Happy Sunday, pinpoke, or whatever day you're listening. This is NYC Pin Pod, in which a panel talks location pinball in New York City and nearby surrounding areas. My name is Benjamin Furiga. My initials are BCF. And I hit lots of pinball ramps last week, but I'm still waiting for ramps at the market. I'm looking at you, lucky dog. My name is Eric Sweetland. My initials are HIP, and I'm a pinball tournament director in New York City. On this week's pod, we'll run down the local competition results in Ball 1, as always. In Ball 2, we'll have venue updates and we're going to try something new called our Pinball Bullet Journal. And in Ball 3, we're going to talk about late arrivals and early departures at tournaments and how that's weird. Let's get started. On Saturday, April 12th, four players gathered at Deb Hard's under Glenn Gilliard, the operator's steady guiding hand. And Peter Larson took the day after playing six rounds of match play with 30 points in IFBA scoring. That's pretty good. That's an average of second place every time. Congrats, Peter. On Sunday, April 13th, Matthew Lewandowski directed the last monthly Jersey City Open at Barcade Jersey City. Thirteen players showed up. After five rounds of match play with IFPA scoring, the top six advanced to a Papa-ish style finals of two rounds. What was the ish? In the first round, there were two groups of three from which two players advanced, eliminating one to a final four. Gotcha. With Papa scoring. So three, two, one. Four, two, one scoring in the semifinals and four, two, one, zero scoring in the finals. It took a little bit of fiddling to get that set up and match play. I helped Matthew out with making sure the format worked. Cool. On the software. At the end of those finals, I won. The work paid off. Yeah. Ash came in second, Matthew Lewandowski third, and Tom Spark came in fourth. Waiting on the Whoppers yet. Also on Sunday, No Bro Presents Slaptism 413 was convened under Sam Hall's guiding hand at Jack Bar in Williamsburg. 14 players gathered after an amazing race finals. Sam Hall, the tournament director, outlasted the rest of the field and earned 2.39 whoppers for the win. On Monday, April 14th, Parliament hosted special when lit at Owl Farm and the home team picked up an 11 to 5 win. Balls of Steel went to the Monroe and faced Intermission Dolores and picked up a 13 to 3 win. I'm pretty sure they lost their first four and now they've won their next four. The Mutants beat the Aristocrats at home at Rulos 10 to 6. the lesser players went to Barcade Brooklyn where the deluxe horses handed them a 12-4 loss on Monday afternoon I talked to Sunny the captain of the pinpals let me know that she and a couple of the other players were out of town and the remaining players weren't going to be able to make it up to at the Wallace so the New York City Flipper Sport Association got a 12-0 forfeit win several of us still showed up and played around, I'll talk about that a little bit later We, Colliders, hosted the two-for-oners at Buttermilk Bar, and there must have been something in the spring air in NYC because, unfortunately, the two-for-oners only had three players show up, which is among the reasons that we won 11-5. We've picked up our first win. There are no longer any winless teams in the division. Pinball Union went to Gebhard's beer culture, where the mighty Lion Persons bested them 11 to 5. Pinball Union is almost the exact opposite story of Balls of Steel. They started off really strong, and they've been struggling a little bit as we've gone on. If the playoffs started today, NYC, FSA, and Lion Persons would have buys in the left orbit playoffs with 7-1 records and 86 and 83 points, respectively. The Mutants would be surely in at 7-1 with 79 points. All of these teams have clinched. It's a little bit up in the air, and in particular, there's a big match coming up in Week 10, I think it might be fair to say, that will determine probably whether NYC FSA or Lyon persons get to buy. If the mutants have the opportunity to win out, NYC FSA or Lyon Persons will take a loss in week 10 because they will face each other. Parliament is pretty safely in the picture at 6-2. They would need to lose, and Pinball Union and Balls of Steel would both need to win out for them to be threatened. They're pretty much in with their 6-2 record and 77 points. special when lit is five and three with 62 and they're definitely above the line balls of steel is four and four with 77 remember what i was saying before pinball union is below the line in the in-lane playoffs they're four and four but they've got 62 points one of these teams is going in the direction they want to go the other is not unfortunately for them i hope frankly, that the Colliders can play spoiler for the bottom two teams that are in that orbit playoff right now because our last two weeks are the five and three special when lit and the four and four balls of steel. And if we do, we could have a chance to get in the next one. Let's talk about that. If Pinball Union wants to get above the line, they're four and four at 62 points. If they want to get above the line, they really have to win out because they are a lot of points behind Balls of Steel with whom they're tied. The Deluxe Horses, Intermission Dolores, the Pin Pals, the Aristocrats are all three and five. They are separated by only four points, top to bottom, 62, 60, 59, 58. Wow. That three and five clump, they're all pretty much in because they have three wins. someone that group is probably going to get a buy they all technically have a chance at getting into the orbit playoffs but it's a long shot for all of them i think that is the likeliest result is that these four teams are all going to fall somewhere in these in-lane playoffs but we just don't know how it's going to shake out yet the two for one is at the bottom at two and six and 46 they're vulnerable but they are facing two of those three and five teams in the last two weeks so they don't necessarily have a hard schedule. Blessed players are tied in points with the two-for-oners at 46, but they are 1-7 instead of being 2-1, so they need wins. You said that they're 1-7 instead of 2-1, like the two-for-oners. Oh, yes. 2-6, which is the record of the two-for-oners. Well, I'm pretty clever, aren't I? We colliders, we need to win out to have a chance. We're 1-7. We have to beat Balls of Steel this coming week at midway, which is a very hard thing to do. And then we have to be special when lit at Buttermilk, which is also a hard thing to do, even though it's not their home venue. There's a lot of players there who play at Buttermilk a lot. We're going to try our best, and we're going to be damn cute. On Tuesday, April 15th, in Pinball NYC's right flipper division, the Butterballers went to Scrapple Land to face Scrapple Squad, and we picked up a 10-6 road win. No quarters for Laundrie, had a bye week. They get nine points and they're sitting pretty. I also want to correct something I've said in the past. I think that I've said that buys get you the points but not the win and I'm wrong about that. Looking at the records, it gets you the win as well. Schlubbs visited Danger Danger at Buttermilk Bar. They went to a tie break with Danger Danger coming on top. The replays hosted Penister 6 at Rullos. The home team won 11-5. Picking up their first win. Nice. Nice. Rest in pinball. R.I.P. Went to Bargrade Harry where the Trolls handed them a 10-6 loss. Harlem Globetrotters traveled to Jack Bar to face the Ball Drainers and picked up an 11-5 road win. While the Pin Babes went to Milo's Yard to face Neptune's Treasure. Neptune's Treasure won 13-3. And so far, if the playoffs started today, and we've still got two weeks left to play, folks. Two weeks left to play. But if they started today, no quarters for Laundrie would be in the top seed. And in fact, they have effectively clinched a buy in points. Danger Danger is only one win behind them, but they are 11 points behind them. And so unless in only two weeks, Danger Danger were to win twice and no quarters for Laundrie were to lose once. They'd have to pick up 11 points. Yeah, that's a lot of points. If no quarters does lose one of their matches, they still win one of their matches. And you can only make up eight if you both win. Yes, that's true. You make up a lot more with a win and the other team loses, but they have a limited ability to do it. Yeah, Neptune's Treasure is 19 points behind them, even though they also have a 7-1 record. Harlem Globe Flippers are 18 points behind them at a 6-1 record. they have effectively clinched a bye here it's almost impossible to get past them unless you've also got a 9 point free win coming up on your schedule and I don't think you do either of those teams Pinister's best is 7-3 with 92 points and they're at the top of the next version of the playoffs that is the best they could possibly be is 7-3 so no quarters has clinched already to the birth and they've pretty much clinched a buy. Neptune's Treasures magic number to clinch a birth is one. That is to mean they win one or Pinister Six loses one. They're in. That's it. The six and two clump, which are Danger Danger, Harlem Globe Flippers, and the Ball Drainers all look really good. Danger Danger has a lot of points at six and two at 83. Harlem Globe Flippers at 76, ball drainers at 68. It's interesting that those are in the 80s, in the 70s, in the 60s. And butterballers are five and three with 62. Pinister Six is liminally tied at five and three, but they have 60 points. So they would be below the line and heading up the in-lane playoffs if they started today. Schlubbs and Scrapple Squad are both four and four. They have 66 and 63. points, respectively. Which is more than either of the five and three teams. The middle of this thing is still really crazy. The bottom couple of seeds in this top thing, they're tenuous at best. And the top couple of seeds in this could easily move up and frankly, easily move down a little bit. They can't fall out, I don't think, because now we get to the trolls at three and five with 49 points. And then the next two teams that are qualified for the playoffs today are 1-7 with 56 and 54 points. Those are the replays who just got their first win and rest in pinball, parenthetically RIP. With 54 points. There will be a shakeup at the bottom next week because the pinbabes have a buy and the replays in RIP play each other. They will move in and whichever one loses will move out of the playoff contention right now. The pinbabes don't have a lot of points because they had a forfeit. So if the team that loses wins in week 10, they are still probably able to best the pin babes, but the pin babes have a guaranteed win. Also because the replays and rest and pinball play next week and one of them must lose, that means the trolls are guaranteed a playoff spot at 3-5. Can't be caught. on Wednesday, April 16th. 24 players gathered at Scrapp-O-Lands for the fourth installment of the NYC Match Play Pinball League, soon to be called Scrapp-O-League, under the direction of Greg Pavarelli and assistants. We played five rounds of match play with IFPA scoring with the goal of acquiring points towards our series total and the finals in week seven. Sean Grant got the most this week with 31 points Alex Kelly garnered 29 while both Greg Pavarelli and Adam Kane got 27 10 players joined in the side pot this week contributing $5 a piece and then Scrapple Land matched the total for a side pot of $100 given out to the top 4 those top 4 in the money were Sean Grant, Alex Kelly and Greg Pavarelli and then a tie for fourth between Sean Atlas and Chris Caffaro. They played a tiebreak game on Monster Bash, and Chris Caffaro won and got the money. With four weeks in the books and two to go, the playoff is starting to look like this. Sean Grant is leading the way with 112 points. That's not catchable. Not for many people. Not for many people. Not for eight other people. Yeah, he can't be knocked out of A at this point. That's right. That's right. He couldn't be knocked out of first. He can't be knocked out of A. The rest of A pending, ranging from Sean's at 112 down to 80 points. Greg Pavarelli, Chris Caffaro, Sam Atlas, Kate Smith, Dante Oliva, Peter Larson, and Zach Till. Dante Oliva has only three meetings. And then we drop down to the next eight, looking at the B finals. Four more people out of these eight are only three and are all looking to jump big up into A. Alex Kelly's got 77 with only three meetings. I have 76 points. Adam Kane's got 73 with only three meetings. Alan Gamboa, 71 with only three meetings. Nint and Woody have both 70 points and have come to all four. Rob Wong, 69 points with only three meetings. And Dan Merrill, 63 with only three meetings. Ian Leone also, I think, at 63. Oh, yeah. Tied on the line. Yeah, on the line there, I think. And also, after that, almost everybody who's left has played in only three. And so there's a world in which there's a lot of pinball left to play. To be fair, there's only two Wednesdays worth of pinball left to play. But, you know, 10 games can be a lot of pinball. A lot of points. There's a lot of whoppers out there. A lot of whoppers out there. On Thursday April 17th the third installment of the South Slope Pinball League 2025 Season 2 was held at Buttermilk Bar under the direction of Kate Martin 18 players came out with the goal of garnering points for their series total After five rounds of match play with IFPA scoring, Rob Adler did that the best. He got 29 points. Rob Wong and Billy Vazine both got 27, while Stephen Christopher, Taylor Connolly, and Mason Matthew got 23. I don't remember if it was Iron Maiden or Attack from Mars, but I remember that I was physically standing at Buttermilk at some time over this past weekend and playing pinball. And I saw Rob Adler and he said to me, man, I feel like I've been a little bit short on Thursday nights. I came out to practice for Thursday night and I see Rob Adler's name at the top of this. You did it, buddy. Congratulations. After three weeks of SSPL, we've got three more to go, so lots more chances to get points. But the A-finals range from 71 down to 54 points. Those people currently are myself, Stephen Christopher, Rob Adler, Kate Martin, Monica Weidekamp, Caitlin James Rees, Rob Wong, and Alicia Ritchie. And let me also just not let Eric be quite that humble, but he said myself first because he is at present the top seed. Just barely. Well. Sitting in B, if it were held today, ranging from 50 down to 38 total points across the series, Matthew Carlson, Jenna Altamirano, AJ Gould, Janos Kiss Gonzalez, Thomas Milburn, Courtney Wetzel, Mason Matthew, and Zen Zokniak. next week on Monday, April 21st. Intermission Dolores will visit Pinball Union at Barcade Brooklyn. Can Pinball Union regain their torrid pace from the beginning of the season or will they fade back into the in-lane playoffs? Parliament at Mutants is a battle of the Titans at Solid State. The lesser players will take the L train across and then some west side train way upstate Manhattan to visit the New York City Flippers Port Association. We colliders will ascend on Williamsburg from our various colliding places and visit Balls of Steel at Midway. The Pin Pals will host the Deluxe Horses at Skylark. The winner of Deluxe Horses and Pin Pals will stake their claim on a higher seed with a week left We talked about everyone with those three wins is looking pretty good, but one of those two is going to look a lot better next week. The Aristocrats will visit the two-for-oners at McKenna's Pub, and the two-for-oners really want that home win while they've got a couple of one-in-seven teams who are hungry chomping at their heels. The Lionpersons will visit Special When Lit at Rulo's. on Tuesday, April 22nd in round nine of Pinball NYC's right flipper division. The Pin Babes will have a bye and they're guaranteed to move up the standings like we were talking about. They'll get a win and one of the one win teams will get a loss. Pinister Six will visit the Trolls at Bar Great Harry. Scrapple Squad will visit Schlubbs at Jack Bar. That one's really interesting because the Schlubbs are guaranteed a win and nine points in week 10. With the ball. Yeah, so if they win here, they've got a case to get above the line if the Butterballers or Pinister Six lose once. Ball Drainers will visit solid stakes, no quarters for laundry. The Replays, as we've talked about a couple of times, will visit Reston Pinball, parenthetically RIP, at Barcade Brooklyn. One of those teams will emerge with two wins, one will emerge with still just one. Danger, Danger will visit the Harlem Globe Flippers at the Wallace. That's a battle of six and two teams. So one of those teams will have seven wins and could be making a move next week. Neptune's Treasure will visit the Butterballers at Butterman Park. On Wednesday, April 23rd, New York City Match Play League, soon to be called Scrapple League, will be met at Scrapple Land at pinball 8 o'clock. It's the fifth meeting of six, four meetings count. So get out there and get your entries in if you're one of those people sitting at two or three. It starts at Pinball 8 o'clock. On Thursday, April 24th, No Bro Presents Thursday Night Strikes will be met at Jack Bar at 8 o'clock sharp, sharp. Also, on Thursday, April 24th, SSPL number two of 2025 will have its fourth meeting at Buttermilk Bar at Pinball 8 o'clock. On Saturday, April 26th, South Slope Strikes. Now, with four strikes, we'll have sign-ups at 5 o'clock and a 5.30 start. This time, it's at Buttermilk Bar. Sometimes, it's at Rulo's. This time, it's at Buttermilk Bar. I mean, it'll probably be at both for the first few rounds, first four rounds. On Sunday, April 27th, a seaside putt, semicolon, by Red Hook Pinball Museum will be convened at Seabourn in Red Hook. It's a pin golf tournament with qualifying eight holes and qualifying 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. And then a papa-ish is what I believe the finals are referred to as, which I think you might have actually also said earlier in this episode about another finals. And I'm really excited to see that there's a competitive event there next week. As of April 18th, 2025, there are 300 pinball machines in New York City at 81 public locations. Thanks to the creators and users of Pinball Map for this data, here are machine updates from the past week. On Friday, April 11th, user Rocco1515 visited Scrapple Lands and said of the Tales of the Arabian Nights, plays well, merciless. On Saturday, user Sean of the Dead was also at Scrap-O-Land. They noted on the Jaws, it's more broke than your 401k. Air message displayed makes it seem like a simple fix. Hopefully back up and running before you read this. I was there Wednesday, it was. Do you think it was fixed so fast because it was Sean of the Dead and they've got connections to the pinball Illuminati? Sean of the Dead also commented on the spooky Evil Dead. Seems like it needs to just be fine-tuned. Small things like the right scoop not ejecting balls until ball search is activated, and when the ball does eject, ball save is expired, and of course the ball is shot straight down the middle. Also had right flipper button pop off mid-ball, but that only happened once in seven-plus games. Biggest fail at Scrapple Land is the coin changers that spill 25% of the quarters on the floor. I'm old and fat. Do you have any idea how hard it is to scoop quarters off a concrete floor while wearing Crocs? Also on Saturday, as we pointed out in the update last week, the map now reflects that a Looney Tunes was taken out of Barcade Chelsea and a Pulp Fiction LE in its place. On Sunday, the Monsters was removed from Dino's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park in Coney Island, and that was the last pin that was at that venue. I mean, good news is there's a much better pinball venue there. Yes. Coney Island's currently showing two pinball venues. The Coney Island Pinball Museum, of course, at the Freak Bar is awesome with eight machines. And there's still that one machine at Margaritaville. Oh, the Rolling Stones? Not the Guardians at the El Dorado? There's a Guardians of the Eldorado arc. Yeah, I just looked this afternoon, and Eldorado doesn't show on the map anymore, so I don't know how to get the update from it to see when it left. That's too bad. Yeah. On Tuesday, April 15th, user GeneX visited Sunshine Laundromat. They said, of the shadow, left furbidiverter doesn't work. You can hear it try and move when you hit the button, but it stays in position. on wednesday user bounce back was at bar great harry and noted that the jaws right slingshot rubber is broken and dangling unplayable on thursday april 17th user jns was at scrapple land and said for the big lebowski half the gi went out mid-game and they also said merlin's vuck doesn't register on medieval madness what's the gi i know what a vuck is but what's the gi GI is general illumination. Great, thank you. It's the floodlights and things. Yes, word. If you're not like me and know what VUK means, that's the vertical up kicker. In this instance, if you hit the saucer just to the right of mid play field, the thing that kicks it out is what we're talking about here, VUK. I think technically I would just call it a saucer kicker. I think I would too. And not a VUK. Yeah, that is what the user called it, and that's what that means. That's what they said. Yeah. User Viega was also at Scrapple Land and said my buddy and I played a game of Godzilla's 70th anniversary. And the tilt plumb is way too sensitive. I don't hit the machine hard and we both tilted two balls. Just multiball started starting up triggers a warning and you couldn't possibly have a long multi with without a tilt. User Mayor of Now was also at Scrapple Land on Thursday and said of the attack from Mars left in lane. Well, actually they said left insane. In the in lane. Yeah. Left in lane and middle shield don't always register hits. Super skill shot doesn't launch all the way around. Scoop shots straight down the middle. And then the angry face emoji with the little symbols indicated swearing. Sassafras and sassafras. I saw on Instagram last Friday just after we recorded an update from Barcade. Friday update. Games are in. Beer taps are in. Chandeliers are in. opening date will be announced as soon as we have one. We can't wait for you to check out this giant space. It's a picture of a bunch of arcade cabs covered with plastic. The chandeliers aren't hung yet either. Amongst the comments, one is string one from Lane D. Where is the pinball? And another user asked if they know what pinballs will be showing up, and Barkay just replied, yes. Good for them. I like it when people are confident in knowing what they know. All right. We're going to try something a little bit new here. I don't want to say that we're going to abandon the idea that there might be featured venues in this part of Ball 2 in the future, because I don't think that we're abandoning that. But it is sometimes burdensome in a week full of other pinball and a week full of life to get out to just some random venue to make sure that you can talk about it intelligently in the way it exists right now every single week. And so we're going to try this different thing called that I would like to call, at least for now, at least until we come up with a better name, because, you know, maybe it's not a great name. Pinball Bullet Journal. Bullet Journal, you probably know at least roughly what it is. Everybody was into mindfulness for a few years, and I am still an adherent to the bullet journal practice. But the idea is just like every day you just like jot down a couple of notes. It's not trying to write a long form thing like a diary entry. It's just you write down a couple of notes. This thing is just, you know, a couple of notes maybe about what we did, a couple of bullet points about how we played pinball this past week. I've aspired to journal at various points in my life. It's never stuck at all, but just for the last week or two, just sort of jotting down stuff that happens while I'm out playing pinball. I found that helpful. And hopefully, it's interesting. Hopefully so. Hopefully. Look, the reason that I wanted to do NYC Pin Pod when I wanted to start NYC Pin Pod was that no one was talking about playing pinball the way that I was playing pinball, which was going out on location in New York City and sometimes just running into who I ran into and sometimes being there with the people I went with or sometimes competing and sometimes not. I think that there's a lot of folks doing that. We record on Friday and I played four days between last Friday and this Friday. On Saturday, I went on a walk through Park Slope and I started at Skylark because they open early and I put up a high score on Foo Fighters and I played there until buttermilk was going to be open at five and then i went to buttermilk when i played nba i noticed that after we had reported just the day before and on thursday night i had been told that the three saucer didn't work that the three saucer worked on saturday uh on nba that was nice i played nba last night i didn't know if it was working or not because i hadn't heard any update on it and i tried my damnedest and i got one two and four but i just could not get to three before my game was good. My bad, I guess, for not having put an update on Pinball Map to say three is working last Saturday. How dare I? I was watching on my opponents. So I did note that it never got stuck in three from the angle I was able to, you know, to see. So at least I was like, okay, well, you know, I have a negative evidence, but nothing proof positive yet. On my way home, I just want to add this in because, again, it's important that the little notes get said here. I stopped by. There's this great candy store that I walked past on my way home. And I walked in and I got a Reggie bar, which they made for Reggie Jackson back in the day. And then it hasn't been made for a million years. And then some candy company in the last two or three years was like, we're going to make Reggie bars again. I had one. And it's just a Google cluster. if you're from south of the Mason-Dixon line. It's just a Google cluster. Did you play on Saturday? No. On Saturday, I was considering it, but then feeling wiped out, so I decided to stay home, and I watched the stream coverage of Pintastic New Robert Englunds on backhand pinball. On Sunday, then, I did go out to play. I didn't want to miss the last IFPA tournament being held at Barcade Jersey City. I also didn't want to miss it, but I also didn't want to go to Jersey City. I had two negatives that were fighting each other. It was really nice to see that the place was really hopping. There were lots of people there besides the pinball crew, which was what, 13, I think. I won, which was really fun. Complimented on my outfit, which I liked. Is that the one that I see the photo of? Yeah, that's it. I was wearing a cut-up rock fantasy t-shirt over my long sleeve black floral mesh top that picture and a bunch of other ones that i threw into this little journal experiment are now available on my blog at no one wants to talk about competitive pinball.com after the tournament was done i threw in real quick three selfie scores into the non-ifpa tournament that will be having its finals the Sunday night when this is released. They were pretty crappy, they weren't anything great, but I just did them to have some scores on the list. And since I was the first person to do it, I was in first place for a brief moment. I also got to play Dungeons and Dragons for the first time. Yeah how you like it So I tried it out in warming up ahead of time I was just learning the shots and stuff Did you do any Stern Insider stuff so you could progress further game after game I did. I logged in so I could do that to see how that worked. It felt very slow going. It's always stopping the ball. It's a lot of choose this, choose that, go right, go left, move around the map. It's a role-playing game. It's a lot of stuff, yeah. It's a role-playing game. They really implemented a role-playing game. You have a lot of choices, don't you? I did get called on that during the tournament, at which point the rule was no insider-connected. Of course. Yeah, I mean, this is one of the things that kind of pisses me off about the idea that this is a thing, is that sooner or later somebody's going to fuck up, and then they're going to get to play a game by themselves after three people played a three- or a four-player game. If not too cute. Well. Some tournament directors say no insider-connected for anyone, just to keep it simple. The games that are a problem really are Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Venom. When I run something, it's like, those are the ones to not log into. I'll tell you, as a person without it, I just feel like, please, can we not in the tournament? I understand why you want this tracking for it, but as a person who doesn't do it, I just wish that we could just all agree that it's just not of thing. That's also just me, and I understand that that is not a prevailing sentiment. I'm not trying to push that on anyone. That's just me. That's my thing. That's not everybody's thing. I understand. I also think it's useful in tournament play because if you log in at the beginning, then your name, your initials are associated with one of the players on the screen of a tournament. You're not going to step up and play the wrong ball if you look up and it's got your name right there. Yeah, oh sure. I also screamed a massive F-bomb at Matthew Grady's stream at Rulo's when I couldn't just figure out how to hit two fucking buttons and get past all the goddamn Stern Insider bullshit so I could see four scores. Yeah. I think that there's a way to log in to Dungeons & Dragons to track your progress but not receive any of your accumulated benefits from previous games such that it would be fair in a tournament, but at that point, it's got so much oversight and trying to make sure that players have put themselves into exactly the right position for it. At that point, I think D&D is not a login game. It feels like it to me. Played it in the tournament, didn't log in, had picked up enough couple little hints from the practice game that I was able to win that round. Nice. Did you play on Sunday? I did. I tried. So I had expected to make ramps jam, but I didn't because there weren't ramps at my farmer's market this week. I tried to go first to Randolph Beer in Dumbo. I wanted to go to the flea market, the Brooklyn Flea. There's this great vendor called the Hood Haberdasher, and I bought a couple of lapel pins from him. So I was going to go to play some of Steve Pence's machines, shout out to Rotten Apple Pinball, at Randolph. I could not handle the scene at Randolph. I walked in and it was, I mean, it was Sunday brunch time and it's three blocks away from the Brooklyn flea market, which I could barely handle, which is outdoors. You know, there weren't even walls closing me in there, but I was still just could barely handle the mass of humanity. And so, you know, I tried to walk in and I just couldn't. Yeah, you probably just turned around and said, I'm not going to last long here. I am pretty much. Yeah, I pretty much. I actually did not, because there was not a human being to whom I was saying it, I walked in, saw the crowd and literally said out loud, nope, and turned around and walked away. The venue is cool. I just went at the wrong time. I did then because I had been thinking that I would like to get there sooner or later because I've never been there, walk over through the Navy Yard to Transmitter Brewing. Oh, cool. I've heard lots of wonderful things about what's happening at the Navy Yard, and I've got to tell you all of it's bullshit. It's a strip mall. It's a fucking strip mall in Brooklyn. It was a long walk. That was part of what I was out to do. I was out to get some exercise. I was out to get some air. It was a nicer day, much nicer day than it had been on Saturday. Was not gross outside on Sunday. It was a very nice day to take a long walk. I played, I think, eight games in total. I got 10 ones. I put two on the bar as a tip, and I played my eight. And I don't think I got it. Maybe I got a replay. But the only one I didn't touch in the back was Foo Fighters, I think, because I had put my initials in Foo Fighters and Skylark the other day, and I didn't feel like I needed to touch it there. Well, so Monday was the Pin Pals forfeit at the Wallace. Four of our association showed up just to play around and actually to shoot for some league high scores, see if it could be done. Adam Robinson landed six points short on fast break. of the league high score how what is the league high score 366 i think and he had 360 and it's freddy who has it so he wasn't he's like i'll let freddy keep it philippe installed an insider connector kit into our deadpool a couple pieces weren't at hand so we actually had to cannibalize Foo Fighters to do it. So Foo Fighters Insider Connected is offline right now. So the Clyders win, right? I have two important things to say about that. One of them is that I had just ever so slightly my best score on Attack from Mars as my walk-up game in practice ever at 8.15 billion. That's before the match. I mean, practice. So, you know, here's what's really important. On Metallica in round three, I scored 69,750 points. I have never been so sad to score 7,050 points in pinball in my life as when I looked at my final score just then. You played Tuesday. Butterballers went up to Scrapple Land. In the fourth round, Butterballers were in a position where one win of the two would get us the match. We'd lost the Jaws. Courtney and I were playing on Congo. She had a really good game for Scrapple Land, Congo, because that thing was being pretty mean. we were fighting with the fact that if you shoot the left orbit when it's lit for a lock the lock mechanism does not catch the ball right the machine turns off all the gi the general illumination and the ball comes flying out from the right orbit return in the dark i tried it twice before giving up and the first time i was completely surprised and the second time i was completely surprised but i managed to catch them luckily fool me twice won't get fooled again is i think what george w bush would have said we said said that somewhere this week but anyway courtney had a good game it was 500 and i then i got about 300 but at least half of that was thanks to courtney because i was watching her play and she happened to be hitting that little upside loop that lands in the saucer that gives you the cave video mode yep where you're picking between caves And I watched her play it because this, you know, importantly, strategically, the cave pattern is random. But every player in a multiplayer game will get that same pattern. Oh, see what Miriam was saying last week about watching your opponent to try to gain some knowledge of the machine. Exactly that. She just seemed to get into this groove where she just kept flipping it right into there. And so she played all the way through. She got through the fifth level and got the complete 150 million points that you can get from the caves. On my ball three, a wacky bounce put me in that saucer. I had the pattern. I went bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, 150 million points. Boom. Yeah. That's quite a way to win 10 to 6. Look at that. Everybody complains about it, but play video mode. Play a video game to win pinball. Do it every time. Every time it's available to you, please do it. If it's offered to you, it's points that you can get when the ball won't drain. After the match, we headed back to Buttermilk Bar, bounced into some numbers of Danger Danger. Janos Kiss has been working on an idea for playing horse with pinball, the basketball game where one player... Where one gets eliminated or you get a letter, you get a penalty and it is not unlike a strikes tournament right, Horst? Yeah, but with the idea being that you call a shot and make the shot and then everyone else playing the game has to step up and do the same shot or else get a letter I also had on a cute outfit for the Butterballers night the pictures again at noonewancetotalkaboutcompetitivepinball.com This is my Butterballers t-shirt and a short black skirt I had on my spooky pinball leggings and my butts socks. Oh, also, right, ran into a few members of the Schlubs as they were leaving the match against Danger Danger. Saw Ida, which is great. Also ran into Daniel Herrera, and I forgot to compliment him because he was interviewed on Nudgecast, the podcast from Nudge Magazine. and it had just come out the past week just before I saw him. I listened to it. It was great. Listen, I encourage everyone to go look up NudgeCast and get Episode 9 with Daniel Herrera. After playing on Saturday and Sunday and Monday, I kind of felt like I probably wouldn't play again. But then on Wednesday, for reasons that are not worth going into here that I will go into in different bullet journal formats, I needed to get some rage out on Wednesday evening. and so I thankfully now have a local haunt with some machines in very good shape and could run up the street and play just a couple of games of Game of Thrones and a game of Godzilla at Franklin Park and I did just that. Wednesday was Scrapplebeak. I was on hand to assist Greg's TD and play. Didn't do great. I only got 17 points. But I did win the free giveaway of a Stern Army t-shirt. So then Thursday was South Slope Pinball League. I was okay. I got 21 points. Round 5 I was playing with Rob Wong on Godzilla. He finished with 1.0 billion. And I finished with 0.01 billion. Like I said, I threw up some of those bullet points and some pictures on my blog at noonewancetotalkaboutcompetitivepinball.com. Also, I threw in a few links to some other stuff I saw around social media in the last week or so. Tommy Ortega is on Blue Sky and commonly posts updates from his team pinball matches. You can see one from his visit with the Butterballers I linked to. I've got the link to the Barcade post about the Fidei status. And also, not pinball related, but a cool music video from a band called Scowl that features the singer of the band Inside a Claw Machine. Let's talk about late arrivals and early departures from a pinball tournament. now I want to really clarify here that there are certain formats that some of these things just don't matter like if you just were like I am going to leave a best game tournament early and just not come back it kind of just doesn't matter an alternate will get in your spot if you somehow qualified before that happened or whatever if you said I'm going to show up for a three strike tournament after two rounds have been contested, you will have two strikes. So the format has already accounted for this. And it doesn't really, in most other formats, same thing, in a match play format, you're going to have zero points and all of your competitors are going to have a very minimum of two. So this is, right, but this is where I think we initially stumbled upon the first thoughts of what we're talking about, in that if you show up late to a match play tournament that's using Swiss pairing, you'll have zero points while other players will have gathered points along the way if they're using IFPA scoring or several other scoring methods. You know, a player gets at least one. That's right. In some scoring methods, I guess, if you get fourth place, you get zero. Right. Depends on which one it's going. But if you show up and the other players have been getting points and you've got none and you get thrown in with Swiss pairing, you'll automatically be thrown into the bottom group. That's right. And you'll probably stay there for a couple rounds depending on how many rounds you've missed, what's the gap you're making up. But if an exceptionally skilled player does that. The very sort of parity notion that Swiss pairing attempts to correct for is kind of thrown out the window in this instance, right? This is the question. this is oh yeah so this it's a little it's not as nice in this case right if you had balanced pairing in your tournament then maybe it doesn't matter right then it probably it doesn't matter then just show up late you'll be at a disadvantage but you're not messing with the natural flow of the swiss pairing tournament right by being a good tournament player who is able to walk in late and know that that just means that they've got a sandbag. Now, let me be clear. When Eric says this sort of occurred to us a couple of weeks ago, there is zero accusation of this. There is only, to me, a question of the experience of that player who lost twice in the first two rounds and then has that great player walk in the door for round three. now look shit happens to everybody everybody has a bad night right Rob Wong sometimes loses his first two rounds not to sandbag but just because Rob Wong sometimes loses his first two rounds at this league and he is perennially one of the top people in this league same thing for any of the top players in any of the leagues sometimes it just happens like it just happens you just show up and it's not a fine night for pinball and so like you could, by luck, also be paired against these people in that way. So it's not impossible. It not outside the realm of possibility that you otherwise would have been paired against these people if they showed up in round one I feel like the opportunity cost of those first two rounds probably outweighs a great advantage And I think in general I don't think the problem... Giving up points is not a good idea. Giving up points in a tournament is not a good idea. Just don't do it. You get one for free. You could show up and turn your back to the machine and plunge. You get one point in IFPA scoring. I don't think the problem really rises to the level of needs to be solved. No, I don't think so either. But I do agree with you that, you know, I think the big concern is the experience of the players in the group that get something shoved on them that they weren't expecting. I think that there are really interesting questions that surround this. There is an overall idea here that late arrival is one thing. That's mostly what we've been talking about to this point. And late arrival in almost all situations penalizes you in such a way that it's just irrelevant. the very specific instance in which Eric and I were just talking about it is one also in which it is further complicated by the fact that anyone who might walk in late to the exact event that we're talking about has already paid their league dues. If they show up for just round five on any given night, they paid their league dues, man. They can show up whenever the hell they want. there is also a very clear and fair argument there. There's no reason that someone cannot give up points and walk in later. It's just that the Swiss pairing creates an oddity. It might actually, if anything else, be an argument for balanced pairing in league situations in particular. I would have to explore that to feel better about it. Something to think about, yeah. Is it different than for Early Departure? So... Does that mess something up more? Best game, no, like you said. Max Match Play. Yes, there you go. Early Departure from Max Match Play just breaks it. Do you understand Max Match Play enough to succinctly describe it? Because I do not. Max Match Play is the name of the format that has evolved out of what was called Flip Frenzy. Mm-hmm. And it involves a kind of matchmaking that the IFPA is happier about. And so it gets graded better. And so it gets used nowadays. But it's effectively sort of an open-ended round robin. It's a head-to-head format. It lasts a prescribed number of games. This is the big difference from Flip Frenzy. Flip Frenzy went for a length of time. Different players might play different numbers of games. because it's all just people in a queue get pitted together. They go off and play. When they're done, they come back and stand at the back of the queue, and you're just constantly moving people from the front of the queue onto games and people who've completed games to the back of the queue. In max match play, you do it for a certain number of games. The determined director determines the number of rounds, let's say, the number of games that each player will play. So then you multiply that by how many people are there. That's the total of games that will happen. and if someone leaves, the matchups get hairy because then you can't play that same number of games but have people have even numbers played. Right. I seem to recall that at Rochester, where there was a three-day max match play tournament. Oh, wow. Like tempting fate. Yeah, that somebody played on day one and that they ultimately got excluded from the results because then in the next day and then in the next two sessions, everybody who played that person played one more round in each of the sessions in order to make up for the fact that the games that that person played were not played. now no longer a part of the record because they departed. It works out great if you have an even number of people left over. Right, right. And I think that it might have actually been that there were two people who left or something. I don't remember what the whole, yeah, right. It gets very complicated. It gets hairy. Right, yes. Right. You then have to make up for something. So Max Match Play is obviously the worst case example, or at least the worst case example that I'm aware of. There are new and exciting tournament formats that are coming out all the time. People have told me about new things. Everybody has told me that when someone walks away from Max Matchplay, we got a fucking problem here. I liked Max Matchplay a lot. And I will also, just to add to what Eric said about the way that it is administered, I will say as the experiencer of the administration, that what it felt like was we're trying to get through a match play tournament a great deal faster. You're not waiting for everyone to complete a round is where it comes in. Yeah, round one isn't all 45 people who are playing in your 45-person match play tournament. God, I hope there are 46. Let's call it that. All 46 people play their 23 pinball games, and then you wait for it. It's instead that when the first 10 are done, they get a new match and go somewhere else. And then when the next 10 are over, even though some of those might have also been the first 10, they get another match. And so some people are done with however many rounds they're supposed to play earlier than others. And those are the people who would have been at the bottom of the Swiss pairings, probably, to be fair. Or else they're people who are having walk-off wins against people who were at the bottom of the Swiss pairings, potentially. But it tries to account for that Swissiness of the pairings, and it tries to account for the match-play-iness of the format, and it tries to account for the I'm playing pinball now of flipper frenzy. It fails to account for somebody's ability to leave. I don't think there's really a problem if you're leaving just a standard match play tournament. And it's fairly simple to leave early from a strikes tournament. Although I will say from experience, when someone leaves early from a strikes tournament and in the match play software I go and adjust their number of strikes, quite often when I go and look at the final rankings, that person doesn't seem to be ranked where I expected them to be. That sounds like a match play thing. Yeah. It's mostly just like, oh, I just need to adjust this line before I submit it to the IFPA. It's just a little thing you've got to remember to do. a little gotcha for a tournament director. Good note for a tournament director, yeah. To me, early departure isn't particularly different from giving up. Or from as I think you referred to it just moments ago, you can plunge the ball and look the other direction and get one point. I think that there's an interesting philosophical line here that is at least worth discussing, even though everybody hates moral philosophers. Part three, paragraph three, it's actually two paragraphs, I believe, so section three, of the IFPA-PAPA combined rule set that is currently posted on the website. If you go and click the link that links to a read-only Microsoft Word doc, it says there's a couple of things about collusion that aren't important here but here's the important bit refrain from making any effort to refrain i i just cut out a lot of words but it's also what this sentence means any effort to refrain from making the best possible competitive effort on each and every game played will be looked upon very poorly by capital t tournament capital o officials and may result in disciplinary action, including disqualification and or ejection from the tournament. That phrase makes it very clear that there's a lot of leeway for tournament directors to decide what the hell they would like to do if they feel like somebody has refrained from making the best possible competitive effort on each and every game played. It also gives the players a little bit of leeway because of the word played. It does not say that I can't opt out of a game after I have already won a round. If I have 14 points after two rounds of three and IFPA scoring, it does not say that I cannot opt out of even playing the game. But it does say that every game played, I've got to give my best possible competitive effort. There's a point of niceties, too. If you're ahead in a three-game round, you've clinched it, let's say, after two. There's a sportsperson-like way to get out of the way of the rest of the group. I define the game choice, and I choose to play first. Right. But in that case, you're still playing the game. Yeah, you're still playing the game. But also, if I say, I am player one, and I don't care what I am playing, then I have given the three people who can change their destiny the ability to control their destiny. And I could not possibly. It is impossible that I could collude with another player because there will still be everybody's ball three to play after my ball three. Just get out of the way. Yeah, get out of the way. There's other sections in the combined rule set about intentional delays and about absences. but it's mostly about getting called up for your next on the best game or if you're in a match play kind of situation, you've got three minutes before you step up or the tournament director has to do something. Right. So I have an interesting match play example from my own life from the last year. At the Pinberg Satellite Tournament that happened between Buttermilk and Rulos last year, I had a wicked headache as we were approaching 10 or 11 o'clock at night on a Sunday night, on a night that I was going to go to work the next day. And that, my recollection is that the ticket was given away after 2.30 a.m. on that night. I was not there. My recollection doesn't matter because I wasn't actually there. But I remember looking at Kate, the tournament director, and saying I want you to know that I am going to give you my best effort in this next game because it really matters. It's like something that will determine who is in the finals and who isn't. But if I make any finals, I am walking out the door the minute this next game is over. I don't want to hate on someone who has to do that. And I think it might be shitty if you did it after the game was called. But I think there's a time and a place. And I think there's probably a way. And I think that while Swiss pairing might have been our culprit earlier. It might be our savior in certain ways in exactly this matter. As long as order of operations is Benjamin leaves, then Swiss pairing happens. Does it matter? That seems fine to me. So Swiss pairings, the cause of and solution to all our problems, as Homer said of beer. It worked for balanced pairings. You're just changing, you know, the number of groups, the number of people in the last group. What's it like from a tournament director's perspective when someone's just like, hey, I'm going to bounce. Like, I know it's not over, but I'm going to bounce. you know aside from knowing a couple little gotchas like the strikes tournament rankings at the end it's really no work okay my main concern would be i hope they're not leaving because they found something objectionable during the event from anything you know just as a director i want to you know make sure it's a comfortable place for everyone to be Of course. And also... Yeah, if you're tired, please go home. Right. Well, and also, like, yeah, you got a headache? You feeling sick? Yeah, get the hell out of here. Yeah, it's not... It's the same as... We're just out here having fun slapping the ball on the pound. Don't worry about it. Yeah. If your body can't do it, your body can't do it. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I don't know. The stakes are so low. Why is someone colluding? when it's happened that I've clinched an advancement after the first two of the three games. I can think of once or twice that's happened. Sure. The one time I did it that I was driving the bus, definitely I chose to go first and deferred game choice. But the times I can recall, stepping up to that last game, it occurred to me, like, what should I do here? Am I going all out on this? and I just you know it was like well I've you know I've got nothing better to do than just play this pinball game best I can here we go I didn't really see there was any other option than just step up and play my pinball game I guess what's what I don't consider low stakes is just personal ethics yeah I'm not gonna yeah I'm not gonna fuck around I'll play my game Yeah. That's all for this week's pod. Join us next week when, as always, we'll run down local competition results in Ball 1, including whoever's closing in on those playoff spots in Pinball NYC. In Ball 2, we will try another turn at the Pinball Bullet Journal. And in Ball 3, we'll talk with Jose Garcia. whatever you're up to this week go get them pinfolk