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How They Do It In Their Family

NYC PinPod·podcast_episode·1h 13m·analyzed·Apr 28, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

NYC PinPod covers late April 2025 local tournament results and playoff standings across multiple NYC pinball leagues.

Summary

NYC PinPod covers local pinball competition results from Pin Baltimore, Barcade Jersey City, and NYC team leagues (Left Flipper and Big Flipper divisions) in late April 2025. The episode includes detailed playoff implications for Pinball NYC teams, tournament updates from Scrapple League and South Slope Pinball League, venue/machine updates, and a personal pinball bullet journal segment featuring discussion of card format tournaments and local play experiences.

Key Claims

  • Adam Robinson won Pin Baltimore Charm City Classics on Friday; Alex Kelly came second, Gabe Chasanoff seventh

    high confidence · Benjamin Furiga reporting tournament results at the start of Ball 1

  • The Rat Race tournament was a three-part format with groups of four, advancement per group, then finals

    high confidence · Benjamin Furiga explaining tournament structure; Eric Sweetman confirms having played it two years ago

  • Barcade Jersey City is closing (JC Flippers Farewell Barcade Bash held April 20th)

    high confidence · Benjamin Furiga reporting on the farewell tournament at Barcade Jersey City

  • Pinball Union beat Intermission Dolores in Pinball NYC Left Flipper Division at Barcade Brooklyn

    high confidence · Benjamin Furiga reporting match result and noting close match throughout; Pinball Union swept doubles

  • No Quarter for Laundry is dominating Big Flipper Division with 8-1 record and 106 points after 9 matches (11.78 points per match average)

    high confidence · Benjamin Furiga presenting Big Flipper Division standings and expressing surprise at point accumulation rate

  • Dante Oliva scored 35 points (perfect night) at Scrapple League session 5 on Wednesday, April 23rd

    high confidence · Benjamin Furiga reporting Scrapple League results under Greg Pavarelli's direction

  • 31 players competed at Scrapple League session 5 with Swiss seating and IFPA scoring format

    high confidence · Benjamin Furiga describing Scrapple League event structure and participation

  • New ban prevents teams from having double homes at multiple bars; Lux Horses and Pinball Union are grandfathered in

    high confidence · Benjamin Furiga explaining league scheduling constraint affecting Lesser Players team placement

  • As of April 25, 2025, there are 302 pinball machines at 81 public locations in New York City

Notable Quotes

  • “yeah you know hey we appreciate it pinball pinball is everyone's hobby and and we all love it yeah but but family does does some things for some people too”

    Benjamin Furiga @ ~18:00 — Reflection on tournament attendance priorities when players have family/personal commitments; shows community values supportive of life balance

  • “we got our asses handed to us, 15-1. It was a great time, even though we lost like that. I bet you looked cute. Oh, we were super cute.”

    Benjamin Furiga (speaking as We Colliders player) and Eric Sweetman @ ~35:00 — Illustrates community culture of camaraderie and humor despite competitive losses; mentions 'jumpsuit night' social event

  • “Dante caught him”

    Benjamin Furiga @ ~55:00 — Dante Oliva overtook Sean Grant for lead in Scrapple League after week 5, reversing prior expectation of 'almost uncatchable' gap

  • “that's how they do it in their family”

    Benjamin Furiga @ ~83:00 — Humorous recurring phrase used when describing Scrapple Land machines needing recalibration/readjustment each week

  • “card format sucks”

    Jose Garcia @ ~110:00 — Jose's summary critique of Pentastic card tournament format; expressed as personal bullet journal entry; explains poor performance despite paying $140 in card fees

  • “if I were going to put those two things in an economy together, that seems like that would be a good value for that”

    Eric Sweetman @ ~119:00 — Joking about Jose's Whopper/dollar value ratio from Pentastic tournament spending

  • “I don't wear printed t-shirts”

    Benjamin Furiga @ ~168:00 — Personal preference noted regarding Rob Wong Invitational t-shirt prize ('I beat the cat' shirt) despite still chasing high scores

Entities

Benjamin FurigapersonEric SweetmanpersonJose GarciapersonGreg PavarellipersonAdam RobinsonpersonAlex KellypersonDante OlivapersonGabe ChasanoffpersonGreg Fertelperson

Signals

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Multiple Pinball NYC Left and Right Flipper Division teams in playoff contention with tight point spreads and match-to-match implications for seeding and bye weeks. Several teams (Ball Drainers/Butterballers, Parliament/Special When Lit) within striking distance of major ranking shifts.

    high · Detailed standings analysis showing 6-3 teams only 2-14 points apart; extensive discussion of playoff implications for specific upcoming matches

  • ?

    venue_signal: Barcade Jersey City closing; Lesser Players team relocating from Arcade Chelsea (past) to Jack Bar, seeking Wallace as new home but prevented by double-home ban

    high · JC Flippers Farewell Bash event; Benjamin Furiga noting Lesser Players' venue situation and league policy constraint

  • ?

    community_signal: New ban on double-home team venues implemented; Lux Horses and Pinball Union grandfathered in. Policy creates scheduling complexity and affects team placement requests.

    high · Benjamin Furiga explaining league constraint: 'A ban on new double-home team bars prevented them from being able to move up to join us'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Scrapple Land Twilight Zone initially misconfigured at $4 per credit; corrected mid-week by Max. Venue extends credit to league organizers for setup errors.

    high · Benjamin Furiga noting Twilight Zone pricing error on Tuesday, fixed Thursday; Buttermilk Bar fronting coin drop

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Scrapple League (Swiss seating, IFPA scoring match play format) attracting 31 players in session 5; growing participation and competitive depth in NYC match play

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.220

0:30
Happy Sunday, pinfolk, or whatever day you're listening. This is NYC Pin Pod, in which a panel talks location pinball in New York City and sometimes nearby surrounding areas. My name is Benjamin Furiga. My initials are BCF, and I can't seem to go to Williamsburg to play pinball without leaving Barcade tomorrow. My name is Eric Sweetman. My initials are HIP, and I'm a pinball tournament director in New York City. My name is Jose Garcia, my initials are JGN, and I'm officiating a wedding next week. On this week's pod, we'll run down local competition results in Ball 1. In Ball 2, we'll have venue updates and we'll do another pinball bullet journal. And in Ball 3, we will talk with Jose Garcia about the Triborough series that he's running, and also we'll talk about some terms in pinball that, you know, you'll come across, but if you're a noob, you might not know. Let's get started.
1:31
In not-so-nearby-surrounding-areas news, a lot of New York pinballers were traveling last weekend, including a large contingent to Pin Baltimore. On Friday, Adam Robinson won the Pin Baltimore Charm City Classics Tournament. Alex Kelly came in second, and Gabe Chasanoff came in seventh. Friday at Penn Baltimore in the rat race tournaments. Alex Kelly came in third, Gabe Chasnov came in fourth, and Adam Robinson came in fifth. Do we know what a rat race tournament is? So the rat race tournament was a three-part tournament. It was weirdly constructed. The first round, groups of four played several games together. One person from each group advanced. then there were four separate groups in the second phase each group played an amazing race okay to get i guess four finalists who then played a match play finals i think an amazing race should theoretically end with one person in each and so if you got four groups it seems like there would be four players and then they played match play cool interesting i played it two years ago at pilbottom or it's a lot of fun the the whole idea of grouping up people into four and then basically round robbing everyone in your group it's really cool sean ford also qualified for finals in both the rat race and the classics on saturday at pin baltimore gabe chasnov won the guinness book of world records certified world's largest stall ball tournaments and also at the baltimore city women's championship courtney wetzel and miriam nadler finished in third and fourth in the finals Nice. Also on Saturday in Wilmington, North Carolina, Greg Fertel won the Backyard Arcade Beach Bash number 10. By the way, remember that when we talk about Monday night and the Colliders match. On Sunday, April 20th, TD Matt Falzone held the JC Flippers Farewell Barcade Bash at Barcade Jersey City to celebrate the closing of that venue. After a week of selfie best score submissions, eight players played in the A finals in an amazing race format. and Dave Hurdle was the A winner.

high confidence · Benjamin Furiga citing Pinball Map data for NYC machine inventory

  • Jose Garcia attended Pentastic tournament in Massachusetts two weekends prior; paid $140 for 8 cards and scored 10 Whoppers

    high confidence · Jose Garcia reporting on Pentastic card format tournament experience in bullet journal segment

    • Kate Martin
    person
    Dante Olivaperson
    Dave Hurdleperson
    Elizabeth Graberperson
    Sean Grantperson
    Adam Kaneperson
    No Quarters for Laundryorganization
    Pinball Unionorganization
    We Collidersorganization
    Scrapple Leagueevent
    Triborough Seriesevent
    Barcade Jersey Cityvenue
    Scrapple Landvenue
    Buttermilk Barvenue
    Jack Barvenue
    Pentasticevent

    high · 31-player attendance at Scrapple Land; $5 side pot with $130 total purse paid to top 4; tight qualifying standings for A/B finals

  • ?

    event_signal: Card format tournaments (Pentastic) criticized for cost inefficiency and high variance; Jose Garcia's negative assessment: 'card format sucks' due to placement-based scoring where strong performances don't offset weak games

    high · Jose Garcia bullet point assessment; detailed explanation of $20-per-card mechanic and placement-scoring system creating 'wasted' cards

  • ?

    content_signal: NYC PinPod adding 'pinball bullet journal' segment for personal reflections, local observations, and non-competitive play experiences; moves beyond pure tournament/league coverage

    high · Dedicated Ball 3 segment; Jose Garcia and Benjamin Furiga sharing personal outfits, bike routes, venue experiences, machine setups

  • ?

    product_concern: Multiple machine issues reported via Pinball Map user feedback: Medieval Madness Merlin's Magic bug (Scrapple Land), Pulp Fiction flipper sticking (Scrapple Land), Congo/Spectrum offline (Gebhardt's), Flash drop target issue (resolved at Hallyards)

    medium · Weekly Pinball Map updates; user reports from Rocco1515, Nudgy, DMarmanneo, Dzenus265, Hitchhiker across multiple venues

  • ?

    machine_intel: Godzilla LE and D&D added to Scrapple Land and Commonwealth; Twilight Zone replacing Godzilla at Buttermilk Bar; suggests strategic machine cycling and LE rotation among NYC venues

    high · Machine updates: Godzilla LE added to Scrapple Land (Saturday), D&D added (Tuesday); Godzilla removed and Twilight Zone installed at Buttermilk (Tuesday)

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball community members (colliders, tournament players) regularly meet before/after matches at food/bar venues (Commodore for nachos/salads); social fabric extends beyond pinball play itself

    medium · Benjamin Furiga noting Colliders meeting at Commodore before Monday pinball matches; Jose Garcia and others extending night at Freddy's after Barcade Jersey City farewell

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Multiple tournament formats in use: Swiss match play (Scrapple League), card format (Pentastic), Amazing Race (JC Flippers Farewell, upcoming events), standard match play, round-robin groups (Rat Race, Pin Baltimore)

    high · Detailed tournament structure discussions; Pin Baltimore using three-part Rat Race format; Scrapple League Swiss; Pentastic card format; JC Farewell Amazing Race finals

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball Map data shows 302 machines at 81 NYC public locations as of April 25, 2025; active community crowdsourcing of machine availability and condition updates

    high · Benjamin Furiga citing Pinball Map inventory; weekly user updates on Pinball Map for condition, availability, removals, additions

    • 4:06
    Second was Matthew Lewandowski. Third, Dante Oliva. And fourth, Matt Falzone. 11 players played in the B finals. Amazing race. Max Michaels was the winner. Elizabeth Graber came in second. She was playing real strong all night. She had, when you look at those amazing race scores, she was beating everybody's ass until that last game of Medieval Madness. And also, shout out to Elizabeth Graber. Former troll and homie. Adam Rau came in third. Richard Cole came in fourth. I personally came in seventh in that B finals rat race. After both of those finals, the last place player from A played against the last place player for B to win a special trophy. It was pretty cool. It was like maybe a foot tall and it was a dead guy draped over a pinball machine. alex weisenberger took that home that's awesome on monday april 21st in nyc pinball's left flipper division pinball union faced off against intermission dolores at barque brooklyn and pinball union took it i was really excited for that if you see the result it was a very close match all the way through we got it in the end i think we had some really nice setup for the doubles to actually make sure that we could succeed in that last round coming into that round we had seven points versus five points and we're good enough to sweep it that puts us in a nice position for potentially getting into the top six teams do you mind if i ask what the games were that you played we played godzilla and bad girls i actually have a note about that that night we've had an attendance thing uh where most of the time we're only getting four people to show up but that day we actually have six and the opposite team intermission dolores only had four and we were talking about this one of the players is expecting a baby and that they might have to leave at any moment i'm like yeah i'm glad that you made the time to come out here to play pinball and become the fourth member but please do not do not hold back going back for your baby like yes yeah you know hey we appreciate it pinball pinball is everyone's hobby and and we all love it yeah but family does does some things for some people too our new york city flipper sport association hosted the lesser players at the wallace in upstate manhattan our association got a 10 to 6 home win always really happy to host the lesser players such a really fun group of players got to chatting with them and and had heard they left arcade chelsea a couple seasons back and they're now over at jack bar for their home but they had requested to make at the wallace their new home. A ban on new double-home team bars prevented them from being able to move up to join us. I guess the Lux Horses and Pinball Union are grandfathered in then. Yes. A couple of buttermilk teams on Tuesday night also, and I don't know, I guess Rulos? That's a question, I guess. It makes for really hard scheduling, you know, when you've got all of that to juggle. Parliament headed out to Woodside Queens to see the Mutants at Solid State, and the home team got a strong 12-4 win. That's them making their case for a bye week. Pretty strong case for it, too. We Colliders went to Midway to visit Balls of Steel. We got our asses handed to us, 15-1. It was a great time, even though we lost like that. I bet you looked cute. Oh, we were super cute. By the way, next week is jumpsuit night. So just look out. If you are on special when lit and you're coming to Buttermilk on Monday night, just look out because it's jumpsuit night. I'm going to be in my cutest dickies. Greg Fertel came in straight from LaGuardia and we started just a little bit late. We were happy to wait for him because we are always happy to see those folks. After having won the whatever it was that Eric said, the bash at the beach on Saturday or Sunday, now I know where he was coming from when he was coming in straight from LaGuardia, just like at Jose's match. Thank you, Greg. Life is more important than pinball sometimes, but thank you for jumping from pinball in one place directly to pinball in another place, like with only an airplane ride in between, I presume. The Deluxe Horses went to Skylark, where the pin pals made their case for the in-lane playoffs with a 12-4 win. The two for one-ers hosted the Aristocrats at McKenna's Pub and picked up an eight to eight tiebreak win. That puts the two for one-ers solidly in the playoffs. They've got their berth because the lesser players lost, because we colliders lost. The two for one-ers are in. Now here's the fun one. lion persons went to Rulo's where special when lit beat them eight to eight.
    9:17
    So that's that was the seven and one lion persons. And a gas went up at the Wallace. That's right. I'm sure a gas went up at the Wallace. I imagine a gas went up at solid state at exactly that moment. Special when lit really made their case to stay above the line. And they compromised Lion Person's position to get a bye with that win. So far, the lesser players and we colliders are on the outside looking in. It's over. There's no joy in Mudville. That's that. We're 1-8. Lesser players have 52 points. We have 36. Like I said, jumpsuit night. That's what we're playing for. Jumpsuit night. nyc fsa and the mutants are both eight and one nyc fsa has 96 points the mutants have 91 lion persons also have 91 but they just took that loss so they're seven and two they also need a Mutants loss or at least a 12-4 or better win over NYC FSA to get a bye now. They're definitely in the playoffs. You don't have to cry for them. They're in the Orbit playoffs. But they need a lot of work to get a bye or at least some work. I mean, a win does it effectively, but it has to be big. Should our association manage to pick up at least six points in the next match, we will have a buy. Right, right. And 11 points, which would also come with the win, would guarantee us the number one seed. The mutants clinch a buy by winning or losing as long as they outscore the lion persons. Parliament and Special When Lit are each six and three. Parliament has 81 points. Remember this number. Special When Lit has 70. balls of steel is five and four one win fewer with 92 points scored more than the mutants more than the lion persons that's right and way more than special when lit 22 more than the team in front of them with a record of one better so that if they won and that team lost they're definitely in front of them. If they won and Parliament lost, they're 11 points in front of Parliament who are 6-1. So they would probably end up in front of them also.
    11:54
    It would be surprising if they won and either of those teams lost and they didn't move significantly up. Parliament and Special Winlet, they seem to me to be more vulnerable to pinball unions overtures than Balls of Steel, probably. are based on just the number of points pinball union is also five and four but they're right now sitting in the in-lane playoffs they have 73 points a win can take them to the orbit playoffs but they will still potentially need a little help we're hoping on the results of every other team right like parliament special and balls of steel but also you know being top and in lane is also pretty good so we'll take either one this would be the first time that we would end up on the Orbit playoffs if we make it. Good luck. The Pin Pals cannot ascend to the higher division, but they are sitting with another bye in the in-lane playoffs at 4-5 with 71. The D-Lux horses and the Aristocrats are exactly tied at 3-6 with 66 points. All of these teams are in. the deluxe horses and the aristocrats maybe have a little bit of a chance to get a buy if pin pals lose and they win but they need help intermission dolores is also three and five and only one point behind them at 65 three and six sorry thank you and only one point behind that cluster at 65 and the two for oners are at three and six with 54 on tuesday april 22nd in Pinball NYC's right flipper division. The Pin Babes had a bye and got a 9-0 win. Pinister Six went to Bar Great Harry, where some of the players from Balls of Steel faced off against some of the players from the Colliders, but this time it was Tuesday night, so it was the Trolls. And once again, the team, Zen's team, I'm just going to call it, won the day by a wide margin, 14-2. Scrapple Squad went to visit the Schlubs at Jack Bar and remember the Schlubs have a bye coming up so a 9-7 win for that home team looks like a really good case to be in the top part of these playoffs Ball Drainers went to solid state where no quarters for Laundrie handed them a 12-4 loss in the battle of one win teams The replays went to Barcade Brooklyn where Rest in Pinball, parenthetically RIP, lost 7-9 at home. Danger, Danger went to At the Wallace and Harlem Globe Flippers picked up a 13-3 win at home. Our Butterballers hosted Neptune's Treasure at Buttermilk Bar. We got a 10-6 home win. So far, on the outside looking in is Rest in Pinball at 1-8 with 61 points. What they really want is a pin babes loss. If they win and the pin babes lose, the points become irrelevant. They could potentially, they're four points behind the replays also, so they could potentially make their way in if they won and the replays lost. But I think they're really looking for a pin babes loss, and they need to win to control their own destiny, obviously. No quarters for Laundrie. They've just run away with it, the right orbit division. They are 8-1 with 106 points scored after only 9. That sounds like so many points. 11.78 per match on average. Like 11.7 points on average per match, apparently. Harlem Globe Flippers and Neptune's Treasure are in. They're safe. They have 89 and 81 points respectively. Harlem Globe Flippers. Yeah, with a 7-2, sorry. The globe flippers are basically in. They're 8 points in front of Neptune's treasure. Neptune's treasure would have to win while globe flippers lost, or somehow, miraculously, if they both won, they would have to get a 16-0 win while globe flippers got an 8-8 win. And then it's still a tie, and so it depends on when they met this season. If they met this season, yes, quite so. We'll figure that out next week. But there are so many teams at 6-3. Danger, Danger, Pinister 6, Ball Drainers, and Butterballers are all 6-3. At 86, 74, 72, and also 72, there's also some drama here. There's some real drama with these two teams being tied. That is the liminal point. The way that it's written in the standings right now, the ball drainers are above the line and the butterballers are below it but there is not currently a tiebreaker other than that ball drainers are alphabetically first but there will be next week when these two teams face off against each other in week 10 in what is currently the in-lane division the schlubs are five and four with 75 now but we know how they're going to finish because they have a bye next week. They're going to be six and four with 84 points. That's how they're going to finish. So these six and three teams losing, that's what you're fighting against. You can't lose and get there, I don't think, because they already have outscored you by a lot or by a little. I think the schlubs are really well positioned right now to make this because they're not playing next week. Scrapple Squad is going to be in the middle of the pack at four and five with 70 points. The Trolls are three and six and are in. The replays and the Pin Babes are both two and seven. The Pin Babes have only 39 points because they forfeited once, and that's why they're vulnerable to rest in pinball, parenthetically. R.I.P. On Wednesday, April 23rd, 31 players showed up to Scrapple Land to play in the NYC Match Play Pinball League, soon to be renamed Scrabble League, session number five of their first season of 2025 under the direction of Greg Pavarelli with several assistants The goal in playing five rounds of match play with Swiss seating and IFPA scoring is to garner the most points towards their series total
    18:30
    Dante Oliva did it the best this Wednesday, 35 points, a perfect night. Dan Merrill and Tommy Ortega both got 27. Peter Larson, Sean Grant and Susie Zalewski all garnered 25. 13 players joined in the side pot with $5, matched by Scrapp-O-Land for a total purse of $130, paid out to the top four, Dante Oliva, Dan Merrill, and then Peter Larson and Sean Grant tied in third place for the money. They had a tie break. Peter Larson got third. After five of the six weeks of qualifying, The A-finals consist of Dante Oliva at 120 points, Sean Grant at 112. Last week we were saying that's almost uncatchable. Well, Dante caught him.
    19:23
    Alex Kelly's at 98, Adam Kane 96, Greg Pavarelli also 96. Chris Cafaro has 92. Three players are tied at 90 for two spots, Dan Merrill, Kate Smith, and Peter Larson. One of those would be at the top of B, joining Alan Gamboa and Sam Atlas at 88 points, Rob Wong at 85, Zach Till at 82, Wyndham Manning at 81, Nint Hu at 80, and myself at 78. Right below the line for B finals, Casey Johnson, Susie Zalewski, Woody Richman, all looking to make a move next week in the final qualifying week. those are some really tight scores between both of those finals like anyone from B can definitely make A with the appropriate win next week so good luck to everyone you could do it Eric I could theoretically jump to 96 which would be in the middle of A but that would be a big week for me I'm finding the Scrappleland machines quite challenging well they're i mean they they always readjust you have to readjust you know it's oh yeah like this so that's how they do it in their family on thursday april 24th no more presents thursday night strikes was held yours truly was the td 24 players came out till did the signups early on and then i td the rest of the night it was a pretty good night 24 players a lot of people that i haven't seen in a while like greg pavarelli and dave peller came out too so it was a great night adam kane took the night with just the one strike west took second and david and eda tied for third and they played a tiebreaker game on monster bash which david won that monster bash game when we were looking at it just you know waiting for the result the score came up and we were all like whoa is that an exact same score it was very close it actually came down to a hundred thousand and thirty point difference between them so 12 million 827 000 versus 12 million and 927 000 um so uh congrats to everyone that played and uh yeah congrats to david also who made it for the first time to the top three nice also on thursday the fourth session of the south slope pinball league 2025 number two was held at Buttermilk Bar under the direction of Kate Martin. Nineteen players showed up to play five rounds of match play with IFPA scoring with the goal of garnering points for their series total. Zen Zokniak did that the best with 29 points on the night. Caitlin Reese, myself, and Matthew Carlson all got 27. With four weeks done, the top eight in the A Finals at the moment, myself at 98 points. Steven Christopher has 89, Caitlin Reese, 84, Kate Martin, 81, Matthew Carlson, Robert Wong, and Rob Adler all have 77, and Monica Weidekamp has 76. In the B-finals, Jenna Altamirano has 75, Zen Zokniak, 67, Gus Gonzalez and Courtney Wessel at 63, Alicia Ritchie at 54, Tom Milburn at 51, and AJ Gould and Kelly Arasa both have 47. Just below the line.
    22:55
    Benjamin, you've got 46, but you've only been twice. Yeah, and same for Billy Vazine. Oh, yeah. Two-time attendees with 46 points, and right below us is a two-time attendee, Taylor Connolly, with 44 points. We only net points. Every single point is a net. Two weeks left to go to raise your total score. Yep. Next week on Monday, April 28th in Pinball NYC's left flipper division, Pinball Union will be watching for the results of Balls of Steel as they go to Owl Farm and visit Parliament. if they win and Balls of Steel loses they'll be in and Balls of Steel will move down if they and Balls of Steel both win big they have a chance because they could get past Parliament in the standings based on points Pinball Union will in fact be at Jack Bar playing the lesser players who enter this match 1-8 Special When Lit will visit us Colliders where we will hope to play spoiler to Special When Lit and potentially assist Pinball Union also there. Two for Oners will visit the Deluxe Horses at Barcade Brooklyn. Both of those teams are in the in-lane playoffs. The Deluxe Horses have a path to a bye if they win, but it's just a path that's not necessarily likely. The match at Rulos has the same sort of implications where the Pin Pals winning, definitely they get a buy, but the Aristocrats winning big could potentially get them a buy over the D-Lux horses and the Pin Pals. The Mutants will visit Intermission Dolores at the Monroe, and it's not going to have a lot of implications overall. You missed one there. What did I miss? our New York City Flipper Sport Association will be heading south about 70 blocks to visit the Lion Persons at Gebhardt's Beer Culture that one is definitely going to have some implications for who gets a buy and who don't definitely is on Tuesday April 29th No Quarters for Laundry will visit Scrapples Squad at Scrapple Land. That one doesn't have a whole lot of playoff implications. No quarters have thereby Scrapple's squad is going to be in the in-lane playoffs. The Pin Babes will visit Pinister Six at Skylark. Pinister Six has come on strong of late, if memory serves, and the Pin Babes, with a win, guarantee themselves a playoff berth. Butterballers will visit the Ball Drainers at Jack Bar where these two teams, which are exactly tied in the standings, will have their tiebreaker, even if it comes down quite literally to a tiebreaker.
    26:09
    Harlem Globe Flippers will visit the replays at Rulo's. Trolls will go to Milo's yard to visit Neptune's treasure.
    26:19
    Rest in pinball, parenthetically. RIP. will visit Buttermilk Bar's Danger Danger and the Shlubs will get nine points and a win as we were talking about. They are going to be six and four with 84 points at the end of all of this. Lots of drama this next week. Good luck to everyone. On Wednesday, April 30th the NYC Match Play Pinball League at Scrapple Land session number five will meet at pinball eight o'clock on Thursday May 1st, No Bro Presents Thursday Night Strikes will start at Jack Bar at 8pm sharp. And also the South Slope Pinball League will have their fifth meeting of this season at Buttermilk Bar at 8pm pinball time. On Saturday, May 3rd, quit talking and start chalking the Royale 2 with a 1.30pm start time and a 48 player cap. Looks like it's a match play with an amazing race finals. We've been talking about amazing race a lot recently, it looks like. That one's at Barcade Brooklyn. And on Sunday, May 4th, may the Silver Bowl be with you. The Silver Bowl Sunday at Single Cut, number 25, will be held at Single Cut Beersmiths in Queens at 3 p.m. Also, Stern Army's Rob Wong Invitational, you're invited, will be at Rullo's with 4.30 sign-ups and a 5 o'clock start and a tasty dish made by Bart. And also if you beat one of Rob Wong's high scores on one of the games, if you beat anything that has the initials P-U-R or C-A-T, you get a t-shirt. It says I beat the cat. I'm still chasing that high score. I don't wear printed t-shirts.
    28:06
    As of April 25th, 2025, there are 302 pinball machines in New York City at 81 public locations. Thanks to the creators and users of Pinball Map for this data, here are machine updates from the past week. On Friday, April 18th, user Rocco1515 went to Scrapple Land and said of the medieval madness, not much fun because Merlin's magic is bugged. User Nudgy was also at Scrapple Land and said that the right flipper is sticking up on their Pulp Fiction. On Saturday, a Godzilla limited edition was added to Scrapple Land. On Sunday, user TiltedTaylor let us know the drop target and scoring issue is fixed on the Flash at Hallyards in Brooklyn. And user MHG went by Transmitter Brewing and said of their Venom, playing totally fine. No insider connected problems. On Monday, April 21st, user ChamberTin was at Barcade Chelsea and said that the Pulp Fiction was off. On Tuesday, a Dungeons & Dragons was added to Scrapple Land. A Spider-Man and Attack from Mars were removed from the lineup at Commonwealth and replaced with a Godzilla and a Dungeons & Dragons. Also, a Godzilla was removed from Buttermilk Bar and a Twilight Zone was put in its place. On Wednesday, user DMarmanneo was at Single Cut Beersmiths in Queens and said that the Fishtails is back on. User Dzenus265 went to Gebhardt's Beer Culture and left several comments. Congo, machine was turned off. I assume it's down. Spectrum, it was turned off. Must be down.
    29:59
    And Pulp Fiction, it's set on adult mode, which is great. and on Thursday, April 24th, user Hitchhiker went by Gebhard Spear Culture and said, of Spectrum, game is up and running as it should. And of Congo, game is up and running as it should. I think this thing worked out last week, so we're going to try this again. It's a pinball bullet journal. We're going to start at the beginning and go to the end the way that everybody should, which is probably what some character in Alice in Wonderland should have said. jose tell me you've got something before last friday when we recorded but it is definitely chronologically first and it is certainly worthy of some bullet points what happened two weekends ago pentastic was held in massachusetts i went with another couple of folks from new york city the main tournament was a card format tournament and i just wanted to uh make sure that my bullet point i'm not a big journal person but it literally is just three words and it is card format sucks um yeah like like you have to play x prescribed games yeah you have a bank of if i remember correctly 14 games and uh a card that is five games so you play five different games per card each card is 20 and uh your placement in each of those games compared to everyone else gives you points and those points add up in your card and that is your final total is going to be your placement in the whole tournament if you have two great games like i did and three really bad games those two games basically don't count because your placement now is very low on the standings so you know that's 20 down the drain and uh i bought eight cards so i played um something to the tune of $140 worth of cards.
    31:54
    I got 10 Whoppers out of it. Sounds like a good Whopper per dollar value. It was a lot of fun. If I were going to put those two things in an economy together, that seems like that would be a good value for that. Yeah, it was a lot of fun though. That's the second bullet point. Well, this past week, the weather really warmed up. So I wound up biking to a bunch of my pinball stuff, which I like to do. I just checked. I biked 23 miles over the past week. Nice. Also, with the warmer weather, I was trying out some new outfits. And so a lot of this stuff's pretty visual, and I put it all together in a blog post at noonewancetotalkaboutcompetitivepinball.com, where you can go and see my outfits and my bicycle routes and score sheets from Pinball NYC matches, all that stuff. In terms of bullet points, on Sunday, we talked about I was at the Barcade Jersey City Farewell Bash. That was pretty great. Turned into a real late night. Kate Martin and Matt Grady showed up on their way back from Pym, Baltimore. And after we closed down Barcade Jersey City, we took our car to Freddy's and wound up staying out pretty darn late. That was my Sunday. Oh, my.
    33:11
    On Monday, played in Team League, our NYC FSA, got the score sheet up on the blog. We played NYC pinball at Barcade Brooklyn. And I wanted to mention that that Monday was actually really, really quiet. Like, I mean, it's the day after Easter. So I assume Easter Sunday that is. So I assume that's probably why. But literally the only people that were in Barcade were the two teams that were playing pinball that day. So it was eerily quiet, even with the loud music. my monday bullet points actually start before the pinball nyc match when i went to commodore to get a bite as often happens a few colliders and i often meet up at commodore to grab a chicken sandwich or some nachos or something i went with the wedge salad which i questioned myself later as to whether or not i should have ordered a salad in such a place but it was it's a wedge salad it's you know, iceberg lettuce. It was actually really good. There's a slightly spicy dressing. I'm sad to report that the Gilligan's Island pinball machine was not working. When I ordered at the bar, the bartender told me that that was going to be the case. You know, when he gave me my little number and I said, I'm going to go over to the pinball machine. And he was like, I don't know if it's working, but these other video games are on free play. I don't know if it was working or not either because I couldn't put any money into it to find out. But I assume that everything was taped over because it's non-functional. They really need the professor to invent a coconut pinball machine. So my Monday Night Bullet, after having played our match in Williamsburg, and you heard a little bit about this in my update also, but I went to, I saw Jose at Barcade Brooklyn and agree, there was no one, like I sort of realized over the course of the week, my social awareness is sometimes low as we've talked about occasionally and I sort of realized that like, wait a minute, when I left there, I might have been the only patron. Now, some of this, I'm that wrapped up in myself that I just assume most of the time that I am the only person in the world anyway. So I could have just been living in my head. But it kind of felt like I was the only person in there when I left. And yeah, it was Tuesday when I left. But it was only just Tuesday when I left. Tuesday night, I biked to our Butterballers match at Buttermilk. Another cute outfit. That was interesting. When the Twilight Zone first showed up and we came in on Tuesday night, it was $4 for one credit because Max had mistakenly set it up. He was able to come back on Thursday and fix that, but for Tuesday night, buttermilk was nice enough to front us the coin drop. I have a question. Yeah. Did anybody put a quarter in the machine and see if it gave you... If it was just that it was backwards? Well, no. If it was taking the dollar as the quarter and the quarter as the dollar, Once or twice I remember putting three quarters into a machine that was supposed to be 75 cents for a play or you know three for two dollars and finding that I had four credits or something like that after putting three quarters in It was for some weird thing like that On Wednesday I bicycled up to Scrapple Land for League During one game, I set a personal best on Congo, more than double my previous personal best, 1.8 billion. And at Scrapple Land. I'm getting a hold of that, Congo. And another cute outfit. And then on Thursday, I biked to Buttermilk again for the South Slope Pinball League. And that was a good night. I got those 27 points. That's the best I've ever done on a weeknight in league in this format. Equal to last week, I believe. Yeah, it's the third time I've gotten 27. I went and checked all the times under this new format of league. I did it once last season of South Slope and twice this season. Nice. Congrats. Yes. Yeah. Good work. I also saw some neat stuff around the web over the past week and collected those links and put them on my blog post. I just wanted to mention this one, this really cute little comic zine. It's just a short personal comic, and it's got a little bit of pinball in it. It's not the basis of it, but it's in there, and it was a fun read. I have one little Thursday thing, which is that I got my medal from the last opportunity of 2024 that was at Kate's place. She gave it to me and I was like, what the hell do I have a medal for? And she was like, that thing that you like needed to go to sleep instead of sticking around for like three months ago, dude, like here. so i i'm thankful to kate for having kept that all this time and solved all of all of those transactions so thanks for that oh yeah also on thursday i read the news that david thomas the singer for the famed art punk band pair ubu had passed away they're a little favorite of mine i blasted some pair ubu during my bike ride up to buttermilk i have two things for thursday actually i td'd the thursday night strikes yeah there was an interesting occurrence with the creature after the last player tilted the machine i gave it a couple of seconds and i went into it shot the shot on the right orbit and it immediately tilted there was no dangers no nothing you know it's oh it's the the stuff that happens with older machines right no big issue we reset the machine we start the game again and while i was doing really well in that first ball for the first game, the reset, I couldn't even get 10 million points. So, uh, oops, but that's pinball. Yeah. It's happened to my opponents before. Now it's happened to me. It all evens out in the end. Right. The other thing I was going to mention is before that, that eliminated me for the night, but before that I had a game of Jaws. My opponent was doing really well and something clicked and I apparently got like 350 million points, uh, in one ball, which is a personal best for like one ball on Jaws. Nice. So I was very happy about that. Yeah, that's great. Jose, you're pulling together an event called the NYC Triborough Series. How does that work? I got an inspiration from the Stern Pro Circuit event, which is a couple of events that are held all over the US and bring in a lot of people. And the idea is to just showcase a lot of like the really great pinball places that we have in New York City. Staten Island has one place that has one pinball machine. I don't think we're going to get any tournaments there. And as far as I can tell from pinball map, there are no machines in the Bronx that are public. But in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, we have plenty of pinball places. And most of those locations have TVs that are organizing events. So the idea is every month we grab one of those events. We say, oh, this one counts for the NYC Triborough Series. And based on your standings in that event, You get some sort of seeding into what is going to be a final event in November where we crown a New York City Triborough champion. Right now, we've gone through the first four. The very first one was Jack Bar. It was one of the Slaptisms that Sam was hosting. Single Cut Sunday by Tommy was the second one. Rulos, Robbong Invitation was the third one. And the next one is going to be the Pimberg Satellite Ticket that is going to be at Buttermilk. And the idea is I'm trying to split these around the three boroughs. So the next one is probably going to be in like Queens or Manhattan. It's very experimental. I don't have a full list of what's going to be for the rest of the year because I still need to contact TDs and find out what sort of events people are hosting. I'll try to find some way to make it more publicly available. But if not, you can definitely follow the Match Play event series. As soon as I know what event I'm going to be, it's going to be hosted. It's going to go on there. And if you're part of the Discord, I also try to announce it there. Make sure to put the link to that event page on the show note. Yes. So it'll be one tournament each month through October, I think I'm counting. Correct. And then the top performance in Five of the Nine count towards your seeding. It's going to be, I'm thinking, top 30. And that's just going to be seeding into a non-IFPA tournament after that. Benjamin, you're in the running. You're in the top 30, even though you may not have done it on purpose or you didn't know that the Triborough series was happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah, quite so. I did not know that it was happening, but you told me earlier tonight I am qualified. Anyone can go and look at the combined standings as they are now after three events. There's 62 people who've played in at least one. I don't think anyone's played in three, but a number of people have played in two of them, including myself. Including Eric, who is currently in first. currently seated first just for playing in two tournaments that i decided to go play in not only that one of those i believe you won or got second so i got second place yeah second place at that single cut tournament oh right but it was courtney this definitely makes me hmm yeah that's the one courtney was the winner yeah it definitely makes me interested to see what you know future tournaments will be added to the series because now i've you know i'm I'm invested.
    43:03
    I know I'm going to the Pinberg Satellite ticket tournament. That's going to be one of the harder ones, I think, to get some good points out of because there's going to be so many people. There's like a re-seeding, re-scoring scenario here, event to event, is that right? Like if I got 35 points in a five-round match play event, do I get 35 points in the Triborough series? Great question. No, what I grab is the final standings that are submitted to IFPA. And then I translate those into a, let's say like a best game format where you have 100 points for first place, 99 points for second, 97 points for third. So if you got 35 points, that actually probably means you were first. So you would get instead 100 points for this final seeding calculation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gotcha. So I don't remember how big the Pinnberg satellite is. Is it 40 or so? Yeah.
    44:06
    Just getting into it, just playing in it, you're going to get like 60-some points. Get you right up there, and then another one at 60. Even if you've come in last in the tournaments but show up to all of them, you're going to do pretty well. I tried to make it opt-in early on, but it was really hard to get registrations to work. so instead i'm getting literally everyone's names in there and then somehow you can opt in later yeah it'll be an invite yeah yeah exactly somehow i will contact people and then if they you know rsvp no uh then i will go on to the next the next person down the list and keep going until we have 30 people and if you do it in a large enough venue you can offer a b format for the you know when you say like the top 40 should show up because who knows yep yep you know who actually gets to make it yeah that's true or an open b this is all an effort to just have some more interesting competitive pinball i want to say and ways to get people to move around i mean right now people don't know that it's happening so they're not actually trying to like make a tournament at the wallace but that's one of the places i want to host it's at the wallace milo's milo's yard sure um you know some places that might be a little further away but certainly um you know should deserve some visibility. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There's a lot of tournament worthy venues in New York City. I haven't been to any of the gutters, but I feel like they have large enough collections. Randolph Beer has a large enough collection. And I just named three places that are actually probably a short walk from a ferry, but also in three different boroughs, right? Speaking of moving all over the boroughs, I actually have an update for the Pinball Marathon. I hurt myself earlier this year, my knee specifically. So I probably shouldn't be walking around and moving a lot during one particular weekend. So I pushed Pinball Marathon further into the future. If not Labor Day this year, then sometime in 2026. I will try to keep everyone updated. There is a Instagram page that you can follow and I'll try to post there, but I am terrible at keeping that up to date. So this is probably the best way for me to get that information out there. Right on. I bet we can figure out a way for there to be an Instagram link somewhere, either in show notes or maybe even at Eric. No one wants to talk about competitivepinball.com. Nice. Very good. I appreciate it. As I was listening to last week's episode, you were talking about the VUCC and the GI, and it got me wondering what other types of terms or maybe acronyms exist in pinball. And I think it would be a great, great time to just like talk about it here. I loved this idea when Jose brought it forward. I think Eric jumped immediately into, I also was so inspired by it and yet found it challenging to actually find, I was just like, oh, let's all come with three to five pinball terms and be ready to talk about that. And I found it challenging to get to three that I did not want. here's the thing i wanted this to be a service because sometimes it's hard to just like ask somebody when they're spouting out acronym after acronym or term after term about what all of those things are particularly if you're new to the game and you know all of us were new to the game at some point and i'm not at all new to the game but you all heard me have to ask eric gi just last week, as Jose points out. And I still, I found it hard to come up with things that I didn't feel like were going to be condescending, but I came up with a couple. It sounds like, Jose, you came up with a bunch. Yeah, I used inspiration. There is a wonderful website on the internet called the New Pinball Dictionary, which takes terms from like a Reddit, subreddit, and like just gets them fleshed out as a real term in pinball. They have a lot of nonsensical ones in there, but there's some really useful ones as well that I, you know, I can talk about for sure. I also want to make sure, Eric, that you have something to say here, but also this is all at funwithbonus.com, right? Yep. Yep. So that is to say, this is Steve Bowden collecting these things for sure. We love Steve Bowden. And I was incredibly thankful that when we announced that NYC Pin Pod was coming back, that it was only a couple of days before Fun With Bonus' daily post was, hey, this is coming back. That was touching to me. I love Steve, but Fun With Bonus, I cannot recommend it enough.
    49:02
    Is he still daily posting pinball content for the last 10 years, 15 years? I think that's what Fun With Bonus was, was like a once a day Tumblr at the beginning or something like that. And I think he's still doing roughly that. He's great. I love funwithbonus.com. I need to give that shout out here because it's a part of that. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure we referenced the fact. Hey, this is Steve Bowne. Yeah, Steve Bowne. Former local pinball great. Yes. Yeah.
    49:39
    Former local, comma, pinball great. Yeah, yeah, right. Period. I just want to make sure we've said that that way yes that's how I intended to say it I hope it came through thanks for the punctuation and also a great guy and a great ambassador for the game I have a couple of real terms that we could talk about but I also have some funny ones that I would be interested to see if you can guess what those terms are I'm into it Okay, maybe we can go through like some real ones first. And just let me know if you've like, well, when I say real, I mean, more common. Just let me know if these are on your list as well. But my very first one is house or rather, particularly a house ball. I think that one comes up a lot and it's not obvious necessarily what it is. You plunge the ball, it bounces around, particularly in Paragon. It happens to me way too often in Paragon. it bounces around and it doesn't touch a flipper you cannot flip to save that ball a house ball is when you cannot flip at all and touch the ball a lot of pinball players have gone through that experience unfortunately i've always understood when someone turns around and says house ball from context what it meant but i've never understood the etymology of it do we know that I have a guess. Yeah.
    51:04
    It's a ball that goes to the house, as in the jig when you're gambling. It's the house edge. Yeah. You pay that ball to the house. If I had to guess, that's exactly what it is. That's where it is in my head, too. And I that is I would like to tie this both to things that to one of the things that I wrote down, but also to an earlier segment in this season where we were discussing gambling. It's really hard to disentangle pinball from gambling. Just throwing that out there again. Really hard to disentangle these two things. When you say a house ball, it's a ball that went to the house. What that means is that I gave someone money and they gave me nothing. It was I just paid the house. I just gave it away. That was 33 cents out of my dollar right there. Yeah. And that etymology theory is listed on the new pinball dictionary listing for house. Oh, how about that? See? Excellent. A funny one under that same page is it's a house party. it's when a full group of three or four people playing a game all have a house ball particularly in the same ball and i i bet this happens a lot with like em machines also with kid and play i uh i i did a show with them when they were about 50 and they did do the dance the next one is uh well it's a combination um but i'll start with the with the one that is more illegal let's say it's the bang back i think if you don't know it and you hear that word you could probably guess what it is especially if you see it yeah sure but a bang back is when the ball is coming out of the outline and uh you're about to drain for sure but you hold up particularly from the left outline you hold up your left flipper and then you position your hand so that you can push the machine really really hard forward and cause that ball to flip up into your right flipper and save it this move is very illegal in literally all tournaments um for two reasons one is um you can hurt yourself uh hitting something that hard with your palm you're most certainly going to hit your like hurt your wrist the rules are very careful to call out that is the most important reason that it is illegal whether or not it is the truth also hurting the machine, I guess, is in there, but competitive integrity, I guess, which goes hand in hand with the other term that I was going to say, which is a death save. So if you do a bang back from the left, the death save is, I think, easier from the right out lane. I think it's necessary from the right geometrically. I think it must be coming in from the right to do the thing you're talking about. So it's coming down quickly enough that you can hold up a flipper, but you have to hold up the left flipper again. You have to slide to the right as the ball is coming to the left so that it causes that motion into the right flipper again. And you've saved the ball death saves are usually not illegal in casual competitions but um they are illegal in any ifpa competition as someone who has quite literally never learned to death save i have never purposely i have once or twice had the ball bounce in just that way and been like no or been playing by myself and been like yeah fine but right not doing that but i think i don't when you say they are typically allowed in casual competition i feel like somebody should ask me that question before we just start rolling into the fucking game with assuming that we're all just death saving everything that comes into the right lane right yeah that's that's fair i don't know if i were playing a dollar game with people that i feel comfortable doing it but if you know I just hanging out playing with friends or something or if I practicing hey free practice ball Right, right. I personally have the view of, like, I also don't do death saves or have tried them, but for a different reason. I think it also opens up the door to having uncertainty for any of your scores going forward. Like, if you have a GC that you have created out of, like, saving the ball 5,000 times because the tilt is removed from that machine, you know, you can make the argument that that's how you play pinball. There's no tilt, so I can, you know, do whatever I want to get there. The operator tells me where I can put the machine. This is a very clear principle that underlies the way that I play pinball in Park Slope. Once you start doing it, I also don't want to accidentally do it, you know? just like I'm in the heat of the moment I really want to win this game I'm in an IFPA tournament that's why I've never taught myself because it just feels like I will accidentally do it and then throw my hands up and say zero points please I can sometimes notice certain tournament players playing and when it starts to go to the right I can see them tensing their body in a certain way and then backing off from it.
    56:30
    Yeah, you have to be mindful of it. But Benjamin, you mentioned something. You said, oh, sometimes I've seen the ball coming from the right out lane and it bounces and it just casually jumps up into the flipper. I actually think that that's okay. Like you can play on. Look, there's a difference. It is. It's a Lazarus, yeah. the the difference i think between what the times that i think i've been like nope is that i have probably just thrown the machine to one side or the other and it may or may not have been that my intent was i mean it definitely wasn't that my intent was to death save because i I don't think of that barrier as a diverter in the way that I think of certain static barriers on certain pinball machines as diverters just so long as I move the play field under them to be a diverter. I don't think of that piece of the machine that way.
    57:33
    But yeah, I think there have been times that I've been like, oh, I just moved this a couple of inches and look at that. A Lazarus came out of it. is it a Lazarus is it I have one more of the regular terms before I ask you some questions about some funny ones and then if y'all had any other terms that you wanted to bring up we should do that then but my last one is bricking I think that's one that you'll hear a lot the definition on the new pinball dictionary is actually a little bit different from what I think of it my definition is whenever I try to hit a shot and it hits a post instead particularly if it hits a post and then it just goes straight down the middle and like drains my ball. That's what I would call a brick. The new pinball dictionary's definition is when you're on a cradle, when you're cradled up and then you hit the post with your pinball, you don't have to drain at all. It's just from a cradle trying to hit a shot and then it just bounces right back because you missed. Right. There's an interesting question of the level of artistry, which is required here right because the way that steve bowden plays pinball the only way that he is interested in talking about taking shots is from a trap i'm pretty sure and so i i can understand that for him that is where the definition begins i think that for certainly people who flow a lot exactly where you're coming from is exactly and i think like it's a similar end result it's just because both ways it's chaos right both ways it's this wasn't what i was expecting both ways this was i you know i had to be ready for it but it wasn't what i planned for yep that's right and it's another experience that we've all gone through i'm sure yeah to me it equates to basketball i think when when you hit the rim and not the you know and not the maybe i'm wrong about that maybe it's that like you hit the rim and the the glass at the same time or you hit the rim just square make a nasty sound right yeah it just like makes the yeah that that that that is the brick through a brick that actually sounds like it's probably what it is. I mean, I'm sure that is the overall etymology. That's a sports thing that feels like I've known for my whole life. Well, I had a few acronyms. One of them is what we call WAPR. W-P-P-R stands for World Pinball Player Rankings. WAPR, points, is what we are collecting. That's right. But we just call them Whoppers. Because it's such a great acronym. Yeah. It would be pedantic to insist on saying Whopper Points in the opposite way of calling it an ATM machine.
    60:39
    Yes. Another inscrutable acronym, IFPA, the International Flipper Pinball Association. Don't know why the flipper's in there, but I find it charming. I looked in the history of the IFPA on their website. The best you can find is in the Pinball Legends section on Steve Epstein, who had a big part of reviving the IFPA when that happened in, I think, 2007. But that was them reviving it. It existed in some form, I think, in the 70s. They must have been trying to disambiguate from something.
    61:17
    The non-flipper machines? But that would be way too early, right? Maybe the bingo machines? Maybe it went back that far. I don't know. But that's an interesting one. And as long as we're throwing in an extra flipper, how about the NYC FSA? Sure. New York City Flipper Sport Association. The team that I co-captained, but I didn't name it. That happened before me. I don't know. I find it kind of charmingly clunky. It's sing-songy. It couldn't just be the NYC SA. you couldn't just be the sports association and the pinball team that that would be silly with the nycpa pinball association pinball association i mean i guess pinball sport association i don't know sport is also like a funny little word in there yeah right i mean that's the thing you couldn't you you really need something about the sport flipper sport i don't know i kind of like it it's it's between it's between that and whatever you do swimming laps with fins on your feet.
    62:23
    These are the two flipper sports, I imagine. I had two things that I wrote down. One was Herb, which I think we've probably talked about more than once here, but it is the name for a best game tournament. I'm pretty sure it's named after a dude named Herb who lived somewhere near Pittsburgh and was the guy who made the rules for probably the Papa tournament. I wrote that down. But I also wrote down mostly because it also is a childishly hilarious way to refer to a breast, the term knocker.
    63:06
    I actually wrote it down for other reasons. It's actually because there is a physical element to this thing that lets you know that there's a replay. Y'all know when I say a knocker, I know, Eric, you know what I'm talking about. Jose, you know what I'm talking about. But for everybody who is listening, in case you didn't, there is an actuator. There is a solenoid, just like there is for flippers in these pinball games, in older pinball games that made that loud clap sound when you got a replay or a special or an extra ball or whatever. that is something physically impacting a thing that is attached to the box of the pinball machine making the big clap sound. All right, Jose, you got some funny stuff. I think I'll limit it to three and then we can see where we are. And I'll try to do these from like order of difficulty. So I think this is the easiest one. And this one is skill search. What do you all think that is? I'm familiar with the term I am not okay should I guess what it is? yeah if you can I would imagine that it is a sequence that I have to match for a skill shot like a sequence of lights whereby for instance the rollovers on the walking dead whereby I have to roll over them when they're lit and not when they're unlit in order to score more points. Is that roughly the idea of a skill search? No. Nope, sorry. What do we got? Yeah, so a skill search, particularly in older machines, is when you're trying to hit your shots, you're really just hitting nothing. You're hitting post and post and post, literally not hitting any switches, and the machine starts searching for the ball because you haven't hit any switches. That's a skill search. Yeah, I thought that was a pretty funny one. I've definitely been skill-searched myself, so it's how it goes.
    65:17
    Second one, here we go. This is a moonwalk. This one has a particular definition in the new pinball dictionary, but I think even if it isn't that definition, there's still a moonwalk that can happen. Does it have to do with a drop catch? No. it could be associated with one a drop catch could lead to a moonwalk in fact that's probably one of the more common ways that it happens when a ball starts rolling up an in lane and just rolls itself right over the post into the out lane moonwalks right over that does seem to me like it would be the likeliest way to get one a shat maybe being the second likeliest because you're getting a direct shot up the in lane. The pinball dictionary definition is actually when it comes from a ramp. Let's say that you hit a ball really hard. You hit a ramp like in Godzilla, and it's trying to come back into your in lane. But the ball still has so much spin that it kind of like spins right there and goes straight into the out lane. So you thought it was safe, but it actually moonwalked right out of there. I've definitely played a few machines that have a tendency to do that. I know on, I think it's fairly common on the ramp return on Tron. I was going to say, you like those John Borg machines, don't you? Yeah, yeah. I feel like it happens on those. Definitely. And I think, I mean, I see a lot of Trons have a foam deadening square attached to the bottom of that plastic ramp return. And I think that is supposed to help with slowing the ball down from spinning so much and moonwalking. Right, yeah. here's hoping that it doesn't happen to any of us anymore right indeed i have two or three more i think this next one's pretty interesting everybody out of the pool i think it comes from a from a reference to a movie but i actually don't know i mean i i am certain that there are a million times at every like country club pool that that is shouted i don't know what all of the scenario are in which it's appropriate. You know, your standard Caddyshack scenario. Right. Yeah.
    67:42
    Anyone want to hazard a guess? Oh, Eric, are you stumped? Do you not know? I've heard it. I'm just trying to remember. I think I probably heard it first from Bo and Karen on a video. That's definitely when you multi-drain out of multi-ball. an empty ball. Oh, okay. Not only multi-drain, it has to be instantaneous. It has to be a thing where, I don't know, all three balls decided to just disappear.
    68:12
    The lifeguard blew the whistle, said everybody out of the pool. The next one is Final Destination. I mean, that just seems to me like it's the drain. Is it a reference to the movie? It is a reference to the movie. Which I haven't seen, but people talk about it, And I think I have an idea what the movie's about, but I have no idea. So I'll give you a reference of what happens in Final Destination, and then maybe you'll figure it out from there. In Final Destination, people get premonitions of how they're going to die before it actually happens.
    68:47
    But it usually always happens anyway. Yeah. Can't avoid it. but based on your description of that movie i mean it sounds like your your classic drain bow you see it coming here comes the drain there's nothing you can do the ball's just out in the middle of nowhere you got nothing to nudge it off of yeah but all of these also this is uh every one of these has had some specific like it's coming back from this yeah so i'm going to say i missed a ramp and it comes straight down the middle feels like the thing it it that i think Benjamin's one is closer. A combination of both of you is closer. The idea is that it's going to drain, but you actually save it. You nudge and you save it, and then it does a little bounce on a slingshot. Second goes anyway.
    69:39
    You make the save, but it goes in. But then it goes anyway. That is the story of one third of my awesome slide saves.
    69:50
    All right. And I think I think this is the last one. And I just I just found this one very interesting because it's happened to me so many times. Or at least I perceive that it happens to me a lot. It's called an Icarus round. I think I can work that out. I mean, everybody flew too close to the sun. I think it would be if you did specifically in Swiss. you have a great first round or two great rounds and then you're playing against the toughest. That's interesting. That is very close. The particular definition is you did really well and now you are pit off against the strongest players and you immediately fail. You did really well and then you got put into the A group and then you just lost everything. Right. I spent $200 qualifying on that one machine where I got 100 points and Bowen Cairns fucking kicked my ass in round one.
    70:59
    Yeah, that. Yep, that's the one. Uh-huh. Or I mean, look, we just said Bowen's name twice. Let's shout out the generation who are actually winning pinball right now. Jason Zahler or Escher Lefkoff Oh my gosh One of the links in my pinball bullet journal on NoOneWantsToTalkAboutCompetitivePinball.com is to a very entertaining video John Cosson in Australia made at a 24 hour tournament where things get wilder and wilder and And a YouTube comment on the video from user at Escher Lefkoff says, for legal reasons, this was not me in this video.
    71:55
    Those are all the ones that I have. Thank you so much for indulging me. Oh, those are great. That was a lot of fun. Yeah. Thank you for that. That is awesome. Yeah.
    72:07
    That's all for this week's pod. I'd like to thank Jose for joining the panel today. Join us next week when I believe Tommy Ortega will join the panel and we will in ball one, as usual, run down local competition results. In Ball 2, we'll do a Pinball Bullet Journal and updates. And in Ball 3, we'll talk with Tommy about the Single Cut series that he's been running. And it'll be released on the day of the next Single Cut Beersmiths event. Between now and next week, whatever you're up to, go get them, food folk.
    72:51
    On Wednesday, April 23rd, 29 players showed up at Scrapple Lands for the NYC Match Play Pinball League. Sorry, can I stop you? It says 31 on the screenshot. Yeah. I'm looking at the arenas. Ah, you sure are. Yes. almost as many pinball machines as humans were in the room