All right, guys, welcome back to another episode of a pinball podcast. Thank you guys so much for being here. I greatly do appreciate it. And this is officially episode 49. So we are chugging right along. Now, it's been a couple of weeks since my last podcast, and I actually have a bunch of stuff to talk about. So what I'm going to do, I decided I'm going to just split it up a little bit. So I'll save some of it for the next podcast. So if you guys are looking for twippy discussion and stuff like that, I think I have so much to say about that. in relation to not just what the results are, because I think everybody knows what the results are at this point, but just the implications of it on the industry. I have a lot of thoughts on that and I want to really dedicate a full episode towards that. So I'm going to save that for the 50th episode, which hopefully, I think today's Thursday. I will probably put that out on Monday as of today. So let's, well, I say today's Thursday, today's Wednesday. Nevermind. I'll put it out Friday. I'm getting my days wrong. See, I'm already time traveling guys. That's how great I'm doing right now. So anyhow, as you can tell right now, I've got my energy back up. I'm good. No more side effects from my shot. My God, those side effects brutal. And come to find out, I consulted with some friends and some doctor friends and lo and behold, they said, most likely the reason why your side effects are the way that they were is probably because you already had the Rona. So it just, it hit me so hard and I have my second shot scheduled for this next coming Monday and I am not looking forward to it at all, but I suppose at this point it's just a necessary evil. I just hope I don't get the side effects for too long. I'm assuming within 48 hours I'll have a bunch, but hopefully it won't be too much because I've got a full schedule starting this weekend all the way through next weekend, which we're going to get to here right now, as a matter of fact. So what's going on right now in the pinball world? Well, for one, Penn side is completely down and women and children are screaming nonstop. And when I say women and children, I mean, middle-aged older men are screaming. So it's, yeah, it's different. I will admit guys, I tried to log on the other day and at first I thought it was me. I just assumed I was having problems. I couldn't log in. So then I tried all my other websites. They all worked. ESPN, comicbookmovie.com. Yeah, I'm in the comics. I do that stuff too. It all worked. And then I tried to go on Pinside. Doesn't work. And so lo and behold, apparently they're having server issues. And I'm sure if you're listening to this, you're already aware of that. But if you're not aware, that's what's happening right now. And hopefully they get it figured out because I know as much as we joke around about it, I know that that is a big fixture in the whole industry for people to really connect back and forth to talk about the hobby. And it's kind of strange. It's kind of strange not being able to do that. And when it's gone all of a sudden, I can see how that has a negative effect on some people, but hopefully it'll be back pretty soon. But that's like, that's just the crazy thing that's going on right now. Just a lack of being able to communicate back and forth in that way. Now, what else is going on in the pinball world right now? Well, Pin Slash is going on. Carl D'Python Anghelo has started a new tournament, again, Pin Slash 2, although I don't think he's officially called it Pin Slash 2. But this one, this time, instead of Jurassic Park, it's Avengers Infinity Quest. And, of course, you know, L1 pins work perfect for this just because of the vast amount of ruleset to it. You can have all types of different challenges. ongoing and everything like that. Now, with Pin Slash, the information that I have for you guys is pretty much out in the open. You can find it at pinclashtourney.com. And right now, qualifications going on until April 30th. Now, this type of qualification, you have to play the Battle Royale Challenge. And on top of that, if you're wanting to play this, you need to have a Twitch stream. And you have to be able to stream live. Now, I think Loser Kid accidentally said that you could tape yourself and put it on YouTube or something like that, but no. You will have to be on Twitch. You have to be live, and I'm pretty sure you have to have a webcam too. And you basically just show your runs of Battle Royale Challenge, and your goal is to get the least amount of flips. And the top 24 people will basically qualify for the finals. Now, the tiebreaker being just score if it's needed. And I believe there's a $1,000 top prize, guaranteed top prize for it, plus Avengers Infinity Quest Playfield, plus a $200 gift certificate, the pin monk, plus a $250 Art of Pinball gift certificate, plus a Stern Translight. So great. So basically after either Raymond or Escher wins that, the rest of us will get 50% of the remaining prize pool. Well, now that's second place. I guess third place, 30%, the remaining prize pool. So there you go. But no, so I haven't been able to do this yet. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll see in the background, it's just mass chaos behind me. I've been getting my rig set up because I will be streaming it pretty soon. I don't know exactly when, but my runs will happen on the channel Marv, just M-A-R-V over on Twitch. I haven't streamed in such a long time. I'm still a partnered streamer over there due to my Call of Duty days from several years ago, but I will be streaming my runs on there. Now, in terms of what my overall strategy is, honestly, I'm kind of sitting back and waiting to see where the standings are. I think I'm heavily leaning towards not wanting a buy. And therefore I want to qualify of course, but I would really like to just play in the first round, get it out of the way. And either if I lose, I'm done early in the day. But if I win, I got a little bit, a little bit of momentum on my side because quite honestly, if I'm going to play Escher, if I'm going to play Raymond, if I'm going to play Carlos, if I'm going to play anybody like that, that are excellent pinball players, I want to catch them in an early round. I do not want to play those players in later rounds to where they have a lot of momentum built up. I would rather play those players when they're coming in cold, quote unquote, because obviously they're still getting warmed up and all that, but I would rather play them early on. So I'm leaning heavily towards just trying to qualify and not worry about the buy. If I can put up a number in which I qualify, I'll be happy with that. Right now, my practice runs, I'm typically running 25 to 35 flips. I have been able to figure out how to get down to the teens, but I don't know if I want to do that. I don't know if I want to get one of those buys. So I got to really think through what my overall strategy is. Plus, I just want an opportunity to play more pinball. And I think I would just rather play those types of players in the second round, where it's technically their first round, than I would in the third or fourth round. And that's just kind of my mindset. I know there some people out there that are probably like well take the buy If you can get it take the buy But I don know And plus two guys there some excellent scores coming in I think it going to actually be really difficult to get a buy And I don't know if I want to spend my entire April trying to stream and just try to keep getting under 25 because I think that line is going to get down. There's a lot of people under 30 right now. So it's going to be highly competitive to get to that point. So I'm pretty excited to see how that goes. Now, besides that, some more pinball discussion when it comes to tournaments. Now, today is obviously Wednesday. I messed up earlier and said Thursday, but today is Wednesday. And I have an invitational event that's occurring on April 16th that you guys will be able to find over at Fox Cities Pinball. Now, actually, it's a full weekend of pinball coming up, but this particular event happens on Friday. And I think it's going to start probably around 6 p.m. Central Time. There's some time right around there, but it's going to be four players total playing nine holes. And I had the objectives up, and of course I ended up clicking off the screen, but we're playing nine holes total. And so it's yours truly playing against Raymond Davidson, Luke Nahorniak, and Colin MacAlpine. Now, obviously these are three very excellent world-class players, and then me. I understand that I am basically the fourth wheel, so to speak, on this, but I look very much forward to it, and I thank Tom for the opportunity to be up there in District 82 also for hosting this. Now, how this is going to go down, with the Penskins event, we are each going to put up $20 per hole, and we're going to have nine total holes, each that are objective base, except for the very last hole, which I believe is Flight 2000, which will just be biggest score. or basically who can rip the spinner the most amount of times and survive it. But all those games, pretty much except for Flight 2000, I believe, is going to be five ball or set on five ball. And the goal is, is obviously you want to get the least amount of balls used to achieve whatever objective is put forward. Now, if we tie, that will simply just cause a push, and all that money, all $80 of it for that hole will just push to the next one, and then the next hole becomes worth $160. So if somebody wins a hole outright, they win all the money. That's the idea. So we could end up either having somebody win a couple holes early on, or there might be a lot of pushes, and we might play the most expensive Flight of 2000 game in the history of pinball, which is highly likely because there's some excellent players here. And I think that the way that I saw the objectives, they're aimed to be, they're not overly difficult is what I'll say. They're definitely doable. and so I fully expect some great pinball to be played that evening. Now, what's going to happen the following day on April 17th, and if you weren't aware of this, hopefully you are now because I'm about to tell you, but the Great Lakes Pinball Open takes place at District 82, and it's actually two tournaments wrapped up into one day, with the first tournament being the Great Lakes Pinball Open Classics Tournament. that's supposed to last until starting at 9 a.m. till around 1 p.m., sometime right around there. Now, they are having upwards, the max is 95 participants. There is actually, as of this podcast, there is 79 people confirmed to attend. So this is going to be the largest pinball event that has happened since the shutdown back in March of 2020 in over a year that happens here in the U.S. So I'm very excited about that. There's some huge names on there. I don't want to spoil it too much, but if you go over to district82.com, you can see the player list. If you're interested in playing in something like this, I highly recommend it as it's a great place. Now, there's also going to be another tournament happening later that afternoon that I believe is the Target Match Play format. And that is going to be, let me bring it up on the calendar here. Come on, Internet, let's go. That is going to be, what time is that one? That's going to start around 3 p.m. And it's going to run probably past 9.30. So Classics Match Play is the first tournament. Target Match Play with all the pins there in the second tournament. And then, of course, there'll be an entry fee, which is, I believe, let's see here. First place, 35%. So there is an entry fee. I know it's here, guys. Okay, here it is. Classics Tournament's $35 total. basically for a facility and the tournament fee itself. And then target match play would be $20. So yeah, classics tournament, $10 target match play, $20 to get you in like your all in costs for facility fees for tournament fees is $70, which to me, that's excellent. I mean, they, they'll provide bottled water and soda, also trophies prizes at the door. So I highly recommend you guys come out there. There, there is going to be many great pinball players there. So if you're interested in tournaments, if you're interested in doing something like that and you haven't got a chance to before, and you're wanting a chance to play against some of the world's best players, they're going to be there. There's some big names that are signed up to be there. But I don't want to spoil it too much just yet. But if I piqued your interest, go over to district82.com and go check that out. Now, of course, right now is when I was going to start talking about the Twippies. But like I said, I've got so much to talk about with that and so much in depth. I think we'll end up turning this into like a 45-minute podcast. So I'm going to stay back, and I'm still going to hold off and discuss that for tomorrow. But other than that, I did start League, too, this past week. I know I'm all over the place, but we did here in Oklahoma, which I'm really excited about. We started back on our League, and we're trying to get a schedule down pretty much. I say trying. The schedule's there. We created it, and it's basically just aimed to get us back involved in pinball because obviously this has been a long year, and there's a lot of us that have either been vaccinated or we've had COVID already, and we're pretty much nearly immune to getting it at this point. And so there's just a lot of people out there that want to get back into pinball, want some sense of normalcy. And so hopefully this will provide it for them. But I had an excellent time last night. there was actually 16 of us, which I know for some places that may not be much, but considering that at some times we were down to just four or five of us, including me and my wife is, I mean, it's slow going. So it was great to see a lot of familiar faces back. It was great to see people happy, people smiling. And it was just fun just to get out and have human interaction and play pinball. So to me, just mental health wise, that was excellent. I was very happy about that and we ended up playing five rounds total and the rounds I figured I'd just go ahead and just tell you guys a little bit about the games that I played kind of like what Raymond does with his was it do or die podcast I hope I'm saying that right Raymond I haven't missed an episode of it I just I don't know why I messing up the name right now but if you haven heard that podcast that an excellent one as well but what I ended up doing I ended up playing Cactus Canyon in my first round And basically with Cactus Canyon my only strategy with that is just to hit all my shots and not miss my shots I like getting into, I forget what that multiball is called, but it's kind of like Attack from Mars, where once you hit, I think it's each shot three times total, to light all three inserts. And you do that across the board. You'll eventually start a multiball. another thing that I like to do is I will typically go for building up my bonus so I'll stick to the left orbit a lot and I'll just keep trying to build that bonus up as much as possible and that's pretty much just what I do on that game I don't really go any more in depth with that if the locks are there and they're available I might try to take them but sometimes I don't know sometimes I don't on here because I feel like my shot on that particular lock shot it just goes out of control more times than not, and I would rather just play just, I mean, a simple wood chopping type game on that game, just sticking to the left orbit when it's hopefully not going all the way around, but going into the rollovers up top. That's typically how I like to play it. And so I ended up getting first place on that, just killed my two kids, which I was proud of that because they actually, my middle son has actually gotten pretty good. He played me heads up a couple weeks ago. I I was down 3-1 against him, and I was trying hard. He can play, and he's only 10. It's quite shocking how good he's getting, how quickly, because I don't help him at all. He just loves to play. And so the next round, I end up playing Congo. And with Congo, one of the things that I really like to do is I like to hit the map to gray to loop combo. I believe it's worth 20 million points. So basically, if you're not familiar with what this game is, that's essentially the left ramp from the right flipper and that'll spell out your map letters, M-A-P. That'll eventually light a right eject or right scoop type area to where you can collect. You can basically travel and you get points or you can eventually work up the jungle jackpot. So it's worth a pretty good amount, but I like hitting that combo shot, basically that ramp to the little gray shot that's basically a U-turn shot that leads to your upper left flipper. And if you hit those three shots in succession, I believe it's a 20 million point combo. And I mean, that builds up a lot too. That'll help me get to my diamonds. That'll help me build up my map. It'll help me build up my gray and I'm getting some points or grinding out some combo points as well. And typically with that, I'll just keep collecting my diamonds too to work up to lighting a lock. I forget how many diamonds it is that lights each lock, but eventually you'll get to where you'll start your volcano multiball, which I believe is what it's called in which time you'll just keep spamming the left ramp that will give you jackpots over and over and over again. And that's pretty much what I do. The main thing about this game is that if you finish your first grade, you want to avoid, at least I typically avoid starting my second grade because that is a multiball on its own, and then it'll reset the locks. And I don't want to do that. I would rather play my Volcano first and then play my second grade. So that's typically what I do in that instance. And then also, too, once I get into Volcano Multiball, I really like trying to trap up on the left side. And then whenever the feed starts coming back around to the left, I'll just do a little tip over to the right with a single ball. And then I'll just hit the left ramp, rinse, and repeat. So, I mean, I wouldn't exactly say that's too much wood choppy. It's just kind of the sequence that happens just to collect those jackpots. But I did well overall in that game. I think I ended up with 1.2 or 1.3 billion after two balls, and then I just decided just in the interest of time, I just plunged my third ball and just let the game end from there. So let's see here. Round three, I ended up playing Metallica. Now, this game is so hit and miss for me. I will either blow it up or I'll lay an egg. There's really no in-between on this game for me. And I actually ended up taking third place on this game. and I just, I think I had around 13 million or so, and I was not confident at all hitting Sparky up the middle. So if you're not familiar with what Metallica is, the play field, which pretty much I assume 95% of you out there are, but if you're brand new, Metallica, there's a bash toy basically right up the middle known as Sparky, and on ours I think it's set to eight hits on that target, and if you hit that target it actually counts as two hits, and I think ours is set to eight. and that'll eventually get to the multiball. But me personally, some Metallicas I'll go for. Other Metallicas I'll just avoid it altogether. The one at CJ's, I typically avoid it altogether just because that magnet just goes crazy, just the shots scream back at you, and I just don't feel safe going for that shot. So other times what I like to do is just go for the grave marker multiball or just grave multiball, which is on the left-hand side with those three in-line targets. So if you hit all three of those and then you hit that back target, that'll start your multiball. And then you can do it a second time by dropping all three and then hitting that backside twice. And I like doing that. And then I also like doing, I think it's a piston combo, whatever it's called, that goes from the right ramp and then you hit it into the piston targets to the left-hand side. I like doing that combo also and just building, building, building. If I can't find any other shot, I'll rely on that a lot. And then another thing that you have to really focus on, though, is lining up your three targets or your three inserts on any of those shots. And those targets off the top of my head, I think it's like electric chair, snake, and your grave marker. And what happens is if you get those three inserts lit up on the same shot and then you hit that shot, you can basically start a hurry up, a cough and hurry up at that captive ball that's right by the snake head. and then when you hit that captive ball, I think it starts right at a million and it starts counting down. But then once you hit that captive ball, from there you've essentially locked in those inserts for the rest of the game and then you can just start peppering that shot to build towards your crank it up modes where you have to collect so many of those anyways. It makes it so much easier to get to that point and then that's when you can play for whom the bell tolls or whatever your preferred method is and then really start blowing up the points from there. And then a lot of people don't realize this either, that when you do get into those crank it up modes, one of the focuses that you really want to have, especially if you're trying to just absolutely destroy it, is to make sure that you have your snake shot dialed in, you have your sparky shot, you have your grave, you have your coffin, you have all those dialed in because you need those shots in order to light your collect. I know that there's a lot of people out there that aren't sure how that gets lit in that they just keep hitting shots, because I've heard from a lot of people, they end up completing their crank it up mode which you do get some pretty good points off doing that but then their collect never lights But that exactly how that collect will light And then you can go from there You can decide whether you going to add fuel to it for your 2x playfield multiplier, and you can get pretty giant collects. I mean, I've seen collects go well in excess of $150 million at that point, which is absolutely fun to do on that pen. All right, so round four. And again, round three did not go great for me. So round four, I went to go play a pen called Dragon. Now, I think it's an EM. I can't remember if this is a Gottlieb or not, but it's basically a pin in which if you hit these little stand-ups that knock down, it literally sounds like the pin's farting at you, or it sounds like a duck sound. It's so weird. I don't know what sound that's supposed to be, but it does not sound like a damn dragon at all. But the only goal of this game is whenever you plunge, you're either wanting to go over your one, five, or three rollovers up top. or they're like these little button rollovers. And the reason why you want to do that is because it will light your pop bumpers. There's three pops up top and it'll light it for, I believe it's a 10,000 point per hit. And those are essential. That's how you really build up score there. Now on our pin, that's at CJ's, the bonus does not work. So there's nothing that we can really do to build up bonus. So the whole game essentially becomes lighting your pops and then just sending it back up top and nudging around a little bit, hoping to gain any points you can off that. And for whatever reason on this game, I would light a pop, and then I'd send the ball back up top, and that ball would just come all the way back around without even hitting one pop. There was one time I had all three lit, which means you can basically just run away with the game at that point. And I sent it up there twice, and both times I did not hit one pop. It just did the full U-turn and just came right back to me. I was like, that's tremendous. So I ended up with right around 280,000, I believe, and that was good enough for third place. That was really an off game for me. Typically, I'm around 500,000 to 800,000 on that, and I did not play well on that at all, and obviously my opponents played a little bit better, so that's the result of my third place. Now, fifth round, I ended up playing Ninja Turtles, and Ninja Turtles for me, when it comes to tournaments, it's just it's straight up exactly like do this thing and that's how you get the points and for me it's just even on the newest code it's picking rafael that way my episode is automatically lit at the turtle van i will go ahead and take that and in turn i'll also get a lock that is because the locks are lit already so i will get a lock for i think it's called ninja parlor multiball or ninja pizza multiball and i can really just start stacking things up from there one thing that I really recommend people do to do on that game is try to make sure that whenever you are going for your ramps backhand the ramps especially on the right hand side I think forehanding is just asking for trouble that ramp is so close that it's actually kind of tough to hit from the left side so if you can post pass over get it to your right it's actually really safe whenever you do a backhand there that way you can build up your turtle power multiball which you'll need. If you're not using Donatello, you'll need at least four hits to that ramp. Plus you'll need that ramp too, that whenever you're out of an episode, you have to hit both the right and the left ramp to relight your episodes at that turtle van. So get used to backhanding that right ramp with the right flipper. It'll make your life so much easier because even if you do happen to be a little bit late and it hits off that post, it typically will go over into that layer target, into that big target right there. And a lot of times the reason why this pin, people have such huge trouble with that left out lane is because they are just taking crazy shots with that left flipper towards that right ramp. Don't be that crazy person. I'm telling you, that's the reason why a lot of that's happening because also too, if you're late on that right spinner and you hit it off the April targets, guess what happens? It's going to go off that April target. then it's going to hit off the post, and then it's going to go most likely to the left out lane. That's just going to gobble it up. That's why a lot of people are having those issues. It's because of the shot selection during the game. If you're intelligent about your shot selection, you can really nullify a lot of that left out lane. You really can. I think typically whenever I'm playing Ninja Turtles, to be quite honest with you guys, it is a rarity that I drain on the left hand side. I will probably drain on the right-hand side at least three or four times more than the left. I think in the past four or five games that I've actually played on Ninja Turtles, I haven't drained off the left side even one time. And that's just based on shot selection and figuring out what to do. Because basically when you play it this safe, you're guaranteeing you're going to get into a multiball. You're guaranteeing that you're going to make progress on a couple of different modes as well. And you're guaranteeing that you'll most likely get to Turtle Power Multiball. and then from there, once you do light these jackpots, and once you are rocking and rolling, if you can play a decent multiball game to where you're playing under control, and you can still play a little bit on the fly, but obviously once that ball saves off, if you can play a little bit under control, you can chop some wood and get some points, especially if you can dial in the layer shot using your little backhand flip from the left flipper to get your jackpots, or to even build up your turtle level, or whatever you want to call it. There's many ways to do it, But typically, that's what I like to do with Ninja Turtles, and that's what I did here. And I think I ended up with right around 21 million. I had a, oh gosh, what's that called? The team-up multiball lit on my last one, or my last ball. And I just took a pot shot at it and, of course, hit a target and just went right down the middle quick. That game just plays so fast. The games at CJ's, there's a lot of them that are set up. Very difficult. Sometimes even, it's crazy. Some of those games are more difficult than what I even see at a Stern Pro Circuit. These are location games. And I think it's just, that's a variety of reasons as well. Because there's still rubbers on. It's just, it's funny. Just some games just play different from place to place. No matter how many times I play it, they still seem difficult regardless. But that's all I got for today. Thank you guys so much for being here. I know that this was more centric on just talking about pinball in general, tournaments and all that. but we will be discussing the Twippies in the next one and I want to discuss what that means for the industry and pretty much moving forward what that could be because there's a massive gap that I see with the Twippies in terms of what it actually means for the industry that I'm not so sure that people are seeing because I have not heard anybody else talk about this. Anybody else. No other podcast, no other YouTube channels, nobody else has talked about this and we are going to talk about that on the next podcast but that's all I got for today. Thank you guys so much for being here. I greatly do appreciate it. If you want to leave a like, I would love that. I would also appreciate that. If you want to leave a comment, feel free to, but other than that, that's all I got. I'll talk to you guys soon. Later guys.