Happy Sunday, pinfolk, or whatever day you're listening. This is NYC Pinpot, in which a panel talks location pinball in New York City. My name is Benjamin Furiga. My initials are BCF. And having got a prescription filled today, I confirm that I'm living in a hellscape that neither Kafka nor Huxley could have imagined in their worst nightmares. 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, as usual, in Ball 1, we'll run down local competition results. As usual, in Ball 2, we'll have venue updates courtesy of Pinball Map and its users, thanks to Eric. And then some bullet journal entries. And in Ball 3, we'll talk about El Dorado or Gold Strike or whatever you want to call the wonderful 18 drop target game. Let's get started. Let's talk competitive pinball results in New York City in the last week. On Saturday, October 11th, 25 players came out for South Slope Strikes October, held primarily out of Rulos and directed by Jess Warren. Secondarily out of Buttermilk. In this four-strike affair, Greg Fertel outlasted the competition with only one strike. He picked up 7.29 whoppers for those efforts. George Underwood came in second, Ninh Thu in third, and Rob Wong in fourth. On Sunday at Solid State in Queens, Woodside, I think they might call it, 11 players showed up for Greg Pavarelli's The Ocho. which was a double round robin head-to-head tournament. Match Max Play is what the format was set to in Match Play. Chris Medina, the owner of the bar, tied. Chris Dooley, who's been killing it, and Chris's teammate on the pinbots, Harlan Ida Linda, they presumably had a playoff because Chris Dooley is listed as the first place winner with 2.17 Whoppers, Greg Pavarelli, the tournament director, came in fourth. Also on Monday, 14 players who weren't otherwise busy with Team League gathered at Barcade Brooklyn for the third qualifying week of BBPL Season 7, a format that alternates weeks necessarily playing when the Deluxe Horses have an away game. kate martin is the director of record sean grant picked up 33 points on the night bernie birnbaum got 27 jonah slays 25 and matthew torres 23 on monday october 13th in pinball nyc's left flipper division the sixth round was contested in bars all around the city the pin Pals visited the two for one-ers at Scruffy Duffy's Tap Room, and the Pin Pals got an 11-5 road win. That is the first team to pick up a win at Scruffy Duffy's Tap Room other than the two for one-ers. The lesser players had a bye week. Intermission Dolores came up to upstate Manhattan to see our New York City Flipper Sport Association at At the Wallace. our association scored a 15-1 home win. Wow. Wow. It's always a shame when we play intermission Dolores in October because it means you don't get to see Nick McCarthy. He's awfully busy right now. Special when lit hosted the Balls of Steel at Rulos and the home team got a 12-4 win there. That's the Balls of Steel's first loss, isn't it? It is. It's also special. We talked about this last week. We pointed out that if Special When Lit picked up this win, it was going to change what the top of this division standings look like. And they did. And they did it with a little bit of authority at 12 to 4. I'll talk about it in the bullet journal also because I was at Buttermilk last week and I went over a couple of times. to, well, I went over once in the middle of a match, and well, we'll talk about that. The mutants traveled to Bargrade Harry to see Harry's hand grenades, and the mutants take a commanding 16-0 road win. Hand grenades, I said last week, had one more opportunity to get a win than the lesser players, but the lesser players had a bye this week, and they lost 16-0, so they not only did not pick up a win on the lesser players, but they also picked up zero points. Lion Persons and the Pinbots squared off at Scrapple Lands, and the Lion Persons got a 10-6 road win. Lion Persons keep winning on the road. Benjamin, your colliders hosted the Aristocrats at Buttermilk Bar. Aristocrats got a 9-7 road win. It was fun as it always is, and I took back, took back, I say, the Knicks' high score. I see you, Billy, but I wondered while I was playing, because I was player four on the last doubles round, the match was over, and I kept playing because I wanted to. I hadn't yet beaten Billy, I think, after the two, excuse me, SAD is what it said on the back glass. I believe this to be Billy. I might be wrong. but I had not yet quite beaten that score, and so I kept playing, and just about the time I beat the score, I also got my first ring, and so I turned around and asked Jess Warren at the time, what is the league high score, and to her credit, she said, I was just looking that up, because she was watching me play the game, and I believe that Adam Robinson, CAR, has over 600 in a league match. Do you remember this at the Wallace? Yes. Oh. I think it was around 666 or 676, and we complained that he didn't stop. Right. That seems right. I can't remember. But then a few weeks ago, in a round four doubles on NBA, Gabe Chazanov as player four kept playing after the match was won and set the new league high score at 7-4-4 alright well Gabe I was trying to fucking outdo you and I failed miserably and the deluxe horses traveled to Owl Farm to see Parliament that home team got a big 15-1 win that's several big wins in this division this week Yeah, 15-1, 15-1, 16-zip. That's big. Well, the leaderboard did get shook up by those big swings and special win lits. Big win over Balls of Steel. There's two teams at 5-1. Our New York City Flipper Sport Association has 72 points, and the Mutants have 58 points. Balls of Steel are 4-1. having had their bye, they have 51 points right there in the mix of the one-loss teams. And also, you know, just that 51, if they become 5-1, they will necessarily have more than 58 points because you can't get seven points in a win. So they will have at least 59. If they get that next win, they would be in front of the mutants as of right now. That said, we just said the top three teams. Everybody's got a loss. Everybody in this league has at least one or this division has at least one loss. And two teams are still looking for their first win. I bet they've got round 10 circled because they face each other. Parliament, special and Linton line persons are all four and two. They'd make up the rest of the orbit playoff division. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, there's a clear cut line right now. The two for oners are liminal except for their buy. They could be four and two, you know, like the lion persons, or they could be three and three, like everybody below them. And so they're liminal right now, but lion persons would round out the top at the moment. So right now those two for oners at three and two are joined by... Intermission Dolores, the Aristocrats, the Pin Pals, all at 3-3. And the Colliders at 2-3 and the Deluxe Horses at 1-4 would make up the left in-lane finals. The Pinbots are just outside. They have five more points than the Horses, but also one more loss because the Horses had an earlier season bye. if in their bye week the horses have a loss of 11-5 or worse, they would get above the line. The byes are really having an interesting effect on the way that we're looking at these standings these days. We colliders also, by the way, I just want to point out, four of our five games, including both wins, have been either 10-6 or 9-7. We had a bad loss at Commonwealth, which I think was 12-4. but otherwise we've been 10-6 or 9-7 if you're always getting 6-10 points a game that adds up over a season a match it almost certainly puts you in the lower playoffs as long as you've got a win or two you still have to actually win a match or two in order to get into that lower part of the playoffs the in lane playoffs but if you've got a win or two and you've averaged 7 or so or more you're probably looking pretty good. On Tuesday, October 14th, round six of the right flipper division of pinball NYC was convened all over New York City in Greenpoint at Sunshine Laundromat. Everybody loves the sunshine, welcomed Danger Danger to their home, and everybody loves the Sunshine bested them 9-7. Back to winning for Everybody Loves the Sunshine. Danger, Danger's first loss. Rest in Pinball, parenthetically, R.I.P. Took the G-Train from Metropolitan Larimer to 9th Street and 4th Avenue and walked just a little bit. Or they might have walked down the hill from 7th Avenue And the home team, the replays, handed Reston Pinball, parenthetically RIP, an 11-5 loss. That big home win puts them one point ahead of Reston Pinball in the standings. No quarters for Laundrie. And Scrapple's squad had a scrap at Scrapple Land. it was tied 8-8 after all the usual proceedings. And then no quarters for Laundrie won 8-8. Scrapple Squad was just a tiebreaker away from their first win. And that would have been against a winning team. The Pin Babes visited your Butterballers at Buttermilk. It was a pretty nice win for the home team at 12-4. And I will add, as an outside observer, that that puts you in a really good position for the in-lane playoffs. Yeah, it felt like a really good night for the Butterballers. Schlubbs visited Pinister 6 at Skylark, where they conquered the home team 9-7. Schlubbs wins, still looking good. Neptune's treasure, visited the trolls at Barcade Fi-Di, and the away team's 10-6 win was a pretty good-looking win, although, you know, 10-6 ain't bad at home, right? There's a troll story this week on Instagram. You pop by the handle Pinball Trolls, check out some pics from the match. they got some good stuff in there a double NBA being played it wasn't in the match was it? they didn't go head to head to I don't think so I don't know there's a part of me that hopes that super panic ball and head to head NBA is the only thing that anyone ever chooses four rounds of only those two things is what I would like for the match to be at Barcade Viadai in a certain way in a certain very discombobulated way. But Jack Barr was host to the showdown between the Harlem Globe Flippers and the home team, the Ball Drainers. And the Globe Flippers grabbed a 10-6 win. That is to say that there are seven teams in this division, which are either 5-1 or 4-2. and the other seven teams in this division are 2-4, 1-5 or in one very unfortunate situation that we just talked about, they've just lost a tiebreaker for God's sake, R-0-6. The 5-1 teams are, from most points to least, ball drainers, schlubs, Harlem Globe flippers, danger, danger. Ball drainers are out in front by a little, but Schlubbs, Harlem Globe Flippers, and Danger Danger are all within a point of each other. The two lost teams, No Quarters for Laundry and Neptune's Treasure, would currently be in the playoffs. Everybody Loves the Sunshine is also a two-loss team. But here we are. What do you think? The big jump for the Harlem Globe Flippers there, those two teams, I expect to see them clawing back and forth on the points with each other. schlubs and globe flippers or ball drainers ball drainers and globe flippers up at the top of what will be the right in lane finals everybody loves the sunshine new team right at the top of the second half of the division like foreign i mean one win off of the first place team and and not Not that many points, 14. Off the top team. The top team. Not just moving up into the upper half playoffs, but from the very front of it. Yeah. Yeah. It's not as clear cut. We talked about how it was clear cut in the other division. At least right now, even though there are buys, this one feels like there's going to be something weird. If we started today and buy exactly four points, Everybody Loves the Sunshine would be at the top of the bottom half under Neptune's Treasure, who are in that upper division as of right now, based on the number of points that they've scored, accumulated, in fact, throughout the season. The rest of the playoffs, if they started today, would be Pinister Six, Butterballers, Replays, and Rest in Pinball, parenthetically, RIP, respectively, with two wins, and Trolls with one win and 35 points. So Penister 6 are 2 and 4. They've gotten 47 points. That's 7.83 per match. That's so close to 8, which could be all wins. The factor is literally the one win, 48 over 6 would be 8, right? I mean, that .17 represents exactly one point over the course of the season. Any one night, one more point. Right at the bottom of those playoffs, I just want to point out that the Trolls got their win over Scrapple's squad last week. Right? They're 1-and. Scrapple's squad is 0-and. But the squad's tie-break loss this week put them one point ahead of the Trolls in terms of points accumulated on the season. So a win for Scrapple's squad in any week that the Trolls loses totally shakes up the bottom three of this division and totally shakes up the last team in the playoffs. On Wednesday, October 15th, 21 players came to Scrapple Land for the sixth and final qualifying week of Scrapple League Season 4 directed by Greg Pavarelli and assisted by myself, Alex Kelly, and Woody Richman. We played five rounds of match play with IFPA scoring, hoping to add to our series total enough to qualify for the finals to be held next week. Sam Hall got 29 big points on the night. Greg Pavarelli got 27. I mean, that's good, but you know. I got 26, and Alex Kelly, Andy Hayden, and Sean Grant all picked up 25. Greg and Alex Kelly took home money for participating in the optional side pot on the night. With all six qualifying weeks having been contested the lineups for A B and C finals have been set Greg Pavarelli with 112 points will be the number one seed Alex Kelly, also with 112 points, will be the second seed. The automatic tiebreaker came into play. Greg played more weeks than Alex, and so his overall total, without dropping any, was more, and he'll be the number one seed. Sean Grant is the third seed Zach Till and Adam Kane both tied at 98 points overall but Adam Kane came to another week and so he'll come in as the fourth seed and Zach is the fifth Tyler Convery is the sixth seed, Nitsan Gabai the seventh and Andy Hayden the eighth seed but alright, intelligence Nitsan Gabai will not be able to make finals. Moving Andy up into seventh seed and advancing from below the cut line, either myself or Dan Merrill, who tied at 93 points, and this being a significant tie, will have a one-game playoff next Wednesday evening before finals commences to determine which of us will go in as the eighth seed in A and which of us will be the bus driver as the top seed in B. So joining one of us in B, Mike Pantino, Sam Hall, Woody Richmond, Speak a Gift, Peter Larson, Connor Fleming, and moving up the ladder, Ida Kreitzer. Nice. Sam Hall's win has to be a big part of this 86, right? What did Sam get this week? 29. 29 this week. Sam was at 57 last week. But 75 is the cutoff for these playoffs. Sam killed it as the third seed in the B division will have the option to play last, to watch all of her opponents play. Sam might turn into the bus driver. Scrappleland is a difficult place to say, I would rather play fourth. I can play any one of these games better than the three of you. It's a really difficult place to defer. It's a very daunting prospect, but also it's a difficult place to choose. It's true. And some players might not like choosing. Did you know that the pitch at which crickets chirp is related to the temperature outside? I don't think so. Well, it was chilly outside on Thursday. It was one of the first days it was chilly outside. I love the fall. I love the fall. And it may or may not be global warming, but it's global warming. That means that I never get more than like four days of the fall or the spring every year. But it was chilly on Thursday. So it was kind of great. And this is what happened in competitive pinball in New York City on Thursday. This week, on Monday, October 20th, the seventh round of Pinball NYC's Left Flipper Division will be contested. Balls of Steel will go to see the lesser players at Gebhardt's Beer Culture. Balls of Steel seemed downtrodden at the end of Monday night's match. Will they take that anger to the Upper West Side? The mutants will have their buy. Intermission Dolores will host Parliament at Commonwealth. Parliament and Intermission Dolores are both really good teams on Pinball Mile and Park Slope. Intermission Dolores is 2-1 at home. Parliament is 0-2 on the road. The two-for-oners are heading east to Williamsburg to see the Deluxe Horses at Barcade Brooklyn. Our New York City Flipper Sport Association will see the Lion Persons at Barcade Fideye. That's a playoff matchup from last season. I think it was the semifinals. And the Lion Persons, I just got to point out, are under 500 at home. can they get to even? The Colliders host Special When Lit at Buttermilk Bar. For the second week in a row, we Colliders will host a Rulos team. Harry's Hand Grenades go to Skylark to see the Pin Pals. Pin Pals are coming off a big road win and they're hosting the Hand Grenades who are looking for their first and also coming off a big road loss. And the Pin Bots and the Aristocrats will face off at Rulos. The aristocrats have 15 points and two wins on the pinbots on Tuesday, October 21st. Pinister Six will head to Queens, deep perhaps, Queens, to visit No Quarters for Laundry at Solid State. Both Pinister Six and No Quarters were in the Orbit playoffs last season. At four losses, Penister 6 already has one more loss than they did in all of last season. So they're looking to turn it around here. Rest in pinball. Parenthetically, RIP. RIP. Will host the ball drainers at their home, Barcade Brooklyn. Ball drainers in first, hoping to stay there. Rest in pinball is going to have to pick up some wins soon if they want to make it into the upper half. Everybody Loves the Sunshine will visit the schlubs at Jackpot. Standing's ramifications there. Big. Danger, danger. Visits Birdies and the Pin Babes will be their host. That's two buttermilk teams in a row for the Pin Babes. Your Butterballers will host Neptune's Treasure at Buttermill. Scrapple Squad will host the replays at Scrapple Land. Scrapple Squad trails the replays by two in two different categories. They're short by two wins, and they're short by just two points. After coming so close to that tiebreak last week, Scrapple Squad really wants a first win, and this would put them right in the mix. Trolls will travel. they will go a long way to upstate Manhattan and at the Wallace where the Harlem Globe Flippers will be waiting for them and I presume there will be some bitchin' sandwiches along with some clever draft beers Globe Flippers 5-1 Trolls 1-5 on Wednesday the finals of Scrapple League season 4 will be contested at Scrapple Land in Greenpoint Brooklyn starting hopefully pretty promptly at 8 o'clock maybe even slightly before I have to play Dan Merrill in a tie-break game. This will be a Papa-style finals for the top eight qualifiers in the A Division, the next eight qualifiers in the B Division, and a C Division finals with cash and prizes based on a regular league night five rounds of match play. Oh, so whoever shows up for C, they play five rounds. anyone who shows up for C but you're probably not prize eligible if you didn't put in money at the beginning of the season right? We went lenient on that before exactly that's fair if it's $10 for the season and this is your only meet of the season I say pay $10 and you're prize eligible yeah that seems fair on Thursday at Jack Bar in Williamsburg Thursday Night Strikes will reconvene it's New York City's best and brightest weekly strikes tournaments. All skill levels welcome is what it says on the IFPA page. It's three strikes. It starts at 8 p.m. sharp, and it costs you a whopping $5 and $1 for whoppers. Total $6 buy-in. Also on Thursday night at pinball, 8 o'clock, South Slope Pinball League season 5 will convene its first qualifying week of the new season at Buttermilk Bar looks like the last meeting of this season would be I presume Thursday December 11th I'm not looking at a calendar to verify that's Thursday but I presume it is and so you can assume the finals for that would be then on Sunday a women's division tournament So, Galloween, a Bells and Chimes NYC Match Max Play Spooky event, is being hosted by Kate Martin at a private location in Brooklyn. And also on Sunday, the Selfie League at At the Wallace will have its finals in Upstate Manhattan, scheduled to start at 4 p.m. The last event of the Triborough series, right, of the NYC Triborough series, which you may have qualified for, even if you didn't know you were trying to qualify for it. You could go look that up on matchplay.events. As of October 17th, 2025, there are 348 pinball machines in New York City at 80 public locations. Thanks to the creators and users of Pinball Map for this data. Here are machine updates from the past week. on Saturday, October 11th, the Godzilla at Gebhardt's was removed from the lineup again. Not sure how that's going in and out. Gabe mentioned that last week. Also on Saturday, the Shadow and Earthshaker were both added to the gutter bar, LIC. Glenn moving some stuff around. User Chamberton went to Barcade Brooklyn and played the Johnny Mnemonic. They said left flipper sticks. JT Dogzone was at Barcade Fideye, played TX Sector and said right flipper sticking needs another flip to go back down. And user Spike52 was at Scrapple Land and played Gold Strike. They said sometimes starts a two ball game instead of three. otherwise plays great sounds great on tuesday a spider-man was removed from the lineup at jack bar and on wednesday a cactus canyon with the lyman upgrade in it was added to the lineup at jack bar on thursday user flipper eric played the world cup soccer at scrapple land they said free kick by goalie is too weak to reach goal. I played it on Wednesday and I don't remember if I ever got it into that little saucer. We're talking about the penalty kick, right? The free kick is a stand-up target down right on the play field, but this means penalty kick, right? They're saying that the penalty kick kicker isn't getting it inside the goal, right? Yeah, it's also not called the penalty kick. Oh no, that's right. What is that thing called? That's a mode that you get from Scrapples Hideout. Right. What is that called? corner kick maybe? Yeah, that seems right. Yeah, that seems right for the sport. Yeah. Scrapple, it's not Scrapple who is the dog who's actually physically in the place, but instead Striker, who is the mascot of the 1994 U.S. World Cup. By the way, boy oh boy the U.S. World Cup, huh? And on Friday, a Data East Star Wars was removed from Barcade St. Mark's and a Gottlieb Freddy, A Nightmare on Elm Street, was added in its place. They keep putting that game in there. Ew. I mean, Tales from the Crypt was pretty good. Tales from the Crypt was decent. Yeah, Nightmare on Elm Street's bad. I don't love that at East Games, but that Tales from the Crypt is kind of okay. Alright. Bullet Journal. I didn't start playing pinball after we recorded last week until Sunday. I imagine that you worked at Barcade on Saturday. I did. I had the closing shift this week instead of the opening shift I normally have. It's a long night, and a lot of the work happens after 4 a.m., which is draining for the next day. But I did have a couple of pinball-related repairs. I mean, well, I got a stuck ball out of Cactus Canyon. I was checking out Godzilla, and the ball that had drained was not being registered as drained. And there was a broken plastic in the trough blocking the ball from going down. This one had snapped off of somewhere. It took a little while looking around to find it. It was a very odd plastic. It wasn't a plastic that you would normally see. It had a post coming out of it, out of the top of it. And you could tell it's the top because of how it's printed. Yes, sure. You know, which side you can see the art on. It's coming out of the top. Yeah. I eventually tracked it down. It's a weird little sort of curved piece, and it was maybe an inch and a half long. it hangs out normally to the left of the Mechagodzilla figure in the premium. It comes from a much larger plastic that is the roof of the rubber walls surrounding where Mechagodzilla is. That hole, it's the shooter lane slash the backwards lane if you hit the spinner down left and get the perfect inner lower playfield orbit. It's that return that you're talking about where that plastic comes from. Yeah, I'm with it. Just above that lane and then to the left of the Mechagodzilla figure, it comes down from a larger piece of plastic above and behind Mechagodzilla. and in this very thin part it had snapped off and down at the very base of it would be where the post sticks up and I held it in place and the post is there, I believe, to protect the Mechagodzilla figure from air balls coming into the left side of its belly. Ah, sure. Probably hit off of the upper flipper. And while I was holding it there, looking at the fit, it slipped out of my fingers and fell into the slot below where it's supposed to be, just down onto the playfield, but trapped in behind all the walls of the lanes around it. My fingers couldn't quite get in enough to get it, but it was a secure enough spot to store it for the time being. Right, right. It was a temporary... Everybody could still have their dates, and you wouldn't have the glass off the pinball machine. Yep. it was Saturday night. Yes. At Barquet. And one other repair is a new one to me. The latch on the stall in the men's room was busted off and the wood on the frame was splintered. Someone gave that thing a hard shove. Oh my. And I had to replace that. I just moved the whole mechanism down to where the wood was no longer busted up. Oh. But I had to get in there with a drill. and also make sure that you were far enough away from the actual structure of the door frame that you weren't... There was some real math here. The original bracket that the post goes into on the frame, that was all bent up and didn't work anymore so I had to source a replacement for that. It was not of the same manufacturer so it was slightly different but I got all that to line up. This is a very different way in which you enabled a successful date that evening. So I got home after the sun came up and I slept a good chunk of Sunday away. Yeah. Well, I played while I don't, I'm not going to say you were sleeping the whole way through family day at Barcade Fidei, but I was not at Barcade Fidei while there weren't children there. So I presume that you were sleeping for at least a portion of if you got home at sunrise. And I got to tell you, I saw sunrise, but from the other side of waking. And, you know, that's why I was at Barcade Fidei while there were still children there. There would be no other reason for me to go to Barcade Fidei while there were still children there. Then, you know, I'm going to make dinner for my wife tonight. I got up at five o'clock. I'm going to play early and go home and make dinner. But I did go to Barcade Fidei and call to action. I played in the Six Games Six Songs Challenge, wherein I will not be prize eligible. Eric is playing at Barcade Fidei this week against the Lion Persons, and Eric will also not be prize eligible for the Bitchin' Harvest 2025 glass. It turns out there's a new Harvest 2026 glass that we just heard about last week. Thanks, Gabe Chasnoff. Last week at SSPL finals, Eric pointed out that, hey, I've not seen those headphones before, or they knew. And this was actually part of what was important to me, to go to a barcade location, where it is often a little bit loud, and play in the Six Games Six Songs Challenge, that I had these new headphones that are kind of, they have noise canceling features. I don't actually recommend that you use the noise canceling features in this particular set of headphones, and that might be why I got them on an incredibly deep discount, is that the noise canceling doesn't actually work very well, but the actual isolation of of the physical muffs on the earphones is really good And so I went and played the six games six songs challenge I, before I started on the games in the bank, I played a bunch of Dolly and a bunch of Frontier while I listened through my edit of last week's NYC Pin Pod. and then when I was done doing that which by the way Eric found something that I did not find while I was listening which is probably because I was playing Dolly Parton and or Frontier while I was listening but and I was able to get back here and fix that which is also part of why I was there when there were children there is that I could get back here and fix that after I found it I put on the playlist I put on the earphones after I was done listening to the podcast and thought it was good. And I played one game of each in the bank while the playlist was playing. I'm thankful to say that the entire playlist played while I was playing those games. Sorry, let me actually slightly adjust and say I intended to play one game each of each. And then I had such a shitty game on Ghostbusters and the ball trough, the drain trough on Evil Dead was not recognizing that the game was over. And so I played one more on Ghostbusters and my 30 million turned into a billion. Just to be fair, I imagine that I continue to have the 100 point score on Ghostbusters because I put up a billion on my second game of Ghostbusters while I was listening to that playlist. That is the only game that I played twice in it. I did not put in the first score because as I started to put in the first score, yada, yada, yada. I am pleased to say that though I did in fact play one Evil Dead before I walked out and also that I walked out of there in first place, that now Jess Warren of the Trolls, who call Barcade Fidei home has passed me in those standings. I'm not prize eligible anyway. If I get first, it doesn't really matter. If Eric gets first, it doesn't really matter. Someone else will get the prize. But I will probably make somebody play Super Panic Ball against me based on the fact that we have three entrants so far. We have several more people registered, but three actual people have put entries in other than me. I urge you to play. But also, that's what I did on Sunday. And I walked out of there having played seven games, not six, and in first place. And I have since been surpassed. So I urge you to go do that. I had a lot of fun doing it, and I think that when I listened to the Hiatus Coyote version of the, I think they were called Jefferson Airplane at the time, song White Rabbit, I felt really cool about that. That made me feel like a cooler human being than I actually probably am. what happened outside a competition on Monday? Anything exciting for you? I got a bunch of exciting shit, as you can tell, because I think I said in the first, in ball one, that I went over to Rulo's at some point. I had a great time Monday night at the Wallace. Sorry, I also don't want to shit on you. You didn't play on Sunday because you slept, right? Yeah. Yeah, good. I decided to stay in. I had considered seeing what the Ocho was about, and then also the Red Hook grand opening. Yeah. Jess said she was going to go to that, so I was thinking about it. Yeah. But, eh, and then it was like, oh, the big storm's about to start, and I'm tired, and nor is Darius. I didn't get up till 2 p.m. Yeah. I had sort of a double competitive bullet point from Monday night at At the Wallace. in the first round doubles. They called Hot Wheels, and I was one of the pair from our association that played it. Had two very disappointing balls to start out with, sub 10 million, but then had a great ball three, did the Redline Mania several times. Oh. We wound up winning that doubles match, But I was also able to take a picture of my score. It was 435 million and submit that to the selfie league at the Wallace. Double competitive. Yeah. It's not that great in the selfie league, but it moved me up a spot or two. Nice. So on Monday, I teased last episode that I was excited to be playing at home at Buttermilk because there was a big match. Lo, listen to the tale of We6 at Buttermilk. We came, we played, but in particular, our two constituents who come from far needed to bounce on the quick. And so, since we were six and everyone was going to play twice, they played in the first two rounds, which meant that in round two, Benjamin had no assignment. Ergo, in round two, Benjamin went to Rulo's. It was slightly higher tension when I walked in in round two, and I believe it was about to be split two to two. Special Winlet had done their thing on the first game, which I don't remember what the first game of doubles was. It might have been Bond. and Rob Adler was going to fucking town for balls of steel on the X-Men at that moment. And I think I might have been there for five balls worth of the X-Men, and almost all of that time was Rob Adler playing two balls and everyone else just draining right away. I think that that might have been roughly the way that I experienced that. I mean, I was talking to people. I wasn't actually trying to watch the game, but that was the sense I got from everyone in the room was like, it's tense, it's 2-2, Rob is killing it back there, and that's the hope for the away team. And Jess and I, and I think everyone who visited us from the other Rulos team, the aristocrats, went over to Rulos, after our match was over and they were playing round four. And the feeling in the room was different. When I walked in and asked MMC what's up as round three was ending, his response was, we're taking care of our business. Or something, I know that taking care of our, but we took care of our business or we're taking care of our business. I probably just said that a drastically more aggro than he would have said it to anyone ever. But it's just like, we're taking care of our business. And when I looked at the score sheet at the end, it was 12 to four. And I do feel like Balls of Steel, when I walked in the first time, they were caged animals. They were ready. They were pumped. They were excited for this thing. And when I saw them at the end, they were a little bit less hyped. and you know look they went to play a really good team at a really difficult home venue to play Red and Ted's Simpsons Banzai Run Lebowski I think there are nine games there I just named 44% of them it was great to see everybody and in particular, I just, you know, I don't see the Fertel brothers come down this way despite the fact, because I don't always go out on the weekends and play in Park Slope. So I don't see Jason Fertel and Greg Fertel come down this way. That was nice. It was good to see those dudes down in the slope. And that's what Pinball NYC does for this weird community we have. That's the thing it does, is that I get to be out and just randomly drop by some other place where I know there's some folks. And goodness, look at that. I saw some dudes whom I may or may not see this season. It would be the same if I were on their team and I went by Jack Bar after I played my match, right? Like, it would be the same. Or Barcade Brooklyn and went by, you know, whatever it is. The North Brooklyn scene, the South Brooklyn scene, we come together on Monday nights and it's pretty cool. and we come together in Fidime. We come together on the Upper West Side too. Nicely put. Monday is the last time I played pinball. I'm embarrassed to say. What happened for you the rest of the week? Tuesday, Butterballers win. That was really nice. It felt solid in a way that the season didn't start off as strong. That was at Buttermilk. At Buttermilk, yeah. we had the pin babes come by jade complimented my outfit and what were you wearing i had on one of our butterballers team shirts that i have cut up in to cut off the sleeves and and and open the neckline it was one of my earlier experiments in doing that to my t-shirts and I went way too far on it and it's not modest but I wore a see-through lace floral top underneath it and then a hoodie sweatshirt over and there was a little peekaboo of the lace and enough coverage that mostly my nipples weren't sticking out. Right. That sounds like that sounds like Cyndi Lauper meets Stripper Chic. Sounds really cool. I like it, thanks. Should have grabbed a picture, I didn't. Sounds really cool. And then on Wednesday night, I was at Scrapple Land. I put up my best night of Scrapple League in all of the four seasons at 26 points. went to Blue Collar this week for dinner and a city bike afterwards. I'm telling you, that gift is for real. Yeah. It's like a AAA membership. There were some crickets in competitive pinball last night, Thursday night, as you pointed out. Yeah. But I did play some pinball and, in fact, repair some pinball last night. In the off night from SSPL, we scheduled one of our recurring board game nights at Jess Warren's apartment, Jess and Friends. I went over just a little bit earlier than we had all agreed to start the game so we could take a look at Jess's party animal pinball machine. Which animal was problematic? the number one target which is associated with the radio yeah was being flaky it works sometimes but most of the time you'd you'd hit it and it wouldn't light up and that meant you could never change the song right or rarely which meant that almost the entire time that that pinball machine is in game mode, you're listening to a really rough MIDI of Louie Louie. Just took off the glass and hoping for the best, knowing that it was working because sometimes you hit it and it registers. We took off the glass, we test it, we tap with finger. It works. Okay, maybe, you know, and then we throw a ball out a few times. That doesn't work so good when the ball hits it. What's the difference? Well, maybe the ball is just not hitting it as hard as the finger can tap or not pushing it far enough it could be this the the leaf switch is gapped too wide yep uh the first thing i did was i didn't want to remove the whole mechanism and take apart the play field um the leaf switch is sort of contained underneath the radio uh it's like a tin figure on top of it and it's hard to get to but i got a q-tip down in there and just cleaned between the two parts of the leaf switch so the contact might be better. It was pretty grimy and I got out a bunch just with a dry Q-tip. And we tested afterwards. Eh, it's a little better maybe but it's still kind of not great. So we lifted the playfield and take a look at the bottom. I went in and I wiggled all the wires all along the leaf switches on the radio and they all seemed to be in good place. And then I got in there with a flashlight and I took off my glasses and just got my face extremely close to it and I discovered that there's a diode on each of the three 1-2-3 lights leaf switches and one of the legs of the diode attached to the first leaf switch had snapped off of the solder. Right, a snap, a physical like... A gap in the circuit. But it was... The diodes have stiff legs and the leg had been soldered directly to the leaf switch contact. It was still pressed up right against it. If you wiggle the thing, it might bounce off a little bit sometimes. Or maybe if the switch is getting banged by a ball, it gets knocked off a little bit each time. Maybe when you press it with your finger, you hold it in longer than a ball hits the target and rebounds, so it has enough time to get back in contact. It's a complete break in the electrical circuit whenever it bounces off of there. Right. I brought along my little soldering iron with me just in case we discovered something that could happen. Sorry, my little soldering iron, is it butane? It's electric, you plug it into the wall. So it is an alternating current with some sort of controller between it, even if it's just something that's built into the handle of it. It's dirt cheap, it's got no control. You plug it in, it starts heating up, when you're done with it, you unplug it. It's on the whole time, you can't adjust it, it's not a precision tool. Understood. Well, you could put a precision tip in it, couldn't you? And also, I got a little tube of solder that I bought from a radio shack in the 1980s. If you bought it from a radio shack, you can't have bought it in the in a year that started in 2001 or later. Oh, yeah. I have some sitting around too, but I'm just saying if you bought it from a radio shack, you didn't buy it in a year that started in 2001 or after that. Nor can you buy a similar product these days because this stuff is definitely lead. There's a big warning on the tube. They don't sell this solder anymore. Anyway, got in there, managed, poked at it a bunch of times. finally got the leg to stick to the solder blob, and it started working pretty great. I don't know if that solder is going to hold forever, but it's working for now. Good news. I have some resin core right here that we can solve the problem with later. Let's talk about Gold Strike. A few weeks ago, I said to you that, oh my god I'm so glad Peter set it up because I was positive that he had an Eldorado all within the same week Nick Berry who works sometimes at Peter's places I think is a bartender and also is very involved in the maintenance and just general like atmosphere at Scrappleland Nick said to me on a Monday Peter was working on that game and he started to describe the art on the side of the cabinet and I was like I've been waiting for him to set up that Eldorado forever and then on Friday a couple of weeks ago while we were recording this podcast Eric said that in the venue updates that Goldstrike was added to Scrappleland's lineup. And I understood where I was wrong. And let me make this perfectly clear. I am never afraid to be wrong. And I'm never afraid to be loud. Which is to say that I'm never afraid to be loud wrong. but I was loud wrong because the side cabinet art is the same I'm pretty sure and Eldorado and Goldstrike are roughly the same game it's been made as at least at least that would be available to us here in the United States at least Eldorado Goldstrike Target Alpha and SolarCity It been made as at least those four and then there was a much later solid state version that was made that I imagine we won't discuss after this exact moment, which was called Eldorado City of Gold. Do you have anything else to add about Eldorado City of Gold at this time? Put it on the record, please and thanks, and then let's go past it. One of the worst bad glasses I've ever seen. Just, I mean, other than the fact that it had one of the greatest playfields in pinball history, it was a bad game. That's what I can say about it. Look, I love this game as a theoretical concept. I love this game as the way that you can play game theory optimal pinball. If you could execute perfectly such that you hit a drop target and then another target that changed which drop target was lit and then hit the drop target that was lit. and then hit the target that changed which drop target was lit and hit the lit drop target. No matter which version of this game you're playing, you would play the greatest game of pinball ever. And did I mention there are 18 fucking drop targets on it? There's a 13 bank up play field and a five bank down right. So like, I don't, it, to me, it is brilliant because it's, because you could try to break this down mathematically and make it perfect. You could bake it instead of cooking it, right? You could measure every ingredient just right. and solve for game theory optimal points on this game. There's an equation. It's not aloof. It's available to you. You can understand it. There's a lit drop target. It scores more points than every drop target that isn't lit. There's one lit on the 13 bank, and there's one lit on the 5 bank. There's two on the 13 bank. On Gold Strike, there are two? Yeah. Oh. Pretty sure. I mean, Gold Strike is the add-a-ball, and it is also the one wherein you get 1,000 points instead of 100, I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong. Whereas on Gold Strike, you get 5,000 versus 500. You think it's 5,500 on Eldorado? I think it's 5,500. Is it the same on Gold Strike? It was 5,000, yeah. Oh. But you don't like the wow until you have completed all of them, right? That's right. So you have to get 18 drop targets to add a ball. To begin the add-a-ball process. Yeah, to begin the add-a-ball process. You usually start adding balls pretty quickly then. You don't have to. Fair enough, fair enough. And same thing with replays on Eldorado. We said there are a bunch of these. And so Eldorado was a one-player replay version. Goldstrike was the one-player add-a-ball version. Target Alpha was a four-player replay version that I'm sure I've touched somewhere. I can't tell you where, but I'm sure I've touched that one somewhere. This, on the other hand, that's one of my favorite backglasses. that thing is just real pretty. Yeah? Solar City? Have you ever touched the Solar City? Does Billy's Midway have a Solar City? I feel like I've seen one somewhere. I feel like I've seen one somewhere. I don't like the looks of that one as much. You know, it be what it be. Are you going to mention the weird one? The oddball one? Canada Dry. So, we talked about whether or not it's licensed. I think it's in the same way that Domino's had Spooky make a Domino's machine for them I believe Canada Dry had you know wanted some pinball machines with their name on it so like Pabst did it with the Pabst can crusher Primus well look Primus came to them and said we want a pinball machine is that right should we say it's a contract if Canada Dry comes to me and says, make me a ginger ale pinball game. Should that be a contract instead of a license? I feel like it should be. The end result is they took one of the best play field layouts ever and they put on some real groovy art. I think it's a win. Groovy. Groovy. I have to believe that I've touched one of these at Asbury Park which it might have gone to Del Rey by now, I don't know so look game theory optimal let's just talk about it for a second because there's a target that allows you to change which of the drop targets on the banks is lit there are two in fact targets right? There's a star rollover that hits that if you hit it, you're going to necessarily hit somewhere that one of the top drops would be, right? Yeah, the middle says wow. Well, it says wow well under it, I think on the gold strike, but it depends on which game. It says a thousand probably on the because it changes which one scores a thousand points or five thousand points or whatever it is. It changes the thing. The wow I thought on Gold Strike was down play field to tell you that once everything is lit, if you hit the lit one, you'll be scoring. Yeah. Yeah. But on Eldorado, which to me is the OG, which doesn't mean it's actually the OG. It's just the one that I had on Zen Pinball when Zen Pinball was still making really good ports of the 70s Gottliebs, and it's still on my phone because for some random reason they have agreed to support it ad nauseum. So here I am being able to play Eldorado on my phone also, which is part of why I love it. But so many drop times. you light one you hit one you hit the target that moves it to the next one and then you hit the next one I've told you in this space before I love Sky Jump and I love Sky Jump for this reason because Sky Jump has a 7 bank of drop targets and all you have to do is hit a touch target up playfield to move it to the next one and then you hit the lit one and then you bring it back and you hit the touch target again you're never going to actually hit them perfectly but like god damn it's so fun it's so fun to try it's so fun to know that you have a really specific objective and that there's not actually any other objective that we'll do on wednesday i got my first chance to play this gold strike at scrapple lands it was my randomly assigned game in round one of Scrapple League. As I mentioned on the podcast last week, it had just been set up the previous week, but I didn't stick around at the end of the night to get on to it. So, I, yeah, did not get the platonically played balls that you described. Um... on ball. So I noticed it has a skill shot. It's a very early game for a skill shot, but there are three little lanes just outside of the plunger lane that if you were to plunge extremely shortly, you can make the ball drop into the top of these three lanes instead of going out to the rest of the play field. But is it set such that it is always one of those three lanes, or is it random according to what the last state of the game was? I think it's random according to what the last state of the game was on all of the electromechanical ones, is it not? From my observation, the best I could tell, and this is from playing that one game of it, on ball one, the rightmost of the three lanes was lit for a skill shot. On ball two, the rightmost and the center were lit for a skill shot. and all three were lit for a skill shot. I think maybe now that I'm thinking about it, it's not a skill shot, but those lanes just light up because what the little insert says, scores drop value. So you get the same as if you had hit a lit drop. It's 5,000 points. That's right, but also that would on the default settings of El Dorado, not El Dorado City of Gold those targets those lit lanes would toggle in the same way that the 5 drops and the 13 drops light they would toggle just to the left every time that a bumper is hit or every time that you hit, not every time a bumper is hit every time that you hit one of the two things that toggles to the next one. It would toggle that to the next. I did not notice some toggling on Gold Strike, but also I didn't have much time to notice. On the first ball, I short plunged and it was very much going into the rightmost lane, the only lit one at the time, but it bounced on a rubber and moved over to the center lane. it falls through that, it hits a pop bumper it bounces to the right and it goes down a lane that's going to drop it to the flippers it's a side lane it's an upper side lane that will necessarily drop above the right slingshot and depending on how sensitive the right slingshot is it might easily drop to a safe trap on your right flipper. If the right slingshot is very sensitive, it might not do that. But I imagine, based on what you're saying, that this one drops safely to a trap on your right flipper. Mine went down the center. Ah, mean. And a ball no flip. Mean. Oh, it's a one-player game, so I'm not waiting now. I step. I'm already there, and I plunge my ball, too. the rightmost and the center lane are lit. I plunged. This is the one where I overshot. This one just went out into the play field. I did get to take a swipe at it. I hit a drop target on the lower bank, not lit, and then lost the ball. Ball three. All three were lit. It was the same plunge as ball one. It looked like it was going to the right, but it bounced into the center. But all three were lit anyway, so I got 5,000 skill shot on that one. That was the grace of Tyler Convery? That was what got me from, yeah, 9,000 to 15,000. 9,000 to 14,000, passing Tyler at 12,000. Did you play it again afterwards? I didn't play it again, but I went back to it, and there was already a good large group of people there playing it. over the course of the evening, the high score on the game had been going up. So it's got a little spot on the back glass. It says high score in a blank area. And people have been putting little post-it notes there with their current high score. So keep track of the machine. At the beginning of the night, it was Greg Pavarelli. It was 130-something thousand. when I joined the group at the machine after the post-it had been replaced Christian Klossner had gotten 180 something thousand one reason I didn't take a turn is that I think the entire time I was back there Alex Kelly was playing like I came back he had started and then by the time he was done it was time for me to go he got to replace the post-it note with 336,000 of the 18 drop targets. Which one's your favorite? Well, so which one's your favorite? Here's, I mean, there's a star rollover that necessarily about four of them. If I counted them from the left to the right, I would say two through five or two through six, maybe five of them. I have to roll over that star rollover, which will move it to the next one to the right before I can hit it. And so playing this game such that you shoot only from the lower flippers is crazy. Playing this game to plan such that you shoot from the two weird little upper flippers is crazier. You're playing in competition. You were playing on Wednesday night in competition. What was the overriding ethos? Well, I got two center drains from the side lane without a flip. And one flip that was just a survival flip that managed to hit the one unlit drop before dying. But my game plan, I went for the skill shot. Obviously, it cost me, but I think that 5,000 is worth it. It's entirely controllable. With that plunger and spring, it was easy enough to dial in. You get a ball into that, and you've gotten 5,000. that is so hard to get on those drop targets. The top ones are way up there. So far away. But what if you just focused on the lower ones and then knocked out the top 13? What if you said, I will hit them only when they're lit down here? Seems doable. And I will knock the rest out. The lower bank feels more dangerous. but you can make I think you can aim for those shots if I aim for it from my left flipper the angle is such that it is coming back to my left flipper and my only decision is whether or not there is a drop catch or a bounce pass I think that there's an incredible value to containing the game to the lower third of the play field and then letting what happens up there be the rest. Fly away with the little upper flippers. Hope to get some ricochets up there and catch the ones you haven't gotten. I would urge you not to use the upper right flipper as a diverter. I would also urge you to consider every flipper as a diverter because that's what it is. And it's a diverter you control. But I would urge you not to use the upper right flipper, but always to use the upper left flipper. Why? Because you can sweep most of the 13 drop targets with the upper left flipper. And you can only create chaos by putting a ball on almost any effective and fast angle that you can hit off the upper right flipper. You will create chaos. It is coming down somewhere that you don't want to try to defend against. if you flip it from your upper right flipper, unless you're doing the backhandiest of backhands and hitting drop targets number 11, 12, 13. That's the only option from the upper flipper. Any other way, just don't flip the right flipper when it's on the upper part of the playfield, please. The left flipper can flip across. It's going to give you safe returns. The right flipper is nothing up there. Don't do that. It's a trap. Like poetic justice. I'll try to put that into practice the next time I get called on it at League. That's all for this week's pod. Thank you for joining us. Join us next week when I will probably be on assignment. And so hopefully we'll have a special guest sitting in my chair to go through with Eric, the local competition results in Ball 1 as usual. Venue updates and probably a bullet journal in Ball 2. And TBD in Ball 3. Between now and then, whatever you're up to, go get them, pinfolk. you