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The Ray Rae Show, Episode 9: The UK Open & Borås Open

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Oct 23, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

European tournament experiences: Borås Open and UK Open tournament formats, gameplay, and community observations.

Summary

Rachel Risto and Raymond Davidson discuss their recent trips to European pinball tournaments: the Borås Open in Sweden and the UK Open in England. Rachel shares her experience at Borås, including participation in Pin Golf, Classic, and Main events, placing 83rd and earning 8+ WPPR points. Both then discuss the UK Open's card format tournament structure, venues, volunteer organization, and format preferences—Rachel preferring group match play over card formats, while appreciating the social aspects and professional event management.

Key Claims

  • The Borås Open rumor was that it would be the last Borås Open

    medium confidence · Rachel Risto, discussing pre-tournament information about Borås Open

  • Borås Open had over 160 players across multiple events

    high confidence · Rachel Risto, describing tournament scale

  • Pin Golf event at Borås functioned as a sorting mechanism/qualifier for main event divisions

    medium confidence · Rachel Risto, reflecting on tournament structure after the fact

  • Classic event at Borås had 12 games with 2 attempts each (24 total plays), 3 balls per attempt

    high confidence · Rachel Risto, describing scorecard and event rules

  • UK Open card format costs about a fifth of the price of Texas Pinball Festival/Pinball Expo in the States

    medium confidence · Raymond Davidson, comparing event costs

  • UK Open had 40 qualifiers and five different events (UK Open, Pinball Republic Championship, Classics 1, Classics 2, Women's Division)

    high confidence · Rachel and Raymond discussing UK Open structure

  • Neil McRae was running the UK Open for the second year

    high confidence · Rachel Risto, crediting event organizer

  • UK Open event featured a 'game hospital' system for broken machines, similar to Texas Pinball Festival

    high confidence · Rachel Risto, describing game maintenance logistics

  • Rachel placed 83rd out of competitors at Borås Open and earned slightly over 8 WPPR points

    high confidence · Rachel Risto, reporting personal tournament results

  • Rachel qualified for UK Open Women's finals at 11th place and won 36 pounds

    high confidence · Rachel Risto, reporting UK Open women's division results

Notable Quotes

  • “I brought out a ton of players and he ended up having a wait list originally...we got waitlisted which is crazy yes but it was great because he had over 160 players”

    Rachel Risto @ ~early in episode — Highlights strong demand and successful turnout for Borås Open despite waitlist concerns

  • “I think it's fun. And I like, I like the jump ramp method of trying to get up there...if you're able to hit that several times, then you're able to also carry that bonus”

    Rachel Risto @ ~mid-episode discussing No Fear — Shows Rachel's appreciation for 90s theme and game mechanics

  • “I am not chasing a top four for a double buy because you need five, like, perfect games. Like, five what would normally put a high score on the machine games in a row. I was like, holy moly”

    Rachel Risto @ ~discussing UK Open competition level — Illustrates difficulty and elite skill level required for top card format placement

  • “pinball should never be frustrating. It should be...difficult and it should be like a puzzle for me”

    Rachel Risto @ ~mid-episode UK Open discussion — Reveals Rachel's philosophy on what makes pinball enjoyable vs stressful

  • “it is a fun thing. It's so social. This was a much more social event than any other event that I played because you have more time waiting around in queues or it's come and go as you please”

    Rachel Risto @ ~discussing UK Open card format benefits — Highlights social advantages of card format tournament structure

  • “I have realized that this is not the format for me. I prefer group match play of any sort”

    Rachel Risto @ ~late episode tournament format analysis — Clear personal format preference statement affecting future tournament planning

  • “It was great. Thanks, Bowen, so much for that, for all your tutorials”

    Rachel Risto @ ~discussing Avatar game prep — Public appreciation for tutorial content creator assistance

Entities

Rachel RistopersonRaymond DavidsonpersonGeorge ChristianpersonHolly KoskinenpersonNeil McRaepersonBowenpersonBorås OpeneventUK OpeneventPinball's Eyeorganization

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Podcast content creators (Bowen) producing game-specific tutorial content actively supporting tournament preparation and player development

    high · Rachel credits Bowen's Avatar tutorial for enabling her to understand game systems before competition

  • ?

    event_signal: Multiple women-specific pinball tournament divisions (Women's World Championship, UK Open women's division) demonstrating growing focus on female-inclusive competitive formats

    high · Separate women's qualifier, women's finals, and women's division results mentioned across tournaments

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Format preference variance among competitive players: Rachel prefers group match play and unlimited individual game formats over card format due to stress and consistency requirements

    high · Rachel explicitly states 'this is not the format for me' and compares to Women's World Championship format preference

  • ?

    community_signal: Strong volunteer infrastructure at major European tournaments supporting complex multi-format events with game maintenance and scorecard management

    high · Rachel praises volunteers extensively; describes game hospital system and scorekeeping support at both tournaments

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Card format tournaments require sustained high performance across multiple games with strategic consideration of risk management and shot selection consistency

    high · Rachel's analysis of 90% certainty shots vs harder shots, and discussion of need for 'five perfect games' to chase top placement

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.293

0:00
Hello friends, welcome to the Ray Ray Show, a pinball podcast about competitive pinball with pals. I'm Rachel Risto along with Raymond Davidson. Welcome to the show. Raymond, you and I recently had an opportunity to play pinball outside of America. Yeah. Pretty cool. We both had the opportunity to go play the UK Open, and the week before, I had a chance to go play the Borås Open in Sweden. Wow. Pretty crazy. Yeah. Wow. I am... We talked about this briefly before. I'm not a fan of airplanes. I'm not a fan of flying. But who knew that it was going to be pinball that would take me and get me to Europe? I had an amazing trip. With pinball was kind of by proxy because I wanted to obviously go check out a bunch of other stuff while I was there. But I was hoping I could share a couple of things about the Boros Open right out the gate. Christian was the organizer and tournament director. The rumor was that it was going to be the last Boros Open. and I know and so I brought out a ton of players and he ended up having a wait list originally when I looked at it was looking at my calendar and deciding okay uh I traveled with Holly Koskinen we both played both tournaments together we had a great time all these things but when we were first looking at flying to Sweden to play it we had to get it to work out with our calendars first and then we went to go sign up for the tournament and we got wait listed which is crazy yes but it It was great because he had over 160 players, I believe, for a couple of different events. We got waitlisted until he found the space, which he did. The tournament was held at Pinball's Eye, which was a really interesting place with an assortment of not just awesome pinball machines that were in tip-top shape, but also all sorts of other weird arcade games, games that looked like air hockey but wasn't, and this weird Addams Family game. I couldn't quite figure out if you held onto it to see if you got shocked. I couldn't figure it out. It was weird, but it was a really interesting place in itself. There were three different events. There was pin golf, which was a really great intro mixer because you had to find partners to go golfing with. And it helped. I think it helped me to get familiar with the layout and with the games. This event, I believe that it worked kind of like a sorting cap and put you into different divisions for the main event. And I found that out after the fact. I didn't play anything really great this weekend. I was not feeling very well because I had some kind of weird jet lag and stuff going on. So it's unfortunate because I feel like I might have had a couple of missed opportunities, but I was just so glad I was able to play the event. When you said the pin golf was like a qualifier for the main? I think so because the next day, they set up two different divisions for the main event for the open. And either you were in an A qualifier or a B qualifier. And I was told that the pin golf was used as the sorting hat or the qualifier for the main event. But when you say B, was it B as in you couldn't win the whole tournament or is it B as in just a different qualifier, like two different groups that you, you know, that you were playing against? Two different groups because I believe it took top 16 in each group to go on to play finals. Oh, okay. Interesting. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm sorry you weren't feeling well. Well, that's okay. We'll talk about the main event in a second, but I want to talk a little bit about the classic event. And this is where I think I really kind of bummed out. I misinterpreted maybe, and this is on me. I misinterpreted a little bit about when or how quickly you needed to play your games. I thought that I had to complete my classic entry all in the same day, but it turned out that I could really have done it over the course of two days. And that was definitely on me, and I should have looked. It's right there on the website, and I should have read it a little bit better. But anyways, it was really interesting because I've never played this style of event, though, either, where you had 12 different games that you had the chance to play. You had two opportunities to play each game. So it was a total of 24 games. you had to write your score down and have another person confirm your score and initial it and then we had to enter our score sheets into match play so it was really that was different uh number one both scores count yes and it said i had to keep i didn't keep the score card and it does say two attempts both attempts count three balls uh so if there was anything that was set to a five ball game you only got three oh man so yeah it says play your attempts one player at the time single player this will eliminate some problems with some games stealing lock balls machine malfunctions gaming sets etc note the score and get it signed using your tag after each attempt so that i thought that was really interesting so there were a couple of games i what i was excited about when i looked at the game list is that i know how to play the vast majority of these games in this event. However, when I went to go play like Playboy, the index card was in Swedish. Oh, no. So or I believe in Swedish, so I couldn't quite read it. But I did try to ask a couple of friendly faces that I knew that were there playing on how to play a couple of games. So how do you play Playboy, Raymond? Well, you just shoot it up top into the little side lane, the grotto, because that gives you the lanes up top and then once you get all the lanes you shoot that center target and that's your fifth lane and then that lights the grotto for 25 000 uh and it's a bonus x so you just keep going up top see and so it was things like that that you know once i know the one or two small things that i need to do on a game i usually can figure it out that's why i like classic games it's not deep it's about ball control about taking your shot and knowing how to you know either to collect all the bits uh and to get your multipliers and that kind of thing i love older games for that reason i just find them they're easy easier laid out in my head yeah very straightforward um i see your i see your your card here looks like you had some big six million dollar man scores are they i have no idea right 246,313,000 yes there's not a lot of points in that game you get 50,000 for completing all the targets like that yeah you must have let your spinner yeah complete the targets and then I just kept going back up into the saucer in the top yeah that's nice that's all I did yeah and I was really happy with my strikes and spares yeah I was just gonna say those are pretty good too yeah at 325 I thought uh 324 960 I thought that was pretty good I struggled with the one that I played with at d82 so uh that was pretty cool but yeah so again it was a little bummed out that I didn't play better because I had some fairly good scores and then I just didn't do so hot on some of the other games. But that's okay. Again, it was a cool style of tournament and I liked the idea of having somebody else check off your score, but entering all of your own scores into match play, you know, you had to sit down for about 20 minutes and do that. Wow. Because it took time to do all of that and then to figure it out. But everyone there was so, so helpful. I have to say again, you know, volunteers that were there were incredible. The main event itself, like I said, I was sorted into the B qualifier, and this was a more familiar style of tournament. We played a total of 18 games, where we played three games per bank for a total of six rounds. So we played three rounds before lunch and three after lunch. Pretty happy with the way that I played this. I started out the first half pretty rough, a lot of fourths and thirds. I even though I had played some of the games the day before I just felt like I couldn't connect with any of the games and then I went and had lunch and I thought about when I played women's world championship earlier this year where the first half I did nothing but garbage and I knew that I had it within myself to you gotta give yourself a little bit of a pep talk we're not playing so hot and like okay so let's change strategy here I may not qualify uh in the the final for this but at least let's at least go win one game and i know that sounds crazy for some players um that are out there but the rest of us too may also feel man i just want to win one game because that lifts your confidence reminds you yeah it reminds you hey i know how to play and the game that i went back to play after the lunch break was a game i really didn't like very much and so when i saw the draw it was like one of those cringe like oh you know i'm sure you have those two oh yeah but you definitely just you know you make the best of it so it was elvira's house of horrors uh that game actually turned out to play nicer than the most of the ones i've had the chance to play a lot of the time um the ball will shoot out of left side of the pops and then straight down the middle i swear in two of the three games that i play that's the way it is but i was able to win it um is also able to find the backdoor skill shot which is so helpful oh Oh, yeah, it starts your mode right away. Yep, and several other players had a hard time finding it. So that sometimes is a little bit of an advantage if you're able to soft plunge that. That just means you're able to find the skill shot. It's just that there's like at the back of the house, there's like a little, it must be like a little scoop that's back there that you're trying to aim and soft plunge the ball to the very back of the house. It's cool. That's a cool little feature. I've got to love that. So after that, I seemed to pick up the pace. I had several good games, won a couple other games. I had a game of No Fear. It's one of those games where I love, love, love that game. Really? I don't think I've ever heard someone say they love No Fear. Oh, I love it because it's like so 90s. Yeah, totally. It's just totally, totally, totally bad. Totally 90s. And I just think it's, I think it's fun. And I like, I like the jump ramp method of trying to get up there. That how that, I don't know what it's called, right? It's the jump ramp or whatever it is, the top loop when you're up there. And if you're able to hit that several times, then you're able to also carry that bonus. And that can also help you immensely in that game. I mean, don't tilt because there's nice bonus. I think there's nice bonus in that game. Yeah, I mean, if you're just jumping all day, you're going to have $10 million in bonus per jump, I think. Easy. Yeah, something like that. Super easy. So I did tilt one ball in that game. I think it was my second ball. But I paid the price because I took a third instead of a second by less than a million points.

“I always say that while I'm playing the game, even if I don't like the game. I love this game. We're going to have fun”

Rachel Risto @ ~discussing game selection strategy — Reveals Rachel's mental approach to game selection and competitive mindset

Pinball Republic
organization
Hilton (Croydon)organization
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Pinball Expoevent
Women's World Championshipevent
The Ray Rae Showorganization
Playboygame
The Six Million Dollar Mangame
Elvira's House of Horrors (Premium Edition)game
No Feargame
8-Ball Snickerette (Deluxe)game
James Cameron's Avatar (Limited Edition)game
The Diamond Ladygame
Walking Deadgame
The Shadowgame
Meteorgame
  • ?

    event_signal: UK Open card format tournament successfully launched with strong attendance and sold out status, establishing new major tournament destination in Europe

    high · Rachel states event 'sold out' and recommends booking immediately for next year with expectation of higher demand

  • ?

    event_signal: Borås Open successfully attracted 160+ players with waitlist, suggesting strong European tournament demand and potential annual continuation despite rumors of cancellation

    high · Rachel states 'he had over 160 players' and waitlist was resolved to find space

    • 11:13
    So it's the price of tilting. But, you know, tilting is trying. And I don't believe I nudged or excuse me, I don't believe I tilted very much the rest of the tournament, if at all. I was feeling very good going into the final round. And I knew that if I was pretty close in points, I'm able to qualify for finals. and I thought, okay, I'm playing 8-Ball Deluxe. I've never played the game. So I sent you a message, Raymond, and I figure if there's anybody that's going to be awake at this time of day, I have no idea what time it was anywhere. I was traveling the whole time, but I knew you would be.
    11:50
    But you explained how to play 8-Ball Deluxe to me. You want to explain it to everybody? Yeah, I think I just told you if you're on your left flipper, shoot the drop targets on the right, and if you're on your right flipper, shoot the left orbit. And then once you've gotten all the drop targets, then it changes slightly to right flipper, bonus X target, left flipper, eight ball. Yep. And so I proceeded to go fourth, and I took a first on that game and had almost, I think I had almost a million points on that. Nice. Yeah. That was part of your main rounds? Yes. It was the last, the very last round. So it was important for me to step up the pace in order to, if I wanted to try to qualify. And how many did, you said top 16 out of each group? I'm pretty sure it was top 60. And each group had, what, 32, 64, a bunch of people? A whole bunch of people. I think there was 160 players. Maybe it was top 30. No, it wasn't top 32.
    12:44
    Maybe it was top 32. I'd have to go back and look. I'm so sorry. No problem. It sounds like it was a big tournament. It was a big tournament, absolutely. But I know that I was very close to getting into qualifying, and then I went to go play my beloved Addams Family, and I took a last. oh no you just couldn't find the skill shot i couldn't find the skill shot right you would think that would be it right i couldn't find the skill shot but i did start my multi ball but i did nothing with it like two balls drain right away even though trying to catch you know they're gonna come shooting out you know the chair at you and out of the slump and trying so trying to catch them right away but it just doesn't always work like that oh man you started multi ball and still got last must have been a big scoring game it was it absolutely was but it was a lot of fun uh i had a really incredible time and i think i placed like 83rd out of that and that did that did give me i believe eight whoppers a little over that and so that is on my top 24 or my top 20 card you got a little a little swedish flag i do i have a little swedish flag i'm so excited about that. I mean, you know, that, that to me was like, oh, that's just a little, you know, feather in my cap after this whole experience and amazing trip that I had is to come home and see that. So also I want to say is that it was wonderful. All the people there were so friendly. I asked so many players how to teach me to curse in other languages because I thought that was a great icebreaker but it was people were so kind um a couple people knew you and me raymond from our show i just want to give them i know that's crazy crazy things so i want to give all those folks a shout out and say thank you for listening um and i just had again even though i didn't play my best because i know i wasn't feeling my best i'm still really happy with how i played i'm so excited that i was able to have that experience and try um also a different format that to me as well cool so well congrats and i'm glad it was fun time sounds like the boros boros pinball open is a destination yeah and i think the best way to pronounce that i asked my friend ed from copenhagen how to say it and he says boros so i tried boros boros yes so if they do have an open next year you're looking to tack it on and if it's a weekend right before the uk open you know tell them rachel sent you oh yeah yeah so we the following weekend well then i went and traveled around london and had a great time so let's not omit that was great uh and then we both ended up in croydon raymond you and i went to go play the uk open tell me a little bit about that want to describe the card format to that yeah so the uk open is kind of like modeled after the Indisc tournament in California that we have in the States, where the main event is five games you have to play as a card, but it costs about a fifth of the price, I would say, than it does in the States. So money wasn't, you weren't too worried about lighting dollars on fire like you normally are in these pump and dumps. It was mostly just, you know, time and time commitment and being awake and alert enough to, you know, play a bunch. energy yep having energy that was the word yeah i was looking for um absolutely all those things and so you play a game and then you play a second game and a third and a fourth and a fifth and your scores on all those games are added together to give you one score and that score then ranks you know puts you hopefully qualified or not right and if you want to improve that score you can't just pick one of those games and play it again you've got to play another whole set of five games so it really hurts you if you have a great game and then a bad game because they average out you know for your total five cards right and that's kind of how i like to think of it is that it's just taking an average of your your five scores um so you just want to have average games you know with above average games hopefully as well that's a good way to view it average games I just want to have an average game for me. For me. An average game for me. Right. I mean, it depends on the competition, though, and how many qualifiers. For this tournament, there was 40 qualifiers. So five average games probably would qualify you. Some tournaments, you know, there's so many above average players that you actually got to go a little, you know, you got to have some good games and some great games. Especially if you want to chase buys. It was nuts. I put in my entry and I saw that, like, what the other people were doing. And I'm like, I am not chasing a top four for a double buy because you need five, like, perfect games. Like, five what would normally put a high score on the machine games in a row. I was like, holy moly. People were doing impossible things. And if you're interested, you can look at, I think you can still look at the InDisc software. Yeah, NeverDrains.com. There you go. And you can take a peek at some of those scores, and they were astounding, friends. Like, something, scores that you would never see. And to have, like you said, Raymond, to have five perfect games on one card, it's unbelievable. People were magicians. They were definitely, I hate to say it, but pinball wizards. There were five events, really. It was the UK Pinball Open, the UK Open Pinball Republic Championship, a uk classics one and a classics two and also the women's division i think there's also a little kids uh flip frenzy thrown in there yes oh i'm so sorry you're right there was also a youth event too which is awesome because that's all and you know why i neglected to think about that is because it's so uncommon so i'm glad that you mentioned that that's very cool uh neil mccray he was absolutely incredible this was his second year running this event it was the first time for Raymond and I both playing it. For me, I found, because I've not been to InDisc, and I'm telling you, I don't know if I can do it. I'm going to be hard-pressed, or I'm going to need a lot of sponsorship to go to InDisc, because it just sounds, after playing this event, it was hard. It was hard for me, and we'll talk about that. But I want to talk, because it was my first time playing the style of event, a card format, I also learned a lot. What I also liked about the event, Neal, is that I was told that InDisc does this too, where you have a game hospital. Do you know what I mean, Raymond? Oh, yeah, I saw that, where the games would get carted away. Yeah, so, like, the game got sick, and they'd have your pinball paramedics would show up with their cart, put the game on the cart, drive it back to the hospital in the back corner or outside or whatever. I didn't want to get involved in any of the stuff that was going on there. And then five minutes later, ten minutes later, they come back with the game, park it, and away we go. I've never seen that before. and that was amazing because uh when games went down if you're playing the game next to it and you're in the middle trying you know intense focus and so forth it's hard and very distracting as much as good of a player as you are it's got to be distracting right reman yeah yeah if they're like working on a game because oftentimes they gotta you know squeeze in there and then they take off the glass and they have the play field up the soldering out yeah who knows what yeah so It is distracting to the eye. I will tell you that I did have one game. That just comes to mind, that I did have one really weird thing happen to me while I was qualifying for the Pinball Republic Championship, is that I was playing Meteor, and my nails are not very long, but the left button, my fingernail got stuck between the button and the cabinet. Oh. Because the button was loose. Oh, weird. and so i drained you know so i drained and i i called somebody over and they came over and they fixed the flipper right or the fix the button right there but i thought that was really funny because who you mean that's something that would only happen to me okay like i'm the queen at breaking people's games but uh and the the flipper button felt weird when i touched it but i just thought okay maybe it's just you know it's this is the way it's been playing all day who knows sometimes things just feel different but no anyway so it's just a random story there I also want to say all the volunteers that were there were incredible from the scorekeepers to the pinball techs everybody gotta love that great community that's there that was supporting Neil in this gigantic event I want to say that no I didn't go to UK to win you know I didn't go play this event thinking I'm going to go I'm going going to go earn all my pounds back or dollars or get great pounds per whoppers or any of that. I wanted to go and have a great experience. I wanted to try a brand new to me format and just enjoy myself. With all that said, all these wonderful things, and I want to go back and play the UK Open again, I think it would be a great challenge for me, and it was such a fantastic run event. Everybody needs a book. Book it right away and go next year. I'm surprised. It sold out, but it took maybe a little bit for it to catch steam. But then once people started hearing about it, once it was like, oh, hey, there's only 10 tickets left, then they were just gone. So I think next year, look out. Yeah, look out. You should do it right away. Also, the location of the Hilton there was, I thought, really fantastic.
    22:24
    All right, so let me talk about the pinball side of it. With it being the first time ever playing a card format, I have realized that this is not the format for me. I prefer group match play of any sort. Have you tried the individual unlimited game format yet? I have, and I think that is the format that Wizards World does for the Women's Weekend. Would you say you prefer that one, or which one do you... I would prefer that where it's unlimited and not having to string all good games on a card. Yeah, it's a little tougher, isn't it? Oh, my gosh. Okay, so I'm bright and cheery on Friday morning. It's also my birthday that day, so I'm thinking nothing can go wrong. I'm going to have a great day of playing pinball. So I went and I played the first three cards. I played, I think, two classics card, maybe it was four, and two women's cards. and I decided that was enough.
    23:28
    And because I was feeling frustrated, I went up to my room. I'm like, I'm feeling frustrated and pinball should never be frustrating. It should be, you know, difficult and it should be like a puzzle for me. This is what it should be for me. You do you, boo, you know. But for me, I want it to be a puzzle and something I enjoy and something I'm unlocking and something I'm feeling positive about. And I was feeling very negative about my games. I knew how to play almost all the games of the women's bank. So I'm like, what is going on? What's going on with my flipper fingers? What's not working right here? So I thought at this point, because I was feeling all of that, I'm like, this is great. I pressed the button, went up the elevator, went and laid on my bed for 20 minutes. And I think that part of it is my brain was just having a hard time trying to process how to approach the event.
    24:20
    The women qualifier was also five games the classics by the way were the only ones that were three games which seemed easier overall But anyways with the women one I was trying to figure out how do I need to approach this So I tried to give myself, I really did actually, gave myself an attitude adjustment right then and there and let go. I just wanted to approach the event like this is a fun thing. It's so social. This was a much more social event than any other event that I played because you have more time waiting around in queues or it's come and go as you are pinball, which that's a big plus to the card format. So anyways, I give myself an attitude adjustment. I let go and I decide, okay, what games do I not really know how to play that are down there? And Avatar, I kind of sort of know how to play it. I know where my multiballs are, but I didn't know that you could stack them or how to light a mode and all this other stuff. So I watched Bowen's Avatar tutorial from the year the game came out, and I assume that there's been 2001. I don't know. And it was great. Thanks, Bowen, so much for that, for all your tutorials. So I went back downstairs, and I put in my best woman's qualifying card after that. And I just decided I was going to go have great games. and I think four of my five games were really good. I played Diamond Lady, which I love that game, once you light that spinner. And once I figured out how, oh, the ball returns to the left flipper and I can just ski it over. Now my spinner is lit. I can ski the ball over to the right flipper, catch it. Yeah, hit that little inner loop. Oh, my gosh. And let me tell you, once I figured out that little thing on the game, blew it up. And I think my qualifying score was like 2 million something on that. So then I just let it sit because I figured, okay, I think there's like 25 women maybe right around that 20, 25. Yeah, there was less than half or more than half of the people advanced. Yes, because he took top 16 either way into finals, which was good. So I just figured I'm fine. And I think I ended up sitting like fifth or sixth. And it didn't really matter because I wasn't, I'm not a person that's, I'm not going to go seek because it was no buy. It was just meant that if I ranked higher or qualified higher, I might be able to drive the bus and choosing the games in each group. And I'm not interested in that at all.
    26:51
    And you can, people are probably like, what? But I'm not interested in that because like the stress of like, all right, I'm going to go play. That shadow was so mean. I tilted several times on that, gave up on it. But I might have actually gone to go choose it against players that I know, that push the game around a little bit more. I don't know. There's other strategy and junk in there. I don't want to think about that. So I'm happy just to give the game control to somebody else and say, hey, I love this game. I always say that while I'm playing the game, even if I don't like the game. I love this game. We're going to have fun. That's what I say to the game. So I did qualify. I ended up, I think, 11th. I won 36 pounds. But I have to talk about the way that I died in the game. In the first two games of my final, I took like two thirds and I thought, okay, and if I did the math right, all I really have to do here is win. If I win, I can at least get a tiebreaker and advance. Okay. And I don't normally do pinball math, but I figured this is the time if I ever have to do it, I'm going to do it. Y'all can laugh at that too, because usually I'm just like, I just play. I'm having a good time. But now it's a little bit more serious. And we've talked before. Now these people have to become my frenemies. All right. so we go play walking dead as the third game i love walking dead it's got the crossbow in it i'm like super fancy never play one of these at home i i'm successfully use it i shoot a shot get collect the couple million whatever all these cool things i already had completed my well walker on ball two and that's usually what i like to do i know it's not the normal like competitive way to play but you know hey you play the game you like the way you like to play it or it feels comfortable Well, I like I like going after well, Walker, just because it's such a it's I call it like a 99 percenter where if you have a ball on flipper, you can hit that shot. Yes. 90 percent of the time. And, you know, it might be dangerous, but you're at least always making progress towards it every time you get the ball in the flippers. If you commit to it, you know, that's a valid strategy, whereas some games might have harder shots that are technically safer. but if you're missing those shots 50% of the time and then it's going out of control, that's identical to hitting the risky shot, the 90%er shot, you know. So you kind of do a little math, you know, weigh your options. It's like, well, I know I can hit this versus this is harder to hit. That's kind of an interesting game sometimes to play with yourself while you're trying to decide what to shoot at. Right, absolutely. And sometimes I just can't dial in to the left ramp or to the orbit at all in that game. And I have a hard time starting Bloodbath. So I always try to follow the same strategy. And if I can, I do like to backhand the Well Walker because I find like and try not to hit it straight on, but try to hit the side of it because usually it will register. So like I have my own method about that. So anyways, we get to ball three and I have one person behind me to play. and I just needed to, you know, blow it up. And unfortunately, I, and take first. So I'm working towards my prison then, and I have one shot, it's lit, and I'm one shot away, and I get the ball on the left flipper, and I pass it to the right flipper, sitting on the right flipper. I look up at the shot to take the shot, and I look down, and I see the ball roll off my right flipper. Oh, no, it just slipped off? it just rolled off like in slow motion Raymond in slow motion you're like and it's like ah you know like there was yeah there's it's like it's it's faded when when that happens because you just you see it happen and then as you're like trying to comprehend what's happening you're just making it worse because your your timing is off and then you it just falls down the middle yeah yes and and I laughed and I laughed and I laughed and I went outside you know I laughed and I congratulated you know the folks and you know good game all that stuff and so i go outside and uh and i just look at the people that are sitting outside smoking and i yelled one curse word very loudly and they all laughed and i'm like i'm better now because it like it was such a um a bonehead mistake you know to make but you know i was trying i was trying to do it right uh that's okay i just have to uh maybe not ever look at the shot just trust the trust it i don't know i looked at the shot too long i don't know yeah it's just i don't know maybe you just some luck yeah lost concentration i i call that sometimes it's losing focus for just like a split second yep and that's all it takes that's pinball babe that's pinball so who uh who won the women's amy from germany she's pretty incredible if you've met the kid yeah i guess she's not a kid well she's i think she just started maybe college but um yeah young young lady you knew her as a kid yeah she is a young lady uh she's fantastic uh really controlled player i got to do a little bit of streaming in the booth and do some commentary on backhand pinball y'all should go watch it mark did a great job coming over uh over the pond and streaming all of that was really unbelievable unreal with two streaming rigs uh at one point during finals we were watching actually two different final games at the same time it was kind of like mind-blowing we were i don't remember yes Yes, because some of the other games were going too long.
    32:18
    Oh, right. They toggled back and forth between them. Yes. But you could see the other games' score on the screen.
    32:27
    Oh, that's right. That's cool. And then game B, you could just see the scoreboard. That's right. I remember the little picture. Picture in picture. Yeah. It was crazy. So, yeah, Backhand Pinball, go like him, subscribe, and all those things. so anyways so that was my women's tournament event but i won my 36 pounds which is like that paid back for some of the cards that i burned through um the other thing is like the classics i quit playing classics after i did the first two cards i think in the classics one because i didn't know how to play the games i was very focused on playing the games when i was in sweden i was very focused on playing the games the women's bank and that were in the open the uk but i didn't really look at the classics ones at all so i decided okay instead of just trying or going around and asked and i could have gone up and asked a wide variety of people how to play the different games but i just decided not to because i didn't need to you know yeah i'm like i was having fun and the women's event that's one more in addition to the rest of the stuff that i had i wanted to play anyway so i also put a couple cards into actually i put several cards into the uk open in the pinball republic championship i couldn't get anything rolling more than two average games on a card and that was that was tough because i'm like what's going on like i think part of it is the mental game in the back of my head like okay this better be a good game three on your card and like i'm trying to squash that voice while i'm playing deadpool you know yeah uh the case may be that i found it to be very hard for myself so so i had another attitude adjustment And I think this is really good because I think a lot of players go through this where you can be hard on yourself. You're like, why am I not nudging? Or why didn't I nudge there? Or what's going on? Or why am I not connecting all this stuff? So then I just decided, okay, it's time just to play the games that I've never played that are in the other events and just have fun. So I had a chance to play a big game, and I played Alien Star for the first time. Really? Yes. and then I actually forgot that I was trying to like quote unquote compete because I was just having fun and playing pinball and really at the end of the day that's what it's really about. So I've had a lot of perspective. I've had about a week back and some perspective about a couple different things that were going on there. Like I said before, it was my birthday weekend. I might have been more interested in socializing with other people and having a good time. Social Rachel showed up but competitive Rachel, I don't know. I might have left her unsweeted. She didn't really show up so much for this event. I'm not disappointed in that because I had a fantastic time. The nice part about this card format is I think nobody really talks about is that there is more time to engage with other players and more time to take breaks in this format. So instead of playing a 30-point target match play that takes you all day to play and is less social, this was a much more social experience. Yeah, isn't that interesting? Because I know a lot of people say the match plays is very social, and it can be for sure, but so can this format. And sometimes if you consider, you know, going out to dinner with your friends during a break that you just invented as social, then that's even more social. Right. Right. And I kind of kind of think of it as the the match play. I feel like sometimes it's kind of like going to work, like into the office, whereas, you know, working from home, you kind of pick your own your own hours. So it's kind of a nice flexibility. Right. That's interesting. I love hearing you say that, too. It was really such a fun time. I encourage everybody, again, that as soon as it opens, if you're even remotely interested, get yourself registered. Neil and all the volunteers there did a fantastic job, especially the best scorekeeper was Kevin. I know you're listening, Kevin. You are so rad, and I appreciate your friendship. So I have to say that. And also, you become friends with brand-new people you met that day. And that's a cool thing. I got to meet so many awesome people in Sweden that also were from Finland and Germany and all sorts of other places. So, so cool. It's, you know, pinball is more than pinball for me. It's about the community, too. So it's about the people. Yeah, and there's a lot of people there. Heck of a lot of people. All right. So that's my viewpoint on the UK Open. But here's what we're all really here to hear you.
    37:14
    There was a lot of here's. here is what we all are here to really hear you talk about raymond uh yeah uh well i um let's see here so i i played uh in the two classic events and the main and the republic championships the classics events were interesting because that was the first time i played in a three game card format. Usually you see four at the minimum, but five is kind of the normal. Three was kind of like, whoa, wait, what? Only three? Yeah, it was very short, very small. Yeah, and so it kind of meant if your first game was bad, then you either just started over on a new ticket, or you use the other games purely for practice and experimentation. You know, don't get too attached to them, because you need three great games in a three-game card. And so it was kind of frustrating because I'd blow up game one, and then, you know, if game two's bad, you kind of just got to start over again. You got to get three in a row. Do you choose to void your card, or do you play the third game and keep it?
    38:28
    If I play the third game, I'll almost always submit it. But if I have a bad game two, and I just want to start a new card, then, yeah, then I'll void it. Okay. and that's just for efficiency because you only get so many tries because classics is only like six hours of qualifying or something yeah it was very short yeah so you got to use your time very effectively but luckily neil had the most games it was like you know 15 games to choose from so the lines were actually pretty low oh yes i'd agree i think i didn't wait anything more than maybe five to six minutes for any queue yeah for any of the events that i played that was awesome. Yep. It also meant the scores were, you know, they were pretty good because people were playing a lot of games. Um, but, uh, I definitely liked that. I liked that you could just hop right in. Um, and so, uh, let's see my first classics card of the day, alien poker, big game and Harlem that alien poker. Oh, that was my best card. Sorry. Was it? Oh, my first game. First card was Harlem Stargazer Nineball, and this was on Harlem. It felt super easy. I don't know what happened. I never scored like half of this score the rest of the weekend. I got 632,000. I was like, all right, welcome to the UK. And then I made the mistake and chose Stargazer because I think it had the shortest line, and I was like, ooh, Stargazer. And I got nothing. I got like 95,000. so I didn't know it at the time that that card was dead so I played game three and I got a good score on nine ball I got like 600,000 all right and that was also part of the reason why I chose nine ball is because I knew that stargazer probably ruined the card so I kind of picked a game that I just kind of was like oh nine ball's fun um I don't really I wouldn't pick nine ball on a good run just because it's kind of you don't know what kind of game you're going to have on it You're just kind of like sending the ball everywhere, you know, hoping you get that skill shot. In the future, I wanted to pick games, you know, like big game where you're just really focused on that one spinner shot on the left. Yep. Alien poker, you're really focused on, you know, completing your bank. Harlem, very obviously drop target spinner. So that's kind of my battle plan going into this classics is just pick the games that, you know, you can do very specific things on. And it struggled a while. I think, let's see, I did.
    41:06
    So the Harlem card, then I did another card, which I thought this card was actually, I thought this card was good. It was the 300,000 Flash Gordon, a million big game, and 350,000 Harlem. Yeah, you'd think that'd be great. Right? Right, but I think the Flash Gordon was worse than I thought because it was set on kind of easier settings where the bonus X would carry. And I think later on they actually pulled the game because there was some phantom switch registering, so maybe that's why the scores were kind of high on it. Interesting. And so that 296,000 was not worth nearly, it was only worth 139 points. for reference the stargazer the 95 000 garbage score was 132 points so wow yeah i don't understand it i think maybe just because so many more games got played on flash gordon or i'm not sure but they had that that ticket i was so happy with it and then i just watched myself you know i might have went back to my room and chilled out for a while and or played a main entry and then all of sudden I see I'm like on the bubble of classics. I think I'm still out. I think I'm like 40th and top 32 move on. So then I just started getting back to work, did a couple more entries, a couple more entries. And then finally the good entry hit, the 1.5 mil Alien Poker, 900,000 big game. And then, oh, I did actually do a Redemption Harlem of 673. Wow, that's a great card. Yeah. I do want to mention that the alien poker, when I was watching that, and I think I was commentating on that on stream, it scared me because you couldn't scissor on that game. Why would that scare you? Well, because I've never played it with the boner. Oh, you were worried when people, I see, you were scared for other people. I was so scared for others. Well, sorry, I mis-explained myself. But no, you're right. I got nervous, very nervous for other people because they just caught the ball on the bottom flipper i'm like on bottom right flipper i'm like what are you doing you're gonna drain uh and so it took several games of watching that and like man i wish because the one at d2 does not have the bar in between and i wish that it did because that really opened up the game uh and different ways to pass makes it a lot more relaxing yes not stressful yeah right exactly so oh man but yeah that's an awesome card so you went on to play the classics one finals Yep, and I think I was one of the higher seeds, so I got to pick, you know, drive the bus. But on this tournament, you could only pick a game once for the entire finals. So I kind of started running out of options of what to pick. There weren't any buys either. That was the other interesting thing. So I picked Harlem Alien Poker. I got third on Harlem, second on Alien Poker. And then I don't know why I chose Firepower, I think, because I played it and I kind of knew how it played. And every other game that I wanted to pick was being played that round. So it kind of was like the only one.
    44:30
    And oh, my goodness, Rachel, I got so lucky. Tell me, tell me. 86,200 points was my score. Oh. And it got first place. Oh, my gosh. The next highest score was 75,000. And then the next highest score was 74,000. And then the next highest score was 69,000. Oh, my gosh. That's crazy. That's insane. And so that one flip of a coin on firepower, it kind of just gave me the mojo I needed. And it advanced me through that. The brutal first round is always the hardest for me. Always the hardest. And almost didn't make it out. uh but i got lucky or rather everyone got unlucky right anyway so then i got to just kind of actually the next round was rough too next round was i had to play against keith you know elwyn and oh yeah i i know i know who you're talking you can just use single names yeah yeah and uh i had you know i was not really getting things going i had third place um on the first game Second game was big game, and I had nothing going into ball three, and I fought and fought and fought, knowing how important it was to at least get a point. And I did. I got the third place after fighting, and that ended up being important because when I won game three, which was Quicksilver, it put me in a tie with Keith at six points. Wow. And so every point counted, and then I played Keith. He picked Pinball Champ as the tiebreaker game. And I was behind on ball three and I just kind of just kept it alive long enough. Just kept trying to get it upstairs to that upper play field. Have you played any of those weird Zacharias over there? I have. I've I played actually all of the ones that were there. I played them at Neil Skywalker's collection. He used to have all of them. If yeah, he's all of those. And he had quite a few of those type of games. So I had an opportunity two years ago to play quite a few of them. But it was interesting looking at them the night before everything started that Thursday night. I did go in and take a look at all the games. I didn't play anything, obviously. But, man, all the games are in such pristine condition. How do you play Pinball Champ? Yeah, so you want to complete drop target banks to add time. And then once you have, you know, 10 or 15 seconds, you shoot that U-turn ramp to go to the upper play field. and then you get that much time to complete the upper playfield targets. And every target is 100,000, so you're just trying to get as many hits as you can before it kills your flippers. And I think once you spell champ like six times, you can get like a 5 million special on the lower playfield, but that never came into play. It was just all about could you get it up top, could you hit some of those targets. There's also some stuff on the lower playfield where you could shoot the spinner. that kind of gave you some points or you could shoot it in this weird little I call it the hoops shot. Have you ever played Gottlieb hoops?
    47:38
    No. No. No hoops. No hoops for Rach. No. Okay well it's this shot that is very back of the play field and it's on the left. It's kind of like a little U-turn. Like think of Diamond Lady but instead of doing a figure eight it just goes straight back and around the left, kind of like the Captain America shot on Avengers. Okay, all right. Like through the pops. And so that shot was good points, too. But someone was saying that shot would sometimes drain you. It's supposed to feed it back to your left in lane, but sometimes it would rattle and go to the left out lane. Yeah. So if you could, just going upstairs was the best play, but the flippers were kind of soggy, so you had to kind of perfectly time that U-turn ramp. But if you did, you basically won because it was such a hard shot that those that could hit it, you know, you usually ended up winning. Interesting. Yeah, so that was exciting. And then semifinals, I don't remember anything too exciting.
    48:43
    But finals was again very exciting I put up a million on nine ball but Julio put up 1 Wow Yeah Julio. Wow.
    48:56
    If you've ever seen. Insane scores. Yeah. I don't know if you've ever seen Julio play, but he is the master nudger. He is always, he can save almost any ball. Like there's so many times where you're like, oh, that's gone. And then he just saves it, digs it out. I love it. Yeah, nine ball is perfect for that because it's all about just saving, keeping the ball going.
    49:17
    Interesting. I'll have to look. I'm sure, I think there's like pinballvideos.com that actually has different players playing. So I might have to look that up. Yeah, well, this was the final. So this will be on Backhand Pinball and eventually YouTube. Yes, I'll have to check it out there. And there was a kind of a weird controversy that game where I started multi ball, relocked a ball, drained my other ball. And then it just like took a second and then gave me the ball back and was like, still, still my turn.
    49:51
    Wow. Kind of weird. Strange. Yeah. So I don't know. We waited and Neil was like, well, I mean, it said it gave you the ball. It said shoot again. like it go for it you know play it i think technically we should have taken the ball out of the plunger lane and put it in the drain and then see what would happen but i'm like 90 sure it would just kick it back out again because it uh yeah it was whatever it was either a software glitch or whatever it it definitely just served the ball again and it was still my turn so not sure um something weird it didn't end up mattering luckily i love it when that happens where it doesn't decide the difference either way right right um yeah so then pinball champ uh that was my chance to put myself in a position to win the tournament because julio had 4.3 million now i was catching him climbing climbing i got to 3.99 and I did a flipper fumble. It was very sad. Oh no. Yeah. So. Did your ball just roll off the edge of your flipper like me, Raymond? Not quite. No, it was more like I shot the ball into the bottom of the left slingshot and then shot the ball into the bottom of my right flipper. Nice. Like in a quick little like. I've done that. Yeah.
    51:17
    I know. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. Oh, that's a bummer. So then I'm facing, I have four points. Julio has eight. So the only way I can win is if I get first and Julio gets last. And so I pick the most brutal game in the whole lineup because I need stuff to go my way, right? I need some lucky stuff to happen. I pick Ali.
    51:40
    And I hadn't even played that Ali. And, oh, my God, I just blew it up. I just kept backhanding the drops, both of them, either the ones. you know, that give you bonus X or the ones that give you points for how many all-league letters you have. And I just kept sending it, just backhanding those drops, drops, drops for days. And I got 700,000. The next highest score was 170,000.
    52:07
    And it almost happened. Julio going into ball three, he did not touch the ball the first two balls. So the plan was working perfectly. It just went straight out twice in a row. And then on ball three, I'm like, well, if it goes straight out, I'm not going to be upset, but it would feel kind of cheap. I hope I hope he at least gets to play ball three. Yes. But unfortunately for me, yeah, unfortunately for me, he played it very well. And so he got second. And so he won the tournament despite my, you know, my monster score. Oh, man. All in one ball. Yeah. So think about think about the pressure then as and he was player four stepping up.
    52:48
    He was player two. Okay. Even still stepping up as player two, as ball three, and you've had two house balls, like you have to do all the things in one ball and I've been there and it's a lot of pressure to put on yourself, but then it's also kind of like, I need to just kind of calm down and relax, you know, calm down, relax. I know what I'm doing. And the worst is, is I'm going to take a last. Right. And so even if, even if he did take a last, it would still be a tiebreaker between me and him. So he was, yeah. and so that was very exciting finish very exciting very much so oh that that had to be an awesome game i have to go back and watch some of the finals on stream awesome congratulations still thank you so yeah i got second um some good bones collected there and then uh then classics too i was the the one and done on in terms of entries i just did one entry and this is crazy yeah tell That blows my mind because there's so many players that I'm sure put in 10 entries or whatever. They're grinding, you know, grinding. And you put one card into the Classics 2. What was on that card? So it started off, I was like, oh, I guess I'll try this Dolly part. And the worst that happens is it's bad and I can just void the ticket, right? So do your most risky game first. Yes, right. And I basically, I was like, all right, I'm going to try the short plunge technique, see how that works, just to experiment. It came to my flipper. I was like, okay, cool. I hit the drop target, light my spinner. Okay, cool. I did a tap pass, and then I just shot the spinner a bunch, and I got like 150,000 ball one. Wow. Unfortunately, ended the game with 175,000.
    54:35
    Pretty much entirely my own fault of doing poor drains. but it turned out 175 000 apparently uh the dolly was eating people alive it was very mean i could play it yeah and so that was good for 173 points just from that one ball from like five spinner shots that's incredible i have a shot i have a question though yeah so if you're short plunging it you're putting it on the right flipper are you backhanding the drop then um i did the tap pass because when I short plunge, I noticed it didn't score any points. It didn't trigger the spinner, and I had it trapped. So I had like a free tap pass opportunity. So even if I watch the ball just roll down the flipper into the drain, it's fine. I get the ball back. So it's like a practice session for your tap passing.
    55:25
    I cannot tap pass. Maybe the next time we see each other in person, I'm going to have you show me how you tap pass because it is something that I definitely need to put into my tool belt. Yeah, especially, I mean, you can also put the alley pass in ahead of that because that is on Dolly, you can, you know, Schatz alley pass. But sometimes there's games where you just really need to figure out how to get the ball to the other flipper because that one you could drop, you could backhand the drop target as it turned out, but you can't hit the spinner from the right flipper. Right, yeah, but that drop can be very deadly sometimes to backhand. it that's the only reason why i asked but maybe that one was just friendly it was a really pretty dolly that game was really really pretty i also want to mention the paragon and the women's bank that was a very beautiful paragon some of these games were just unbelievable in top-notch shape all right go on dolly dolly dolly so then the next game i played was pinball champ since i had such good luck at it in finals why not why not and i i dropped seven mil and it was like all right let's go holy cow holy cow wow so that was ranked seventh that was 186 points so now i'm like all right i just need well the dolly score i wasn't very confident on i was kind of like i probably need like a first or a second or a third on this last game like i need a big score and i played big game and i had the biggest game of 1.8 million wow awesome yeah that's quite Quite a card. So that was enough with that big game score kind of counteracted the Dolly Parton score to make it from being, you know, average to, like, I think I had top four or something. So that was exciting.
    57:13
    Yeah. Yep. Third place qualifier, Neil McRae with the top qualifier in Classics 2. He just dropped a nuke. Let's see. Classics 2, Neil. He did 1.8 million Nineball, 1.6 million Quicksilver, 1.6 million Stargazer.
    57:29
    Wow. Good job, Neil. Yeah, he just went to Stern Town. It was great. And what's crazy is, as you can imagine, he was setting up the event on Thursday and on Friday. Everything kicked off. Over 100, I don't know, 150 players. There's quite a few people that were there managing this and managing volunteers and all the things that he's got juggling. And then he goes and plays the best card of his life. Yep. So that's so awesome. Yeah, and he only did the one try. Oh, that's even better. The only other piece of information is in Classics 1, he did one card, the same three games, Quicksilver, Nineball, and Stargazer, and did not do as well. But on the next day, he just, boom. he was ready to play pinball and talking about it and looking at it and hearing people complain about it or whatever no he that that's amazing but that's actually interesting interesting strategy as well that he chose the same three games the following day yeah i think that's great that's a good strategy so he knew how they played the day before and he knew he could do better awesome yep uh yeah so i think uh we can speed run the classics too i don't really remember anything too exciting um other than at the i know dolly saved my bacon a couple of times uh and then at the end uh yeah i won on dolly on one of the rounds to advance to the finals i was told there was a blowout game on dolly so i will go back and re-watch that because it's one of my favorite games so i'm excited to see you play it yeah i was glad it got chosen um or maybe i chose it no someone someone yeah peter chose it for me so that was cool yeah and then the finals uh i had to play blackout which i um i had already picked like all my games um i know i would have picked dolly again actually did i pick yeah i picked dolly round one and that that was the one i blew up because i i needed it uh yeah so i couldn't pick dolly so i i just said go forth and um phil burn bomb chose blackout which i did not like because i hadn't played it the entire weekend and i got third on it deferred so you deferred the option yeah because i had already picked everything basically So I got third on blackout just from not really playing it. And then I got second on nine ball with a million, just barely passing Keith at a million. So I had 1,086,000. Keith had 1,072,000. Oh, wow. But Jeff Teolis, 1,234,000.
    60:23
    So he sealed the deal. He got eight points. And because I had that bad blackout game, I only had three. So Jeff won the tournament on that nine ball game. So congrats to Jeff Teolis.
    60:38
    Amazing. A pinball profile. We have to mention that. Jeff Teolis. Yes. Jeff Teolis, a pinball profile. Yeah, go listen to pinball profile. Absolutely. How do you say it? This has been your pinball profile. I'm Jeff Teolis. There you go. Oh, that's perfect, Raymond. Exactly. Got to love Jeff. Congrats to him. Yep. And so on game three, Phil Birnbaum put up a huge firepower score to get second. I basically got one flip on my game. So, yeah. But Keith also did, like, one flip. He also was rushing to get to the main to finish his entry because this was late Saturday night. And so he needed to finish his entry. He had to go play his Bond 60th. Which is great. I've got to love that. Yeah. he's playing his game there i think it's crazy anyway yeah so yep that was classics fun time fun finals after that i'm already like all right i already won i don't really you know there's tomorrow is the main championships which i i just that was another one and done i put in one card and i have to laugh that's so awesome raymond someday i want to be you and be able to Just put one card in and then just take a nap. I mean, I literally did. You're so mad. There was a point on either Friday or Saturday where I had qualified in both the classics and the main, and I just went to the hotel room and did nothing for like three hours, and it was glorious. You watched the stream. I bet you watched the stream. I did. I watched some of the stream. I just chilled. It was awesome. It's amazing. You're such a great player. I mean, we all aspire to be that. You know, I mean, I don't always do the one and done. Usually I have to try. I have to do a bunch. And it can kind of get scary when you're in that funk, because I feel like sometimes your first try is your best try for a while. Like until you until you have that breakout card, you'll be spinning your wheels for a while. So I'm just I'm just glad, you know, I did that card and I just kind of let it sit and watched it. And it fell quite a bit. You know, it was like third when it went in and it ended up 11th. but like I told you earlier I hinted at it earlier I did not care where I qualified as long as I was in top 16 and got one buy I knew there was no way I was getting two buys with top four and so I just didn't even bother I was like it's fine whatever yeah so I had 400 million Stargate which I think ended up going down later which I guess helped me because it meant no one could beat that score um but it had already this is the qualifier for the uk open one card you played for it okay yep and luckily the stargate um it was in half of the tournament or more so they got to keep my score otherwise uh if a game is out before it makes it halfway through a tournament you got to replace the game and you have to play a new one yep yeah so i don't know why what possessed me to choose stargate first i really don't i think i just saw it and it was open and I was like, well, let's go. Well, the game told you what you needed to do. You know what that is, right? Shoot the pyramid. That's right. So I got like most of that score from one mode. It was like the lighter craft mode where the thing's going back and forth and you have to hit those targets up there. And they were just like scoring 10 million a target. So I just kept just sending it up there. It was great. That's a great way to do it. and then I played Congo which I knew I was going to want to play that was on my hit list and did my 1.2 bill on that so I was happy with that one and then I played Mystery Castle which I was a little nervous about because that can kind of go either way where if you light the doom mode and drain you're in a world of hurt because now you've got to go through all the modes and it's a lot harder to get points if you don't get the doom mode but luckily I survived lighting the doom mode and I made it all the way through all the items and had a second doom mode lit. Wow. But the way to light it, I had to shoot the left orbit, and the orbit feed just sent it into the out lane. So I was like, really? Come on. So I could have had another doom mode, but I had 1.7 billion, so I was like, all right. Wow. Wow, Reman. Wow. Yep, that was a big mystery castle for me. um and then unfortunately tron tron was weird because i played a long time i played korra i played light cycle i was doing stuff i just got no points i had 25 million at the end of it like i don't know usually i would have like 40 million after i've done all this stuff but i guess i just wasn't getting enough jackpots or you know not stacking double or double scoring at the right time. Yeah, that could be, that can make a huge difference. Yeah. That's interesting. Cause you thought you're having an average game, which is X would be X amount of points. Then you woke up at the final score and you're like, what? Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of weird. Um, and so that was my bleeder. That was my worst score. Um, it was 52nd and worth 141 points, but I kind of knew that like, it was better than a zero game. Cause there's going to be a lot of people that play Tron and don't do anything. So I was like, the ticket is still alive. Don't sweat it. Just play your fifth game, play it well. And, and you might actually qualify with this one ticket. And so I played Metallica and it, I, uh, you know, I did the crank, I did the Sparky, drained quickly out of that because the ball save was short, which was rough. I didn't expect it. And so I didn't even get my add a ball. And so then I was just like, I don't know what to do. I guess I'll just shoot right ramp piston combos. And that actually got me, that got me enough points where I felt like, okay, I've got like 20 or 30 million now, which isn't a lot, but it was at least something, right? Right. And then I could relax a little bit. And so then I was like, okay, I'm going to go for another Sparky. I'm going to go for a snake multiball. I'm going to go for my crank it up items. I'm going to just kind of play the game. And I, I actually went for coffin multiball, which I never go for, but on this one I noticed I only needed like eight more hits, and I was like, well, I can hit the captive ball eight times. Like, let's go. Right. Yeah, and especially if you knew the feedback tube was going to be decent or somewhat clean. Yeah, this Metallica, the left out lean was set very friendly. I don't think I ever saw a ball go down there because the post was all the way down, the rubber was on, left out lean was glorious. Right. Right out lean had no rubber. it was still kind of deadly but the left one was was awesome and and when you hit the captive ball it usually kind of goes over the left but it was fine so i put up 199 million and sealed wow yeah it was top score when i put it in it ended up fifth so i think people figured out the metallica was playing playing very friendly for sure i did play a game of that in my qualifier and i actually found it to be a game that you could you could definitely nudge the game and it was it was really fun it's a really pretty game yeah it was like the collector's edition or limited edition yeah It has the fancy spinners and the hammer. Yes, a fancy hammer. It actually looks like a thwomp from Super Mario. Yeah, it kind of does. That's what it looks like. It makes you think of another hammer. But anyway. Yeah, so. So you played the one card. You secured a buy. And so then away you go. You went to go play the UK Open Finals.
    68:16
    Yeah, that was. Let's see. So I joined in the second round. And I was with. Carlos was the bus driver Laserlos he picked James Bond and I just I don't know I just blew it up I could not drain it was one of those just kept sending it and I was doing really well in my multiballs where I just kept them alive really long so I was getting big jackpots and made it to one of the little mini wizard modes I had a 1.3 billion and it felt good so I was like alright that's how we start finals that's a great way to start finals yeah yep so then then carlos chose the world's highest scoring star wars so this star wars oh my gosh i don't know if you saw some of the scores yes normally in competition you'll see star wars have the multipliers capped at 20x and this one right it went to 40x so you're getting some big shots big scores and uh second place on star wars was six billion yeah and i got first yeah billion with a b with a b friends yeah i got first with seven billion and paul got third with four billion just crazy crazy scores yeah it was nuts and i i didn't think i was gonna be able to get seven billion i never get seven billion on Star Wars, but I just used my multipliers, kept getting, you know, the, the planet multi balls kept stringing things along and just, it just happened, you know, you were in the flow state. So, yeah, so that was that round. And then, uh, let's see, then I got to play with, oh yeah, Keith Elwin again and Julio from classics. Nice. And Marcus from Finland, I think who was the person that did he win IFPA or he at least took Escher out. Yeah. He got second at IFPA. Yes. And, um, we, Keith picked James Bond again. I was like, yes, let's go.
    70:25
    So I dropped a, I dropped a Billy on that. Um, and after I put my billion, uh, Julio was up and I was like, well, this could take a while because the game was pretty friendly. Julio didn't really know the rules, but he could play a long time, and he went into ball three with, like, $100 million, and I, like, went out, got something to eat, you know, did nothing for a good, like, 15 minutes. I come back, he just drains, and he drains at, like, $500 million. And I was like, whew. I got, you know, my billion almost was getting caught there, so. Right. Then. Do you feel like Bond is one of those games, like, as you play it progressively, like as you get further into the game in one ball like the points start to pile on yeah it just it's because it's kind of like um a hallway a hallway with a bunch of doors and the doors just keep opening uh you know like the next wizard mode the next uh multi-ball like at one point the mystery lit a multi-ball for me and then like after i played that i did a bunch it did enough things to qualify the wizard mode and then after i did that i was able to go back to the rocket and then after i did that it just all kind of doors keep opening and you just kind of surf from feature to feature oh i like i like that idea okay i like love that picture yep all right and then so you move on from bond yeah the other thing about bond is hitting that upper loop to get your play field multiplier that was big yeah yeah it has to be absolutely all right and i think the highlight of my tournament i mean aside from the end but this this was awesome game two keith Elwin picks high speed, one of his absolute favorite games. He's blowing it up. He's got 4 million, 4.3 million, and he's struggling to get the jackpot because the upper flipper is a little weak.
    72:19
    And I go into my ball three with only like 300,000 or so, and I need to get 500,000 to get second. and I struggle bus for the first couple minutes trying to get there and then once I pass that then I'm just like okay time to go for Keith nice and yeah I just got in the flow state I was just going left orbit to side ramp I was shatsing the in lanes to go to the right orbit I was just hitting spinners just kept going and going and going I got to multi-ball I got the jackpot But and then I was like, I knew I was really close in bonus, but not quite. And I was short by like a couple hundred thousand. I knew I just needed like one more orbit shot or two. And I just kept missing over and over again I was like oh no no no But I was no I was focused I was not going to let it drain So I kept saving it getting control trying again Then finally I made the winning shot and I beat Keith Elwin at high speed which is not an easy thing to do.
    73:25
    Yeah, hey, sometimes it's not even about – you can be excited about winning a tournament and moving on and advancing and stuff, but sometimes it really is about playing somebody's favorite game or a game that somebody is really, really good at and being able to beat him at it is such a great feeling. It has nothing to do with the other person, but it has everything to do about you and your skills. Good job, Raymond. Thank you, Rachel. Yeah, I felt it. I think it's so awesome. It felt really good. Yeah. Because it meant I moved on to the next round, which was kind of awkward in game three. I just said I'm going to be player one, because how I did affected the other players. Right. And I put up 1.161 billion, and basically Keith was in the doghouse. He only, well, actually, no, Keith was leading. Keith had three points going into game three. Julio had two. Marcus had one.
    74:18
    So Keith either needed to win the game or at least beat the other two people, or alternatively, if I won the game, then Keith is in a tiebreaker in in a lot of scenarios even if he does nothing and it turns out he did nothing he had like the worst game of Congo ever uh oh one of the drains was his fault he admitted to which I thought was great I love that he he owned it it was um tried to flick the left flipper to kind of tip the ball over and just it rolled off the flipper down the middle kind of like you know sounds familiar hey that actually makes me feel a little bit better yeah that Mr. Elwynn does the same thing. So thanks for that, Keith. Yeah. Thanks for telling me, Raymond, that makes you feel a little better. Yeah. I mean, it was a little different context, but it's still, you know, he just let the ball go at the end. So, yeah. So, so he was in trouble. He had no, he had, he got dead last and he was relying on me to pull him through, which I, you know, I did my best. I always play my best and I put up the 1.16 billion and I was kind of like, well you know me helping elwyn out not the worst thing in the world i like the games he picks if he he's a high seed in the tournament and so if i'm in group with him next round i actually kind of like him being around because he's going to pick games i like right but it turned out marcus had crazy ball three on and i had 1 billion 161 million and he got 1 billion 178 million he had the 3x bonus to pass me oh my gosh but i love i love that i love it but the drama wasn't over yet so that means that meant keith is keith's hope and dreams eliminated um because i shattered right but then julio julio's player four and he just needs to beat the 1.178 billion and he's at like 600 or something and he's climbing and climbing and climbing and then he falls short 1 billion 45 million and so three billion games on congo julio would have been in if he could have just passed marcus it was keith almost got a tiebreaker with three points which i've never seen before in my life with like it would have been nuts if it would have happened and it almost did wow yeah i love i love the pinball math and how that works out in the finals Yeah. I always think it's very interesting because it's not traditional. You'd think scoring would be like 0-1-2-3-4, but it's not that way. It's 4-2-1-0. Yeah, 4-2-1. It just totally throws everything into, yeah. It's a whole other complex math thing to figure out. It's interesting. Yeah, so then the semifinals was also just as dramatic for me because I started with a pretty lackluster Tron, but I did get third. so I'm always like hey I didn't get fourth so I got that point and then Alien Star I just blew it up I had the craziest ball you know six million points it was awesome I got four it was pretty insane it was it was pretty insane to watch were you commentating on that yes oh and yes and it was insane to watch and you also had a scenario where you tilted a ball and you gave like the camera a very suspect look but the player but the player before you had also tilted and i think they tilted maybe on a house ball but they tilted and so i don't know if the game just because you didn't like give the game a lot of like action or anything at least from what we could tell on our end yeah i think i just tilted but i think i just uh i kind of leaned into it a little hard on one of my kind of reactionary moves and it must have still been moving uh but also the weird look it was for that but also because that game had a weird thing where the gi would go out but your flippers would still work for like a flip yep yes it was very strange and you'd be like what's going on uh like did the game die but nope it's just you tilted yeah uh yeah but no that was unbelievable game to watch it was really really cool game i'm glad you got to see it and then the third game of metallica was the most epic metallica match ever crazy oh my gosh crazy The number one thing I want to point out that happened to you and as well as to another player is that the ball jumped the flipper. Oh, my God. That was so frustrating. I'm like, and then I'm just like, everybody was just shocked when it happened the second time. We're just all blown away. But I have a couple of thoughts about that. One, is there a specific terminology when the ball jumps the flipper? You know, like everything. No, there really isn't. It's just that you're going to come up because you're speechless when it happens. Right. it's like a speechless flip yeah it's crazy yeah so i i basically i had five points arvid had three timber had six peter had the double zero so he was out of advancing but i wanted peter to win because then he would take the four and i would be good to slide on into finals right and it was looking like that was going to be the case i was like yeah go peter he was blowing up metallica but then Arvid had the craziest ball three and he falls short 164 million to Peter's 169 million. Yeah. And so insane to watch. And Peter also, I want to mention is that the other finals for the pinball Republic had started. So he was going back and forth and playing both events at the same time. Yep. Me too. Yep. Oh, I didn't know that that had started for you. Oh, I think I had a buy. So I did that next round. Yeah. You had a buy. Yeah. You had a buy, but he didn't but go on so then that meant uh i was in at least a tiebreaker with arvid but i really did not want a tiebreaker i wanted to just move on and so ball three timber has a good ball and now all of a sudden i'm looking at fourth place with like i think i had 90 million or 85 million in fourth place and i needed 107 so i needed like 15 18 20 million not that many millions but enough of millions that like I'm sweating it on ball three. I'm like, what the? And on Metallica, you have to look around and figure out where the hell am I going to get a million or 15 million points? Where's that going to come from without training? So I assessed the situation and I realized I just needed three more grave marker crank it up items. So I just shot the right orbit three times to get those. Maybe I also shot the grave directly and then that lit crank it up. and I knew when I shot Crank It Up, I was thinking, like, I could just collect 5 million, but I think I'm still going to be, like, 5 million short. So I chose Fade to Black because it has the spinners on the premium. And then I knew I just needed to hit, like, three orbit shots and I'd win. So when I made that third orbit shot, I just, like, celebrated, like, yeah. Yeah, it was great. Yeah, that was close. It was a great one to go back and watch because you can actually, learn a lot about playing that game and then watching players play underneath an immense amount of pressure um balls flying over their flippers yeah oh my gosh absolutely insane and then my other question is why would a ball jump a flipper uh spin if it has a back well i guess yeah backspin i like if it's spinning in the direction of the flipper it will if it's spinning fast enough it basically just uses the flipper as like a ramp like a car going over a curb right I guess that's it's very interesting and I wanted to ask because I don't think I've hardly ever seen it happen on a modern game like ever yeah it seems to happen on older games or in classics usually so that's that's why I was so surprised it happened at once it can also happen more often or not if the flipper is very there is a little bit of play in in how high the flipper is from the play field I usually like to you know when I'm realigning my flippers I like to have it high enough so that it's less likely but it's possible if a flipper is right on the play field um generally you don't want them that low because it can damage the the bushing from lots of wear um okay but that can be another cause if a game is doing if a game is being very you know particular and doing it often it might be that something else going on there all right so then what happens next raymond uh the Finals was crazy because Carlos had Groot Multiball lit going into his ball three on Guardians. So I had already assumed Carlos was going to win the game because everyone else had under 100 million. I had nothing going into ball three.
    83:13
    And I'm like, all right, I just need to grind enough points. I'm going to try to beat Yaka Arrow and then get a bonus X and that might be enough and that's what I think I did I basically chose Yaka Arrow, shot the orbit a bunch got my Yaka Arrow finished and then, actually I was three shots away from beating Yaka Arrow and I noticed I had one Hadron target left and so I actually post-passed and shot straight into that Hadron target I don't know if you noticed while you were watching, it might have looked like kind of a weird thing. Like, why did he post pass and then shoot that target? Because as soon as I hit it, I just went button, button, button, and then shot it into the scoop or whatever. Nice.
    84:01
    And so I did enough to pass everybody, assuming Carlos was going to pass me. I just wanted second. but actually to even get that far there was a point where the ball kind of just kissed the right slingshot and it sent it over into the left out lane and i hadn't used any dangers yet and i was just like i saw the ball just kind of slowly teetering and it was in the left out lane like just a little bit yes and i just kind of did this rhythm of like and kind of bopped it out on the second pop and uh that that save basically won me the game now was it something where you slapped the side of the cab no it's just i just just shove just kind of yeah just shoved it just did a did a yeah i love it i love i love the audio too that's awesome yes i think that that save actually got clipped i'm kind of sad that you can't see the save because it's on the left out lane and the ramp is covering it but i could see it from my angle and i just watched that ball just walk itself just fling itself out of the out lane yeah that's awesome you're able to shimmy it back out that guardians was set very hard i wish i would have known that before i went to go qualifying oh my god i almost fell for it i was about to pick guardians for game five and then someone told me yes because that game you had to you do not get to select a mode upon starting your game yeah put it in the scoop who knew that was even a setting i had no idea but was cool is that there was a mod actually above the scoop that said like mode start or whatever that was like a custom mod above it so that was neat and then groot for group multi-ball it was you didn't have to lock three balls you had to lock four so that was a lot it was so much and it had a lightning flippers oh yes yes it had lightning flippers too and i looked down i'm like huh look at that no rub no rubber on the right out lane yeah it was it was pretty brutal and you couldn't lane change which was interesting but uh yeah that was oh and so carlos i assumed he was gonna win but he did such it was such a sad story rachel he short plunged tried to catch it on the right flipper and just perfectly sent it into the right out lane just oh oh my gosh i felt so bad it was i don't even i I didn't even know you – because usually on Guardians, it's an easy catch coming out of the bumpers. But he just – he flipped at just the wrong time, and it just made a perfect trajectory. And so he ended up getting last instead of basically almost a guaranteed first. If he starts that multi-ball, you get $100 million in the group. Yeah, all over, but all over. Yeah. And so I – It's hard. So I took the win. I was like, holy crap. And so then I got to play Avatar and I was so sad because I did the thing. I had it set up where I had the shot multiplier on Link. I started Link. I brought an amp suit. I had the super jackpot. I got the super jackpot. And then it captures the ball and you have to hit the ball within like 10 seconds to get the double super. And it would have been 12 million. And I bricked it, bricked it, bricked it, bricked it. And so I missed my double super. and then Arvid has the ball or not Arvid Vigo has the ball of his life ball three he he does everything he gets the multiplier gets the double super gets the amp suit gets an amp suit super which I didn't even know existed it was like a massive amp super and so then on my ball three I'm like all right let's do it grind back to link and I actually got back to it I got back to link and I had a ball trapped on the right flipper and I needed like five more jackpots and I literally just backhanded link for a jackpot and then caught it. Backhanded link, caught it. And I did that like four times, but then on the fifth one, it just linked down the middle instead of back to my flipper. I was like, oh no, I know. I was, I was really, I thought I was going to do it. Oh no, the game was like, that's enough of that. Yep.
    88:04
    The game was like, Avatar's like, we've had enough of you doing that. Yeah. Something else now. No, seriously, that's what it felt like. Yes, right. I know that feeling. But it was enough to get second, which meant going into game three, I just needed to beat Vigo to win the tournament, basically. And I just annihilated those Martians on Attack from Mars. It was so weird. Oh, my goodness. It was amazing. Now, this was actually the best game of all my qualifying that I did for the other events was on this. And I had just shy of a five billion point game. Nice. And from that, yeah, that's a very, that's a more than average game. Like my average is like two to three if I'm like really dialed into the game. And I just blow up saucers all day. That was not even a multi-ball or anything. Just blowing up saucers. It's what I like to do. I find it like there's some comfort of taking, like shooting at the most deadly shot right up the middle and trying to catch the ball. Well, that's another 90 percenter strategy, right? You know you can hit it. So just keep hitting it, right? If you miss the lock, if you miss the lock and drain, that doesn't help you. It's all over. No, so I'm like, and I really, I like that strategy. It's what also works for me. So you tell us about what your strategy was there. I always go for the main lock multiball first, just because it's only four shots, and then you can use that multiball to find the other shots, because you need to hit every jackpot to get your super. And then after I do that multiball, I might start shooting around the play field to try to work towards total annihilation. and then at one point I ended up setting up the hurry up and I think I actually got the full Monty all all four of them and so that's like a billion points yes it was amazing because when you shot you got the one billion hurry up your hands left the game and you did like you did like a little leap of joy it was so cute it was so cute to see how excited you were that you hit the shot and we were all excited with you as well Raymond yeah it was it was an awesome moment so So, yeah, that was a great way to finish the UK Open. I felt bad Carlos put up seven bill or six and a half, but it wasn't enough to beat my nine bill, so he didn't get the four, and he needed the four in order to get third instead of fourth. But, you know, still top four finish for Carlos. Yeah, so awesome to see him there. But what you failed to mention there is that not only did you win the UK Open definitely on the last game, but you did it in two balls because as player four, you didn't even have to play ball three. You're just able to walk right up there after winning the tournament. That's the greatest feeling. I was like, oh, I had to cheer and get excited for you because I thought that was like the best part of it all. It's like the icing on the cake. On top of the pounds and the whoppers and the trophy and all the other stuff. But being able to do that, I think, is always a really cool feeling in a game. So congratulations for winning that, Raymond. Thank you, Rachel. I'm glad you got to watch. Were you still in the booth in finals? No, I was watching it. at that point. Okay. Yeah, there was quite the crowd. I really liked the whole room. There was multiple TVs with live projection of it happening, like not even with a Twitch delay. So props to Mark from Backhand Pinball and Neil for supplying a lot of the equipment to make that happen. That was excellent. Absolutely. Let's speed run the last – I know we're getting there in our time, but let's speed run the last tournament, which is the Pinball Republic. So you literally got done playing the UK Open and Neil's like, Raymond, Ray. And you had to run over and start your, because you had the bye round into the Pinball Republic Open. And so you went to play that immediately after. Crazy. Let's talk about that. Yeah, this was a quick one because I had to play. I was basically low on the totem pole, so I couldn't pick any games. and danielle picked the creature from hell uh this creature from black it sucked the game oh my god i'm sorry i'm sorry i hate to rag on on games but this one was evil it was yeah it was it did not at least i need i needed to get used to it let's just put it that way um finding the shots was finding the shots that was the issue yes and uh so i did manage to get a third though which you know those come in handy yes and then we played uh junkyard which my strategy on junkyard is just get to multi-ball because if i get to multi-ball the points in that multi-ball are so huge that i know i will at least get second and that's what happened i got second so i got 20 mil on junkyard uh with a bunch of super jackpots and multi-ball and then uh indie 500 was game three and this was me versus Daniele, the winner of us two would advance.
    92:56
    And Daniele going into ball three was behind me, but he put up a good ball three. He got up to 895 million. I had about 600 or 700. I hit some stuff, do some combos, start some of the little features. I start this mode called wrong turn, which can be worth a lot of points. and unfortunately right after I started the ball gets stuck and so I have to watch my whole mode time down oh no and then after the after the mode time down it did a ball search and it kicked out a locked ball from the turbo oh gosh and then I double drained yes I was gonna say what happened so like you're supposed to let one of the balls go you know yeah right but I did it at the wrong I didn't. Yeah, it was a cacophony of errors. An operator. Yeah. Well, yeah, I basically I let one go. And then right after I let one go, I think I missed an upper flipper shot and then it sailed down the right out lane. So, I mean, it's not like it was unfair or anything. I just it just the way it worked out, it went from the roller coaster of I think I'm going to beat Daniele. I'm going to move on to. Oh, oh. and it's like it's that thing too where you're also in the flow of the game and then you kind of lose your mojo a little bit and if i would have held up the flipper it would have not ball searched the uh locked ball and so i could have gotten the ball at least in the plunger lane or maybe on a flipper and i wouldn't have had to the chaos because the main problem was i was trying to trap up and you could not trap up on that uh that indie 500 it was so squirrely um so that was on me Should have held the flipper because the way the rules work is a tournament director can force you to do a ball search if they want. But the good tournament directors will notice, oh, hey, there's a ball in a physical lock. I don't want the game to ball search, so I'm just going to free your stuck ball, you know, manually. But like on a game without physical locks, they might tell you, hey, you don't get the ball on your flipper until it at least tries to do a ball search. Right. Interesting. So a similar thing happened to Travis in Texas finals one year on Godzilla. He had a ball stuck. The building released, it ball searched, it had two balls locked on top of the roof. Yeah. And it ball searched drain train, all of them down the middle. And that was it. And I have seen that actually happen as well. Yeah, so hold up your flipper, folks, if you got a ball stuck. The worst that can happen is the TD will tell you to let it ball search. And even then, that probably won't happen that often. Yeah. Well, probably a little disappointing there. But at the same time, going into that, were you feeling tired at this point? Yeah, so before that ball of Indy 500, I was kind of like, I just want to go to bed. I don't even care if I get eliminated. but then the adrenaline and the circumstance, I was pretty upset. I was like, dang it. But you know, then eventually I, I got to go to the booth, you know, the old beef to booth, got to mess around with a Jeff Teolis and Carrie wing. That was super fun.
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    And then I basically passed out on camera. I was like, I'm tapping out. I'm going home. Go to bed. Yeah, that's it. That's enough time to go to my bed. Congratulations, Raymond. I think it's fascinating to hear all of that. and I hope everybody at home enjoyed or wherever you are driving or riding your lawnmower I don't know what people are doing running jogging whatever you're doing listening to the podcast I hope that you enjoy that adventure listening to Raymond's success and my I wouldn't say failure but I would say definitely like learning big learning experience from that event and again I just want to encourage I want to thank everybody at the Boros Open and everybody at the UK Open they're so open welcoming and i just really appreciate that anything else you want to add bremen uh no i think we covered it all and we uh what was that only an hour and a half not too bad thanks for hanging in there it's kind of a double it was basically a double episode because we both kind of had a lot to say so thanks for listening everybody yeah happy flipping it's remnant rachel rachel and raymond tournament pinball is what they really know It's Rachel and Raymond, Raymond and Rachel, giving all of the info for the travels we go. It's like great college and the sharing the knowledge, so if you don't listen, you won't know. It's the Ray Ray Show.