Welcome to Do or Die, a podcast about competitive pinball. I'm your host, Raymond Davidson, here to help you stay up to date on the latest strategies, tournaments, and happenings in the competitive pinball world, while also sharing direct stories with me as I go forth on my pinball tournament adventures. Welcome to episode 9 of Do or Die Pinball Podcast. This episode is all about IFPA 16 in Italy, Asago, outside of Milan, Italy. And yeah, there's a lot to talk about, a lot of games happen there. A whole weekend of tournament, a whole week of pre-tournaments as well. So yeah, I'm just going to jump right in so we have time to talk about all the crazy games that happened at IFPA. And for me, anyway, it started off on the Thursday. I got to play in the Epstein Cup. And the first game I got to play in the Epstein Cup. So if you don't know what the Epstein Cup is, it's basically like a team tournament where the USA or the North America team plays against the Europe team. and you basically send players from your team to play four-player games. So two people against their two people on a game, and then two people against their two people on a game, and so on. And the scoring is sort of like you want to obviously beat the other team players. You don't want to beat your own players. That doesn't really matter. And then also there's bonus points for combined scores. So if North America really crushed a game, then they'll get bonus points and whatnot. So yeah, basically beat the other team. So for the first game I got to play in that was Dialed In. And the game was playing great in practice, but unfortunately did not treat me so kind in the actual game. And basically, I could not hit the phone, and I drained, like, instantly on balls one and two. It was really sad. I did try to do the hurry-up strategy that I've talked about, where at the beginning of the ball, you make sure the right end lane has 10k plus, and then you full plunge, and then shoot the ramp, and then try to pass it over and shoot the ramp. I got halfway. I shot the ramp, but I could not quite pass it over and continue that. But I did at least light my mode, but then I struggled to hit the phone and just led to disaster. And I did manage to actually start a mode on ball three, but by that point it was too late. And Jim basically had the same thing happen to him. Jim Belsito was my teammate on that game, and we ended up getting last on that game, so it kind of put us in the hole. But then we played Whirlwind, and Whirlwind was a lot better to us. we got first and second on that so we beat actually it wasn't first and second it was first and third so it was actually pretty crazy that Jim got third place with like 2.6 million or something it was one of those games where Jim didn't start multiball so his score was just whatever points he had scrounged together which actually a lot of his points came from looping the right ramp. So that's sort of a good strategy tidbit on Whirlwind is if you can get into a groove on that right ramp you should just hit it because it's worth points. It gives you Skyway Tolls which get added to your bonus every ball. It gives you just actual points that goes up to like 100k and it also works your target in the Pop Bumpers to give you increasing awards one of which is quick multiball. So that actually, I think, single-handedly allowed Jim to squeak by with a third place. I was able to actually start multiball and get a jackpot, I think. So we were back in it on Whirlwind, at least a little bit. The third game we played was Skydive. It was one of those WoW EMs. and well, we needed a huge score. Me and Jim needed a combined score of like 3 million or something because Yorian put up 1.5 million, but I ended up only getting like 750,000 and Jim only got like 150,000, so it just didn't happen for good old Team North America, unfortunately. But that's all right. we'll get them next year when it's in Florida USA yeah so that was the Epstein Cup just a quick little rundown of the games I played there weren't really too many interesting strategy decisions we all know how to play Whirlwind other than the ramps that I said it's kind of a good little detail Skydive was you had to hit 1 through 6, all the rollovers, and then it basically lit the whole table for wow, which on those, basically these Italian EMs, they had this thing called a wow, where when you got to a certain stage in the game, every shot was just worth like 50,000 points, which is just ludicrous. Like, the backbox only goes up to 100,000, so every time you got 50,000, a new light would appear. It'd be like, you know, 200,000, 250,000, 300,000. So yeah, if you ever see a game with WoWs, you should try to figure out how to get them, because they are very important. Anywho, I guess we'll get started. My first actual round of playing on Friday, I got to play against a bunch of different nationalities. Mark van der Goeten from the Netherlands, Paul Jones from Australia, and Danny Luliano from Italy. We played Junkyard, Space Station, and Poseidon. I can only really give the quick rundown on some of these because there's a lot of rounds, so I'll try to keep it brief. But the Space Station was set so that you had to light locks at the beginning of the game, which was really annoying. So you basically had to plunge into the top lanes and then shoot it back up to the top lanes and then shoot it back up to the top lanes one more time. And then that'll light all three locks, and then you just shoot the locks and get your multiball. This space station had a tendency to brick out of the locks, so you had to really pay attention when you shot it, whether or not it went in all the way. Yeah, so that was kind of annoying, but managed to pull a second on it. we also, the Poseidon was this goofy EM that I think I just barely got a third on where you just have to hope that the ball goes into these rollovers and then once you get all the rollovers you get wow central, but nobody in our group got to the wows so it was just all like, how many random points can you get? There was this one shot of the game that would give you a random number of points literally random, sometimes it was five, sometimes it was ten thousand so yeah that was just like a keep it up top all day game there wasn't really too much strategy that I could see other than just throwing it back up top junkyard oh my god this junkyard was so hard the outlanes were gigantic so you basically you got like a couple of flips per ball but I made mine count I was you know I plunged I got the junk that lit my time machine I shot the sewer to start Time Machine, which gave me Mamushka, and then during Mamushka, I just shot the crane, and the crane, you know, it gives you switch hits for Mamushka, and then also gives you progress towards Multiball. What people might not also know is it will also give you progress towards the crane hurry-up. So if you actually hit the cars on the bottom with the ball, that works towards your crane hurry-up, and if you hit the wrecking ball and knock the wrecking ball into the cars up top, that is what actually progresses you to multiball. Also, if you sneak a ball in behind the wrecking ball, it gives you progress towards multiball. And so the crane hurry up is just like something that lights on the inlanes and it lights the wrecking ball for a one-shot two-ball quick multiball, but the real multiball is the one that's worth a lot of points. so I was able to set up on ball three with enough crane bashing to basically be in the lead with multiball lit which was like a great place to be and I was able to hold up the left flipper, pass the ball over and shoot it up the middle and start multiball got a jackpot, got a super jackpot, had like nine million and won that game so pretty good round one I got fifteen points. Round two I played Dr. Dude, Kiss, and Top Hand. Top Hand was basically high hand, but it didn't score at all like high hand. It had the center hole always worth 50k on top of collecting your bonus. And on this particular copy, the outlanes would not give you your bonus. So normally on high hand, the goal is to hit all the drop targets and then outlane. But on this one, it was literally all about the hole, because the hole just gave you 50k and also collected your bonus. As I found out later in the tournament, if you manage to hit all of the drop targets down from all suits, it actually lights every single drop target for 50k, which we didn't really know at the beginning. So we thought it was a stupid game that was all about the hole. But when really, if you manage to complete all the targets, you were just in wow city. Every single target was just another 50k. So it was kind of interesting because you wanted to get it in the hole, but you also wanted to complete targets. But what the game ended up being was just who got it to land in the hole the most amount of times. So that was kind of a silly game, but I managed to escape on it with, I think, maybe a second or third place just because I got it in the hole a couple times. the next game we played was Kiss and this is Stern Kiss and I did pretty well I did my strategy that I've talked about where I love gun right away with deuce and then after that I started lighting my demon locks and so on but I actually have some insight from special guest Adam Lefkoff who has a few words to say on the subject Hey, Ray, it's Adam Lefkoff here. Well, more like Escher's dad these days. And just wanted to come into your podcast. Thanks for having me for a moment. Yeah, no problem, Adam. You know, I've been enjoying, Escher and I both have been enjoying your podcast a lot, and we love that it's just you. Oh, thanks. It's like you're opening your mind to everyone. You know, one of the mysterious things about Elwin is, like, nobody knows what he's thinking. And so you get to be friends with him. You have no idea, but you, you're just opening up to everyone. And it's really cool to get your perspective and to hear what the hell's going on inside there. Yeah. I know since I've known you at all these tournaments, I often turn to someone like, you know, Josh or Escher and like, what the hell is Raymond thinking? And now we know. We just have to listen to your podcast. So great job on the first eight episodes. Can't wait to hear this IFPA recap. That's going to be pretty fun. Oh, yeah. But I got to say, going back to one of your older podcasts, I mostly agree with your strats and your approach, but I was worried about what you had to say about the new KISS game. The new KISS game? Yeah. You don't like KISS. You don't like playing KISS. You don't feel like you've had good games on it. Yeah. I mean, I did reverse the curse a little bit the last time I played it. At Northwest, right? At Northwest. Your scores are not that impressive. Yeah. I actually, at IFPA, I was able to – yeah, you're right. It wasn't – all right, fine, fine. They weren't that impressive. They won, but they were impressive. Here's my problem, that your avoidance of the scoop is killing you. It's killing your EV. And let me tell you why. So you finish your first song, right, and now you're at 2x play field. And you were saying you hate that scoop. You don't feel good about shooting that scoop. And, of course, you've got to shoot the scoop to change your song. And so instead, you're going to go after trying to get your next multiball, maybe work a couple locks on the head. But you're at 2x play field, and if you start your next song, every song shot is at least a base of a million to a million five doubled. You're leaving three million a shot on the table by not starting your next song at that point. Now, you can talk me into prepping your next multiball, but you'd be insane to start your next multiball without first hitting the scoop to change your song. I don't know. What if you have 2X scoring running and multiball lit? You'd rather risk draining than get a 2X multiball? Draining? It's a scoop, Raymond. Do you shoot the scoop on Adam's family? Yeah, but it goes in when you hit the scoop on Adam's family. It doesn't go in on Kiss. It really does. You just have to believe. you've just psyched yourself out that scoop is tough and it's a tight scoop but the ball goes in fine and once you get used to it it goes in forehand or backhand and the ev of taking your next song into a multiball you're probably going to finish that song and now you're at 3x right instead of 2xing everything plus you were 2xing every song shot in that path which is another 20 to 30 million points you're leaving behind so you're stalling at 2x and if you have a huge ball you get to 5x and if you play 5x heavens on fire you will not lose unless somebody else plays a better 5x heavens on fire right it's a guaranteed win and often when you get going on a good ball you can get it up to 5x so i feel like you're stalled at 2x maybe i maybe i've played them on weird settings because I thought when you complete a song, it goes up to whatever multiplier you were at. Is that not true? That is no longer true because they changed – that used to be true when the rules were every two songs got you to the next multiplier. Oh. So you're at 2x, you drain out. You play another song and finish it. You're at 2x. Oh, okay. That might – okay. Every song is its own universe now, and that after every song, it goes up a multiplier. But that's unique for that ball. So I just feel like potentially 80% of every game you play is being left behind by you. And that scoop isn't that dangerous. There aren't posts on it like Adam's Family where if you miss, it's going to go towards the outlanes. It does kind of lose all its momentum when you hit that metal. And granted, I mean, you can get avatared because it'll kind of go into your left inlanes. And sometimes it go kind of scary towards the middle But it just not that scary So you just need to buckle up and just play a few games where you not afraid of that scoop Don be afraid of the scoop Scoop's fine. All right. I'll give it a shot. I'll give it a shot. And you will find yourself playing a lot more 3X and 5X, and you're going to be like, oh, so that's why people score $400 and $500 million when I'm just putting up $180 or $220 million. What was your score at IFPA? I don't remember. It was like 60, 70 million. Yeah, right? So you get that 3x and 5x going. Just shoot that. As soon as your song's done, you're wasting – every shot is basically wasting points until you change your song. It feels so bad because you get it for free on your next fall. Yeah, but you're only at 2x again. Think about 3x and 5x. It's huge. Yeah, I guess the only – actually – Especially for a player of your caliber. The only way to even get 2X in a mode is to actually shoot the scoop, right? Because you can't start the ball at 2X. That's correct. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah. You're – if you started fresh on a new song on the next ball and you finish that song, then you're at 2X and you haven't had to shoot the scoop yet. Right, but you're not 2Xing a song. That's correct. Yeah. And the next song, when you're playing it at 2X, can be quite valuable. And 3X and 5X songs are valuable. And the multiballs, oh, my goodness. You get the super on Love Gun with 3X or 5X. Again, you are not going to lose. 5X Heaven on Fire is like the regular way to go. That's, you know, when you see Elwin putting up his billion at Expo every round. Yeah, I'm all too familiar with that one. Of course, that was the old code. It's funny. He did that on every single round except when I played him. He had – he did – he crapped out at like $35 million in my game. That was like my best game of Kiss ever. I got like $200 million, $300 million. Yeah. And what did he have? Like a billion and a half. Yeah. That's – yeah, he's good at that game. But I bet he shoots the scoop. If we were to ask Keith, right now, if he was ever listening to your podcast, he'd be nodding right now going, And boy, Lefkoff shouldn't have told Raymond that because that's like your only weakness of all the games. So anyway, that was my only thought. All right. What about situational, though? What if you don't need to blow it up? What if you just need not last? It's still just the way the game needs to be played. Like, I'm not sure. Like, if you only need less than, what, 20 million? 30 million? If you need more than $30 million, easiest way to get there is change your song, make a few shots, and go to the next multiball. That's true. If multiball's ready, then go ahead and just start that multiball, right? Good things can happen. But, you know, the Love Gun is on its own. It's fine, and you can do instrument hurry-ups, too, at the same time. So, I mean, there's plenty of points to be had, but I'm thinking more about laying a foundation of a truly big score. Yeah. The high score at Lions Classic Pinball now is over four billion. Zach McCarthy, our other local wonder kid, they seem to be multiplying everywhere around the world, put that up. And that's just a lot of 5X everything. Yeah. Through all the songs and stuff. So anyway, give that a try. I will. And report back to us on podcast number whatever, 13 or 14. All right, Adam. Anyway, that was Adam Lefkoff giving his feedback, and I appreciate that very much. Let's see. Where were we? Oh, yes. So I won on KISS, not shooting the scoop. So I don't know if data is any indication. Still not convinced yet, but I will experiment on my next time I play KISS, and we'll see. We'll see what the data says when it happens. The next game was Dr. Dude. Normally Dr. Dude is you shoot all the different parts, like the magnet thing, the talking thing, and the heart thing, and then you shoot the ramp and you get multiball. But on this Dr. Dude, it was impossible to hit the ramp. Like, the flipper was not strong enough to hit the ramp, and it was also playing very mean with a really tight tilt. So what people did was just shoot the magnetic personality of all things, the little magnet on the left side. It does not give you a lot of points, but it catches the ball and feeds it back to your left flipper where you can do a post-transfer and shoot it again. I did a little bit of that just to get some points going, but later on I saw Kaylee and Zach, who basically literally did that for their entire ball and got like 5 million hitting that shot like 80 times. I wish I was exaggerating, but that was how that game was played because it was set up in such a silly way that just shooting that one shot over and over again was the best way to get points. Unfortunately, I ended up with a third with a margin of victory of like 50,000. Like, I had 1.7 million, and then player like 3 passed me on the outlane, and the outlanes in that game are lit for like 300,000 on ball 3, and so he just barely passed my 1.7, and then player 4 just barely passed that. So I ended up getting a third, but it was okay. I ended up with a 15 in that round as well. next I got to play Iron Maiden, Jolly and Whirlwind this Whirlwind was interesting because it made me think about something I normally don't which is what mode are you starting on you randomly get one of the seller awards as your starting mode and it changes with the spinner and on this Whirlwind particularly if you full plunged it would always go all the way around which sets you up for a nice upper flipper shot to the ramp. Why this is important is because if you full plunge it'll actually spin the spinner a couple of times. So if you start with a crappy mode like light extra ball or targets at max or jets at max you can full plunge and take a shot at the ramp and change your mode as opposed to the normal thing on Whirlwind which is you just always short plunge to get the ball under control. This Whirlwind also had a very strong plunger, so short plunging was actually not very easy at all, and you could actually probably screw yourself more than it would help yourself. So on this Whirlwind, unless I had Light Quick Multiball or Light Million or 500k, I was full plunging to try to get better options and to take a nice shot at the ramp. I don't remember what I finished on it. I don't think I won, but I think I got second or third. but then the next game we played was Jolly which is this weird EM that has no outlanes and two inch flippers. It's all about getting your four cards and they're kind of scattered throughout the play field but if you get all four of them then it lights the wow on the center target and it's just 50k for the rest of the game. So you get your 50k and then you crack off as many as you can before you fall asleep and I think I got second on that. Poor Adam Becker got last with like a million points. This is a game that essentially rolls at a million, so it was kind of funny that rolling it just got you last place because everyone knew how to play it and everyone was just hitting wows. So kind of a weird, weird game. I think I got second on that one. And then the other game we played was Iron Maiden, which I think I had one good ball out of three but that's all I needed because the one ball I did was I got Fear of the Dark, got a Soul Shard in tournament install, Fear of the Dark is your first mode so you should just always play it because it's a great mode it's a lot of points per flip available in that mode I like to start it and then you shoot left ramp, right ramp, spinner and you repeat that. And then once you're done with it, you have to do that three times to get your soul shard. Yeah, so I ended up with 17 in that round, which was pretty sweet. Next round, I got to play Diner, High Low, and the Munsters. The first game, Munsters, was against Zach Sharp and Peter Anderson. and well, they put up like a lot of points. I think Zach put up like 85 million and Peter put up like 130 million and I don't really know much about the Munsters at all so I was kind of, you know, Escher was co-piloting me. He was just telling me like, if you can get to Munster Madness and play it well, you'll beat anyone else. And I was like, okay, well, sounds good. You know, I played Spot on Ball 2 so I didn't have to worry about that on Ball 3. And I just sort of, you know, the hard part was I screwed up Grandpa. So on the LE of Munsters, you have to actually beat the lower playfield in order to get Grandpa, in order to get the Munster Madness. And I had blown it previously, partly due because it was using up my time doing the animation. So now I know when you start the lower playfield, you should double flip to cancel out the animation. And so I had to survive a bunch of death targets to light the next Grandpa, but I managed to do it. I managed to start Monster Madness, and I managed to actually catch Zack, but did not catch Peter. So I felt pretty proud of getting a second on that game because it was, like, a really good game for me. And it just goes to show, you know, if you have a goal, you might not win, but at least, you know, I made up some ground. I got to my Monster Madness, and I did well in it enough to pass Zach, so that felt like a win to me. The last game was Diner, and, well, Zach put up, like, 25 million, and then I ground out 23 million, which was just shy of Zach's 25 million. but it turns out I needed every bit of it because Vid who was the fourth player in our group from Slovenia he was having his best game of the day on it and was up to about 16 million or so before he drained so I definitely needed that so it's hard in those single player games where you have to tell yourself keep pressing, keep pressing you don't know what the other person is going to get and so I was glad I got a second on that and finished with 13 points for that round. Oh yeah, there was an EM thrown in there, but I forgot. It was called high-low, and it was a total luck box. Although Zach did make one shot for 10,000 points to a saucer, and that was basically the difference, so I will give him props for that. Diner, on the other hand, is just all about making left and right ramps. you shoot the right ramp and then you pass it over and you shoot it under the left lock. And then you shoot the right scoop thing and then that kicks it up and starts your multiball. And you just do that over and over again. You never spin the cup. So if you spin the cup, all your diner letters reset. And then multiball is five shots away instead of one. So just shoot it once, light your diner, which lights lock, and then shoot the lock, rinse, repeat. And eventually you'll get a dine time, which is an award for feeding all the people, and it can be up to 12 million. And one way to help you do that is by spelling eat on the top lanes. Every time you spell eat on the top lanes, it lights food on the ramps. And since you're hitting ramps anyway, it kind of goes hand in hand. So eventually with enough grinding, dine time will just sort of light on its own. But if you notice you're in a multiball and you're a couple characters away, you might as well shoot some targets, try to get dine time sooner. The other thing that determines your dine time value is if you get in the roll with that left ramp early on, after you loop it about five or six times in a row, every time after that gives you dine time advances. So sometimes on Diner, my first flips will just be to that left ramp because I just want to get points on the board, and it has the added benefit of advancing dine time for the later part of the game so the left ramp is just good stuff and the right ramp lights the lock so that's good too but yeah, Diner, fun game pretty grindy glad I got a second on it I guess yeah that was round four we're halfway through are you exhausted yet? I know I was this was going pretty late in the day but I had to play on and round 5 I got to play against Daniele, Johannes and Josh Sharpe it was on Surf and Safari which I actually crushed, I got like 80 million I filled out the grid which means basically on Surf and Safari everything is kind of color coded so you shoot the left ramp, it lights the green column the whirlpool lights, the red or purple column, and so on. And basically, as you complete shots, you work towards your grid, and any time you complete a column or a row, you get an award. The most common award is the light lock by looping the left ramp five times in a row. And then once you do that, you get multiball. But after multiball, most people don't know, you want to shoot the left ramp because it will be lit for about 10 seconds to start whirlpool millions. And so you have to remember that in multiball, that once you drain, it's not over. Shoot the left ramp, light your whirlpool, then shoot the whirlpool, and you'll get like a million a spin. Which is pretty absurd for that game. So I got first on Surf and Safari, then we had to play Play Pool, which was this EM where you basically just shoot all the pool balls, and then once you get all the pool balls, it lights, you guessed it, more wows. And so I was able to get to the wows, and I think I got a first or a second on it, I don't remember, but it was not much strategy, really. You just hit the pool balls, hopefully you get them all down and then you had to hit the wows uh black knight was our last game uh black knight sword of rage and uh that game i'm so conflicted what to do on that game because multiball can be so big but you know you have to hit those lock targets um but the modes are worth points but they're not worth that many points so i don't know i i started off basically trying to play modes and I got through a couple which was good because then it lights your extra ball which in tournament mode is 10 million another thing I like to do is whenever I'm in a mode if one of the mode shots is the light lock target you know I'll definitely go for that it's kind of like a two for one special and then you know eventually I was like okay I got some modes I guess I'll start lighting my locks and I think I ended up getting to a multiball and maybe I got second or third on that game. Still learning Black Knight. So I know there some stuff with the super spinner and super features but I don know It feels kind of random and chaotic because you don know which one you going to start and then you kind of have to know when it's finished, and then you collect on the left scoop. Yeah, so instead of trying to learn a brand new exploit or anything, I just kind of played it as I knew what worked for me, which is modes and multiball, And that's, you know, you're going to have a good time on Black Knight if you do those things. Oh boy. Okay, next round. Round six. I got to play Surf and Safari again. And I think I did all right on it again. And then I played Walking Dead, which that thing just destroyed everybody. I think I got a first on it because I just played Barn and nobody else did, because everyone else just got completely hosed. Like, I don't think Werdrick got to flip at all. So that's the power of Barn on Walking Dead, is if you get to play it and no one else does, you might win a lot of matches. Which is why you should always start with Barn, because it's just three points, assuming you get them. the last game was Woe Nelly, which I actually kind of crushed, which was weird, because I usually hate that game, but I was actually hitting the 300s and kind of making shots. My one strategy I sort of developed on the fly was you could backhand the right orbit. It's kind of like an orbit. So if you shoot the right upper area, it'll kind of go around back into the pop bumpers, and the pop bumpers are good stuff. They light for 10 per hit every rollover. So that was kind of the strategy I was employing, was just kind of throwing it up that right orbit, and it did pretty well for me. I don't like aiming for those 300s that are on the targets, because they're at a weird angle. They're very wide. I will aim for the 300 that's in the scoop, because that's kind of just right there, and it's good points. So that's kind of my Woe Nelly strat, and it seemed to work, so I was happy to escape on that game. Finished that round with a 17, and then round 7, I got to play Game of Thrones, which I had the best game of my life on. I got to Iron Throne, which I had never done before, and once again, Escher was kind of my backseat driver, and he was telling me, you know, oh, you have Iron Throne running. Well, it'll be there on your next ball. And you basically hit a shot and then hit all the shots and then hit a shot and then hit all the shots. And if you get to the end, it's just like mad points. And it kind of pumped me up. I was like, all right, let's do this. Let's do some Iron Throne action. And I got through it all. I got like 5.8 billion. It was glorious. Yeah, it was awesome. the next game we played was this EM called 10 Up which is just a simple game with a bunch of drop targets you hit them all it lights wows you know similar to the other pool game and I managed to I guess get to the wows and no one else did so I got first on that one and then fire I played a multiball got a jackpot and that was enough for first as well so I got the perfect 21 that round, which was awesome because it basically locked me in to a nice double buy. So last round I would just be playing for Pride and Seeding, which can be important, but it was mostly for Pride because I was against Daniele, Kaylee, and Peter for round 8. And I escaped with a 13. I actually won Walking Dead got second on top hand. Peter just crushed top hand. He just got all the targets down. And that was the one where we learned where if you get all the targets down, it lights all the targets for 50k. And Peter didn't know it either. So he was actually, he had one target left for the longest time and just kept going for the center hole. and then once he finally hit that target down and started racking up wows, me and Kaylee just looked at each other and we were like, oh my goodness, the missed EV was so high, like, you know, the tactical error of not going for that target earlier cost him like, you know, 400,000 points, but it didn't matter. Peter crushed us anyway, so. The only game that I sucked on was Elvira and the Party Monsters. It was actually my only fourth place of the whole tournament. and that was mostly pilot error I post-passed it down the middle for one of my drains I drop-catched it into the drain and then on ball three, with multiball lit I plunged into the pop bumpers well actually, I plunged into the pops in order to light multiball but I said no whammies, no whammies and the ball just came screaming out of the pop bumpers down the left, and it whammied I did do this awesome rage shove I was like, no, do not do this and I actually did dig it out of the out lane which was sweet, but it tilted of course that was the last place I really should have just shot the right ramp instead of going for multiball on balls 1 and 2 because you should always cash out your party punch on that game, it's just good value it's like 60k, 80k, 100k at least for the first round of right ramp and the winning score for that game was like 1.5 million and I got last with 700,000 so it was really sad actually I should have gone for the right ramp but I was playing for glory and I wanted the multiball and I was going to crush it and of course none of it happened so that was kind of a rude awakening but luckily it didn't end up mattering I still made it qualify just fine. I got second qualifier to Daniele, who was the top qualifier. And it did cost me $200, which was annoying, but eh, it's all good. It's kind of cool they actually pay out money to top qualifier. Keeps you fighting in that last round. Anyway, that was Friday and part of Saturday. So I got a nice double buy, went out to dinner with Jim Belsito and some other people. Found out that from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. there's no food available in the entire metro area, apparently. They closed just the kitchens from that hour. So we basically waited outside the restaurant until 6 to get some food. But whatever. Got some food, came back and got to play. my first elimination match. So the way the elimination matches work is you pick an old, mid, and new game, and your opponent picks an old, mid, and new game, and then you take turns playing your game, then one of their games, then one of your games, then one of their games, and the best first one to win four games moves on. Unless, of course, it gets tied 3-3, in which case you actually go, you kind of start over with a new set of three games. And it's like a little two out of three match that occurs. For the first round, I chose 10 Up, Diner, and Game of Thrones as my games. So we started on 10 Up. I like to get the EMs out of the way first. That's kind of my strategy there. I don't want it to come down to an EM to determine whether I'm in or out. I like to get those out of the way. I played 10 up, and I ended up with like $250,000. I got like three or four of the wows, and it held up. My opponent, I think he came close. He's starting to get the wows, but just couldn't quite collect, because on that game, the wow kind of rotates. and my WoW was in this sweet spot where you could just wail on it from the flipper pretty repeatedly and his WoWs were, I guess, in a different place. So it felt a little weird winning like that, but in the end I got more points. So I won the 10-up game and then we played Dolly Parton. And on that game, it's all about spelling Dolly Parton to give you a bonus and then the bonus multipliers is like inline drops. to multiply it. Now, one thing about that game is the inline drops also spot the Dolly Parton letters, or at least it was on this game. So basically there's no reason not to shoot those inline drops. The first inline drop lights the spinner, but on this game the spinner was not spinny, so you just kept hitting those inline drops, basically. and whoever could do that more basically won the game. I was not able to tap pass on this game. I tried it in practice because you get 30 seconds of practice before each game and I couldn't do it, so I just used the alley pass to just shoot from the right flipper into the left flipper. Or sometimes I would just throw it back up top. If I had zero Dolly Parton letters, sometimes I would just throw it back up top just to try to get some action up there but I don't know if that's correct I think you should just always try to get the ball to the left flipper and shoot inline drops regardless I ended up winning which was good and so then I got to play Diner which was my pick and man I feel like I struggled for quite a bit and then finally got in a groove and was able to put up like 20 million or so but man, sometimes you play like three or four multiballs and you get nothing and you're just like, what am I doing? but it's in those moments that you just have to do it again if you play ten multiballs eventually you're going to have a good one and in the meantime you're racking up bonus points and food orders and other good things so I just kept that going and going and ended up winning on Diner then our fourth game was Walking Dead and well, I started barn and got no shots in it, which is exactly what you don't want to do because not only did you get no shots in barn, but now your barn is off the table. So you've wasted that opportunity. And so now I was like totally in jail and I decided to go for CDC on ball two. But of course I went drop target straight to out lane. So I was like, all right, I guess we'll have to do that on ball three. And I did start CDC. What happened, though, was kind of funny because on Walking Dead, it's pretty often that a lot of the CDC ramps will double register. Basically, they'll register as you hit them, and then when it hits the bottom ramp return, it vibrates the ramp and triggers another hit. And I didn't realize that because I shot the CDC ramp and it started the mode and then also triggered again as a CDC shot, which then lights your left orbit, the barn shot, to start getting points in CDC. see. However, if the ramp is working properly and does not double register, you can actually start CDC and then before you hit CDC, shoot the barn shot to actually add value to your CDC ramp shot. It's the past mode bonus thing. I think I've talked about it before, but basically because I had played barn at the beginning phase of CDC, if you shoot barn, it makes the CDC ramp build faster than it would otherwise. So my plan was shoot CDC once, shoot Barn once, shoot CDC once, and then shoot Barn once, and then shoot CDC twice, and I would have got the 30 million no problem. But because it triggered twice, it started the second phase of CDC. So when I shot Barn, it scored me the second phase points, which then basically turns you into this other mode where now if you shoot the ramp, instead of building the value, it actually stops the mode. And so, yeah, I went CDC ramp to start the mode. It triggered again, which then lit the barn shot. I shot the barn shot thinking that it was in build phase when it was actually in the second phase and then shot the CDC ramp thinking I was building it when really I was ending the mode. And so the mode ended early. I did get some points, but I was short just a little bit. And I basically was just kind of, all right, I need like 5 million points. Like, what do I do? And I just like looked around the play field and was just shooting walkers and prison just to get like 500k here or there. And I ended up draining and the bonus got me there. by like 100,000, and I ended up winning. So it was kind of a fun little journey, fun little game of Walking Dead, where things just didn't quite go according to plan, but I managed to squeak it out anyway. So that moved me on into the semifinals against, or not semifinals, the quarterfinals against Adam Becker. And against Adam Becker, I chose 10 up again, and I sucked. I did really bad. It was a little disheartening. you know, your first game where you do bad and your opponent... My opponent actually beat my score on ball one. Like, Adam beat me on ball one. It was very disheartening. But I was able to shake it off. We went to Dolly Parton, and that's when I actually found out that the drop target spots a letter in Parton. So from that point on, I was always alley passing and prioritizing the drop targets. And I ended up winning on that Dolly game. So that put me at 1-1. Then we played Game of Thrones. And that Thrones, you know, I liked how it played. That's why I kept choosing it, because I knew I would be able to play pinball if I chose that game. And sure enough, you know, I ended with like $570 million. I played Hand of the King and, you know, did okay. So, you know, I had like a run-of-the-mill Game of Thrones game that was pretty good. But it put enough pressure on Adam that he actually had the mega stack ready. He had Lannister and Tyrell and multiball all lit on the center ramp. He hit it, started it, and then just, I don't know, his multiball ended, and he didn't get any points, and I won. So you have to ask Adam about that. But he ended up with like 400 million, so it was close. But I ended up taking that one. and then we went to dialed in and oh my goodness that dialed in it was just killing me with the left out lane just all sorts of no matter how if I tried a live catch on my left flipper it would just hop up into the left out lane if I missed the phone it would just go to the left out lane if it ever touched that drone man on the right it would just go to the left out lane so needless to say not having a great game But Ball 3, Adam also is not having a great game, and he has like 250,000, and I have like 60,000. And I like okay well I have multi lit and so my plan was I was just going to start multi light the big bang and get a big bang and hope that that was enough points And it actually worked I started multiball. I focused entirely on shooting that light big bang target, and once I hit it enough times, it lit the big bang. And then I nailed the big bang, and it got me basically right where I needed to be, the 250K, and I actually got there without even starting a mode. So multiball can be worth points if you bring a big bang to get all your jackpots and supers. So if you're down by just a little bit, you know, multiball can get you there. But you've got to be careful. You've got to, you know, play it well. And for me, I just really focused on that light big bang target, and it paid off. So I ended up taking dialed in. So now it was 3-1. And then we got to play diner. And I put up another 20-something million. and that was enough to put the pressure on Adam. He had a couple of bad ball one and two and then ball three, it was coming straight down the middle and he did this crazy double danger save and was able to actually play his ball three where he almost just didn't even get a ball three. But he was on pins and needles and just couldn't quite get anything together. So I ended up winning that match and moved on to the semifinals. the semifinals I got to play against Johannes Ostermeyer and let's see here we played Dolly and I won on that which I felt very good, I always love starting with a win then we played Iron Maiden and Johannes, he's a bit of a savant with Iron Maiden, he's a bit of a savant with every pinball game come to think of it, but he he was getting 400 million every single game he played and it was no exception against me he put up 380 million and i was like i was kind of keeping pace honestly um i was starting you know beating modes uh starting trooper multi balls starting mummy multi balls um i was doing all the right things but i could not hit that upper loop um and i was too scared to try um because in practice I couldn't hit it and I just from previous playing on that game I couldn't hit it but Johannes hit it like every time over and over again and so his score was basically my score but with a bunch of loop jackpots on top of it and so it came down to well there was a tactical error on my trooper playing where I had a ball trapped on the left with add a ball lit and instead of just waiting for the right opportunity I sort of panicked and flipped that ball trying to get the attaball while another ball was bouncing around the playfield. And, of course, the other ball bounced into my ball and deflected my shot to the attaball, and then it drained. And so I didn't get my attaball on trooper, which was very sad. But if I would have just been patient and waited for a clear shot, I should have just done that, right? There was no reason to not be patient there, because even if that other ball that was bouncing around drained, there was a grace period. You can revive it. I was just too scared. I don't know. The heat of the moment, I took a shot and it ended up costing me the multiball. But anyway, it came down to, last ball, I'm down by like 100 million points. I got like 260 to his 360 or whatever. and I needed like three more orbits for Cyborg or maybe like four or five and I kept hitting the left orbit and once again too scared to use the upper flipper and that was my downfall because I could not catch it on the lower right flipper so I'd shoot the left orbit it would come around the loop and then I'd flip the lower right flipper and every time it would go a little more out of control than the last time and the final time I did it, it went boink into the left out lane and I lost my ball and that was it. So I should have probably taken some loops, you know, or maybe shot the right orbit or tried a different catch technique. I don't know. It was sad because I was so close. And if I could have beat him on Iron Maiden, that would have really changed the pace of the match. and so that was kind of my biggest mistake was the trooper thing in Iron Maiden and then failing to execute on getting Cyborg because if I could have done those things I think I could have beat him on Iron Maiden but anyway, the next game we played was Diner and I actually won on Diner without much problems I got like 20 million again and he really didn't get anything going so that was not really exciting but then we played fish tails so fish tails it was acting kind of funny and it would the reel was doing weird stuff the drop target was coming up when it wasn't supposed to it was just kind of weird all around but there was one time where I shot the jackpot and it just like didn't give it to me because it was doing like a weird reel spinny thing so that was annoying but you know regardless I should have been able to beat him. He only had like 80 million, but I was just, you know, I was thrown off by the jackpot that didn't register, and I just, I really needed to refocus, because his score was not that big. It was just a couple jackpots away. I could have even done Monster Fish, but I was just so thrown off, and also the right flipper was like really weird. Like the timing was just so bizarre, and so I was, my head was kind of focusing on all these other things and I should have just focused on what I actually needed to do but anyway, he took fishtails and then we played Game of Thrones which, you know, what can I say? I put up a billion and he put up two billion so I did have a chance on my hand of the king because he didn't do that well on his hand of the king and I could have maybe done something. I was getting pretty far in Hand of the King. I actually made it to the free shooting round and I was almost to the hurry up, but I did some goofy double drain that was just stupid. It was like a weird panic flip. I don't even know. It had like weird super bands, so some of the flips didn't quite do what I was expecting, But, yeah, I should have just stayed calm and kept pressing on in that hand of the king. And maybe I would have been able to beat him. But either way, he ended up winning on thrones. And so now we go to top hand. And he has to play his whole game first. And he plays it, and he gets, like, nothing. All I need to do is get it in the hole once, and I win. And so for the first, like, three balls, I'm just like, come on. Come on, get it in the hole. Get it in the hole. no hole and then finally on like ball four it rolls in there and I get to victory cheer and so I won on top hand and basically tied it up 3-3 so now I've bought myself a 2 out of 3 match and for the first game I pick I pick Surfing Safari because I had blown it up every other time but man this time I'll tell you exactly I remember every single flip of that game because I plunged, I trapped, I shot the left ramp, I missed the left ramp, it went to the out lane. Ball two, I plunged, it went to the out lane. Ball three, I plunged, it went to the out lane. And that was the game. I got under a million points. It was pretty impressive how unfortunate that was. Then I got to go to Whirlwind and, you know, I played whirlwind. I got multiball. I got a jackpot. I got a... I ended up with like 8 million. I was feeling pretty good. Johannes, you know, didn't have anything going into ball three. But he got multiball and got like three jackpots and crushed me. But, you know, there was a chance there. There was a time where I was watching him miss the upper ramp where I was like, okay, just drain this multiball and we'll be good. But, nope, he refused to drain and his control was so good getting the balls back to his flippers. Like, it was magical. He just always had, like, two balls trapped on one and one trapped on the other. You know, and then he'd, like, shoot and stage and, yeah. So, he earned it. He knocked me out with a great whirlwind game. I wish I would have played my whirlwind game better. You know, I wish I would have gotten more jackpots. But at the time, you know, I'm sitting there with 8 million. It seems good, right? But nope, it's never enough. Anyway, that right there eliminated me from the tournament. But that was actually a blessing in disguise because I got to go into the booth and watch the greatest pinball finals of all time. The main highlight of this match, I think, there was basically three awesome highlights, although every single game was amazing and I would go and watch those I'd recommend you go watch them if you haven't seen them already but there was a tie game on Rocket 3 where they had the same exact score which was crazy oh sorry, the finalists were Daniele Echiari and Johannes Ostermeyer and they tied on Rocket 3 which then I think Johannes ended up winning the tiebreaker and then there was a game of Dolly Parton where Daniele was down and he did this crazy nudge. If you watch the stream, you'll see me flip out about it, and Kaylee flipped out about it too. But basically the ball was heading toward the right out lane and it hit the top of the right sling and it had that perfect trajectory that we've seen a million times where it just goes right sling, out lane, and you're just like, ah. But Daniele, no. He wanted to not be eliminated. He decided, as soon as they hit the top of the right sling, that he just gave it this big ol' upward nudge, and it just, like, boop, bopped it right out of there. And he ended up actually being able to pass Johannes on that game, and bought him extra life, basically, going into the best two out of three finals. which in itself was amazing because on Game of Thrones Daniele had this huge lead on Johannes but Johannes came back on ball three but Johannes kind of blew it he only had like 1.2 billion to Daniele's like 1 billion or something and Daniele hadn't even played his hand of the king yet so we all assumed it was over right? Daniele was going to play his hand of the king and going to beat Johannes and that was the end of the game but nope Daniele started hand of the king and he just fell short he could not hit the right ramp I think I think that was the shot that got him and Johannes ended up winning that game which was crazy because Johannes had to come back and hope that Daniele didn't seal the deal and both those things happened. It was like a runner-runner. And so then they played Dracula, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Daniele just crushed it. He put up 2.1 billion, ball one, and then during his epic game, the game malfunctioned and it actually dumped his balls while he was playing it. And so they recorded his score. Johannes hadn't played yet, in fact the game was so confused it started launching Johannes' balls and so they ended up deciding okay we're going to start a new game but we're going to keep Daniele's 2.1 billion but he also gets three more balls of a new game so here's this game where Daniele has 2 billion in the bank and he puts up another billion basically he puts up like 800 million and Johannes is going to ball three with nothing and he's down by, you know, down by three billion points. And it was like a tool-assisted speedrun of Dracula. Like, if you could plan out every shot and make it, that's what happened. Like, Johannes literally, like, ramp, ramp, ramp, boom, boom, boom, missed, started missed, started coffin, started castle, and then once he started castle, it was just ramp and scoop. Like, nothing but ramp and scoop for jackpot after jackpot after jackpot after jackpot. It was unbelievable. And he freaking won the whole tournament with that crazy ball of Dracula. And it was insane. So I recommend everybody go watch that match. The ruling that was made, by the way, the reason it was made was because they weren't sure how effed up the game was and the only way the tournament directors felt safe to proceed with the situation was to end the current game, do switch tests, coil tests various ad hoc testing, deem that it was acceptable, power cycle it and then start a new game. They did not want to gamble continuing the game when it had already shown to have malfunctioned and also plunged Johannes' ball. So I think it was a perfectly reasonable decision to make. I think, you know, that was, it made everyone happy, right? You know, Daniele got to keep his two billion, Johannes got to play a full game, and Daniele got his compensation ball. And so the only question that people were saying was like, oh, the bonus, but realistically, the bonus might be outweighed by the fact that Daniele got to play another mist, right? Like he got another easy mist, where Johannes only got the one easy mist. And then also, I think Johannes beat Daniele even with the bonus, and Johannes stopped playing when he had already won. So I think it was the best possible outcome, regardless of what happened. So I think it was a good ruling, and it was a great match. And, you know, Johannes definitely deserves to be world champion. He had to go through the hardest bracket of any competitor. He went through all, like, world champions. His first round, he beat Jorin Engelbrexton, then he beat Jim Belsito, and then he beat me. Like, it was crazy. how ridiculous of a bracket and then he beat Daniele it was absurd so congrats to Johannes it was so much fun IFPA was amazing got to meet all sorts of people from around the world and I just can't wait for the next one I think that's going to wrap it up for this week I'm going to be recording next week about City Champ that's down in San Francisco this weekend and then there's also Bat City Open happening so no matter where you are in the country there is pinball to be played so I'd recommend that you go out and play some pinball and when you do remember to do and don't die alright see you later Thank you.