It's time for another Pinball Profile. I'm your host, Jeff Teels. You can find everything on pinballprofile.com. We're on Twitter, X, Instagram at pinballprofile. You can email pinballprofile at gmail.com. We have a great Facebook group as well. And if you'd like to show your support, boy, that would mean a lot. You can do that with patreon.com slash pinballprofile. pinball profile, like great people like William M., Stefan R., and so many others. Thank you again for your support. We're going right now to Delaware, and it's been a while since I was there. It was their last summer in 2022, and I think I have to go back because they've got this pretty cool event going on in December called the Delaware Pinball Open at the Delaware Pinball Collective. I hosted a tournament there last summer, the Pinball Profile Played in America Tour, and helping me out big time, as he always does there at The Collective, Chad Hastings. Chad, how are you? I'm good, Jeff. Thanks for asking. How are you doing today? Wonderful, thanks. We're just coming off. This is being recorded on the 18th of September, so you had a busy weekend. It's a tour championship. It looked like event number four. What's that all about? Yes, tour event number four. When we started running tournaments back in 2017, it was the first tournament in Delaware. I learned about Kevin Stone actually was one of the people that helped me get off the ground and coached me through TDN. And I found out that he was running these events all throughout Maryland and they took money out of each event. And at the end of the year, they had a Pennholics Anonymous big event. And so I thought, OK, that was cool. Let's do the same thing here in Delaware. So I came up with the idea of the Delaware Tour Championship, six events a year. Unfortunately, unlike Maryland where they had multiple locations, we only had one location. So they're all the same place. But you play into six events. You get individual points that are separate from Whopper points. And at the end of six events, the top 40 get invited to the Tour Championship. And this year we'll be offering over $3,700 in prize and cash. Well, that's a lot of fun, too. First of all, getting to play your wonderful games at the Collective. I know it's not just you. There are others involved. and we should probably shout out to those people right now. The others involved in the collective are? Yeah, our board members consist of myself, Chad Hastings, Joe Fox, Rodney Comages, Mike Veith, and Paul Pratzner. And then we have several volunteers that have helped us along the way. I'm going to forget some for sure. Paul Fry, Pete Siporis, Bill Richardson, Greg Postel, Bob Cho, Jim Cardona. And then we have some random members that have also donated their games to the collective since we are a nonprofit. So the ones that I forgot to mention, thank you for your support. We appreciate it. It is something to see there because collectives, I think the first one I knew about was maybe when I heard from the Fraley's in Virginia area. And then, of course, closer to me here, there's the Rochester Pinball Collective. And I know in talking with Joe Fox and some others, too, they were kind of brainstorming, too. That's the nice thing about this pinball community is you can find out, okay, we want to run a collective. We've got this idea. We've got this location. We've got this group that can donate the games, that can pay the rent and the utilities and all that kind of stuff. Let's kind of figure out how we're going to make this sustainable with memberships, with games being donated. It was a big process. I don't even know how long it took to get the Delaware Pinball Collective to where you are today. 100% we got some assistance and feedback from the Richmond Collective and Rochester Collective and that was great feedback as we dove into this. Initially when I brainstormed and wanted to come up with the collective was back in around 2018. 2019 is when we really started to make a push start looking for properties and we were probably 7 to 14 days away from signing a lease when the when pandemic hit so we we dodged that bullet the pandemic hit we obviously shut down everything and then you know for consideration and then when once we got through most of 2021 we started back up looking again and around august september 2021 and we found the property that we're at now and signed the lease uh in december 1st of 2021 as when it kicked off i didn't realize i knew the pandemic obviously postponed starting the DPC, but when I was there last, I guess, July or June, whatever it was, late June, early July, I didn't realize you hadn't even had a year under your belt. And I say that because walking in there, seeing the game, seeing the setup, it looked like you had been running this for quite some time. It was that well-tuned. Lots of preparation, lots of pre-planning. The team, obviously, we all pitched in various ways, but Without the team, this wouldn't have been pulled off as well as it looks. I kind of remember going back to the first tournament that I ever ran back in September 2017. When I posted on Pennside, would anyone come to Delaware? I remember Levy Naiman reached out to me and said, dude, don't worry about it. It's the first tournament that you have. No one knows what's going on there. You're lucky if 20 people show up. Just go have a good time and all that. We had over 40 people show up at the first event, including Steven Bowden. He came down from New York and a bunch of others. And one of the players afterwards said, are you sure this is your first event? And I'm like, it's my first event. And he's like, it seems like you've been running events for like three or four years. But that's only because I put a ton of time in prior talking with Kevin Stone, talking to Corey Holt, talking to other TDs, trying to learn as much as I could before I put that first tournament on. And it was the same thing applied to the collective. We put so much into planning it that when we opened it, it looked like you have a season placed there. And the reason I bring that up is because you are the state representative. And I want to talk to you about some of the changes that are going to be happening and your thoughts on these. But that's kind of a big responsibility. You see all kinds of different tournaments, and you're obviously someone people can rely on to give guidance for, hey, I want to start up this league, I want to start up this tournament. and they'll go to you and other state or provincial representatives or country reps. And that's part of the reason we have such a big growth in pinball, because of people like yourself and encouraging pinball. Totally agree. I'm a huge ambassador for pinball in general, let alone competitive pinball. We've started to add some of our volunteers that help us at the collective. They've started now running some tournaments on Friday nights to get more exposure because the people are hungry for it. and myself and Joe Fox running tournaments and Paul Pratzner was helping out there a little bit. It's just we've only got so much time. So we're starting to expand a little, and, you know, the more we can put out there. But it's only really at the collective. We don't have any other public places in Delaware to play, so we don't have that working for us where there's going to be other TDs in the state that are running tournaments because there's nowhere to play, just the collective. Again, the nowhere to play is the reason why the collective came about because, okay, we've got a lot of hungry pinball players, but we're always having to travel out of state or to go to other events. What about right here? What about right in Delaware? So that you've created this is for the benefit of other people And you see people like myself and other people coming from out of state to come to these big big events So it worked I mean it all part of the plan It has definitely been part of the plan and that the reason why we chose Delaware small to begin with only like 95 miles long, but it's kind of broken down into three sections. We chose the northern part of Delaware, even though I live over an hour away and one of our other board members lives about an hour, 20 minutes away. It had to be up north because now we're tapped into southeast PA. We're tapped into Jersey. We're tapped into Maryland. And we're pulling from a much broader basin. Where we're located, we're two hours from Baltimore, D.C., New York, 30 minutes from Philly. So we're in a very, very good spot right here in this northeast corridor. I like what you're doing, some of the fundraising events. I mean, obviously, you've got the memberships, and that certainly helps make it sustainable. But I know when I was there, there was a draw for a new-in-box Godzilla pinball machine, and that was pretty cool. In fact, I bought one of those raffle tickets to give away at the Pinball Profile Played in America Tour, and the guy who won it won the Godzilla machine. So that was pretty exciting for all involved, and you do a few of those and other fundraisers. Yes, that's our fourth machine we've given away since we've been open, and it's been very well received, and the people receiving them, they're even just as stoked when they get their name called and they've got a machine coming their way. So, yeah, it's all done. We do those raffles simply because it's just bringing in income to the collective. We are a nonprofit, so we are strictly surviving off of memberships and the fundraiser, things that we do like the pinball raffles or anything else that we hold there for people to enjoy the collective. Yeah, like you mentioned, the Tour Championship, you just had the fourth one this weekend, one by somebody named Jason Zoller. I haven't heard who that guy is, but I guess he's pretty good. I should keep an eye out for him, but no shocker there with the great young player from New Jersey. We're going to get to the Delaware Pinball Open in a bit, but I did see another event coming up, and this again is about that growth of pinball. I love that you're doing this. You've got a kids event on October 14th. Yes. I don't even know why it didn't come on my radar last year, to be honest with you. And, you know, we have several families that are members of the collective, and they have kids that come in there. None of them really play in any of our tournaments yet. There's been a couple that have played in our small Thursday night or Friday night tournaments. And it just dawned on me the other day, I'm like, you know, why haven't we done this yet at the collective? And so one of our volunteers has a couple of kids that are definitely, they play pinball quite a bit there. and we started talking, and I'm like, okay, here's the date, and it's already receiving, it's got legs. It's getting a lot of interest, and I think it's, I would be shocked if we had less than 30 kids show up that day. That's big. That's a big tournament. That's what I'm expecting, but, you know, who knows. Let's talk about some of the games you have there, because when I go to a lot of these places, especially more arcades, not so much collectives, you see a lot of the modern games, and that's great. It makes sense. They're big titles. They're going to make you want to put your quarters in when you see a theme you love. But when you go to these collectives, and again, no different than Rochester Pinball Collective, Delaware Pinball Collective has this incredible mix of games. So you're getting all eras. I love that. That we do. And part of our members that have donated games have made our collection eclectic, I would say. And we do have, you know, we're not stacked with all moderns. We have all those mid-grade games that are in there. We have the older games, some EMs in there. One person I did forget to thank in helping the collective, one of our members and a big volunteer is Brad Anderson. He maintains 95% of our EMs, our electromechanical. So without him, we probably wouldn't have as many electromechanical games in there. And we all like them. We like to have them, but no one can work on them. But he keeps them up and running. But, no, the games that we have in there, the classics, a bunch of them are restored. And that's one thing that we focused on at the collective is having quality over quantity. We're currently sitting at about 53 or 54 games on the floor. We have room for 75 on the floor, but it's hard to maintain. And then the quality of the games are going to go down if we just start putting games on the wall just for people to come in and see a big collection. We don't want that. Chad, that's a very good point. So you've got great people like Brad fixing the M's and stuff. But, yeah, the maintaining of the games is extremely important, and especially the older games, which probably need a little bit of loving here and there. So good on Brad and others. And another game you haven't even mentioned, too, it just got dropped off there last week thanks to Rodney Comagies. The Bond 60th is at the Collective. Total shock. He called me up, said we got a surprise coming today. I was working that day, volunteering. And I said, okay, can't wait for it. I'll make a space for it. and when it arrived, fantastic game. Put some games on it right then before the members came in and jumped on it. But it's the only one on location within several hundred miles of where we're at. And so people got to play it a ton this weekend at the tournament and they've been playing it all week, all last week. So thanks again, Rodney, for bringing that to the collective. Another great addition. Tough to find that on location in the Northeast, let alone anywhere. I know Jermaine has one in the Northwest that he's put on location, and that's really cool. So, again, for Rodney and the Delaware Pinball Collective, good on you for putting such a really high-priced machine there for others to enjoy. Yep, and that's what we do. Again, most of the games there, I would probably say a good 75% of them came from the board of directors, came out of our private collections. And, you know, they're all top-notch games. They've been well-maintained, but we're okay with our members and guests coming in and playing these games. and that's how it all started before we had the collective and we were playing in our basements. We don't have a collection here that we just keep blankets over and never use the games. We bought these games because we want them played, and that's one of the nice things that we get to take over to the collective and have other people enjoy these games. Chad, a big event is coming up, and I want to bring attention to this because it's going to be capped at 80 players currently I see here. It's coming up December 8th to the 10th. I plan on being there. The Delaware Pinball Open, the 2023 DPO. And this is four events in three days. You get a bonus fifth event if you come on Thursday night. Big, big main event, IFP certified. Whopper is worth 250% if that's something you want. All 24 players making the Sunday main event will win cash. The registration begins on October the 8th at 9 p.m. Eastern. So tell us more about this wonderful event. Yes, this is our second year of running the Delaware Pinball Open. We ran it last year in May. And you can thank, again, reached out to other people in the pinball community. Eric over in District 82, he was the only one doing Whopper Farms. And I said, you know what? We have the space, we have the games, and we have the manpower. We can run a Whopper Farm here on the East Coast. So I reached out to him last year, talked heavily about it, and we put it in place. I feel like the event last year, we had people that came in from Oklahoma, Chicago, Arizona, everywhere. They all enjoyed it. We're running another one. And the only reason we capped at 80 is not because we can fit 100 and some people in the collective It because of the amount of games and trying to keep the number of games running for match play going back and forth to alternate between classics and moderns We can't keep up with that many games on the floor. So that's why we're capped at 80. But, yes, big event to close out the year, 250% Whopper value. I feel like there's going to be a lot, a lot of heavy hitters that are going to be signed up for this event, and I can't wait. It'll be good, too. For those that don't know really the geography of Delaware, it's important to know, only 25 minutes away from the Philly airport, 75 minutes away from Baltimore, 90 away from New Jersey. So local Amtrak, you're in Biden country. You've got to have a train station for crying out loud. Four miles away, too, so that's kind of nice that it's a really easy location to get to. Sometimes the events aren't always the case, but this is definitely it for Wilmington, Delaware. So, yeah, that'll be nice, having all those events. I agree with you about capping it at 80 too. Sometimes less is more. It'd be great to have 150 people and whatever you could hold, but you want people to have a good time. You don't want them to wait too long. You don't want games to go down. You don't want to put stress on the techs, the TDs. I think that's a nice comfort level. You've nailed it. It's almost the same motto that we have with having quality of games over quantity in the collective. We'll never have 120 people in the collective. is just simply the amount of people and keeping the games up and running just can't sustain it. And so scale it back. When we did the herb format pump and dump, we were able to get 100 because we took out 15, 18 games, and it gave us extra space. But for the match play, we're going to sit comfortably at 80. We might slide it to 84 or so, depending if we have a wait list. I'm assuming this is probably going to sell out in one day. I would be shocked if it didn't, but you never know. It's in December, so we'll know in October when the tickets go live. Well, I know when I was there, 52 players in the pinball profile played the America Tour event. Very, very comfortable. No problems with machines and even stream, too. That's kind of nice that you're streaming there. You've got a nice little setup. Yes, the streaming setup is courtesy of Joe Fox. He started to get into streaming right before the pandemic hit, and he wasn't having much luck with the setup. And then pandemic hit, so he just put everything away. We opened up the collective, brought the gear up to the collective, and I'm not a huge streamer. I'm just – I'm not building the engine. I'm just driving the bus. I've got people behind me, Eric D'Estasio, David Schumeister, and a few others who have helped get the streaming up to where it needs to be. I simply just hit start and moved the cart around. But, yeah, it's a very nice streaming rig that we've got set up there, and we can pretty much touch every game in the building of how we're laid out. So, again, the pinball people that can't attend, they love pinball streaming. They love to be able to watch these events. And we had a good turnout. We had like 30-some people watching our event Saturday, even though there was cleaping going on and some other stuff. So that wasn't too bad. Very nice. You being a tournament director, I do it as well too. I do it to provide these events. I assume you do too. I also want to play in these events. And I know sometimes people will say, well, it'd be nice if the tournament director didn't play in the tournament. And I get the optics of that. But also, I don't know how many tournaments would happen if tournament directors just kind of gave up their time and really didn't have anything. And conversely, too, I've had people say, well, just pay the tournament directors. And I'm like, I wouldn't be comfortable taking money out of the tournament for that. Your thoughts? Yeah, my thoughts on that. I just did in the past week or so listen to your final round podcast, so picked up a little bit on this conversation. So pretty interesting that you brought it up today. And, yes, I run the events. I simply became a TD because there was no one running events in Delaware, and if I was not allowed to play in them, then, yes, I would definitely not be running events. I used to shoot in pool tournaments quite often. I used to also bowl in high stakes scratch bowling tournaments. And it was the same concept there where the person running the event was also TDN for another term. And one difference there in pool and bowling is the person does take a cut, and it is up front. You know, they let you know that every person that registers, I'm taking $2 out that's coming to me for my time and efforts and all that. And the bowling community, no problem with it. The pool community, no problem with it as long as you're transparent. but I've not seen it that it's a need for me to take any money as a cut to run this because I'm enjoying this hobby. I love the sport. I love playing in the tournaments. So I don't feel a need that I need to rake off the top of the money to pay me for my services. Well, that's exactly why we do it. We love this hobby. It's competitive pinball that made me even love it more. I like the machines as is, just trying to get high scores and GCs and modes and this and that. once I heard there were competitions. That's a whole new level. The one frustrating thing, as every tournament's going to happen, you're going to have some people with some complaints, and some are legitimate for sure, but do you find, Chad, and this is just me and you talking, no one else is listening right now, this is TD to TD. Got it. Do you find that sometimes the complaints seem to come from people who, A, have never, ever been a TD, or even maybe volunteered, or B, sometimes, sadly, from the top-ranked players? I would say I get more from the top-ranked players. And, you know, I just had this discussion. There was a discussion on Slack where a person was needing some help with a TD ruling. And throughout the years that I've done events, there have been players, and these players definitely inside the top 250 in the IP world rankings, that have asked for a ruling on something in hopes that I would make the wrong ruling to benefit them. In fact, just had it on Saturday, and the person's comment was, hey, it was worth asking and trying. And, yeah, if that's the route you want to go and, you know, the ball, you're playing whitewater, the kickback is lit and the ball flies down and the kickback doesn't come on, if you want to ask me, do you get a comp ball? or you ask my co-TD and my co-TD, we give you a comp ball and you take it. Well, that's your integrity I guess you need to live with later because you already know that you don't get a comp ball for a failed kickback that didn't respond to a ball passing through it. So it's been difficult, but you just swallow it and move on to the next call. That's right. Good point about the integrity too there. And it's really simple. The rules are right there on ifpapinball.com. I suggest anybody who runs a league, run a tournament, go through and read the rules. It's very, very simple. If you have a question that you can't remember from reading the rules, it's easy to find in the table of contents. And again, asking other TDs, always a good thing too. Just the more minds, the better. But it's not about punishing a player or what's fair, what's not. You know, you certainly never want to ask a player, well, let's ask your opponent what they would like. Because you don't want to put them in an awkward position as well. but it does sometimes make TDs and I seen this happen sadly a lot go I done I not doing it anymore It not worth the headache You absolutely right I actually ran the Mid Pinball Open in March which was our pump and don That was six years of running over 100 and some events as the only TD in Delaware running events. I pressed pause for a few months. I was like, I got to take a break for a little bit. And amongst other things, I was also in the process of planning my wedding with Mary Ann, and that was coming up in May. So I had to take a step back, took off three or four months, and this was actually not counting my wedding reception party that we had, which was not really TDing. That was more of a party. But this was the first event that I've ran since March. And it felt good to get back in, but that break was needed for sure. Well, thank goodness you came back. Thank goodness you're running these events at the Pinball Collective, and especially that Delaware Pinball Open coming up December 8th to 10th. The registration begins on October 8th at 9 p.m. Where can people go to sign up for this? Yep, they're going to go to Eventbrite. All of our big tournaments is hosted on Eventbrite under the First State Flippers umbrella because that's the brand that was built back in 2017 of me running tournaments. So don't search Eventbrite for Delaware Pinball Collective. Just look for the Delaware Pinball Open under the First State Flippers. You can follow us on Eventbrite so you get notified. If you've been to any of our past events, I compile a mailing list that goes out. We will advertise it on our Delaware Pinball Collective Facebook. It will also be on First State Flippers Facebook. And, of course, we'll hit the usual pinball sites, Pinside. It's already up on Tilt Forums. But yes, as Jeff mentioned, October the 8th are when the tickets go on sale at 9 p.m. Eastern time, capped at 80 players. I would be shocked if it doesn't sell out in one day. So if you're looking to get some year-end Whopper boosts and looking to play in a Whopper farm that doesn't have to drive to Wisconsin, then this is your ticket. And if you want to play great machines with a good bunch of people, that's it. The Delaware Pinball Collective is the place for you. So I'll post that link, too, on Pinball Profile because I do agree. I think you'll be selling out. Now, wait a minute. Should I post it? Because then I might not get in. We'll figure it out. I'm sure I've got a quick F5. I'll be fine. But Chad, great to talk to you. I'm glad you're TDing. I'm glad you're doing what you're doing for the state and for the IFPA. These are big changes coming up next year. I haven't even talked to you about 6.0 and what you think of that. Yeah, the 6.0 thing, it's definitely mind-boggling. I will tell you that I am aligned with you on flip frenzies. We ran quite a few of them. But before I even heard what your stance was, we always ran a finals with flip frenzies. Which I did too. Yeah, when you finally started to talk about it online, when the changes were made last year that they were going to cut it to 50%, 50% and you were, you know, advocating, hey, this can all be avoided in a lot of these flip frenzies if people would just run a finals. 100% agree. It's not the perfect format, but it is one of the funnest formats. I've ran over a dozen or so max match play formats now, and it's just not the same. I get it. You don't play the same opponent twice, which is cool, but you're waiting, you're waiting, you're still sitting around waiting. The frenzy is where it's at. You run the finals and I can still be at the same amount of Whopper points that you can with your max match play event. So the 6.0 changes, as it continues to evolve, I don't always agree with them. Obviously we have to deal with whatever is ultimately decided on and voted on by the IPA committee. And aren't you on that committee, Jeff? I'm the people's president, so I'm kind of running in the shadows. And they keep doing things. Last year when they up to the... And to answer your question, no, I'm not on that committee because they don't want to hear the truth because when I called out the garbage of the foot frenzy being nerfed, I was told point blank by Josh Sharpe the reason they're being nerfed are they are too effective. What? What? What? So you're rewarding people for not playing games, for waiting around because playing the same amount of games in eight hours is worth more than playing the same amount of games in three hours. It doesn't make sense to me. And wait till you see what happens next. Oh, I don't know. I wonder if card-based formats will be worth more than regular tournaments. The reason they killed flip frenzies is because everyone is playing flip frenzies. Now you're going to make card formats worth more? I agree, they're harder tournaments. No question about that. But now you're going to kill formats by making one worth more than the other. Exactly. And they're also slightly attacking the venues that can do whopper farms and stuff. How they keep changing things and requiring even more people now. You know, they upped it from 128 to 160 people or whatever. We're never going to get back to that stature. So it's just a shame that, you know, pinball people, the ones that are actually going to the tournaments, that they don't have as much input as the actual IFPA committee and help crafting these rules. They've created the monster, and every action has a reaction. And some of the reactions to what's happened this year, I don't think, have been very effective because the rich get richer. I just think you see the bigger separation. I mean, just look at players one and two and Jason and Escher and the gap between two and three. That gap alone would have put somebody in the top 25 a year ago. Just the gap. So we'll see. You know what? The one thing is they listen, they tinker, you know, they don't always get it right. I do appreciate even the 6.0, the efficiency. I like that idea because I do think that makes more sense as much as it punishes me. I think it's a wise decision. It really accurately ranks players a little bit better. But some players are like, oh, I guess I'm going to play less tournaments because I'm going to get penalized. Well, the truth is just play better. But anyway, we shall see. It's not going to stop me from playing pinball. Probably not you either, right, Chad? No, it's definitely not going to stop. We'll keep pushing forward. And I'll leave it up to some of the other crafty people to try and figure out some ways we can beat the system if we have to. But we still run Flip Frenzies at the collective with the finals. because the people enjoy the format. And we'll continue if they cut off more stuff. It's whatever our players want and our local fan base wants, we're going to give them, regardless of what the IFPA tries to chop down in front of us. That's why the Delaware Pinball Collective is a great place to be. Hope you can be there for the, whether it's the kids event on the 14th of October or the big Delaware Pinball Open. Chad, thanks for your time, buddy. Great to talk to you, and I'll see you in a few months. Sounds good, Jeff. Thanks for reaching out. I appreciate it and appreciate all your pinball profiles that you do. Thank you very much. This has been your pinball profile, which you can find everything on pinballprofile.com. We're on Twitter slash X, Instagram at pinballprofile, email pinballprofile at gmail.com. We have a great Facebook group. If you'd like to show your support on Patreon, don't worry. The show's always going to be free. It just helps keep the show going, and I can't thank you enough for people like Lua W. and Rodney C., Fox Cities, Derek S., and so many others. you can do that at patreon.com slash pinball profile. I'm Jeff Teolas.