Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

The Ray Rae Show, Episode 1: The 2022 Pinball Super Series at District 82

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Oct 24, 2022
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Pinball podcast episode analyzing the 2022 District 82 Super Series tournament structure, WPPR mechanics, and competitive gameplay.

Summary

Rachel Ristel and Raymond Davidson discuss the 2022 Pinball Super Series held at District 82 in De Pere/Green Bay, Wisconsin—a second annual event featuring six tournaments over 3.5 days with 150 players. They address criticism of District 82 as a 'WPPR points farm,' explain the Super Series format (6 events, 100-point scoring per tournament), WPPR rating/ranking mechanics, and TGP (Tournament Grading Percentage). Raymond provides detailed gameplay breakdowns of specific matches from the first knockout tournament, including strategic learnings on games like Terminator 3 and Robo War.

Key Claims

  • District 82 had 40 of the top 100 IFPA players at the start of the Super Series

    high confidence · Rachel Ristel stated this as a factual observation about tournament attendance

  • Only 44 of the 150 players at the Super Series received points in all six tournaments

    high confidence · Rachel Ristel cited this statistic directly

  • 110 out of 150 players were already in the top 1,000 IFPA rankings before the Super Series

    high confidence · Rachel Ristel presented this statistic

  • IFPA only counts the top 64 players' quality ratings toward WPPR points; above 64 players, only quantity matters, not quality

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson explained WPPR algorithm mechanics in detail

  • Karl D'Angelo won the overall Pinball Super Series across all six tournaments

    high confidence · Rachel Ristel stated this as a factual tournament result

  • Eric Thorne has created a wonderful, warm, and welcoming environment for players at District 82

    high confidence · Rachel Ristel made this subjective assessment about the venue operator

  • Zach Sharpe won the first tournament (10-strike progressive knockout) with a win on Supersonic

    high confidence · Rachel Ristel reported the tournament results

  • Raymond Davidson took 16th place in the first knockout tournament and scored 85 points toward the Super Series overall

    high confidence · Rachel Ristel referenced Raymond's performance

  • District 82 has two 'unstreamable rooms' for longer or less visually interesting games like Funhouse and Palooka

    high confidence · Rachel Ristel explained the venue's streaming setup

  • The Super Series format requires consistent play across all six tournaments; only 44 players competed in all six events

Notable Quotes

  • “District 82 is known as a WPPR points farm... you could call anything a farm that provides all those things.”

    Raymond Davidson @ early in episode — Addresses a common criticism of high-event venues and normalizes the concept as a natural outcome of venue quality

  • “I think the top 100 has just gotten a lot... there's been more people every year. The IFPA player count has probably doubled every year or every couple years.”

    Raymond Davidson @ mid-episode — Provides context for why top 100 entry is harder regardless of regional tournament availability

  • “You have to actually perform well in those events, right? It doesn't mean anything if you can't do well in them.”

    Raymond Davidson @ mid-episode — Counters the narrative that proximity to District 82 alone explains player rankings

  • “Now people are discovering, hey, anyone can go to these tournaments, and it's attracting the best talent out there.”

    Raymond Davidson @ mid-episode — Notes how Super Series and similar regional tournaments have become destination events for top players

  • “Every win you get in that format feels so good. It feels like you just, you know, bought an extra life, basically.”

    Raymond Davidson @ discussing knockout format — Captures the emotional intensity and stakes of knockout tournament play

  • “I was just focused on the, like, I just want to get multiball. Like, just let me get multiball, you know.”

    Raymond Davidson @ discussing Terminator 3 gameplay — Illustrates tunnel vision and lack of strategic flexibility in competitive play

  • “He took the gate. There was a gate on the right flipper. He took that out, so it makes the game so much harder.”

    Raymond Davidson @ discussing Robo War tournament ROM modifications — Shows how tournament rule modifications at District 82 affect game difficulty and strategy

  • “I basically wrote myself off as, okay, I'm at least taking one strike... It was just kind of, you know, well, Jason loves X-Men. He's going to blow it up.”

Entities

Rachel RistelpersonRaymond DavidsonpersonDistrict 82venue/organizationEric ThornepersonPinball Super SerieseventKarl D'AngelopersonZach Sharpeperson

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: The 2022 Pinball Super Series at District 82 was a second annual tournament featuring six separate events over 3.5 days attracting 150 competitive players, with 40 top-100 IFPA players in attendance

    high · Rachel and Raymond provided detailed breakdowns of the event format, attendance figures, and player quality metrics

  • ?

    community_signal: District 82 is establishing itself as a destination tournament venue with community-wide respect; Eric Thorne is being recognized for creating a welcoming and competitive environment

    high · Rachel explicitly praised Eric's management: 'Eric Thorne has done there is an amazing job... He's really created such a wonderful, warm, and welcoming environment'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: The Super Series introduced the 100-point multi-tournament aggregation format and explored double-up match play variations, indicating ongoing evolution of tournament structures

    high · Detailed explanations of scoring system and format mechanics; mention of experimenting with styles at 'Tilt and Tuesday at District 82'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: 10-strike progressive knockout tournaments are presented as psychologically intense formats where survival is as important as winning; players reference 'groups of death' with top-ranked opponents

    high · Raymond's detailed gameplay narratives showing decision-making pressure and psychological response to facing top players

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Advanced players are discovering and sharing alternate strategies on machines; example: Terminator 3 assault mode strategy instead of multiball-first approach taught conventional wisdom

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.386

0:00
It's Raymond and Rachel, Rachel and Raymond, tournament pinball is what they really know. It's Raymond and Rachel, Raymond and Rachel, getting all of the info for the travels we go. It's like we're in college and they're sharing the knowledge, so if you're on the list, then you won't know. It's the Ray Ray Show. Hello friends, welcome to the Ray Ray Show, a pinball podcast about competitive pinball. I am your co-host, Rachel Ristel, along here with my pinball pal, Raymond Davidson. We are excited to chit-chat with you today about a huge super series of pinball tournaments that was recently held at District 82 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. What do you think, Raymond? Oh, man. It was, yeah, it was quite the weekend. It was a very super weekend series of tournaments. It was insane. I had a great time. As most folks know, I spent quite a bit of time in the streaming booth. I played one tournament. Raymond, it was the opposite for you. Yeah, I played all six tournaments and popped into the booth here and there, You know, from 9 a.m. to midnight every day, like 1 or 2 a.m. one of the days. After the tournament, did you go home and play any pinball or did you take a break? I think I just slept for a while. Yeah, I just chilled. Yeah, I think you and everybody else. You know, there's something I want to chit-chat about before we jump right into talking about the Super Series and kind of going over it. District 82 is known as a whopper farm, right? Yeah, I've heard that. How do you feel about that? How do you feel about Wofford Farms in general? You know, it's kind of funny because it's just called a farm because, what, there's a lot of events, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of points. But you could call anything a farm that provides all those things. It's just now, I guess, there's a new name for it. But, you know, I've been, if you look at any of the top players' IFPA profiles, back in the day, the Papa. Papa was the original WAPA farm. You know, they had classics, three different classic events. You know, the main event got super boosted because it was a major. It was just something everyone traveled to because there was tons of people, tons of events, and tons of WAPAs. And so I don't think it's a bad thing that now there's just one that happens to be, you know, in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Technically, it's in lovely De Pere, which is the suburb of Green Bay. But most people, you know, when they try to figure out how to get there, it's easiest just to think about it in terms of Green Bay. I have so many people that reach out and ask me the best way to travel to get to Pier. I'm like, well, you can fly into Green Bay, but it's going to cost you a pretty penny, as is if you would fly into Appleton. But definitely I think the best way is if you fly into Chicago or Milwaukee and you rent a vehicle and you drive on up, you're going to need a vehicle anyways over the course of five days if you're going to be playing that much pinball. Yeah, I mean, that's all very true. Yeah, it's flying to Chicago, you know, centrally located, lots of good flights there. You can ride with people, catch, you know, all rent a car together. So that's definitely probably the cheapest way to do it. For sure. And it's fun. Yeah, it's an incredibly fun weekend. I think sometimes I've heard a little bit of negative connotations about it being a walker farm and that it's harder for players that want to break into the top 100, that this is where they have to go in order to get the points. Do you think that's true? No, I think the top 100 has just gotten a lot, like there's been more people every year. I don't know if you've looked, but I'm pretty sure the IFPA player count has probably doubled every year or every couple years, where now the top 100 is just way harder to get into. Yes. No matter where the events are, there could be only one or two events a year, no Whopper Farms at all, it's still going to be hard to get into the top 100 because there's just so many good players fighting for those spots. Right. I'd agree with that, too. Because I am a District 82 player, as you know. This is something that, and perhaps I took a little bit of a personal offense to it when it was first mentioned to me, is that the District 82 players, the local players, that they have not fairly and squarely earned their points. meaning that because it's easier when there's these large tournaments or the fact that District 82 has over 70 players on the Tilton Tuesday night, that the opportunity for more points is there. Do you think that's a fair or an unfair statement?

high confidence · Rachel Ristel emphasized the structure and consistency requirement

Raymond Davidson @ discussing X-Men match — Demonstrates psychological self-defeat in tournament play and how player reputations influence competitive mindset

  • “I think you always played it classics first and then modern. But it can be kind of tough if you get a hard group, because now you have double the times you have to play them.”

    Raymond Davidson @ discussing double-up match play format — Analyzes the trade-offs of pairing classic and modern games in tournament structure

  • “Yeah, so, well, it was, I started off right away with, you know, Jason Zoller in my group, and I'm like, oh, boy, all right, here we go.”

    Raymond Davidson @ discussing Event 2 — Shows how top-ranked players at an event create psychological pressure and higher stakes for competitors

    • Jason Zollerperson
    Jared Augustperson
    Steven Bowdenperson
    Colin McAlpineperson
    Andy Rosaperson
    Alex Harmonperson
    Brian Shepardperson
    Steven Zahlerperson
    Luke Nahorniakperson
    Josh Sharpperson
    Kyleperson
    Carlosperson
    IFPA (International Flipper Pinball Association)organization
    Pinburghevent
    The Tee'd Off Showorganization/podcast
    Poor Man's Pinball Podcastorganization

    high · Raymond's detailed Terminator 3 analysis: 'they were going for assault... almost ignoring the multiball completely... I wasn't in that same headspace. I was just focused on the, like, I just want to get multiball'

  • $

    market_signal: Regional multi-event tournament series are attracting top-tier national talent; Super Series had 110 of 150 players already top-1,000 ranked, indicating consolidation of competitive events at key venues

    high · Rachel: 'out of the 150 people that were there, 110 of them were within the top 1,000 already to begin with... people that really were looking for the points, were looking for the fun'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community perception of 'WPPR farms' is shifting from negative (unfair advantage for locals) to understanding it as natural outcome of venue quality and larger player base; top players flying in raises difficulty for locals

    high · Extended discussion where Raymond counters the 'unfair advantage' narrative: 'you have to actually perform well... now you're facing against the top 50 in the world... it just all of a sudden becomes a lot harder'

  • ?

    technology_signal: District 82 uses tournament ROM modifications on machines (e.g., Funhouse first mirror always multiball, Robo War gate removed) that meaningfully affect strategy and difficulty

    high · Raymond's discussion of Funhouse tournament ROM mechanics and Robo War gate modification affecting game strategy

  • ?

    operational_signal: District 82 has implemented dual-room setup with 'unstreamable rooms' for longer/less visually interesting games, optimizing for broadcast quality and viewer engagement

    high · Rachel explained Funhouse was 'moved back there' to unstreamable room; Palooka described as less interesting to watch

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Super Series created significant WPPR ranking shifts; Kyle moved into top 25; Josh Sharp and others placed highly, indicating the event provided substantial ranking boost opportunities

    medium · Raymond: 'Kyle got himself on the front page, top 25 or higher. So he had a massive move. Pretty much anybody... that doesn't play a lot and did well found themselves moving up'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Double-up match play (two games per round with same group) is evaluated positively for time efficiency and player flow, allowing more games while reducing wait time compared to alternating classic/modern

    medium · Rachel and Raymond discussing benefits: 'if you have a bad classics game, you can try to take out the revenge right away on the modern' and 'less waiting' compared to alternating formats

    • 4:50
    You know, it definitely, it's, you know, it's an advantage in the fact that you have this event you can go to that's close to you, but you can say that about any different area of the country that has a lot of events versus not very many events. And then also at the end of the day, you have to actually perform well in those events, right? It doesn't mean anything if you can't do well in them. And finally, they're all open events, and you actually are seeing this, where originally things like Super Series, Great Lakes Open, they didn't have a lot of the top 100 players flying in from out of state, But now people are discovering, hey, anyone can go to these tournaments, and it's attracting the best talent out there. And so now all of a sudden all the people living really close next to District 82 are facing against the, you know, top 50 in the world at their District 82. And it just all of a sudden got a lot harder. So I think the IFPA system is a lot, it's pretty self-balancing, especially because now you're actually going to get more points when those top-ranked players fly in versus just your local ones because of the way the algorithm works with all the ranking and ratings boosts. Okay, that's interesting. I didn't think about that aspect of it. Thanks for that. I also thought about what the top, you know, the top 50 best players in the world coming to District 82, the games at District 82 also get much harder. As a local player, you learn to play very difficult and very nerfed games. I think that's part of it. And then also the opportunity to learn how to play the game differently based on those other players that come to town. So I always think that makes me a better player as well. Yeah, yeah, all very, very true statements. it's definitely a great place to practice and you know what, it is an advantage because practicing in tournaments is probably one of the best ways to get better at pinball and so it is nice to be so close to Districate 2 but it's not, I don't think we should shun that, that it's convenient, you know, it's not really fair No, Districate 2, what Eric Thorne has done there It's an amazing job. I just have to put that out there. I say that all the time to people, but he's really created such a wonderful, warm, and welcoming environment for players all over the world to come to with games that I think play magnificent.
    7:19
    And, you know, he really puts the effort forth. So we are going to talk about this wonderful idea. It's a second annual tournament called the Pinball Super Series that was at District 82. It was a total of six events. Over three and a half days, there were 150 players. That was a lot of players. That was a lot of people. I have not traveled to any tournament with that many players. That's a good question for you, Raymond. What's the biggest or the most amount of people at a tournament you've been to? Probably Pinnberg? I have no idea. Yeah, I mean, if we're excluding Pinnberg, because that was 1,000 people, I think probably In disc, I think got up to like 300. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's probably the next biggest. Well, overall, the Pinball Super Series, I'm going to do my very best to try to explain it in layman's terms and just kind of really lay it out how the Pinball Super Series worked as a whole. Each tournament, and Raymond, you hop in and correct me if I get it wrong, but I'm going to try to lay it out. So each tournament, there are 100 points to grab per person.
    8:35
    So if you place higher than 100th place in the tournament, you will not receive any overall points towards the Super Series as a whole. Does that make sense? Yeah, if your number is bigger than 100th place. So, yeah, if you're lower than 100, higher than 100, basically, you know, if you rank 101st, 102nd, then you won't get any points. But if you get rank 100, well, I guess rank 99 would get you one point.
    9:03
    Correct. That was the right way to put it. So you're getting the opposite. So your points tally over the six tournaments,
    9:11
    and the person that has the most points at the end of all six tournaments is the overall winner, and that was Carl D'Angelo. Yep, and that gets you a really cool trophy and a lot of cash. Yes. I have no idea. I didn't even look. I didn't even look to see what it was, but you're welcome to peruse the District 82 pinball website, peek at that, what the overall winners, cash-wise, what they won. And also I'd encourage you to take a look at IFPA, looking at their website, to look at the whoppers that folks took home, too, as well. Because I'm not going to go over any of that, because I think that might be getting too far into the weeds. So it's really, really important to play consistent over all six tournaments. Taking a look at the overall statistics afterwards, there were only 44 players that received points in every single one in all six of the tournaments. Wow. That's crazy. That means that there were some players that did choose to skip a tournament, and there were some that just played not so hot where they came 101st or 101st to 150th in that tournament and they received zero points. So it's only 44. At the beginning, the other fact that I want to share is at the beginning of the tournament series, 40 of the top 100 players were there. Afterwards, I have no idea. I'm sure that there were rings that changed and there were people that were, you know, 15th and 16th or something like that, that they're now 14th and 12th, I have no idea. But I do know there were so many points available that there had to have been some big changes there. Has anybody said anything to you, Raymond, about any big changes as far as the ranking? You mean like the IFPA whopper rules? No, I mean like I was just curious, like, you know, if anybody within the top 100, if they had a big rank change. I know there are quite a few people that bumped into the top 1,000 after this tournament. Oh, yeah. There was, I think Carl got himself on the front page, top 25 or higher. So he had a massive move. Pretty much anybody, you know, Josh Sharp probably moved up a bunch. Anybody that doesn't play a lot and did well found themselves moving up, you know, flying through the ranks. Wow. Also, out of the 150 people that were there, 110 of them were within the top 1,000 already to begin with. Wow. 110? I think that's interesting. It goes to show the people that really were looking for the points, were looking for the fun, looking to play the pinball, were looking to go experience District 82 came out for the weekend. That was pretty awesome. The other thing, Raymond, I'm hoping that you can help explain a little bit further. Raymond, can you break down and explain how each player brings in their own ranking or rating? and how that affects the overall Whoppers within each tournament? Yeah, so basically the reason why these tournaments were worth 80 points and a Tilton Tuesday might be worth 45 or 50, even though they're both the same quality of tournament, same number of games, and even maybe similar number of players, note that any amount of players above 64 actually doesn't help add to the Whoppers. It's only the top 64 people that attend your tournament who get their value added.
    12:46
    So once you get past 64, it's all about the quality of those 64 players that determines how big of a whopper pool there is. So, you know, you got Jason Zoller, Jared August, myself, we're all, you know, top five of the IFPA ranking. So we might be adding one to one and a half points just for playing in the tournament. And so everyone, an unranked player is half a point. And then, like I said, a, you know, top 10, top five could be all the way up to one and a half points. So there's about a point or so difference based on your ranking. But there's also a point or so difference based on your rating, which doesn't really get shown very many places on the website. Right. But it's basically this other stat that the IFPA tracks. And it's more about kind of your average finish relative to other people who are kind of at your level. So whenever you beat somebody who's good, your rating will go up. And whenever you lose to someone who's not as high as you, then your rating can tank. And so it rewards consistency of always playing at the level that the system expects you to play at. And so the rating is also pretty key. And so if you look, the people that were at District 82 had high ratings and high rankings. And so, you know, you add up normally if there's 64 people and they're all half a point, that's only 32 points. So the difference between 32 and the 85 that somebody got, you know, that's all just because of how good the players are. That's the difference. Thank you. You explained that so much more succinctly than I could have ever. And I really appreciate it because that's a question that people often ask me is about how that works. So thank you. I also think we should talk about and provide a general overview of how the scoring works with TGP, the magical letters of TGP. Do you want to explain that just a little bit? Yeah, it's actually extra magical because it can stand for two different things. It can stand for total games played and also tournament grading percentage. Usually tournament grading percentage is what you're talking about when you're talking about did the event grade out to 100% TGP. And so you could have all the right players, but if you only play, like you could have, you know, 1,000 people of the best people in the world, but if they only play one game of pinball to decide the winner, that's only going to be 4% value. So it's more about the quality of the tournament itself, how many games you play, which is why TGP sometimes is said as total games played because you play more games, that raises your grading percentage. So you want to try to get 100%, but with certain things you can do to try to boost, you can actually go above 100%, especially next year when they're making all sorts of different changes to encourage different formats.
    16:03
    And so that's kind of a multiplier effect on the base value that people bring to the tournament. I think I combine both TGPs in my head together as one, like they're working hand in hand. Yeah, they kind of are, basically. That's why people just usually say TGP and people know what you mean. Yeah, that's an extra magical feeling. All right, so I think we should break down the different events that happened over the course of the Pinball Super Series. The first event was a 10-strike progressive knockout. Now here, the objective is definitely first place every round. You want to knock out all the other players until you're the last person standing. I think I've won one knockout in my life.
    16:59
    They're very difficult, yeah. They're very difficult. The scoring is 0-1-2-3 strikes, so you definitely want to take first place. If you take second, I guess that's okay, but you definitely do not want to take last. Mm-hmm. You could easily be knocked out of that tournament if you play bad or terribly four rounds in a row, and you'll be gone. And that does happen. So my goal in that type of a tournament is to last five rounds. Yeah, that's a good goal. Yeah, I think so too. What's your goal, Raymond, to take first, right? Yeah, although, you know, I'm happy if I last maybe ten rounds, you know, get up in the top part of the field where you win a game or two, you save off some fourths and turn them into thirds. You know, you try to do your best to survive as long as possible. Every win you get in that format feels so good. It feels like you just, you know, bought an extra life, basically. Yes, right, that you just skated away on ice, on thin ice. Yes, it is a very good feeling when you can take the game in that format, especially when you're playing against, I just have to say it again, against the best players in the world. I mean, to me, when I walk up to a game, I do look at who else is playing the game. And, yes, I know it's about my game ultimately and how I play and what I accomplish in three balls. And hopefully I get to play all three and flip all three of them, right? But I also do look at who else I'm competing against. So sometimes I'm like, man, this is a knockout. It's not good. I have nine strikes. I only need a half to take first. And now I'm playing against these folks that I know that I've had bad games on Xenon before, and I'm playing these people that are incredible players. We better turn it on. And I like that. I like that feeling. I like that. I like to challenge myself, I guess. Anyways, were there any gains within that tournament that you'd like to talk about? Yeah. I got all the match play events broken. So let's see here. That first tournament, that was, so Progressive Strikes, that was on the Thursday night, right? Yes. Yeah, so it started off good. And with just a bunch of first places, I was kind of in the groove. And then I hit the kind of that group of death you're describing where you're like, okay, well, shoot, everyone here, you know, I'm a little worried because I know what all these players can do. And it was the modern round. And I knew all these players were really good at, you know, the modern games. So I was playing Terminator 3. and well I unfortunately took a last place but it was you know I learned a lot that game and the reason I took a last place was normally I just try to get multi-ball you know shoot that skull in the middle and just kind of you know get that going survive a little get like 30 40 million and you're usually pretty good but in this match the other three players all had like 80 to 100 million, and it was because they all went for a strategy that I had never really considered, which is going for assault, which is on that left orbit, and you qualify by completing the inlanes. So they were just shooting ramps to get their inlanes, and then shooting left orbits, and just doing that, and almost ignoring the multiball completely, because they realized, you know, a multiball is not going to do anything for me. Like, they all ended up playing a multiball, but it wasn't their primary goal. They were playing for the whole game of, I'm going to need to get this wizard mode because I need to blow it up, and this is my strategy to do that. And I just, I wasn't in that same headspace. I was just focused on the, like, I just want to get multiball. Like, just let me get multiball, you know. Yes. And that is a really deadly shot on there. You can hit it from the left or the right, but I think from one or the other, on that particular copy of the game, it does go in there pretty smooth. I also learned that, I think a couple of tournaments ago, about going towards assault, multi-ball, and then going towards the wizard that way, or going that roundabout way of doing it. The fact I also know is it's important to collect your weapons. So I believe the first option is your mystery award. It awards you a weapon because I believe that the more weapons you have going into that, the jack raises your jackpot. And you also get an extra cool million once you get to that assault mode or multivol. I think that you get five million, then you get a million for each weapon. So there's other really cool things to go that path. But I used to play it the same way, Raymond, where I would just go towards the block underneath the, I guess it's the T3, right? It's the skull guy. The T1000 or something? I don't know. Yeah, but I used to do that too, so that's also a lesson learned. And since I played it differently, yeah, my score is definitely better. I'm getting more than $40 million on that game finally. I mean, I used to really struggle with that game. Yeah, and I also learned that choosing mystery is also good because it plunges the ball back to your flipper. you don't have to go into the pops. So that was another thing I learned. It's a safe bet, for sure. Yeah, so that was a sad fourth place, but, you know, lesson learned, and they all deserved it. So I was just kind of like, all right, well, okay, you know, that's why we get so many strikes. So then I had to play against another group of death, which was on the Alien Poker with Steve Bowden, Alex Harmon, and Colin McAlpine, and I'm just like, oh, no. but you know I was able to grind out and just barely collected that royal flush on ball three and immediately drained but it was enough to pass one player so I got third instead of fourth so that was nice to not take two fourths in a row because that can really mess with you so even though it was a third it felt like a first because you know everyone had you didn't pick up that extra strike Like, yes, I agree. Yep, and then I got to play Jackbot, and so I was in the groove on that. Then I got thrown on another group of death on a deadly game, which was Robo War with Jason Zoller, Colin McAlpine, Andy Rosa. And I just, I don't know, I don't like that game. I never feel comfortable.
    23:45
    He took the gate. There was a gate on the right flipper. He took that out, so it makes the game so much harder. And it's just like, you know, I can start the multivolve, but usually it just drains immediately, and then I'm back to trying to figure out how to get points. And also it seemed like I did make one critical error, which was I had a ball locked, so multiball was lit, and it went down the right in lane, which is, you know, the outer side that lights your spinner. Yep. And instead of shooting the spinner, I tried to start multiball. And you should always, always, always shoot the spinner in that game when it's lit. Because it's just stupid points. I saw everybody else do that and beat my entire, like, game score. with that one shot. So always go for that if it's lit. I actually don't go for multi-ball usually on that game because I drain so quickly out of it every single time. So if I can get my spinner lit, great, but I go up through that same shot, go back up on top, and I collect my robo letters. That's usually what I end up focusing on and provides me a decent game. And, again, because I drain so quickly out of that multi-ball, I can't even get the, like, the second ball that comes out wants to go directly into the out lane. Yeah, no, Colin was super frustrated. He played, like, four multi-balls, and none of them made it to his slipper because they kept going straight down the middle, and he was getting very frustrated. I was just like, hey, man, you've been playing for a long time. Like, that's still good. At some point and stuff, you know, it was better than nothing, better than a house ball right off the gate because I have had that on that game as well. Yeah, so that was me struggling, you know, and eventually just I had to play X-Men and Jason Zollers in my group. And I already, this was a mistake too. I basically wrote myself off as, okay, I'm at least taking one strike, which ended up happening. But it didn't have to because in a later tournament, I actually GC'd X-Men and that would have, you know, beaten Jason's score. So there was no reason I resigned myself to the one strike. It was just kind of, you know, well, Jason loves X-Men. He's going to blow it up. Here we go. I'm playing for second. I do that too, Raymond. And I think it's really easy to do that, especially if you know if the person really, really loves that game or they own the game. I know that can blow up in a player's face too, but I did the same thing. Yeah, so then after that, played 8-Ball Champ and just had a couple of bad drains, you know, never got any ball time and missed too many shots at the end, and Carlos blew it up. So that was the end of that tournament. I don't know where I ended up. You said 15th, 16th or something? 16th. I think you tied with 16th. Yeah, so not a bad way to start the Super Series, points on the board. That's right. You gained 85 points in the first tournament.
    26:44
    Not lopper points, unfortunately. No, not lopper points. No, unfortunately not. No, I should correct myself that you gained 85 points towards the overall Super Series scoring. Better way to put it. Yep, so that was good for the series, getting some good points for that. Heck yeah, very much so. The winner was Zach Sharp on Supersonic. That was Brian Shepard, Steven Zahler, and Luke Nahorniak took second, third, and fourth after that. I was a bit concerned. I'm going to wait to confuse Zach and Josh Sharp, even when I have it written down in front of me.
    27:21
    Congrats to them for finishing good strong on the first event. Congrats. Event number two started the next morning on Friday. It was a double-up match play. I like this style of tournament. The objective is to get as many points as you can, meaning that you want to take first place. You played two games per round for a total of 14 possible points in each round. One game was a classic, one game was a modern, and usually the games were next to each other. The scoring was 7-5, 3-1, or 7-4-1 if you played in a three-player group. I don't mind that if you get second place in a three-player group, at least you're getting four points. It's better than 3, I guess. Do you like that style of tournament? Yeah, this format is nice because it's consistent where you get to play a classic and a modern, and it's with the same people. I don't know, actually, now that I'm thinking about it, because most tournaments you get to alternate between classic and modern. So this one's nice because there's less waiting. So, like, if you have a bad classics game, you can try to take out the revenge right away on the modern.
    28:37
    Yes. Because I think you always played it classics first and then modern. But it can be kind of tough if you get a hard group, because now you've got double the times you have to play them, you know, in that group. That's true. And I do think that it's actually more time efficient, too, when you're traveling from one game to the next with the same group of people. Generally, it's a little bit more time efficient as well. I like that. We actually recently explored that for Tilt and Tuesday at District 82, that style of playing. And I thought it was fun. Instead of playing seven rounds, we played four, but with two games each, so a total of eight games. Yeah, it's a great way to play more pinball, as Eric Thorin likes to say. That's right. You get that extra game in. So I really do like the double-up match play.
    29:25
    Let's see. What games would you like to talk about here? This was a pretty good tournament for you. Yeah, so, well, it was, I started off right away with, you know, Jason Zoller in my group, and I'm like, oh, boy, all right, here we go. And I managed to get a second on Pool Sharks, which was good, but then I had probably the best ball ever on Funhaus of, like, I don't even know, it was, like, 50 million or something on ball one. Like, it was, yeah. From one ball? Yeah, it was absurd. I think I ended with like 70 or 80 million. Like it was the most, I basically played a multiball and I got the jackpots as high as they can go to like 10 million a jackpot.
    30:12
    And that was the nice feeling. Rudy was very happy with you or was he upset? He probably was upset. Yeah, he was probably upset at me. You know, I kept going into his trap door. But yeah, that one, I was in this crazy flow state where I just couldn't miss a shot. Every flip either went up the ramp in the hallway or in the trap door. It was pretty awesome. Amazing. I wish that would have been streamed. Yeah, unfortunately it was in the unstreamable room.
    30:39
    Oh, that's right. I forgot Funhouse got moved back there. Yes, there are two unstreamable rooms at District 82, and usually it's the games that are longer playing or perhaps a little bit more boring to watch that are back there. I mean, Palooka is back there, and that's kind of a snooze of a game. Yeah, it can be. But, you know, my Funhaus strategy, especially on that one because it had the tournament ROM where the first mirror award is always multiball. Yeah. Just try to short plunge, start multiball, bash Rudy, get those millions, and then hopefully if you survive long enough in your multiball, you'll get enough minutes and you'll be able to lock a ball and start the real multiball. What you've got to be careful with on Funhaus in tournaments is you have to lock both balls and then hit his mouth in the same ball. If you, you know, ball one lock, ball two lock, drain on your next ball, you have to lock two balls again. So be aware and always prioritize starting multi-ball if you have it ready. Yes.
    31:42
    It absolutely stinks to have to start all over, start your progress all over. and most games at District 82 where they have these different type of ROM different type of install stuff funky tournament competition install or whatever else that's going on there there's actually a sign on the game believe it or not I have to say this, I think it's funny because I noticed on Champion Pub that the ball save was off during my fight and I went to Eric and I like the ball save didn come on he like he was standing right there and pointed at the game And the sign on it said ball yeah no up post right No up post, yes, correct. Sorry, no up post. Yeah, that kind of thing. That's how you learn. Anyway, so after Funhouse.
    32:23
    Well, you know, that was a good start. And then I had a pretty bank that I was really not a fan of, which was the Police Force Lethal Weapon Bank. and that one was streamed.
    32:38
    That was the cop bank. Yeah, cop bank, exactly. That was the one where Colin blew it up on police force and I think I lost by like 100,000 on Lethal Weapon 3. That was so sad.
    32:53
    It was brutal. Yeah, I just, and if you watch the stream, you'll be seeing me miss the right orbit because I knew if I could have just hit that right orbit, I would have passed player one, but I just kept missing it and missing it and then eventually drained and fell short. And I was just like, if I just hit anything, it was so painful. Hit anything. Hit something. Anything. Had the one shot on the left go in and bobble out, and if that would have stuck, that would have been enough points. It was just, I needed to keep my cool, though, and I think I just started getting frustrated, you know? Yes. Or you're, like, thinking to yourself, why is it not going all the way in there? that's where the shot is. Sometimes I think about that. When it's just once it dribbles back out or just barely touches, you know, you're trying to get one drop-down target on something, it just barely whispers across that you think it's enough power to knock it down and the ball comes down and drains. I feel for you.
    33:51
    We should talk about that, that all of the tournaments that we're talking about, all the different events in the Pinball Super Series was streamed by Fox News. Pinball should go take a peek out there. You can look at the cop bank that Raymond played on. Yes, I do want to mention Colin on that police force. That was something unbelievable to watch. I don't know how many multiballs he had in one ball, but it was really – he's an amazing person to watch play. He's also a fun guy to have in the booth as well. Yeah, great streaming action. Yeah, it was great streaming action, really. Yeah, and I think one of my games this tournament was a Harlem game that got streamed. I think both my Harlem games that were on stream were insane, everybody rolls it kind of games. Really? I'll have to go back and look. Maybe this one didn't get streamed. I don't remember. Yeah, I can't remember half of it, Raymond. I streamed so much. I think there was 48 hours of stream, and I'm pretty sure I streamed at least 38 hours. I'm pretty certain. So it's hard for me to go back and recall in my mind. And I really should have written it down, what games has Raymond streamed today, but that's okay. That's next year. I've got notes now for next year.
    35:09
    Yeah, so this tournament was going, this tournament was like a constant uphill battle where I was playing pretty good, but every single round it was just not quite good enough for first. because if you look at the people I played, I had the highest tiebreaker of anybody, meaning I played players who ended up doing the best in that tournament. So, like, if you look at all the players I played, all of them, most of them, finished in, like, the top 16, top 20 of that event, and so that made my tiebreaker really high. But my tiebreaker kind of deserved to be high because it was really, really hard. It was so tough. Yeah, so, like, round one, I had Jason Zoller. Round two, I had Colin McAlpine. Round three, I was with Zach Sharp. Round four, I was with Stephen Bowden. Round five, I had Jared August and Carl D'Angelo. Round six, I had Carl D'Angelo again with Andy Bagwell and Kaylee Campbell. That was another death group. And then the final round, I was in the kid group. I had Neil Graff, Jason Zoller, and Asher Lefkoff, and I'm just like, oh, my God.
    36:20
    What? What did I do? Oh, man. And you got a return to alien poker. Oh, my God. And then I got last with 900,000. That's crazy. Yeah. I just needed to survive, and I just fumbled it at the end from some weird panic flip. You know, it's hard with that right flipper setup, so you don't, you know, drain yourself through them.
    36:45
    Yes. And I just, I was on my way and I almost started getting things going, but just fell short. And then I got, I got kind of, kind of angry, rage, rage, where I was like, kind of upset, you know, and I was like ready to just go to the next game. And, and so on NASCAR, I think I put up like 45 million ball one of just like this razor focus, like, just like, like, yeah. Yeah. Rage and rage. Love it. If you want to watch a crazy ball of NASCAR, it was just me just like, I don't know, I was in this weird rage state. And it worked out that time. I have a friend of mine that likes to rage play. I have a couple of friends that talk about that. Maybe I need to implement that.
    37:29
    It always sometimes works. Yeah, maybe sometimes. You have to be the right kind of rage. You can't be, like, angry rage. You've got to be, like, focused, like, this is my time kind of rage, you know. Channel it. You're channeling it. Usually my rage is anger rage. Yeah.
    37:51
    So I don't think that's why I shouldn't use that. Usually if it's a bad game, I go outside and take a walk, get some fresh air, do a walk around the building, go get a water, and then we'll come back and play ball too.
    38:03
    Yeah, sometimes it's good just to take a walk for sure. Yeah. Yeah, have a breather. So you overall. Yeah, so even though I was in the final four group, because I had that fourth on Alien Poker, I slipped to fifth. Andy Rosa snuck in above me. Yes. So it was Escher who won, and then Jason Zahler and Neil Graff and Andy Rosa, and then Mr. Raymond Davidson.
    38:35
    So that's what an incredible finish. Jason Zahler, man, like you said, I did have the opportunity to play against him in a tournament, and Jason Zahler makes me as nervous as when I play against Neil Graff. Hands down.
    38:51
    He's unbelievable as a player as well. And his dad is so nice, too. Yeah, they're great players. It's always scary playing against Jason Zahler. It's scary. I like that. I like that you're real honest about that. I appreciate that. I guess I should. Should I talk about some brief strategy of, like, some of the games I've played, since I know a lot of people maybe haven't played NASCAR or Alien Poker? Yes, please do so. Let's talk about Alien Poker first. Yeah, so Alien Poker, you kind of have two different things going on. You have the center drops, which if you hit them in order, you'll collect a royal flush value. That can be multiplied by the top lanes. So if you complete all the kings, then that'll go 2x and 3x and 4x.
    39:41
    But meanwhile, there's these joker lights kind of scattered throughout. There'll be one joker lit on a target. And if you hit that, that's your bonus multiplier. So you can actually, you don't even have to go for the royal flush. You can just kind of shoot it up top, get a bunch of bonus, and then chase the jokers. And that kind of gives you some good base points so that that way you get some points before you start cashing in on your Royal Flush. Because those targets in the middle can be kind of deadly. So I usually, when I step up to the game, I'm just shooting the right orbit over and over and over again, getting bonus up there. And then shooting some jokers to get some bonus multipliers. And then once I'm at 3x, your spinner actually lights, which is interesting. So when you get the Kings to 3x, your spinner will light, and then when they get to 4x, the spinner turns off until you complete the targets and then get it back up to 3x again. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, so actually, if you're having kind of a rough game, like, let's say you have a bad ball one and you're on ball two and the scores are pretty low, like everyone's kind of having a bad game. On ball two, you might want to just complete your kings up to 3x and light your spinner, and then don't, like, purposely lane change incorrectly so that you don't go to 4x. That way, your spinner is lit, and when you drain your ball two, on ball three, you can step up and power plunge a lit spinner for 1,000 a spin, which can be enough to pass somebody. Okay, there's a couple of things there. One, I didn't know that it turned off at 4x. That is a great tip. Thank you. Another thing I want to talk about there is power plunging. I had never done that until this past tournament, because I recognized that on Alien Poker specifically, people were doing that. Because when you power plunge, which is a certain way of holding the plunger, which was demonstrated to me, and I can now do that, it's super fancy. It's a great way to do it on that game, because you're ripping that spinner right out the gate on the plunge. That's a great way to accrue a whole bunch of points. Versus if you just do a regular full plunge on there, that spinner might only go around like six times. Yeah, yep. And I actually saw people more dexterous than I am were power plunging every ball, even though the spinner is only worth like 100 or 10 just to get the extra, you know, those extra little points. Yes. Yeah, and you kind of do the power plunge by, it's kind of hard to describe. You basically, you pull back with one finger and then use your thumb and then push against the plunger while pulling back with your other finger, and then you slip the other finger away so that your thumb, with all the tension, goes in once you remove your other finger, and that can kind of give you a nice, powerful... And it's driving it home, and it's driving the plunger home hard, basically, right? That's a good way to put it. Yeah, that's a really cool thing. So thanks for the tips on that. Yes, I normally play the game Warcraft Kings. I like to go back up on top and then I work towards my flush but I find that it's easy to go back up on top either way and usually it's a safe shot another fun fact of that game is the pop bumpers will change their lit-ness like if you hit the flippers it'll change which pop bumper is lit and I think it's a thousand when one's lit versus a hundred not like it's really easy to change the pops while it's bouncing around like but it's kind of a fun feature they have on that game Yeah, okay. That's probably something. I think that question has actually come up in stream. Why are the pop bumpers moving around, or why are the lights moving around on the different ones? I never even thought about that. That could be an option. So thanks for that, Raymond. I'm going to learn all sorts of things this episode. Let's talk about NASCAR. What is your strategy there? Well, you definitely want to get to race multiball, which you shoot the orange race flag. They're like diamonds. They say race on them. They're orange. You hit the flashing ones. So you need four of them to light multiball. But I think only three of them will start lit. And to add another one to the play field, you have to complete the drop targets on the right. So at some point, you're going to have to complete those drop targets. But what's interesting is those drop targets will also give you a mode bonus if you've played one of the test car modes, which basically doubles your scoring from that mode. So if you watch my game on that stream, I started a mode which was just bash the test car, which, you know, a lot of people probably wouldn't actually go for. But I was in, remember, I was in Rage, Angry Ray, and I was just like, you know what, I'm taking this out on this test car. And I shot it probably like 12 or 13 times and got like 15 million out of it. And then once that mode's done, I shot the drop targets and got that points again, but also lit my race letter. So ideally, you'll start a mode from the test car. Hopefully it's a multi-ball mode. There's a couple of them. It's, I think, haul or ride, infield party, happy hour, I think, are the three multi-ball modes. So, yeah, you hit the test car, it opens, and you shoot it in there to start a mode. And then you just kind of shoot what the mode says. So I usually will do that, get my mode bonus, and then play my multi-ball. And then once I'm kind of done with everything, another thing you can go for is the speed shots. You can also bring the speed shots into anything else you're doing, which is just shooting the orbits a bunch until they get to the top, and then that lights every shot for an increasing number of points.
    45:28
    Okay. I've never had a really great game on that, so I'm going to try that method with hitting the drops. I had a hard time going for the race letters, and I can't recall the reason why. So a lot of times I just go to just, you know, bash my mode and keep going my modes, because I know there's at least a multi-ball or two or three that are hidden in there. Yeah, yeah, going for modes is good, and like I said, going for those orbits actually is really good, too, because when you get the orbit to the top, it'll start a mode where every shot is worth points. So if you're having trouble picking off the race letters, go for the car or go for the orbits. All right, handy dandy. Speaking about Orbits, I have a question here from Orbital Albert. In preparation for the Ray Ray show, I did reach out to a couple of pinball pals to see if they have any questions that they might have for you or I, Raymond. Would you like to hear what Orby has to say? Sure. All right. Always good to hear from Orbital Albert. I know. I absolutely adore him. Anyway, Orby's question is, if there are any tips or tricks for people with poor memories to remember so many different rule sets? Oh, let's see. Is there something that you do to help recall it? I can answer that question what I do. So I would say if you're in a tournament, Pintips.
    46:54
    I think it's a website. Pintips.net, Pintips.com. Maybe search just Pintips, you'll find it. And you can search any title, and it'll just have kind of a bullet point list of important keys of the game.
    47:08
    That's a very useful resource. You can also just ask somebody, like, hey, I'm playing this. What do I do? And, like, anyone will tell you. Like, if they know the game, they'll just tell you. Like, oh, yeah, shoot this, get the multiball, do this. And then there's the Glenn Wechter. How do you pronounce his name? Is that right? Glenn Wechter, you got it right. his approach, he showed me, he has this spreadsheet that he prints out, has every game in the tournament, and he has all these columns, such as, like, where should I plunge, what shots should I hit from a left flipper, what shots should I go for from the right flipper, you know, multipliers, how do I start a multiplier on this game, just all these things. And so you can actually study all the games ahead of time, So you know all the key features and then just have a cheat sheet. And then when you get drawn in a game, just look at your cheat sheet. But honestly, for me, it just kind of came with going to tournaments a lot and seeing the same games and tournaments over and over again. So eventually you just, you, as long as every time you play a game, you learn something about it, you'll eventually just learn them all. Now, if you go to a bunch of tournaments and play a bunch of games and never, you know, ask anybody or figure out anything and you just keep playing games without knowing what to do on them, that won't really help you. So at some point you need to, you know, learn a little bit about the games you're playing. For sure. And I think that it's hard to, I don't think there's like, I wish it worked like a memory palace, you know, or something like that, or mind palace. I wish that I had something like that where I could just go and reach in and pull those, the rules out. A lot of times for me it's when I go and stand at a game and I'll have a moment of, man, I haven't played this game in, I don't even know, six months. How do I play it? And absolutely looking at the rule card and also in preparation before going to the game, you're right, you can always ask a friend. I'll be like, hey, I totally forgot. What's the skill set on this game? I haven't played in a while. And people are usually helpful. But in terms of trying to, like, bury that information and recall that information, that can be hard. I think it's repetition for me. I think always just pulling out pen tips and rereading and rereading or having a screenshot of that game. I think everybody learns differently, and you just have to find a style that works right for you. That kind of rolls into a second and third question. Ari Jones has this great question about what is a good method of studying rules? And he touched a little bit on that, Raymond. You know, some folks use notebooks or flashcards or do you have a photographic memory? Is there something that helped you when you first started playing, or was it just something you recalled after playing the game 50 times?
    49:59
    Like I said, I kind of just, every time I saw a game, I would ask somebody or look online just to find a few key things about it, and I would just kind of add that to the arsenal of like, oh, I know that game because I played it at this tournament, and this is what I did or this is what everyone did on this game, you just kind of build these connections of I played this game at X tournament and that's a really good way, for me anyway, to reinforce easy lookup, right? They say brains are just like connections. So if you connect it to where you played it, that can be a good way to kind of long-term store it. Or recalling a time when you had a good game on it. For me, Jurassic Park, I had a really great game on that at Expo last year and every time that I've gone back to play that game, I think about that. And I walk through, it makes me feel more confident about that game because I can also recall what I'm supposed to be doing there. So that sometimes helps for me too.
    50:58
    What kind of personal time investment do you think is required to be a great tournament player? Do you think it's more like daily plays, studying of rules, practicing skills, developing strategy? It's all of those things. I mean, is it something that you're currently always working on? I don't know really how to phrase that or even how to even answer that. I think Ari's question is, like, what's the time investment that's involved there? What does it look like for you? I mean, nowadays, like, I really just play in the tournaments, and I use that as my practice where after I play a game, I'll review, you know, what I did wrong, what I did right, like that T3 game, and just kind of accumulate the experiences. I don't really I'm not really practicing every day like right now when I first got into pinball I would go seek out games and I would play specific games until I kind of got good at them and that helped me focus because if you're focusing on one game it means you're learning the rules for the game and you're learning the bounces and it's a lot more easy to start learning the different tip passes and catches and things So my recommendation is instead of playing a bunch of different games, I would find one or two of your favorite games, or they don't even have to be your favorite. They could just be the ones that you have access to to practice. Yes. And just keep playing them, learning the game, learning the rules especially, because often rules can be applied to many different games. You know, green lock is multi-ball sort of thing. Yeah. Right. or realizing that you're going to be able to hit your orbits if it's lower on the flipper, you know, and just simple things like that. Or being able to have access to the game and just practicing. I think practicing skills in terms of being able to pass the ball back and forth, that's a huge skill. And being able to trap up and have two balls on the left and be able to flip around with your right. Being able to stage flip, other things like that. I think that if you really want to be a great tournament player, to begin with, there are all those things, I agree that that's the best advice is find one game or two games that's local to you that you can play and sit on that game so that you can be an expert at that game. And once you do that, you can definitely apply all those skills to other games. That's a good answer. I thought it was an interesting question because some people have asked me how much time have I invested into tournament playing. I'm like, I don't know. I play, I don't know, four hours maybe during the week maybe I'll practice. I'm lucky enough to have a game or two at home, so I do play. But I like to location play to change it up too.
    53:44
    But also you have to realize that any game that you play is definitely going to be playing different at places like District 82.
    53:52
    Like the Deadpool there is not your normal average Deadpool, for example, right? Right. All right. So let's talk about event number three, which was an eight strikes classics fair strike knockout. That's the way that Eric has it on the District 82 website, but it was really an eight strikes classics knockout is what it was. It's a fair strike tournament. A big mouthful of words there. This is probably the most brutal format, and also the one that I think people are probably afraid of the most, for good reason. This is the one I got, I think, 55th in. So, you know, it can happen to anyone. So, yeah, you have good reason to be scared of this format. Yeah, I don't like it at all. And you really have to be quite, you have to be able to play a classic game quite adeptly and continue to do that the whole tournament. I think that's a whole different mindset when you're playing older games versus modern. Yeah. The objective, really, is to hit first place, but second place really ain't so bad, right? You just want to keep handing out strikes to other players. The scoring for that in a four-player group is 0-1-2-2, so you do not want to be third or fourth.
    55:05
    I mean, taking first is great, but taking second isn't so terrible. It still gives you one, but man, you get a third. Even getting a third is so rough in that format because it's like losing the game anyway, right? Yeah, yeah. It's a weird format because it punishes two different aspects. It punishes getting fourth where it's like, great, now I get two strikes. You know, you definitely don't want to get fourth. But it also punishes getting second because you still get a strike. And if you would have just got first, then you get to avoid a strike. So it's kind of a weird format where unless you're winning or getting third, those would be two ways to do well in this format.
    55:53
    Great. Actually, next year, this might be the format that I choose to play because it is brutal. And I only choose – last year I did it too. I think I played a knockout, but it wasn't this one. It was a different one earlier in the weekend. But I do choose to play – I can play whichever tournament I'd like to play. I didn't choose this one, but next year I think I need to because I think I like the brutal factor of it. It pushes me to play better. Like, if it's all your eggs in one basket, you better make sure that you're really playing a good game. I don't know. Maybe that's good or bad that I pushed myself like that, but I find it interesting. Anyway, are there any games you would like to talk about? I know it was a rougher tournament for you.
    56:38
    Let's see here. This was the one. Yeah, things are going pretty good. This is all classics, too. So you don't even get the reprieve of like, oh, maybe I'll play one of my favorite modern games. It's like, even if you play one of your favorite classics games, it's still a classic and things can go wrong, you know? So this is definitely the most brutal tournament of the bunch. But yeah, everything was going pretty good until I had to play Flight 2000. And I just, I don't know, I couldn't read the ball right. I kept getting pretty bad bounces, and I kept kind of just – I was never comfortable on it, and just I got an abysmal score.
    57:21
    But normally your strategy for Flight 2000 is actually very, very simple. Well, it can be altered a little bit. So the simple strat is left flipper, right spinner, right flipper, left spinner. Yes. End of story. That's just – That's the spinner all day long. But the alternate strat, which I wouldn't recommend on the District 82 one because I didn't find that those drop targets on the right would get completed very often. But if you find one where you shoot the right spinner and it always completes those drop targets, then you switch to right spinner all day. You try to post pass, alley pass, whatever you can to get it to the left flipper because then you can build that spinner up to 2,500 points a spin and you'll just crush anybody. By skipping the drop targets on the right. Yeah. above the right spinner, for those who haven't played the game. Yeah, I like that game, but not the one in District 82.
    58:15
    I find it very hard for whatever reason. I can find the left spinner, but I have a very hard time finding the right one. Yeah, and the right one's scary, too, because it's right by the flippers. Yes, very much so. Yep. All right, so that game gave you a hard time. Yep, and then I just kind of kept petering along. I had a good Frontier game. Actually, maybe I just had a not sucky game, but it ended up winning because everyone else just, it was deadly.
    58:43
    And that Frontier, I found you could tap pass on pretty good, and the spinner was in a good spot. Once you kind of got control of the ball, it played pretty good, so I was able to use that to my advantage to get a first. But then I had to play Meteor, and I don't know why, but I'm kind of scared of Meteor just because, like, Meteor and Nineball, a lot of those stern games that are just wicked fast and there's not a lot of, like, safety. Like, you're just always kind of batting the ball around. Yes. So I was just kind of scared, and I played scared and, you know, missed my spinner shot and died immediately, misread a couple of center post bounces. I had, like, a horrible Meteor game. I think it was, like, less than 50,000 or something.
    59:33
    But I kind of learned a little bit, and I played, like, a revenge game to try to get the bounces down. And that came in handy in a later tournament, so when I actually was able to play it pretty well.
    59:45
    But that was frustrating. And I think I just had lost before I started because I was in this state of mind of, like, Meteor, and then once I had a bad ball, I was just kind of like, oh, man, like the next ball is going to be bad too. Like I just – I could feel it unwinding, and it just happened, you know.
    60:05
    That's interesting. We're going to have a good conversation about McGeer when we talk about the next event as well.
    60:11
    And then the next one, I was actually very happy that I got to play Barracora. I was like, yes, okay, a game I can do well on. And I was doing pretty well on it, But then Dominic had a crazy good ball, and he passed me, and I just needed, like, maybe 90,000 to get first on ball three, and I had maybe one target left. So I was ready to go, and it never made it to my flipper on ball three, and I was very sad, especially when I learned you could short plunge and always get it to a flipper if you wanted to, which normally I wouldn't do on that game because it's important to get those top lanes, but I only needed like a little bit of points and I don't know. Maybe, I don't know what would have been more painful, getting it to a flipper, hitting a target and then draining or the fact that I never got it to a flipper.
    61:02
    But in that case, it was more painful. Not just where it just powered to the out lane from the bumpers. Oh, that's not good. Not good at all. That's a death that you can never recover from. There's nothing you can do there. You just watch it happen. It happens faster than you can even do anything, I think. Yep, and then it didn't help that I was on hot dog in the next round, which I just was so, so scared of that game. It just seems to always drain in unpredictable ways. It bounces the triple left out lane that somehow always goes down the left out lane. Oh, yeah. Well, I want to back up and say about Barracora, the way I like to play that game is I don't have any goal towards the multi-ball because, again, I feel like the game just wants to give it to me, Meaning, I just go right back up on top, I shoot the left, I shoot the right, go back on top, I just keep collecting my numbers. So I do all day long. Because I feel like when I miss the shot, I'm always hitting the drop-down targets and I end up randomly locking a ball. It's the craziest method of playing the game. A barricora. A barricora, yeah. Yep. And I just want to say that. And some people, they're shocked that that's the way I play, and they're not going and dropping down the barricora letters and ordering all that. If you go up top, you're actually getting bonus, because I don't think the drop targets actually give you bonus. They give you bonus multipliers, which is huge, but you do need a lot of up top action if you want to get any actual bonus happening. Right. So to me that seems like to be a safer way, and sometimes I think the safe way is the only way. I get too nervous doing something alternately when I know that, you know, going up top, that's been such a good proven method on the other games for me. So that's interesting. I'm always interested to see how people play different games. I love it. Okay, so after Barakora, you went to go play Hot Doggin'. And, yes, that game can make me nervous, too, because I feel like the ball just sails over all this 3,412 in lanes. A little exaggeration there. But it always finds the out lane on that game. But I can say the one at District 82, You can bump that game pretty hard to help avoid sailing into the outlane. Yeah, but you definitely don't want to tilt because the bonus is everything. So it's a fine balance. Yes. And so on Hot Doggin', I did the thing where I tried to shoot the multiplier shot, and I missed it, and it does this. If you miss it in the wrong way on that game, it goes left of the 3x target, right of the 3x target, straight down the middle. There's this perfect little triangle right down the middle. And so I've learned, and I've also seen people hit the multiplier and then it goes straight to an out lane. So I don't actually go for that anymore off the bat. I want to get some hot dog and letters first. You do. So I'll actually shoot drops. I'll send it back up top just to get something going. And then, you know, as soon as I kind of get settled on the right flipper, then I'll take a shot at the multiplier target. But then I also don't really go for the 4x or 5x because it's actually way harder to hit those targets because they're further back. And once you get the 3x, it lights your spinner. And so you can just shoot the spinner and you know you can take a shot at the 4X or 5X but I just started playing that game where I focus on hot I take the 3X when it convenient and then I just go spinner and then maybe sprinkle in a 4X or 5X once I had a nice long ball and that's really turned my game around on that game because after that horrible game, I think I played a revenge game and it was on stream.
    64:46
    I think like Tim Sexton was in the booth just like watching it and I got like 700,000. And a lot of times it's like, oh, a revenge game, great. I just did so good. You should be happy when you play a revenge game because it puts you in that state of mind of, oh, wait, this game is playable. next time I play it I just got to remember that I can play it and just kind of do what I did you know just do absolutely I never think about it as a revenge game I think about it as a redemption game ah yes redemption game yes I am redeeming myself for the game before that yes I'm assuring myself I can play pinball I just haven't played that game beforehand and I'm redeeming myself the fact that I know how to play the game, not just that I can, but I know how to. And then feeling out the shots that I missed. I'm like, and then if I do have a great game afterwards, awesome. And if I don't, eh, then maybe I'll play one more, because I really want to be able to dial in the thing that I missed. But I agree. Whenever I take fourth place in anything that I play, tournament or league or whatever I play in, I always go back and play the game, because I apparently need to learn something else from it. Yep, and it can be a learning experience too, for sure. Heck yeah. That was a flame out, basically. You know, I was struggling and then just had, I got three fourths, which is what killed me that tournament, you know, Fight 2000, Meteor, and then Hot Dog.
    66:14
    But that was, you know, that's how it goes sometimes. So I was just ready for the next tournament, looking forward to that. The winner for the 8 Strikes Classics Fair Strike knockout for the event number three was Andy Rosa that took Hot Ham. That was his first time taking a first-place tournament at District 82. It was Josh Sharp, Carl D'Angelo, and Andre Massenkoff routed out the top four there. I did end up watching. Now, I didn't stay every night and stream until the very end of every tournament because I figured in there all day, I went back to my Airbnb, and you know what I did laying in bed? I watched the end of the tournament because I wanted to. You know, I was like, I can't get enough. talked about it all day but hey let's just try to go to sleep watching some more um so that was fun watching the end of that one at this point in the the overall super series how are you feeling how's your energy level it's been a lot of pinball yeah i'm uh i'm starting to feel it a little bit although at this point i was still actually feeling pretty good because i had um i was actually on a good sleep schedule for once in my life where i was actually like getting up at eight pretty good and going to bed at midnight, you know, getting those full eight hours. I was actually feeling pretty, and I was sleeping well during the nights, which was good. So I was actually doing pretty good those days. It was after Saturday night into Sunday. That was the killer. We'll get to that. All right. So we fast forward in time a little bit. We go back to our place, Airbnb. We all rest. We get up the next morning on Saturday. and for event number four, which was a classics target match play, 30 points. I like this style of tournament as well. I actually like the scoring in it. The objective is first place, of course, and also the other objective is just avoid last because the scoring there in a four-player group is 3-2-1-0 for first, second, third, fourth, and a three-player group as three points, one and a half, or zero points. The first person to 30 points wins.
    68:33
    This is the tournament that I chose to play this year. I thought it was interesting hearing you talk about Meteor because that was my first game of that day, and I had to play. I played against Jermaine, and he's an amazing player. He took the game. It was Meteor. I feel the same way where I walk up to that, and I feel like, man, that ball is going to be in chaos. Please, please, please let me put it on the left flipper and rip the spinner. I don't even care if it's lit. You know, if I can even, if it's on the right, I'm going to try to get some drops, you know, or anything. The ball, I feel like, is always in chaos, and I have a hard time controlling that. So even walking up to that game was my first game. That, it made me feel, I felt sick.
    69:16
    I wish it would have been any other draw of any other game except Meteor. Isn't that funny? Sometimes you feel that way about different games. And I really love classics. I feel like I play classics better than I play modern games. So I ended up taking a fourth. So that was my first game of that tournament. And I played mediocre. My goal, I'll just quickly talk about how I played overall. My goal was to get at least 10 points. Now, you can laugh at that. You know, 30 points is definitely where you want to be. But I thought just knowing the competition that I was going into and facing, really, the players that were there was unbelievable. But I thought getting 10 points would be great. Well, I did that. And then I decided, okay, we better make a second goal. Well, that's always good to make your first goal. Yeah, for sure. And so my second goal was 15 points. And so I did. I got 15 points. And I thought that was a good day concerning the people that I played against. But you mentioned, too, it's those last places that hurts you, and I took four of them in that tournament. Even though I took three firsts and several seconds, just those fourth places, just they burned me. Oh, yeah. Big, big time. Yeah, if those fourths were second, it would just make such a huge difference. Right. I would have had over 20 points. Easy.
    70:42
    The one game I'm super ashamed of. I shouldn't even use the word ashamed. The one game I'm really bummed out the way that I played is I love, love Wildfire. I love that game. I feel confident every time I go up to that game. I know how to play it. I enjoy it. I have a great time. I know not to tilt. When other players ask how to play the game, I tell them do not tilt. Guess what I did on ball three? I tilted. Oh, not on ball three. Yep. and I had all my extra bonus and everything sitting there, and I would have taken the game, but instead I took a last. Oh, no.
    71:23
    What did I learn? That's always the question. What did I learn? Nothing. I learned nothing. Well, you learned really, really shouldn't tilt, yeah. Oh, man. You also were playing against some pretty good players there, Ryan Spindler, Adam Becker, and Mike Weinberg. Yes, incredibly good players. Maybe you just got psyched out and you felt like you had to save it to prove something and you tilted, you know? It's like, stuff like that can mess with you. Yeah, I think that too.
    71:52
    You're right, like I had to catch the ball in order to like, I didn't want to drain. If I would have drained, it would have been the end of the game, you know? But I should have just really baked on the bonus that I had sitting there. And I also sometimes rain that, I'm sure by now you have seen how I play, that I am kind of an active player, right? So I do bounce around, I kick my feet, and I do my pinball aerobic intervals, you know. And I sometimes forget that I might actually have a game rocking and rolling and moving more than what I actually thought I did. So when I tilt it, I was actually surprised because I didn't think that I had. I think I actually just put my hand on, like, hit the side of the game with my hand. And I guess I just didn't realize that I hit it as hard as I did. Maybe just the buildup, yeah. That says something to me. Like, I think I learned is that I guess I really had the game moving. But, oh, well, you know, there's no crying in pinball. That's how we learn things. But, again, that was just disappointing. But I went on. I had a couple other good games after that.
    72:55
    Yeah, it looks like you took a first on Frontier. You survived Hot Doggin'. And earlier in the day, you got a first on Barracora. So that strategy must have worked out. Yes, it sure did. but that's the strategy I went with. And also on Melody, here's a funny thing that happened. I forgot about this. So Melody is a single-player game. You write down your score, and I thought I had written down 1,300, and I was the first player, and I'm like, this is not a great score, and my score was really 1,800. Well, I didn't realize that, and I had written it down correctly, 1,800, because other players confirmed that. But here, after the fourth player played, I thought I had lost the entire round, but I had actually won it. because I forgot what my score was. Oh, wow. You thought you had like 1,400 or something? Yes, I had 1,800, but I thought in my head I had 1,300 because I'd forgotten what I'd written down. I went and used the restroom, came back, went and I glanced at the sheet, and apparently my eyes couldn't connect that. My eight was really, or my three was, or my eight was really, not a three in my head, but whatever. But I ended up taking the game instead of losing it. That was really kind of a fun, unexpected win. I don't know. It was a lot of pinball.
    74:12
    Well, that's a good, nice surprise. Yeah. Yes, very much so. So silly. I did the opposite where I did the melody of don't tilt on a tilt-ends game game, and I did that.
    74:25
    Oh, no. That is not good. Not good at all. Although it was on ball four, but I could have used that ball five. Yes, you could always use an additional ball. Who cares if you get tilted out on ball five, right? Yeah, I'm pretty sure if I would have just played that ball five, I only needed like a couple hundred points to get third. And so that was really painful. And that one, I was in my head too because I had previously blown up Melody, and I had this maneuver where I could catch the ball, and then that maneuver stopped working, so I was panicking, and I was insisting that the maneuver would work, and it still kept not working. And so then I got frustrated, and so then I tried to nudge it out of the drain, and then it tilted. see I was upset with that game I had two really bad balls I had a house ball right out the gate and then my next two balls weren't so great because I was anticipating on the ball coming out of the saucer to the right flipper and dead bouncing and it didn't twice two balls so after that every time it came off the saucer I assure you I whacked that game and sent that ball away yeah I had the I was originally on my good game earlier in the tournament I was able to just catch it But now it kept flipping off my flipper and going towards the middle. So I was in the same boat where it just wasn't working anymore.
    75:37
    But, you know, the house balls on that game seem frustrating, but they're actually not as bad as you think because they always give you a four and you get an out of ball when you get a one, two, three, four. And so the only way to get out of balls is to drain. So it's kind of weird where it's like, well, it was going to happen at some point. It's fine that it just happened right off the bat. Let's not. Don't let it get to you. That's actually a great perspective. I appreciate that. I had so much fun playing that tournament. It was not about the points at all to play it. It was really about getting it, well, one, I spent a lot of time in the streaming booth, so it was good just to get out and stretch my legs on that Saturday. And two, I really wanted to interact with the players. Unless people came into the booth or they caught me outside of the booth, I didn't get a chance to chit-chat with people. And as you know, I'm kind of a social gal. So it was nice to welcome returning players and greet new players to District 82 and hang out with some of my local friends. So I had so much fun playing that tournament, even though I only got 15 points, and people might chuckle a little bit at that, but I'm still happy with how I played that day. I had a great time because at the end of the day, if you're not having fun playing pinball, what are you doing, right? Yeah, great job. You know, you played in the tournament, and you had fun, and you got some firsts along the way. You learned some things along the way. And, yeah, got to play some great players. So that's cool. I didn't even know that you played in one. You didn't? No, I didn't hear anything. I would have expected an update, but I guess we were just too busy focusing on our own. Oh, absolutely. Well, I did not play you in this tournament. Why don't you talk about the Classics target match play, how it went for you, Raymond? Yeah, so started off strong. With first on Hilo Ace, where I, I don't know, I just, I, you have to put yourself in a good mood on that game, because it is kind of inherently random on whether you get the right cards. And so I was kind of in a silly mood of like, all right, here we go. I'm going to hit that impossible target. Here we go. I'm going to hit it. Like, watch me. Like, I just kind of like being goofy with it. Well, luck box. Come on, luck box. Yeah. But I was able to kind of just keep that momentum going for a really long time. And even though I never actually got the 5,000s lit, I had like 75,000 points just from playing forever.
    78:10
    So that ended up holding, surprisingly, for first, which was amazing. I was expecting it to be second to someone who got the 5,000s. But, you know, sometimes it's enough. So that was a nice way to start. It was funny. Chris Frame, who got fourth on that game, he ended up getting second in the whole tournament. So he bounced back. You know, that is a great story of, you know, getting a bad game one, but not letting it get to you. Yes. Taking that zero right out the gate. Yep. Especially in this format where it's a literal zero, not even a one.
    78:49
    Yep. So then after that. You got to play another single player game right after that. Yeah, Palooka, where I was first on Hilo Ace, so I got to play my game and then just hope for the best and, you know, wander around forever. But I was fourth on Palooka, so I just kind of, like, chilled and hung out and waited for everyone to play. I walk up, I look at the scores, and it was like, oh, so if I just plunge five skill shots, I'll win this game. and I plunged three and then I missed my fourth and I was starting to panic a little bit because I was in fourth place or like third place or something. But then on ball five, I got the perfect 500 point skill shot and I didn't even need to flip anymore. So luckily I got the plunge corrected for my ball five.
    79:40
    But yeah, that game is just all about the plunge. Yes, it is. Really got to learn it on that one. I think it's a fun game because it's all about the plunge. I like the little, I don't know what it's called, the little kickback, the little corner sling kickback that's on it. Those are fun, too. Yeah, it kind of plays itself a little bit. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and then I had the unfortunate melody incident, which was on stream. I think you were in the booth, so you got to see that. I won't tell anybody. Yeah, that's all right.
    80:10
    It happens. It happens to all of us. yeah it really does but i was able to cruise along just taking a bunch of firsts on everything i had oh sky kings i was in fourth place on ball five and all i needed was to hit one captive ball and i did and it put me into first place from fourth place like it was so terrifying plunging that ball five because i i would have guaranteed myself third if i would have just plunged in the hole, which I had done on every other ball. But of course, on ball five, it circles around the hole and makes my heart pound. I'm like, no, no, no, please, come on, just let me get to a flipper. And I managed to hit a captive ball and get first, but that would have been such a sad fourth, because the scores were so close, and I just needed, like, anything on ball five. Yeah, that was intense, but I survived that one. Then I kind of carried that momentum into my trident game, which I had like a huge ball one once you get in the groove on Trident like once you figure out where the spinners are plays pretty good you just gotta watch out for the dead pass that doesn't work on the left on that one and the right out lane area where the in lane can sometimes go to the out lane yes someone on stream called it a leaky out lane leaky that's a good one I like that yeah you do not trap up Probably the most hilarious match on stream was the Electronimo match right after that with Dominique, Josh Sharp, and Bill Mason and I.
    81:47
    And Dominique, ball one, just plays the best ball Electronimo ever, just like hits the ball up, gets bonus, does a bunch of stuff, gets like $100,000. Josh Sharp and myself are just alley passing, shatting back and forth until we die from an over shat. Like it goes up and out, right? Yeah. So it happened to both me and Josh. Bill Mason is not doing the shats, but he plunges, gets the ball to a flipper, shoots like the spinner, and immediately dies. So then the same thing repeats on balls two and three, where me and Josh are both just hitting the shatsing, shatsing. And it's funny because on Electronimo, shatsing only gets you 3,000 points, but it can give you 6,000 because it goes up and back down. and it's so much safer in terms of, you know, every flip I'm getting 6,000 points as opposed to going up top, bouncing around, and maybe not coming back to your flipper.
    82:45
    And so it's just funny how deadly that game is that me and Josh were both just shooting in lanes because we thought that was the safest way. I'm going to try that, Raymond. I've never even heard of that strategy. Yeah, go watch that match. It's on Fox Cities. somewhere. You're going to have to search for it. But it was funny because I ended up getting third, Josh got second, and Dominic, who didn't shats, got first, but Bill Mason, who also didn't shats, got fourth. So you could see if you play the shats, you're in the second to third zone. You're probably not going to get first, but you're probably not going to get last. Whereas if you go for the normal strat, it's either a home run or you just never get the ball back to your flipper. That's right. It's kind of an interesting dichotomy of strategies on that game. Yeah, next time we get to District 82, I'm going to play it that way. I like that because it seems like a safer thing. I don't mind shafting on a game either. That's fun. I think that's actually fun. I also noticed on that one, when you have the ball trapped on the right flipper, you can actually just kind of pretend you're doing a post pass, and it actually flips it up the right in lane and tags the in lane for you before it post passes. So you actually get a free, a freebie. Freebie. Nice.
    84:05
    So that was fun. And then, yeah, then I just, I think I had a huge Harlem game on stream again. And, oh, after that huge Harlem game, I had to play Stingray, which I don't like at all. It's a little better now because it has a new ROM. So it's not random. It was awful before because you could plunge the ball and get $55,000 or you could plunge the ball and get $5,000. It was completely random. But now the awards go in a specific order. So now the game is actually a little more fair. But I still hate it because if you shoot directly at that center scoop, sometimes it just doesn't go in and goes right down the middle. But your other option is to shoot it up top and there's no guarantee it's going to go in the hole up there. So you're kind of, you know, you're kind of, what do I do? Do I shoot at the impossible hole, or do I shoot up top and hope that it goes in the hole? I shoot it back up on top. I never go for the one in the lower scoop, the lower saucer. It makes me so nervous. Yeah, that was my strategy as well. But I also learned on Stingray, and a lot of the solid states, I was starting to figure out the tap pass. And that was, like, my secret weapon all day today. all day that day because it was the classics tournament so there's a lot of tap passing and i i felt like i i had that move down so well um on harlem on star trek uh well what else did i play stingray yeah on stingray basically you get that ball on the left flipper and you're you're in jail like there's nothing to hit with the left flipper it's like uh wizard you ever play Wizard? Yes, I have. It's almost, basically, Stingray plays exactly like Wizard, where all you want to do is get it to the right flipper and then shoot up the left orbit. And I had some bad ball one, bad ball two, you know, really getting frustrated, but on ball three, I just, I don't know, instead of being scared of draining or not knowing if I should shoot the center or what I should do or focusing on the scores. I just focused on, I'm going to shoot the left orbit over and over and over again. And, and I, that's what I did. Like every time it came to my left flipper, I just did a tap and then left orbit, tap, left orbit. And I came back against Brian O'Neill who had like four or 500,000. And I, I came back all the way to get first on ball three as player four. And I was like, so proud of it. I was just like, holy crap. I can't believe that just happened. The, the last couple points actually came because once I passed, because the scores were kind of lopsided. It was like Brian was way ahead of everybody. I was in fourth, and I had two people that were pretty close to me. So once I passed them with some left orbits, I actually then changed strategies and started shooting the drop targets because the second time you complete the drops, you get 100,000 points special, and it lights an out lane for 100,000 points special. and wouldn't you know it, I shot the drops, got the 100K, and then drained down the lit out lane for the other 100K, and it was just enough to pass Brian. So lucky to have it happen that way. Yeah. Yep. So that was probably my proudest game of that tournament was that Stingray ball. There's nothing better as player four coming back on ball three and just crushing it. Yeah, going all the way. Like not just passing one or two people, but beating everyone. Yeah, it feels great. I'm taking the game. I think there's no better feeling in pinball than that, quite frankly. As a player, I feel like I did the thing, and I executed it well, finally, on ball three. That's awesome. I really like Stingray. That's probably one of my favorite games there. A lot of people don't like it, and they think that it plays mean, but I think it's a fun game. Yeah, I've come around on it now that it's less random, now that it's more about just hitting the spinner and sometimes mixing in drop targets. and then using your tap pass to your advantage. Sure. I've come around on it a little bit. What I think is interesting here is the first game of the tournament for me was the last game of the tournament for you. Oh, yeah. Yep, the Meteor. Yeah, that was my final game. And that game was funny because I was on such a hot streak that I honestly didn't even care if I did bad on that game because I had such a huge lead in the tournament. And also, people wanted me to not win so that there'd be another round because I ended up penalizing the whole tournament 4% TGP because I ended the tournament in 12 rounds. Instead of 13, which would have given it 100%, correct? Right. And so, I don't know, I guess because I wasn't as worried, things just flowed well and I was able to hit my spinners and things just happened. And, you know, I'm not going to let the ball drain on purpose. So, it just, that's the way it worked out. And then because I got first on that game, it allowed Chris Frame, who got first on his last game, to jump everybody to second because I took away all the points from everybody in my group. Yeah, that's awesome. It's just I love how the pinball math, how it works out sometimes. Mm-hmm. So Chris Frame took second, followed by Jermaine, and then Bill Mason came in fourth. Yep. Do you feel like there's some kind of trend going on with you here, Raymond, with playing classics tournaments? I don't know if it's a trend. I mean, it's something that has been happening recently where I have been doing better at classics tournaments for whatever reason. I don't really know. I guess maybe because your moves can sometimes get amplified in classics where if you figure out a tap pass or you find a shot and someone else hasn't found the shot, you can get a lot of points. And now all of a sudden, like, you force your opponents to do that same thing or play a long time. But it's kind of hard on classics to play a long time because they're just inherently drainy. So I feel like if there's a classics that I can step up and do the thing on, I feel like I'm more likely to win that game than on moderns where it feels like anybody can come back once they find the shots. You know, especially the young kids who can play marathon games of modern games. There's no safe score, especially with like multipliers and things where they'll blow it up. But on classics, it's like when you have a good game of a classic, you're usually pretty, you feel like pretty safe with that score. But that's, I mean, that's not to say people can't come back on you, but I don't know. It just seemed to work out where whenever I had a good game, it just stuck. And that ended up working out for me this tournament. I can appreciate that. I do have a question from another pal, from my friend Michael Reitman. He does have a question for you specifically. for classic solid state games would you rather play a Valley a Williams, a Stern or a Gottlieb and what would be a favorite game from that manufacturer classics are being from 1978 which is a great year because it was the year I was born through 1984 that's a tough one that's a very specific question I don't know I think if it's an EM Gottliebs are all pretty solid But you said, is it Solid States 2, right? Yep. I guess. Do you have a favorite game? Do you have a favorite Solid State game, period?
    91:51
    So hard. Yeah, I mean, it depends on what we consider classics, because once you get into, like, Mouse and Around or Whirlwind, like, are those really classics? Like, you know. No. I guess I wouldn't consider them classics. Yeah, I don't think so either. So I think, so pre-19, what did you say, 1985? 85? 84. 84, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I think Stern games, Stern Classic games, I feel are the most bouncy. So there's the most action where you can kind of bobble the ball out of outlanes and things. And they feel very strong. And once you find those spinners on the Stern games, those feel really good. Valleys are kind of scary because they're all metal. like lots of metal outlanes, like Mystic, just giant metal outlanes. And they're terrifying because you can't really save the ball from them. So it really depends on the title. Because some valleys, if they're structured in a way that's like, oh, if I can just hit this shot, I don't even need to worry about the outlanes because it usually doesn't drain. If I'm doing this thing, I'm good. but if it's a game where you have to kind of throw the ball out of control a lot, I'd rather play a stern just because there's so much more rubber and bounciness.
    93:14
    And then the Williams are interesting because, like, Cosmic Gunfight, for instance, which is notorious for just shooting the right orbit all day, every day. I do like playing those kind of games because I feel like I'm strong at finding a shot and hitting it and getting the ball back to a flipper and post-passing and hitting the shot. but those also have the same problem as the valleys where, like Barracora, you can't save it from the outlanes. Like, they're just metal, right? There's nothing over there. So it really just depends on the specific game and how they're set up. You know, like if the tilt is tight, then I'd rather play a Williams than a Stern because you can't – if the tilt's tight on a Stern, what's the point? I can't use that rubber to my advantage, so I might as well play a game where I can make a shot over and over again. Sure. So, yeah, it just kind of depends on a lot of factors. Yeah, I think that's actually a really great answer. People ask me quite frequently what my favorite game is, and my response always is whatever I'm currently playing.
    94:18
    Yeah. You know, because, I mean, there's so much – I think I have so much appreciation for different games for different reasons, and you said it right there too. Like, if it's just a metal – a wire form between your in lane and your out lane, I might not like that game as much as I'd like one that's got a rubber on there, right? I mean, I think that's a great way to put it. Great answer, Raymond. I love this. Next time, we're going to do a whole quiz show. Next time, maybe.
    94:44
    Because it's fascinating. It's interesting to hear your perspective. Because it helps me to think about how I can up my game, too. And for everybody else listening to this, that's kind of the whole point. All right. So congratulations on winning that event. Thank you. That was great to have that win because then it was like, all right, I did something really notable this weekend. Like, even if I bomb the last couple tournaments, like at least I have this piece of hardware. You know, it always feels good getting those. Heck, yeah, it does. Absolutely.
    95:15
    Event number five, after that Classics target match play on Saturday during the day, then we switched to another knockout. Event number five was a four-strike group knockout, where the objective here is first or second place. They're equally lovely. My goal always, of course, is to last more than four rounds because the scoring here is 0-0-1-1 in a four-player group, and in a three-player group, it's 0-0-1-1. So, again, any time I can last five rounds, I think that's a good, for me, that's always a good beginning goal, especially depending on the caliber of players that I'm playing. How did you do? This format is the marathon, not a sprint format, where you don't need to blow it up. You don't need to get first. You just need to just get second every game for as many games as you can. And it went like 18 rounds or something crazy into like 2 a.m. in the morning. Playing and playing and playing and playing. You ended up pretty well in this tournament. Yeah. Basically, you know, I took a strike in Royal Rumble against Escher, Luke, and Jermaine where everyone had a billion points and I just you know I didn quite get there And then on Pharoah where I just I was never very comfortable with that game I eventually started playing it more and more and so now I way more comfortable on it But if you haven't played that Pharaoh, it will just eat you for lunch, because it's got lightning flippers and big fat yellow rubber posts and a weird kind of slipperiness to the flippers. Yeah, it's very mean, so. That's funny. I had no idea all those modifications were on that game. Oh, really? Have you had to play it? Yeah, because it's the only Pharaoh I've ever played, and it's at District 82. So I just accept that when a new-to-me game comes and appears there, I'm like, that's just the way the game should be. It's just the way the game plays.
    97:15
    Yeah, so that was kind of scary, playing that game. But then I got my groove back on when I was playing Iron Man. Then I had to play Silver Ball Mania, but luckily it was a three-player group, so even though I sucked, I think I only shot the inner loop once. I barely eked out a second against poor Luke, who I think maybe also shot it once, but it was a really bad game for both of us, but I somehow had slightly more points than him. That game, Silver Ball Mania, is just literally just shoot the horseshoe. It does everything. So if you can't find it, you're probably going to lose. And that's what happened to me in the tournament, the next tournament, was I got fourth on that game because I could not hit the horseshoe at all. I like to backhand it. On that one specifically, I like to backhand it. Yeah, backhanding is good. I just couldn't find it no matter what. And the game is so fast, I couldn't even tell. Normally I'm like, oh, I was early, oh, I was late. It was just like, oh, I missed. And I couldn't figure out how I missed. So that one's one you want to practice before you play it, I think. So if you're at District 82 and you're in practice time, that's a good game to kind of learn that shot ahead of time for sure. Because all the money is there in just that one single shot. Yep, that's it. And the plunge. You want to plunge the middle lane to light your kickback. Yes, absolutely that as well. I have to just mention this too. I really like classic games more because usually it's like one, two, or three things that you have to hit and that's it. To me, I find that that's so much easier. You can kind of, you don't get distracted by all the other blinking lights and you don't know, like, oh, should I shoot this orbit over here? Should I shoot this over here? Like, what should I do? Or, like, did shooting that do anything for me? It's like in a classic game, you kind of know immediately. You see that bonus X light come on. You see the spinner, you hear the spinner go. So, you know, you get immediate feedback, which can definitely help for sure. Yeah, yeah. All right, so Super Bowl Mania, this one might be a personal favorite game. It's probably my top ten. What did you play after that? Judge Dredd, which I always loved playing, but this one was just set up really tilty. So almost, I think, too tilty. I think Colin tilted, like, every ball. But I managed to get second because it was, again, a three-player group. So I was disappointed that I didn't get as big of a score I wanted. I got like $200 million. Jared had like $400 million. Colin, I think $100 million. But it was enough to survive. But then I had to play Trident, which I was super stoked about. Because I had been practicing that between rounds. I did great on it the last time I played. I was like, yes, I get to play Trident. And then it started with an in lane that went to the out lane. And that just killed the mood. And I couldn't get anything going the rest of the game, unfortunately. I hate that. But it's hard because you don't ever want ball one to spiral into ball two and ball three. But, man, sometimes if you just can't find that shot. What I really hate is if you're on ball one and you try to take the shot three or four times and you still miss it. I get so anxious going up to ball two thinking, man, I better sure as heck find that on the slipper this time. And I feel like a struggle. It's internal. It's the Zen thing, Raymond, we've talked about. Yeah, it was also like 1 a.m. at this point, so I was getting a little tired. Yeah, it's true. I was not in a zen state. And then I had to play Twilight Zone, which I could not find a way to get the ball from the slot machine to a flipper. And I killed myself like two balls. And then I finally got the Powerball, had it trapped, and I missed the right orbit and drained. It was, yeah, that was sad. That's so frustrating. And then afterwards, I played that Twilight Zone, and I just held up the flipper, and it caught it perfectly every time. I was like, oh, my God, I could have just done that. I've had it hit the flipper and then go out the right out lane before. That's what I did, yep.
    101:16
    And it's funny because I know a lot of people that have a Twilight Zone. For whatever reason, that seems like it could be a popular game in Wisconsin. And I feel like every single one, it plays so differently. Sometimes you can trap it, sometimes you can't. but usually now I just, I flick them all away. I try to dead bounce it. Sometimes you can do that and right to the other slipper, but I don't think we can do that on the one at just your 52 either. Yeah, I would always dead bounce, but it'd be so fast that you'd have to flip it away. So yeah, that one, I just, I just couldn't get in a groove. I was just too scared of that kick out and I couldn't figure out a good way to handle it. So that was, and then once I finally did catch it, sometimes you only, you know, the James Bond, you only live twice. Well, sometimes you only miss once, and then your ball's gone. Yeah, that's it. Sorry. I hope you enjoyed your 15 seconds of playing. Yeah, I mean, it does make me feel a little better that, well, not better, but it's like, well, it was entirely my fault. Like, the game didn't screw me. It was on me. Oh, yeah. You know, when I get a house ball, I'm never angry at the game. I say to myself, what did you learn? Plunge better. Nudge. You know, there's other things sometimes you can do there, too. You've got to own it. When you make the operator error, you've got to own it. Take responsibility for your drains. Heck, yeah. So the winner there was Esther, and Jared August came in second, and Carlos Angel and Mr. Raymond Davidson tied for third. Yeah, and we had a playoff for the $100 difference in prize pool. Oh, tell me about that. It was on Comet, and I was doing pretty good. Well, me and Carl were both doing pretty medium. Like, we had a couple hundred thousand points. And I just needed, like, 80,000 on Ball 3 to beat him. So I realized my Comet was ready. It was lit. Normally in Comet, you always full... You plunge to the lanes up top to get your playfield multiplier. But I was in the unique case where I knew exactly what I needed, and I already had my Comet ready. so I short plunged which you can do on that game and it goes right to your right flipper and I shot the comet once shot the comet twice and then missed and died and was short like 40,000 which would have been exactly what if I would have hit the ramp one more time I would have won oh it was kind of a rough way to end the night because it was like well I could have just left like an hour ago because I hadn't won anything in the last three rounds. Sure. Oh, I didn't know if he made you do the playoff that night or if he had you do it the following morning if it was just for money. I didn't know. Yeah, they just had us do it there that night because it was on comment, so it was fast. Yeah, I gave it over with, yes. And that is a very tough playing comment, apparently, has been pointed out to me as well. Again, I just accept that's a new District 82 game. I just accept that. Lightning clippers, no gate on the left side, yeah. Like, I have no idea.
    104:21
    That's how I learned to play the game. And so when I come across the game that has all the missing pieces to it, it's placed so differently. And then that does affect, that can affect my game. But at the same time, I'm like, oh, well, I know how to dodge this game because, you know, this game, the balls can come flying out of here. And then it's really soft. It's a soft, you know, roll to the slipper. I'm like, oh, well, this is super fancy and a lot easier. So it goes both ways. But that was a really good finish there for you in event number five as well. Yeah. Yep, so now I'm looking at my series total, and I just need to not take a dive on the last event, and I will be in the money for Super Series. Right. Oh, the last event was rough. It was tough. 13 rounds, right? It was tough on a lot of people. Yeah. And I think for a couple of different things. One, again, as you said the night before, that knockout went on forever and ever. And the 13-round match play, which was a bench number six, that was on Sunday, there were a lot of people that walked in looking very tired, very exhausted. They were ready just to get the tournament over with and get out of there. The attitude actually kind of got picked up from a lot of different players. It's not that they weren't having fun, but I think people were just exhausted. It was a long weekend. How was your energy level that morning on Sunday, and how much sleep did you even get? yeah I was exhausted and I didn't sleep very well because you're all hyped up from the previous night finals and it's like 2am and you're like I gotta go to bed because I gotta get up early and ugh I don't know how that is I was feeling pretty tired and so I was thrown into the sharks right away on Doctor Who as my first game early in the morning and not only that but our third player well first of all I was in the only three player group which sucks because, you know, now I'm good. Yeah, so I couldn't get third, or else I'd still just get one point sort of deal. And one of the three people in our three-player group didn't show up, so it was a two-player group, but Eric took someone from another group and put him in our group, except the person he chose was Andy Rosa. And so I'm playing as Wesley Johnson and Andy Rosa, both great players, early in the morning on Doctor Who, which normally I love Doctor Who. I'm like, put me on Doctor Who every round. But early in the morning when there's no ball save on that game and I couldn't find the shots, I actually did. I started off the game perfect left shot and then 10 upper loops in a row. Great. And then missed the right ramp and it immediately drained. So I got $16 million instead of $56 million. Like, if I hit that right ramp, it's $40 million. Boom. And so it was just so painful because I started off, you know, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop, brick drain. Done. That is a hard shot. Being able to loop that 10 times in a row and then to get the correct shot after is hard. But I find just the looping itself is so much work. Then on ball two, the looping started getting weird. And the upper flipper, every once in a while, it did like a half flip. and of course it killed me as soon as it did that it went like halfway and then died and i just never got and then oh and then ball three i missed the initial shot to the left orbit and instantly died no ball save just brick drain it was it was so annoying and disappointing because i love playing that game and everything that could go wrong went wrong and it was just like oh no i just needed to do okay this tournament like why what is happening so upsetting and defeating to have it happen especially when you know what you need to do that day and have it happen first first game out of the gate as you mentioned too the objectives for this tournament too is just to take first place you want to get the most points uh 13 rounds so it has the most points that the end wins what's also interesting is the way they group you together is a tiered algorithm so actually you want to win the early rounds because then you'll play people who lost the early rounds. And so by me losing the early round, now I'm facing people who have won. And so it's an uphill battle. Like every round I'm going to be playing, it's, you know, people who won their game. And so the next round I had to play Comet. That was, you know, I squeaked out a second, but just barely by making one cycle jump shot, you know. It was so close. But then luckily, I got to play my favorite game in the whole building as round three. Do you want to take a guess on what that is? Your favorite in the entire building? No, I have no idea. There's so many games. It was The Shadow. Oh, really? Yeah. So you combo, you ramp all day long? All I did was just go to left orbit, side loop, over and over and over again, put up like a billion points. The next person had like 200 million. So it felt really good to just destroy that game after a rough start. Wait, give me your strategy again on that. So you shoot the left orbit and then combo it with the upper flipper into the loop. Okay. And then you can keep hitting the loop or you can shoot it in the con hole. But that little maneuver, just going left orbit to the upper loop, it gives you 10 million for the first time, but then it raises it to 13 million and then 16 million and then 19 million, and that value carries the entire game and it never stops growing. So by the end of the game, it was like 50 million, 53 million, just huge amounts of millions for just those two flips. Wow. I may have to try that. Yeah, it's an interesting strategy. On that one in particular, I found the upper loop was very hittable when it comes around that orbit. Yes. It feels, like, very natural. Like, those two shots flow very well together. You're correct. Yep. And I just love that game because it's so fun. the sound effects and the goofy shadow laughter and the smoothness of the shots. I just like playing that game. Oh, that's interesting. Nice way to bounce back. But then I had to play Super Sonic, and the only ball that I plunged into the middle lane, I fumbled and never got a shot on the spinner, so I unfortunately got third on that. Super Sonic is literally all about just shooting it up top and hoping you get the middle lane. Because if you don't get the middle lane, you don't really get any points. Because that controls your spinner and your outland gate. And it is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, but it's the only place to get 2. And if you get all the 5, then you start getting more and more progression on the playfield. So you really just have to get that middle lane or the game is, like, turned off, essentially.
    111:29
    Essentially, you're not playing, in other words. Yep. And you just mentioned, too, that the scoring in a 13-round group match play, where it's a four-player group, it's 7-5-3-1, and then a three-player is 7-4-1. I want to also mention, Raymond, District 82 players, when you're in a three-player group, we like to call that juvie. You're a juvenile. You know, you're a juvie. But you're playing in a three-player group. Right, because I think it always assigns it to the lowest group. Yes, that is correct. That's why at the beginning of the tournament it was just random, and I was like, are you kidding me? And it's a hard, starting in Juvie, the beginning of the tournament, it is hard to dig yourself out of there. Well, that's awesome. So you won on the shadow, you blew it out of the water. Yeah, and then I, after Supersonic, I kind of took a dive, but then I was able to win my next two games. But then I had to play the game, one of the games I hate the most in that place, which is that Star Trek. premium. The Stern Star Trek. Why? Why don't you like it? Because they removed the right in-lane post and the left in-lane post. So there's no... There's nothing over there. It's just like a giant black hole. And also, there's no ball save anymore.
    112:47
    And it's just every shot is so strong that it's just like it warps, vanishes the ball before your eyes, and you can't even save it. It's like... It's just so terrifying to play that game. I love that game. I've had great games on it. Even with the new modification? Because it's fairly recent. Even with the new mods, I had a pretty good game on it on a Tilton Tuesday night. I want to say the two weeks or whatever before the Super Series. Wow. I played it. Maybe it's all in my head then. It's just I'm afraid of it. Yeah, man. Take your strategy of, yeah, because you're used to it, right? You're like, oh, that's just how it is. That's just how it is. And then I think, again, like we talked about RoboWar earlier, that was a new modification. Once I recognized that, I went to other players and, like, isn't there something missing on this game? There's a gate or something that was here that I had to look up the original game photo and then, you know, you just get used to it and you play it that way. But I do that too, Raymond. When you see something that looks weird to you, it's like kind of like you a little bit on that game.
    113:54
    I like Star Trek Premium, but you didn't take a last. You took a third. Yeah, well, I had 7 million and it beat someone who got 5 million, so, you know.
    114:03
    That's horrible. Well, I'm telling you, every flip, if you miss a shot, the ball just disappears. So, as soon as you... And I usually miss... The way I usually die in that game is missing the left orbit. Like, from a backhand, I'll miss it and then just die. So maybe I should stop shooting left orbit. I don't know. Maybe. Or don't backhand it. I don't know. Yep. And then, so after that debacle, I had to play Silver Ball Mania, which usually I'm okay with, but that was the game where I didn't hit it like a single inner loop. I just couldn't find it, and I got fourth.
    114:39
    Yeah, so then I had to play Fishtails. Fishtails was interesting because I had kind of a rocky, well, I had a decent start. Ball one and two were okay, but I was player one, And so I watched everybody pass me on their ball too. And so now I'm going in as player one with like 30 million, but everyone else has like 35, 40. And then Travis Meary had like 150. So I'm like, I'm staring a last in the face here. You know, I got one ball locked and I have to decide, do I go all in on multi-ball or do I go for the ramps and try to get a monster fish? I decided to just go ramps to try to get some space between players two and three, and then after that go for multiball. Well, I got the monster fish and then missed my multiball and drained. So I didn't get to go after Travis Meary, but I left a little bit of space for the next two players who both, which I was relieved of, did not pass me. And so my strategy worked out for getting a second. Because if I would have just went for multiball and missed, and gotten nothing, then I would have gotten last. So it was important to get something first and then go for the multi-ball. Put the points on the table. I agree. That's the right strategy for sure. Yeah, and then after that I was able to – another great game of Harlem. I like all we've got a million on that Harlem, sometimes like one and a half million. I don't know. I'll just dial in on it because I could do the tap pass, and I don't think anyone else could on that one because it's very finicky. But I found it, and I just kept doing it to get the multipliers and lighting the spinner. I am terrified of tap passing. I have a really hard time with it. It can be intimidating, but once you learn kind of how it can go wrong or right, and also when you tap pass. So I was showing somebody who normally taps when it's near the middle to end of the flipper, and I told him, no, no, no, I'm tapping right at the beginning of the flipper so that if I mess it up, I have time to bail myself out. And also, there's less leverage at that point, so you're less likely to over-tap and send the ball into an out lane. It'll more likely go where you want it to go. So try tapping a little earlier if you're having issues. I'm going to practice that, too. I'm going to have a whole list of things that I'm going to have to keep working on, but thanks for that tip, too. I appreciate it. Yep. So I was starting to feel pretty good, especially because my next game was Getaway, which I like playing. But unfortunately, I just could not find the video mode shot, which if I would have hit that at any point, I would have went from fourth to second. Tom Graff put up a ridiculous like 300 million or something. He was just unstoppable. But Alex Harmon and Josh Sharp and I, we were all sitting at the just nothing, nothing points club. and we just couldn't find any of the shots, but I, I guess, found the least amount of them. So I got fourth. Josh last, too, because he was in the same situation. Alex put up a good ball one. He had, like, 30 million, but then he had 36 million for the whole game. And me and Josh had, like, 20 million or something. And so we just needed that video mode shot to pass Alex. I failed to do it, and then Josh failed to do it. Yeah, that's rough. Yeah, it was so brutal. We don't know what happened that game. It just, that getaway wasn't that mean, but it was to us, that game, for some reason. I think that one, I think it plays so fast. I think that one, yeah, it's just really lightning fast, and if you don't find the shots, you just punish, like, immediately. Yes, drain, instant. Yeah, so then I played Stingray again, which I was in a similar situation going to ball three, player four. I was in last, but I managed to come back to second. I didn't get first because someone had a huge score, and I just never quite caught them. But getting second felt like a win because I, you know, was able to get second instead of last. Yes. And then to top my whole tournament off, I got to play Shadow again in the same tournament at game 13. I was so happy. Crazy. and I got another billion on it. And as the very last game of the tournament overall of the entire Super Series. That's cool to be able to play your favorite games there. Yeah, so that was a great way to end it. Getting first moved me up to finish 31st in that tournament, which, you know, it wasn't top eight, so no whoppers and no cash, but it was enough so that I got third in the overall series. The only people I lost to was Josh Sharp, who got 30th in that tournament, and also just had a slightly better, he didn't have any of the big, like he was very consistent. I had that one 55th place. I think Josh didn't have any of those. He got 56 points in the second tournament.
    119:46
    So he did not have a good tournament there. Okay. Well, yeah, he did slightly better than me. And then Carl, who had, he destroyed it. He was the Terminator. He had top 10 every single tournament and just crushed it. It was insane. So he was the undisputed, not even close, Super Series winner. For sure. He collected more than 90 points in every single individual event with a total of 573 points overall. And Josh Trapp was behind him with 503. So a 70-point difference is bonkers. So talk about real consistent playing over all six tournaments. That's amazing to me. Yeah, congrats to Carl. Who won? What were the final four in those last couple events? The 13-round group match played a final four. The winner was Neil Graff, District 82's very own. Proud Papa. Proud Papa on stream, yep. He played on Guardians of the Galaxy. Ezra came in second, and Jason Zala came in third, and Carl DeAngelo came in fourth overall in that tournament. It was a cool final game watching Neil and Escher and Jason, and who was the fourth player on Guardians of the Galaxy? That was such a fun last game to watch on stream as well. It was pretty amazing. Six tournaments in three and a half days. Yep. How quickly did you leave District 82 on that Sunday?
    121:18
    Well, we left after doing the volley side tournament, which was always fun. You did. You did? You know who won? Yeah, it was Matthew Richardson. He was the first player to play, and he put up $55,000 on ball one, on one ball. And we were just like, well, I guess we're giving our money to him.
    121:40
    That's crazy. Yeah, so what District 82, what Eric likes to do after a tournament, any tournament usually, and on Tilt Tuesdays, is we play a one ball on volley. It's $5 in the cup. and winner takes all. I won that once, and I had 72,000 points in one ball. 72,000? 72,000. Holy crap. 72,200, I think. And I held the record for a very long time on $5 volley. So that's a lot of fun. But I've not yet been able to roll that game. For whatever reason, I struggle with it from time to time. I can get my in lanes lit on top. But sometimes you just, I have to remember, that game was so much about geometry, I think, in order to, with the drop-down targets, and just one will bounce off the next. And so sometimes I think I get caught in my head thinking about that versus just taking the shot. But I love volley. So that's cool that you got to stick around and play that, too. I didn't know he did that. I took off.
    122:45
    Tom Graff came up to me and asked if I wanted to interview Neil. and I said no and he said are you done and I'm like yep and I'm like see ya because I was done I was burned out not burned out but I was just like I was done talking to people yeah we ended up going out to dinner at the side kickers place in De Pere it was like a sports bar so that was nice just decompress get some food and then drove home do you have any thoughts about the super series from the inaugural one to this one positive negative anything in between I mean, it was smooth, I think, both years. I think this year, actually, we were more on time and things were moving faster. It was just that one Saturday night strikes tournament that was kind of bogged down a little bit. But luckily, it's the strikes one. So if you're eliminated, you can just go to bed early. That's right. But otherwise, I think it was a great success. Me too. The only thing that I heard, say, ask players what they thought of the tournament style, especially new people, new District 82 people. The one thing that came out of several players' mouths was that it was too many classics tournaments. There's too many classic games. So then it got me thinking about that. I wonder what it would be like to do an all-modern tournament. Yeah, well, if you come to the Frosty Flippers, the Sunday tournament is exactly that. Yes. I did realize that. I don't know if I'm going to play it or not yet. I have not signed up for it. I'm just trying to, because it's in my backyard, I have time to decide if I want to play it or not. But that's another thing. Yeah, it hasn't sold out quite yet. No, it hasn't sold out. I think it has like 120 out of 150 possible players. Well, here's the thing, Raymond, you know, because I'm working on my own goals. My pinball goals are probably dramatically different than yours because I'm still a new player. You know, I'm not rookie Rachel anymore. I'm more like a sophomore now. I'm still feeling my way about things. But my goals were to get in the top 1,000. Check. Did that. Then my next goal is to get in the top 50 women overall. Not women's division, but overall division. And I did that. Check. So now the goal is to get in the top 16 and to be able to go play Women's World Championship next year. So now I'm sitting 15th out of the top 16. All right? Okay. I'm right where I want to be. But here's the deal. There's other things in December I want to do. There's other things I'd like to do that weekend other than play pinball. So I'm kind of feeling like, well, I'm just going to let the tournament sit there and hang there, and I can decide, seeing how I am point-wise, moving into the end of the year, if I really have to play the tournament or not. Because I feel like if I sign up for the tournament and get into my head thinking I've got to bank and really make points that weekend, I think I'm going to play it badly. Does that make sense? Yeah. You can't overthink it. Can't overthink it. So I'm just going to keep playing the tournament. My Tilton Tuesdays at District 82. I am going down to Houston Arcade Expo, and there's a couple other things that I'm going to have a chance to go play. So I'm just going to keep my, you know, those of the grindstone that way. Do you have current pinball goals to get back on top and be number one again? Yeah, I mean, that's always a goal. I'm not quite as, like, dead set in doing it just because I've already done it, So it's not quite as, you know, if I was trying to maintain a streak, actually I guess I kind of am. I'm trying to remember if I held it last year or not. I think I might have. So I would like to get it back, but I think the gap is just too high, so I'm just not really as motivated. If it was, like, really close, then I would be much more into it. But right now I'm playing damage control just to stay in second at this rate with, you know, Jared on my tail and all the other young'uns, you know, it's tough. So I don't really have too many IFPA goals I'm gunning for. I've started just kind of my goal is to always kind of cash or make a trip, pay for itself or experience new places that way, kind of like, oh, I've never been to this part of the country. I can play in the tournament, and if I do well enough, then it pays for my flight. And then, like, I've added this tournament to my – so I think my goals are probably more like seeing different tournaments and trying to do well in them. Playing defense. You're playing a lot of defense right now. I like that. Yeah, just stay consistent. You know, I'm trying to just – I don't know. I don't have too many goals other than don't embarrass myself, you know, play well, have fun. learn something every tournament. That's the other thing. Always be learning something. And you definitely, during this episode, you definitely showed that you learned things from different games and that you learned different strategy. And I think that's really fantastic as a competitive pinball player to know that even the best players in the world are still always looking to change their strategy. So thanks so much for that. Yep. That's all I have. I thought that was kind of a fun episode of just chit-chatting about the Super Series and about competitive pinball. Yeah, I think that went really well. Hopefully listeners enjoyed all the different ramblings and also learned a thing or two about some games. Yeah, we're happy to be here to drop the knowledge. Thanks so much for joining us on the Ray Ray Show. Happy flipping. Woo.
    128:30
    It's the Braving Show.