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Episode 14 - INDISC Part 1

Do or Die Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·39m 41s·analyzed·Jan 12, 2020
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Raymond Davidson recounts INDISC Classics qualification and Open play strategies with game-by-game analysis.

Summary

Raymond Davidson of the Do or Die podcast provides a detailed breakdown of his INDISC tournament experience, covering his Classics qualifying run (four games yielding a finals spot) and his Open division attempts across multiple tickets. He shares specific strategic insights on game selection, shot execution, and recovering from poor early balls, while also discussing venue-specific machine conditions and rule interpretations.

Key Claims

  • INDISC uses a 500-point scale for scoring, which means every point earned helps and every point missed hurts significantly more than the old 200-point scale

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson discussing the new scoring format at INDISC and its impact on competitive dynamics

  • Beat the Clock machines at INDISC had a phantom tilt issue affecting multiple players, requiring the game to be pulled from competition

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson describing experiencing phantom tilts along with at least 3-4 other players before the game was removed

  • Sinbad machines at INDISC were set to 5-ball play instead of the standard 3-ball format

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson noting this was a favorable condition and expressing wishes that all tournaments used 5-ball Sinbad

  • Jungle Queen was down initially but was repaired during qualifying play at INDISC

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson describing waiting in line for Jungle Queen while it was being fixed, then successfully playing it after repair

  • Indy 500 at INDISC had a ROM issue where the game remained in multiball mode with one ball and jackpots still lit after the player drained down to a single ball

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson describing having to flag down Jim Belsito for a ruling and being given compensation ball after draining to end the malfunction

  • Viking machine at INDISC had a spinner that would not reset from 1,000-point value, staying at high value indefinitely

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson describing the spinner behavior when playing for the Viking bounty on a substitution game

  • Raymond Davidson advocates for selecting forgiving, controllable games in card-format qualifying to avoid 'dead money' tickets

    high confidence · His opening strategic advice for INDISC qualification play

  • Scared Stiff had the coffin extender set to hard difficulty, requiring two ramp shots to light lock instead of one

    high confidence · Raymond Davidson describing the lock lighting mechanics when discussing his Scared Stiff gameplay

Notable Quotes

  • “You gotta wait out the lines, don't be tempted by the 8 ball deluxe in the main bank. Pick the games that you think are safe-ish, ones that give you the most forgiveness, because in a card format, you need to be able to play the games because you don't get another chance.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~0:03:00 — Core strategic advice for INDISC qualification that reflects the tension between game availability and risk management

  • “Learn from each missed shot. You don't miss the shot the same way twice. Be early, then be late. Don't be early twice in a row. Don't be late twice in a row.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~0:08:30 — Fundamental pinball technique philosophy emphasizing adaptive shot-making and learning from mistakes

  • “If you get a house ball out of 5, that's only 20% of your game. If you get a house ball out of 3, you know, 33% of your game.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~0:16:00 — Explains the advantage of 5-ball vs 3-ball play formats in mitigating the impact of random drain events

  • “If you get one of those [house games] as your first game in a ticket, it's pretty tough. Basically what you do in that case is then you forget everything I just said about picking the games you like and waiting in the long lines, and you just play all the fast throwaway games just for fun.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~0:21:00 — Strategy pivot for salvaging a busted ticket in card-format tournaments

  • “It's really strange, but 47 million on Jurassic Park is actually way better than 15 million. Before, with a 200-point scale, they would both be zero by the end of the tournament. But now, every point you get is helpful.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~0:35:30 — Demonstrates how the new 500-point scale fundamentally changes scoring incentives at INDISC

  • “The game would just tilt completely randomly, like nothing to do with the Switch closing, just some software in the game, something wired backwards, who knows.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~0:42:15 — Describes the phantom tilt issue affecting Beat the Clock and its technical nature

Entities

Raymond DavidsonpersonJim BelsitopersonJason WerdrickpersonINDISCeventDo or DieorganizationWizardgameBlack PyramidgameSinbadgame

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: INDISC implemented a new 500-point scoring scale instead of the previous 200-point scale, fundamentally changing how incremental scoring affects tournament outcomes

    high · Raymond Davidson explicitly states: 'they're using a new 500-point scale at Indus' and explains how it changes strategic value of every score earned

  • ?

    product_concern: Beat the Clock machines at INDISC exhibited phantom tilt behavior affecting multiple players consecutively, requiring game removal from competition

    high · Raymond describes experiencing phantom tilts along with at least 3-4 other players, notes they had 'trouble with it tilting phantomly before' and thought they fixed it

  • ?

    machine_intel: Multiple machines at INDISC showed unusual conditions or setup variations: Sinbad on 5-ball (instead of standard 3-ball), Scared Stiff coffin extender on hard difficulty, Indy 500 ROM issue, Viking spinner reset failure

    high · Detailed descriptions of each machine's specific behavior and non-standard configurations

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Tournament card format creates strategic tension between game selection (waiting for forgiving games vs playing available fast games), ticket salvage strategies, and risk management

    high · Raymond's extended discussion of picking forgiving games, avoiding 'dead money' tickets, and pivot strategies when early games fail

  • ?

    competitive_signal: The new 500-point scale at INDISC increases the relative importance of every incremental score, creating stronger differentiation between player skill levels than the previous 200-point scale

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.119

0:00
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.
0:30
Hello, hello, hello, welcome. Welcome back after a bit of a hiatus to Do or Die, pinball podcast. I am at Indisc as we speak, taking a little break in the hotel room. I thought it'd be a perfect time to record a podcast or, you know, part of a podcast. It might help me get these actually done if I just do them as they're happening. Less work to do later. So I figured I'd start with Classics 1 and go through the games I played to qualify. And, well, I only put in one card because that was pretty much all there was time to do, unless I wanted to, you know, get up at 10 a.m., which I like to sleep in on my vacations. So I got in about 1 p.m., started playing Classics games, realized, oh, there's eight people on every game. Looks like I'm going to have to choose wisely because I might not get a second card. And I was right. basically I finished my fourth game and there was only about 45 minutes or an hour left of qualifying which would not have been enough time for a second card so yeah lines were long but my advice my overall advice for indisc is you gotta wait out the lines don't be tempted by you know the 8 ball deluxe in the main bank or whatever Pick the games that you think are safe-ish, you know, ones that give you the most forgiveness, right? Because in a card format, you need to be able to play the games because you don't get another chance, right? I mean, unless you redo your whole ticket. So you need the games that will punish you the least for missing shots, let you recover, let you showcase your skills, and then the rest will just happen naturally if you pick games that, you know, fit that description. It's tempting to pick the fast players with short lines, but unless you have a really good reason or know something about that game or have played that specific copy enough times to really have a grasp on it, my advice is stay away from the temptations of qualifying.

“I was like, man, I wish I could just do that on every game, just razor focus on a score and just get it... if you can just get in that state of mind of, this is a free roll. It doesn't matter.”

Raymond Davidson @ ~0:52:00 — Reflects on mental game and the psychological advantage of playing with low stakes or no pressure

  • “Your goal is about six to eight million is your goal on Scared Stiff. Maybe a little bit higher as the day goes on and people figure out how to play it.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~1:05:30 — Establishes baseline expectations for competitive Scared Stiff scoring in the early stages of a tournament

  • “Don't think about it too hard because you can't dwell on it. You have to just hit the shot. Remember what it felt like when you hit that ramp earlier.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~1:22:00 — Describes the balance between conscious technique and muscle memory in clutch shot-making

  • “Indy 500... if you don't start multiball, you get no points and the multiball is not easy to start. I might play Indy 500 on a busted run or a semi-busted run, but I don't know if I'll play it in a serious run.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~0:57:00 — Assessment of Indy 500's feast-or-famine nature making it risky for serious tournament play

    • Jungle Queen
    game
    OXOgame
    Black Rosegame
    Dinergame
    Indy 500game
    Jurassic Parkgame
    Beat the Clockgame
    Vikinggame
    Scared Stiffgame
    Dialed In!game

    high · Raymond explains how identical scores (47M vs 15M on JP) both ranked zero under old scale but now both contribute to ranking, rewarding incremental progress

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Indy 500 exhibits feast-or-famine scoring dynamics where not starting multiball yields minimal points, making it risky for serious qualifying play but acceptable for casual/busted tickets

    high · Raymond's assessment that Indy 500 is unreliable for serious play due to difficulty starting multiball and near-zero points without it

  • ?

    operational_signal: Multiple machines experienced downtime and required repair during INDISC qualifying (Jungle Queen, Beat the Clock, Scared Stiff initially), indicating venue maintenance challenges

    high · Raymond noting Jungle Queen was 'down for a while' and 'they got it back up and running', Beat the Clock being pulled mid-tournament

  • ?

    community_signal: Raymond observes that baseline competitive scores improve as the tournament day progresses and players learn game strategies (e.g., Scared Stiff target score increasing from 6-8M to potentially higher)

    medium · Statement: 'Maybe a little bit higher as the day goes on and people figure out how to play it' regarding Scared Stiff expectations

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Tournament organizers made deliberate setup choices to balance game difficulty (5-ball Sinbad, ball saver on Dialed In, hard coffin extender on Scared Stiff) affecting player experience

    medium · Multiple references to specific machine configurations chosen by organizers and their impact on player strategy

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Card-format qualifying creates complex decision trees: game selection timing, risk tolerance, ticket salvage strategies, and psychological state management all factor into competitive success

    high · Raymond's extensive strategic discussion covering game selection, bounty hunting on busted tickets, focus/mental state, and adaptive technique

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Individual machine copies show significant variance in shot difficulty, flipper strength, and playability, requiring players to adapt techniques between seemingly identical machines

    high · Raymond's experiences on Wizard (flipper strength surprising him, requiring pass type adjustment), Sinbad (finding plunge bounce patterns), Diner (couldn't control shots despite loving the game normally)

  • $

    market_signal: INDISC Classics division experienced high participant density with 8+ person lines on every game during qualifying, creating bottleneck for card-based play

    high · Raymond noting 'there's eight people on every game' and that he could only fit in one qualifying card before running out of time

    • 3:11
    So I basically followed that advice for my four games that I picked. I started off with Wizard, the classic EM that tournament players love this game just because it's pretty controllable. You get to use moves like tap passes and alley passes, and it rewards shot making, shooting that left orbit as many times as you can, basically. And then also going for double bonus when it's appropriate. So I started with that game, and I had to wait probably 45 minutes to play it. But when I finally got to play it, I started off with the old full plunge, because in Wizard, half your score comes from the plunge, so make sure you have a strategy for the plunge. And I started off with a full plunge, and it sort of bobbled around and, like, eventually got in there, but it did not look consistent at all. So the next ball I adjusted and basically just picked a spot on the rail that was like a little bit less than full plunge. And it went like perfectly bounce, bounce in the hole. So I locked that in, remember that plunge, did that the rest of the balls. And so that gave me, you know, basically half my score just from plunging. But ball one and two I drained the same exact way, which is a little uncharacteristic of me. One of my advice tips I like to give players is learn from each missed shot. You know, don't miss the shot the same way twice, right? Be early, then be late. Don't be early twice in a row. Don't be late twice in a row. So what happened was on Wizard, I was trying to alley pass from left to right, which is very common on that game because you're trying to shoot it up the left orbit, and there's nothing to shoot with the left flipper, really. and my alley pass, basically I would flip too early and nail the slingshot and it would go down the middle faster than I could react. So I basically just killed myself two balls just doing a bad alley pass. But on ball three, I was like, okay, I'm not draining like that anymore. I gotta do something different. So on ball three, I tried a tap passing and it worked. It worked perfectly the first time, pretty good the second time. I had a couple that weren't as smooth, but none of them ended in catastrophe like the alley pass did. So sometimes you just got to adjust your technique if it's not working for a particular game. Normally I love alley passing on there, but it was so fast. I think the flipper was really strong, so it caught me off guard. And so I switched to the tap pass.
    5:52
    I managed to squeak out 96,000, which, you know, not a huge score. But I got enough shots in, and I made my skill shot every ball, that I got just enough for a medium, let's see, how many points is it worth? It's ranked 34th right now as of 5.15 p.m. with 15 minutes to go in qualifying.
    6:16
    So, no, not too bad. It's actually the worst game on my card. So that's kind of disheartening, actually. Starting with a game that's, like, you're not excited for the score. But it's better than starting with a zero. If you start with a zero, you're dead money, especially in classics. Because, and when I say a zero, I don't mean a literal zero. I mean basically a house game, right? Like if I got 40,000 on Wizard, pretty much everyone can beat 40,000. If you get one of those as your first game and a ticket, it's pretty tough. Basically what you do in that case is then you forget everything I just said about picking the games you like and waiting in the long lines. and you just play all the fast throwaway games just for fun, just to try them out because someone might pick them against you in finals. You might end up liking one. You might figure something out.
    7:08
    Maybe play one game that you're interested in for your next ticket. But basically get that ticket done as fast as you can because it's not qualifying you in classics when you only have four tickets. It might qualify you in open to have one horrible game out of five. But in four-game tickets, you can't really afford a really bad game. So that was enough to let me keep playing. And so I next picked Black Pyramid, which is a solid state where you just shoot the orbits over and over until you can't shoot the orbits anymore. And you just keep doing that. And I saw Jason Werdrick put up like 2 million or some absurd score. So I'm waiting, waiting, waiting. I finally get my turn, and ball one, it just does a weird... I think it was probably my fault, because it was down the middle drain that I just kind of fumbled a little bit. And then ball two, I don't really remember what happened, but I think what happened was I was doing too many dead passes, and on that black pyramid, because the slingshots were so sensitive, dead passes were actually more dangerous than just flipping it away because it would dead pass off one flip or go up, roll up a slingshot, and then boom, you're in the slings in the out lane. And so on ball three, I adjusted and I did a lot more live catching, a lot more catching, and that served me well. I managed to make about six orbit shots, basically three on the right to get my bonus multiplier to 5x and then two or three on the left to give me some black pyramid letters and drained pretty fast, but I managed to get 619,000. pretty much all in ball three with just a few shots. Just very well-controlled shots, and I salvaged that because that game was basically dead, but I managed to escape with something.
    9:02
    And so the ticket was still alive. That was rank 26. So I've got two very medium scores going into game three.
    9:12
    And for game three, I normally would never, ever pick Sinbad because it's so deadly, right? It's got those quadruple flippers, it's got those big outlanes, and you just have no safety. Every shot is a deadly drop target. However, they had it set on 5-ball here, which I thought was wonderful. I love that. I wish every tournament had Sinbad on 5-ball. Because it means you get to play without the fear of the house ball, right? If you get a house ball out of 5, that's only 20% of your game. If you get a house ball out of 3, you know, 33% of your game. So played Sinbad had some medium balls 1 through 4 nothing great I never got above two or three X on those But I noticed on Sinbad sometimes you have to find out if it a Sinbad where it kills you to go down the left or it rewards you when you go down the left. And when I say that, I mean when you plunge, the ball can kind of teeter around the in lanes up top, and it can sometimes roll down the left side. On some Sinbads, it rolls down the left side. it hits a post and goes right over into the right out lane. But on others, like this one, it perfectly bounces to a nice controlled catch on the upper right flipper. So trying to figure out how to get that plunge because it was the safest plunge because it guaranteed ball and flipper.
    10:36
    And if you miss the plunge, you might get the 5,000 lane, which is kind of nice. Anyway, Sinbad, number one priority on that game, hit that 2x target. Basically, you can backhand it from the upper left flipper, and you can forehand it from the right flippers, and that should be your first shot of the game.
    10:59
    And once you hit that, then you go for the 2x targets, and then the 3x targets, and then the 4x targets. And this Sinbad was just super fast. Like, you would flip and the ball would just be gone if you blinked. And that's actually how a lot of my other balls drained, right? I would hit a 2x target, and it would just go straight down the middle. And, you know, you just got to accept that on Sinbad. That's why I was so happy that it was five balls, is because, you know, I did exactly what I was supposed to do. I hit the target, and it killed me. But, you know, that's just how it is. So ball five, finally, none of the targets killed me. I was able to go all the way to 5x, kept the party going, ended up with $257,000 for rank number 11. so now I've got three games under my belt two very middling games but not horrible games you know good games and one above average game but not like a GC game so that's a good place to be I just need another middling game or above average game to to qualify me but all my I picked my three favorites those were the three in the bank that I felt gave me the most chances and you know played to my skills. And so I was like really stuck on what to play next because Jungle Queen was taken out and that was the best five ball EM that you could play there. They had a surfer, which normally I would love surfer, but everyone was getting killed by it. It was tilting through with a, with a tap, like you tilt to the next, you'd kill two of your balls with one flip. Um, and that just scared me to death. So I, I didn't want anything to do with that surfer. Um, especially cause I didn't know the skill shot. And if you know the skill shot, then you can get a lot of points, but that, I steered clear of that. Um, so I actually, because I just needed like a medium score, I really wanted to pick a five ball game because, you know, more chances, right? Um, I didn't want to pick like flash, uh, because that game, you know, can be over in a flash, right? It's, it's super three ball solid States. I was staying away from three ball, uh, like frontier. No, no, thank you. I want as many balls as possible, because I don't need to blow it up. I don't need super control. Like, Flash, if I needed a first place score, Flash is a great game for it, because that plays to my strengths of, you know, hitting the drop targets twice, lighting the spinner and ripping the spinner and blowing it up. But if anything goes wrong in Flash, you get nothing. So I didn't want to do that. I was just looking for a middling game. So Jungle Queen had just started working again. It was down for a while, and they got it back up and running.
    13:42
    But before I was in Jungle Queen's line, I actually queued up for this game I'd never heard of called OXO. No clue what to do on it. But it was a five-ball EM with full-length flippers, and I figured I could just bat the ball around and get some points.
    14:01
    It looked like the longest playing games Of all the games left, that looked like the one that was the most forgiving. So I queued up for OXO. Luckily, Jungle Queen got fixed while I was in line, and I jumped on over to Jungle Queen.
    14:16
    And on that game, I basically just played C-ball, hit ball, because even outleaning gives you 5K on that game. And throwing the ball up top, there's like a 50% chance that you're going to get it in the hole or get some bonus. And then, of course, hitting the monkeys gives you bonus. and because it's one of those EMs with a big gap in the middle, if you try to get too cute with those flippers, you can kind of drain yourself. So I was basically, I mean, I was doing dead passes and drop catches, but mostly it was just see ball, hit ball, throw the ball back up top, throw the ball up top, just give me some points somehow, some way, don't think about it too hard. And I was able to get enough hole shots to get 5K, 5K, 5K. That game's kind of unbalanced, honestly, because the monkeys and the bonus only go up to like 10,000, 15,000, but every shot to a hole is 5K, always. It's kind of weird. Like, I would have liked it if you had to light the holes, like if hitting the drop targets would light the hole for 5K. I think that would be a much more interesting game.
    15:21
    And also the Outlands giving you 5K is kind of weird. But anyway, I managed to get 96,000, which was above average. It's tied with my Sinbad rank 10 right now. And so I'm in Classics finals.
    15:35
    Hooray! That went pretty well. So now I get to play in finals. I don't think there's any buys or anything. And there's eight groups of four. So depending on where I end up, I could either be in a position where I get to pick a game, but I'm the last to pick a game because I'm like eighth. So I get the eighth pick of game, which is going to suck. or if I get like in a different group I'd almost rather be in a different group that someone else drives the bus as long as the person driving the bus picks games I like either way I don't have too much control of my destiny but I'm in so I will make hopefully make it count so that was my classics run let's see going on over to the open I guess I'll just go through what I was thinking with that so when I first walked in Thursday night first game I played of the whole yeah, first open game I played was Black Rose because I love Black Rose I don't know if anybody didn't know that but have a Black Rose first pinball machine I ever got love that game, know that game, inside and out super fun game and I got the high score on it my first game it was like 137 million it's not the high score anymore people have figured it out but so that was a great way to start my Open and then I went to Diner and I usually love Diner but this one it just ate me alive it was like every ball squirreled out the right out lane and I got like 1.5 million and that was like super disheartening after getting the top score on Black Rose But I learned that I don't think I'm going to be picking that diner because I couldn't handle the... The shots were not quite where I wanted them, and you can just get pretty housed out of the pops. But it's weird because I usually love diner, but I just could not get a handle on this one. I ended up playing it again later on a busted ticket and got $5 million. So I can play the Diner, but man, I could not play it that first time.
    18:03
    But, you know, that's the way it goes for these ticket formats. So I had to shake that off, and then I played Indy 500, which I love Indy 500.
    18:12
    And that's just all about left orbit lock combo all day. I was able to do that pretty successfully. And you get a combo for doing that, and then it also advances you towards multiball. Left orbit, side shot, turbo combo. And I had this weird thing happen. I think it might have been related to the Sorin ROM, but maybe not. Where I got in a multiball, and when I was done with multiball, I was down to one ball, but it still had jackpots lit. It still thought there was a ball locked in the turbo. And I was still in multiball, even with one ball. So I had to raise my hand, ask Jim Belsito what to do. He said, drain it, let's see what happens. I drained it, and it ended my ball. So it went from multi-ball to end of ball bonus. So I got a compensation ball, but I didn't do anything with the compensation ball. But I ended up with 725 million, which is plenty of points on Indy 500. You're usually looking just around, like, 300 million is, like, a pretty good score. So, you know, I got GC, you know, pretty, really good score, and then Diner. So next I went to Jurassic Park.
    19:21
    I love Jurassic Park. I have one at home, play it all the time. but I could not find the shots on this one, and I gotta admit, I deviated from what my usual strategy was. My usual strategy is focus entirely on capturing your first dino.
    19:40
    You know hit those trap targets hit the rescue shots because rescues give you points build your rescue bonus Capturing the dino gives you points and then lights the control room control room mode is worth it an easy way to get a lot of points But I got distracted by that stupid O shot I was trying so hard to spell chaos because I had gotten the first three letters, and I just basically flailed around trying to hit the O and couldn't get anything going, and then ball three I was like, okay, alright, I need to go back to what I was supposed to do. And so on ball three, I managed to get some points, basically stopped going for the O and did my strategy that I wanted to do, which is just capture a dino. And I ended up getting 47 million, which, you know, is not really what you want on Jurassic Park, but it could have been worse. It could have been a 15 million or 3 million.
    20:33
    But anyway, that's not a good score anyway. So it's, oh, I should mention they're using a new 500-point scale at Indus So it's really strange, but 47 million on Jurassic Park is actually way better than 15 million, as weird as that sounds. Before, with a 200-point scale, they would both be zero by the end of the tournament. But now, every point you get is helpful. And similarly, every point you don't get hurts you a lot. So that diner that I got hurt me a lot, because pretty much anyone can get 1.4 million just from skill shots, which is basically what I did. Um, Jurassic Park, not everyone's going to get 47 million, you know, um, that actually took some shot making. So it's kind of a cool format because it really rewards, um, incremental, uh, progress. Um, just getting some points on the board, but you still need to, you know, you need to get some good games in there too. Uh, the 47 million Jurassic Park, I wouldn't have been worried about if I didn't also have the 1.4 million diner. but anyway so after that um i played uh beat the clock beat the clock was like actually i think i played beat the clock second um and i got like a million on it uh i had like a super jackpot lid of like 3x 200k or something but blew it of course uh beat the clock is really fun you have to go for those stop targets to stop the clock and you can rotate those with the right flipper and then And basically, you flail around, like literally just flail. Like, don't take time thinking, because the game's timed. So just hit drop targets, hit orbits, hit stop targets, hit everything. You can even drain on purpose if you want to plunge extra times. But once the time runs out, or once the time starts looking like it's about to run out, you've got to start cashing in that bonus on that upper scoop. and then the game just switches from frenzy flail to focus and only shoot the bonus collect. Turns out the guy in front of me and then the guy after me and myself all experienced a complete phantom tilt.
    22:47
    And, you know, one person getting it's like, okay, that's kind of weird. Two people getting it's like, okay, they should probably check on that. But three people and then I think four and so on, they had to pull the game because the game would just tilt completely randomly, like nothing to do with the Switch closing, just some software in the game, something wired backwards, who knows. I guess they were having trouble with it tilting phantomly before, and they thought they fixed it, but it looks like it didn't quite fix all the way. So they ended up pulling Beat the Clock out, so I had to play a substitution game. and it's funny because my substitution game really doesn't matter because this ticket's broken anyway because Diner and Jurassic Park were no good. So for my substitution game, I go for Viking because Viking has a bounty. If you get two million points, you get 50 bucks. And I was like, all right, I'm going to go try to get two million on Viking. And I just went over there and I just, well, I found out that the spinner basically never reset. it took forever. So you, normally on Viking, you shoot the spinner, it starts at 10 points of spin, then goes up to 100 points of spin, then goes up to 1,000, and then times out and goes back to 10. But this one stayed at 1,000 forever, it seemed like. So it was just spinner all day with the left flipper, and then of course bonus X with the right flipper. And then once you get your bonus X to five, and you've maxed out your bonus, then you start shooting the right scoop, or the right orbit, which feeds to the upper scoop, and you collected your multiplied bonus. So, you know, once you get your bonus up max, it's like 400k over and over again. And so 2 million was totally doable. And I basically had nothing to lose. It wasn't, you know, it was just for fun. And so I was playing like I was having fun. I was loose. I was shaking it as much as I could. I did a couple of outlane saves, bouncing off the post, basically just kind of like was razor focused on that 2 million, and I managed to get 2,093,230. It was so great. I just like, I was like, man, I wish I could just do that on every game, just razor focus on a score and just get it. Like, oh man, that was really cool. And it just, yeah, I guess focus really matters and the ability where it didn't matter. Like if I didn't get two million, it literally didn't matter at all. It was just a free roll. So if you can just get in that state of mind of, this is a free roll. It doesn't matter. I just, I, you know, but of course, you can't trick yourself when it does matter. But if you can, or at least try to, it can be helpful.
    25:35
    So that was my first entry. It was enough to technically qualify me, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted. So I started another entry, this time playing Scared Stiff first, because Scared Stiff was actually down the first day, but they got it working the second day. And I love Scared Stiff because it's just all about shot making. You just loop the ramp over and over again, start multi-ball, rinse, repeat. and it was a little scary. I started off, you know, nothing after two balls, missing the spider every time.
    26:13
    It's crucial to get that spider, by the way. If you play coffin multiball without getting the coffin extender from the spider, you're just, you're sacrificing so much equity. Like, your EV is, like, cutting a fourth. Like, it's so bad. So I purposely won't start Coffin Multiball unless I have the Extender. The other thing about the Extender was, on this one it was set to hard, so you had to shoot two ramp shots to light lock. And if you spin the spider and land on the coffin, it will actually spot you both those ramp shots. So it instantly lit lock if you could do that. So it actually was a two-for-one special. So always be short plunging, trying to get in that spider hole. Shoot the right ramp to relight the spider hole if it's not lit. and basically none of that stuff happened on balls one or two. Ball three I finally was able to make some shots and got like eight million, which was, you know, that was fine. That's what your goal is. Your goal is about six to eight million is your goal on Scared Stiff. Maybe a little bit higher as the day goes on and people figure out how to play it. then I went back to my Indy 500 that I loved so much and I got destroyed by it I got like 20 million, it was really bad basically never started multiball and that game after I did that I was like, okay, I don't think I can play this game in a serious ticket because it's feast or famine if you don't start multiball, you get no points and the multiball is not easy to start you gotta shoot the loop and then the lock and that lock shot's tricky.
    27:51
    And it was really slippery too. It was really fast and slippery and hard to control. I might play in D500 on a busted run or a semi-busted run, but I don't know if I'll play it in a serious run.
    28:05
    Then I went back to Diner, tried to get the Dine Time bounty. There was bounties on all the games, so if you did a certain thing, you would get $50. The bounty on Diner is try to get Dine Time up to $12 million and then cash it in. I did not do that. I got like 5 million. I just kind of, I didn't really do much. I just stirred the cup, flailed around, and that was it.
    28:28
    The diner had a special code where every time you played multi-ball, your diner letters reset back to zero. So you actually wanted to spin the cup, which was worth a million points or so.
    28:41
    So diner literally was just ramps. Can you hit them? right ramp five times, left lock shot. Or left ramp as many times, getting cash registered, bonus, and that sort of thing. The answer for me was no, I could not hit them.
    29:01
    But if you can hit those, that diner, you could play that really well. So anyway, that was that, and then I went over to Viking.
    29:12
    Oh wait, no, I didn't go over to Viking. That was a different ticket. Yeah, I got a bunch of tickets here. I don't know how long I want to spend on all these tickets.
    29:23
    Let's see. We'll get to the good ticket. The ticket that so far is my best ticket. That ticket started with Dialed In. I got which basically consisted of starting a mode It was nice they had Ball Saver on so you could full plunge and hit the QED guy to light your mode and not worry about an instant drain So I always full plunged and did that
    29:53
    And then I started a mode. Then I think I failed out of the mode and drained. But then the next ball, I started another mode, got it going with multi-ball. My strategy there was I short plunged to get the upper flipper because the lock was set on hard. so you could only lock with the upper flipper. But the upper flipper was super strong. I was super happy about it. You could hit that side ramp no problem. And so short plunge, you get the lock, hit both flippers to cancel the lock, and then start a mode, then start multiball. And I basically started multiball with Alien Invasion and rode that to 500,000 points, basically. Just played the multiball a long time. I think I beat Alien Invasion. I think I got a sim card. I just did the whole dialed-in thing.
    30:44
    Then I think when that was done, I had Big Bang lit, and I think I just cashed that in for 50K. In the qualifying format, you definitely should just cash in your Big Bangs whenever they're lit because you do not want to end a game without leaving 50K on the table because that could be like three – that could be a lot of ranking positions. That could be like ten points that you're giving up or more. So I made sure to get those even if they were just in single-ball play. so that was game one game two I went back to Black Rose and Black Rose I struggled a bit I played like five multiballs that did nothing and then eventually on one of the multiballs I played it for a little bit and then eventually I had like 19 million basically just struggling like the longest 19 million ever and I had a ship ready to go I sunk the ship for 20 million so that got me up to 40 million, and then that lit the special for 40 million.
    31:45
    And so I shot the special, got the 40 million, and drained, and my score was 80 million. So 60 million came from that last couple of shots with the ship.
    31:56
    So that was a weird game. It went from being like totally dire to boom, points. So I'm a little worried that if other people figure out the boom points strategy on that game, it might fall down a bit, but somehow 80 million is in 9th place right now. I think people just maybe don't like Black Rose or aren't playing it, but that is fine with me. So then after the 80 million Black Rose, went to Scared Stiff.
    32:24
    And it was another typical ball 2 nothing, ball 1 nothing, ball 3 do or die. And man, it was so scary. I had to ball three, I short plunge, hit the coffin after missing it on balls one and two from the spider.
    32:44
    So spider lights lock, hit the lock shot. Now I just have to short plunge, shoot the ramp two times, shoot the lock shot, and I managed to do it. It was so scary. I was like, oh my god, I had no points, and my ticket was in absolute peril. but I managed to just remember like okay the ramp's a little bit late or like a little bit earlier than you think just you know make those little micro adjustments but you can't think about them too hard if you think about the mic the adjustments too hard you're gonna brick them so you have to just at some point when you're aiming you have to just remember what it felt like the last time that you made the shot I think that's like the best advice I can think of that helped me get back in the zone of hitting that ramp. It's just kind of think back. Like, how did it feel when you hit that ramp earlier? Was it like a little bit late? Was it a little bit early? But don't think about it too hard because, you know, you can't dwell on it. You have to just hit the shot. Anyway, started multiball, rode that party. I think I started maybe with double trouble too.
    33:53
    And I got like a ton of jackpots. I ended up getting like up to 12 or 14 million and then I went into the Scared Stiff mode, which I probably shouldn't have done. You probably don't want to actually do the Scared Stiff mode, because it locks you out after, like, you can't do anything until you finish Scared Stiff. So the reason I ended up getting Scared Stiff was because I wanted to play Crate, because I only needed, like, one more hit on Crate, and I had, like, 12 million points, and I wanted to keep getting points. So I played Crate, got that up to about 15 million or so, So, started scared stiff, got about halfway through it, and then eventually the kick of death sent it to the right out lane. But I ended up with 18 million, and I was super happy about that. That was a solid, solid game. And so, now I'm going to play Radical, and Radical, I was kicking its butt. Like, every other time I played it, I got like 10 million. Like, no problem. Like, it was nothing. And of course, when I need it the most, ball one, pretty much instant drain. Ball two, got some stuff going, got a ball locked, you know, I was doing pretty good. And then out lane. Ball three, I managed to pick up some millions. You know, always go, the first thing you should do on Radical is go for that right orbit and then left flipper ramp million.
    35:17
    And so I did that a couple times. Got the snake pit million. so I got about 5 million and I have a million shot lit on the ramp again and I only need one more letter for radical and I shoot the right orbit and it whizzes around so fast I miss it with the upper flipper and it goes straight down the middle and I'm just like heartbroken because my 5 million could have been 10 million easy if I would have just made that shot, started multi-ball 4 million jackpot But instead I got 5 million, which somehow is rank 46, which is worse than I thought it would be. I thought 5 million would be, like, respectable. But apparently everyone can get 5 million on Radical. But, you know, because I got those millions when I, you know, deliberately and didn't just focus on Radical letters, at least I had 5 million. I didn't have, like, 2 million. So the ticket was still alive, just barely, because I had three solid scores and then a medium to low score. So my last game I play, class of 1812, and the only reason I did was because the other couple times I played it for fun, I didn't have any problem with it. I was able to shoot the ramp, get millions, and so I was like, all right, here we go, let's do it. and the secret strategy for 18-12, by the way,
    36:46
    is when you get multiball, the left ramp is worth a million during multiball, but it's also worth a million after multiball as long as you don't hit any major switch. So, I mean, I didn't drain intentionally out of multiball, but you could if you really wanted to and you were confident, but basically I always had a ball trapped in multi-ball and then as soon as the other ball drained that million ramp is just there for you so you just focus on that million ramp and as long as you don't hit anything else you can just keep getting those millions in single ball play and so you shoot the ramp then you hold up the flipper you try to pass it over or you do like a post catch you know you basically just don't shoot any other shot just try to hit that million and yeah, I managed to do that pretty well. And then I also hit some of those targets on the side that light for millions occasionally, and then eventually lit another lock by completing the left bank twice, lights lock. And yeah, I ended up getting 21 million just from grinding out Class of 1812. So that was it. I sealed my... I'm guaranteed to play on Sunday, which is great. I might do more tickets try to get higher rank higher qualifying that radical really bummed me out because if that was 10 million I think I would have been solid double buy maybe material but either way I'm playing on Sunday so that's good but I'm definitely going to do more entries because last year I actually learned from experience you really want to be high seed because last year I got I was in a group and someone was picking all sorts of crazy games against me and I just crumbled and it eliminated me. So I'm going to try to be, you know, top seed is, not top seed, but improving your seed is very important in this format if you want to win the tournament because you just do so much better on games that you know and that you're comfortable with.
    38:55
    So that's going to be my goal for the rest of the day is just maybe put in another ticket. Oh, shoot, I've got to get to Classics finals. That's probably starting in, like, 15 minutes.
    39:07
    All right, that's it for now. We'll be back with more. And remember, do, don't die. We'll see you next time.