We're listening to and are watching our podcast called Wormhole Pinball Presents. And today I'm very, very excited to be joined by Tom Graff, Fox Cities Pinball and the Triple Train podcast. Tom, welcome to the Wormhole virtually. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me, Jamie. I appreciate it. Oh, of course. You know, I've been listening and watching you for the last few years. And all I have to say is take it easy on me. Try not to talk too much. today okay uh joel's not here so i'll be able to talk okay good i got to meet them both yeah texas pinball festival how was it it was really great good it was really great um they they both came in and did the uh the stream for a little bit yeah did they do the finals no i okay i gave him the uh quarters okay we got to ease joel in i can't just give him the fine that's true that would that's a wise move yeah i thought so right but they did a really good job i went back and i listened to it and uh that's on you that the entire video is on youtube but we're going to break it up and do some cool things with what they did so cool so it should but we did miss you so But by the way, they're giants, those two. Oh, yeah. Especially Joel. Joel's tall. I'm like a dwarf next to him. He's got like trees for legs. Tree trunks. I mean, he really does. He's a big dude. But they were super sweet, and it was really nice to get to meet them. I mean, they were really cool. I met Travis before, but I had not met Joel. Sure. How did you meet them? Well, I met Travis actually at Pinmasters. No, I met Travis actually at Freeplay Florida. We kind of had a brief meeting. And then a friend of a friend, Luke Nahorniak, we ended up hanging out a little bit at InDisc after Freeplay Florida. uh the next year and then uh we ended up staying with each other at uh nationals and pin masters back in 2020 before the uh like right before everything shut down for covid yeah that's that's like our origin story yeah at the wormhole you know everything shut down and they were going to turn this place into a bar. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. And it shut down. And so we said, all right, well, let's just turn it into a pinball club and we'll just quarantine here together. And there were eight of us. And that's it. And now look at you. Oh. That's kind of. Can grow some things, you know, so. Yeah. It's kind of like District 82, though, too. I mean, it was popular around our area, but, you know, it didn't really get popular until the pandemic. Really? Yeah. Yeah, that's when more people started coming. I was streaming there, and people just caught on to it. I mean, I have a feeling if it wasn't for the pandemic, it wouldn't have been a huge success that it was. That's interesting. Real quick, how's the audio on your end? Because it cuts in and out of fine. Okay. I'm fine. It could be my mic. I have a tendency to move around a lot. Okay. It's just my stupid soundboard. when I moved it from TPF. Yeah. I think I broke it. Okay. What soundboard do you have? It's just a mono price. Okay. Right? Yeah. I know. I need it. I know. Well, I started out with just a plain old mix. It wasn't a mono price one. I'm trying to think what it was, but I can't remember. But it was okay. And then I went to the Rodecaster and now I have the Rodecaster Pro 2. So I'm trying to convince the wife that I need the Rodecaster Pro 2. Of course. Right. Yeah. But the problem is I can only use it for the stream so many times. Right. When we know, both of us, I mean, you have a lot more viewers than I do, but I can assure you we're not printing money off of these things. Right. Exactly. And the rigs that I just brought to Texas Pinball Festival cost, I'll have to bleep it if I say. It's expensive. It's definitely, streaming is an expensive hobby. It's a stupid expensive hobby. So let's go there. Why the hell are we doing this, right? uh it's a great question sometimes i wonder but uh oh it's i it's for the fun of it honestly i i like showcasing competitive pinball that's that's what i really enjoy you know but i know you do too i do i really really do i like to goof on our monday streams yep around i like that balance and on our stream but i love the competitive pinball streams and to showcase texas town is kind of what we're doing right yep and uh you guys get to showcase you know national talent it's such a privilege that what you do oh absolutely i'm probably the one of the luckier streamers out there i mean honestly i mean if yeah yeah i mean i put you and I when I first started someone was like why do you want to compete with Fox Cities and IE and I said I'm not competing with these guys we're down the channel maybe I'll start out in you know public access but you know JDO Fox Cities and IE pinball they're not competing with each other no not at all they're showcasing what we're doing right that's all I want to do I look at those three streams and I go, Tom, okay, I've got work to do. All right. I got to get, you know, moved to at least the WB down the channel. Just because you guys do such a really, really great job. I think I really do put the three of you on a pedestal of what we all should try to do when we're showcasing our local talent in competitive pinball. I appreciate that. Honestly, I learned from watching IE Pinball and Papa and all that stuff. I really enjoyed watching. How can I bring this out in our area? And once District 82 happened, that's really when it took off because I would try just doing our league stuff. And it's hard to gain a following with just doing very small things. And like I said, once District 82 really started bringing in more of the national level is where I got recognized as far as streaming goes. But you've been streaming, I think, YouTube goes back 14 years. Yeah. I mean, but it's been on and on. I mean, I did some really early videos where I literally had a USB camera that you could plug into a computer. And I just hung it over my games and I would just record myself playing. And I do an occasional video. So I was into the visual pinball community and some people would ask me like, hey, you have this game, could you record this? I'd be like, yeah, sure. And then I was like, I'll try doing some home streams. But I mean, you know how it is, you get 10 or 15 people that watch those and you kind of wonder like why am I doing this Well I doing it for fun Doing it for fun. Yeah, we're doing it for fun. You know, we got paid from Twitch the other day, and I just started laughing. You know, I just started laughing. Your Twitch payment is a lot better than my Twitch payment, but it can't be that much, much, much better. That's fantastic. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Not not being on the front page of Twitch and getting that many people watching. But that's the great thing. I mean, you have people from all over the country, all over Canada, and they're tuning in to watch their their respective state or province playing in the tournament. I just want to do a good job for them. Yeah. Right. I want to just showcase them. And, and, and that's why I went with the two rigs, which was a royal pain in the ass. And you told me it was going to be. It's it is. I, I actually, Travis actually talked me out of it for nationals. Cause I was going to do two rigs. And he's like, he's like, Tom, you're, he's like, just do the one. You'll, you'll thank me for it later and thank you, Trevor. But, uh, I eventually I'll pull out the two. Here's why I liked it. Right. We got really lucky. OBS did not crash once. That's good. Okay. So that's awesome. And two, there's no like rig moving time because I can move it where I'm already know they're going. Yeah. The dead air is gone. I don't have to have a channel. I don't have to have any of that. they can just click click use this screen deck and boom boom boom so when i did learn i and i also had the double channel you have one of these not as big okay bigger than mine yeah this is this is one of the best things you can have as a streamer yes is this right here yeah but yeah i don't have as many scenes because i tend to delete them if i don't like them and they're not perfect but that's just sure but uh um the double i had a double i have a double rig one scene and it's a lot going on it's just a lot there's six cameras coming in right yep and i it went over well at tpf but it did it because we were commenting on both come commentating on both streams and people which is hard to do it was over well i just said i said uh hottie to the right of me you take the right side and me you take the left side and i'll just interject and it was overload for people so you can't do that again and it'd be like watching two football games or something you know it's it's their baseball or whatever so i what i'll do is i'll just put it like a picture in picture okay i think i'm gonna fool around with that and we have a pinberg uh golden tournament in a couple months it's our next real big one so i'll probably fool around with that anyway let's get to origin stories because i like to do origin okay well how they got in the pinball so they're currently ranked 130th i looked today yeah that's the is Is that the pro ranking? Yeah. And do you know your open ranking? I think it's like 114. Yeah, you're exactly 114. Yeah. You know me. You look all the time, right? I don't look every day, but I'll check it out every once in a while just to see where I'm at. I looked at my ranking. It is 2,302, I think. Yeah. That's really great. I'm really happy with it. Yeah. My rank keeps going down, so that's just how it is with the new changes. But I think the ranking system is probably better for the changes, though. I mean, I always thought I was coming in, being in the pandemic, coming out of it, everything wasn't open, and I shot up because a lot of people weren't playing. And, uh, you know, at one point I think I was like 24th in the world and I was just like, yeah, I don't really consider myself that good. Um, compared to, you know, I'm seeing, you know, names below me like Eric Stone and, you know, other people just throwing out that name, but I'm like, there, there's no way I'm, I'm better than Eric Stone, you know? So, um, but. I think that because because he I've played against him and he killed me, you know, you know, I might be able to get a game on Eric or something. But yeah, I mean, he's he's way more talented than I am. That's depressing, Tom. You're 114th in the open ranking and you. Yes, somewhat lower than you. That hurts me once for us peons. I don't I you know the rank is there but you know anybody can beat anybody at any given time any given Sunday right any given Sunday so let's talk about that what's your best win or what's your biggest win according to Tom Grabb I mean biggest money win was definitely the last last Pinburgh I won the b division okay so you know that was four grand in my pocket minus you know taxes but it's just but yeah yeah i'd take that any day of the week and then uh i don't know i mean um when i went out to uh indus a couple years ago i took fourth and uh one of the classics so i was just i was just really happy i took a plaque home and yeah that's awesome yeah um one amazing race a couple years ago and then just you know a lot of local stuff a couple two uh state championships in wisconsin that's pretty good yeah yeah it's pretty good stuff so how many people do you get for Chilton Tuesday. Yeah. Last night we had 73 people. So you have a whopper farm is what you planted at D82. Is that what people say? You know? I mean, yeah, people say that, but I don't know. I mean, I don't. Yeah, sure. I mean. It's great. Oh, yeah. Oh, I think it's awesome. I mean, if there were 40 people there, I'd be like, wow, this is a lot of people. You know, we we have capacity here for 64. But it's too many people. Yeah, it's cramped. It's cramped. So Garrett, Garrett, who was at Nationals and Pinmasters, he was kind of describing it to me. OK, so I have an idea how big it is. So, yeah, it's not that big, right? Right. It's bigger on camera when I show the wormhole view than it really is. this is where I put the cameras, you know, but we're, you know, we had 40 with 39 people on a Monday night and we were here till out of three X and we're here till midnight. That's a little too much. So we've got to figure out, and we started at six 30. So we've got to figure out either make the machines even harder, which we've done or, um, limiting it. But I don't want to do that. Everyone comes is so great. And there's so many new people coming now that I just want to spread pinball. Yep. If we got to stay a little later, we'll stay a little later. Yeah, it's hard. You know, that's the biggest problem with pinball. You run out of, you know, I mean, no matter where the location is, just seems like that. you know in my own house it's like well if i get a if i get a new game i gotta sell one you know and we're very lucky that tim just bought a building for a pinball museum oh cool and so we're having the wormhole pinball museum it's going to open up in probably 2026 now uh but with his close to 180 plus games he needs a place to put them and uh and non It going to be a pinball charity it going to be you know a non it going to be fantastic cool try to build their own little d82 down yeah it yeah if you can do it do it it's awesome yeah it is going to be awesome it's a lot of work you know because like yes you keep when you're hosting all these tournaments how do you keep your pins in such great condition because i've i've heard from garrett i've heard from troy sands and guys that that play here they've gone there how do you keep your machines uh you need somebody like eric thorn that's all i can say i mean eric is um and first of all he's great tech uh but but second of all he's just like if sorry my game just updated um but uh he is just you know if if something's broke he wants to fix it immediately like he does not want a game down at all it's just it's just how he's wired if it was my collection and i was doing that i'd be like let's turn the game off i'll get i'll get to it when i can you know kind of thing we'll we'll get you on a new game but uh yeah eric is very good at um you know finding what the problem is i'm fixing it quickly you gotta have a great tech team of them yes why on you know we said in the beginning of this podcast it's it's tech night at the wormhole and if they're you hear music and there's people behind me i have to make way for them because it's their night yeah i just saw the guy with the glass taking off i didn't see him what we're doing right it's tech night and we just came back from tpf with five pins and they got beat on and so future queen got beat on and it won best original which was really kind of cool uh really really rare title from uh bell games italian so tim geeks on a lot of those old machines that no one knows about now again not really old but really rare ones and so we have a warlock here a future queen um we had a german kiss here andromeda uh that's a cosmic princess yeah that's a great game i I remember when that was at Endos. Andromeda's a great game. It's this guy right there that keeps it together. And he really does. And he gives me the biggest amount of shit that anyone in my life has to put up with it. Because he's so damn good. You know? I mean, he's the Da Vinci within these Italian games to work. How can you get Future Queen that comes in a box from Italy? literally came on a cargo ship. And of course, it's not going to work the same, right? Right. And he gets us to work. And you've got to leave him alone. Yep. And he likes peanut butter, so we get him peanut butter. He gets the tax, right? I appreciate that. Yeah. And it does. it really takes a community to to uh you know run these places yeah you know um just uh yeah like i said eric thorn a bunch of tds that work at district 82 helping out to you know matt mccarty eric strangeway aston when when luke from minnesota comes luke corneac he helps out i mean that's you really need that uh those people just helping you out beth and coney trafka they do all of our at district 82 they do like the scores when the when the games are done uh it takes takes a village takes a village man do you let me ask you a question about the uh go back to the podcast triple giant sure we said you know you kind of went and how you how often do you guys get together and do those and you do it via zoom or do you do it uh we do it through zencaster which is it's kind of like but it's more geared towards podcasts okay so but um we we kind of just do it when we feel like it and when we can all get together to do it uh so i'd say two to three times a month but it's more like probably like two two times a month now good i really like the the banter that the three you know joel it's joel and travis no i don't think you give yourself enough credit ah i wet that yeah good i i i throw in where i can No, we have a good, we have a very good dynamic and we're, and we're good friends too. And when we first started it, you know, cause we all, we, we give each other crap. Everybody, I think everybody literally thought like Joel and Travis hated each other. Yeah. Yeah. Cause we would get some emails like, Hey, you know, Travis really needs to be nicer to Joel. And it's like, well, you know, he was just joking with them. you know he wasn't he wasn't like it's kind of like how you joke with your friends you know you give them shit yeah you know you know but uh you know yeah maybe every every once in a while we cross the line but you know it's you know it's it's it's just for fun it's interesting to me though in the competitive streaming world we rate each other and you know we hey tune in hey fox cities has this and we'll put fox cities up here right and uh and carpool puts us up there and it's we're just trying to show competitive pinball yep we're watching wormhole at our uh pinball league awesome yeah thank you yeah and all we need to do is not fight with each other but grow this damn thing so that we can uh have a future because there's not a lot of there's a lot of kids playing but not as much as we have, right? So, you know, diminishing returns in 20 years, how many kids are still going to be playing? And although at this rate, the kids are just kicking our ass, aren't they? Yeah. The kids are pretty good. I don't know if it's reflexes or just, I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is. You know, they don't get nervous. no they they're actually like full attack mode and like where i'm like okay i gotta make sure i don't screw up the shot nope they're just like boom boom boom boom recovery yeah like dalton i still think dalton's a kid though but he's not right right he his one of the things we'll talk about competitive pinball now real quick sure i think you guys can do better than anyone is when you trap up and Bowen Kerins goes all right i was late the last two shots and then boom corrects it and hits a time war right that that's an impressive feat yep you know absolutely what do you think was with your skill was it what was the aha moment when you started playing pinball that started getting better was it the nudging was it drop catching was it i'm still working on my nudging to be honest um i to me that's the hardest thing is just you know when's the right moment to save the ball and you know sometimes my my reaction is just delayed um but i think it was just really looking at play field artwork and using that to somewhat of my advantage to try and make my shots and correct from there. Okay. Sorry. So when you're looking, so you look at the play field artwork as a line in Ghostbusters and some games. On some games, sure. Yeah. Yeah, so like I'll give an example like Spider-Man. There like a web that up to the upper play field and I kind of use that as a little guide Even sometimes the inserts the inserts are leading up to the upper play field and i kind of use that as a little guide or uh even sometimes the inserts the inserts are leading up to the ramp i kind of eyeball that um you know certain things like that and then but i think my biggest problem is you know owning some games i i'm so used to the way mine play that it's almost like a muscle memory type of thing like i don't even look at the shots i'm like uh it's here you know and then and then i'll play somebody else's game and it's like oh that shot's not how my game is so then i it it's a little harder to adapt to it but then if you just kind of feel the shot i guess it's a hell of a lot better than 23 hunters in the world learning curve probably i mean just yeah i one of the biggest things that really helped me early on was actually the pinball 101 dvd that ethan his brother did wow um i don't know if you've ever watched that but it goes over just just rudimentary flipper skills and nudging and things like that that that really helped my game um yeah and there's some like tips and tricks on some games too that i had no idea about and of course bowen's tutorials i mean those are huge those are huge you know going to papa tv and just checking those out um those and then And, you know, just really knowing the rules, knowing the rules of the game. I mean, I've beaten people just on rules knowledge before. I wasn't particularly playing good, but I knew what to shoot when they didn't. Yeah, your depth and breadth of knowledge passed me. And I think that's where really it takes a long commitment. and I don't know if he got that. I mean, one tournament at a time. I think I'm better at pinball. I think I just want to be here. I've retired like a hundred times. I've done two and then came back and finished second and a four act with the EPA. And so that's how they keep the pinball gods keep sucking me back in. But I think I'm going to retire again. I'm going to hang up the cleats. I don't do that, Jamie. The streaming? Yeah, I just like this better. It gives me an opportunity to be an idiot. And I just really, really, really enjoy it. And my only issue is I can't go on Pennside and I can't handle criticism. Criticism is a hard thing. you know i i took a lot of it when i was first going like a lot of people were complaining well i thought they were complaining but they were actually trying to help me um for instance like you know playfield lighting yeah like man the playfield's dark and i'm like oh it looks fine you know kind of thing and uh you know i it was just one of those things like i i thought people were actually like ripping on me yeah when they were actually like no you know like we're just trying to help you you know kind of thing no that type of criticism i can handle all day long yeah in fact i went back and i watched a stream of uh the finals and they wanted to hear eric stone more and the problem there was the mic that i had they were close to us and what i should have done is i should have said look i can't turn his mic up more because you'll hear me as an echo and it'll be brutal yeah you don't want that right i didn't explain it properly and uh you know i chatted a few people because i they're like why is he not turning up this and i'm like because it's gonna Well, that's, that's the problem with having a constant chat. You're looking at too, right? I mean, do you not look at it? Uh, no, I do. I do. Um, and sometimes I'll, I'll, I'll acknowledge stuff and other times that won't, it's just, you know, it's just this, you know, whatever the situation is. You're doing a stream by yourself and your house. how hard is that to interact with chat and play at the same time when i was first doing it extremely hard um i i've gotten a lot better at it but i haven't done as much home streaming because i've i've been doing so much tournament streaming and now i've been doing a lot of stuff with lumberjack johnny's too uh which is in town there the other day yeah yeah and that was gauze launch right yeah that was a lot of fun i got to watch a bunch of that i went back on the twitch and that looked really good yeah and i won too what's that i said there you go yeah yeah so okay you will keep me coming back actually that was the first time i won at that uh appleton location lumberjack johnny so it's pretty cool well i don't want to take any more of your time and they're working on Andromeda. They're cranking up the sound. So that means, Jamie, you've been on for 45 minutes. Shut it down. I really want to invite you to Houston one day. And you said you're going to be in. Yeah. Where are you coming in Texas? We're going to San Antonio. I don't know the exact place we're staying at. I have it in my itinerary kind of thing. There's a place there called What's Brewing. Okay. Okay. Somebody told me that. I can't remember who, but... Office shop. I've never been there, but tell them Wormhole sent you because there's a family there called the Loves that are my absolute favorite people from San Antonio. They're the nicest people on the planet, and they will just take you in and show you around. Supposedly, the collection's excellent. In fact, our state finals are going to be there next year. I will definitely try to check it out. Check it, people. Depends if I could leave my family for like a few minutes. Could always bring them, but you know, they're like more pinball. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. I know. But if you ever do drive through Houston, please, I am me, and we will open this joint up anytime. I really want to go to the, what is it? The Space City? Houston Arcade Expo? Yes. It's a must. that looks so much fun like you don't see many tournaments where you know it's the finals and everybody's hanging out cheering and and it's just amazing to watch we brought that to texas pinball festival this year too yeah you saw it a little bit last year at tex pinball festival but this year we really brought it and uh we're gonna bring it hard and it's it's just by we make them we just we guilt them in the coming back i don't want to free free beer yeah right easy it doesn't cost you right it's 48 50 bucks give me a buck they'll sit there i'll put the room cam on their asses and they'll go crazy and that's what we want we want how fun is it to hear the crowd in the background oh it's fantastic you know when sanjay is just soaked a cool dude and then eric stone says something stupid like he said i am the Carl Weathers or i am the something to whirlwind so that i don't know we're gonna flip the crowd went crazy they fetched it up It was awesome. So, let me let you go. Oh, no problem. No, that's fine. I'm fine. Thanks for hanging with me tonight. Of course, you can contact Wormhole at wormholepinballatgmail.com. Fox City, all of his videos can be viewed on VODs on YouTube. And, of course, Fox City's on Twitch. Fox City Pinball on Twitch. Please go check them out. They are the GOATs. They're the networks. So the three networks and we're all just so happy that they keep rising that bar for the rest of us. Thanks. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you so much. Thank you.