Episode 131: YEGPIN recap (2018)

Pinball Profile·podcast_episode·16m 58s·analyzed·May 18, 2018

Analysis

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TL;DR

Pinball Profile live from Yagpin 2018 Edmonton: rapid growth, Calgary explosion, and Raymond Davidson's championship.

Summary

Jeff Teolis hosts live coverage from Yagpin 2018 in Edmonton, Alberta, featuring interviews with tournament organizers, players, and community members. The episode highlights the event's rapid growth from 100 to 150+ machines, the thriving Calgary pinball scene with multiple leagues, and competitive highlights including Raymond Davidson's first-place finish in the Classics division. Key themes include community friendliness, sponsorship support, and the tournament's potential for IFPA circuit status.

Key Claims

Yagpin grew from 100 machines last year to over 150 this year
high confidence · Kyle Harvey confirmed the growth: 'Yeah, that's correct. It's packed in here.'
Calgary has exploded with pinball, growing from minimal scene to 40-50 locations with at least one pinball machine
high confidence · Josh Brown (Canadian Arcade): 'We've probably got about 40 or 50 locations now with at least one pinball machine.'
Calgary has two active pinball leagues with approximately 50 members each, plus a third unnamed league
high confidence · Ken Fighten: 'We've now got two different leagues in run, just about 50 members in each league.' Plus mention of a third.
Derek Thompson provided $500 sponsorship to Raymond Davidson to attend Yagpin
high confidence · Raymond Davidson: 'Derek Thompson just kept telling me how great it was... And, you know, he gave us $500 to come as well'
At least 40 Calgary players attended Yagpin 2018
medium confidence · Jeff Teolis: 'I could be underestimating the number, but I heard there was at least 40 Calgary players here in Edmonton.'
Raymond Davidson is the number one ranked pinball player in the world
high confidence · Jeff Teolis introduction: 'the number one player in the world here. What made you come to Yegman?'
Yagpin 2018 had over 150 pinball machines on display
high confidence · Kyle Harvey: 'over 150 this year. Yeah, that's correct.'
Edmonton's die-hard pinball community had established leagues running a couple years before Calgary started theirs
high confidence · Ken Fighten: 'Edmonton led the way. They had their league running a couple of years before us.'

Notable Quotes

“Derek Thompson just kept telling me how great it was, and I just wanted to check it out. And it is great.”
Raymond Davidson @ ~24:00 — World #1 player's endorsement of Yagpin as a destination tournament, validates Derek Thompson's reputation building
“The sponsor asked me, how would you make it better? And I didn't have an answer for him.”
Dave Stewart @ ~28:30 — Strong endorsement of event quality from experienced tournament veteran; suggests Yagpin competitors with major circuit events
“Calgary's just exploded with pinball. Absolutely, and we've got a lot more location play in Calgary, a lot more pinball.”
Josh Brown @ ~43:00 — Documents rapid growth of Calgary pinball ecosystem from location play perspective
“It's just a whole summer of fun... I highly recommend everyone make it out to this Yankpin tournament. It's a really fun, different but the same sort of game-picking style.”
Raymond Davidson @ ~93:00 — World champion's public endorsement legitimizes Yagpin format and encourages broader participation
“if you've never been to another show, you have no idea how great the show is”
Jeff Teolis @ ~29:00 — Establishes Yagpin as benchmark quality event relative to broader tournament circuit
“More competition, more people. It makes for an awesome atmosphere.”
Kyle Harvey @ ~39:00 — Local community embraces out-of-town competitors; indicates healthy growth mindset

Entities

YagpineventDerek ThompsonpersonRaymond DavidsonpersonKen FightenpersonCalgary pinball communityorganizationEdmonton pinball communityorganizationDie Hard PinballorganizationJosh BrownpersonSydney Harveyperson

Signals

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community_signal: Die Hard Pinball streaming Yagpin content on Twitch; Canadian Arcade documenting event for YouTube; established media coverage infrastructure
high · Michaela Wolf: 'you can catch your action they streamed it on the last game on Paragon too so you'll get to see you in action when you go to diehard pinball on Twitch' Josh Brown mentions filming for YouTube
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community_signal: Edmonton established pinball league infrastructure 2+ years before Calgary; positioned as regional leader in community organization
high · Ken Fighten: 'Edmonton led the way. They had their league running a couple of years before us.'
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community_signal: Calgary pinball community explosive growth from minimal to 40-50 location machines and dual leagues with ~100 total members within 2-year window
high · Josh Brown: 'We've probably got about 40 or 50 locations now with at least one pinball machine.' Ken Fighten: two leagues with ~50 each
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community_signal: Multiple sponsors and game donors supporting Yagpin; charity tournament component (Yagpin Fights Cancer) with $20 entry
high · Jeff Teolis: 'tournament is really the brainchild of Derek Thompson and Die Hard Pinball, but this is only the third year of this tournament, and it so relies on the volunteers and the sponsors'
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event_signal: Yagpin 2018 positioning as potential IFPA circuit event with support from experienced tournament veterans (Dave Stewart, Raymond Davidson)
medium · Dave Stewart: 'if Derek wants to get on it, he'd have my support because this is as good as most of the circuit events that we go to' Raymond Davidson endorsement of tournament format

Transcript

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0:00

it's time for another pinball profile i'm your host jeff teoles you can find our group on facebook we're also on twitter at pinball profile email us pinball profile at gmail.com and please subscribe on either itunes stitcher or google play you heard me talk to derek thompson just recently about yegpin well it's here it's in edmonton and it is a huge event and we're going to talk to some of the people that made this happen. A former champ here at Yegpin, he was the Classics Pinball Tournament winner last year in 2017, looking pretty good here in 2018. Ken Fighten, how you doing Ken? I'm doing great, thanks Jack. Ken from Calgary, Alberta and you know I'm from Ontario so you know the people in Toronto aren't exactly the most friendly with the people in Ottawa. What is Calgary and Edmonton like? We're good friends, you know there's no animosity here at all. Our sports teams are not rivals. There's none of that. Wait a second. I remember the old 80s, or maybe early 90s, the Oilers and the Flames going at it. Didn't Steve Smith put one in the net?

1:03

I vaguely remember that, yes. Well, Calgary's had a championship. Edmondson's had quite a few. What a show here at Yagpin. And from what I hear, it's just a lot bigger than it was a year ago. You've been here, is this your second year or third? This is my third year now. Second year in this venue, and every year it just keeps getting better and better. It's amazing. Well, I've heard from a lot of people from Calgary, and Calgary is just exploding with pinball. Really, it wasn't a big part of the scene maybe a few years ago, but it's changed. That's absolutely true. We started out with a couple of tournaments, you know, see is there a community even here, right? And we saw that, yeah, there was. And eventually we started the league. I have to say Edmonton led the way. They had their league running a couple of years before us. So we got our league going, and within two years of that, we've now got two different leagues in run, just about 50 members in each league. Wow. It's just been fantastic. I assume home collections are on location? Yeah, we're on location actually. So what we've done is we have a collective of owners and collectors and we put our games on a location. We've got a restaurant bar that's very friendly to us and lets us use one of their back rooms. And yeah, we put our own games on location and we use that for league night too. Every week there's one night a week that we have league, We have tournaments. And what are the names of the leagues? Stampede City Pinball League is our official league. And then we have the Pioneer League, which is the first one that started. And then we have, I don't even know what the new one's called. I don't play in that one. But there's a second one we added because we had too many people in the first one. Wow. Because we've only got 10 games in the room. Well, that happens a lot of places. Capacity, it happens where I play in London. It happens in Phoenix. It happens all over. but was the big reason Calgary's seven of these leagues were to finally stuff it to Derek Thompson so that he didn't keep winning Alberta? That wasn't the original reason, but it's an ongoing motivation, for sure. We had a lot of fun with Derek, actually, to be honest. He runs a great show here. He runs a great tournament. And, you know, we did the Alberta finals in Calgary here this year. And it was just fantastic. Great fun. You can see there on the banner, Derek. You know, there's guys from Calgary that win it. Doug and Derek go back and forth. Oh, okay. It's fantastic. Yeah, they've got banners here in this old airport hangar of some of the champs from this tournament and also from the provincial championships too. So very, very cool. I assume you go to other events as well too, like something maybe, it's not necessarily nearby, but it's certainly close, something like Vancouver Flipout. I've been to Vancouver twice now, and that's also an amazing turnout there. You know, I don't get too far. I've got family commitments and whatnot to keep me close to home, but I do try to get to Vancouver every year. Pretty soon Calgary might have to have a show. People keep telling me that. I just don't know, honestly. We've run a few big tournaments, and those have turned out well, but the scale of what they're able to do here is really mind-blowing, to be honest. The number of games and just how well it's run, it's fantastic. The die-hard pinball league and Derek and all the volunteers have really set the bar here at Yankman. Ken, great to talk to you. Yeah, thanks. It's good fun. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, yet three yo-hos from Seattle thought, oh, we'll just show up and dominate at this tournament, and all three of them are in the Classics finals and we see how this goes Raymond Davidson Jermaine Marial and Dave Stewart Hello boys Hello Jeff Hello hello Hello all All right what made you guys decide to come to Edmonton First of all, glad you did, because a lot of people were excited, Raymond, to have the number one player in the world here. What made you come to Yegman? Derek Thompson just kept telling me how great it was, and I just wanted to check it out. And it is great. It is. It is great. And, you know, he gave us $500 to come as well, so... What? I only got 400. Ah, yeah. Better negotiations. Dave, you are no stranger, first of all, to Canada, but also tournaments here. A guy who looks after Vancouver flip-out coming up in September 7th and 9th. What do you think of the Egg Pit? So far, I like it. Really well done. Nice space. I like the spaciousness. And came up, support, you know, Nitro Pinball is one of the sponsors of this. And he's a sponsor of the Women's Championship at Northwest. And that's a huge one. Yeah, brand new machine, Hobbit, has a top prize, largest women's tournament in the nation. And so he supports us, I like to support him and the events he's supporting. So I came up just to see what it was all about here. This tournament is really the brainchild of Derek Thompson and Die Hard Pinball, but this is only the third year of this tournament, and it so relies on the volunteers and the sponsors. I made a speech last night for the VIPs talking about if you've never been to another show, you have no idea how great the show is. And I've been to obviously quite a few, as you guys have. I had a sponsor come up to me today, and he said, what makes this show so good?

8:13

I've heard worse call-outs. That one's not too bad. What a great show. There's so much going on here. a lot of games on display, a huge tournament bank, classics. They got also the main event women Are you going in the women Sydney Hopefully Oh no definitely you should I seen you play What you get the highest score on You crushed one of the games Oh yeah on Fireball 2 Fireball 2 I asked you how do you play that game Because I don know that one And what did you say? Not really sure. Brilliant. There's how you get better. Go for the lit lights. Okay, fair enough. This is a big tournament. There's also a special charity tournament today on Friday. It's a cancer charity, I believe. Yeah, it's the Yankpin Fights Cancer or something like that. $20 gets you in and all money going to charity. I love it. I think that's a great idea. I'm looking forward to that. Today at 5.30. Yeah, it's going to be a great one, I think. I think, Sydney, you're going to win that one, right? I'm hoping. Here's hoping, yeah. So third year here at this old hangar, really, and it's grown and grown. I heard there were about 100 machines last year, over 150 this year. Yeah, that's correct. It's packed in here. It's fantastic. So do you mind us out-of-towners coming into your beautiful city of Edmonton? No, it's awesome. More competition, more people. It makes for an awesome atmosphere. It is a lot of fun, and I think you're going to see more and more. This show is going to grow because it's one of the best tournaments I've seen in a long, long time. You never know when you go to tournaments what you're going to get, and the quality of the games is absolutely perfect, and that, I guess, goes to a lot of the people from the diehard pinball league. Yeah, I know that a lot of people have donated lots of games to be here today, and I can't think of too many that I know that I love that aren't here on the floor right now, so it's fantastic. All right, Kyle, Sydney, thank you very much for joining us today. Awesome, thank you so much. Thanks, Jeff. Love the show. It makes sense that he's here. We're in Alberta. Josh Brown from the Canadian Arcade is here, which you can see on YouTube. How you doing, Josh? Not too bad. It's a great show. You've been here before, I assume? I've been here the last two years that they've put the event on. Where's your partner, by the way? So he's in Calgary right now. He's doing a launch party for Iron Maiden at the brand new Pin Bar on 17th Avenue, southwest Calgary. I've seen you filming here, so we're going to see that, I assume? Yeah, absolutely. Probably in the next month or so we will be able to go through the footage and kind of cut out what we want to use. We try to do something a little bit different every year, so we're not just doing the same video over and over. So we try to bring out something special for everybody each year, so they look forward to that video coming out. I could be underestimating the number, but I heard there was at least 40 Calgary players here in Edmonton. I think, yeah, absolutely. There's so many guys from Calgary coming up here, and I see people walking all over the place. It's blown up from what I hear. Calgary's just exploded with pinball. Absolutely, and we've got a lot more location play in Calgary, a lot more pinball. We've probably got about 40 or 50 locations now with at least one pinball machine. And you'll cover them all on the Canadian Arcade? Eventually we'll get around to that. All right, all the best, Josh. Thank you. Not only the youngest person here in the tournament, but one of the better players, and he's advancing now to the quarterfinals, Myles Grant. Myles, you're playing amazing this weekend. Oh, well, thank you. You're here with your dad? Yep. And your dad's a good player, too. Yeah, he's pretty good, although he didn't make either of the playoffs. He got third in the knockout for cancer. He knocked me out on volley. Yeah, I got fifth, and he took me out of the tournament, too. We're getting ready for the quarterfinals. How do you like the game so far? Yeah, they're playing pretty well. Better than in qualifying, I would say. A lot easier. A little less tilting action, for sure. How old are you now? I'm 15. I love seeing the young guys come up and just dominate. And I know your buddies with Escher, too, and he's one of the best. Yeah, for sure. What made you like pinball? I always ask the young guys, because it's different for every person. Well, my dad was into pinball, right? And we have quite a few at home. So it really got me in at a young age. Awesome. Well, I think you and I are playing in the next round. So if you win, I'm going to delete this. I'm just kidding. All right. Thanks, buddy. Yeah, see ya. Here's the women's champion from the Eggpin 2018, Michaela Wolf from Calgary. congratulations thank you very much it came down to the last game you were playing paragon you were tied with christina and uh you just pastored boy that paragon was playing tough oh my goodness i'm not very good at the classics and i just oh i was shaking it was really scary what a great tournament because there was so much action it was great to see all the women come out and you're from calgary so many calgary players oh i know you know what it really awesome when we get to come up to uh and the girls from Edmonton come down to Calgary It kind of a little rivalry but it all fun it awesome Mikayla I watched you play I not surprised to see you the champion I don't know your history is this your biggest win? I think so yeah. You got a really nice trophy and some great prizes and well-deserved so congratulations and you can catch your action they streamed it on the last game on Paragon too so you'll get to see you in action when you go to diehard pinball on Twitch. Oh no. Well, you won. Congratulations. Thanks, Michaela. Thank you. Well, this kid's making a name for himself. You might hear of him in the future if he's winning like he is doing right now at Yankpin. The sky's the limit. His name is Raymond Davidson. Raymond. Yeah. Hey, Jeff. Buddy, congratulations. A great tournament. And it wasn't a cakewalk for you, was it? There were some scary moments. It was really fun and really hard fought. every game I played, you know, I felt like I was, you know, at death's grasp where, like, if I don't perform well, it's over. And everyone was putting up big scores. F14 Tomcat, you know, I put up 3 million, and Jody came up with 2.9. So, you know, it was just really close games, really tough competition all around. Yeah, had Jody gone for that kickback, it could have been a whole different game, right? Yeah, that was crazy. It's interesting. You got to drive the bus once Derek was out, and you got to choose really whatever bank you want. And it's funny because I see Walking Dead, I see Mousing Around, and even Harlem and Evil Knievel, but you chose Guardians, F-14 Tomcat, and Paragon. And on the stream, you got to watch how many times The Beast? It was five. Five times. Five on the first ball and more. And my God, it was crazy. Like it didn't even exist. Yeah, it was a pretty crazy ball. I chose those games mostly because I got snakebitten on Mousing Around. I got a last on it the previous round and I just didn't want to didn't want to deal with that even though I love Mousing around I would pick it almost every time but you know I just after that game. I was like no no I I've been consistent on Paragon f14 and I hadn't played Guardians in the finals yet But I have one and I know it pretty well So I tried to use that to my advantage and managed to get a second on it which was enough to move on well You had nine million going into your last ball to a dead last to What was your strategy? I did the Yaka Arrow, bringing it into Groot, and I got actually kind of fortunate because I started Groot with four seconds left of Yaka Arrow, but enough flailing got some hedrons, and I was able to pound away, finish Yaka Arrow, and then line up the double Yaka Collect for like 50 million or whatever. So there's a clinic, and you can again watch that on the Die Hard pinball stream on Twitch. But that Paragon game, I mean, that was Robert Byers-esque, like the Texas Pinball Fest. Just the clinic watching you play, watching him play. And speaking of Robert, he, yourself, myself, in a couple weeks, we're all going to be in New York City for the New York City Pinball Championship at just all these great tournaments. I know. I've got a busy schedule lined up. I'm going here, and then I'm going to New York, and then I'm going to Toronto. and then there's the Northwest stuff after that, and then there's replay effects. It's just a whole summer of fun. Well, Raymond, congratulations on the first place overall here at Yankpin at being the number one player in the world, well-deserved, and this is certainly going to help that status. Yeah, you know, just trying to maintain, and it's just always fun competing. And I highly recommend everyone make it out to this Yankpin tournament. It's a really fun, different but the same sort of game-picking style where you have to play a little variety of games.