, right? From a strategic standpoint, decided not to submit the card. So he didn't affect his other card, his good card. Yeah, that's another thing with this card format of figuring out when to void or not. I mean, my scores are never good enough that it matters too much. But the top end, it matters more, you know. Skullgull, $53 million on the Skid 2. Tim Linton has said a little bit after the anti-shimmy. 10 maybe five for a gym skill shot up there on the plunge. Come on baby kick control. I got under the register school for either. Not shooting the disc. I'm going to spray transfer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. That's rough. Very rough. So Jason hasn't felt so bad about his ball now. Yeah. He's got his light cycle lit. Yeah. So Jason's got his light cycle lit. He needs to convert here on the plunge. Get the 500K for the Flynn's Arcade and then go right into the light cycle would be the ideal start for him. Yeah, the way this is played. Get it a little bit past the gate and get it to bounce over. Not quite enough. And we'll get the seat there. Finally. Move with my crew. Program design. Okay, so we're going to try to get four of them. So you want to hit the light cycle, the yellow square on each of the shocks. yellow square on each of the shots. Yeah, he's got double scoring and then he also ended up getting a gym shot off of a carom. Worked out really, really well in his favor. There he goes. Kedges too far? Nice. Race period again. He's two reasons to find linemen today. 2.8 on the end of the line. He had a double scoring, I think, on it. Yeah. So now he's gonna start, okay, he's gonna go Cora, right? He chooses not to go disc, which is fine because not only does Cora get your multiple lit, but it also sets you up for some end-of-the-line jackpots opportunities. Nice. I mean, if you get a Tron that you're really comfortable with and it's tracked up on the right, you can actually shoot that left ramp first, come around, then shoot the Cora, then shoot the upper right ramp and then get the end of the line. So he's going to give it a second here to stabilize out after that flap. Right to Cora. He's got that shot dialed in. Oh, man. That was free. That is free on Cora. So now he's trying to shoot the Cora shot. You can also get an add-a-ball, as you can see on the screen right there, by hitting the visor. So he's probably going to wait right now on hitting the visor. Well, he's trying for the quarter shot. Gets the ball saved. Add a ball. You can do this two times. I know you can do it two. I can't remember if you can do it three or not. Now he's set up, and that's what he's looking at. Get the next out of all that. Got another dim shot. Beautiful. Busting this open now. So he's exhausted all his add a balls on it. OK, let's get rid of that. No, he's not. This is great. So he set up his light cycle. That was very smart. Dick of that. Now he's doing four and light cycle at the same time. Next level thinking there, Jason. And play. Very nice. This is all free right here. That's alright. Sitting here at 3536 after a core and life cycle. The ball to. Back into the scoop again. Blue. Trying to make some clue progress. Moderate points on clue. More works towards your simulation if you can get to a portal. Five more for his disc multiball. Because it's just multiple ball to it's pretty impressive Mountain the blind Yeah, he's working on this disc No He's not well, I mean if it happens it happens It's not what he's shooting for because even when he shoots Cora he's shooting for the right ramp All right, Jim shot is so hard compared to the value you get from the end of the line jackpot So he just going straight this right here. Two more. Can you control nice Rob catch? You can make it from there, so now even this multiple. It's in this points and then. He's going to set up so that he can restart his disc and have the ball at the end. There we go. Restart. I've had a couple of games, not necessarily here, where I was not able to restart the disc to restart the disc because I couldn't get control and it just feels like such a loss. Oh man. Can't believe it. That's annoying, the big open thing in the middle. This is good for a three-point. It really gives a win here. Yes. Three more for the super. Double scoring again. Oh, it does. So you get another. Gary did that earlier. He got the 14-mil super. Nice shot on the fly to hit that just like that from the right side. Okay, so now his visor came up and he's trying to figure out. He has a little dirty pool there from an Addams Family reference. Shot the visor down and now needs the disc for the super. There you go. Nice job, Casey. Eight disc. Now you see a simulation. So he's got a little bit of a problem. 8 from disc. There we go. See a simulation. So he's still going to need clue I'm pretty sure. He didn't finish it, did he? I don't think he did. Oh, Jim. It's always Jim. He's fine. So see if he banks off the front. Or if he shoots the Cora into the Jim shot. We're gonna go pretty standard. Try to get it from up there. Oh, get a caravan there. So he tried to bank there. Yes. So early on that upper left flipper. Really long ball for Jason. Oh, sorry, Jason. Jason's going to come back and watch the stream and say, Oh, Bill, he's going to message me later on. Or after he watches the stream. It might not matter. Let's play ball two. Yeah, let's ball two. Chase will be happy with that for sure, he needed it badly. Bill, safe journey home, so Bill's heading out to catch a plane. So, Scott really didn't seem to do exactly what Jason did, but doesn't get a chance to. Nope. Fairly shame there. See if Andy can get anything going on this one. Yeah. I'm just gonna think about what he wants to do here. There's a metric truck behind him. There's a scooch. Yeah, straight into the scooch. Instead of a safety. Yeah, there's that double bank. I think that is definitely the way to handle that scooch. Yeah, it's pretty consistent. Just a little bit of intrusion command, very unlikely. Yesterday he couldn't miss on a a close shield. That was one way. There he goes, yep. We've got Coralit, he's going for that. We have Tim Six and Jerry Wilkinson. Thank you, Neil. I see what's going on. We got multiple. Just got into core. Ball two. Jason just put up literally a tutorial of how to play Cron. And he's a super strong finisher. Before you just hit the chorus off the jackpot? He had a gem shot for super jackpot. Yeah. And he's got all his add-on balls in now. So he can also make light cycle. Okay, yeah. which you would need a gem shot, well he got that one done. He needs his ramp on the right over there to bring in life cycle, which you don't necessarily want to stack in, you can just use it later, but. Jason stacks it, it's a good effect. Yeah. And the last run, last bowl. So he's hitting the disc a lot in the middle, which doesn't really do much in this multiball. All right settle down two on the right traps. Super Jackpot! Great player here from Mande. He got the super tip. I'm stepping away from him! That's a good one. You got the Super, Tim. Oh, so he is back in the multiple, sorry. Yeah. You got a Core Super. Core Super's a million. Keep getting those. Yeah. And we've got Dave Stewart here. Hi, Dave. Hi, Dave. Welcome. Hi. I'm taking over for Gene. Hi, Neil, Tim. That was nice, that was very nice. So he starts to follow the jump, which is important if he wants to get to see a simulation. Jason was struggling with that jump shot earlier on, it's a really tricky shot. Did he get to the last combo with him? Did he not hit the shot? He's really lost into that Korra shot as well. And not really going for the disc, I think he just wants to go for another Korra. Yep, that's a line combo as well. Little late there, but that was a nice begin lane. Oh, danger. It looks like the extra ball is lit. How much is that worth on this game? Maybe we'll see right here. I think it's worth very much though. Maybe two million, two and a half I think. Yeah, two and a half I think. I'm not sure if he's got it. Probably less than his, um, if he can shoot that side ramp and then shoot it into the scoop, he'll get an end of the line jackpot and he keeps hitting the target like that and he can hit it again a little bit late on that shot. And he also will start a multivolve, he does. There he goes. Three million. There's the answer. Oh, he got that on the launch. If you see, he completed the jam. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of players have been going for that. Did he intentionally plunge that, or was that the auto plunger that gave him that? He let the ball drain, and then he intentionally plunged the next one, so he wasn't focusing on other balls in front. I think that's a total clean. There he is, didn't get out of the ball. That was a really nice grace period on that one. Yeah, he took the thing line on that one there. Alright, that right orbit lit his next light cycle multiball. Oh, that's a good one. Oh, there's the backhand. A little early. Oh, take the danger. Two danger. Three! Good run, mate. We didn't get to finish here. The jackpot involves shooting combos starting with the lit, light cycle bikes. Well, to complete it, you need to at least get, is it a three-way combo or a specific left ramp, side ramp? You need a three-way combo or two, two, or three two-way combos. Okay. To completely insert solid in the middle stack. Nice stage flipper there. I think he's using this just to go to perfor again. Nice side ramp. That's a three-way combo. No, it didn't complete it, though. It didn't complete it, all right. He didn't start with the left ramp. Okay, yeah, it's a specific three-way combo, not any three-way combo. Yeah, the lights are on. End of line. What is his end of line now? Does it tell us? Four and a half million. A couple of those and just looping that could get him above there. Another thing too, he's hit the gem shot a lot, which builds his bonus multiplier, and he's on two dangers. So tilting here, he would lose several million points. He's just going to let it go. Was this ball two or ball three? Ball two. Ball two. clear for first sorry coming in right in the middle of the game sometimes hard to get state of the game he's in touching this is Jason can we start this next ball here for Tim this is his game choice yes we haven't really seen him do what he wants to do in the game yet. He couldn't get control of the ball on ball one. So that full plunge, I like to do that to get the cycle on the right orbit. It's a harder shot, but by full plunging instead of going for the skill shot, it comes back to the spinner and gives you credit for that. This looks like his first, that was only four shots, this looks like his first cycle But he's having to just get in a multiball And he's trying to skillfully punt He's trying to punt it to Jim Schafer Looks like he won the first game, and given that, it's like even if he finishes third Even if he doesn't catch the 60 million His first goal is provide some distance against Scott to get that extra point because that extra point can come in big. You can move through with that extra point. Yeah, and if he gets enough distance, then he starts thinking about those other 60 million. But right now, it's like every point gives him a little bit of distance for earning that one point. Tim is looking great on his ramp shots right now, but he is not getting the Quora shot as dialed in as the rest. Here's one. And actually in Congo he was 24 on all the shots, very confident taking them. So maybe he had two decent scores on this game in these cards. Oh! Unfortunately. It was impressive. So Dave, have you played with Tim Hanson before? Yes, in fact I played with him at Lin's Arcade at the Seaside Chat a few weeks ago. Small tournament, but it was a fun tournament. I've seen a few of the Monterey players here. And, yeah, we had several matches against each other. I've heard he used to be very active in the scene and took a bit of a break, but now he's getting back into it. Yeah, I watched him. We were saying this earlier, Tim. I was watching him yesterday in the Classics thinking, wow, who is this guy? and he's a very exciting player to watch. He was phenomenal in Congo. He went for the map strategy and smashed it and won the round convincingly. So Jason had a comfortable lead after that ball too and Andy has almost caught up to him. Now, is Jason at zero and Andy at one? They both really need a win here. Neither way, this could make for a really interesting game three with if the two that finished third and fourth finish first and second this round, it basically means that anybody has a chance going into that last game to move on. So Jason and Andy have both been handling the scoop feed by letting it bounce off both flippers and then trying to get it trapped on the right. And Tim wasn't doing that. He was going for the live catch, and that's where he got into trouble on this game. Yeah, I think Scott tried the live catch as well, and I think he pulled it off once and had some challenge with it. That's a lot. 70 million, that's a great score, and he has a chance to win here. Andy needs to do something. He can go for his disc, I think, with the five shots away he is, but does he want to risk it? And for Scott, Scott's looking for, well. He's looking for that 10 million first. Get the point, because if he can get that point and he ends with three, he still has a much better chance to, you know, pull a win on the next one and move on. If he doesn't get that extra point, he could end up falling short. Scott has only hit the core shot this game. Yeah, he didn't have a great first fall. This looks like he's going for life cycle now, just three shots away. Go for an orbit here. Oh, there he goes with four again. That's two more. Oh, no. Oh, no. No, he's cute. No. So, you need six and a half or seven million points. Where do you see the point with the way this play field lies? I said the five disc, and he didn't react to it. Yeah, you believe the disc is the way to go. He's only three shots away from light cycle. No, four. He still has a gem. One for Cora and he just pointed, so that's where he's going. But Andy has not been dialed in on the scoop either. And he has been dialed in on the Cora shot. Okay, that's one. He did not go the way he wanted to, but he's got it under control. So I would probably go Cora from the right flipper, disc from the left flipper. flipper this way you're going I know it's kind of a mixed strategy but you got it so he was late again on that chorus shot and trying to get control that almost went to the outline he's still out of control of the swing shot Boom, there you go. Win for Jason, very important win for Jason. I think he shouldn't be... It's not the end of the world, he gets the second. Yeah, but he did so much work on that ball too, and he was... If he had hit that scoop, he basically had a... We're going in 5-4-3-2 into the finals, I think. Yeah. I think the last game test is going to be quite interesting. So I'm going to grab my laptop because I'm going to try to provide live probability updates throughout the remainder of my time here on the stream. Yeah, so Tim runs the pinball, fantasy pinball, a great little escapade that gets really, builds up a lot of hype towards these tournaments. Yeah, I'm going to move before the camera shows my empty chair. Too late. Go for it, go for it. So we've got some photos here from Gene. That's Eric Stone on Getaway on the high stakes bank. These pictures of Gene Zagan are fantastic. That's the winners from Classic Match Play. Really great tournament that was. That's one of the ladies, I don't know who that is. That looks like Amber from Seattle. Phenomenal shot. So there's the pinball face of death. Just lost, oh no! and Escher Zach the current champion and then Andy Ruzzo who won the classic match play not sure if we're focused on that I can see Sanjay in the background I think Eric Eric, the concentration. Oh, you're right, it is Eric. Yeah, concentration. Angle, there's Kyle. Tim. Interesting, that was Tim on Congo, was it? Yeah, it looks like they're moving the rig maybe to get the end of that game. Yeah, Kyle's moving it. See where it sticks to us. Looks like we're going back to Congo. Okay we're going to catch the end of another group game. Must be a higher seed game which is preventing the next game choice. The College is waiting to slide into Congo. Yeah, it looks like we're going to catch the next player on Congo. Currently playing is Mr. Zoller. I forget his first name. Jason's dad is currently playing Congo. So we're going to join. I think that's the group that had Jim in it as well. No, that would be Steve in, Steve about in, Steve Zoller, August, Caden George. Okay. So we're going to join the Congo. And... I think we are joining probably start of ball three because it looks like they are on player one. Yeah. And I imagine at this point they've reached ball three. There we go. Pulling the car plane He didn fall apart He surprised by that Here we go Congo yeah So we have Jared August with a commanding lead of 1 billion 1.4 billion, sorry. And Jared needs a win, so that's good news for him. situation similar to last game where those that did worse the last game are ahead this game so again he keeps it close and gonna make for some exciting games and he's very familiar with Congo he owns the game of Congo right and this looks like his pick So guessing from his score, I think he might have had one multiball so far. Two gray letters away from his next award. And there he is using that extra ball saver. He got one shot on the gray, let the ball drain to give him a bit longer ball save time. I'm actually surprised I had not realized until this tournament that the grey letters don't take away a skill shot you would think they would you would think there's a lot of switches up there but it's really just just a couple so this would be his second grey that he got this game first one would have been diamonds The Rams are lit for jackpots here. That upper loop, that is a super jackpot that he just hit. 67 million, that's good. Yeah, you shoot the left orbit, which will feed the inlays, but the ball comes back to the upper flipper. That was phenomenal. That was phenomenal. So at what point does the, if you notice, like, the first few shots went to the right flipper, then the diverter changed and they started going to the left flipper. It looks like those five gave him back to the right flipper and then the sixth one, they're now going around to the left flipper every time. Is it always five? Sometimes it seems like it's left before it switches. I don't know. Because you've got those backcourts in a hurry pretty quickly. Video mode. All right, so Steve's looking for control. He's got a video mode lit on the middle scope. He went for it. There it goes. Let's see how he handles video mode here. The most pinball thing you can do in a pinball game, right? It's just like in the 500s. The breeze. The breeze. Doing great. Yeah. Made it all the way through 71 million. Takes a lock there. So he needs two more to get to his next multiball. And you get the chance to hit the gray over and over again here. What's the third award on gray? It's diamonds again, which will light the second rock. There's a skill set. Nice. That's the hour, though. And after video mode, what was his, he got video mode, what was his mystery? It was enough for a lock is what lock is lit. Okay Yeah, this is I would say, you know looking back 20 years in the past This should be a little more points this mode satellite transfer. Not a single player will take shots at us running And what's worse is when it does start at your one shot away from what you really want. Yeah but that's why you just hold the ball here and take a break and and the timer's done. There we go, right. He didn't want to hit that again. So Stevenson with one gray, he can get his next locklet. 20 diamonds there if you get 100 diamonds you get to another multiball yeah the super multiball or something like that right and does anyone know what his next mystery might be because it could be diamond hunt multiball yeah I'm not sure what comes after the laughing I think it is diamond I know diamonds is the first one do they start repeating after the first there is a sequence to them yeah Yeah. Oh! Actually, Locklitz the second one. Sorry. No, Diamond's the first. Locklitz the second. I'm not sure what the third one is in tournament settings. So, Kaylee's name has been mentioned for the strategy of hitting Gray over and over again. I think he's maybe the first, maybe not the first to discover it, But he certainly employs it more than almost anyone else, I think. So I expect we see a long time here of plunging and shooting the gray shot until the ball gets into play. Of course, eventually he'll start multiball if he continues. But he has a question for the tournament director, so we're taking a bit of a break here. In the meantime, I'll update some scores from the groups. So, no one's won two games in a row. But we have Tim Hansen out of the group we just saw with five points after two games. We have Josh Sharpe with five points after two games. So they are currently leading their groups. No one has six. No one has eight. and it's all pretty close in those other groups, so nothing, and no players have been eliminated yet either. So there we go with Kaylee, and doing what I was just alluding to, shooting gray and then letting the ball drain. and he uses a nice little drop catch to expedite the ball's pass into the drain there without hitting any other switches nice little tap over to get it to the right flipper there So, well, now he won't let it... Oh, well, it's multiball. Obviously, he's going to play it. And so your jackpot value is set in every multiball baseline. How many diamonds you've collected since the previous multiball? Even in this multiball? Even in this multiball. So taking this multiball first is a pretty good idea because you'll have to collect the diamond stick for the next multiball. Most people usually do it in the other order and wonder why their jackpot values are so much lower. Oh, it's already diverting. Yeah, see, it wasn't... I'm not sure what the algorithm is for what point it starts to divert. Nice line. So the one on pop is setting up super got pot. But I don't know if he went for it. If he did, he was very late on the shot. That is a nice save. That was great. I have seen like 85% of the drains on that right out lane. He got 5 damage, which isn't enough to light his lock. Which means he must have had his first multiball already. Right, and that's why his jackpot values were only 10. So he's at 49 diamonds. Gray is next. The word would give him 20. And then after the 20 diamonds, you know what gray award comes. Yeah, the next multiball. The next ball. So it alternates between diamonds and multiball. Yep. So now he can go back to gray again. He can do the plunging again. Will it work even though this does not scar the ball? Yep. And he hit the satellite transfer target. Let it drain. And that was lucky to not hit the in-lane switch. That lets him get the ball back again. And he's hitting the satellite transfer. He's back into play. So also one left orbit, he could start his Amy. That's another way to get a lot of diamonds. The last group of time in Amy. So he has to do that three times, and he'll get the diamonds. He can also get a double, kind of a super Amy, if he gets the inner loop shot up there. That would give you a double score. There's three in a row, so no timing out there. More diamonds and lock is lit again. I thought it was as odd as it looks like in the eye, but... So Kaylee has almost put himself out of last here. Yeah. And with his four, he's looking for, you know, a point. Yep. Both two locked. He could take his mystery award to possibly light his lock. 84 diamonds. 84 diamonds. This would be a nice time to get the diamond chase multiball. I presume he's played it once, but if not... He'll get some diamonds here if he doesn't get bit by the snake. snake. Wow, and he's getting good points. $40 million. He's almost through. $15 million. $15 diamond. So he needs one more. He needs one more. He was 16 away. Oh, no. Oh, no. And he's on double danger. So right from that, he took the lock, which gives him multiball, and it means when he comes out of this, he can hit one more diamond for super multiball. So Kaylee has started to build the ingredients for an amazing comeback here. He's at 99 diamonds. He's in multiball. Down a few balls. Oh, and that's a beautiful separation. I think he can keep that up. Let's the ball roll to the end. Tips it over. Cheats the ball trapped on the left. 45 million on these jackpots. That's great. Overtaking Steve now. Or will do. I think he's up next. Yeah, no, he's overtaking Steve. 300 away from Jarrett. Takes the jackpot there. Oh, two beautiful live catches in a row. Kaylee is one of the best live catchers out there. If you want to learn and learn when you can do them, watch a lot of Kaylee videos. And you'll notice he's also showing a lot of patience in this multiball. It's not, I'm in a hurry, let me get as many jackpots, and then you leave one of the balls. He was just taking his time, knowing that building the points a little bit at a time is all he needed. Nice jackpot on the fly. I wonder if he knows he's as close as he is to the super multiball. I think he does, but he does not want to take a shot at the right ramp at all, it seems. If he gets Matt, sometimes that relights your diamonds, depending on where he is in that sequence. It looks like he's just going to go the aiming route. Do aiming one more time. I went for that orbit there. Okay. Get bonus X2, which is big. So three shots here, and he'll have his diamonds. Does he have to hit? Oh, it didn't go in the land. Oh, he's in hard aiming mode. Hard aiming mode doesn't feed your upper flipper. Send it to the lower flipper instead. Wow. Ricochet off the target. That counts, though, as a double. Oh, it fed at that time. It did from the soft there. Oh. 3x bonus, 148 million. Good in the league. I mean, he gave himself the chance here. And we don't know Jared's state in this game, really. So there is an update from another game. Neil Graff has scored 8 points in his group. And that means he is ripped. Yeah. Neil of course came in his 40th seed so he's really on fire alright Jared's playing there we go that did not light his lock with 20 diamonds he's probably already had 2 actually as you see he's got 126 diamonds now so he's already played his Super Multi-Doll as well and that increased bonus X was big in the Mystery Award because it's the number of diamonds what is it half a million per diamond or something so now it's a million per diamond and he's at 126, 126 million coming to him already in bonus and that's why he's going for the left orbit 3x there. So that might have given him the lead as long as he doesn't tilt. And more points to Diamond if he can get one more shot. So, Garrett August is now in first place With a lot of bonus in the tank. Takes a nice lock. He is hitting all his shots right now. Doesn't matter if the ball is rolling. He'll hit it. He needs a window with zero points. Nice on the fly jackpot on that one. That was a good way to, he saw the ball, he knew the ball was coming out of the mystery lock. And so he made sure, he didn't just hold the ball. Sometimes you see, he made sure he cleared off the ball that was on the right flipper to be ready to shoot the ball that came out of the video or the mystery scoop. And he's doing the same thing Haley was doing with tipping the ball from the left flipper over to the right, keeping the ball trapped on the left side. and puts him almost at 2 billion points. Well, over 2 billion is a bonus. Well and clear. And for those of you wondering how you start playing at this level, I actually think that's one of the big secrets. Flipping is not just binary on or off. If you learn those K'nex moves, the microflips that I like to call them, that becomes so important in your game and can make a huge difference between your average player and your great players as we're seeing here today. Oh, here we go. This is a great little motion. We saw earlier on, this motion was huge. Here we go. So now it says skill shots all day. And let the balls drain. I don't even know if the flippers are active. You don't need them. Yeah, you don't want to use them because they only make balls get in the way. There we go. Now he's going for the actual targets. The super skill still registers here, too. If he was able to get it in the left out lane, I'm not sure what the score is, but I believe you can, I don't know if it gives you the same score. There's one on the left. Look, super skill, 100 million, twice the score. Nice. So if you can quickly plunge into that left out lane, then you can get that many more points. Wow, you got another ball saved there. I think he knew that. He didn't even clinch at that ball saving. He's texted some... You can get more diamonds here from the map. The question is, how many diamonds does he need now to light a lock? Probably 25, 30 diamonds? 12 more. 12 more. That bounce off the slingshot and you use the upper flipper to push it around the orbit. Oh. Strains down, but a great ball from Jerry August with the 3X bonus. Proving that a loss the first game is not a reason to give up. 2.6 billion. It's a great score, phenomenal score on this Congo. So Steve has one point now. Going into that last round, having one point makes it extremely difficult. I think at that point the best he could do is win and hope for a tie. If he could get up to a second point, steal it from Steve, that gives him that extra little edge. And so you know that's going to be his first target. go after Steve's score, if he reaches that, settle down, it's like, okay, let's kind of do it in phases, not go after that top score, you know, right from the beginning. So, Steve takes his kill shot there. Oh, and he gets a nice ricochet lock. A free roll. Now, he really is not too far from Steven's score. Yeah. Did you see was that lock one or lock two? I missed it. The lock he just got. I think it was lock one, but I also missed it. That probably is yelling at us. I think it was lock one. I think he's going for that super skill shot. It looks like he's plunging for it. It'll take as many chances as he can get at it. Oh, that put him into play. You can hear the music change. Okay. Gets to video mode. 71 million was what Steven got out of this, avoiding all the rocks. Looks great on the color dots, too. Yeah. Oh. Who gets it? And this gives him increased bonus. Okay. Not bad, but he would like a lot here, I think. 71. So that's $35 million, the bonus X. Doesn't look like Instant Info is telling him how many diamonds he needs for the next one. But the display will tell you any time you earn a diamond. Oh, sorry. He doesn't have 71 diamonds. He was 71 away from the Super multiball. Is that what you're saying? No, he was checking to see how many for the next block. Okay, but I saw one that said 71 diamonds. Yeah, that's his total count. Oh, so he's got that many right now. So that's a decent end of ball bonus. Okay, it's just a scoop. Just a transfer to the right, Cooper. Goes for gray. Oh, this is a nice one that he got. He's looking for a jackpot. A two-ball drain very quickly, and that is a very quick multiball where he did not pick up any jackpots in quarterfinal. He has advanced pretty far in his map past the jungle jackpot round already. Oh. A deadly right out lane. And that's not going to be enough for him to pass Steven. He's out, in effect, I think. So as we look at ourselves, hi, I'm Tim Sexton. Next to me, Dave Stewart and Neil McRae. Hey. and I'm going to run on my laptop here some projections for after that round and see how things will shake up. So Kaylee took second there, puts him at six points. And Steven picked up one point, puts him at three points. Jared August, coming from a zero, takes four points. And our last player, Steve Zahler, stays at one point. So, now what I'm doing, I hit this button, and I'm running 10,000 simulations of the remaining games for the finals. There's smoke coming out of Steve's laptop. Yeah. Actually, you need to turn your laptop around to the camera. 8,000 simulations. It's still going. So Group 1 is on deadpool, thanks to the power of Scoreback, they're on ball 2. Player 1, which is Arvid, is on 30 million, so he's in trouble. Player 2, which is Neil Graff, he's already through, is in the league with £312 million. Player 3 is Donovan Stett, he's on £11 million, he's currently playing, which we can see. And player 4 is Daniele, who's on £22 million. And currently, between Daniele and Arvid really, so it looks like Daniele could be safe. Oh, sorry, no, another ball to go. Harvard really needs to step it up. Have a look and see if we can get the scores of some of the other games. Let's go to Mystery Castle. So, Neil, you're looking at score bit now, right? Yeah, that's right. I have on my app, we can pull up the live scores. So, Group 2, which is Jermaine, Gabe, Jason, Zoller and Corey, with actually quite an evenly balanced Group 2, 3, 3, 4, 4. Player 1, which is Jermaine, £130 million. Player 2, this is Ball 2, £464. And that is Jason, unsurprisingly, I would have guessed that. player 3 we have Corey Dunn who is on 66 million, so very close group because players 1 and 4 are on 3 and players 2 and 3 are on 4 lets see what else we can get a view of, World Cup Stalker we should be able to see I think, yep here we go Welcome Soccer, currently that group is Nick DiStefano, Bowen Kerins, Andre and Brian. So player 3 is in the lead which is Andre unsurprisingly I think. Player 1 is second place which is Nick and then player 2 who is currently playing is Brian O'Neill who probably needs to step up actually because he's only on 4 but again actually anyone, I mean whoever wins goes through on this because it's 4-4-4-2 what else can we have a quick look at, we can probably look at Tron we can't bring up Tron unfortunately I got some numbers for you T. Neal go for it, go for it Tim So our players in the most in danger of getting eliminated right now are Jordan DeChane, Steve Zahler, and Donovan Stepp. They all have less than a 5% chance to move on to the next round. Yeah, and Donovan's in big trouble in Deadpool, so he needs a big game. Pardon the pun, to get through. Just imagine integrating your spreadsheet and simulation with the score bit scores as they come in and the stream and everything It's great that we're getting this live this live stuff. So we're joining the Suffern Safari This is the previous group we were following that we kind of jumped out of to watch the end of the last round So this is kind of a tight group, Tim Hanson, you know, if you still go for anyone to win here or go through rather. Yeah and Andy is player three here. Does not have a ton of points yet. He's one shot away from lighting his multiball. I can't tell what ball they're on. I think they're on ball three but I'm not sure of that. I don't think this game is on your bet. Here in multiball I think there's like a sequence versus two shots left. then there's one shot lit, or then they all become lit, and then you want to go for, like, the left ramp for your super jackpot, which is where the big points are. I find often just starting the multiball is more points than you get in the multiball in this game. Well, unless you've got the super jackpot for 30 mil. Okay, so he's got the left ramp. He's trying to get any of these balls over to the right flipper. Okay, this lights all shots, and if he hits all these shots, it's going to light this two-burn for, I believe it's $30 million. So there's two balls in play. There's the other ramp. A little late on the toss there, loses the ball. So that puts him up to $15 million, though. And he's ready for his $3 million round, which is huge. Shooting that target with the three flashing on the insert in front of it. Gives him three million a hit. So the timer at that seven seconds in the middle of the play field runs out. Oh! Ouch. So we'll see, that's ball two. It tells us between the balls. Alright, still a chance for anyone here. I'm in a good position though. So Scott has played his multi well. I'm chasing for it. He can play his 3 million point round by shooting the orange arrow insert on the left. And he can get some points out of the right ramp in the whirlpool. And he can play the extra ball round from the whirlpool. I'm so excited. Dave's making a joke there's not a lot of points in the extra ball rounds no but like you said shooting the whirlpool though it increases the value of the whirlpool every shot you make on the same ball and you know later in the ball if you shoot it a lot that can start being worth some real points alright now this is the round you don't want to Well, you want to get some three million targets here because it's one of the fastest ways to increase your score at Surf and Safari. And this is when you don't miss the round. Right. And now he's going to take the tilt warning there. That little beep indicates it. There you got one. Four seconds left. Still has a chance. One. And the cute little whistle indicates the round is over. I'm sure he would have liked to have gotten more than just one. Now, he can light a multiball again by getting all his grid in the middle to three rows completed, which means he needs one more spinner and one more center target bank, or he can shoot inlanes to spot some progress. Lit inlanes, specifically. Right, and you can't do it from a ramp. You have to shoot it or get it in there directly. So there he goes with the spinner, which means one more of the middle banks. Or, hey, take the extra ball around, and this game will not award an extra ball, so we won't see any real prize from it. But he's going for it. Many players will find this out. Well, he might think that, and I probably would think the same, a lot of premier games do give you points for the extra ball. and so the question is are there points but being that dangerous shot being one of the two shots like the one straight ahead of you why would you shoot that? Looks like now he's letting it just run out. So he probably doesn't want to hit the drop target the best thing he can get now is one of the lit inlanes and if he's not up for shatting, if you haven't done it, you know, I drained one of my balls on my first attempt to shat, I can understand that. You just, you know, hope that by catching the ball when it comes down, you roll up and down the in lane. Oh. Well, he got some good points out of that ball. It's a 19 million. He's now definitely within reasonably easy reach of Andy before Andy plays his next ball of course but puts him in coming in at this same level. Yeah I mean he kind of needs a win to push a tie really. And Scott. Tim's probably in the most danger right now because if he gets a zero he's out. Yeah, Tim coming into this game had a 53% chance to move on with the extra points there. Jason 61%, Andy 50%, and Scott. Where is his name? Oh, so Tim's in trouble now. I think he could be out. Well, five points still means he could be in a tiebreaker. Yeah. In fact, this is kind of the result he wants. If it ends the way it goes now, it's order. Tiebreakers only mean bonus pinball. So Scott here is winning it. It would force a tie with Andy. It looks like you have to play this three million round. Jason has completed his easier great objective. What's the flashing white light on that shot? Oh, it's to get to the double round, which is double scoring and double other stuff. It's a good round to get to once you've completed your orange column. Actually, this one, I'm getting mine confused. It's the pipeline he hasn't done yet, the middle one. Because if he's got two shots there, he could get, you know, and doing one in lane or getting that, just getting that other multiball, which could be valuable. No, he's just getting good whirlpool points now. It's going up to 200,000 per spin. And that lands in the hole. It pops into the kicker. Yeah, if he has a lead, you know, building a little bit of distance a few points at a time is not a bad strategy. You get anything special if you hit 13 shots? I don't know if the score is going up now or just counting shots for fun? This game is running some modified software to prevent some of the crazy stealing your score awards in the mystery. So I'm not sure what will happen if he completes his ramp to 13. Another chance at the whirlpool. back down to 75,000 a spin, but that can still be good points for him per shot. Nope. Down the middle. 40 million plus some grid award. That's a good score. Scoring goes up in bunches in this game, and Andy here needs at least four shots to start his next multiball, or he needs a lot of whirlpools, or he needs a lot of progress to double. So he has to do work here to catch Jason despite having half the score. He's not one or two shots away from the next big score. So just some news. Neil Graff is definitely through. He wins on bedpool, wins three out of three. This is a fantastic performance. Just trying to think. so between Arvid and Daniele Daniele did not pass Arvid, Arvid came second which would give them four Daniele will get one I think Daniele and Neil Graff have gone through so I think Arvid and Donovan are out I'm waiting for proper confirmation on that, but just looking at the score, that's what it looks like. two points. Yeah. Scott really needs to get that multiball going. That would be, you know, he's one shot away from lighting, or one in-lane away from lighting it, or he can brave the three drop target thing. But if he can get his lock lit, I think that that's what puts him on a good trajectory. So that starts the spinner round. Which will take a different spin in the whirlpool. There he goes. There's some points out of the spinner round. Wow. Scott's showing us some alternate strategies here. Look at that. That puts him ahead of Andy Bagwell. I think people avoid the spinner because it comes out uncontrolled. Look, he's at 30 million already, and he's got another shot at it. 31, 32 and a half. I mean, I mean, Andy's out. Yeah, Andy will, the best he has, well, he has four points now, so he will not move on. But Scott is making things interesting here by doing what he needs to do. Yeah. And so I did not know how to light a cycle home. Oh, that's unfortunate. I think we lose I think Tim and Jason go through I think we lose Andy and Scott unfortunately yeah so probably a pretty clean round through there and hopefully we can get some bonus pinball action next congrats to Tim who made it with just a zero on the last game you know five points is that's what you need to do and also Jason for a great game there we didn't see his ball one but he did most of the work there probably in that 3 million round and then Neil you had mentioned Donovan's step yeah I think Donovan's over the looks of it unfortunately and congratulations to him he got a ticket that knocked me off the seniors that's right he won the seniors he won the seniors this year I saw that that's great I didn't think he was that old that's always a case you look at that list it's like wait Half those people are not over 55. Well, a lot of the people on the seniors list were, you know, we not quite at that point in competitive pinball history but pretty soon people who were at one point junior pinball players will be moving into senior division Tim that just a scary horrible thing to say. Isn't Keith Ellin just a couple years away from his seniors? He's just a few years away. So, yeah, it's going to become its own extremely competitive division. Especially with all the teenagers now. We see a lot of them in the finals. We're going to probably see Zach McCarthy in the next round. You know, he was a top qualifier. He had two buys, so we haven't seen him play yet. But, you know, he also, I believe he had won the Pinball Expo, and those videos are online. It was one of the most impressive shows, him and all the other young players. It really was, you know, a play for like the teenagers, early 20s, and it's just, you know, to see what they can do on the machines. It's like, wow, it's a skill level that I know when I was that age and, like, I was still playing Papa, Pinbird, and that. You know, this almost looks like they've brought a new level of skill to the game. Yeah, the young players seem to be really enjoying some of the new games. Tim, you are a young player. Come on. I'm not in my teenage years anymore. The players who were at the Pinball Expo tournament in Chicago, which is another Stern Pro Circuit tournament, takes place on all Stern pinball machines. And they're not set up like this. They're all just fresh out of the box, how they come from the factory. And that means game times are quite long. So if you really want to see someone get to wizard modes and get through all the way through the end of the game, that footage is great. Yeah, there's an epic game between Dalton and Escher that I would encourage everyone to watch where Dalton comes back. You look at it and you think, a lot of people just give up and thought it was all the way through and win the match convincingly. A lot of other great things. You can actually find them on Fox City Pinball's YouTube channel. Tom Graff who streamed that did a great job. Long day of streaming. But as Tim says, I like that tournament because the games are pretty friendly. They play very much like any other stand out of the box. and you can have a good few matches on that even if you're not a great player like me I enjoyed it, I won a couple of games there and played some great pinball definitely a tournament I like and I love the... I know a lot of people don't like it but I kind of like the dual the double elimination format which I think gives you a lot of pinball if you've got time to play it Just looking at that double elimination format. I think that's kudos like the original IFPA So I'm looking at where Carl's lining up the rig we're gonna get some bonus pinball after one of these games are Finished we're either going to Tommy or rush for our next game. Hopefully rush Tim so you can give us your in-depth genius genius knowledge of it That the top player in this tournament has the option to remove a game from the finals and because it's that Russia's still here. I know other players would have been looking to possibly replace it with something Yeah, they kicked out Street Fighter Yeah, they kicked out my favorite game Alice Cooper It's usually a very popular game that gets kicked out because players want someone to beat them on it I would have liked to have seen They have choice, that's what I don't understand They have choice, so it's not like anyone is going to beat them or pick it against them But you run out of you know because you can only pick the game once in the tournament Last night in the classics, but and just an update on group four, which is Nick Andrean Brian O'Neill and Last player is playing right now, which is Bowen at the moment. Andre is looks very strong and going through Bowen does not look like he's playing. It looks like the game is in attract mode. Ah, okay, then it must have just... oh, they're just putting the scores in right now, actually. You're right, so... And it looks like we're going to Tommy next with the rig. Which is the group we were following earlier on Congo. Steve, Bowden, Zaller, August and Kayleigh. Jared August is having a great fall here on Tommy. Yeah, Daniele and Neil as I said confirmed they both go through. Waiting for the last score to go in. But I think there could be a tie in Group 4. Just waiting to see for the final results. And Arvid Flaigeri, or Flaigera I don't know how to say it. I would say Flaigera. I don't think that's the right way of pronouncing it but that's how I say it unfortunately. I could ask him. One of the youngest competitors here in the finals is eliminated here in round two, but he's currently number five in the world overall, 14 years old. And current European. He's a major winner. He won the European Championship actually the same day we were at Chicago Expo and beat quite a few big players. Knocked out former world champion Johannes Ostermeyer, which was no mean feat. So I'm going to put Arvid's early departure down and maybe a bit of jet lag because it really hurts when someone who travels, jet lag really gets you. Because at any day you can beat all the players in that group. Out of curiosity, you said you won the European Championship. What was his age compared to when Escher won the PAPA World Championships? I think Escher was 13. Who was younger then? Escher. Yeah, I think Arvid's. I think I was, I want to say 14 or something. But, yeah. Yeah, I mean, great, great plays from both of them. And if you want to wonder why junior tournaments used to be 16 and under and they're now 12. No, 12 and under, yeah. Because they're realizing that these 13 to 16-year-olds give the rest of us a real run for our money. And so while we've got Union Jack on the camera, I'm going to pick up the UK Open. We're a sponsor of Indus, we work closely with Indus, they help us out massively. Our event, a stem full circuit event, an ECS qualified EPC event in September 29th, 30th and the 1st. Ticket sales go on sale the 1st of July and we're really excited about it. and lots of the great things I've seen here. I'm going to try and borrow a few of them as I've done before but if you're liking this, you want more of that, come to London. The rain might be the same so if you've enjoyed the Carl Weathers here in California, the Carl Weathers will be much the same in London by that time and actually the winner of the main tournament will get a pre-entry into the Classic Match Play here and Indus 2024, if you can believe it, that he's already started planning for. So let's get back to Tommy. Yeah, so you got ball two with player four here, Steve Zahler. He's got his multiball left. That's where big points can be had in multiball, but they're not guaranteed. And it's very similar to Tron with the kind of flip end of the line sort of shot. another great board game this game we have this game in our club and the stats that we've got this game gets a huge amount of play it's a massively popular game so Steve's only chance here is he needs a win and he's got the multiball ready so you can do it you can do it in one multiball but he's definitely disappointed with that he just got one shot at it it was a little bit early and couldn't get the ball back So Steve Vinn is up now. So Steve has already played his multiballer. You would have seen the mirror down at this point. So Steve also needs a win to guarantee he can get through. And with Jared's big score, it doesn't help him too much. So he's really looking at a win to get in right now. And that means he needs to come back and climb ahead of Jared August with that great 800 million after two balls. So do you think he's trying to soft plunge or actually go for the skill shot? I think we go for the skill shot. It's big. Everyone's on a multiball strategy here. Oh, no, never mind. He wanted to backhand. Yeah, the shot from that left flipper is dangerous, But I also found the backhand from the right flipper harder than usual for Tommy To the point where I started going after the left scoop From the right flipper just because you you hit the post and the ball just goes flying to the outlanes That multiball ended pretty quickly for Steven and He has four more shots to light his multiball at the mirror You see that with the tommy lights as we light up, you have to hit that ramp mirror shot. So he's going to the left flipper because he wants to relight his mode through the left orbit. Or he can do that too and shoot. That lights it temporarily if it goes through the in lane, but he wants to get the left orbit because it's a lot less dangerous to shoot than the right orbit. But in this case, he lit it through the in-lane. When you go through an in-lane, you get your mode shot lit for a couple of seconds. Very similar to Addams Family rules, keeping in mind that they were built the same generation. And it's one of the Data East machines that claimed that they didn't make their own rules. They just repeated all the other rules. This is tunnel hunt from Addams Family. that was the but then there's also the question which one came first, who actually had the original rule I think the Data East guys had it first that's the conspiracy that's the UK bias in the commentary booth absolutely and the fact I like this game more than I like Adam's family right, you get some mirror I don't even register for it Yeah, it did. So he's got a nice 20 million there. He took it right away. He knows he needs the points. The silver ball lights for 20 million after you've hit the three stand-ups, I believe twice each. So when you see that lit and you need points, it's a good shot to go for. From here, probably go for the mirror each time. He would love another multiball. Yeah, but that kick-out wasn't great for him. I came way off the clipper there. Oh, here's a good one. Oh, a little late. This game with the pin send is great. You get the music so much better. Steve is really keeping this ball going here. He needs to. He needs to pass Jared. Or, if that doesn't happen, he needs someone else to pass Jared. Hopefully Kaylee for his sake. but you can't control other players you can only control yourself and here it is ball three another mirror hit oh I just waiting for the turnover so I can confirm Daniele and Neil are through Gabe the silver is a local player and Jason Dollar are through Tim and Jason we still go through both world champions Andre and Bowen go through and we're still waiting for the results of the last two games. There's a tie in group five between Josh Sharpe and Jim Belsito and it looks like Travis has gone through, Travis Murie which is great, we might still see some work and obviously we're waiting for the results the result of this group the tires of mystery castle just picked that well so that's the end of Kaylee's ball but it's not necessarily the end of Kaylee's tournament I don't think things can turn out at this point he's got six points Jared will move ahead of him, but Steve does not have enough points to catch him with a second place. Best finish for Steve. Yeah, Steve. And Steve Zoller best finishes by points. So Kaylee is through. And Jared is through. Jared is guaranteed two points at this point. So they're both through with six now. Because the best Steve can do is five. The best the Steves can do is not enough for Jared and Kaylee. So this group is wrapped up, and I think Jared knows it because he looks very comfortable. Yeah, he's playing in a relaxed stance, not the, you know, I'm going to save everything that comes by. And that's why he's taking shots in his right orbit, you know, he just feels good. Yeah, it's just a bit of practice really, isn't it? Not too worried about that ball. Yep. Maybe we can get some Mystery Castle in if our producer is up for it. tiebreak from mystery castle maybe can we get on that so we're yeah I think so yeah cuz this game's kind of decided Carl no disrespect to Steve, but... We're sending our producer on a little jog to move the broadcast rig over to... I'm just thinking of Carl's health, trying to get him some laps and some steps. You'll probably see the mobile rig go by behind us. It's coming. You'll see it soon. It should be by Neil first. There we go. We're going to bully our way into Mystery Castle. There it went. It just went by. Heading over to Mystery Castle. Josh Sharpe is currently playing. That's okay. You can just wheel it over him while he plays. I do know that happened in one tournament. I can't remember who it was. I did it here in Classics 1. I waved it over. I remember. It was that nine ball I think, wasn't it? It was on the Sorcerer. I trapped it up on the left and I was like roll it over me. Keep the show going. Absolutely. I'm not great sure it's been we still got a lot of pinball we got another you know few four rounds of this yeah I think it's up for qualified oh absolutely the by guys come in and keep that and Eric yes so lots of color to come there I think and Josh currently on 113 by looks of it. Yep, and this game is probably one of the most difficult to commentate because if anyone starts the Skull mode, scores will no longer display for the remainder of the ball. So right now we know that Josh has over 100 million, but if he starts the Skull, we will lose the score. Is this one on score bit? So unfortunately, score bit grabs the scores from the DMD. So if the DMD says nothing, score bit also says nothing. Oh, okay, so. Guys are working on a CPU hack so that we can grab scores from the CPU, but... For the very popular Alvin G architecture, I have no idea what the game runs on. But even a lot of... I think it's a Williams rip-off. Yeah, but even a lot of Williams games, you get into a mode, and it's like you don't see anyone else's score. Yeah, I kind of... The one thing I'm really happy about is how easy it is to get scores at the end of a game on modern games, because you ate from a creature you didn't want to eat, right? So Carl just... Yeah, Josh's ball one is completed. Yeah. He's taking a... He looks happy, actually. He's taking a big bite of a Snickers by the looks of it. Other chocolate brands are available. I wish we could put the camera on him now just enjoying that candy. He's happy. Yeah, look at this. This is a bad lie. He's looking at us on the screen waiting for his game to show up. Not aware we're probably talking about him chewing and taking every bite. And our producer is heading back over to switch, rig over to see Jim Belsito, another tournament director. I mean, we're watching a guy who does all this work. It's insane. Gets all these games ready and then somehow still qualifies in the tournament. On two entries. Yeah. And he was fixing every game. He was doing so much. Yeah, so Joe's got $154 million. This is Jim's first ball player too. I have only seen this machine once before this when I did a pinball at the lab. Supposedly there's 500 made according to ITDB, but I don't see it anywhere. I think there's 20 of them left. It's like Jim's got the only one that you ever see. We have a great guy who looks after our games at Pinball Republic in London, James Reid, he's a gotliab and weird pinball specialist, he has one. I've been trying to convince him to let me borrow it for the UB Open, but it's kind of a treasure for him. That's the only other one I know of in existence. And this is the game from Pinball at the Lounge, it's the same game. One of my favourite things about this game, it has a secret title. It's not the Mystery Castle, it's the Mystery Castle of Doom. So, I believe you've got your lights on the play field, which I'm sure a lot of viewers don't know this machine very well, if at all. You've got a whole lot of different modes. One of them is like extremely valuable. Some of them are worth points and some of them only like light something. Basically, to start the mode, you have a lit... One of your shots has a lit light, and you have to hit that shot, and it starts the mode, I believe. It's just like one shot. Yeah. Just one shot gets you the item, and if it's a mode, it starts. And most players will do this. They will time out the mode, because there are just not as many points in some of them as there are in the others. Jim is looking for some items. You can always also I didn't realize this until my very last game you can change the items by shooting the target right next to the right ramp. So here's another mode that Jim does no interest in playing. But he has lit Mega Mode. It's a green insert, which I have no idea what lights it, but you get a ball save no matter what when you start a Mega Mode. Sometimes it's a multiball. Yeah, we're going to find him. That was a nice way to patch it up to that upper floor. That was like a tap or something like that. Really interesting sound effects on this game. Oh, that ends. I love the music and the sound effects on this game. It's awesome. So distinctive. Candelabra mode. Candelabrum. Excuse me. And that ends Jim's first ball. So neither player has played the incredibly valuable goal mode. Can I circle this? No. No, it's not. No, there's so much to unfortunately. So you see this goal just above the flippers, above the words good luck, you'll need it. That's the ultra valuable mode. And the one that turns off the display so you can no longer see the scores. That's what you want. And it's, what is it, there's a particular switch or something that moves the mode? It's the one right next to the right ramp. Just to the left of the right. Illustration would be great here, but we apologize. Josh has started his Mega Mode, giving him his multiball. And he's got some interest for Jackpot's Lich. Or 5 million. I never know what's in this game, sorry. And it's over. So he shot the change shot there. That just changed to the portrait mode. And it also moves which items are lit. So if it's a tough one, like one of those inner shots, you can move it with that as well. The left ramp is what he's going for at this point, just to start the next roll. So this has a moving jackpot shot. It's 25 million points, you know, on the left orbit, but he's not interested at all. He's going to let it time out. I think the audio is the strong speech of this game. Not the speech, but the audio. Hey, Tim, you work at CERN. Here's an idea for you. You know that standard button where you sometimes don't know what to do with it? Press it to board a boat instead of timing it out. We try to prevent people from timing out modes because we get boring pinball moments. I'm glad you do that. But you have to ask yourself, why are you creating modes that people want to time out? Right. Okay, Skull is lit, but it's on a very difficult shot. So he shot that target there to change it to the left orbit. Oh, and he's got the Skull lit. Yeah, and it happened to be his last one, so it didn't change. Oh, nice. So he is ready for multiball and he has to shoot one of the lip shots. And you get this John Carpenter style music here while your mode is ready. It's a bit of high speed in the background. And here we go, we have lost display for the remainder of the ball, but we have started multiball. and you can tell how many balls are in play by the number of dancing skeletons that will be on the screen in a moment. Every shot is looking for a jackpot. And in our opening you have all these points. I believe that when this ball is done, when all the balls are done, you have bubbles pouring from the rest of the ball. And you get a great animation of a skeleton dancing. Look at that stuff. It's amazing. So, another good thing is Josh has almost completed all of his items, which will be the game's wizard mode completing the scavenger hunt, collecting all the items. What do you think about that skeleton, Dave? Oh, sorry, Dave. I think it's your job, Tim, to get it into a stern game with some sort of flipper. I think we could do a few more frames. I will buy that game irrespective of what it is. 423 million. See? That was quick points in that skull mode. And look what's lit for Jim Balsito. No other than the skull. But first, the skill shot. Yeah, he does not want to accidentally hit that changeable stuff. And what I saw Arvid doing was he was plunging around and then just shooting right up the right inline. and then just shooting the ramp to get the left ramp to turn off the skill shot because you really want to bother with shooting the skill shot over and over again? I don't think so. Just want to get skull mode. What everyone's here for. This is why we wanted it on stream. We want to see those skeletons. Jim's talking to himself a bit. I'm not sure what he's thinking about. I think I might have up his crazy game in the night. That's a skill shot. He's going for it, and that's going to end it. We lost our display here a little bit, but I hear the flippers clicking, so we know that he's trapped up, and he's practicing with the other flipper what he wants to do. Uh-oh. Good luck. You need it. Okay, he's got the multiball ready, And he shoots it. Starts it. Trying to use the audio there. So every shot's lit for a jackpot. Only two pinballs in this game I think. Maybe they're in there. Not gonna see us. Boom. Jackpot. Boom. Jackpot. Oh, he went for it. He's got another chance now. He's got the tough ones left on the upper-finger side. Staging was not possible on this game when I played it. The left flipper would disengage. The bottom flipper would disengage before the top one. And the only way to feed that shot is to go behind that orbit or into the pond. Oh, he's got a shot at it now. A jackpot? Nope. Drop the flipper to try to get another jackpot. Now he's got another chance at the jackpot. Right in the middle of those two shots. So are there any other shots worth points, or is that really what he needs? All he could do is hit the jackpot shot right now. Now that it's over. It's over, but he's into double scoring, I believe, right? For the rest of the ball. I couldn't tell you because you can't see the score. So you can't even see what is happening. It could be double scoring for the rest of the ball, but I would have no way to know, unfortunately. So we have to, like, guess the scores and see who's closer, what gets all done. You think he's past Josh yet? I don't think he's past Josh yet. Josh had 400. Oh, he scores here. Whoa, 324 million. Wow, amazing. I didn't know it would come back. Maybe he knows his secret flipper combo to reset the display. All right, left orbit. Pull the poker up. Okay, and he takes the shot with the upper poker. Instead of letting it come back down. Back to the Dancing Skeleton. They seem to have that shot down pat to get their top flipper. It leaps to the left a little bit, holds the flipper, it goes up a little bit, and the Dancing Skulls draw it to the upper. He sets 10 million lead on every shot. So maybe you're all right about the double score. Are you saying 10 million instead of 5 million on the Vagabond? Oh, look, two Dancing Skeletons. Is that why it's double scoring? Because there's two? But is it two because of... Because there's two balls in play. Because there's two balls in play and you've got double screens. I don't know. Like I said, I played like two or three games on it. I had a pinball at the last tournament, but that's been my exposure to it. I do have a co-worker who did wiring on this game. I might ask him if he could find an original rule sheet somewhere. Or just the source code. That's probably long gone. Wow, nice. I think Jim might be ahead of Josh now. Also, does this game have much bonus? It does. It has some. It could be big. I have no idea how you build your bonus hex either. What would it be? Inlands? No. Targets? this is my top mystery castle every rule on the rules and they potentially change from me so how many more you only has like two most maybe three you know trying to see he can you can shoot the target to change with shots lit or he could go for it now he's backhanding the target so his His left orbit's now lit. A much easier shot. Okay, he's in a frenzy-type mode. Every switch is 250k, but with this spinnerless game, people are just going to time it out. We're getting some growling, taunting music here. Now they're left orbit. Jim's dialed in on the left orbit. The police are coming for Jim. Here we go. Boom. It's late. This music that's playing over and over again sounds a lot like someone put the theme from Halloween through a random number generator to come up with the notes It worked Why would he not It looks like he's trying to go for that shot and not change it? Is there a potential reason why he does try backhash? Oh, he did it there? I don't know, yeah. Instead of going for like a hard side shot. It seems like that's what he did before. He hired the ramp lit, but he gets the ax. Yeah. I think Jim's in the lead. Let's see if my prediction comes true. Got a little more dancing to do. Wow. 56 million times 10. That's 5 million times 10. Oh yeah. Okay, last ball. Here we go. That's also confusing. Like, player one has the score listed second. I just flipped. Now it's where it was. Hunter won. Josh is wearing an ancient t-shirt. Top of three. That was my first ever tournament. Top of three. Wow. and I don't know how Josh finished but he was playing I think juniors that year and that was the only tournament I ever played in my life in B division I finished second, I became eighth in the division and I've never played in B division since What's amazing is that Corey, he is there And we are done with Pandora's box. So he's got a good shot now. A ramp. Maybe we'll see a putt pass here. Yep. He thought he changed it, but he didn't. Oh no, it did not make it all the way around. I am warning. It's the warning. You get a guy pointing at you on the screen. So nothing really happens so far on Josh's ball except a lot of frustration. He wants to shoot the ramp and just get through this. It looks like a bell, I guess. And we're getting a little bit of language. A yellow car. Oh, gosh. Getting great audio from the games by our incredible stream producer, Carl D'Python Anghelo of IE Pinball. All right, Josh, can you hit the right ramp? Make that joint the water. Doctor's known for taking a drink of water in the middle of the game. It's actually gin. It's actually gin. It's gin? Okay. Yay! GIN! causing producer a bit of an agony. Okay, he changes his shot to the left orbit, and he is really going for these end of flipper transfers. His voice changing higher and higher pitch with every missed shot. He's throwing bullets at the skeletons. That's his last blow. What happens after this? You get another special mode with a roving jackpot. I think it roves every 60 seconds. But I think it's worth $100,000,000 if he hits this red jackpot arrow. Which he just did. Super jackpot. Ooh, $100,000,000. Another one. How's the other one play? Okay, he's making some faces. This is where staging would work, but he said it's not working on this one. On this game, no. Oh, it actually moved on him. Had he waited, he might have been able to take one last chance at that last grab. Now he's back to the beginning and he can get another skull mode now, which would See what he wants to do and just get through items again. I mean the game is already we've seen every single thing in the game We still don't understand what happened, but we saw it all Alright, switch frenzy that he doesn't care about. What's happening? I like these ghosts though, they're very spooky. And where, oh they're coming out of Pandora's box. I thought that was like a pizza oven or something. Now it's closed. Okay. Alright, ramp. If we switch the mode, do we know which order, what direction it goes in, or is it random? I don't know. Is it cookie random? Because I'm wondering, like, right next to the skull, is that something it would be able to switch? It seems to just jump wherever it wants to go. Okay, so not necessarily the adjacent one. Is that, like, a 25 million jackpot there? Oh, he's thinking about it. Oh, as soon as he thought to move for the jackpot to switch flippers, it moved to a shot he wasn't able to hit. and then he pointed to the game and mentioned that. You've got to jump right over these small... Yes. ...wagon. But it takes a while to move, right? It's still lit because it's running, and then once it's done running, it'll move. And where's it going to go? In order? Nope, just went up to the bell. I don't think it has any rhyme or reason, Dave. I don't think there's... It kind of feels like they didn't finish some bits of this code. What about the artwork, Neil? Yeah, well, that's... Oh, no! The artwork does what it needs to do, I think. But yeah, it can do a bit more quality. It does look like you were looking down from a helicopter into... The castle, yeah. the maybe like the inner sanctum of the no I see it's like supposed to be kind of curved yeah thanks perspective of the corn pops looking sad on that. Yeah, this is the big organ. So it looks like Jim needs two modes to get to that same wizard mode. Right, with the 100 million shots. And basically if he hits two, he's good. And he's blocked from making any progress on the mode by the skill shot, which is why I saw Arvid just shooting away from it. Jim shot at it. You get a ball save, so hey, take a shot at it. This is almost better that he hit the target because now it's done. Nice reflex shot up the ramp. Back up bullet. He's got his left orbit lit, which we know is a shot he could make. So Crown is the last one always, I guess. Oh, no. So Crown's always the last one. Yeah. I see. That's kind of what you're marking out as fast. More rules still work without a sound. I'm familiar there. Oh, he wouldn't put a shot on the ramp. He knows he just has that one shot. Halfway up the ramp. Nice, you just dug it out from under the other side. That is a waste of time, I mean we can't see it but the game is telling us he scored 100 million twice. Yeah he's going to be ahead now right? Oh just a little bit, ok. The bonus was the game again. I wouldn't be risking bonus, I'd be going for shots. You know what would be bad? If it was based on how many things you've collected and they all reset to the green crown. So, okay, last year we were watching this game and the shot moved when Zach McCarthy waited. There we go. That's it. Big round of applause goes up for Jim. Josh tackled him. Knocked him off the game. A billion, that's great. Okay, so Jim goes through, whilst alongside... Josh Sharpe was... alongside Travis which is going to be interesting and now the top seats come in which will also be interesting, welcome everybody Thank you Neil. Thanks guys, I'm off. Have a great rest of the tournament. We're going to run some adverts and pay the bills. and we'll see you guys later on. Still loads of pinball action here to come and it's only going to get better and better. So long guys, bye bye.
Bowen Kerins
person
Neil Graflingperson
Kyleperson
Congogame
Rushgame
Star Trek Next Generationgame
Flash Gordongame
Street Fightergame
Back Alley Pinball Loungeorganization
INDISC 2023event
IFPAorganization
Pinball Republicorganization
?

event_signal: INDISC 2023 IFPA World Championship showing strong spectator engagement and event organization

high · Mexican wave among crowd; multiple score bit displays; professional streaming and commentary

  • ?

    product_concern: Rush setup at event modified with earplug mods and runs faster than standard configuration, suggesting base game may have vibration/setup issues

    medium · Commentary on earplug mods being 'smart' addition; notes about Jim's machines running unusually fast

  • ?

    technology_signal: Widespread adoption of earplug mods on tournament machines to reduce tilt bob vibration and improve playability

    medium · Commentator notes 'Almost all of them [have the earplug mod]' with caveat about older Gottlieb machines