Welcome to Do or Die, a podcast about competitive pinball. I'm your host, Raymond Davidson, here to help you stay up to date on the latest strategies, tournaments, and happenings in the competitive pinball world, while also sharing direct stories with me as I go forth on my pinball tournament adventures. All right, all right. Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for that intro, Raymond. That was great. Welcome, welcome everybody to the first episode of Do or Die, a pinball podcast about competitive pinball. We are going to talk about pinmasters in this episode. This is the tournament that I most recently attended. It is the most recent Stern Pro Circuit event that I went to, and I can really dive deep into what I thought about it, the events that happened, the games that were played, the people that were there. Really great event. If you haven't had the chance to play an IFPA Pinmasters, I strongly recommend it. Next year, I think it's going to be somewhere in the Denver area. It follows the AMOA show. So you can, I'm sure you'll be able to find that somewhere. Pinmasters this year, though, was in Las Vegas, Nevada. Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. and well let's let's break it down let's see um it was it was a two-day tournament or three-day tournament actually there was nine holes and you play the same nine holes each day and so if you're not familiar with pin golf a hole is just a table a pinball game and you basically have to play until you get the target score and then you write down how many balls it took you to get to the target score. The difference, or the thing that's a little different about golf is if you don't make it in five, then you automatically get a score assigned to you based on how close you were. So a lot of times you're going into ball five with nothing, and if you don't do anything, you're going to get a 10, which, man, getting a 10 is not a good thing. So you really got to, you know, every bit counts, every point threshold counts when trying to get the lowest golf score for the whole tournament. Uh, so there was, I think 72 players and man, there was only 16 qualifying spots. So you had, you had to be on your game. Um, the, uh, the top qualifier, uh, was Escher Lefkoff. He killed it. He was, I think he was probably 10 strokes ahead of the next, uh, next person. Um, he just had a really good, you know, he just, I think his worst hole was a four, which is unbelievable for 18 games of pinball and none of them bad. It's almost as if I felt like it was, had a lot of the same feel as competing in the old Papa style, uh, world championship, where you have a ticket of four games that you have to put together or five, five games. And, But this was 18 games. You had to play 18 games and not give up on any of them. You couldn't afford a bad game because it just killed your whole run. So it was really impressive to Escher. Huge props to him. I managed to qualify fourth, which I was very happy about because I basically needed a hole-in-one to get top four, and I managed to do it on Tron at the last minute. So I was really happy about that. And the reason, in case you're not familiar, why top four was so important is because in this format, the top four get to be the bus drivers. They get to choose what games to play in the finals. And this format, when there's so many minefields lying around where you don't want to play a game because you're scared you're going to get a 10 on it, you know, choosing your game is really important. And so the games in the tournament, in the order that they appeared in the pinball halls, were Tron Legacy, Star Wars Premium, Sorcerer, Game of Thrones, Star Trek, Black Rose, X-Men, Attack from Mars remake, and Abracadabra was the fun EM of choice that people got to play. So how did my finals go? Well, I was playing with Adam Becker, Joe Lemire, and Gabe de Silveria from Oakland, and Joe Lemire from New Robert Englunds, and Adam Becker, of course, from Canada. So, it was, you know, I still, even though I got to choose the games, it was still scary. You know, I still had to perform. The games I chose were Star Trek, Black Rose, and Tron. Now, you might be wondering, Black Rose? What? That game, what? Why would you pick that death trap? Well, I love Black Rose, and maybe I'll get into that later, but the score was really low. It was only 15 million, so I felt that I could get that sooner than other people could, especially because there was no ball save. So if you just could get the ball to your flipper, you were already doing pretty good, and I felt pretty confident that I was able to plunge to my flipper and then just shoot the World Bowl ramp a bunch of times to victory, basically. Anyway, we'll get to that when we get to Black Rose. First, so I picked Stern Trek first, and the target score on Star Trek was 35 million. Now, that seems, you know, pretty low, pretty doable. But it's also kind of a weird score, right? Because normally in competition you're shooting for about 50 million. 60 million is kind of, you know, what you're kind of having in mind when you go into a game. And oftentimes when you don't get the 50 or 60 million, you get like 6 to 7, 8, 9 million because, you know, you just, you never started multiball or you had a bad vengeance. Basically, in this format, you know, you can't think that way. You can't shoot for the 50 million, and if you miss, it's okay, because you can just play again. You have to actually think about how do I get 35 million and progressively get to 35 million, so that if I fall short, I don't fall that much short. And my strategy was the right side of the pyramid, the mode pyramid, Prime Directive, Space Jump, and... Oh, jeez, what's that third one? Someone's going to get at me for that. It's the green one, I think. And to be honest with you, I actually don't know all the rules to Star Trek. I don't know the intricacies of all the modes. I just knew that if I picked those three modes, I'd get Super Ramps. And Super Ramps is like a million, two million, if you're comboing. per ramp shot, and so I knew I could get to 35 million if I just play those three modes and shoot the blinking lights, and it really suited my strengths on that game because I was able to find the left and right ramp shots. The right ramp was a little earlier than I had thought, but I used that in the back of my head to sort of remind myself, okay, remember to flip a little earlier, and so once I got dialed in on those ramp shots, that's basically all I did. I just shot left-right ramp in combos, and of course, you know, orbits and stuff when they're lit for modes, and I actually racked up 35 million without even getting to my super ramps, just from playing the modes normally, just because I was comboing everything, and, you know, normally you don't think about the combos as being that, you know, mattering, because you have bigger goals in mind, like Kobayashi Maru. But in this format where you need 35 million, you know, take those combo shots because it's double value. It gives you, you know, that much closer to your 35 million. And so I was just kind of in the zone. I was just kind of flowing and hitting shots and got my 35 million and two balls. And, you know, that was how that went. And I was happy with that. And then the next game was Black Rose, as mentioned. And basically, I think everyone's strategy was the same. You know, you plunge to your flipper, you shoot the whirlpool four times, and then you lock a ball and you play multiball. And so I think I did that a couple of times and failed horribly at my multiball. Like, I don't even think it hit my flipper. I think I just plunged it away And so then eventually I started thinking like wait why bother changing it up I should just once I have the whirlpool shot I should just keep hitting the whirlpool because it gives you a million a shot. And all my points up to that point were just from the whirlpool. So that's what I did. I just never let go. I just kept shooting the whirlpool, just ignored multiball, and got the $15 million I needed just from that. you saw some other people you could also play broadside as a way to get 15 million on black rose basically shoot it up the middle and get the goodies there's a bunch of rewards up there anything from instant multiball ramps worth millions some video modes that are worth a million points or so and then also once you collect the mode it lights a 2 million hurry up and you know normally you don't care about two million but in this format two millions you know that's uh a seventh of the way to your to your victory score so you saw people going for that um and then you also saw people you know black rose it was mean because if you couldn't get anything going you were basically getting a nine or a ten um because you only got points when you were sort of doing the thing like you know shooting the whirlpool, shooting the broadside, if you were struggling at all, you don't just get points for free on that game, which is partially why I chose that game, because I felt that I could do the thing better than other people could do the thing, and it sort of paid off. I got my two, and I think some other people got like, you know, fives, sixes, and eights or something. So that almost locked me in. Basically, as long as I didn't get a ten on Tron, I think I was guaranteed. So going into the game three, I chose Tron, and I knew I just needed like five million or something, seven million, to guarantee myself to move on. And, you know, it sounds really easy, and you can definitely blow it with no ball save. So I was still a little nervous, but, you know, once I started a light cycle, I knew everything was going to be okay. Yeah, not much to talk about strategy-wise on Tron. and everyone kind of knows that game to death. You just start your light cycle, start your Cora. One thing that came up throughout the weekend was, how do you get the light cycle light solid? How do you beat light cycle multiball? And there's actually two ways to do it. You can either... So, first of all, the way light cycle multiball works is you have the left ramp, the right orbit, lit for jackpots. and if you hit the left ramp, then it lights Cora for a super jackpot. If you hit the right orbit, it lights the side ramp for a super jackpot. So if you get three of those throughout the multiball, three supers of any combination, so either left ramp Cora supers or right orbit side ramp supers, and if you get three of them, you'll beat the mode. So that's sort of just the grindy way, right? You play a long light cycle multiball, you've got three supers in the same multiball, and you'll get the light cycle solid. The other way is to just collect one double super. And the way to get the double super is specifically the combo of left ramp, Korra, and side ramp, or left ramp, Korra, and gem. Either of those will get you the double super, and you'll beat the mode. It also gives you 3 million, or maybe 1.5 million. 3 million if you have double scoring running. Anyway, so that was just kind of something that came up over the weekend. I thought I'd talk about in case you didn't know. The round ended up finishing with me and Joe Lemire moving on to the semifinals. So at this point, you know, made the top eight. Pretty stoked. Now I get to play with Escher and Colin MacAlpine and Joe Lemire again. so Escher who was the top seed gets to choose the games much to my dismay um and he chose uh Tron Game of Thrones and Star Wars so I got uh three on Tron which I was super bummed about because I basically had a one like I had like nine million on ball one and double drained and And it was entirely my fault. It should have been a hole-in-one if I just kept it going a little longer. And then ball two, it was just like a brick drain, immediate death. And then ball three, I finally got enough points to get the three. But everyone else got like a two or a one. So it was like, oh no, I'm already behind. This isn't good. So then we played Game of Thrones, and oh my god, it was a disaster. For me, at least. everyone else, uh, Escher, Colin, and Joe got like a two. They, they beat Greyjoy, just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, 150 million, done. Uh, and I was just like, well, shit, like, I, how am I gonna, I guess I gotta do it, right? And I, I went four balls of, of nothing. Like, it was brick out lane, brick out lane, or sling sling drain, or just, just nothing, I could not piece together more than one or two shots in a row, so I went into ball five with like 15 million, basically, you know, staring down at 10, and I was like, well, I guess I'm just gonna try to play the best Martel I've ever done, and, and I managed to actually get a perfect Martel, because I had, And I don't know, orbit, orbit, ramp, ramp, orbit, ramp, whatever the combination is, I did it without missing finally. You know, it just took me those first four balls to really find the shots. And I got like a 200 million in one shot for beating Martel. So it was impressive, but, you know, I got a five, right? And a five compared to everyone else's twos doesn't really help me. It helped me mentally, you know, it made me feel good that I didn't get a 10. So I technically had a chance going into the third game to move on. I basically, I needed a hole-in-one, and I needed Colin or Joe to get, like, a six or a seven, right? And I fulfilled my part of the bargain, sort of. I didn't get a one. I got a two. And the way I got my two, so here's the thing about Star Wars. similar to Star Trek I don't actually know all the intricacies so I just sort of play it the way I know to play it which is for me I choose R2-D2 light Death Star missions and then I shoot Endor ramp three times and then play Rescue the Princess and then after that go into Destroy the Death Star and if I do that I almost always end up with like 300 400 million and I managed to do that on ball two. I was sitting pretty. But Colin MacAlpine, who had apparently studied up before the tournament, he knew that all he needed to do was get $200 million in like three balls. And so he just chose Leia and just ramped out and then shot the hot shot three times and then shot the Death Star a couple times and he was there. He shot like five shots or six shots because every shot to a planet was just giving him like 10 million points. And we didn't really know about this. Apparently Leia makes those worth a lot more. So he had the score just by hitting a couple things. And so I was like, well, there goes that dream. Joe sort of did it the old-fashioned way. He did the video mode strategy to get it most of the way there. and then played the escape from Han multiball or something. And so he, you know, put in his good, honest 200 million and was done after a couple balls. So, you know, unfortunately I got a 2, but it didn't matter. I ended up with a 10 overall. And Escher had a 10, but Colin and Joe had 7s. So, you know, a 7 in three games, that's a pretty good round of golf. That's, you know, 3-2-2, right? Like, I can't be upset for not moving on with my 10. Most of the time, that probably would be okay. But, you know, it was that Game of Thrones. It really, really hurt me. But it's okay. I ended up getting fifth, which is great. I had a great time. I got to, you know, watch the rest of it on Carl D'Python Anghelo's excellent stream, i.e. Pinball. and yeah, it was really fun. It really just showed that if I had maybe been a little more diligent on Game of Thrones and not wasted those first four balls, I might have had a shot or on Tron if I would have not double drained, that sort of thing. So looking back at possible spots where I could have done stuff differently, there's always something. You always got to reflect on what you could have done better so that hopefully at the next tournament you do even better The eventual winner was none other than Zach Sharp Stern Pinball He swept, actually. He won both the Pinmasters and the Nationals, which is what Eric Stone did a couple years ago. It actually makes me sad that I didn't play in Pinmasters last year because I won Nationals last year. So, you know, naturally, apparently there's this unwritten rule that if you're playing in both tournaments, you just win both tournaments. But I didn't know about that rule, so I missed out last year. Yeah, Zach played great. I think the final four was Zach Sharp, Jim Belsito, Colin MacAlpine, Joe Lemare. And they played a great, great set of games. It came down to abracadabra. You know, Zach Sharp had a lead going into it, and all he needed to do was just get, you know, a four or something. And he did. He got his four, which meant that the only way he could lose is if Colin, Jim, or Joe got a one or a two. And getting a one or a two on abracadabra is not easy. You have to basically survive a lot of bounces, a lot of chaos, and I think that's why Zach Sharp chose that game. Because Zach was already ahead, and he felt that the spread on Abracadabra, the chance that I do this much worse than someone else, was low. He thought abracadabra, on the average, people generally get around a four or five. Just sort of, you know, normal, average speaking. And he used that to his advantage and it paid off. So I think that was a great strategic choice by Zach Sharp. Rather than picking a game that, like maybe Star Wars, where it's pretty conceivable that you could not do anything in five balls. and then someone else could also do something in one ball, right? It's a lot more volatile on Star Wars, whereas Abracadabra is much more linear and your average strokes kind of settles around that three and four range. So it's just kind of interesting thinking about the different strategic options you have available to you when you're playing in these tournaments. You know, every choice matters. And Zach Sharp definitely deserves the congrats, the victory. I think he won a new in box stern for winning nationals and then just a bunch of cash for winning pinmasters. So congrats to him. And that was pinmasters. That was my first time playing in it, and I will definitely do it again, and I recommend anyone else to try it out. It was a whole lot of fun. It was also very, very nerve-wracking and intense. Like I said, it kind of had that Papa-style feel to it. It's almost like you felt like you were playing in the World Championships, even though at the same time it was just kind of like a casual round of golf. So it was a really cool blend of both competition and fun, and I really liked it. Moving on to news in the tournament scene. The governing body of Competitive Pinball Landscape, the International Flipper Pinball Association, or IFPA, made an announcement. And they announced that there would be a new major in town. So in case you didn't know, the major tournaments that are all worth 1.5 times as many world ranking points as normal tournaments are the IFPA World Championships, the PAPA World Championships, the Pinberg Match Play Championships, and the European Pinball Championships. Joining these four is a new fifth one called The Open. And no, the name is not a joke, even though it was revealed on April Fool's Day. But I actually kind of like it. It's called The Open because it's a chance for anybody to compete in it. It's not going to be a limited entry, you know, sign up in the first five seconds or you're not going to be in the tournament. No, this one, anybody can come. You show up and you play, and it's a great way to really partake in the top upper echelon of competitive pinball play. And the Open takes place in January in Banning, California at the Pinball Museum there. They have a great pinball museum there, and it actually coincides with the It Never Drains in Southern California festival. and before, known as Indisc, this tournament was its own tournament and it's basically getting an upgrade now. It's getting turned into the Open. And I'm excited. I think everyone who's played in that tournament has already recognized how great of a tournament it is and how ridiculously tough the competition is. And so I think it's great for it to finally, you know, get that final upgrade to major status. It's sort of like the Papa West, because Papa, unfortunately, is on a hiatus at the moment. And so to take its place, I think there's nothing better than this new open tournament that also is, it goes along with a festival with over 400 machines that you can play. You know, it really, it's really got that Papa vibe of, you know anybody all the country can gather here once a year and just play a ton of pinball and at the same time there's going to be these these world champions battling it out for top you know ranking points and prizes using the same format as the old papa world championships uh you know card based you got to string together five good games in a row and i'm really i'm really looking forward to it. I always look forward to it every year. I recommend anybody who's interested in competitive pinball to come check it out. That tournament, you can find information at neverdrains.com. It's run by the Southern California guys, Jim Belsito, Carl D'Python Anghelo, Bob Matthews. It's going to be great. I'm really looking forward to that. The responses have been mostly positive. What's not to like about this. It's basically taking something you already love and just upgrading it. So it's also, they also announced that they're going to have a Thursday. You're going to be able to actually come to the event on Thursday this year, whereas normally it's only been Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So adding that fourth day, you know, it really brings back the feelings of this is Papa. This is, this is West Coast Papa, you know, reincarnated. Four days of pinball. It's going to be great. If you didn't know it already, now you do. So, yeah, that was announced recently, and looking forward to it. So, what's the current situation in the competitive circuit? Well, I can tell you. The Stern Pro Circuit has been updated up until Pinmasters, and leading the pack is me, somehow. I guess I did well enough at the three events I went to. Then Jim Belsito, then Colin MacAlpine, followed by Steven Bowden, Carl D'Python Anghelo, Colin Urban, Zach Sharp, and rounding out the top eight is Jason Werdrick. So, you know, big names up there. They're all fighting for that top 20 spots at the end of the year, which will be invited into the Stern Pro Circuit Championship. Steven Bowden did very well in Texas. Colin MacAlpine did very well in Texas and in pinmasters. Steve got second in Texas, and Colin MacAlpine got fourth. And Colin Urban, I think, won the Open, or Indisc. Unfortunately, he just missed being world champion, so that's kind of a bummer for him. But either way, very impressive stuff. Looking forward to how things shake out there. We also have the IFPA World Rankings. And I am still number one, which I'm a fan of. But Keith Elwin, right on my tail there. And then Daniele, man, he's still killing it. Looking forward to playing him in Italy this June. followed by Johannes Ostermeyer, the German wonder kid. Wunder kid, I guess. Man, he's really good. I'm looking forward to playing him. And then fifth is Bowen Kerins, followed by Zach Sharp, our friend Eric Stone, weatherman extraordinaire. And then rounding out the top eight of the IFPA rankings is Kaylee George, good friend of mine, mentor, pinball buddy. I've been hanging out with him and learning his tricks of the trade for many years so glad to see him up there so that'll be a fun race to see where those shake out with the Open being a huge part of next year in determining who wins that race for number one Yeah we see what happens there Moving along to some other updates we have a new game from Stern that has been announced, Black Knight Sword of Rage. I guess not so new now, but it's the most recently announced game, and I'm looking forward to that game. I love the music of Black Knight. I love the fact that Steve Ritchie designed it, and Tim Sexton's going to be on code. Really looking forward to the opportunities, points scoring, and otherwise that he presents to the player, because I know Tim is a really good pinball player, and he knows what works and what doesn't. I know for a fact that the game will not play as monotonous as the original Black Knight 2000, uh, just with Tim in charge, that, that's just not gonna happen, so you're gonna get the best of both worlds, you're gonna get the awesome music from Black Knight 2000 with the actual playability of a modern game, so I'm really looking forward to that, uh, there, it's funny, the other release by Stern, The Munsters, kind of almost flew under the radar. Like, they didn't hype it up as much. They are finally shipping the LEs. And I guess, I don't know if they just sort of wanted this to be like a game that just sort of they put out in between their, you know, their cool game, like, you know, Black Knight, you know, that's a cool game. Maybe Munsters was just sort of a filler game. I don't, I don't know why it didn't seem to get as much praise or hype. I've definitely played it, and it just doesn't seem like it's all there yet. It seems like the whole game is just avoiding the super jackpot shot until you need it, and then when you need it, you can't hit it, because it's this little tiny catapult shot that when you shoot it, it just can go right through it. So it just leads to very frustrating games where you'll get random slingshots to collect your super, but then when you really want to collect it, you can't. It's also a game that's warped by the 6x Dwight special, you know, where you have a playfield multiplier that goes 2, 3, 6, and if you're not in 6x, what are you doing? You know, it's... So from scoring and competitive play, I don't really find it all that interesting. I think they need... If they could balance it out with some other things, like make the zap jackpots, you know, worth a little more or the the other modes are like spot you know the spot mode is fun but it just kills you you know the guy comes up and blocks your shot and goes down the out lane so if that could come with a ball saver or just make it worth a lot of points to go for it just it just needs a lot of balancing the play field's okay the ramps feel pretty good um but yeah i'm just i'm not sold on it yet i i much prefer deadpool over monsters uh deadpool's pretty rocking now with all the code updates. I used to be pretty low on that game when it came out, but now that I've played it a bunch, I'm really getting into it. I really like the kind of the pacing of the game. It's very good. It's sort of just naturally, you know, as you progress through the game, you're beating more villains. You're getting things like mech suit multiball. You know, you sprinkle in a disco multiball here and there. You get your katana of multiball. It's just, it's a very fun game. It's just really fun, and they did really good with the quotes and the humor, and yeah, I guess just pacing overall, the game is really good. I wish some of the shots didn't reject, like the Colossus jackpot or the, you know, katana ramp, but other than that, really like what Stern's been doing. I'm looking forward to Black Knight Sword of Rage, and I can't wait to see that. Alright, so to wrap things up, we're going to talk about what tournaments are upcoming. What can we plan to really show our stuff and compete? Well, I got news. There's a lot. There's a lot of tournaments happening. Pinball's popular. Competitive pinball's popular. The next event I'm going to is called Yegapin, and that is April 26th through the 28th in Edmonton, Canada. Edmonton, Alberta, I believe. And that tournament is run by the wonderful Derek Thompson. So if you ever see him at a tournament, make sure to say hi. And I'm looking forward to that. It's going to be a – they have a Classics main, and I think they have the high stakes as well. And then also some other rookie knockout tournaments, and it's going to be attached to a show. So if you haven't been up there, I recommend checking that out. It's called Yegpin. Also going on that weekend is the Portland Pin Brawl. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it because I'm going to Yegpin, but any of my Northwest friends, good luck. Have fun at Portland Pin Brawl. Always a good tournament. There is also, the week after that, there's a couple tournaments going on, May 4th and 5th. Cactus Jacks, Silver Ball Showdown, and Pinball at the Zoo are happening. And also there's a Pinfest going on that same weekend. That starts on the Thursday, May 3rd and 4th. I've heard great things about Cactus Jacks. I want to make it out there sometime. I hear they have the most pristine games that you'll ever find on location. I've never been to the Pinball at the Zoo, so that's another one on my list. That is May 4th and 5th. Next up in May is New York City Pinball Championships. That'll be taking place in fabulous New York City, Manhattan, in the Skyline Hotel. And that's May 17th through the 19th. Looking forward to that. That is going to be a big tournament run by Levy, Neiman, some of the New York City crew. They put on a big, big show. It's going to be fun. It's going to be fabulous. I'm going to have big prizes. Last year, it was a lot of fun. It was the most fun I'd ever had at a tournament. And also, you know, I got to see New York City. So that was a cool experience. So I'll be attending that again this year. So I hope to see some of you in New York. After that is the IFPA World Championships. That's June 7th through the 9th. That's going to be in Milan, Italy this year. I just booked my flights. Looking forward to that. I cannot wait. It's going to be the second time ever traveling outside of North America. The first time was to Copenhagen. So that was a cool experience for the IFPA Worlds a couple years ago. So I'll see how I do in another country again. I'm a little nervous about it, but there'll be friendly faces there, and I can't wait to try to take down Daniele in his home country. Nothing sweeter than that, right? So after Worlds, the next thing on the docket is both the Bat City Open and the San Francisco City Champ. That's June 21st through the 23rd. And the City Champ is kind of a little controversial because they just changed their date drastically from December to June. And unfortunately, it lands on the same weekend as the Bat City Open. But that just means, you know, more options. If you didn't make it into City Champ, come to Bat City. I hear it's a great time. And either way, there will be a lot of competitive pinball going on that weekend. A lot of whoppers up for grabs. So I am looking forward to that. I will be going to City Champ. I got my ticket sort of inherited, if you will. They basically invited me because I won the previous year, so I didn't have to do the five-second madness in the morning to try to get a ticket. So shout-out to San Francisco. I'm involved in the park for that. That was great. All right, let's finish up here. I think that wraps it up for our first episode. Thanks for listening, and you can contact me by shooting me a Facebook message on all the Facebooks. I don't have an email set up at this time for this podcast, but I'll probably get one of those going at some point. In the meantime, yeah, just shoot me a message on Facebook if you have any suggestions or things you want to hear about. For the Do or Die podcast. this has been Do or Die make sure when you're playing in competition you want to do you don't want to die take care everybody you