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Episode 7 - New York City Pinball Championships

Do or Die Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 2m·analyzed·May 21, 2019
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.025

TL;DR

Raymond Davidson narrates his NYC Pinball Championships tournament run with detailed game-by-game strategy breakdown.

Summary

Raymond Davidson recounts his experience at the New York City Pinball Championships (May 17-19) held at the Skyline Hotel in Manhattan. He covers his gameplay across multiple divisions including the Classics Tournament, semifinal, and final rounds, providing detailed strategic analysis of classic games like Argosy, Satin Doll, Wizard, Monaco, Whirlwind, Shadow, and modern games like Transformers and Rolling Stones. The episode focuses on competitive gameplay dynamics, shot strategies, machine-specific quirks, and tournament format.

Key Claims

  • The NYC Pinball Championships featured multiple A and B divisions, a Women's Tournament (Dahlia Rowan's Memorial), and a Classics Division

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson, host of Do or Die podcast, describing the tournament structure

  • The Classics Division used a 'pump and dump' format where players select their best four games from seven offerings to count toward overall ranking

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson explaining the qualifying format

  • Raymond advanced from Classics qualifying to semifinals by beating scores of 47,000 and 58,000 on Satin Doll with a score of 58,750

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson personal match results

  • Keith Elwin was the top qualifier by a significant margin and earned the right to choose games in the final four

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson describing final round format and Elwin's qualification status

  • Argosy, spinner shots are critical for scoring—the shot requires precise timing and will drain the ball if missed

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson detailed gameplay analysis of Argosy mechanics

Notable Quotes

  • “The only thing I will say about Argosy is you should try this in practice on all our Argosys and that is how is the alley pass from the right to the left flipper? Because if the gate is open, you don't want to do it. Ever.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~early in Argosy discussion — Key tactical tip for Argosy that could cause unexpected drains if misunderstood

  • “I got a bye so I got to sleep in till 11. Take notes tournament directors, you should always give your bye players extra sleep in time because they earned it.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~Sunday finals introduction — Tournament operations feedback; appreciation for player comfort

  • “I was able to light my lock but I missed my lock shot. It was funny. I actually remember thinking in my head, don't miss. And then I missed and then it drained like immediately. So the moral of the story is don't think about your shots too hard. Just shoot them.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~mid-finals discussion — Reflects on competitive psychology and shot execution pressure

  • “Beneficial malfunction, play on.”

    Tim Sexton @ ~Rolling Stones final game discussion — Tournament director ruling on mode starting glitch during final round

  • “I went from 10 million to 53 million on Ball 3 just playing Decepticon modes. No multiballs, just lots of Decepticon Modes.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~Transformers game discussion — Demonstrates strong mode-grinding strategy and score recovery on modern game

Entities

Raymond DavidsonpersonNew York City Pinball ChampionshipseventDahlia RowanpersonKeith ElwinpersonLevipersonElliotpersonJoe LemirepersonJerry Bernardperson

Signals

  • ?

    competitive_signal: NYC Pinball Championships used pump-and-dump qualifying format (best 4 of 7 games) and double-elimination finals bracket; featured multiple divisions (A, B, Classics, Women's)

    high · Raymond describes Classics format and advancing through semifinal and final four

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Top-tier players demonstrate mastery of classic games (Argosy, Wizard, Monaco) and modern complex titles (Transformers, Rolling Stones); mode-grinding and multiplier stacking are key meta strategies on newer games

    high · Raymond's detailed strategic breakdowns of shot sequences, multiplier mechanics, and mode selection on Transformers and Rolling Stones

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Individual machines exhibit significant variance in playability (flipper hop on Monaco, gate mechanics on Argosy, upper flipper actuation on Shadow); proper machine setup and maintenance affect competitive fairness

    high · Raymond notes Argosy gate behavior differences, Monaco flipper hop issues, Shadow upper flipper actuation problems, and how these impact strategy

  • ?

    operational_signal: Tournament operations including: granting bye players extra sleep-in time, using streaming for real-time viewer engagement, fair rulings on beneficial malfunctions during finals

    high · Raymond praises NYC Championships for 11 AM wake-up for bye players, mentions stream availability, and Tim Sexton's 'beneficial malfunction, play on' ruling

  • ?

    event_signal: NYC Pinball Championships is a major regional tournament with 100+ players, multiple divisions, multiple days (May 17-19), dedicated venue, tournament director staff, and professional streaming

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.188

0:00
Welcome to Do or Die, a podcast about competitive pinball. I'm your host, Raymond Davidson, here to help you stay up to date on the latest strategies, tournaments, and happenings in the competitive pinball world, but also sharing direct stories of me as I go forth on my pinball tournament adventures. All righty, welcome to Episode 7 of Do or Die. We are, uh, well, I don't know why I say we, it's just me here. And I'm gonna talk today about a little tournament this past weekend called the New York City Pinball Championships. Took place this last weekend, May 17th through the 19th at the beautiful Skyline Hotel in fabulous Manhattan and featured many divisions of play including, uh, multiple A and B divisions The Dahlia Rowan's Memorial Women's Tournament Honored of course after the the late Dahlia Rowan That was very nice of the New York City Pinball Championships crew to honor her in such a way and let her be remembered Anyway, I guess we'll start with the Classics Tournament The games used in the Classics Division were Argosy, Countdown Monaco Satindal, Sinbad Stars, Targetpool,and Wizard. The format was your standard pump and dump where you have to get your best four games to count towards your overall point ranking. And I think I chose the games I qualified on were Argosy, Monaco, Sinbad, and Wizard. The most important thing on that game. If you can do that skill and your opponents can't, you will most likely beat them pretty consistently. So, I was feeling really good about Wizard. Argos C, I put up like a million in qualifying, so I'm pretty happy about that.
2:42
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3:56
I was under Levi's control. He got to choose the games that we played. And the first game that he chose was Argosy. And I just kind of went to town on that game. I put up 700,000 on ball one. It just, it wouldn't drain. It was like a perpetual loop of shooting the spinner, going into the middle lane, and drop catching. And I just did that over and over and over again. The you know anytime that the ball would go down the left out lane because i had lit my gate open it would save it and then i would shoot the spinner again and so the key to that game was just knowing where that spinner shot was and not being early or late on it because man it really punished you if you missed that spinner it would most likely just drain you it would I had some really nasty bounces if you missed, but if you made it, it was money. It was just, it was golden and I basically just kept doing that until I got, you know, a couple hundred thousand in and then I started pivoting a little bit to hit the drop targets on the left because if you get those four drop targets, it'll light the scoop for double bonus. The also the drug targets give you a some award it's like ten thousand twenty thousand thirty thousand something like that and so i completed those a couple times i've got my double bonus and then i had his way back to the spinner uh... and just kinda kept cranking out points so there weren't any real strategy decisions or or anything the only thing i will say about our gacy is you should try this in practice on all our disease and that is How is the alley pass from the right to the left flipper? Because if the gate is open, you don't want to do it. Ever. Because if you shoot the ball from the right to the left flipper, it'll go up the gate, trigger the outwind switch, which will close the gate, and then the ball will come right back down, kind of like black hole style. And you just have to watch it drain in front of your own eyes, and it's super sad. But even on this Argosy when the gate was closed, shooting it open would sometimes happen so fast that the same thing would happen. Whereas other Argosys I've played, the gate was a lot more stiff and you could shoot it open and it would slow it down enough so that it wouldn't ever be in danger of draining. But on this one, I actually drained shooting the gate open before. The good, good tip is to, you know, try it in practice with the gate closed. Because if that works, that's like a free kickback, right? Like you just invented your own kickback and got the ball to your left flipper so you can shoot the right spinner. Which is where half your points come from. So half your points in Argosy come from spinner when it's worth a thousand and the other half come from your bonus. The spinner is only lit for a thousand randomly. It alternates On and off based on a couple of rubbers, rubber switches throughout the playfield.
Jason
person
Bowenperson
Tim Sextonperson
Skyline Hotelvenue
Argosygame
Satin Dollgame
Wizardgame
Monacogame
Whirlwindgame
Shadowgame
Transformersgame
Rolling Stonesgame

high · Multiple game selections, bye rounds, finals structure, Tim Sexton as tournament director, streaming mentioned

  • ?

    design_innovation: Modern pinball games (Transformers) feature mode selection systems (Autobots vs Decepticons) that fundamentally alter playfield multiplier mechanics and strategy, creating asymmetric gameplay paths

    high · Raymond's discussion of Decepticons left-ramp playfield multiplier advantage vs Autobots right-in-lane multiplier, and strategic choice of Decepticons for high-scoring comeback

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Classic games show wide scoring variance depending on player skill and ball luck (Stars winner 142k vs multiple players under 70k); modern games show tighter competitive scoring with multiple viable strategies

    high · Jason's 142k on Stars vs field, Jerry Bernard's 30M on Rolling Stones multiball, Raymond's 53M Transformers comeback, 275-400M Shadow

  • ?

    community_signal: NYC Pinball Championships honors deceased player Dahlia Rowan with dedicated women's tournament division, indicating community values and historical memory

    high · Raymond notes Dahlia Rowan's Memorial Women's Tournament division

  • ?

    content_signal: Do or Die podcast provides in-depth post-tournament analysis including machine-specific strategy, shot mechanics, tilt risks, multiplier stacking, and player decision-making processes

    high · Entire episode structure based on game-by-game breakdown with technical strategy explanation

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Skill shots on multiple games (Wizard 3k+bonus, Rolling Stones rockstar/mode start) are critical scoring opportunities worth 3-8 million points or mode advancement

    high · Raymond emphasizes Wizard skill shot consistency lost in finals, Rolling Stones short-plunge strategy for skill shot

    • 7:12
    But, you know, it's good EV just shooting it because sometimes it'll be lit, sometimes it won't. Sometimes it'll light as you're shooting it. Sometimes it'll turn off as you shoot it.
    7:23
    But yeah, that's pretty much straightforward. If you can't shoot the ball to the left flipper with the right flipper, the thing you do is you just shoot straight up the middle. Well, not straight up the middle, because that's a little hard. There's like a pop bumper there, but you shoot sort of in between the drop targets and the pop bumper, and the ball just kind of goes up this sort of center path and then hopefully goes into your center lane to light your gate. Anywho, so I got the four points on Argosy, and now Levi took us to Satin Doll, which is a two-player version of the game Pat Hand, which In fact, they carried a commercialہ nomiasm renexruff the emotion they поэтому a couple of months but .. but it's not
    8:18
    because is a so the it's a thousand-yen eventually He might The top nubs and the top nubs get lit by hitting the one two three four five rollovers in the center of the playfield you don't really go for them, but they just sort of happen and If you complete one two three four five twice you get double bonus Which can be pretty big but in the grand scheme of things if you have a long ball just shooting nubs for a thousand Your double bonus is actually not going to matter that much The game is a little bit more complex than the first game, but it's not worth going for intentionally. The key thing about that game is knowing when to use the upper flipper and when not to. So if you have a clean feed from the upper flipper, you can shoot it back up top. It's like a little loop and it works pretty good. But if the feed is kind of bobbly and doesn't come off clean, then using the upper flipper oftentimes just sends the ball hurtling towards the right out lane. The other one that I was aware of and you could see me do it which was anytime the ball was towards the lower left area which is where the pop bumpers are I had my left flipper held up because you don't want to pop bumper to just shoot it straight down the middle or you know shoot it at an angle where if you would have flipped you would have caught it but it happened so fast that you missed it so always hold the left look rep when it the balls bouncing around up there dove a door into my office... and ran up to the power accepting I had a lot of fun and I just needed to pass the two other scores which were pretty close to each other. It was 47,000 and 58,000 and I had about maybe 28,000 or so. And you know it's like okay I basically need to max my bonus and then hit a couple more nubs and I'm good. And man it came down to the wire. I was shooting the nubs and you know it was going I was playing according to plan and then it found its way sort of going down the center but I didn't tilt it because I knew I was in the ballpark and when I looked up I saw it counting down and I was like I think I got it and the final score was 58,750 to 58,720. So I won that game by three points. I ended up locking up my advancement into the semis. Levy picked stars for the last game and ate everyone alive. I think I got third on it with 70,000. The winner was 142,000 which was Jason who unfortunately after taking two zeroes could not advance unless I got second. I played, but it's stars. It's pretty hard to get points on stars. So I felt bad for Jason because he had a good game, but it was all for naught. So me and Elliot moved on to the semifinals, which I was able to drive the bus on because the other high seeds got knocked out. So I chose Argosy of course because I had such good luck in it in the previous round. And man, I uh, I gotta tell you, I had some pretty bad luck, but I made the best of it. I um, I gotta say I only missed one shot and that was the, I was trying to shoot it from the right flipper back up to the top and I bricked a little bit late and hit the drop target to the outlane. But all the other shots I made were golden, like spinner ripping, you know, going back up Argos I'm going to play a game called Wizard. And, man, Wizard, if you get that skill shot every time, you'll probably win like most games because it's worth, you know, 3,000 plus three bonus advances plus probably some other stuff too. And I had it down the last round in qualifying, but I lost it this round. I just could not find the skill shot consistently. I did have a pretty cool moment on ball one where I did this ridiculous left out lane save where it did like a triple bounce and I was I kept moving it was one of those things where it happened early on so I didn't have that much bonus and so I just did like a little move it didn't tilt I did more of a move still didn't tilt but the ball still wasn't saved and then I bumped it again and finally got the ball back in so it was like a it was like a progressive nudge it was like did I get away with it did I get away with it and then I Have a great day!
    14:32
    I'm a hundred thousand actually looking like it could be forth honestly cuz Lewis put up seventy thousand so That was sad. I got three points
    14:43
    Going into game three and I chose Monaco which I alluded to earlier was pretty mean to me in general and I Really, I don't know. I picked it because it was quote the safe option. You know, it's it's a five football game I'm a fan of the game, spinners, it's like Argosy, it's like a reverse Argosy, but man, the same thing that happened to me in qualifying happened in the finals, which is I only got to play three out of my five balls, and that's just not going to cut it against three other opponents when you need to win the game, so I ended up getting last with just under 400,000 on it. If you don know Monaco so there kind of a couple of options when you have the ball on your left flipper You can either shoot it into the bonus collect or you can try to pass it to the right flipper And if you could pass it to the right flipper and then shoot the spinner, that's like the preferred option because the spinner is worth a thousand once you max your bonus. And then there's some goodies up top too you can get. But this one had a flipper hop which I feel like all the Monaco's I've seen have a flipper hop for some reason. So if you pass it to the right flipper, there wasn't a great way to trap it afterwards. You had to kind of pass it and then shoot it, and it was very hard for me to get that spinner shot like that. So I would shoot the collect hole, and then when it came out of the collect hole, it usually returned safely, but it wasn't a guarantee. So you're kind of rolling the dice either way. I think I like the collect Hole if it's safe because it's like a free 10 to 30,000 points. When it collects your bonus, it does reset, but it resets to 10,000. So the worst you're going to do for shooting the CollectTole is 10,000 points, which would be if you collect your bonus and then drain immediately. You still got an extra 10,000 for shooting it, right? So, um, yeah, I would, I'd recommend just shooting that thing just cause it's, it's worth points unless it's like super deadly or if you have a very good way of transferring the ball from the left to right flipper.
    17:03
    Um, yeah, that was about, about it for Monaco and I ended up with only three points and sixth place, uh, in the Classics. Um, I got to see Elliot and Joe Lemire move on. I'm kind of wondering if I should have picked Sinbad just because I practicediced it so much and I actually did have like a number two score on it but Sinbad just scared me because it's so deadly and they also I think they said they put a tilt in it or oh no that wasn't until Sunday so I guess I could have I could have picked Sinbad because in qualifying there was like no tilt like I think the bob had fallen off so maybe I should have just picked that and got away with some feats, k
    18:03
    st out everlightπ histail cyfers of白bags탕 microscope pullspamusﻗunkno bitch Ḭ� Brown minus one . Beckie Ḯ ᶦ ᵣᵘ ᵗˢ ḥˡ ᵗˡ ᶦᶦ ᵣ.'ᵗˡ ᶢᶦ ᴶ'ᶦᶦᵢᵒ ᵛ'ᵒᵒᵒ 9 lights High-end follectθε聽 neu potassium Thank you for bringing those out from Pittsburgh and I can't wait for the next year. Alright, onward and upward to Maine. So Maine finals happen Sunday. I got a bye so I got to sleep in till 11. Take notes tournament directors, you should always give your bye players extra sleep in time because they earned it and it doesn't make sense to make them get up in the morning when there's no reason to. So, huge props to New York City Pinball Championshipships for that simple, you know, delicacy. That was much appreciated. Especially when you have a stream going on that I can, you know, watch in my hotel room and just kind of, you know, get out of bed, watch the stream, catch some commentary, walk on down, get ready for some pinball. All right, so I got to pick all the games because I was driving the bus and the first game I picked was
    19:55
    Whirlwind. I love that game. I'll always pick it if there's a good playing whirlwind I'm a sucker for those those Lawler games, especially, you know upper flipper ones The only thing I don't like about whirlwind is the randomization of the seller awards because some of them are so good and some of them are so bad I started my game with the good one. I walked up and Quick Multiball was there waiting for me. So short plunge to right flipper, shoot Quick Multiball. Often times you'll tag the northeast target on the way into the cellar too, which is nice. During Multiball I went after the side ramp for the million. I was a little bit nervous about that, but I was really excited about the idea of having a pinball that would be a little bit different from what I had initially thought it would be. I had actually noticed that my compass arrow was not complete yet, and you can actually work on compass arrows during quick multiball. So I actually started shooting some of those targets and shots to advance my compass arrow so that when I came out of quick multiball, I would have lock lit. I cashed in the lock and then I basically focused on the other compass arrow shots, picking up a cellar here and there.
    21:11
    Because I got a jackpot in Quick Multiball, it also relit my cellar, which is nice. Even in Quick Multiball, if you hit that side ramp, it counts as lighting your cellar award.
    21:23
    Kind of like in Whitewater where even if you're in Whirlpool Challenge and you shoot Insanity Falls, 每 appendix bachelor ofbook by Mark Ventura and the original Monitor by Jonathan Franco, the time is not update. Dante to the intellectual cast music exercising I was in jail, but my opponents didn't really do anything, like they had a million each, so I didn't have to like go for broke and try to start another multiball. I was able to just shoot the ramp a bunch because that ramp is worth, you know, 50k, 60k, 70k, up to 100k, which is just good points to pad your lead. And then additionally I ended up finishing the megador, and that gives you, you know, 2 mil. The lights quick multi ball and I got to twelve million for my game and the one it pretty handily so I got for on that game time that that game is is is interesting because it is different like scoring tears like there's the that the three million or under three million game where you don't get multi ball there's the late six or seven million game we get a multi ball and then there's the game where you get a multiball and you get a whole bunch of jackpots and get like 15, 18 million. And then there's the game where you don't get a multiball but you grind out modes and get like a 10 million that you worked really hard for. And so it's just kind of realizing which camp you're in and kind of following that path to completion. The next game I chose was Shadow. I have a soft spot for Shadow. I love that game. I love doing the two-way loop combos. I love, like, everything about that game, but this, uh, this shadow was very, very mean. There was no ball saver. The upper flipper didn't quite actuate all the way, so it made loop combos, like, really difficult. On the plus side, though, it made the conhole shot very hittable. Like, I was, I was probably 80% on that conhole shot. Um, it was, it was pretty nice. And, um, my strategy going to shot The way you shoot a shadow is you plunge, you pass it over by holding up the right flipper, you shoot lock. You plunge, you pass it over, you shoot the sanctum to light your lock, and if it drains, that's okay because it's only ball one, then ball two you can lock and light lock, and if it drains again, that's okay because it's ball two, and you'll have multiball waiting on ball three. So as long as you never miss, you're guaranteed a multiball. Unfortunately, I missed and threw off My whole algorithm . And so, I was in jail on ball three because I had to survive a shot to the sanctum to get my third locklit. And I swear, like fifty percent of the time when you shoot that sanctum it goes straight down the middle. And, with the tight tilt there's like no saving it. So I did not want to you know tempt fate. I'm and so I had to change my strategy and the scores you know I only needed like maybe 150 200 million to start getting some points but I had nothing going to about three you know like six million and so I shot the left orbit missed my loop combo did a crazy double danger save and it sort of snuck into the mode start hole and started a mode and then you I think I immediately bricked and drained. So it was kind of a sad, quick game of Shadow. But you know, it was my fault. I missed my shots. It was, you know, whatever. I still like that game, but that one was pretty brutal. There was no rubber on the outlanes, so any missed shots you were just like dead, dead on arrival. But you know, I got four points la chAndel and so I did uncom Beit ano, more of that text tape ad체적terminate the I had a good feel for it. The game had some nuances to it that I felt I could take advantage of. When you shot the play records shot, you had to wiggle it as it came out or else it would sometimes just shoot straight down the middle. The ramp combos I was sort of dialed in on and it had some weird like super bands on the flippers and then also had like a slight left lean so I felt like I could take advantage because I knew sort of how it played and I did okay on balls one and two. I had like five million which you know that's something. It means I shot a few things but it's not really the score you're going for. I ended up sticking with the plan of shooting the ramps with the intention that when you miss a ramp you hit a rock star target to spell rock star and once I had my rock star one shot away I actually backhanded the right rock star target on purpose because one shot to light multiball you might as well take that. So, you know, that really rewarded paying attention to the DMD because there's nothing else that tells you how close you are to Rockstar other than anytime you get a Rockstar letter it would show you. So I was able to light Rockstar, start it and play it. I got pretty comfy on it, you know, once you're in multiball you're kind of moving and grooving. I added a couple of balls by hitting the Rockstar targets and the VIP targets. And I think what happened was I added a ball with the VIP targets, but I didn't realize I did. And so I shot the VIP targets again and it actually lit extra ball, which was worth three million. So that was a nice little score Booster. After that I started album multiball just from hitting the mic. He was like maybe one or two shots away and I was able to play that to a big bonus. I actually had my album super lit. So during album multiball I think every time you hit mic it lights a jackpot and if you get all the jackpots then it lights a super. and the super is a rock star target that's directly behind the Mick target so you have to hit Mick he moves out of the way and then you have to immediately shoot another ball into the rock star target and it was actually really cool I had never gotten to that stage before I did not get the super jackpot but I bet it would have been cool I was pretty happy with that. That game you don't want to tilt especially after a long ball because You're if you're shooting a lot of ramps the in lanes give you bonus multipliers and I think I had like seven or eight million in bonus So I end up finishing with 27 million The the qualifying strategy of that game which I I think I employed a little bit at some point is You shoot the guitar targets on the right side of the game and that starts combos and if you get five combos which are two unique shots in succession, if you get five combos it starts super combos which is like twenty seconds of like five hundred thousand, six hundred thousand, seven hundred thousand, but the key is in super combos you don't have to hit different shots so you can just shoot that center ramp over and over and over and over again and just pound out a ton of points really easily Leslie Beachoutде mechanicalbusinessHey Separ pada esté hai fünfинойscantos Online
    30:41
    1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19 I was able to light my lock but I missed my lock shot It was funny. I actually remember thinking in my head, don't miss. And then I missed and then it drained like, like immediately. So the moral of the story is don't don't think about your shots too hard. Just shoot them. You know, you'll make them if you're if you try. Don't don't overthink them. , Narration from Can With drauf on the previous page Indie Con Nowadays, APIMANG Divineorth ascendancygroup at Bandcamp IGTV K6 ما IC-拍 Coco suffers ,ательerme,ะ03ойдTPinnoyouise,ai Thank You for giving the program to talk to pick infromint and I didn't really know when he's gonna pick um... and I wanted to play Transformers so I I picked it because he didn't pick it and I also picked it because after the whirlwind Game where it was pretty short pretty quick and brutal I kinda wanted a more controlling game that was gonna last a little longer and give me more chances um...to You know, to show my skills and get points. And so I locked three balls on ball one and started a mode and then drained with the mode running, which was a bummer. On ball two, I was debating, do I start a multiball without a mode or do I shoot four shots to start mode and then start multiball? And I was like, no, I just want to start a multiball to get comfortable. You know, I want some points. I want to make sure going into game three, you never want to be dead in the water going into game three. So I want to make sure I got to at least play and get some points on the board. And so I did I play multi ball got like maybe 10 million or so. And, you know, I could not figure out how to light the garbage cube. And by garbage cube, I mean that whatever cube thing that what's I'll spark. That's what it is. That would give you an attaball and multiball, but I couldn't figure out how to light it. I thought you hit the blue targets, but the blue targets would never light up during multiball. So I don't know if you had to do them blind and just shoot each of them, knowing which ones you had shot, or if it won't let you light it once you're in multiball. So maybe you have to have it lit before multiball, which is actually a twist on things if it is that way. So, yeah, I'll have to do some testing next time I see a Transformers to get the answer on that. But it kind of clouded my judgment because I was so focused on getting the Atta Ball that I had a super lit on the center with a multiplier. And, you know, instead of going for that, I went for the Atta Ball and didn't get anything. And so it was kind of disappointing. I ended up with $10 million after two balls. And so going to ball three, everyone has like at least 20 million or more. And I was looking at a 6-6-1-1 lockout situation, which is not where you want to be, where, you know, two people have six points and two people have one points. And if you're a one-pointer, then you are done. And so I needed to get some serious points and I needed to do it on ball three. I'm a fan of the podcast, so I chose Decepticons.
    35:50
    I'm really sad this wasn't on stream because I showed the power of Decepticons. I went from 10 million to 53 million on Ball 3 just playing Decepticon modes. No multiballs, just lots of DecepticonModes. I had my favorite Devastator mode with the right orbit that In the second part of this video, I'll be talking about the first game that was multiplied. You know, that game it just snowballs once you get those multipliers lit. Decepticons also makes it so that the easier ramp, the left ramp, advances the left in-lane for playfield multipliers, whereas if you choose autobots the right in-lane gives you playfield multipliers. So you're able to build up your playfield decks a lot faster, shot multipliers rather. So, that game, I was really proud of it. I got up to 43 million, but then Jerry Bernard thought it would be a cool idea to just absolutely destroy his ball three as well and ended with 54 million. So, I'm like, okay, well, at least I got a second place, but I really wanted that first place. Luckily, the53 million did hold up. I got the second place. So, I got three points going into game three. But the way it shook out, because Jerry Maddie Gottlieb Rose Пом, Pressurerada Milne fallens, psychological Learner regarding the clash between Your były Puestasныхalsth heavhyresendie and I had a little bit of a hard time with my computer. I didn't really do what I wanted to do. I felt like I could do it better. And I ended up getting like a 275 million ball one. Sort of just surviving, honestly. It was kind of a very reactive game. I did start multiball. I was able to get, you know, some jackpots. Played some modes. Just kind of did a little bit of everything. Ended up with 275, ball one. 300 mil, ball two. And then I think 400 mil after ball three. And Bowen just never really got anything. and Bowen just never really got anything going. He might have started multiball but I don't think he got any jackpots because all the balls were in the trough. So sometimes when you are in a multiplayer game of Shadow, if you start multiball and there's no balls in the Sanctum Lock, that's a huge disadvantage because you don't get those easy jackpot feeds. and so he didn't he wasn't able to get any jackpots and he ended up draining with like fifty million uh... and so i got to move on uh... to the finals and uh... yeah i was pretty happy at this point you know i i i felt like that transformers comeback was like my highlight uh... even though it only got me second place it was enough to put me in a situation where i just needed to beat bowen to move on and that's what happened so uh... now i'm in the the final four I do not get to drive the bus anymore because this guy Keith Elwin was top qualifier by a lot and he got to choose the games. He chose Rolling Stones for the first game so I was pretty stoked about that because I had done well in it in both qualifying and in my rounds. Some interesting things happened. The only which is interesting itself uh... steep out only got like five million jerry bernard got like thirty million and it was crazy because he started uh... licks mode which you get from the ramps but he com but it was multi ball and he gets points just like blew up like crazy like he went uh... 15 million points in a matter of seconds and we were like kind of like blown away but we also found that the game was being a little funny because it wouldn't kick out a second ball for his multi ball for like a long time and then uh... eventually it did uh... and so he ended up with like 30 mil and you know we were like well that's a good ball you know and then I stepped up and I started short plunging over and over again because I really wanted to get the ball to my right flipper so I could shoot the skill shot. On that game, you can either plunge the super skill shot or you can short plunge and then kind of sneak it up the back way and it'll give it to you either way. So I was short plunging to do that. And I had Rockstar lit as well, so my plan was I was going to start a mode and then start Rockstar. Um, but when, or I might have, I, I don't know, I, I was, I was tempted to just start Rockstar without a mode, um, cause I didn't need that many points, I only needed like 8 million, um, so I actually don't know if I would have went for the mode start shot. I was still kind of deciding that when the game decided for me, and as I was short plunging, it started my mode out of nowhere, and We were confused because the mode start switch just fired a couple of times on its own. And so I trapped up. I had Happy running, which was the best mode you can have in the game with the multiball. And I trapped up. I looked over to the tournament director, Tim Sexton. I asked, what should I do? And he said, beneficial malfunction, play on. So I was like, okay. I backhand the rockstar target, start multiball, get points, points, points. I had done it. I won the game. I thought it was pretty clear cut. Jerry and I both played good balls. Keith and Bowden both didn't play good balls. I like the way this was starting out. And then, well, the, uh, it just kinda, we sat there for a long time before the next game because the tournament directors were wanting to investigate more about what had happened during my ball, um, and they were looking at the game and determined that the opto, like, an entire line of optos was misbehaving. So not only was it giving free hits, but it was also not scoring things when it should. The tracking of Mick Mick Jagger as he moves left and right was wonky causing the him to stick in certain spots. And so they they ended up ruling that the game was malfunctioning and they couldn't determine at which point it started malfunctioning. So they had to throw out the entire game.
    43:04
    After the game was over, which I think is sort of the point of contention for a lot of people. You know, they should have said that when I was trapped up. Maybe.
    43:17
    They, you know, it's kind of weird to retroactively throw a game out. Especially if you look at it sort of on the surface of, I don't think it affected the final finishing position. A lot. You know, sure, Jerry got a lot of points, but he also played a lot of ball like same with me like I played multi balls and did stuff. The other players didn't. And, you know, unfortunately, this is why I'm not a good tournament director is because if I was making the call, I like to do what's like, makes the most sense just in my head and been like, Oh, yeah, whatever. It didn't affect anything. You know, these guys won in this order. Yeah, whatever. But if you actually, you know, look at the rules and try to interpret the rules, which is what Tim Sexton did, he applied the rule, you know, that the game beneficial malfunction was significant. And because it was not known when the malfunction occurred, there was no fix that could be applied other than a catastrophic malfunction, which was The only thing I think that was maybe objectively incorrect was he gave Keith the option to play a new game or play Rolling Stones again because they said that they had fixed it. And I think that was a little sketchy. I think if it was fixed, we should have played Rollinging Stones again. I don't think you should get to change your pick after you see, oh, everyone's good at this game. I don't want to pick that game. Like, you know, I'm sure that's not why Keith did it. He probably did it because he didn't want to deal with more BS if it broke again, which totally fair. But from a tournament official standpoint, it should have been Rolling Stones again, given what had happened. So that's the only real beef I have with it. You know, it would have been nice to have that four points, but it's pinball and I was perfectly fine with the ruling. Like I said, it was a ruling that followed science and logic and, you know, was was something that could have happened if it was a different tournament director. They might have ruled differently, right? That's that's why tournament directing is hard. You gotta make those judgment calls and that's why we have just a tournament director because you know if it was up to the masses there would be mass hysteria and you know even people yammering like oh you should get to keep it or oh no he shouldn't get to keep it and you know I didn't want to make any decision because you know I don't want an asterisk next to my name that I won a game with a malfunction but if it was deemed oh no the malfunction was immaterial you know I'd feel okay about that but I'm not going to be doing this, but I'm going to be doing this.
    46:21
    So, anyway, we had to play Alien Star and I hate playing that game in tournaments just because it's so housey and sure enough, everyone like did nothing on ball one. I got one spinner shot which put me in the lead so that was pretty cool. And then ball two, I started Video
    46:42
    Go You spell alien to light your lock and then during multiball you have double triple or 5x scoring based on the insert that changes on the spinner And so you can either take your 2x by default or you can shoot the spinner to try to change it and try to go for more. I think most people just always take 2x if it's lit just because the game is so drainy that you'd rather be in multiball than not. The other way to get a lot of points is if the ball goes down the right in lane and you combo it into the spinner, it's lit for 10,000 a spin, which is crazy because I think the max bonus on that game is like 15,000 or something. Like, I don't know who was doing score Balancing at the time, but clearly they didn't realize that, you know, shooting a spinner for 100,000, you know, that would dwarf anything else you could do in the game. That's really what you're going for. I was in the lead, Elwyn had two house balls and one real ball. I was actually ahead of him going into ball three. I was actually ahead of everybody until Stephen Bowden had a Lazarus that, you know, he drained and it bounced back into play, and he was able to push that advantage enough to get enough I had enough points to put me in this do-or-die situation, where I needed 120,000 on ball three in order to win the Alien Star game, and I had the ball trapped in the right flipper. My plan was I was just going to shoot the spinner, because normally it's 1,000 a spin, and a 1,000 a spin is enough to grind 100,000. You shoot that like four times, you're probably good. I got too excited just because it was such a high pressure moment. Tradffentlich Kalkar. I think he fumbled it there and he was exactly right. You know, I had assumed that when I flipped, I was done. But I missed and I just failed to recover it because I was so focused on getting the ball trapped and controlled that I didn't realize that the ball was in a funky pattern that I needed to react to. And I ended up just bobbling it down the middle and that cost me the game. So, you know, even though I got my first place taken away on Rolling Stones, I had the opportunity to get it back with one flip and I did not. So, that was definitely on me. So I got two points. Going to the next game which was Black Knight Sword of Rage. And Sword of Rage was very, very mean. I played it in qualifying a bunch and oh my goodness, The lock was set on hard, so you had to hit two lock targets to light lock. And I must have played two or three qualifyingifying games where my whole focus was just to get to multiball, and I did not get to multiball. Like, because every lock-sharp target was just like deadly as all hell. Like, it was really mean. And so going into the match, I knew, like, okay, I'm not going to go for multiball because I'm going to get like five million points. Oh hey its sick not getting basketballs in yesterday hahahaha highlighting something from N dah獺 I think I lost myself matrices have been I der пров the death I'm not sure if you know Keith Ell when he came back and just like blew it out of the water on his next balls. Whereas as I, I got double dangers and I was able to actually survive those hits. But then during the modes themselves, I just would miss a shot and drain. And unfortunately, you can't do that. You know, you can't miss a shot on that game because it's so fast and furious. And just, it killed me. The one thing I will say though is, because I had played two modes, even though I did poorly in them and only had like ten million points, I had an extra ball lit on ball three because I played two modes. And so, I was able to focus on getting that extra ball, because it's worth ten million points, and that bumped me up a whole position. So I went from fourth to third with that one extra ball shot. And so then after that, I was very perplexed on how to get the next scoring threshold. And so what I did was I backhanded the inner spinner to try to spell war so that I would start a war hurry up. And that way, when I had to hit the dangerous flail and knight targets, I would at least be getting war hurry up points. So kind of double dipping a little bit. I was able to survive and start and light my mode start and unfortunately I shot the ramp, it came to my right flipper and I needed to backhand the mode start shot basically for the, in order to get enough points to pass Jerry and I bricked it and drained. I think I might have, instead of backhanding it on the fly, I could have done a post catch because that was actually very successful on that game. I had a lot of success in practice doing that, but I would have I was watching everyone else just nail it perfectly, so I was like, I can do that, and I didn't. So Keith won, Jerry got second, I got third, Steve got fourth, so the points are now four, three, five, two, I think. Something like that. Um, and so the final game of Walking Dead, um, Keith does a ridiculous double danger save as he had been known to do on Walkingdead and cranks out like a 250 million game of Walkingdead. And we're just like, oh boy. Well, that's not unreachable. Um, you know, I put up 600 in my qualifying game, so this was my chance. I could win the tournament, or at least I would force a tiebreaker if I could win I'm going into Ball 3. I had 50 million in the bank because I had played a really good barn on Ball 2. But the next highest score for me was Jerry's 150 million, so I needed 100 million in order to secure second place in the tournament. So even though I did want to win, I kind of had that in the back of my mind. I was like, well, second is a lot better than fourth. So I, you know, I kind of had that in my mind a little bit. Um, which is also why I played barn on ball two is I wanted to get some base points just to have something so that there'd be less work to do on ball three. Um, should I, should I need it? And so, um, well, I, uh, my plan was to do the same thing I did in qualifying, which is just shoot the drop target. 350 35 36 37 In the junior SAND än I'm not sure if you've seen the video I made about the game, but I only got up to about 100 million just because I didn't have a mode running. And, you know, that was kind of my error on that game, was I took the siren of prison when, you know, if I wanted a realistic chance of winning the game, I should have just shot the drop targets. I should have ignored prison. I should have started, made sure I had a mode ready, which I could have actually done because I don't remember if I just needed to hit the drop targets one more time to lighten the game. sei entrée procurdice, nitrogen Parnas. Thanks Bruno escort how to read description no
    57:18
    The You should never drain down the middle without any dangers, right? It's... it just... I don't know, I let the drop target get to me and it distracted me from... similar to Alien Star, right? Where I... I wasn't in survival mode, so... oftentimes I feel like that's a weakness I have is I don't switch from offense to defense at the right time, so... anyway, that was... that was that and I ended up having a three-way tiebreaker for second, which... I chose Shadow again, um... which I should not have because... You know, even though I was surviving on it, it was not really playing to mystrengths as much as I thought it would. But it did kind of work out because I got second on that game, so I got third place overall in the tournament. I lost by one million. Steve Bowden passed me on his ball three. It was actually really exciting because for the first time ever, the ten million award on the skillshot is what won him the game. and he needed twenty million or fifteen million going into ball three and he sat there for like two minutes thinking about what skill shot to do and he went for the ten million, nailed it, shot like a couple of things, did a couple of crazy saves, hit enough just random junk and got a bonus multiplier, drained without tilting and his bonus counted up and put him over by one million points. So, it was actually a really exciting finish to the tournament, even though I was on the wrong end of it. And it was kind of a disappointing finals for me because I felt I had a lot of missed opportunities that were all on me. I could have beat Keith. I could have won. If I would have just done a little better on that Walking Dead or if I would have done a little better on Black Knight, done a little better on Alien Star, it was all there for me. Thank you for watching my video. If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe and hit the bell icon. Its free and easy to use. I always call this the pinball person, that's why I keep doing these videos. But unfortunately, just missed a few key moments and that's what's the difference between winning and losing pinball championships is those opportunities that you have, you have to take advantage of them and, you know, that's why the podcast is called Do or Die because you get put in those spots and you have to do and unfortunately, I died, so. But regardless, it was super fun. I was so happy that I made it to the finals. I was already pretty stoked just being in the finals. So it's hard, you know, I shouldn't let things get to me, but it's also how you become better. You know, you gotta reflect at least a little bit. But yeah, good props to all the New York City fellas. Super fun tournament. I really strongly recommend going to that tournament. If you fly into JFk, take the subway. It was $7.75 to get from the airport to the hotel. So I was super impressed with that and it really helped make things easy. I was really happy being in New York. Yeah, it was a great time all around. So congrats again to Keith for taking another championship. Congrats to Steve Bowden for his awesome play throughout the finals. Congrats to Jerry Bernard with his ridiculous saves and nudging and his ability to just grind out those points, man. When he passed me on Transformers, I was like, yeah, he earned that. That was really impressive. So congrats. Everyone was just so good in this tournament. So the final finishing positions were Keith Elwin, Steve Bowden, myself, and Jerry Bernard. All right. That was the that was New York City Pinball Championships. So I will I don't know if I'm going to have an episode next week. It's Memorial Weekend. So might take a week off. But after that, I should have an episode on the Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show. And then after that is Italy. So plenty of do or die to come. Do or Die Pinball Podcast at gmail.com, Facebook, or like our page on Facebook.
    61:46
    We have a Facebook page now called Do or Die Pinball Podcast that will give you updates on new episodes and you can also post there if you want to get a hold of me. So until
    62:00
    next time, do, don't die. Alright, see ya everyone. Music by 51.