Episode 374: Olli-Mikko Ojamies

Pinball Profile·podcast_episode·17m 37s·analyzed·Sep 23, 2023

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

Finnish legend Olli-Mikko Ojamies discusses pinball culture, tournament formats, and Europe's competitive scene at IFPA 18.

Summary

Jeff Teolis interviews Olli-Mikko Ojamies, a legendary Finnish pinball player attending his 10th IFPA World Championship, at IFPA 18 in Germany. They discuss the active Finnish pinball scene with emerging young talent, European tournament culture and organization, the challenges of IFPA's new Euro fee system, and various tournament formats including match play, pin golf, and the Papa card-based format.

Key Claims

Olli-Mikko has attended 10 IFPA World Championships and approximately 13-14 Papa World Championships
high confidence · Direct statement by Ojamies: 'This is actually my 10th IFPA' and 'you probably have to count also some Papa World Championships also in probably around 13th, 14th'
Finland has a growing young player base led by Markus Virtanen (number one player in Finland), including Lucas Martin and Marco Suvanto (age 11, who finished top 16 at EPC)
high confidence · Ojamies describing the Finnish pinball scene: 'now we have this awesome young player base who like led by the number one player in Finland, Markus Virtanen, but also followed by Lucas Martin and really awesome player. Giro Suvanto...he was the best finisher in EPC, finishing in top 16'
Markus Virtanen uses an unusual playing stance with his right leg underneath the pinball machine, hugged up against the coin box
high confidence · Ojamies describing Virtanen's technique: 'He's hugged right up against the coin box. He has his right leg underneath the pinball machine, kind of holding the leg'
Flights from Finland to major European tournament venues cost approximately 200 euros if booked early
high confidence · Ojamies: 'I would estimate that like 200 euros for the flights if you book them early on'
Börås Open in Sweden runs two parallel tournaments annually—one on newer machines, one on classics—that can be swapped
high confidence · Ojamies explaining Börås format: 'you have so many older and newer games that you basically can have the same tournament twice a year, which is like one tournament is main tournament on newer machines and side tournament on classic machine'
IFPA 18 uses match play format and is exceptionally well-organized with reasonable scheduling, lunch breaks, dinner breaks, and sufficient sleep time
high confidence · Ojamies: 'I think this is the best tournament in the world. also in sense of organizing. It's like the schedule is reasonable enough...everyone gets to sleep at some hours'
Ojamies maintains detailed statistical databases of IFPA World Championship results in Google Sheets, tracking game scores, win-losses, and match details

Notable Quotes

“I think this is the best tournament in the world. also in sense of organizing.”
Olli-Mikko Ojamies @ N/A — Endorsement of IFPA 18 organization and format; reflects experienced tournament player's perspective on event quality
“If there is a crazier pinball stance in pinball, I have not seen it.”
Olli-Mikko Ojamies @ N/A — Describes the unusual playing stance of Markus Virtanen, highlighting distinctive playstyle in competitive pinball
“We don't do it at all. The culture is different in Europe than in the States.”
Olli-Mikko Ojamies @ N/A — Explains why the Papa card-based format is not prevalent in European tournaments, highlighting cultural and economic differences
“It's like the German culture of organizing a pinball hall seems to be that all the lines are in perfect form and also like games grouped together. I love all those classic ballet games and seeing like a row of 20 of them in the same row.”
Olli-Mikko Ojamies @ N/A — Praise for German pinball venue organization standards and appreciation for classic game lineups
“It's such a cruel format to get nice good games inside your ticket that it's like it's not only like like attempt having more and more attempts and trying the single good scores but no you have to like play well in that exact situation”
Olli-Mikko Ojamies @ N/A — Explanation of why the Papa card-based format is challenging and tests true skill consistency
“And that's the thing that kind of drives me nuts sometimes is when people who've never organized a tournament or have never volunteered to scorekeep or anything else, and they're critical, and they don't know what goes into these things.”
Jeff Teolis @ N/A — Commentary on lack of appreciation for tournament organizer effort and volunteer work in the community
“It's been awesome to see how it works in the States since it gives such more value to nationals. And the States and the provincials”
Olli-Mikko Ojamies — Acknowledges the value of structured national/provincial tournament systems in creating tournament hierarchy and incentive structure

Entities

Olli-Mikko OjamiespersonJeff TeolispersonMarkus VirtanenpersonLucas MartinpersonMarco SuvantopersonJürgen HolmpersonChristian HolstenpersonNeil McRaeperson IFPAorganization

Signals

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business_signal: IFPA's implementation of Euro fee system in Europe creates confusion and resistance among tournament directors and players; viewed as lacking clarity on value proposition and creating potential tax complications across different EU countries
high · Ojamies resigned as Finnish county director over fee system; expressed concerns about tax law compliance and unclear reinvestment of collected fees
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community_signal: Detailed statistical tracking of tournament results by dedicated community members (Ojamies maintains comprehensive game score databases) enhances tournament viewing experience and competitive analysis
medium · Teolis values Ojamies' data work: 'when you have data of those kind of defeats available it makes like it much more interesting' and Ojamies explains providing entertainment value
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community_signal: Finland has a developing competitive pinball scene with emerging young talent base (Markus Virtanen, Lucas Martin, Marco Suvanto age 11) gaining prominence in European tournaments, signaling healthy succession and growth
high · Ojamies: 'now we have this awesome young player base...he was the best finisher in EPC, finishing in top 16' and describes young players gaining skills rapidly
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competitive_signal: Distinctive playing techniques like Markus Virtanen's unusual stance (leg underneath machine, hugged to coin box) are effective and demonstrate that unconventional approaches can succeed at elite level
medium · Ojamies acknowledges Virtanen's stance works for him: 'It's his style, and it works for him so well. He gets so much more power using the long feet stance'
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Topics

Finnish pinball scene and young player developmentprimaryEuropean tournament organization and cultureprimaryIFPA World Championship experience and formatprimaryTournament formats and their merits (match play, pin golf, Papa card-based)primaryIFPA Euro fee implementation and its impact on European tournamentssecondaryCompetitive pinball playing techniques and stancessecondaryStatistical analysis and data tracking in pinball tournamentssecondaryTournament organizer challenges and volunteer appreciationmentioned

Sentiment

positive(0.82)— Ojamies expresses enthusiasm for the Finnish scene growth, praises IFPA 18 organization and German venue standards, appreciates European tournament culture, and shows pride in emerging young players. Some measured criticism of IFPA Euro fee implementation and pin golf format design issues, but overall tone is constructive and celebratory of the global pinball community.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.053

it's time for another pinball profile i'm your host jeff teal so you can find everything on pinballprofile.com we're on facebook we're on twitter and instagram at pinball profile email pinballprofile at gmail.com and of course if you'd like to support on patreon that would be wonderful like great people like gme law lua w rodney c fox cities and so many more thank you so much for that Here in Germany right now, actually we just started IFPA 18, and I've got one of the finest, a legend, an OG from Finland. Olli-Miko Ojamies, how are you doing my friend? Thank you Jeff, I'm doing really well. It's good memories from this place 10 years ago, and it keeps being even more amazing now, so I'm happy to be here. How many world championships have you been to? This is actually my 10th IFPA. Wow. And then you probably have to count also some Papa World Championships also in probably around 13th, 14th. That's amazing. And of course, it's easier when it's here in Europe, but you've made it across as well. Yeah, for sure. I think I played in four IFBAs in the States during the years. And what's your highest finish? It's actually this tournament, top 16, knocked out by Jürgen Holm, eventual winner by 4-2. losing by 17 million on jackpot, which Jörgen drained to outlaying, giving him 25 million points. Know that I'm bitter or anything, but I still remember all those things from 10 years. On jackpot, that's not much, 17 million. Yeah, we both have somewhere 2.5 billion points. It was a good match. Before we get back to IFPA 18, tell me about pinball in Finland. I've never been able to play there, haven't been to your fine country. What's the scene like? Scene is really active and growing, and I love the most interesting thing which happened probably since COVID is that now we have this awesome young player base who like led by the number one player in Finland, Markus Virtanen, but also followed by Lucas Martin and really awesome player. Giro Suvanto only, sorry Marco if I'm wrong, but I think he's 11 years old, Marco's son, and he was the best finisher in EPC, finishing in top 16. So we have a lot of talent to come. You've got your own Eschers and Zimaks. You've got your own Arvid and Vigos, like Sweden has. So some young players for sure in Finland. I've played Marcus a few times. If there is a crazier pinball stance in pinball, I have not seen it. What is with that stance? It's his style, and it works for him so well. He gets so much more power using the long feet stance that I can't understand. that I couldn't play with that stance, but he makes it work. So he's hugged right up against the coin box. He has his right leg underneath the pinball machine, kind of holding the leg, if you will. I guess maybe that helps him with nudges. He's got the gloves on, so he's not afraid of big slap saves. It's working. He's a great player. Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. He seems to be good at all eras, too. Yeah, it's crazy. He's been learning all the games so fast, and it's like he really doesn't, at least in my opinion, I feel like he's really comfortable with all the older games and also newer games. He has his own pinball location where he has games, but still you have to also be really active to learn new things. And I'm really proud of him, how he has learned so many games in such a short time. So it's nice that you have all these opportunities in Finland, but it's also easier for you to travel. Where are the places you like to travel to here in Europe? Well, I would say it's a little more hard for us in Finland since we basically have to jump the plane to go to anywhere. I'm so jealous for these people living in Central Europe where they just jump the car and then they are able to drive to like 10 different countries. But luckily the flights from Finland are quite cheap to fly to big tournament hotspots such as... Well, Buros in Sweden was my favorite for 10 years and then also traveling to UK or Germany or other normal European places, it only like I would estimate that like 200 euros for the flights if you book them early on Oh that good So it not too bad You mentioned Bor Open in Sweden You know there are kind of three real big whopper farms We know of District 82 in the States We've seen what Bulls and Balls have done in Fulda and Borås Open. That looks like a fun event. The tournament organizer Christian Holsten did just an amazing job for like 10 years running those tournaments. I hate the word whopper farm. Whopper cropping? Well, yeah. Something like that. In Buros, it was so well executed that it felt that all the tournaments there made sense and were perfectly organized. And also having such an awesome location where you have so many older and newer games that you basically can have the same tournament twice a year, which is like one tournament is main tournament on newer machines and side tournament on classic machine, and then you switch, you have the same kind of tournament again, but then it's like classics is the main thing and then main is the side thing. Isn't that interesting? It's awesome and it's funny that there are many players who do really well in classics and not do well in modern and it's good to give them a possibility to win something big also in classics. So in that sense, I love the tournament for most of them. I like all aspects. I'm not a big fan of tournaments that are all modern. Not that I don't love the games because I certainly do. It's just the length of time it takes to play those games whereas classics, it's still pinball. You're still playing, as you would a modern game, but you seem to get them done a little quicker. We're right now recording this in between round one and two, and the delay has just been so long, and the moderns are holding things up, and then maybe repeatable classics, I guess, like Sorcerer. Do you have a preference when it comes to playing in tournaments? Do you want to just go, go, go, or do you mind the weight like we're having right now? I think this is the best tournament in the world. also in sense of organizing. It's like the schedule is reasonable enough that we might have some rounds going on really late in the night, but still everyone gets to sleep at some hours. You get a lunch break, you get a dinner break. Those are big too. Exactly, exactly so. Enough space to maybe like even do compromises by making a little shorter break for lunch or something like that, But you really don't have to be afraid of tournament running so late that you only get a few hours of sleep. Well, when you talk about the IFPA World Championship, you've done something that... You're kind of a legend when it comes to this because you've kept the stats for years and years and years. And not just who wins, not win-losses, not games, scores, everything. You've got this incredible database. Well, I wouldn't say it's that incredible. It's just something that I learned from my friends that you can do nice things in Google Sheets and they are readily available for everybody who has an internet connection. So I just, in my opinion, like I love watching games back home and seeing how my friends are doing and seeing the exact game scores from every machine. At least for me, it provides with so much more entertainment and information about a tournament. I'm pretty sure that if you go to I hope they recorded the scores but I heard like Azure getting beaten on jokers by 40 points so like when you have data of those kind of defeats available it makes like it much more interesting to see that okay so they all played well but it was so close that it basically tied but somebody got points and somebody else didn't well that's interesting you talk about how close you are on points and something And something like match play, yeah, it does matter each point. But something like pin golf, as we've just done a few of these tournaments in Folda, the score kind of doesn't matter. You could just have to get past thresholds to get the number of strokes. Obviously, you want a bigger score and do it as quickly as possible. But you can be on a game where the range is so huge. And in one sense, you know, okay, I got 9 million and this person got 14 million, but we have the same score. Like there's some weird variables in pin golf that way. Exactly. Pin golf is awesome too when done well but pin golf can also be the most frustrating format when the target scores are maybe a little too high and the games are maybe a little too hard to play It not fun when the average is something like everybody plays three balls and gets seven or eight out of the target score so nothing fun in there So what the TDs try to do in pin golf is make sure that after all the holes are played, there's an average of at least three. That way you can get full TGP. You talk about some unreasonable, perhaps, scores. who he played Star Trek Stern and the target score for a hole-in-one was 300 million. It was an error in printing, but I mean my buddy got Kobayashi Maru and got a stroke of six. Yeah, that's crazy. It's like mistakes that screw up the tournament schedule and everybody has to play the game and it's like it's the same if you play 1 million or 299 million, so it doesn't make any sense if the scoring is like that. It happens, but it is fine-tuning by a TD. You try to get some data, and maybe that's where you come in with your data and scores to figure out, okay, what are the average scores? Because if you're going into a pinball arcade or a hall, you really don't know what it's going to be like, because maybe you don't have the keys to the machine, maybe it's a coin op. It's tough to figure out. A unique format, indeed, in pin golf. It's frustrating for me more than not, but I certainly see the appeal for many. So there are other formats. We've talked about this wonderful one here at IFPA 18 with the match play. You like that format. Is there another format you really love? I love also the original Papa format that IndySkiff is now running. And also thank you Neil McRae to organizing similar format also now in Europe, in UK Open. so that's I think it's such a cruel format to get nice good games inside your ticket that it's like it's not only like like attempt having more and more attempts and trying the single good scores but no you have to like play well in that exact situation and that really is what like the best players are are about they are able to qualify even in that kind of format not a lot of people have had experience playing that old papa format and what you're talking about is the card based format so every game on your card has to count until you try another card so you have to be consistent uh you're right indisc has picked that up and they've been doing it for years and neil mccray with his uk open which is coming september 30th in croydon just south of london in the uk they've adopted it so when they did that last year at the uk open for a lot of europeans That was the first time they saw the Papa format. Yeah, for sure. We don't do it at all. The culture is different in Europe than in the States. The money isn't that involved in our tournaments, which is also a good thing for tournament organizers since the world is kind of different here when it comes to giving out prize money. But at the same time, especially when Neil is doing it in such a way that it feels that he pours in his own money by like tens of thousands of euros and keeps the entry prices low. So you can buy the entries for totally different money in UK Open that you can do in Indisc. And I understand both, since Indisc gets the pot out of the entries, but when UK Open manages it with its own, then they don't have to build the pot with the entry money. So I think it's a good compromise. Take some big pockets, some good sponsors, and you should pat every TD on the back when you go to an event, because it is a lot of work that people don't see. And that's the thing that kind of drives me nuts sometimes is when people who've never organized a tournament or have never volunteered to scorekeep or anything else, and they're critical, and they don't know what goes into these things. And I don't think any TD should be out of pocket for doing a tournament. Their time, their money, they shouldn't have to put on this event and then forced to be paid. So that's unfortunately where a lot of the money does have to come from, from the players, from the entries. but that's kind of new to Europe this year because we're now seeing the euro. In North America, we've been paying the dollar for a while, but that's new this year. How are people finding paying the euro to IFPA? Well, I actually was the former Finnish county director for IFPA. I resigned since I didn like the idea of Europe or me being involved in forcing people to collect it Surprisingly tournaments still keep happening and people are paying the fee It's not that big of a problem since IFBA guys handle it pretty well and it's easy to pay out the money. But still, since we don't build any kind of like a big pot for some kind of European tournament winner out of that money, it feels that it doesn't serve the same purpose that it does in the States. It's been awesome to see how it works in the States since it gives such more value to nationals. And the States and the provincials, yeah. Yes, exactly. But maybe we are going to build some kind of that kind of culture also in Europe, but we currently don't have it. So for me, it feels kind of like unnecessary to collect the fee. Of course, like if IFPA guys need the money and a collector keep it themselves and say that this is just a fee for use the system, I'm totally fine with that. But since it feels that they aren't taking any of that money, but they are recycling it to some kind of pinball purpose, that's where it gets confusing for me. That's why I'm not the biggest fan of the idea. You're not alone because when that first happened in North America, there were some split decisions and others like yourself did resign and just didn't want anything to do with it. You can still run a tournament without the dollar fee or in this case the Euro fee. It just won't be IFPA endorsed. So the money that comes in, all but maybe 5% of it goes back to the players. It's an admin fee. but I have heard other people say the same thing too. If they kept the dollar just themselves, you'd be fine with it but they're giving it back and some people maybe question that. I've talked to other Europeans and they've said it changes the competitive dynamics so you'll just have to get used to it over, I guess, the next years to come but it is a bit of a culture change. It is, yeah. I'm just hoping that the laws aren't that strict in any country that it's seen as some kind of tax evasion or something. It is basically recycling money into this weird U.S. organization and then maybe even receiving something back. And what's the sad part is that in between, some of the organizers probably also have paid some taxes out of that money. So it's like at least a tax official gets money from this process. But I think like sometimes he's the only winner here. Well, what you were talking about, too, is part of the delay of the euro fee here in Europe because, yeah, each country has different tax laws. And, you know, we've been able to get away with it in the United States. Any prize over $600, you're taxed on. In Canada, we don't have a tax for prizing, but it is different in each country. So that's a lot of pressure and a lot of research and figuring it out for country directors. So interesting. So back to IFPA 18. This is exciting for you. You were here 10 years ago. We're at Freddy's Pinball Paradise. First time for many of us here. What a wonderful location. Oh, this is one of the most amazing ones. It's like the German culture of organizing a pinball hall seems to be that all the lines are in perfect form and also like games grouped together. I love all those classic ballet games and seeing like a row of 20 of them in the same row. It makes me so happy. It's just awesome. it's fun and like you said at the beginning it's nice to see young people get into pinball you know we remember when these come out we're a little older but the young people getting into pinball it's exciting when they have options like video games and and their cell phones and everything else but uh pinball is going strong here in europe and around the world only it's great to talk to my friend thank you jeff it was a pleasure this has been your pinball profile you can find everything on pinballprofile.com we're on facebook we're on twitter and instagram at pinball profile email pinballprofile at gmail.com maybe suggest somebody you'd like to hear and if you'd like to support on Patreon don't worry the show is always free but your support is greatly welcome to offset any costs you can do that patreon.com slash pinball profile I'm Jeff Teolis you