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Ep 4: Andreas Pedersen, The Best Tourney Format as a TD, & Streaming Tips From Home

Final Round Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·56m 8s·held·Jun 26, 2020
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

COVID-era episode featuring Andreas Pedersen on Matchplay software and tournament format selection.

Summary

Final Round Pinball Podcast Episode 4 features an interview with Andreas Pedersen, creator of Matchplay tournament software and Pintips.net. The episode opens with hosts Jeff Teolis and Martin Robbins discussing the impact of COVID-19 on the pinball community, including cancellations of major tournaments (TPF, MGC, NYC PC). The bulk of the episode focuses on tournament organization, different tournament formats supported by Matchplay, and advice for new tournament directors, with the hosts walking through scenarios for selecting appropriate formats based on venue size and player count.

Key Claims

  • The IFPA suspended endorsement of tournaments during COVID-19 to ease decision-making for tournament directors

    high confidence · Jeff Teolis citing Josh Sharp's (IFPA president) announcement on Pinball Profile

  • Group match play is the most popular tournament format on Matchplay software, with group strikes as second

    high confidence · Andreas Pedersen directly stating this, correcting the IFPA president's claim

  • Andreas Pedersen developed Matchplay software because he was tired of waiting around during strikes tournaments and wanted Pinberg-style tournaments in San Francisco

    high confidence · Andreas Pedersen explaining his original motivation

  • Flip Frenzy tournaments grew globally after Matchplay software added support for them

    high confidence · Martin Robbins noting that running Flip Frenzy went from requiring two TDs to one, and Australian adoption increased

  • Matchplay's user interface will be refactored in 2020 to simplify tournament creation for new organizers

    high confidence · Andreas Pedersen stating his 2020 project plan

  • Venues are renting machines and selling equipment to maintain cash flow during COVID-19 lockdowns

    high confidence · Martin Robbins observing venue closures and equipment sales during the pandemic

  • Pinberg-style tournaments require software to manage player pairings based on win-loss records

    high confidence · Andreas Pedersen explaining the necessity that led to Matchplay creation

  • Fair Strikes tournament format was developed by community discussion on Tilt Forums, not by Andreas Pedersen

    high confidence · Andreas Pedersen attributing Fair Strikes concept to Kiefer and community discussion

Notable Quotes

  • “Safety first, pinball can wait.”

    Jeff Teolis @ ~20:00 — Summarizes the community sentiment regarding COVID-19 and tournament cancellations

  • “I developed match play because I had started playing competitive pinball and back in those days there was even more waiting around than there is these days”

    Andreas Pedersen @ ~28:30 — Explains the original frustration that motivated Matchplay software creation

  • “The development of Matchplay has always been very organic with the pinball community”

    Andreas Pedersen @ ~35:00 — Describes Matchplay's community-driven design philosophy

  • “Group match play format is by far the most popular tournament format on the match play software. But group strikes is a second.”

    Andreas Pedersen @ ~55:00 — Corrects the IFPA president's claim about which Matchplay format is most popular

  • “I'll take the compliment then. Please do.”

    Andreas Pedersen @ ~50:00 — Humorous moment when Andreas accepts credit for improving Fair Strikes despite initially attributing it to the community

  • “Learning how to play pinball amongst people like Andre Masenkov is just such a blessing because people like Andre are just so friendly at bringing you into the hobby”

    Andreas Pedersen @ ~62:00 — Reflects on the welcoming nature of the pinball community for newcomers

  • “I just needed myself. It's hard to mention Pintips without mentioning the pinball spinner project from Corey.”

    Andreas Pedersen @ ~48:00 — Acknowledges Corey Hoops' Pinball Spinner as an improvement on Pintips concept

  • “The fact that it's like fast-paced, but has a set time limit is very compelling for me when I like to play on the weeknights”

    Andreas Pedersen @ ~60:00 — Explains why Flip Frenzy is his favorite tournament format

Entities

Andreas PedersenpersonJeff TeolispersonMartin RobbinspersonJosh SharppersonEd Van Der VeenpersonPierce SchwarzenbergerpersonCorey HoopspersonRyan CpersonAndre MasenkovpersonKieferperson

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Multiple major tournaments cancelled or postponed due to COVID-19: TPF postponed to 2021, MGC cancelled, NYC PC cancelled, Yegpin cancelled. PinFest postponed to mid-June.

    high · Jeff Teolis and Martin Robbins list cancellations: 'TPF has been cancelled. MGC has been cancelled. I think NYC PC has been cancelled. Yegpin. Yegpin's been cancelled.'

  • ?

    community_signal: IFPA suspended tournament endorsement during COVID-19 to relieve pressure on tournament directors and discourage organized play during pandemic

    high · Josh Sharp announcement discussed on Pinball Profile podcast about IFPA suspending endorsement of tournaments

  • ?

    venue_signal: Venues facing severe cash flow challenges, some closing doors, others implementing strict health protocols, some selling equipment to maintain operations

    high · Martin Robbins: 'a lot of these businesses, particularly venues, barcades, whatever it is, they're literally living with cash flow. And that cash flow is now drying up... I've seen some have closed their doors... I've seen some of these venues actually sell some of their games too'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Arcade operators using machine rentals as temporary revenue source during COVID-19 lockdowns, as discussed on Tilt Forums

    high · Jeff Teolis: 'there was that post on Tilt Forums where it was talking about all the different barcades and arcades that are probably operators, too, that are looking for help during this time because those machines are sitting idle. So a lot of them are actually renting machines.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Matchplay software planning major UI refactor in 2020 to reduce complexity and improve onboarding for new tournament directors

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.169

0:00
The Pinball Network is online. Launching final round pinball podcast. Hello, my name is Jeff Teolis. My name is Martin Robbins. Welcome everybody to the Final Round Pinball Podcast. Episode four. We made it. It is four now. Is episode four a milestone? I'm sure it is. I'm sure people thought we wouldn't last past one. But here we are. Nothing's going to stop us. no virus will stop us take that down to flip we beat you by three what a fortnight it has been jeff a lot in the world has changed in such a short period of time now i know that fortnight means two weeks but for everyone listening they're thinking what do you mean the video game fortnight but i get it okay you're right the two weeks have been absolutely crazy uh marty what have you done over the last two weeks well fortunately for me i i've been social distance for three months since I finished work. I have been at home that whole time. So my life really hasn't changed that much from what I'm doing. But in my little bubble in my house, looking out to the world, a lot has changed. You trendsetter.
1:49
Oh, well, I am. But obviously, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the coronavirus, COVID-19 and I was optimistic I was hopeful in my mind I was still going to go to TPF um I assume you're in Texas right now no no uh yeah I was meant to be flying there and in three days obviously it has escalated this shit has gotten real and a lot of things have now been cancelled or postponed and rightfully so I mean this is the time to indeed flatten the curve as they say very important to do so. The inevitable may or may not happen, but this will certainly help, especially with the healthcare system. Yeah, the last two weeks, I mean, really, I could give you my grocery bills stocked up. The funny thing we didn't stock up on is what everyone's stocking up on. You'd think our last week's sponsor, CheapAssToiletPaper, would have thrown me a couple of rolls. Not one anyway, but- No, they're out of stock. They can't keep up with the demand. We shouldn't have plugged them. It's our fault. It was our fault. We caused the hoarding. I went shopping for bidets for the first time ever.
2:58
Final Round Pinball Podcast
organization
Matchplayproduct
Pintips.netproduct
Pinball Spinnerproduct
IFPAorganization
Tilt Forumsorganization
Pinbergevent
TPFevent
MGCevent
NYC PCevent
Outer Orbitvenue
Free Gold Watchvenue
Melbourne Silver Bowlvenue

high · Andreas Pedersen: 'For 2020, my big project is sort of a big refactor of the entire user interface of Matchplay to make it simpler for new people'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Matchplay developed through organic, community-driven feedback rather than top-down design. New features added based on observed tournament formats being used worldwide

    high · Andreas Pedersen: 'The development of Matchplay has always been very organic with the pinball community... Whenever I saw a group of people playing a tournament style that I didn't know about, I would sort of reach out and talk to them'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Flip Frenzy tournament format adoption accelerated by Matchplay software support, Australian community particularly adopted it after software was added

    high · Martin Robbins: 'I remember running a Flip Frenzy before Matchplay supported it and after. And it's done two things... it only really requires one [TD]. And I now know that in Australia, the tournament director is actually playing in the flip frenzy as well.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Bay Area pinball community actively mentors newcomers, with experienced players like Andre Masenkov teaching new players game rules and strategies

    high · Andreas Pedersen: 'Learning how to play pinball amongst people like Andre Masenkov is just such a blessing because people like Andre are just so friendly at bringing you into the hobby'

  • ?

    product_concern: New tournament directors find Matchplay software intimidating due to numerous configuration options and settings, creating adoption friction

    high · Andreas Pedersen: 'it is complicated because there are so many settings. When you start a tournament, it's hard to understand what the consequences of your choices are.'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Fair Strikes tournament format developed through community discussion on Tilt Forums to address advantage imbalance in three-player groups (zero strikes not possible with three players)

    high · Andreas Pedersen: 'Fair Strikes came out of a discussion on Tilt Forums a long time ago... Kiefer suggested this Fair Strikes system... The problem is that if you're in a three-player group, it's a huge advantage because you can't get three strikes.'

  • ?

    content_signal: Podcast episodes recorded 5-6 days before release, creating timing misalignment where announced cancellations become obsolete before episode airs

    high · Jeff Teolis: 'when we recorded the last episode, I think it was probably about five or six days until the episode was released. And by that time, a lot of the stuff that we'd said was completely negated.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Community shifting to digital pinball (Pinball Arcade, Pinball FX, Zen Pinball), streaming, live concert streams, and home practice to maintain engagement during lockdowns

    high · Martin Robbins: 'you can also play digital pinball... I've been practicing on some of my games at home... I've been working on erasing high scores from people... Practice some skills... And you'll see a lot of those on streams.'

    • How'd you go? I didn't know about the heated seats. I knew the heated water, which is definitely nice. You don't want that nice shock, I assume. But I didn't realize they had to be plugged in. I thought it was battery operated. And Scott from Loser Kid told me, you know, no, you got to go to the plug. I'm like, there's not a plug around there. Get an extension cord. Nah, now it's too messy. It's too cluttery. Let's not be talking about your plug. All right? Let's just... What we're really talking about is the show. So, TPF has been cancelled.
    3:26
    MGC has been cancelled. I think NYC PC has been cancelled. Yegpin. Yegpin's been cancelled. I think one of the wisest moves that I saw... I mean, obviously, it was wise to cancel these events because you don't want this thing to spread. But also, the temptation, because people that are addicted to tournaments, which, obviously, we like, the sort of to resist the temptation to go out there, IFPA made a really good announcement. What was that? I had Josh on the program yesterday on Pinball Profile, and he was talking about really suspending the IFPA endorsement of tournaments. In other words, a lot of people run tournaments certainly for fun, but they're attracted to the whopper points. And certainly in different areas of the world, they're, I'm not saying they're whopper whores by any mean, but certainly they are whopperholics. Whopperholics. Thank you very much. They're certainly fascinated by maybe achieving being the best in state or province or wherever they may be or whatever. By them doing this, it just made all the tournament directors, it gave them a big sense of ease. Like, okay, I don't have to make that decision because I've got people wanting it to cancel. I've got people not wanting it to cancel. And I know the leagues I was associated with, it was a hard, we have to, I got to stop using the word cancel. postponed for things like leads because for example pin fest is one that is a part of the stern pro circuit they postponed currently right now for the middle of june i think that was a wise decision if they can in fact hold that that's good some of these other events that we talked about it's just not feasible for them to postpone until 2021 yeah i mean that's a mess i think like some people were sort of saying why can't you postpone let's say tpf for a couple of months or maybe six months? And I think really the answer is pretty simple because you just don't know how long these sanctions are going to be in place. It may be, some people have been saying this could go for 12 months. I don't know. And it's just on this exponential curve at the moment. So it is much better for these people to say, let's postpone for a year. Because if you think about what it takes to put on a show, and a lot of us don't, we just think about, you know, me, oh, I've got to cancel my flights or I can't travel. But if you think about, let's talk about Ed Van Der Veen, who's putting on TPF. I don't know, there's a team of people as well. You've got sponsors that are coming from all around the country that need to organize their travel and their transport and their time off. They've got to ship machines, they've got to ship goods. You've then got to hire the venue itself. Now, when do you know that you're going to be able to hire the venue again? Well, you're just not going to know. So you're better off postponing these things for 12 months. At least that's enough time for the dust to settle, I hope. Fingers crossed. That's certainly what we can hope for. And I've been telling everybody, you know, safety first, pinball can wait. Hashtag. Yeah, it can. So what does that mean? What can we do if we can't go to tournaments? Well, you're probably at home and maybe you have a game or two or you could maybe rent games. I know there was that post on Tilt Forums where it was talking about all the different barcades and arcades that are probably operators, too, that are looking for help during this time because those machines are sitting idle. So a lot of them are actually renting machines. And I think that's a really good idea to get some revenue, to give some pleasure to some people as they're stuck at home. So not a bad idea. I mean, anything we can do to help. and buying gift certificates is a big thing too for some of your favorite establishments so that when we do come back from this, they'll have a little bit of cash flow to keep them going if it's certainly one of your favorite places. I know I've done a few of those and I've heard some feedback that it's going well in that sense, but it's not going to be easy for a lot of people. Yeah, agreed. Besides physical pinball, you can also play digital pinball. So pinball arcade, pinball FX, the Zen pinball, There's stuff that you can do to keep you connected to pinball in a way. I've seen that there are some venues that are still open. And this is the thing that, you know, is a bit heartbreaking, is that a lot of these businesses, particularly venues, barcades, whatever it is, they're literally living with cash flow. And that cash flow is now drying up. So a lot of these venues are on the brink of actually collapsing themselves. So I've seen some have closed their doors. Some have kept their doors open with very strict health regimes. So I would look around. I'd be very cautious. Obviously, people are just saying, stay at home. That is obviously the best policy. But just be wise with what you do. I've seen some of these venues actually sell some of their games too, again, to get some sort of cash flow, whether it's to pay the mortgage or to pay staff or whatever the case may be. But there's certainly a lot of equity in machines and that's what I'm seeing some people do. And if that's what you have to do in these tough times, you do it. Yeah. But as I said, these things have been escalating. So when we recorded the last episode, I think it was probably about five or six days until the episode was released. And by that time, a lot of the stuff that we'd said was completely negated. It had escalated already. So by the time this airs, it may even escalate further. We don't know. Just to let people know behind the curtain, if you will. So last week we had Jim and Dina Lindsay from JDL Pinball. They talked about ECS and some of the cancellations that happened in Europe. Then we had Steve Bowden on and we talked about three things for Steven. We talked about him being the top player at the Stern Pro Circuit. That's now postponed. We talked about TPF, cancelled until 2021. And we also talked to him about Deep Root and the launch. That also has been postponed. So that was 0 for 3 for Steven. And then we had Le'Veon talking about NYC PC. And as we've heard, that has been canceled for this year. So, you know, I have a thing on Pinball Profile called the Pinball Profile Karma. The final round is going the other way. And I blame Josh Sharp. Shit hit the fan when he came on. Really?
    9:30
    He has that effect. Yeah. So, you know, we recorded somebody for TPF that was going to be on this week. and we can't air it because everything that was spoken about has been cancelled. Colin McAlpine, we record it. So we record these shows probably a week in advance. Today, right now, we're recording this on March 19th. Don't ask me. My days are different to you. I'm actually on the 20th at the moment. Mr. Future, there you go. That is correct. We are in a way where we're physically, socially distanced. But this is the good thing, I guess, about the social media era that we're in right now is that we still can remain connected, whether it's Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or whatever it is. I mean, we can effectively share photos of us being at home, but also there are other ways to connect with each other, like watching people pinball stream, for example. Pinball streaming for sure is a big, big thing. And later on in the program, we're going to talk about maybe how you can set up because Martin has been doing it for years with Melbourne Silver Bowl. and you've got some good tips there and we'll probably focus on that this week and a little bit next week as well too. I've seen a lot of live concerts on social media too. I'm enjoying those. Yeah, why not? Well, especially for us in Australia because a lot of the, let's say the big bands, when they do a world tour, it's a world tour except for Australia and New Zealand. So we just don't get the big bands. So I'm now actually getting to see these live concerts of bands that would never come to Australia anyway. So silver lining, I guess. I've been practicing on some of my games at home. I've been playing with gloves on just to get used to that because that might be a thing in the future for me. I have been working on erasing high scores from people that have come over to my house and put up their names or things like that. But the real thing, and you can do this too, practice some skills. Whether it be drop catches, live catches, loop passes, alley passes, some of these great skills. and there are great tutorials on certain individual games if you want to be game specific. So there's some good time to do that as well. And you'll see a lot of those on streams. And we'll get to the streaming later on in the program. Yeah, for sure. We did record an interview recently and we thought it'd be a good time to share it right now. We have a special guest, don't we? We do. And this again stems from a lot of people that have been reaching out to us that are not necessarily veterans in the tournament scene, people that are getting into it, all those people that are thinking about starting tournaments. And, you know, one of the questions is, you know, where do I start? And one of them is, well, what software can you use to run your tournament? You know, if you're getting into competitive pinball for the first time, if you've been in competitive pinball for a while, you certainly know what this next person has done, because his software, his great mind has really helped so many players in not just one, but two special areas. One is Pintips.net. The other is this software that you probably have used before if you've been in a tournament or a competition, and that is MatchPlay. And he joins us right now, Andreas Peterson, the Great Dane, joins us right now on Final Round. Hey, Andreas, how are you? Hi, I'm doing well. Thank you very much. So, Andreas, Jeff and I were talking only a couple of days ago, and I've had a lot of people that are wanting to start tournaments and play tournaments and match play always comes up and i said well hey let's get andreas on because i want to people to understand why you develop this software and what it's like for people to use yeah i mean the first question is easy i developed match play because i had started playing competitive pinball and back in those days there was even more waiting around than there is these days like if you were playing a strikes tournament you have to wait for all the games to finish. And then it was a bunch of like poker chips or something else put into a bag to draw, you know, matches for the following round. And it was just really just a pain in the butt to work with. And then I had gone to Pinberg in 2014 and come back to San Francisco. And a good friend of mine, Pierce Schwarzenberger, who was organizing a bunch of tournaments around that time, was like, we should do a Pinberg style event here in San Francisco. But for Pinberg, you need software to sort of create those, the player pairings to sort of match Pinberg where you play people that have the same win-loss record as you. So I had to build some software to support that So really it just because I wanted to play in more tournaments And there was a fortunate coincidence where I was between jobs for five six months around the same time So I also had time to do the software Talk about how it's evolved over the years that you've had it released. Yeah. So it's always been a pretty organic process where to begin with, I built sort of the basic tournament formats that I was playing myself. So there's like simple group match play tournaments. and later on I added knockout strikes tournaments. And I just realized at some point that I had this sort of basic machine where I could store tournament results and build tournament standings in different ways. So it became pretty simple for me to add more types of tournaments. So whenever I saw a group of people playing a tournament style that I didn't know about, I would sort of reach out and talk to them and figure out what are the rules. Can I sort of change my software so that you could use it for this kind of tournament? So it's always grown very organically with the pinball community. The latest example is last year where I added support for Flip Frenzy tournaments because I could see that even though no one was playing Flip Frenzy tournaments here in the Bay Area where I live, I could see on the Internet that there were more and more people playing these Flip Frenzy tournaments. So I reached out to a handful of Australian people because I could see that it was very popular in Australia. and they sort of had to walk me through the rules of what the tournament is like because I'd never played in it. And thankfully, they also donated their time doing a bunch of testing to sort of weed out all the problems that I had in my first implementation. So the development of Matchplay has always been very organic with the pinball community like that. I remember running a Flip Frenzy before Matchplay supported it and after. And it's done two things. The ease of entering scores is so much easier. So it's actually meant that rather than having two people to run a flip frenzy, it only really requires one. And I now know that in Australia, the tournament director is actually playing in the flip frenzy as well. And players are now inputting their results. So it is just a massive time saver. And I think that's what's helped grow flip frenzies around the world. See, on one hand, you think of all the stalking that Ryan C. did. And you talk about the Australians under us. It was him emailing you nonstop, bugging you. I mean, just honestly tormenting to the point where there needed to be legal action. But he did persist and all this happened in Australia. And really, I know jokingly, he's actually been a big supporter of match play and the things that you do to kind of come up with some ideas. In fact, I think of things like the strikes tournament to another tournament that you have made better by making it fair strikes. Well, you say I made it better, but I don't I honestly don't see it that way. I think Fair Strikes came out of a discussion on Tilt Forums a long time ago. With Kiefer. Kiefer came up with the distribution. Someone else came up with this idea of the progressive strikes where you get zero, one, two, or three strikes. And the problem is that if you're in a three-player group, it's a huge advantage because you can't get three strikes. So Kiefer suggested this Fair Strikes system instead. And for me, it's like I already had to accommodate different types of strikes awarded to people in a group. So it was very simple for me to add Fairstrikes as an option. So for me, there was not a ton of time invested. So there wasn't really any risk for me to just sort of say, hey, will people play this? Let's throw it out there and see what happens. Flip Frenzy is a different matter where it took a very long time for me to develop. So I had to be sure that it was something that people would use. Fairstrikes was more like, let's try it, see what happens. I say you did make it better because that software didn't exist until we found it on Matchplay. I'll take the compliment then. Please do. It is funny that it's called Matchplay because I was talking to, I forget his name, the IFPA president, whatever his name is. Jeff, I think. Well, thank you very much. The other guy. The guy won't leave. Anyway, he has said that one of the biggest tournaments still being used as far as what's being entered on IFPA, and maybe you would see this from your own stats on Matchplay, is not Matchplay itself, it is Strikes Tournaments. So it's funny that you developed this because you wanted Matchplay, but Strikes Tournaments are still one of the biggest ones being used because of how easy it is to do it and how you can kind of have a quick tournament in a short period of time, especially on a weeknight. Yeah, I mean, it's very easy to explain to, like it's very easy to run as a tournament director, but it's also very easy to explain to players, especially new players. So I think that's one of the reasons that it's quite popular. I will say that the IFPA president is not quite right. The group match play format is by far the most popular tournament format on the match play software. But group strikes is a second. Did you expect him to be right?
    18:52
    Probably in numbers, maybe sometimes. I don't know. Well, one thing you said, obviously, is that it's easy to use. And I can say that now because I've been using it for many years. But I've also had some tournament directors that are wanting to move on to it, finding it sometimes a little bit daunting. So what I really want to ask you is, what sort of advice would you give to somebody that's like, right, I now want to move on to match play events and start running a tournament using your software? Yeah, there's actually two sides to that. One, I agree it is complicated because there are so many settings. When you start a tournament, it's hard to understand what the consequences of your choices are. And MatchPlay is not very good at letting you change things after the fact. And at the same time, while Matchplay has good tools for sort of helping you out, if you make a mistake, it's not always obvious where those options are. So that's one side of it. I think my advice with someone who is starting to want to run tournaments on Matchplay is to, one, find a friend who has done it before. That's always the most obvious answer. It can sort of show you the ropes. If you don't happen to have a friend like that, go on Tilt Forums and ask or send me an email. I'm always happy to help. And the third option you have is to read the Matchplay Handbook, which was new also last year. It's at matchplay.events.com. It sort of spells out all the different options on what they do and what the difference is between the different tournament formats and answers some of the most common questions people have for troubleshooting and that kind of stuff. I would offer a fourth option, and that is run a test tournament because you can actually run one and simulate the results, but it's not live. Yes. Marty, that's so right because I've run several tournaments and even to this day, I always do a test tournament, run it completely, see how it went. And then if it worked right, I just clone it, which is the great thing you can do in Matchplay. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the biggest, because there's so many knobs or buttons that you can adjust once you sort of get to the style that you want to run. For example, you are running a weekly tournament and you're running the same format every week. Just keep cloning the same. It's what I do when we run our league. I don't think I've configured a tournament from scratch for our league for, I don't know, two years, three years probably. I just keep cloning them because then I know I don't mess up. For 2020, my big project is sort of a big refactor of the entire user interface of Matchplay to make it simpler for new people, to sort of hide the more advanced options and make Make it so that you are not presented with big, scary forms with dozens of options every time you want to create a tournament. So that's all my plan for 2020 is to sort of make match play less scary for people who are organizing their first tournaments. Making things easy is what you do. And we talk about match play, but as I mentioned earlier, pin tips.net. If you're playing in a competition or you're playing a game you've never played before and you go to pin tips.net, This is something that Andreas created going back a few years. It's user-based, and it's really on most popular games. You're going to find some information. And I know Marty and I are very similar in the same way as we're not very good when it comes to rules. Tell me two or three things to do, and I can probably do that. That's where Pintips comes in, and this is all your brainchild. Yeah, I mean, I'm also terrible at remembering rules, especially on the newer games. So my favorite games are like the late 70s, early 80s, solid states, where you sort of have to figure out how to light a spinner, and then you have to hit the spinner over and over, because I can remember how to do that. But on modern games, it is very difficult for me to remember the rules. So the site is just as much for myself as it is for everybody else, because, yeah, I just needed myself.
    22:42
    It's hard to mention Pintips without mentioning the pinball spinner project. from Corey. Corey Hoops. Yeah. Every year he sets up all the banks for Pinberg on his website called Pinball Spinner. And you can sort of see links to tutorials and videos and pin tips and everything else in one place. So you can sort of go there. He's made what I had hoped to make with pin tips, but he just took it all the way. So it's actually my preferred way to interact with pin tips is to go through his pinball spinner website whenever I'm at Pinberg because it is so much faster. Yep. I definitely use it at Pinberg. It was very handy. I'm sure he'd give the credit right back to you, Andreas, because you did the work to create pin tips and he just kind of got that information, put it together with all the videos. They're both great websites. We're trying to figure out how to get the two sites merged, but we both have the problem of having too little time. At some point in the future, I hope to work with him to get everything merged into one thing so you don't have to remember to go one place or the other so we'll get there one day but i can't can't say when well you talked before about all the all the different formats that we've got for tournaments in match play what's your favorite tournament format my favorite tournament format right now it's i think it's flip frenzies right now and it's because i get to play in a monthly flip frenzy tournament at a place in san francisco here called outer orbit which serves great hawaiian food and then they have nine or ten pinball machines and flip frenzy is great because there's a set time on it so these tournaments are on a thursday night and they start at seven and i know i'll be out of there uh by 10 and uh it just helps me a lot that i can go see friends play a little bit competitively but i know i won't be there all night so uh i enjoy that i get to play a lot of games maybe around eight games in two hours uh and then hopefully if i make finals i get to play another four but the fact that it's like fast-paced, but has a set time limit is very compelling for me when I like to play on the weeknights instead of on the weekends. Andreas, you did very well at my flip frenzy at Free Gold Watch. I don't even remember what's the second place, maybe. All I remember is the train slide I went home with. Yeah, Andreas, you were second to some guy named Andre Masenkov, so I guess he just got lucky that day. He tends, I mean, we have a friendly competition amongst people whose names start with Andre, but I usually end up second in those competitions. So I never played pinball until I moved to the Bay Area. I grew up in a small town where we didn't have any of that kind of stuff. But learning how to play pinball amongst people like Andre Masenkov is just such a blessing because people like Andre are just so friendly at bringing you into the hobby for one, but also then teaching you how to play the games. And anytime a new game comes out, you can just stand there and watch Andre play and then try to copy whatever small part of it you can work out. Andreas, I can't thank you enough for everything you do on Match Play and also on Pintips.net. And good luck with you in San Francisco at Free Gold Watch. I hope to see you again soon. I hope to see you there too. Andreas, thank you very much, buddy. We really appreciate it. Yes. I hope you get some sleep now soon.
    25:55
    Thanks, man. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. So there we go. So what Andreas was obviously talking about is how you can run the different tournaments using matchplay.events. But what is the format of tournament that you want to run? And what I thought would be good this week, if we could, Jeff, is to go through some of the different formats just so people can understand what they are and what's going to be best for them, depending on how many machines you've got and how many people you want to be able to attract. Okay, I'll give you a scenario and you tell me what you think is the best. Okay. So you're at a location and there are 10 machines. Let's say eight of them are newer games that might play a little bit longer. Extra balls are on and they have two older games. And you're probably expecting 15 to 20 people to come over. And it's a weeknight, so you don't really want to be there much longer than three hours. What would be the best tournament for you to run using Matchplay.Events? Well, probably like we discussed with Andreas, I think strikes is probably a good format there, mainly because people get eliminated. And I would give three strikes because basically what it means is you can start with 15 and within two, three hours, you'll be down to four people. It's a nice way to guarantee, hey, look, everyone will play three games. Yeah, that's nice. A minimum. It's not going to maximize the TGP if that's something you care about. But if you're really just getting into pinball and you're really trying to introduce us, no one cares. You know what I mean? Very few do. It's really just a nice way to, oh, that was fun and a chance to play different people, especially with match play because you're in different groups, right? I mean, groups of four. That's correct. Or groups of three. Yeah. The other thing that's probably good about strikes formats really is that there's no real difference between qualifying and finals. The whole thing really is kind of like a ladder where it all just sort of leads into the final two people and then last person standing is the winner. There you go. So that's an easy one to do. I'll give you another scenario. Okay, Marty? This is a weekend. Sure. And people are really crazy about pinball. So you got a lot of people that have been playing pinball for many years Certainly a lot of experts maybe some great players in there as well too You at a fortunate place You at a private collection 25 machines I can tell you right now the players want to maximize TGP The people that are going to win this will probably be playing for about six, seven hours. What's a good format to use in matchplay.events? So are you saying that it's weekend, so a Saturday and a Sunday, all day, both days? No one's going to work. This is their day off. They're looking forward to playing some pinball at a great collection. So this is where I think it's probably good to split the days into qualifying and then finals. The finals obviously should be match play, group match play, groups of four, how many games per round you want to do, but you can allow the entire day just for finals. So then you've got to think about what do you want to do for qualifying? And there are a number of different formats. You could use match play again for qualifying. You could use, let's say, a best game format. And there's two. You can have unlimited entry or limited entry. I think for this particular one, I'd probably... It depends on how many people are going to turn up. If you've got 100 people, then you'd probably want to have limited entry, meaning if you've got 25 machines, then give people the ability to put up, I don't know, maybe 8 to 10 scores on 8 to 10 different machines out of the 25. that limits the amount of time each person is going to be on those machines but eight to ten per eight games that's 64 games no i'm what i'm saying is did i hear that wrong no you heard that wrong so one score on eight to ten games yes a cake yeah okay so that limits it if you had i know 20 or 30 people you might want to make that unlimited meaning you can have as many tries as you want to get your eight to ten scores up but i think if you've got 25 machines you'd probably want to do match play for qualifying as well just because you've got the room to do it i agree too you're going to have more fun too and you talk about going into the playoffs one thing you need to know if you're running a tournament if you have let's say i'll give you a nice easy number 40 people at this tournament you have to have a minimum of 10 of those qualifiers and a maximum of 50% go on to the finals in some direct play format. So the minimum would be you have to have at least four people go to the finals, maximum of 20. And you can maybe use Brackelope. You can use Matchplay.events to do a Papa style format, which is four, two, one, zero scoring, depending on coming first, second, third, or fourth. And then the top two in each group move on. So if you had 16 people, then it goes to eight, then to the final four. That's something that you could do. Remember, when you're playing playoffs, those group plays of four, that one game counts as two games towards TGP because playoffs have a higher value. I'm trying to explain it in layman's terms. Yeah, I know. But again, really there are, I guess there's probably five main qualifying formats. And we talked about best game. Sometimes known, if it's unlimited, it's called pump and dump. Basically, what's good about that format? And I use that format for the Melbourne Silver Bowl Championship mainly because you can generate a lot of money to then be put into prizes. Each entry, yeah, that's right. Each entry, yeah, you have to pay for your entries. Each of these formats has their fans and detractors. The fans of that are particularly the ones that can pay their way in, and that's fine. I think that for me that's fine because it means that there's more money. I mean, we generated, I think, $3,000 in prize money just from additional entries. So all that money went to people that won money. So, you know, there's some benefit to that. Those people that don't necessarily have the funds but are better players may see that as a bit of a disadvantage because other people can buy their way ahead of them. Still got to put up a good score, though. Still got to put up a good score. But the way to obviously negate that is to limit that. So have a limited entry, meaning you've got a maximum number of different scores that you could put up. So that kind of evens the playing field somewhat. TPF was like that too. So they had 20 entries and you had to play eight different games, which was neat. It was two from the modern era, two from kind of the late 80s, early 90s era, two EMs and then any other two games. So it really required you to play a different variety and era of games. But you only had 20 cracks to put up eight good scores. I like the idea of that. So that was kind of interesting. So you've got match play. You've got strikes tournament. A pump and dump is really more for a major tournament or something bigger than just a household gathering. But there are other formats. And one of the biggest is the pinball, pinball, pinball or flip frenzy, which is so much fun. But it does require a lot of machines. Well, based on your scenario that you talked about, if you've got 40 people and there's 25 machines, flip frenzy would be fantastic for that just for three hours. for those people that are new to it. It really is a timed format, usually two hours or three hours, and you play as much pinball as you can in that time, and it's head-to-head, player versus player, and at the end, after three hours, you then count how many wins you've had versus how many losses. You subtract them, and that gives you your net wins, and sometimes you can have it that whoever is the top winner wins the tournament, or you can have the top four, 8-16, whatever you want, to then go into a finals bracket as well. Which I think is a good idea too. So I'll leave some time for a playoff because depending on how the software works, you may have an easier go around than somebody else. I think when you have that match play at the end, that playoff where you're having the best players kind of go at each other, it's a good way to find out who really may have been the best player that day, as opposed to the luckier schedule, perhaps. Well, correct. I mean, it does drag out, therefore, the amount of time you've got to dedicate to it. So previously when I've run Flip Frenzies, I think the last one I had over 90 players in it. Because of the venue and the time that we had, we really only had three hours. So if I put finals on it, I would have to then reduce the amount of qualifying time, which means all the players would get maybe two hours instead of three hours. And I'd rather people just have three hours of fun. And that's usually the case with Flip Frenzies. Here's the last scenario I kind of want to talk about, and it's really for the playoff aspect of it too. Some players do not like this, but the best benefit of this is the time. You won't see this at a major tournament because they want to focus in on one player at one time, but a lot of tournaments I've seen, and I did this for the Pinball Profile World Tour, and no one seemed to mind it. When we got to the finals, let's say it was the final four players, each of the players was playing one different game, one ball at a time. So picture four games in a row. Player one is on game number one. They play their ball. Then they go to game number two after player number two has finished their first ball. You keep rotating, keep rotating, because one of the biggest time consumptions of tournaments is really waiting for the other player to be done. That's true. If you have four people on the machine, three people aren't playing. But with this staggered or what is there's a proper term for it? Concurrent. Thank you. Concurrent playoff format. you have more activity. Now, you might have somebody blow up a game and there's a bit of a backlog, but still, it is much faster to do than play a game and wait for your turn and then go to the next game and the next game and the next game. Yeah, agreed. Like what we said about qualifying, it has its pros and cons. Some people like it, some people don't. But if you want to get through finals a lot quicker, then concurrent is absolutely the way to go. It does rely on the players to manage themselves a little bit better as well, but it's also done. And you should make sure you have a TD at all times that is kind of watching the four players in this case. And if you're a TD yourself, you better assign someone else to be a co-TD because you definitely cannot rule on your own game. You shouldn't. Yeah, that's true. Just going back to qualifying as well. I know we've talked about it in the past and we've been very vocal about it. But another format is pin golf. Go ahead.
    36:19
    Well, we've talked about it. And I don't know, like what I'm saying, it doesn't mean it's a bad format. It's just not what I find enjoyable. But I don't know, a lot of ways I do find it enjoyable as well. But it's just one of those ones where if you absolutely bomb out on one machine, just on one machine out of 18, it can throw you a whole day. Whereas other formats will allow you to have a bad game and be able to recover. Steve Bowden was playing at Pin Masters. And Steve Bowden, as we know, one of the greatest players in the world, played Batman 66. sticks. Tilts were set tight, which you shouldn't, by the way, do on pin golf. That's an important lesson. He gave it a shove up, tilted, and because maybe something was moving, it tilted the next player, which is rare to do on a new stern. Yeah, tilt three. Which means he got an automatic 10. That killed him, and he said, that's it for me for pin masters. The funny thing about pin golf is, and I said this before, the first tournament I ever ran, I think, was pin golf, because I look forward to pin golf. I find the format idea, concept, Very fun. It's just a tough mindset for me because you don't play pinball that way. You're trying to maybe get to that, not wizard mode, but multi-ball in a few balls, two, three balls, as opposed to the first ball. You don't think of, like, for example, Escher Lefkoff, who won Pinmasters, I watched what he did on Star Wars. And what he did on Star Wars was play the Leia strat. Now, if he was trying to get a GC, he would not have done that. But because he only needed 250 million, it was nine shots to get there. so you have to have a different strategy when it comes to pin golf and the other disappointing thing for me is when one game goes down oh it's a mess and what do you do so that's the difficulty i find with pin golf but i love the idea of it yeah i've had some good times playing and i've had some bad times what i think the most important thing with pin golf is which is probably unique to pin golf with all the other formats really it's the format is set and away you go with pin golf you've really got to configure this really well. For example, going down to 10 strikes is pretty brutal. And there are some pin golf tournaments where the maximum par you can have is five or six, which keeps the field a little bit more even as opposed to having that one game that just throws everything. Also, setting up the scores. I know that's a little bit controversial, but setting up the scores, making sure you know what par one is achievable, achievable. Par 3 should be what you expect the median to be. And sometimes you can get that right and sometimes you can get that wrong. And if you get it wrong from the start, it can really throw the whole tournament. The goal is to make sure that the average gain on a machine is at least three. Otherwise, you can't count it as full TGP for that game. So that's the reason they want to make it probably somewhere between the three and four range. And they take data from previous games to see, okay, the last 20 times this game was played, the score was blank and they take the median. That's usually the rough idea. So what's your favorite tournament that you like playing in? What's your format? If I do well in it, it's the Papa Ticket, in which you have to put up consecutive games. So do you want to explain the Papa Ticket? Okay, so Papa Ticket again, let's say at Indisc, you had to play five different games, and those five scores were compared to everyone else who played those games. But you can't pick five games. If you play 10, you can't pick the best five. You have to pick five in a row. So you have to do very well. You have to be consistent on five games. It's tough to do. Maybe you have two great games and then a lousy one. All the pressure's on for game four and five. Or you have a lousy first game like, oh, this is going to be terrible. Maybe I throw the ticket and there's, in the case of Dindus, $20 gone. You have to do a lot of math and really just play consistent. Do you have to pick the five games up front or can you play one game and then go, okay, well, I've got four more scores I need to put up. Now I can just pick another machine? You can pick your machines, and that's a very good point, Marty, because I found, and I didn't realize this until this year, the better players save their go-to games for the last games. I know I can put up a safe score on that. I'm saving that for them. This is the one game I'm not sure about. I'm going to play it first. If I do well, great. If not, I start over again. Yeah, okay. Once they get over that hump. So that's a good point, too. And that kind of selection, too, goes to those players that are, quote-unquote, driving the bus, that get to pick games in playoffs. They get to pick three games. A lot of the good players will save their best game for the last game. So that, okay, if I'm down, I got a shot on my go-to game. Okay. Yeah, I've not played in a card format. And they've been talked because, as you know, Melbourne Super Bowl Championship was modelled after Indisc. When I went to Indisc, I loved the format. That was still, to this day, my favourite tournament. And so I modelled that on. And then they moved from best game, pump and dump, to card. And there's been talk about us moving it to card. And I've not played in one to know how enjoyable and what the difference is. Like I said, that is my favorite tournament, if I do well. But my favorite tournament format is still match play, and especially when it involves different arrows.
    41:28
    That's why Pinberg, to me, is a perfect tournament. It's well-timed. You're guaranteed to play 40 games over two days. That's amazing. And you're going to see a variety of different people. They pair you up with people performing at the same level as you are. Over time, after day one, you're put into either A, B, C, D, or E with people that have like scores. I think that is the most fun. It's tough, though. And you know what? You can have a bad round, but you can bounce right back. So it doesn't cripple you like something like pin golf does. So it's really interesting. Still for me my favorite is the strikes tournament Wow I know it not worth it Yep and I explain to you why Because it kind of what you were just saying before about you know if you have a bad round in match play Wow really like that you know the win lose but once you've lost you're out you don't have to pick the scab for another four five hours one thing that's unusual for me in those strikes tournament is the first game i'm really relaxed because i'm like ah i've got some more strikes they don't really matter i don't really feel the pressure until i'm on my last leg my last strike yep absolutely agree with you i also that's what we said before about strikes format being a good format to introduce people to tournaments because at least you know you're going to get a minimum of three. You've got the safety first couple of rounds and then you're out and the tension's up. As a tournament director, they're easier to run. So as an introduction, your first tournament, I think strikes formats are really good. So Marty, usually at this time, we highlight one of our many, many sponsor requests, but I don't know. Maybe it's not the best time to be selling out. I mean, people have other things on their mind right now. Yeah, you're right. Our listeners come to this podcast to escape reality and forget what's going on in the world. They just want to be entertained. Good point. We should definitely hold off on the sponsor this week, I think. I think that's the right thing to do. You're right. There's nothing I really feel like buying right now except the essentials, obviously. Let's skip the plug. Unless you're talking about the hottest trend in fashion. You don't need the Met Gala or the Fashion Awards to tell you what the look is that everyone will be talking about this spring. New for 2020, it's Hazmat by Gucci. Our perfect blend of plastic, fabric, and rubber comes in a variety of bedazzling colors. Snowflake white, sunshine yellow, and orange. Each suit is fitted with oxygen provided from Woody Harrelson's bar. Buy your hazmat now and receive a free accessory, a stay-the-fuck-home t-shirt. Don't settle for knockoffs. Trust only Gucci.
    44:23
    Hey, we got to make money somehow. We do, and let's make the most out of a bad situation. You know, Marty, you did something a few years ago that I can imagine a lot of people right now are certainly going to be thinking about. Maybe I can do it. And that is streaming from home. You're absolutely right. And right now, there are a lot of great pinball streamers out there. For those people that don't know, go to twitch.tv in your browser, browse for pinball, and you will see a lot of streamers out there. And, you know, before we started recording, there were four pinball channels streaming pinball at the moment. And whilst we're at home and we're stuck at home, you can stay connected socially by people that are streaming. And probably the first thing, let me just call out the streamers that are part of the Pinball Network. So they are 1iPod1Pinball, RaidayPinball, so Raymond Davidson, watch that, he's fantastic. Special When Lit Podcast, Flippin' Out, Pinball Mafia, Eclectic Gamers, TurboGrafx-7, Don't Panic Flip, Emily and Dr. John, and straight down the middle, SDTM Pinball, the Pinball Network channels. Obviously, you've got Deadflip. He's streaming all the time. Alonymous, Buffalo Pinball, IE Pinball, Colorado Pinball. A couple of other ones that I do watch. One is Live Catch, which I think is from South America, but there's also Loose Flip. I really encourage everybody to watch Loose Flip. He's in Germany, and it's in German, and he is hilarious to watch. So there are a lot of different streamers out there. There's a couple of Australian ones as well. So you've got Netherworld Arcade and Keeley. That's K-E-Y-L-E. That's great that so many people are providing content like the people you mentioned. And there's others. I'm sorry that we have forgotten them, but send us a list and we'll certainly plug those right here on final round. Another thing, too, when you see a lot of these archived, too, you know, right now there aren't a lot of competitions going on. But their archive too, i.e. Pinball, all the great Indisc ones, Papa TV, and all the tutorials and competitions that they have. JDL Pinball, our guests last week, a lot of great European coverage. So, you know, there's no competition live right now, but you can see some amazing matches. And I would definitely check out some of those archives. But also a good point to note about watching those tournaments as well is that they're usually archived on YouTube as well. So with Twitch, they normally can stay there about 60 days, but then with YouTube, it's there forever. So look at Twitch, look at YouTube. But for those people that are thinking, well, I've got pinball machines at home and I would like to stream, I'm going to talk about the most basic setup that you can do, which really isn't going to cost you that much, really. Because obviously you need cameras and you need a microphone. and really it's a minimum of three cameras and one microphone and one camera for the play field, one camera for the score cam, so you can see the display, and one to look at you. And you can use webcams for this. The camera that people use really for the score and for the player is a Logitech C920. I don't know how much they cost overseas, but let's say it's going to cost you about $100 each. You want something that does 60 frames per second, so the C922 will do that fine. It's not necessarily the best when it comes to sudden fluctuations of light, but it's still a cheap way of being able to do it. Microphone, use any sort of USB mic that you want. A snowball mic is good because it allows you to make it omnidirectional, so you can hear you as the streamer and the machine itself. You need some stands as well to be able to mount those cameras. And then you need all of those being feeding into either a laptop or a PC. Obviously, you need enough USB ports for all those different USB devices. And then you need software that will then put that all together. And there are two different software programs that people use. The first one is called XSplit. XSplit Broadcaster is probably the one to choose there. or the other one is OBS, which stands for Open Broadcast Software. And effectively, that allows you to do a layout to have all the multiple different cameras to set up your scenes. And then it also allows you to output to either Twitch or YouTube or whatever streaming service that you have. So if I'm doing this from home, what kind of speed run do I need? Obviously, you have to be able to download and upload at a certain speed, correct? Yeah, correct. And the recommendation is anything greater than 3 megabits per second is what you need. It's your upload that is most important. Just about every other country except for Australia has got that advantage. Our NBN, our National Broadband Network, has been pretty slow to roll out. I only just got it probably six months ago, I want to say. And so I used to be tethering from my mobile phone, which you can do for those people that don't have a big internet connection or you want to be able to travel with that, which you can. if you've got everything going into a laptop you can use that as a travel streaming setup as well but as long as you've got greater than three megabits per second you've then got to check your bit rates in the software programs as well there's lots of online tutorials that will show you what's best to do there but if you're streaming at 720p anything around two and a half thousand three thousand bits is all you need have you ever looked back at your first ever stream and see you know, some of the troubleshooting that you've done since then or some do's and don'ts? Absolutely. I mean, my layout has changed completely. I mean, that's something that you need to look at as well is how you're going to design your layout. And you can do that in Photoshop or your image editor software, or there's people online that can do it. If people want to reach out to me, I can do you an overlay as well. But do you know what was actually really interesting is that I was looking at my broadcast over the last, and I've been doing it, I think, for four years, nearly five years. And I was kicking myself because it was only recently that I saw a setting in my software that allowed me to better broadcast at 1080p. And as soon as I tick that one button, my streaming looks so much better. And even as recent as last week, I'd been streaming on OBS, which is, as we said before, open broadcast software for a long time, which is a good software because it's actually quite lean. It doesn't take up much resources. So even if you don't have the most powerful laptop or PC, OBS will run really well. XSplit, on the other hand, is quite a heavy, bloaty type program. So you've got to have a pretty powerful laptop and PC. And last week, I went back to XSplit just for sits and giggles. And I've noticed that the output of that is a lot crisper and a lot more vibrant as well. So you're right. So when I do look back at my old strings, I sort of scratch my head. I just see low res, blurry with really garish layout. So, you know, it improves over time. But also I've now got a more professional rig. I've been speaking to Carl D'Angelo here via Pinball and InDisc, and he's been really generous with his time. And I've now got a rig that can, you know, switch between 16 different pinball machines. I'm now using HDMI and camcorders. so the quality is a lot better. And if you've got the money, do it. Again, reach out to me. I'll be able to give you some advice. But if you wanted to just stream on the cheap, you can do a very, very good stream at the moment just with Logitech C920s and one C922. It's all you need. Okay, so if I'm looking to do that from my home and I'm thinking, okay, that's the first step, doing some streaming here. But you know what? I play in leagues and I play on location. I wouldn't mind bringing this portable rig and the setup. Are there different things you need to buy? Because a lot of those cameras have batteries that last maybe 15 hours. So you don't need to be cordless when you're at home. But if you're going to a tournament or a location, you might want to have those batteries and those kind of options. So if I'm thinking that down the road, will all of these cameras that you suggest work for something like that? Well, I've just talked about that really being probably the most basic or the entry level. They are all webcams. So those webcams are powered off your laptop. So you don't need batteries for those. Yeah, absolutely. Next, if you want to then go to camcorders, and I do have a mobile rig that goes with me with camcorders. You can plug those directly into a USB power board and that will power them for a long time as well. But that's probably now delving into what we really want to get into next week where we start talking about your mid-range and your professional streaming setups. But for those people that are now, they're social distanced, they're at home, they're isolated, and they've got pinball machines at home, just go and buy some C920s and one C922 for your playfield, because that does 60 frames, and start streaming. You'll have some fun. And this last week, I noticed that there's more people watching my stream, and I'm probably going to be streaming more often just because I think there are a lot of people that can't go out to restaurants, can't go out to bars, can't go outside their house. So let's stay connected. Well, when do you stream? I stream on a Wednesday night and a Sunday night in Australia, which is, you know, we're plus 10 hours to the median. But I'm thinking of doing Fridays as well. Why not? I think it's a good idea. I enjoy the streams. you have a lot of likable people on there. James, I see frequently. Ryan C has made it once or twice. And you also move around too. I mean, I think the last one I saw might've been at Moondog while that was open, of course. Are you going to be streaming from home or what are you going to be doing during these next few weeks? Well, I'm actually going to have to repair some of my machines as well because my Lord of the Rings right now has got so many issues with it. And everyone knows how terrible I am at repairing machines, but I'm going to try and fix that. My Wizard of Oz, the lock mechanism has stopped working on that again. If you remember, that was a problem, but it was fixed. Now it's broken again. I've got four machines at home, but there are locations that are open and nobody's going to them. That's actually probably a good opportunity for me to take my mobile rig to those locations. You talked about fixing your machine. Well, that's interesting because I just watched a stream recently. Chuck Webster of New England was restoring an old Rolling Stones machine, and it was fascinating. So he had a camera on the play field. He had a camera overhead. He had a camera on the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus from 1969,
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    a great concert going on in the background, the Stones, the Who, Jethro Tull. It was really neat to watch. And, of course, the great thing about streaming, as you know, is the interaction, and I think you do a very good job with that. If you are going to stream, make sure you're reading the chat line because, you know, people might have questions for you and it's a nice way to acknowledge the people that are watching. You're absolutely right. One of the most important things about streaming is engaging with the people that are watching your stream. That can be sometimes a challenge when you're on location and there's lots of fun and excitement that's happening around you. but always make sure that you've got the ability to read chat whether you've got an iPad that you can sit there or your laptop or even just your iPhone just make sure that you're always watching chat and you're always interacting with people some good advice Marty I appreciate that and we'll talk more about streaming in a couple of weeks the next time we do this episode here on Final Round on the Pinball Network until we do this again my name is Geoff Teels thank you very much for listening and I'm Martin Robbins thanks everybody for listening we will speak to you again very soon stay safe