And I'm like, um, oh, so I reached out. So I sent you a message. You responded later, which is okay. And, uh, but I wanted to give a shout out to Preston Curry and Joe Bear because I don't know if they were together or whatever, but they, uh, gave me a couple of tips on how to play that. The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. I'm going to play a game that I've never played in my life. And I had a big blowout game on that and that felt really good. So I was able to advance after beating Michelle. I had so much fun playing with her. I always have fun playing pinball no matter who I'm playing with. But I don't like playing against the ladies in Wisconsin anymore. It's really hard because I care about them as people too. It's that whole frenemies thing. So then I advanced to round two and I play against Lily Piazza. She's an Illinois player that came up to play. We go and play Twilight Zone as our first game. That game scares me, Raymond. I have such a hard time doing anything on that game, but I was able to get my clock millions going and I had a huge bonus and that's what helped me win the game. Nice! So you started the round off with a win and didn't even... you just played modes, not even a multiball. I just played modes, not even a multiball, that's right. So, and again here I had deferred to her to choose first. And then we moved to Walking Dead and I got jacked twice by the feed out of the pop bumpers and straight down the middle. Wow, so that was your game pick. You picked Walking Dead. That was my game pick. I did. Because I like my strategy on that and I like playing the game. I like games that you can nudge. You know, that's part of it too. But she just blew it up. She didn't, she, we both had, I think, one multiball, but I was too nervous to bring a mode into it, and that was my own fault. Because after the two horrific drains on ball one, ball two, I'm like, let's just get points. But it was okay. So we're 1-1, and we move to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles LE. I don't think I've ever played an LE of Turtles. So the feed and the plunge and all the things are so weird. I'm so used to playing a pro that like the ramps and the diverter and all this other stuff is going on. I tried my best but I just really couldn't get anything going. It wasn't even a close game. She really knows how to play that game and she just really just blew it up so she won. So now I'm down one. Two to one. Okay. All right. Here comes my secret strategy, okay? I played, I took her to the Sopranos. So I took her to the Sopranos and the reason for this is when I was practicing in warm-up, I noticed something interesting on this game. The drop down target for the lock shot, which I don't go for anyways, I just happened to, I wanted to test it, it immediately shot the ball to the left out lane. I play like three warm-up games and I have that happen I think three or four times from hitting it from the left flipper. So I thought, huh, that might be actually a critical advantage to somebody that might not know how to play the game and that they think that multiball might be the best way to go. They might get jacked by that drop down target. And guess what, Raymond? It happened on ball three. She was chasing after me and she hit that drop and it would immediately sail into the left out. Oh no, just airmailed it right over the left? Yep, absolutely. And so I know, so I felt like, okay, as a player, is that dirty to do? And I think the answer is no, because I think that's a good strategy. I've warmed up on the game. I try to crack the safe all day long, let's straight up the middle and you can usually re-catch the ball. That's usually, that was my strategy, how I played out the game. Yeah, I mean, you came with a plan and you practiced ahead of time and you put in the work. You deserve to get paid for that. Okay. Yes, I thought about that afterwards, but like that's any kind of strategy, as Carlos would say, free, right? Because it's like that's the strategy that you should be going into that like, if I know how this particular copy of the game plays, and something that I can remember and note about it, I guess it was totally an advantage. So from there, we went and played Spider-Man, but not the Spider-Man everybody thinks we would play. We went to go play the amazing Spider-Man. Oh boy. And I've never played that game before. And I'm like, look at this beautiful, it's a solid state, right? Look at this beautiful solid state that's just gorgeous. This is a game that's got, you know, double flippers on the right and it's got like weird little saucers up on top and drop downs that are super deadly right in the middle. I'm like, this looks like so much fun. And it was. It was. How do you play that game, Raymond? Can you tell me? I just know that there's, I think the A lane or the AB lane and then like the drops are good. I really, I haven't played it much. After watching her play her second ball, I think the drops are the multiplier, the bonus multiplier. But I had, I just decided we're just going to play the ball as long as we can and try to shoot safe shots. Yeah, so try to shoot it up the middle and once I had two drops down I tried to get another one You know that kind of thing and that was that was good and so that led to a win on that game So I'm feeling good. We're at three and two and Or we're at three and three. I had a fight back a little bit there. So here we are going to six games again So I take her to the one game you've told me you're not that I should tell you to never play and finals again Do you know what game that is? Remember? Attack from Mars Oh yeah! Because this copy there played so nice, like butter on a roll. It was gorgeous. So I had, I blew up a saucer. I think I blew up two saucers and she was right behind me and she ended up tilting out and I won the game. And she was such a great competitor. She hung out for a little bit with me outside, we chatted for a little bit. And I think of course we're coming up to play. It was so much fun, but it's very stressful trying to like choose those games. So I chose my first round, my second round, I chose my games wisely. So now here comes the problem. As I move on, now I know I'm in the final four. It's Becky Meyer, Cassidy, Milonowski, Dori, Ann, and myself. Now, if you don't know Dori, she's a player from Milwaukee. She is, she plays all the things, all the things, and I love that because she just wants And I think most people would agree. So, so I'm going to my third match against Dori. And I decided to pick Demolition Man and Sopranos and I chose Cyclone again. And Cyclone, I really should have, I chose that as the third game and I probably should have picked Led Zepp or picked something else. I could have picked Amazing Spider-Man again there as well. But you have to pick them ahead of time, right? Yes, correct. And so, because you're declaring the games before you even go to play. And so I picked Demoman, she picks Iron Maiden, I picked Sopranos, she picks Godzilla. I picked Cyclone, she picks Medieval Madness. Well, we go, I defer, and which was now was not so good, Raymond, because I didn't get to play that other game of mine. I kind of got busted that way. So we go to, yep, so we go to our first game is Medieval Madness, and I just cannot get anything rolling on that game. And she had a great game, she won it, and I was very happy for her. So we go to Demolition Man. Now I did not play this game. I played a couple warm-up games and I didn't pick it earlier, but I really liked this game. I owned one for a long time. And this one I felt like the triggers were really weak, or the handles or triggers, guns were very weak. So I used the flipper buttons themselves. And I thought that was a huge advantage. I felt like I made every shot and I had a great game on that. So from there, now I was terrified Dory was going to pick Godzilla or Venom because I know she's a very skilled player, both of those. And she chose Godzilla. I had an okay game, but she just had a better one. You know, sometimes it's just the way it is. Yeah. So after that, I'm like, well, do I go play Cyclone or Sopranos? What should I do? And I chose Ron. I chose Cyclone thinking it's my girl, you know. I've had great games, even this one. I had found the skill shot before. We're in good shape. Nope, I should have chosen Sopranos because I went up to play Cyclone and I got not one, not two, but three house balls. Three. Three house balls. Three in a row? Yes. And I would say two, the first two were my fault where it just, um, it dribbled down at the bottom of the flipper. The one I had my flipper up and the other one I had my flippers down. It just went down the middle. And the other one, it was like a sling to the right out lane. And that was it. And I shook that game pretty hard, I'm not going to lie. I was pretty frustrated. And Dori just looked at me and I looked at her and I walked outside, because now I've lost, I've won one and she's won three. And I go outside and I took a nice long walk in the parking lot in the 12 degree weather and I had to calm down. I didn't swear, I didn't yell, I didn't curse or anything, but I really had to calm down because I wanted to go play and I knew her next game was going to be Iron Maiden. And I still thought that would be good for me because that game and I are pals. Nope, didn't work out. She just had better games. She's just so dialed in in terms of knowing, I think she's got a better, Dori has a better rule set than I do, bigger knowledge base, those kind of things. Yeah. But anyway, I was very excited. So she got, she had a plan and she basically stuck to it, you know, picked Iron Maiden, knew what, you know, got the multiballs, got the modes, all that goodies. Yep, all the things, yeah. I was just gonna say, I'm just realizing now that, um, deferring or not deferring actually doesn't end up mattering, it's more of a mental thing anyway, because if you wanted, if you lose on your own game, you're, you're in trouble either way. John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Lyman F. Sheats Jr., orbit ramps, Automated Amusements, Python Anghelo, Joe Kaminkow, Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. Sure. Maybe if you're playing your game under pressure, you don't do as well or, you know, who knows? Yeah, but I still, what I did wrong there is instead of playing Cyclone, I should have played Sopranos because I knew about that issue with that drop target. Oh yeah, you could have got, yeah. Yeah, and I knew how the game fed from the pops. I knew all of that. Maybe that would have been different, but coulda, woulda, shoulda, even. So I was so happy because I came in top four and I was very, very, very happy and excited for Dori to go play against Cassidy. Cassidy went the whole day undefeated. She shut out Dori 4-0 and won the tournament. Did she get any losses? None. Just 4-0, 4-0, 4-0? I believe so. Nobody could beat her the whole day. Wow. And it's interesting because I really wanted to meet her again in the final two because I know that I could have given her a loss. I'm not going to be giving her a loss. Yeah, you've done it before, you can do it again. I can do it again. And I will say that Dori, I do want to say that she, her, she played the same six games all day long. Basically, Medieval, Godzilla, and Iron Maiden, those were her games she chose all day long. She came within 100,000 points of beating Cassidy at Medieval Madness. And maybe like 20 million. It was a very close game on the shadow that Cassie picked. So Dorian was right there knocking on the door, you know. Cassie is an incredible player, so congrats to her. She goes to Nationals at Wizards World in March. And she will also be playing Women's World Championship the next day, as will I. So we'll see how tired she is the next day or not, but it should be a really, there's gonna be a lot of women that qualify that won their state and will be playing Women's World the next day as well. So it should be very interesting in terms of endurance, because as we know, pinball can be quite a physical sport. So that's interesting. So this year, the winner of the women's states are going to play the day before the women's worlds? Yes. So we'll have a national playoff. I think it's that Thursday and then maybe Thursday, Friday, and then qualifying for women's world Saturday with finals on Sunday. I think that's how they're doing it. Are you going to be at the women's worlds? Oh, hell yeah, Raymond. I qualified as 12th woman overall last year. All right. Yeah, so I can talk pinball and believe it or not, sometimes I can play it. So you'll get your chance to get revenge on Cassidy and Fort Wayne. Oh, I have every Tilton Tuesday to get my revenge on Cassidy. Nah, it's not even like that. You know, she's my pal too and I'm really happy for her. She came dialed in, hyper-focused, and she wanted to win. So I'm really happy for her. Just before we get into switching to talking about Illinois State Open, I just want to say also thank you to all across the world, I guess, to all the tournament directors, organizers, scorekeepers, people that open up their game collections, the techs, the people that donated or anybody that helped to make the state championships for Open Edwomens happen because it is an awful lot of work. I'm going to say it's been a while since I've said this Raymond, but if you travel and you're going to go play something, I always encourage you to try to volunteer or, you know, look for the volunteers and see if they need anything because, you know, it really takes a community to make all those things happen. Yes, thank you to all of our tournament director friends. Yeah, all those people doing the doing the IPA things. So I think the only other thought I had about that actually before I throw it to you is it was very hard to play being the only person in the team that was able to play the tournament. I'm so excited to be the organizer and I want to give a shout out to all the people that do that and then they go play their state championships as well. I was happy. Oh, you know, we didn't even finish. I played out for fourth place. Oh, how'd that go? Well, I played against NotGood for third and fourth place. Becky Meyer, we played, she chose Foo Fighters. I chose Lost World, which was a mistake. I should have chose Orbiter One. That would have been a great game to play. Because like the bronze match or whatever, you know, to me, it's fun. It was more like fun. But Becky and I had a good time playing. She won both games and shut me out. It was fine. And I took fourth. And I'm really happy with that considering all the other stuff and outside noise that was going on that day. I'm really happy with the way that I played. Did you get out of hardware? I did. Nice. And it's the best thing is when, because as the organizer, I chose to have trophies made for second, third, and fourth, and also some key chains to commemorate the day for all players. But the trophies are really cool. It's almost like a little mini play field. If you do not know who Jim Dietrich is of Cauldron Falls Trading Company, this is my plug for him. He makes, he's great to work with. He custom makes the most amazing trophies, hands down. I think that is, oh, and I think that's everything. I don't know. It's all bungled there, but I know if anybody knows, this is like, you know, the sloppiest, one of the sloppier podcasts anyways, right? Yeah, we get it done. We get it done. That's right, Raymond. Thank you for that. Okay, now let me throw it to you. I want to hear all about your travels. And actually, what I want to start with is why did you choose to play Illinois? Because you're qualified to play in several different states. I chose because it's like 10, 12, 15 minutes from my apartment. Well, that makes sense, but also like do you think about like the other people that are going to have to play? I mean you knew you're going to play Andy Baywell or some other really great players. Well, I was also, I think Illinois was my highest state, so it made sense. Okay. I mean, technically I was higher in New York, but it didn't matter in Illinois because the second seed chose a different state. So I was basically second in Illinois, which is very helpful because it means that I wouldn't have to play the one seed until the finals, which is Andy. So you can really want to be high ranked, assuming everyone else is also doing what they're supposed to do, because it's nice because I got to have Andy kind of, you know, take out all the players on his side of the bracket before meeting up with me. And in that way, I don't meet an early exit to Andy. Sure. So the seating can really matter. So that's why you should usually, usually play in the, in the state your highest seated in, but not always. Okay. Sometimes there's some sharks lurking in those lower seats, especially if they're coming from out of state and they just want to see if they can run the gauntlet. So you gotta, you gotta look at your brackets and, and kind of choose accordingly. Okay. Interesting. I'm always, I love, what I love about pinball, I'm always learning and like, I love this, I'm really trying to get into the strategy of playing these more complicated and higher payout kind of tournaments. I appreciate that.