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Episode 308 - College Only Matters in High School

NYC PinPod·podcast_episode·1h 22m·analyzed·Oct 21, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

NYC PinPod reviews local tournament results and profiles Jack Bar venue with competitive pinball players.

Summary

NYC PinPod Episode 308 covers NYC-area pinball competition results from October 12-17, 2024, including the South Slope Pinball League pin golf tournament (won by Alex Kelly), multiple NYC Flipper Sport Association team league matches, and a detailed venue review of Jack Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The episode features interviews with tournament director Eric Sweetland, player Madeline Lin, and Alex Kelly of Nightlight Pinball.

Key Claims

  • South Slope Pinball League held a pin golf tournament on October 12th with 21 players; Alex Kelly won, Greg Fertel second, Steven Boltz third, Robert Wong fourth.

    high confidence · Benjamin Furiga, podcast host, reporting tournament results

  • Addams Family hole in the SSPL pin golf course had the easiest average strokes at 2.6; Foo Fighters was the toughest at 3.3 strokes (Area 51 multiball/five right ramps).

    high confidence · Benjamin citing Dr. John's Facebook wrap-up with statistics

  • Dr. John and Aaron are planning to run the pin golf tournament format maybe twice a year, with one potentially coming in spring 2025.

    high confidence · Benjamin reporting on Dr. John's post-tournament statement

  • NYC Flipper Sport Association defeated Intermission Dolores 11-5 in a team match on October 14th.

    high confidence · Eric Sweetland reporting team league results

  • Pinster Six is currently in first place in the NYC Flipper Sport Association league standings as of October 17th, with a record of 5-1.

    high confidence · Benjamin Furiga reporting league standings

  • Jack Bar has 15 pinball machines in really nice shape, located at 143 Havemeyer Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and closes at 4am.

    high confidence · Benjamin Furiga describing Jack Bar venue during formal review segment

  • Godzilla premium at Jack Bar has a special mod with an oversized LCD screen (full height between machine and backglass) that John (owner) got from the designer to test in public.

    high confidence · Benjamin Furiga describing Godzilla machine specifications during venue review

  • As of October 18, 2024, there are 279 pinball machines in New York City at 86 public locations.

    high confidence · Benjamin Furiga citing Pinball Map data

  • Elton John by Jersey Jack Pinball features tight, butter shots and is mostly rip-orbits and collected shots rather than crazy ramps, making it similar to a good 1990s game.

Notable Quotes

  • “I wouldn't say dominated, Benjamin, but thank you for having me, first of all. I really appreciate having the space to speak on the podcast.”

    Alex Kelly @ Early in episode — Guest gratitude and humility after winning SSPL pin golf tournament; sets welcoming tone for discussion

  • “It's weird how it adds that pressure to it. You know you can do this, but can you do it when it's the only thing you have to do?”

    Alex Kelly @ During SSPL tournament discussion — Insight into pin golf tournament format pressure and psychological differences from regular play

  • “I mean, I had a shitload of fun. I also was not unhappy about the way the night went, even though like that was the best feeling 15 one loss I can imagine.”

    Madeline Lin @ Discussing Colliders vs Mutants match — Community sentiment: emphasis on participation and new experience despite lopsided loss

  • “If the playoffs started today, the top six teams would be... New York City Flipper Sport Association, Balls of Steel, the Lion Persons. One of those teams is 6-0 and the next two are 5-1.”

    Benjamin Furiga @ Mid-episode standings report — Competitive landscape snapshot; NYCFSA undefeated through multiple weeks

  • “Jack Bar is a premier location. It's known far and wide.”

    Eric Sweetland @ During Jack Bar venue review — Industry recognition of Jack Bar's status as a top-tier competitive pinball venue

  • “I think John has done a really good job of having machines that are very attractive to the eye, even if you're not necessarily into pinball when you walk in.”

    Eric Sweetland @ Discussing Jack Bar machine curation — Operator strategy: balancing casual accessibility with competitive depth and aesthetic appeal

  • “Jersey Jack really landed it with having such tight butter shots on everything. It's a fast game, but it's also very controllable.”

    Alex Kelly @ Discussing Elton John gameplay — Design praise for Jersey Jack Pinball's shot design philosophy on Elton John

Entities

Benjamin FurigapersonEric SweetlandpersonMadeline LinpersonAlex KellypersonGreg FertelpersonSteven BoltzpersonRobert WongpersonDr. JohnpersonAaronpersonJeff Andersonperson

Signals

  • ?

    competitive_signal: NYC Flipper Sport Association undefeated (6-0) through October 17; Pinster Six leading opposite conference at 5-1. Clear competitive hierarchy emerging mid-season.

    high · Benjamin Furiga reporting playoff projections and team records across multiple weeks

  • ?

    venue_signal: Jack Bar confirmed as premier pinball venue known far and wide in competitive community. Hosts regular Thursday Night Strikes tournaments. Premium machine selection attracts competitive players and casual walk-ins.

    high · Eric Sweetland: 'Jack Bar is a premier location. It's known far and wide.' Owner John receives new machines for beta testing. Consistent high-quality machine maintenance.

  • ?

    event_signal: South Slope Pinball League planning to run pin golf tournament format twice yearly (spring and fall) instead of occasional occurrence, indicating format validation and operator commitment.

    high · Benjamin Furiga reporting Dr. John and Aaron planning future spring event after successful October 12 execution

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Elton John by Jersey Jack Pinball praised for tight, controllable orbit-based shot design reminiscent of 1990s games; contrasts with complex ramp-heavy modern design trend.

    high · Alex Kelly: 'Jersey Jack really landed it with having such tight butter shots on everything... mostly just about ripping orbits and collecting every shot.'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: John Wick and Star Wars machines at Jack Bar observed as 'domination corner' where players with full rule knowledge dominate because newer machines have complex, undiscovered rule depth.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.247

0:00
Happy Sunday, Pinball Brothers! Happy Sunday, pin folk, or whatever day you're listening. This is NYC Pin Pod, in which a panel talks location pinball in New York City and nearby surrounding areas. My name is Benjamin Furiga. My initials are BCF. And I really enjoyed playing Elton John at No Bro Presents Thursday Night Strikes Last Night. My name is Eric Sweetland. My initials are HIP. And I'm a pinball tournament director in New York City. Hey, y'all. My name is Madeline Lin. She, her, hers. My initials are MXL. Well, and I've gotten 4th of July multiball in JAWS three times. My name is Alex Kelly, he, him, my initials are NGT, and I think I'm becoming a pinhead extraordinaire lately. On this week's pod, InBall1 will run down local competition results from the past week, InBall2 will review Jack Bar as a pinball venue, and InBall3 will speak with Alex Kelly of Nightlight Pinball. Let's get started. Let's talk about competitive pinball in New York City and nearby surrounding areas over The last week.
1:30
On Saturday, October 12th, roughly 24 players, I didn't actually get the number of total players who showed up for South Slope Pin Golf. There's 21. Nice. 21 players. 21 players in total showed up. Our guest this week, Alex Kelly, took first place at the end of the night. Greg Fertel got second, Steven Boltz got third, and Robert Wong got fourth. Alex, how did it go? What was your favorite thing about, I mean, it's pin golf, so it's a different thing. Did you enjoy the qualifying objectives better or was just like dominating your competition in the finals? You dominated me in the semifinals. Which part of it was more fun for you? I wouldn't say dominated, Benjamin, but thank you for having me, first of all. I really appreciate having the space to speak on the podcast. I'd say that pin golf is always an interesting tournament style. South Slope infamously hasn't really had too much pin golf. I haven't been around the area super long, so I don't know if they've had it in the past past or if I just missed it at some point. Yeah, I mean, there's been a few, but it hasn't been a regular occurrence. Right, but this was along the entire pinball strip that we have here. Multiple locations, each location had at least one game to play and you had that extra challenge of being like, well, this is something I would normally aim for in a full game, but now it's the only goal. So now I have that added stress of being like, I know I can do this, but can I do it when it's the only thing I have to do? It's weird how it adds that pressure to it. Yeah. But yeah, great format. Loved being able to travel around and play all the games. In particular, I think that the holes were set very well. Yeah. I think it was a good mix of things that were very achievable but maybe a longer term goal and other goals that you could get done very quickly but they were dangerous shots. Yeah. Loved how it was all set up. Yeah. And then to have the finals be just your regular top eight four player groups gives it a sense of normality at the end as well. Yeah. So I think that brings it all together in some sort of way. I thought it was a really fun tournament. The objectives were, as you say, they were fair and some of them were like one shot objectives. I mean, effectively, Adam's family was just hit the left orbit, right? Yeah, the two that come to mind that were like that were that Adam's family one in which I felt lucky to get it too, because most of the people, I mean, it was just a much harder shot than you would think on the fly. You were supposed to get the bonus acts, I believe, from the right in lane into the left orbit. Oh geez. It is, you know, unless you can trap up somehow, you gotta hit that. And you get a bunch of chances, but maybe not if you miss bad enough to get an iffy drain. The other one that got me was the Fishtails video mode. That's something that I aim for in any Fishtails game. For whatever reason, lit video mode, on ball one, took the left orbit, five times, rejects every single time. And I don't think it's necessarily the game there either. It was probably user error. I know that it was harder to hit than some other fish tails, but I mean, it's an older game. You should be used to that, right? So the entire time I'm just questioning to myself, like, why can't I hit this? Lightning flippers, not always an easy shot anyway. Right. Dr. John posted a wrap up on Facebook with statistics, including that Adam's Family Hole was the easiest on the course with 2.6 strokes on average, Whereas Foo Fighters was the toughest at 3.3 strokes and that was to start area 51 multiball. That's five right ramps. Yeah, I was real proud of having accomplished that one and not taking a four on that one. That felt good. Yeah, and he was also saying that he and Aaron are looking to do this maybe twice a year. Maybe spring and looking forward to doing it again. Yeah, so keep your ears to the ground. There's maybe one of these coming in the spring. On Sunday, October 13th, the monthly Jersey City Open October 2024 was held at Barcade Jersey City. Seven players arrived for a three strike knockout tournament. Jeff Anderson won the day. On Monday, October 14th, three and two intermission Dolores went to visit the undefeated New York City Flipper Sport Association. We have two team members on the panel today. How'd it go? We expected Intermission Dolores to come in hot after their win over the Mutants in the previous week. They didn't disappoint. They played strong. It was tough, but we managed to pick up an 11-5 home win. I mean, Intermission Dolores as a team though, we definitely knew that many of their games coming up to this were very close. It was either 7-9 or 8-8 all the way across, I think. So when we started out, it was 2-2 to begin, and then I think we got to 4-4, and it was gonna be another battle. So definitely had to lock in towards the end. Yeah. Cool. We, Colliders, went to solid state and the mutants just handed us our asses 15 to 1. Madeline, how did your night go? I mean, I had a shitload of fun. I also was not unhappy about the way the night went, even though it like that was the best feeling 15 one loss I can imagine. Well, I'm always glad to get to a new or different borough other than Brooklyn for pinball. I'm glad to go over to Queens, especially because it's a little bit of a closer commute for me. I know we might talk about the psychology of the game later, but while I was competing, I think I barely broke 100 mil in Jaws, and then at the end of the night after everybody had gone home, I got my 4th of July multiball and broke 300. And I'm like, well, where was that? But it's fun. It's nice to meet new people. I don't think I played against the mutants before and I'm glad we were in a new venue. I'm glad there were some new games to try out and hey it's part of being in the community so I had fun that's what matters for me I guess. Yeah I stunk on Mata Hari for the game that I played of that we we chose it in the first round and I just stunk and I also stunk on the game of Demoman I'm a fan that I played. I was no help to the team this week, that's certain. Pinball Union went to Skylark and the home team picked up their second win, 11 to 5. They lost the first three and have won the next two, is that right? Yes, they did. The aristocrats went to McKenna's Pub to face the two for one-ers. The away team who bested us colliders the previous week, this time bested someone on the road. They picked up a 9-7 win over the two for-one-ers. The lesser players went to Owl Farm to visit the parliament of such, and the home team bested them 13-3. Balls of Steel went to Barcade Brooklyn to visit the Deluxe Horses, and Zanzacniak texted to say, balls of steel avoid a tiebreaker going into round four at six to six. We got the win ten to six. New player Scott was player four and won the night with a big ball three on total nuclear annihilation, a game he never played before ever! Exclamation point. Nice. Balls of steel, ten to six win over the dogs horses. Zen also added a side note to say that during a single player match as the away team they encountered a machine failure on Baywatch. The home team as player two was slightly behind Zen's score and did the thing to start multiball, but then the game froze as this game sometimes does, And they had no choice but to tilt out in order to resolve the game, which meant that that person was behind and couldn't finish their game. They agreed to play another game on bad girls, and Zen ended up with a high score on bad girls. But he, as a hell of a sports person, points out that this might have been 9-7 and not 10-6, And probably would have been 9-7 and not 10-6 if even a couple of flips were flipped on that Baywatch game after that multiball should have started. The Lion Persons went to Rulo's to face Special When Lit at their new home, and the Lion Persons beat up on them 13-3. Hmm. If the playoffs started today, the top six teams would be New York City Flipper Sport Association, Balls of Steel, the Lion Persons. One of those teams is 6-0 and the next two are 5-1. Nice. The Mutants and Parliament are 4-2. And the top six is currently rounded out by the Aristocrats at 3-3. The deluxe horses and intermission Dolores also are at 3-3 but are losing a tiebreaker based on points. The next six in the playoffs would include the deluxe horses and intermission Dolores obviously at 3-3, two for one or special when lit and pin pals and pinball union all at 2-4. We, Kalyders, and the lesser players, are on the outside looking in at 1 and 5 and 0 and 6, respectively. On Tuesday, October 15th, 1 and 4 Trolls went to at the Wallace to visit the Harlem Globe Flippers. The home team picked up their third win to even out their schedule. Rest in pinball went to solid state and no quarters for laundry handed them a 14 to 2 loss. Those two teams were consecutive in the standings at three and two. No quarters for laundry had a big points advantage going into this week. They now have a win and a bigger points advantage. That was a pretty big win for no quarters for laundry. Pinister Danger went to Sunshine Laundromat and won a tiebreaker against the home team, Scrapples Squad. The Pin Babes went to Kettle of Fish and seemingly won a forfeited 12-0 match against Kettle's Hand Grenades. Pinister Six hosted the Shlubs at Boat Bar and they picked up a 9-7 win. Zen Zokniak texted me of Pinister Six to say, Pinister Six wins with nine points and if my math is correct, that puts us in first place. His math is correct. Nice job, Zen. Good to play with some nice people that I rarely have the opportunity to play against. The replays went to Jack Bar to face the Baldrainers and the Baldrainers who were four and one, they were one of those teams that were way up at the top. They picked up a big 11-5 home win over the replays who were down at the bottom of the liminal part of the standings last week. So my unfortunate, my unfortunate Tuesday team. We got beat up. Neptune's Treasure was really strong. Hmm. Neptune's Treasure picked up a 13-3 win at Buttermilk facing the Butterballers. If we started the playoffs today, the top six teams would be Pinister Six, Neptune's Treasure, Ball Drainers, and Danger Danger, all of whom are five and one. No quarters for Laundrie at four and two. And then the next tier, the Harlem Globe Flippers and Rest in Pinball are both at three and three. But the Harlem Globe Flippers have several more points, I believe, than Rest in Pinball. The next six would be Rest in Pinball, Schlubbs, Butterballers, Replays, Scrapples Squad, all of those folks except for obviously Rest in Pinball as we discussed are at 2 and 4 and separated only by points. The Pin Babes are also 2 and 4 and will occupy that 12th spot. On Wednesday, October 16th, 21 players came out to Barcade Brooklyn Pinball League's third qualifying session of our fifth season. Matthew Grady and Jonah Shlaes were the big points winners that day. Also on Wednesday, October 16th, Sunshine Fall League 2024 number three was met, six players gathered, and Sean Grant won the night after five rounds of match play with IFPA scoring at 32 points. Nice job, Sean. Shining at Sunshine. It's the storm at Sunshine, in fact. In fact, on Thursday, October 17th, No Bro Presents Thursday Night Strikes was met. Twenty three players, including two of tonight's panelists, were there.

high confidence · Benjamin Furiga and Alex Kelly discussing Elton John gameplay during Jack Bar review

  • Stranger Things at Jack Bar has projection details including animations that display on stand-ups (spelling 'WILL' and 'RUN!' as modes are progressed).

    medium confidence · Eric Sweetland describing Stranger Things projection features; Benjamin clarifying the mechanic

  • “That's the corner in which the usual suspects, the people that are always at the top of the list at Jack Bar, that's their domination corner because these are intensive games and new enough that people don't know all the rule sets yet.”

    Benjamin Furiga @ Discussing John Wick and Star Wars bank at Jack Bar — Competitive meta observation: newer complex games advantage skilled players with rule knowledge

  • “When you see a big bank of machines from different eras with different artworks and different styles, that tells you that this is a pinball bar.”

    Benjamin Furiga @ Analyzing Jack Bar's front machine bank — Venue design philosophy: aesthetic curation signals community identity and pinball-first positioning

  • “If it wasn't the first time I touched [Elton John] last night when I played it while warming up, it might have been the second time I might have touched it at Buffalo.”

    Benjamin Furiga @ Discussing Elton John at Jack Bar — Signal: Elton John availability/exposure; also indicates traveling to Buffalo pinball events

    • Ian Leung
    person
    Travis Rosenbergperson
    David Patlakperson
    Alberto Santanaperson
    Zen Zokniakperson
    Sean Grantperson
    Matthew Gradyperson
    Jonah Shlaesperson
    Jack Barvenue
    South Slope Pinball Leagueorganization
    NYC Flipper Sport Associationorganization
    Nightlight Pinballcompany
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany

    high · Benjamin Furiga: 'That's their domination corner because these are intensive games and new enough that people don't know all the rule sets yet.'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Godzilla premium at Jack Bar equipped with oversized full-height LCD screen (custom mod) obtained from designer for public testing, indicating designer collaboration on experimental features.

    high · Benjamin Furiga: 'It has an oversized screen in the back... Special mod that John got from the designer to test out in public.'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Baywatch machine at Barcade Brooklyn experienced freeze during multiball sequence during competitive match; home team player tilted out; teams agreed to replay on alternate machine (Bad Girls). Demonstrates venue and operator flexibility with equipment issues.

    high · Zen Zokniak reporting machine failure incident and workaround protocol; noting potential score impact if full game had completed

  • ?

    product_strategy: Jack Bar operator John intentionally curates machine banks by era, theme, and visual appeal to serve both casual walk-in players and competitive players. 'Monster movies' bank (Creature, Godzilla, Monster Bash, JAWS, etc.) demonstrates thematic coherence strategy.

    high · Benjamin Furiga analyzing machine bank arrangement: 'When you see a big bank of machines from different eras... tells you that this is a pinball bar.' Eric on accessible game choice: 'Cactus Canyon being right at the front I think is a good choice.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Despite competitive disparity (Colliders lost 15-1 to Mutants), players frame experience positively, emphasizing fun, new venue exploration, and community connection. Indicates healthy culture prioritizing participation over pure competition results.

    high · Madeline Lin: 'I mean, I had a shitload of fun. I also was not unhappy about the way the night went, even though that was the best feeling 15 one loss I can imagine.'

  • $

    market_signal: As of October 18, 2024, NYC has 279 pinball machines at 86 public locations. Data sourced from Pinball Map, indicating stable machine base for competitive and casual play.

    high · Benjamin Furiga citing Pinball Map data: 'As of October 18th, 2024, there are 279 pinball machines in New York City at 86 public locations.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Jack Bar operator John balances accessible casual-friendly games (Cactus Canyon, JAWS) with deep competitive games (Stranger Things, Elton John) to serve walk-in players and tournament competitors simultaneously.

    high · Eric Sweetland: 'John has done a really good job of having machines that are very attractive to the eye... Just easy to walk up and play as a new player, but also are deep enough that competitive players enjoy them.'

    • 14:56
    At the end of the night, Ian Leung won with only one strike to his name with a possible three. Travis Rosenberg came in second. David Patlak, who ran the night, and Alberto Santana tied for third. Alberto won a tie break. Huh? Very good. Very, right, of course there's money. Of course. They'll get the same whoppers. One of them got money. Next week. Good morning, New York City! Hey, this is not a test, this is rock and roll! Time to rock it from single cut down to South Slow! On Monday, October 21, 2024, the 2 for 1ers vs Pinball Union at Barcade, Brooklyn. Special Unlit vs The Colliders at Buttermilk Bar, the New York City Flippers Sports Association vs the Aristocrats with an exclamation mark at Rulo's, Intermission Dolores and the Lesser Players at Barcade in Manhattan, Fells of Steel vs Parliament at Owl Farm, the Mutants vs the Pinfells of Skylark, and the Deluxe Horses vs the Lion Persons at Gebhardt's Beer Culture. Animal lovers, watch out! Nobody call PETA there. Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday, October 22, 2024, Pins for Six vs. Danger Danger at Buttermilk Bar, Ball Drainers vs. Restin' Pinball at Barcade Brooklyn, Harlem Globe Flippers vs. The Shlubs with the Z at Jack Bar, Trolls vs. The Pin Babes at Birdies, Epstein's Treasure vs. Kettle Hand Grenades at Kettle of Fish, No Quarters for Laundry, unlike No Country for Old Men, Scrapple Squad at Sunshine Laundromats, Butterballers vs. The Replays, not the extra balls, over at Rulo's to close us out on Tuesday. Then we also have in Morristown, New Jersey Tuesday Pinball at the Vault October 22 as well. On Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, October 23, 1023 of the fall 24 JPA tournament number five, fair strikes number two in Dunnell in New Jersey. We have October Wednesday at Gebhardt's Beer Culture in Manhattan, New York, New York Arcade Brooklyn Pinball League and Sunshine Fall League. There's four events happening on Wednesday folks. Try to catch them all like they used to say on On Saturday October 27th, Nobro presents Stern Army X-Men Launch Party at Bells and Chimes, New York City presents Pinball. Halloween, Brooklyn, New York, Women's Division, private location. Plenty of events happening this week folks. Go to as many as you'd like. We hope to see you there.
    17:29
    As of October 18th, 2024, there are 279 pinball machines in New York City at 86 public locations. Thanks to the creators and users of Pinball Map for this data. Here are machine updates from the past week. On Sunday, October 13th, user Bartender Man played a couple games at single cut beer smiths The Getaway They said just discovered this machine a lot of fun and a foo fighters They said my favorite pinball machine ever if I could ever afford to put this in my apartment. I will on
    18:02
    Monday a Mata Hari was added to solid state bar in Queens and a Terminator 3 replaced a GoldenEye at the less dead in Brooklyn on
    18:16
    Wednesday Gamehouse New York, a sports bar in Hunters Point that might be in the former Alewife space, added an Elvis.
    18:26
    And on Thursday, user We Have a Winna stopped by Jack Bar and played their Elton John. They said, plays well, great sound when listening through earbuds. Let's talk about Jack Bar. At 143 Havemeyer Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, your closest train stops will be Marcy on the JMZ, Bedford Ave on the L, or Metropolitan Lorimer on the G and L trains. And those, uh, there's a sign hanging just inside the front door of Jack Bar that'll point you in the general direction of those three stops when you stumble out very late at night. It is a place to stumble out of very late at night, or at least you can. They close at 4am, as you know, a lot of pinball bars do, as so many of them are dive bars that just happen to have pinball machines in them instead of a place like Jack Bar, which is a pinball place that kind of just happens to be a bar. The decor in the place is pretty cool. It is a mural on the right wall from when you walk in that spans that whole right wall, goes around the back and ends just past the bar on the left wall. The rest of the left wall from the front back to that mural is exposed brick. The walls are lined with pinball machines and a bar. It is very much a pinball place. It is very much a bar from the standpoint of its menu. But that mural is really something special. Eric, I think you particularly liked the mermaid bit of it up by the bar, right? I'm a big fan of that mermaid back there in the back corner. Also, you know, best seats in the bar is the back corner. It's a fantastic place to set up as a TD, as you can commandeer Here some private space have you know storage for bags or coats or things You can set up your station right on the corner of the bar and then people can approach from there and you keep it to one side and make a line It all the back corners of bars and they useful Yeah, well, and this one maybe in particular just because it has that very limited space too. There's no like passing behind it to go somewhere. There's no there there. There are newly or recently to me at least several tables set up where you could actually you know just sit down and have a drink in the middle of the back part of the bar. I'm sure there were tables there before but I don't think that they were as when I remember from many years ago going to Jack Bar I don't think that they were kind of as well organized or as neatly laid out. The menu is just drafts, cans, bottles, liquor, and chips. The beer selection is good. The drafts rotate like any bar does based on some availability and some curation, I think. Eric, what do you think of the menu there? Is it always a can of Narragansett? Yeah, they've got a Narragansett and a shot special. So that's, yeah, it is a complete menu from my point of view. Uh-huh. Very good. Very good. And the chips. I mean, yeah, if I got desperate. Uh-huh. I mean, they're zaps, I think. They're the fancy New Orleans chips, right? Yeah, yeah. Really, the attraction here is the games. There are 15 of them. They're in really nice shape, typically, and by and large. There's a front, there's a two bank up front right when you walk in along that exposed brick wall. They're the only ones on the on the left wall. That's John Wick in the front and Star Wars right behind it. Let's go bank by bank. What do we think of these games? How do we like these games in a location together? Last night when we went for strikes was my first time encountering those two in that particular spot in Jack Barr's current lineup. Competitively, I wouldn't like to be drawn on either of those. Yeah, I don't like John Wick. I would like to be competitively drawn on Star Wars. I unfortunately speak a gaffe, beat my ass last night on it, but I would like to be drawn on it in general. Yeah, it is interesting that both of the intensely fast Sterns just happen to be right next to each other in Jack Bar. Right. And I don't... I have a feeling that there are going to be some really interesting complicated rules to John Wick eventually, and maybe they're already there, because I don't know the rules that well. I don't know John Wick. Star Wars, that shot multiplier thing and the ability to move it around and do the things that you can do with it, build it up and, you know, get your 20x video mode or whatever you want to do. That's that's a real paradigm shift. And I feel like some of the enemies things and whatnot are going to change John Wick pretty different, you know, make it a really different game. I almost feel mentally when I think of that corner, that's the corner in which the the the usual suspects, the people that are always at the top of the list to Jack Bar, that's that's their I'm in your domination corner because they are intensive games are new enough that people don't know all the rule sets yet. So if you have full knowledge of that game, you're probably eking out a win there. It's interesting that you say that because when Alberto Santana walked in last night, Eric and I were playing it and then he started sweating us until we got the hell out of his way so he could play. You're determined to practice on it. Gotcha, gotcha. You know, it happens to be one of the best John Wick games I've ever played and it was taking a while. It was just randomly during warm up. In the front, on the right, I'm going to treat the right side as two different banks because the room sort of opens up as you go toward the back, right where the bar, it juts out to the right. And in the front right bank, we have from the front to the back, Dr. No. I never know what to call that game. 007, James Bond, Dr. No. I don't know what that game is called, but it says Dr. No bigger than anything else on the back glass. So that's what I'm calling it for now. Yes. The yellow one. That's right. That sounds, well, anyways. Cactus Canyon remake is just past it. Jaws, I know it's a premium. I don't know if it's an LE or what version. It's just a premium. Okay, very good. Creature from the Black Lagoon is just past that. Godzilla, I also didn't clock actually if this was, this is not a premium, right? That is a premium. Oh, that is a premium. Okay. And it also has a special mod in it. It has an oversized screen in the back. It is the full height of between the machine and where the back glass starts as opposed As opposed to all the other Stern LCD screens are about, you know, maybe two thirds of that size. Huh. Big screen for a big monster. Indeed. Special mod that John got from the designer to test out in public. Very cool. That is one of the things that will happen from time to time at Jack Bar, I think. You will get some things on the first day that someone can get it somewhere. You know, you will get some things that someone wants to test out because it is a known quantity in the larger pinball community. Jack Bar is a premier location. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It's, yeah, it's known not yet. Far and wide. Yeah. And also, it had been other places that John, the owner of it, has owned and operated were well-known reciprocal skateboards. For anyone who is old enough to remember reciprocal skateboards on, I think it was 11th Street and A, back in the day, that was a lot of these games were there, or at least a lot of the games from the 90s. Just Past the Godzilla is Twilight Zone. And Just Past the Twilight Zone is a Monster Bash remake.
    26:53
    One of the meanest Monster Bashes you will ever play. I think almost all of the remakes are mean because I think there's a problem with the way the scoop feeds. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. It's not just the scoop. There's also like the rejects just feel really mean on that Monster Bash, but I haven't played any other remakes. So maybe you're maybe that's what you're saying is that all of them are just all the real scoops are the worst. Yeah, they're terrible. I didn't play this one last night. I don't I have not actually personally had that experience. But when you say it's mean like that, that's the thing that comes to mind is just like that. I am consistently walking away from that game in competition with scores less than 5 million. Like it is not good. Yeah, that's brutal. It's the best playing remake in the city. Sure. What do we think of this bang? Dr. No, Cactus Canyon, Jaws Premium, Creature, Godzilla, Twilight Zone, Monster Bash. What do we think of all of that? Definitely a varied selection. I'm always reminded of staging in art museums. Like how do you decide to put which pieces together and which galleries, you know, which What frames do you use with which pieces? And when you're a business person, when you walk in the door, the first thing you see is your first impression of the venue. And when you see a big bank of machines from different eras with different artworks and different styles, that tells you that this is a pinball bar. And that bank, I think, is the, I don't know, the gestalt, the first impression, the main idea of the place. And I think that represents the entire place, the old and the new all mixed together. To follow with what you're saying and go along with that, I think John has done a really good job of having machines that are very attractive to the eye, even if you're not necessarily into pinball when you walk in. It's in a spot where a lot of people end up just wandering in. I notice this a lot on the Thursday strikes. We'll get a lot of strangers walking into Jack Bar, kind of seeing what all the, you know, why it's so busy. They always end up playing a couple games and asking questions. I think it's not just the excitement of the tournament. It's also that some of the games that are really beautiful there are more accessible games. Like the Cactus Canyon being right at the front I think is a good choice. Jaws being the new release and it's a nice Jaws. It plays well. I think he did a good job of, while not having necessarily like a themed pinball bar because there's so many machines, having a great selection of games that are just... Just easy to walk up and play as a new player, but also are deep enough that competitive players enjoy them as well. Yeah. Creature from the Black Lagoon next to Jaws up front. That seems to make a lot of sense, right? And we've got Godzilla and Twilight Zone and Monster Bash right there. All of this is sort of a piece in a theme, but it is also all different enough in terms of its visual presentation, in terms of the style of pinball, That I think that's a really interesting, just that we sort of go from monster movie to monster movie to monster movie to monster movie to the Twilight Zone to a monster movie. You know, and it's kind of cool that that's all there. 1950s, 1950s, 1950s, 1950s from the left. Right? Looks like it actually. Monster Bash, so Universal Monster movies, those are the 40s. Sure. They stretch into the 50s, what they're referencing. And then, what? Twilight Zone, which kind of does a bit different. Television show from the 1950s. Yeah. Godzilla. Godzilla first came out in the 50s. Creature from the Black Lagoon. Creature is a 1954 movie. Now Jaws, we're not gonna, unfortunately, they didn't have, yeah, we didn't have that technology in the 40s. So then we gotta make the jump to the thematic link, water monsters. Right, exactly. Exactly. Joe's creator is the monster. Come on. Yeah.
    30:48
    Enemies we made along the way. It's a cool line. It's a cool bank. It is a cool bank. It is a cool bank. It is also part of a cool venue. The rear The winner, right bank, such as it were, is from front to back, Fishtails, Deadpool, Toy Story 4, Stranger Things, Freemium, Pulp Fiction, and Elton John. What do we think of this? I enjoyed playing several of these games despite Eric handing me my first strike last night on Fishtails at the beginning of the tournament. I think it's a real wild card row. What a wacky set of games that each have some sort of unique way to draw you in. I mean, when I first look at it, immediately I see the Stranger Things projector screen right there. I'm like, ooh, I gotta go do that. And then it's got the UV light flashing and the upside down and oh, wow.
    31:56
    It's a bunch of show off machines back there. Elton John, the light show. Yeah. Yes. Insane. Yeah, I think if it wasn't the first time I told Eric, it was the first time I touched it last night when I played it in while warming up. It might have been the second time I might have touched it at Buffalo just for one game. I liked that Elton John a lot. I really like, I felt like those shots are really satisfying to hit.
    32:22
    Yeah, Jersey Jack really landed it with having such tight butter shots on everything. It's a fast game, but it's also very controllable. Yeah. It reminds me a lot of a really good 90s game in the sense that there's no, no crazy ramps really going on. It's mostly just about ripping orbits and collecting every shot. I mean, like, you do have the upper flipper into the ramp, I guess, as the big multiball shot, but that's the only one of prominence. Everything else is kind of scoop or, you know, it's more about just like nailing your shots and getting through every shot in the game, which I think leads to a clean, understandable game. Which, if the previous issue that some people may have had with Jersey Jack is that the rules are complicated, Elton can be easy if you want to just play the game. Sure. Do you spell Elton and then it lights a mode or starts a mode? Is that the idea? You're collecting all the stars, so you need to spell... I believe it's Elton, John, and there's a star in the middle. So it's ten shots? Don't quote me on that. But yeah, you're collecting all the stars and then that upper flipper shot will lock balls and the piano. Got it. And that's your big mode that you're trying to get to. Got it. Got it. I did that a couple of times last night. In one game? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was very helpful. I had a very good game on it. It was the only good game I played in competition last night. If you get more than one, you're having a great game. Yeah, yeah. I rocked a couple of multiballs that way. I really appreciated your pointing out to me some of the projection stuff on Stranger Things, Eric, because I had certainly not noticed that. Yeah, it's, you know, signs on stand-ups and the spinner and the ramps. I, I, I, yeah, and I appreciated that, uh, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, it, when, when you are spelling will on those stand-ups, will projects on it, and when you're spelling run exclamation point, run exclamation point shows up on it, it's projected onto them. Animated flames. Like, wow. Yeah. I'm not usually geeky about design stuff on pinball games, I'm usually much more about how does it play, how do I, what are the rules, is this a fun thing to play, but this, The boy the razzle dazzle on this one is really pretty. It is crazy how different the pro and the premium are perceived because I think that the pro visually, while it's not horrible as far as Stern standards go, it's a little plain looking. And then the premium is one of their best looking games period. So yeah, just the difference. I'm not someone who usually would like, not that I own any machines, but I would not normally spend the money or find it important enough to spend the money on a premium versus a pro if I were to own. That's a game I would definitely consider premium. The projector is nice because I actually know what I'm spelling. I was kind of confused like the first two times I ever played Stranger Things because I'm like, what do you mean run? There's no run. Oh! Run exclamation mark is a poor line game. That's a pretty cool disability issue. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. It had never occurred to me that way, but it is that that is kind of an interesting question of accessibility that the I'm not sure if you guys have any games that you've done that are like, premium, maybe adds functionality that would be necessary instead of... Have they done any projecting on any games after that? Not to my knowledge. Yeah, I don't remember any since. Did it just not sell well? Like, I feel like that's like a really cool thing. Like, you're at the movies. Like, any old school monster movie, like, like Jaws on a projector in a parking lot. That's, that's something you could, you could do. Any little nudge to where that lens is makes a massive difference. And so when you're putting this thing in a space where, where like some jerk like me is going to come up and bang on the thing in order to make the, you know, put the ball where he wants it to go. I imagine that it's a question of design feasibility, but I don't know for sure. Yeah, if you're gonna have a projector, I guess it's got to be the main thing, the main attraction, because you gotta make it make it worth it to have it in the machine as well. Right, yeah, yeah. And I mean, you know, whatever it is that you have to do to protect it so that it can't fall out of focus is I'm sure, you know, not insignificant. Toy Story 4? Do we care? I love Cat Lawler, but do we care? I am infamously a lover of Toy Story 4, the game. RGB. I feel like I'm the only defender for this game at that bar. And maybe it's just because I tend to do pretty well on it. But it's I swear to you that I think that it doesn't get the credit it deserves in the sense of it being I would call it and let me explain after I say this, I would call it a spiritual successor to Twilight Zone. I see it. I think that, you know, in the same way that with Twilight Zone you hit the scoop or the piano shot and you get into a mode that, with the piano you get the next one on that's lit up, but either way, you're not really controlling what modes you're getting. I think Toy Story has a very similar flow in which you just kind of get what you get and none of the shots are too dangerous so you might as well go for it. The flow state of always trying to, in the back of your mind, saying, okay, I can go for the road multiball on the far left side or the pop, even if you're just brand new to the game and don't really know what to do, when you end up in those pops at the top, usually they'll give you the other multi, the buzz multiball at the top. I just think that there's, it's the perfect game that is accessible, but if you get good enough, you can absolutely crush that machine. Obviously the theming is a bit odd because why four?
    38:21
    The answer is probably because that was what they were paid to do or they had the answer all they could get the rights to The answer is to all your questions is money. I'm gonna stand my ground. I'm gonna say Toy Story 4 great Jersey Jack game I won't let the haters get to me. I would say that it doesn't perfectly tell you what you should be going for at any given time because it's showing a lot of things and there's a lot of Like there's a mini screen inside the playfield I didn't touch Pulp Fiction last night. I'm really glad to see as many of these on location in the city as there are because I do like this game. John, what's your favorite game? Has anyone touched the one at Jack Bar? Did anybody play it? John keeps his games generally in good shape. I presume what you're going to tell me is like, it plays great. I haven't had many conversations with John. The one that I remember the most is John came over when I believe it was me and David were playing on that Pulp Fiction after John got it recently. And we were playing it, trying to learn it a little bit, and John comes up and John says, isn't this game incredible? Isn't this? And it was just all praise for the game. And at that moment, I was like, oh, this is John's baby. This is never leaving Jack Bar. John loves that game. And you can tell he there's a lot of care put into that game. It's one of the better playing games are one of the better playing pop fictions I've played. Personally, I think that it's good for competition, not the most fun game to play. If I were to casually play, it does what it says it's going to It's a game that you can do on the box. It plays like similarly to a classic but it does have that new school feel. It has modes which I guess is what modernizes it, right? You hit that right scoop which is a very tight shot. Sure. But you have the back hands that are super sweet. And multiple multiballs, not just one thing. It also separates itself from classics that way I think that there are many different ways to start a multiball. Good to see that it's not just Sterns and Jersey Jacks out here but we're giving other companies shots as well. Indeed. Speaking of care, I also like how in the branding, maybe unintentionally or intentionally, you get to know sort of John as well as his family helping out with the business and such. If you scroll through their IG as of right now, you can see his family helping with some sort of construction. I remember when I googled the place a couple years ago, he had his family in a fundraiser video. And obviously some people nowadays, or younger people nowadays, are talking about separating work and personal and such. But I think in the inverse, it also shows that there is a lot of care. You truly care about the venue the hobby the community so much so that your whole family is involved like this is not just a business for you this is not just a day job for you right you are involved in this and that nice to see yeah i i had a chat with john last night he had a big smile on his face when he was talking about his family this is a family business in in no uncertain terms i think it interesting that when you google pinball Well, NYC, at least for me a couple years ago when I was getting into the game, that is one of the first places that comes up. It was mentioned earlier, this is a premier spot. This is on all the different review, like the basic Yelp and TripAdvisor and Hotels.com and everything. You are going to see this venue on this list. This is one of the front facing venues of the community. And given what we've said about the selection, about the care, about the staging, I'm glad to see it at so many places. Any of those lists? As someone that's new to the New York pinball scene as a whole, like in the whole scheme of things, like I've been involved for a little bit over a year, but that's new for a lot of the people in the scene. Jack bar was the first spot that was my regular. I think that I wouldn't have gotten as deeply into pinball as I had without a jack bar, not just for the location, but the people that you see there nearly every week playing strikes. It's competition, but it's also just you're hanging out with friends. And there's not that Jack Bar is the only place that does this. Obviously, we have South Slope here where it's a very similar vibe where everyone here loves each other, knows each other. But Jack Bar was my first walk into that. And I think that a big contributor to its notoriety as the pinball spot in New York does come from the regulars that come every week. And it's a very inviting space. You know, everyone's willing to teach you anything on a game if you go up to them and ask them a question. And you got some of the best players in the city playing there on Thursdays. So you have competition. You always have something to aim up towards if you're trying to become a better player. Has a lot of little things that I think add up. Yeah. And also look, if something like Whoppers mattered to you, I believe that the Thursday night tournament at Jack Bar is the highest Whopper weekly proposition. For a little bit? Yeah. It's decent. Are you know things that yeah certainly you know in in New York City the the leagues may work out to have a little bit more over the course of the six weeks value maybe but if you played at Jack Bar all six weeks and got first I think you'd do better than if you got first in one of the you know six week leagues. Let's talk with Alex Kelly, a New York City competitive pinball player, a fellow associate of mine on NYC FSA, and the creator of a series of new YouTube videos about pinball on the channel Night Light Pinball. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you for the introduction, Eric. It's great. Thanks for joining us, Alex. Absolutely, yeah, I love the idea of this podcast. I think that it has a similar goal as I've tried to reach on my pinball content, which is that, you know, having pinball content that is something that's very digestible and accessible to, you know, the general pinball populace, not necessarily any one certain thing, but just for everybody and having something that feels a little bit more lighthearted and fun, I guess. About your new series of YouTube videos, did you have a concept behind them, a unifying story? Yeah, well, okay, so when I first started making the videos, it was... I follow a lot of YouTubers that are involved in other hobbies. A hobby that I had before pinball that I mentioned quite a bit in my channel is that I got into chess pretty deeply before pinball. And there's and the reason I got into chess was there's this content creator It's probably the most content our most popular content creator in chess Gotham chess who? constantly reports about news in the chess scene and Has tutorials on different openings that you could be using and it's just overall makes chess more fun Especially for someone that isn't at all involved in the world and they can see that and say okay. Well chess is cool now So I wanted to do something similar with my channel. For me, when I look at pinball, I think that there's a world where everyone can enjoy it in some way, shape or form, whether it's through a theme or through, you know, they play video games and then that translates well to pinball. I wanted to give a platform where people could discover their love for pinball and watch enjoyable content. That was the main goal, I'd say. Um, through that I've created a few series. I have a reaction series to new releases. I've only done X-Men and the new Metallica remastered so far, but I do tend, I do plan to do more, uh, outside of just Stern. Beyond that, I have my road to pro series where I've taken it upon myself to attempt to reach the upper echelon of pinball players at the top two 50. I don't know if that's going to happen, but it's a journey nonetheless. And I want to kind of take steps towards, 1949
    46:54
    I'm going to turn it on and it's you. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Pinball has a lot of different subsections of people as to why they're into it. Sorry, I have to know. Was this before or after Alex was an associate of the New York City Flipper Sports Association? Ooh. Well after, only recently. Okay. Yeah. It had to have been after. When did you make the Road to Pro first video? Two months ago, maybe? Okay, I don't know if I saw it two months ago, I think more recently, maybe a month ago. Yeah, I joined NYCFSA last season, like in the middle of it, so it had to, like, the YouTube wasn't even existing when I originally joined. It's like the Spider-Men pointing at each other, and it goes on to YouTube, and it's like, oh hey, oh hey! Uh huh. Yeah. I think that there are subsections of pinball players for and they all enjoy pinball in different ways. There's the public sector, I'm gonna call it, of pinball players where they love collecting and owning and going out to arcades and just hanging out having a beer and just playing with their friends and trying to get their high score and posting it on Pinside. And there's another subsection which I find myself falling in where I'm a very competitive person. I'm a pinball person. I have this drive whenever I pursue anything to be one of the best in it. I might as well go with it and attempt, just make my best shot at being one of those people and I know there's other people out there that feel the same way so this is almost like my way to hopefully inspire some people to take the jump as well because pinball as a whole, the competitive scene, while it is, there's a lot of passionate people in it, there's not a ton of reward at the end of the rainbow. Not a lot of money. If you're a number one winner consistently maybe, but I still don't, I just spoke to Escher recently, Escher Lefkoff, and I think he said in the interview that we had that just recently he's able to make enough money that like for it to make sense with all the travel and entering tournaments. And he's number one in the world right now. Right. So there's not a lot of reward in this. So the question I often get is why are you doing it? And I don't know. But, you know, maybe I'll figure it out by the end of this journey. You've got the whopperitis. To be completely frank, all of my like extra spending money right now is going towards travel and accommodations for tournaments because that's what I'm focused on at the moment. Um, but I, I mean, there's just, there's a draw to pinball that I do not get anywhere else. And, uh, until I reach a certain point, I don't think I'm going to know how to explain it. And maybe I'll never know how to explain it, but that's the magic of it. Right? Mm-hmm. Totally. It's nice to get good at something. Yeah. I went very hard at concert percussion for like 18, literally 18 years of my life. And So, it's been a while, you know, your inflection point and your slope and yada yada yada. It's fun to get good. It's fun to be good or to be great, right? And obviously opportunity costs you give up stuff, but it's fun to get there. Absolutely. As an occupation, I work in music production and songwriting for up and coming artists in the New York area. Um, and I think that for this, it's the kind of job that requires you to be that type of person where you have to want to always be improving and get better and better. Um, so I think that there's lines to be drawn between them for sure. But now that music has become my job, not that I don't still love every single moment of it, I think I needed another occupying hobby that hit the similar niches. Another one of the series that I've been working on a bit is tips and tricks towards the pinball, some of the more modern games. I think that there is a lot of really good tutorial based content out there on YouTube already for how to get into pinball. But then when you start talking about mastering pinball, much of the content is very long form. 녹음을 통해 새로운 기술을 배우는 것이 처음이고요. drain a new machine I go to pinball videos and I'll just watch people play for an hour or so. And I feel like that's not something that many people would be able to do because they're just not that deeply invested in learning pinball. So I wanted to have more digestible little nuggets. So that's my advanced pin tips that I have going on right now, a little flipper control things with clips of competitive players doing that said thing. I really appreciate I really appreciated that. I watched a few of those today and I really appreciated the clips that gave the examples. I remember a clip of Stargazer and a clip of Twilight Zone. I appreciated seeing those competitive games at big tournaments that you were using as examples. I'm a visual learner. I always need to see something to be able to... that's the first step for anything for me. Someone can say... if I'm standing in front of a pinball machine and someone's telling me to do something, I don't get it. It just does not work for me. You show me. Yeah, I know some people that are like, oh, if you tell me what to do, I can do it. I can't do that. I need to see someone play it out. So I wanted to give visual learners that option as well. And the other thing that I touched on with the tips video, which is something that we spoke about before Benjamin, was the mental aspects of pinball. Yeah, I think it's very interesting that you go into the philo- the- it is the psychology, but it is also to a certain degree the philosophy. Some of the- you know, look, psychology is still effectively a branch of philosophy. Yes. But with or without that distinction, I really appreciate that you look at some things. You and I have talked numerous times about playing each other in a series about what player order choices should be made. And you had a video about that, about what it means to choose player one, to choose player two, to choose player three, to choose player four. I appreciated your arguments. I think that we disagree on some points. And that's okay, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, 100%, 100%. And also, I think that we disagree on some points in that particular discussion, but I also 100% heard you and understood where you were coming from and validate the point of view. It's not that I'm right and you're wrong, it's just that we disagree. Oh, for sure, yeah. You know, and like, I love that I was able to view the video and feel that without feeling like the video was preaching at me to... you told me your point of view, you made a convincing argument, but I also did not feel like you were making me agree with you. Right, yeah, I mean, when I make a video, the only thing I can give is what's going I'm not the only one in this noggin here, right? I am not. Some of the pro players that I watch and study a little bit, they just play in styles that I will never be able to recreate because it's just not how my brain works when I play pinball, right? I had, when you talk about things like control versus flow, I tend to lean a little bit more on flow, but I'm somewhere in the middle. I try my best to slow the game down as much as possible, like to an extreme degree, like some of these pro players do, and I just don't play as well. So it is like even from a physical perspective there's just things that are personal to you that cannot be changed by the, you know, what everyone else is doing or what everyone else is saying. With the mental aspects, when I give my opinions on first, second, third, fourth, at the end of the day, it's like in a perfect world, none of that should matter because you're gonna play your best. So, you're going to be playing your best, and you're going to be playing other people that are also playing their best. But the reality is that there is going to be some differences depending on the legacy a player has, or maybe if you become... I didn't talk about this in the video, but it's almost like there are roles that everyone has in a four player tournament, and then you want to stay in the main character role, right? So like if you want to keep that, for me that that's why you pick first sometimes right you want to stay in that main character role have people chasing you but I also understand someone else's perspective of saying like well I it's for me to play my best I need the most information so first is not for me right you know there's tie-ins to types of sports psychology which I understand is still a little bit of pseudo but everything about the brain is pseudo because it doesn't work perfectly for anyone right I think when we talked about it before we aired I said You know something about mental toughness and I'm gonna tell you right now that that was the name of a VHS tape that my tennis coach made me watch in high school like I when I say yeah like it is clearly a branch of at least popular psychology right? I there yet one of the tennis is huge for that because one of the books that is most recommended in sports psychology is a book about tennis. The inner game of tennis. Inner game of tennis. Inner game. The inner game of tennis. That's the popular sports psychology book. By whom? Timothy Galway. I have often said that playing pinball is like playing Monopoly and tennis at the same time. Interesting. In that you have to, you know, it's a board game. You have to know the rules of the board game that you're playing. But also you have to, tennis is my personal, that's, I played tennis as a kid. So that's, that's the way that I can look at it. I'm sure that you could also say it's baseball if you played a lot of baseball and hit a lot of baseballs when you were a kid or it's, you know, racquetball, handball, make a... Pickleball. Yeah, well, certainly now, yeah, yeah, I would, that's, that, uh, I'm a little too old for that. Better love a pinball. Yes, yeah, absolutely, table tennis, yes. But you have to have that, you know, those reflexes, and you have to potentially react very quickly or very slowly based on what just happened somewhere that you couldn't maybe have predicted very well. Right. And also where you have to put it isn't just in bounds but in the next place on the board that it has to go. Something that I find very interesting is that a lot of pinball players don't tend to but it just happens right now that a lot of pinball players have neurotypical tendencies. I'm going to start with the pinball community. I feel like this is I've had this conversation with many people that like, you know, overactive mind is a big thing you hear in pinball. And pinball is so overwhelming sometimes that I feel like it almost forces you to learn how to quiet your minds in the right times. Um, and... It's the difference between when I'm playing my best and when I'm not, for sure. Absolutely, yeah. The moment that you have, you're cradled up, and you tell yourself, like, oh, all I have to do is hit that, I think that reduces your chances greatly. Like, you just gotta let yourself do it. Um, you know, you can take the second to think about what you have to hit, but the moment you're telling yourself to hit it, it's over. In my mind. Like, for me at least, is... Ooh! You know, I once I you never want to be your own coach. Like you, you are the player and you are playing the game and you're going to do it as best as possible. Sounds to me like it's paced more like a boxing match. Sure, sure. I can see this match. A one player boxing match. Like a one player tennis match. Yeah. Yep. It's I mean, what are your experiences with how you like if you're in a high pressure situation, right? Let's say you're, it's between you and another person for a second.
    59:21
    What's going through your mind when you're about to play that game where you have a, you know, you can get, get over the hump, but you have to catch that score, right? Like what are some things that you do to calm the brain or, um, because I know that you're, you're a great player and you're very capable of doing this. I see it sometimes. I'm flattered to be called that Alex.
    59:42
    We need to play together sometime. We've never played. No, for real, for real. I get nervous a lot. I mean, again, I did all this stage stuff. I did all the, you know, I stand on stage every day now, I guess you call it that. But I get way too nervous. I never like playing in the first round or the last round of New York City. I never like playing in like finals or anything like that. Just hang out. You know, I get I get way too caught up in my own head. And I think the way I calm down, you know, for better or worse, is I try to get my heart rate up. I want to get my reaction time as good as possible. So let's let's start, you know, adrenaline dumping. Before we can, or the opposite of that first, you know, let's, let's do a couple jumps when you're standing. Let's make sure you know all the buttons are. I like to play the, the cradle and shoot if I want to be calm. But I think it's more fun to just hit everything on the fly, because that means you get to push the buttons more. Sure. And I get nervous a lot. The thing that you mentioned about like jumping up and down sometimes before you get in front of the machine, that's something that I think all pinball players have. They have little routines they do before they walk up and play. And you know, while that while you know, getting the heart rate up isn't necessarily something that I would do when I when I go up, I still have my routines that I do. And if that's a routine for you, that's what works for you. Right? And you'd probably do it unconsciously. It's not like you're thinking like, Oh, I need to get my heart rate up. So I'm gonna jump up and down. Sometimes I do. Yeah, it's just that conversion of the things that you tend to do into something that's a little bit more meaningful, right? For me, when it's a really big tournament, I have a rag that was very generously donated to me by George Underwood. George made rags for everyone that he was going to the Beast with, with our little initials put into it. It was beautiful and wonderful and I love it. Um, but now it's something... Like a water rag? Yeah, so you wipe down the...actually I have it right here. Like a dish towel rag or like a... It is definitely like a dish towel rag. Yeah it uh it Oh that cool He built this thing from the Trinehart Society that is real yet But it looks like some Illuminati something or other It the Twilight Zone Eye Oh, yeah. Yep. But now it's given me something. So now when I step up to a game that I know is important, you do the wipe down and that is my indication to my mind to be locked in. It's like, okay, this is the one that matters. So I'll bring it to the big tournaments. And it seems silly, But it does work. Nice. Addressing the machine changes your mindset. Yep. Period. Absolutely. How about you, Eric? Any walk-up things you do? I do. I have a physical walk-up routine that I stick to as a force of habit to put myself in the right spot in front of the machine, both physically where I want to play from, where I want to I'm going to look at the plunger meter from and where I want to think from. Because having done that step, then I'll be occupying my mind with laying out the script that's in front of me. You take a certain stance when you plunge sometimes, and I love that. When you're really focused in on that plunge, you take a stance where one of your legs goes way back. I got my face real close to that meter. That's important because the parallax, the plunger is not right next to the hatches. Yeah, and if you're in a different position then the parallax is different. It's not the same. And yeah, it throws it off. You practice it. And then yeah, I start scripting out what's in front of me and what do I need to get done and what can I do. What can I do? And that usually will include flipping through instant info if it's available on a machine. Mm-hmm. My left hand goes on first. I place my left foot. I put my eyes where they're supposed to be on the flippers and adjust my left foot. I put my right foot down. I put my right hand down. You do the hokey pokey. Yeah, I do the hokey pokey. Turn the machine around. But, but like now I'm ready and I will at this point I will say to myself I am player whatever player I am this is ball whatever it is and lay out my script of my five shots before I pull back there is a That's a very podcast host thing to do. Thank you. I am Benjamin. This is Ball One. That's right. And welcome to the That's right. Internal narration. Welcome to the ASPD. Yep. That's exactly right. No, I love that. I love that. I always love hearing what people have because everyone unconsciously has built that into themselves. And, you know, there's no rhyme or reason. I think I built it consciously because of that VHS tape called Mental Toughness.
    64:37
    So thank you, Tennis, for bringing us great pinball players. I have an interesting question for Alex. I have a thing I did a while back and I want to know your thoughts on it. I went to the St. Mark's Arcade to play their Jaws Premium. And every game I played, I took a picture of my score. And then when I went home, I took like the 12 or 15 photos I did. And then I graphed them on a frickin line graph. Okay, with time on the x axis and the score on the y. If you look at just every three games, it was a nice upwards curve. But if you looked at every game, it'd be up, down, down, up, a little higher, down, even I'm a little higher now. And, you know, in your sort of medium to macro progression of training, how do you find the sweet spot of, I always got to be playing my good game because my other two, I'm going to get my 30 million and then we go back up to 200 million, then we go back down to 30 or 40? Consistency is one of the hardest things to get good at, because it's the only thing that I think in any sport or hobby that requires just pure by promising clips about PS2 that 어떤ießen in another section, all Gearокой by Awesome I'm not a scientist in pinball or anything. I didn't even finish college. Going to college only matters in high school. And that is your pinball philosophical moment.
    66:45
    Yeah, no, I love that you graphed it out though. That's so interesting to see. And it is pretty perfect. It looks so, it's a weird shape. We'll put this in the comments or something. Yeah, we'll make sure that this shows up on Facebook or on nycpinpod.wordpress.com.
    67:05
    I find it impressive that your scores kept continuously going up on your good games, because I feel like after I put like three or four games into a pinball machine, it's only downhill from there. Oh, interesting. Yeah, this is this this graphs 15 games and you can see every roughly every third game Madeline improves just a little bit. Well, now, you know, you just practice twice. I felt. Yeah. Is Jaws a game that you're confident in when you play? Well, one and third times. Sure. It would seem. If you were to pick a game, would Jaws be one of them? I've only been picking JAWS this season, which is rare because sometimes I like to change it up or whatever, but for whatever reason, I don't know, maybe because it's blue and that's my favorite color. So that's why I got drawn into it. It's actually become one of my favorite games recently too.
    67:53
    The open playfield is interesting. Yeah, I didn't like it at first when it came out. I've been trying to connect like a different, like I was thinking about like MMA, not that I know anything about it, but it's called like overloading your opponent, right? You do so many fake outs that eventually your brain gets tired and you can't process All of these different stimuli coming at you and that's sort of locking in mentality or zoning out the extra bits you just can't do as well after a while because your opponent has fented or fainted or F-E-I-N-T towards you so many times. And you kind of would think you would find a peak maybe after like five games because after that, well, there goes all the reaction. But who knows? After a while, my hands just kind of hurt and then I have to stop. Yeah, if I walk up to Godzilla right now, Godzilla being one of the games that I don't normally practice anymore because it's just part of my pinball knowledge. I think that Godzilla is one of the games that a lot of the higher ranked players would just be able to do well no matter what, right? And it's the language. Every pinball machine speaks a different language and you need to learn that language.
    68:58
    With Jaws, I think that if you put a ton of time and games into it, So you speak the language, but maybe there's a level of like, I'm not fully fluent in the language yet. It's not like, it's not unconscious to me at this moment to know what to do next. I still have to, like, every time I do a little bit better, it's like, okay, well, this is the furthest I've ever gotten. So what do I do now? Right? And as you just keep playing and getting those higher scores, eventually that, you know, you know the machine head down all the way, All the way to the point that you would ever need to. And at that point it's just unconscious, right? You're just flowing through. You've hit the... You've closed all the beaches before and now you get to choose between search and rescue. And you know which one that you're more comfortable with so you're just going for it. You don't have to sit and think about the question like, what are the rules for each one? And how do I maximize my points? You just have a way that you do it. I just pick rescue because of the helicopter. Yeah, absolutely. I pick search because I think it's more fun. I think it's more fun, but it's like, you know, it's not necessarily the most competitive way to play it, but I find that my scores in search are better because I have more fun playing it. I don't know. It's, you know, it's that aspect of just like learning a new language and putting the time in to learn it, I think. I like that. Conscious competence to unconscious competence. Yes. That's important for learning anything. I mean, you got, everyone's got to start somewhere. Yep. I think that can be for anything. Yeah, I think Madeline, you were talking about knowledge, understanding and skill a few weeks ago, and I think that plays into the same general idea that like the skill is the skill to do the thing. The knowledge means that you know the facts, but the understanding is the thing that maybe, you know, you have that is like, I really understand this thing. I don't just know facts about it. I understand it. Also, a new idea that was proposed to me by Astro Leckoff in our interview was that I asked Why it is that all these younger players are being or outperforming the people that have played pinball for years and years and years.
    71:04
    And his simple answer was that the younger players are more willing to to be worse before they're better.
    71:10
    So maybe those dips are you trying new things or like trying to like learn new things about the machine now that you've already done the things that you know work. I'm bad at drop catching right now. I know this. I live catch everything. I don't know how to do that at all. I can't drop catch, but I need to drill drop catching and I'm going to fail a lot.
    71:29
    Once I learn that, that's going to elevate, that's going to give me another tool in the toolbox that I never had before. And then all of a sudden that's, you know, I jump in skill. But I'm going to play pretty poorly before that, I think. So yeah, just all these little things to consider.
    71:47
    I'm going to make the prediction right here and now that it will be shortly after Alex I think it will take longer than people hope it will because I was looking at the maths and I currently am sitting at 196 swappers on my card, which puts me at 1069. The pin golf isn't in there yet. Nice! That'll warm it up a little bit. Right, right, right. But to be the top 250, so I'm at 196, I need to get to 492, which is more than double of what I have right now. Right. So it gets incrementally harder to reach those numbers because the numbers get bigger and tighter. Right, which means you have to play bigger and bigger tournaments in order to do it. Exactly, exactly. Which is why you're talking about traveling as much as you're talking about traveling. My first major I'm going to in January next year, I'm going to go to INDISC, which is Oh, good luck. Big one over in California and, you know, I think this will be the first big, big test. Cool. Well, I hope that I will be watching you on a stream in someone's private home while I'm playing a classics tournament that day. Sounds good. I hope your classics tournament goes well. Thanks. We should watch the stream on our podcast and we can commentate the commentate. It'll be like people who do reaction videos to reaction videos. I did like how you had the commentary, because a lot of the live commentator videos, when you talk about the video niche, you're saying it and you're doing it. So you have to be either really good or you have to make sure you're only cradling every time you do a thing so you can talk. Right. But when you have the freedom to pause and talk with another person, that level of reflection I did not consider before seeing that video. So I'm glad you had it. I do think that commentators for big tournaments are doing a much better job as of late, keeping everyone updated with what's going on. I think the commentators that you would normally see on Twitch for these live streams have gotten better and better over the years. Like, um, yeah, there are some people in particular that are just nailing it right now. And, um, you know, they know what audiences are speaking to because I love the ones when they explain just the basic rules of a game before you get into it. Because not everyone that's going to watch that stream, most of the people when you watch the stream will know everything, but some of them won't. Right. And you always want to be inviting to the everyone. So I like that. Yeah. Ooh, here's a question. I feel like a lot of the commentators are inspired similar to what you would see at a golf tournament.
    74:21
    I would love to see and someone from the Bells did this really well at a gathering when we were watching one of the Indiana tournaments. Like it should be commented like like give me like a WWE style. Oh, absolutely. I actually think that'd be a raging thing to do. I'd love that. Amongst other things, I think one of the things that's keeping pinball from reaching like an e-sports level, because there's many other difficulties that would make that nearly, not impossible, but very hard in the current context. The economics are just very different. But showmanship is something that I think needs to be brought to pinball to some degree. Some people are doing that for sure. Let's hear it for Crazy Levy, please. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I was just going to say exactly that, Eric. Like let's, let's, uh, let's recognize, uh, Crazy Levy Naiman and, uh, his showmanship at New York City Pinball Championship over the years. I remember offering to help him with his cuff links for his tuxedo at the first one. He was, uh, he, he was certainly a showman, uh, if nothing else, and was the loud boisterous presence. Uh, Coining, coining boom across pinball everywhere. Yeah. He'll join many a booth. Yes, oh yes, yes, indeed. He will join many a booth and yeah, he will, he will commentate that way as well. Yeah, he's gonna, he's gonna bring some show up into your show. Absolutely. I have been wondering why there aren't more, like, why Split Flipper isn't an actual tournament style that is like ranked or like more team based things aren't like on a grander stage because I feel like that would definitely bring more engagement at least to people that would, you know, just having like, not sponsored teams, but just teams for, you know, like city based things or it'd be interesting. I don't know. It's like entering smash with your buddy to be to, you know, There were often, sort of, I don't know that there were ever any real side bets involved, but I think there were a lot of the tournaments in Pittsburgh in particular, the Papas and the Pinbergs, where affiliation was noted on your scorecard for like what, where you play, such that there was almost a regional scorecard. That's cool. Do I remember that correctly, Eric? Do you agree with that? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. I think, and I think there's... It's a city-state. I went to Pinburg and I registered as, you know, a member of Pinball NYC. Right, right. The team, right? There was some amount of pride in, you know, in whoever's city did the best or whoever, you know, whoever had the most points at the thing, whoever had the most perfect cards or whatever the thing was for the format. Matt, yeah, absolutely. You know, that's a that's a cool thing. Although I think what you're talking about is probably something a little bit more organized than that or more specific. Maybe an actual in a perfect world that anything works. Right. Yeah. I mean, the end goal of this is never like I the overarching goal is the 250, but I think that the 250 serves a different point, Which is just more accessibility, more outreach to people that feel like they're not necessarily part of the community that, or they're a specific type of pinball player in the community, you know? Like, I want to have a platform for people of all kinds of interest in pinball to speak about their love for it. And I also want to just preach my love for pinball. That's it. Preach! Please stay tuned for Alex's pitch after the end of the music for his Patreon. It does indeed take a village to raise a pinball player and a couple of bucks could probably help him out on his quest for 250. That said, thank you so much to Alex Kelly. Thank you to Zenzokniak for joining us this week. I hope that you've enjoyed this week's episode. Join us next week when we will of course run down local competition results in Ball 1. In Ball 2, we will review Gebhard's Beer Culture in advance of The Harvest. And in Ball 3, we will have Gabriel Chazanov as our guest. And we may or may not have the official announcement of the final games list for The Harvest at Gebhard's Beer Culture. Join us then, whatever you're doing, between now and then, pinfolk, go get em'. We had just asked Alex if he wanted to promote what I thought might be an upcoming conversation with Escher Lefkoff. It turned out that he had just published it, but he asked us if he could rap about his Patreon and we were all too happy to oblige. Here's that conversation. If I can promote something, there is a second secret part to that episode, but it is only accessible through a Patreon page that I just threw up. Yeah, I so the with all the travel and tournament entering that I'm doing lately I'm realizing that I need to crack down on work much harder if I want to be able to afford everything all of the money through that patreon is just going to go towards tournament play and Affording housing for when I go out there and everything but it's a very expensive venture and it would be fantastic if If it obviously no obligation at all or any pressure, but it would be wonderful if you enjoy the content to just check it out, at least see what benefits you could get from the Patreon page that I just threw up. What are some of the benefits? So there's different tiers. At the lowest tier, it's just a shout out on the video. But beyond that, at the $10 mark, you get bonus content every month, which might include like an Escher interview or a, you know, just less cut down info for people that want to listen to it more like a podcast. And then beyond that, you could actually be featured on the channel and I'm going to have like a best moments video of pinball players. So I'm gonna do super cuts and commentary over some of my the people that submit their videos their play on the channel and You know not not coaching but just like, you know little things here and there that could be Could be improved or things I really liked about their play And then at the highest level which I don't expect anyone to do this is more of like a reach like you're crazy for doing This kind of goal. What's the number? It's 50 It's very high but you could just decide what the next episode is gonna be about like obviously with with We'd have to agree upon it, but you could come on the channel and just be on an episode with me and we will talk about whatever you want to talk about. It doesn't even need to be pinball related. I had someone say, could I do that? And then just like stare at the viewer for an hour. And I said, absolutely. That would probably be my most popular videos. Count to a thousand. I don't know about that. But yeah, anything means anything and obviously no obligation, but I love you all for checking it out if you do. Thank you so much for that. Well then, for all of our lovely listeners out there, if you wish to support a young rising star and welcoming voice in the community, head on over to Nightlight Pinball on Alex Kelly's YouTube page and support him on Patreon.