And I see their team, their local team, a lot like, you know, the IFPA team when we started out. We were just a small group of idiots that wanted to change the world. So we did that. slowly, day by day. Now, I don't know. I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that it's the end of a chapter and there will be a next chapter in the book. How do you guys feel about it? I mean, you guys have been equally invested, I think, at least maybe not as long as Zach and I have, but recently, you know, certainly just as invested as players. Yeah, look, I probably had mixed emotions. It's harder for me because I've only been there twice, right? So I don't have that same connection. You were the Trash Talker Invitational winner for crying out loud, Marty. That is true. But it was more the gravity of it being like, whoa, if this goes, that's a pretty big blow for pinball, really. I don't know. I don't know if I see it that way. I mean, Papa has gone away before. Well, you know, it was it was gone in 1998 through 2004. And that was when it was truly like one of the three events on the calendar. I mean, that would be in 1999. It was the equivalent of losing like twenty five hundred events on the calendar. Like it was it was a monumental thing when when Epstein stopped doing it as great as and, you know, Zach touched on this as well, relating Pinberg to the Stern Pro Circuit As great and as huge of an event as it is, it's just one event. And people miss it. You know, a thousand people go, but people miss it because they couldn't register in time. People miss it because Jim Belsito will miss it because he has to take his daughter to a daddy-daughter dance, which I have now been participating in as well. Like, life kind of happens, and it's still only one event. So I don't see it as like the sport is crumbling to the ground, you know, by a long shot. Hey, I saw those daddy-daughter dances on the new Borat movie, the debutante dances. I hope it's nothing like that. I just want to say that. But the point is, you asked about what does it mean to me. I got to say, out of everything I've done, and I've done a few things in this podcast and Pinball Profile, pretty big thrill for me. And I don't take it lightly that I got to be on the stage with you and Colin and Keith and Jim Balcedo and Massenkoff and Chris Stevens, it seems, every year. And young Andy Rose and Daniele when he shows up. but just to be with those great, great players and just see how unbelievable competitive pinball is. See how the real people do it, Jeff? You know what? I can't make a joke. Yes you right See how these people got up the pyramid from 1 people to the top four and just learning the different traits and the coolness and really just like your brother is perhaps the most calm player ever I do need to check DNA because you're a spaz out there. The not like this bullshit, the high kicks. Yeah, I mean, all that garbage, you know, whining about high hand, that crap. But your brother is like, I want to check his pulse. He doesn't move and he won it. I mean, so learning the different styles. L1's obviously like that, too, but you'll see him get mad once in a while if he's got stuck on, like, Pirates of the Caribbean, JGP, and give a little donkey kick. Things like that. But, you know, that Family Guy game and all these kind of great memories. I'm going to miss that and certainly the people that maybe I only saw once a year. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. All of the non-pinball playing stuff, for Pinberg especially. You know, I mean, everyone's gotten used to Papa not happening for a few years now. But the getting together and, I mean, you couldn't go around in Pinnberg without being paired with someone that you're like, oh, shit, man, how are you doing? Or walking to your bank and running into like a half a dozen people on the walk. And, yeah, man, I mean, that's what it's all about is connecting with, you know, these people that all share all these diverse backgrounds that have a shared passionate interest in this weird little game that we play so seriously. Well, also having fun. Even though it's serious, it's also fun. Tournament people know how to have fun. I don't know if there are certain podcasters that don't believe that, but it's true. Marty, what about your point of view and all your Australian friends that went to something like Pinberg and just saw the grand scope of it and went, I am now into competitive pinball, or even I'm now going to run tournaments and events. That is where I think Pinberg's biggest loss is going to be the number of fans that were created. Well, I'm going to take that one step further, if you will allow me. And I guess from an outside country looking in, there were always two institutions that represented pinball. It was PAPA and it was IFPA. Different lenses, but I reckon a lot of influence from both sides. So I don't just see it as the one event, obviously best event, biggest event going. I see it as this institution that has had a big influence on me and a lot of players. And so that really means now of those two influences, IFPA remains. And I would say to you, Josh Sharp, it's up to you to save pinball. Oh, fuck, we're screwed. I think that's the Pinberg takes resources and lots of money and lots of time to organize. doing all the other things that I think you just mentioned within the context of Papa serving as this access point for competitive pinball as a whole. That doesn't take any money to do. It just takes effort. You know, I mean, we started IFPA with like, you know, zero dollar bills collected. And it was just time and volunteer work from people. Right. Like, so I'm not I'm actually not concerned about that part dying and going away. You know, I mean, Zach and I messaged Doug already because, you know, we had similar fears of, hey, man, so the next Stern Pro Circuit call, you know, do you want in? And it's like, fuck yeah, man, I want in. And it's like, all right, good. So, like, things are continuing. It's not like the SPC group, you know, lost one of the three members of the tribe. We're still, you know, we're still together. We're still here. and we'll still be leaning on Doug and the people that he leans on the Papa side of things for guidance when we make collective decisions. The one thing that became very, very popular to a lot of players at Pinberg was the match play event. And I think it's probably safe to say, I should ask Andreas this, but I would assume many tournaments that were first-time creations were done in that match play format. We still see City Champ. We still see the 24-Hour Sanctum. But we see a lot of Pumpin' Dumps now. We see all kinds of other different formats. I hope we don't lose the Match Play format because it's very, very special. There are some pros and cons to that format. And I guess I want to talk to you, Josh, who's played everything. What are some of the pros and cons for you for different formats? And we'll start with Match Play. I mean, Match Play goes back to, I remember describing when the first Pinberg happened. and it was like, oh my God, they're doing a league season. You know, our league season is Pinberg and we've been running it since 1998. And I believe like the idea of running a whole league season in one day. And it's like, hopefully, you know, try to explain to my dad. So I'm going out to this thing. What is it? You know, league, we play, you know, five games a night for seven months, once a month. We're going to do that in a day. And then you're going to do it a second day again. And it's just like, oh my God, are you kidding me? The social aspect that you get out of, you know, our league here, you, that's the best part of match play to me is, especially in four player groups, you're only playing 25% of the time. So you have 75% of the time that you can connect with people, you know, if it's, if it's our, our local monthly tournament that was match play for a while out here. And I think is currently that now, I think we do four or five sessions, you know, to a given time. But you're left being able to, like, connect with people. And how great is that? It's far less than the solitary experience of, like, a pump and dump when you get to visit with people when you're in a queue line, which after, you know, Carl's queuing software, there's no real need to sit in the charity bar and talk with the people around you. But that's my long-winded answer that the human connection of match play is the best part for me. So you mentioned leagues. I've mentioned on this show and head-to-head as well. In Australia, we don't have leagues at all that I know of. We may have one or two. What sort of percentage of all the tournaments that you get in North America are league-based? You know, that's, I mean, the answer is I have no freaking clue without doing some sort of like Brian Shepard email deep dive query me something. I think Whoppers have impacted how we play and the whole TGP and getting to 100%. And then anything that you're playing beyond that is kind of whatever air quotes wasted opportunity for more Whoppers. That our league runs for seven months and our TGP is whatever, 850%. And we just don't care because we've been playing since 1998 when Whoppers didn't exist. And I think the newer communities and even, you know, Australia, there's a lot of people that are into these Whopper points, guys, that the idea of playing for an entire year for one quote unquote event for a league just isn't as appetizing as, well, we can get together still the same amount of time, but we can submit 12 different nightly results and we can get so many more points that way. that the construct of what a league is, I don't think is really as important as it used to be. You know, the monthly tournament we get here at Level 257 or Pac-Man Entertainment, whatever the hell it's called now, it's like a league with respect to the social atmosphere because you get a lot of the same people that are coming month after month after month. We just are submitting the results after every evening rather than holding those results for a year. So it's tough to really tell a league from a, what do we used to call them? Damn it. One of the old Whopper formulas, periodic tournaments, used to be a classification that we had. Okay, again, more pros and cons of different formats. You run Pinmasters, the pin golf format. Yeah. I think easily one of the cons is you can only have so many people and you have to have a lot of games. Yeah. one of the pros is I like golf right so I get to scratch my own personal itch gross I guess I mean the other the other like the pro for me is the idea of trying to accomplish something in as few balls as possible is a different play mechanic where house ball management really matters because you never have to drop a huge score on the game you know to to be successful it's about you know doing it in as few balls as you can. So the pressure that comes along with, I only need to get 10 million on Tron, which I've done thousands of times in my life, except in this situation, I now have to do it on one ball and the pressure that, or on two balls, like the pressure that now comes with, I don't need to get to see a simulation. I don't need to get to portal. You can start putting yourself into kind of situational play opportunities where how you play the game might differ from how you would play it in, you know, a regular pump and dump, right? Like a standard pump and dump format. So I enjoy that. The cons are usually, at least with us, you're only in, even though you're playing nine games per day, you're with the same group of four. So you don't get as nice of a social experience, mixing groups during the round. Although, I mean, I end up talking with a lot of people even outside of my own group, but that can be something that I would see as a con is sort of being with three people one day and three people the other day and kind of missing that match play experience of being able to connect with a higher number of people. Other cons are the tilts are usually set up like shit. Oh yeah, yeah. You mentioned Pump and Dump. That seems to be very, very popular. The biggest pro is it creates a lot of money for the plot. Yeah, I think the other biggest pro is the barrier to entry, right? If you're going to play in Pinberg, you know, you're committing to what? Between the entry fee and the entry into replay, it was like 200 and something bucks. Is that right? Yep. So Pinmasters, I think it was $150 for the entry fee. For Pump and Dump, like, I mean, the joke with me and Zach, you know, back in the day, it's like, I'm going to go qualify on $20. You know, watch me and it's like oh damn it you know i qualified on 40 bucks you beat me there was the barrier entry at three dollars at a time makes it so for people like my brother's friends they would know that hey i don't have 200 to play in pinbird but i can bring 60 bucks and play in this pump and dump and get 20 games out of it and have a relatively fun competitive experience for myself on a budget that works for me. So it's very budget flexible. Yeah, Bob Matthews has never said watch me do it on 20 bucks. Only competitive players will get that. But you know what I mean? Like you're not pot committed from moment one. You can put up some scores early and be, I mean, you know, Escher could probably qualify on like six bucks plus whatever free entries you get. I mean, it's nice to be able to have the ability to do that. If you want to chase top qualifier, you can keep dumping if you want. The scheduling, like, you know when you can go get dinner at a pump and dump? Whenever the fuck you want when you're hungry. You know when you get dinner at Pinberg? When a thousand other people are getting dinner at the same time. I think an interesting format that the league that I started, Melbourne Super Bowl League, was this format. I believe you may have killed it off. That's the selfie league. Oh, yeah. It's not dead. There's still selfie leagues out there? Yeah. Pros and cons? They're just not worth as much as they were when they first came out. Yeah. That's probably the big con. But obviously, you know, every format's gone through the... It's like the new very attractive person that walks into the bar and, like, the lights all shine on this one person and the music turns down and everyone's, like, staring at this person. And I feel like selfie leagues went through that and flip frenzies went through that. And who knows what will be next. But it had its moment in the sun and it got to a point where it was having a negative impact on just how it was scoring whopper wise compared to other events. And we've never been bashful about making changes to our formulas to try to balance things. Both with respect to the competition level of the event that's being held, along with the ease of access for people to be able to, air quote, participate or not. So, yeah, like when we ran it, I mean, I thought it was a blast because I could play whenever I wanted, which would usually be like on the way home from work, I'd go play one or two games. and you know when things started it was our facebook we created a facebook group for our selfie league and it was very active so you'd have people that were posting you know almost daily and the ability for me to like send a text to lyman you know if we're kind of gunning gunning for each other on game of thrones for a given month and you know i'll stop off home from work and shoot him a text and it's like hey man i do let send him a picture that's like 4.2 billion and, you know, he'll send me back an LOL. And then three days later, he'll send me like $7.8 billion. And it's like, God damn, I got to get back over there. So it was a great way to sort of scratch an indirect competitive itch. And for those that I guess valued Whoppers over Substance, you know, a lot of those leagues died out when the Whopper, you know, insane Whopper values died down. But I do know areas where, especially, I mean, during COVID now, you know, it's been a very popular format that people have been running non-sanctioned, you know, during this hiatus period. Josh, can you please go get some cream? You've been talking a lot about itching and starting to, it's getting a little creepy. But the point is. Go some distance. It's a great format for social distancing. I liked the selfie league aspect of whenever was convenient for you. Yeah, that was something that was good because you couldn't always make certain dates or league nights. Got it. Yeah. Now, you did say something in that pro and con about selfie leagues when you were talking about it was kind of fun. It was the new thing. You said the same about flip frenzies. I don't see a decrease in flip frenzies. Are you seeing something I'm not seeing? It's been eight months since I've seen anything. So it's tough for me. It'll take me a little bit to get back on the bicycle and start riding again. But, no, it's still, it is a massively efficient format, right, for turning games around for people. So, yeah, I think it's still the most attractive person in the room probably. Yeah, I loved it when it came out. I'm not a big fan of them now. What? What turned you off? What happened in Australia in January? Go ahead, explain. Where did it touch me? no it's more so that it is and people love the speed dating aspect of it it comes back to what you were saying before josh i i like the being able to stand around and be social and chat with people yeah you know what's interesting i don't know if you've done with this marty on your side but i can remember you know you can you can fuck with the cues or whatever of of how many people are in the queue. And in the beginning, everyone was so fixated on playing as much as you can. It's like, you know, our queue would be, I forget what Andreas recommends, it's like 10% or 20%. 20. And people were like, why am I standing around? Like, we could be playing, we have eight people here. And then you could see as the months went by, there was almost like the reverse became true, where it's like, man, do you think we could just, if we made the queue a little bit bigger, we could have some more time to hang out, finish our beer. Like, there was definitely that. I'm going to piss my pants. I've got this itch. Yeah, I know. Well, you're in the hole, man, so that's on you, bro. But, yeah, the lack of ability to be able to socialize is a real thing. Yeah, there you go. That's what I think. I feel like I'm taking an exam. Do you want to ask him question number seven? No, no, no. I think this one's going to throw him. Yeah, do you want to put the gloves on? actually i i with all of uh i had my first prostate exam that was fun did you go to a doctor i did yeah with with my dad and zacks everyone's having issues i had my first ekg i had my first prostate exam i got all got myself all checked out boys by the way that thinking that like i'm a day away from like the next person to have a heart attack if you are over the age of 40 absolutely men get that done yeah that's my dad he used to do 45 and he uh he said he found someone at 41 who like was feeling something and now he he does it for you know 40 and over no big deal just get it done you know trust me early detection is everything so good on you for doing that absolutely okay and speaking of which by the way this airing on december 2nd of course we are live This isn't a prerecorded podcast. So happy birthday to Colin. You'll be 41, not as big as last year, but I did give you a gift earlier this year. Marty, I told Josh he needs to watch The Boys. Phenomenal. Like, I actually can't believe some of the stuff they showed on TV. Like, it was, Jeff, you definitely warned me that it was some extreme watching, and you did not lie, my friend. that was... And I think I had finished season one, and you were like, you ain't seen nothing yet, man. It's season two. And I was like, holy shit. What am I watching?