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The Ray Rae Show, Episode 4: Pincinatti & some Frosty Flippers!

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Dec 26, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Rachel & Raymond recap Pinsonati tournament and Frosty Flippers series, discussing wins, strategy, and venue culture.

Summary

Rachel Ristel and Raymond Davidson discuss their experiences at Pinsonati (Cincinnati regional tournament) and the Frosty Flippers series at District 82 (Wisconsin). Rachel won the Pinsonati strikes tournament and gauntlet event but narrowly missed qualifying for match play finals; Raymond opted out of the first Frosty Flippers tournament due to fatigue and frustration. The episode covers tournament formats, game strategy discussions, and community dynamics around venue atmosphere (lights on/off debate).

Key Claims

  • Pinsonati had a unique collection of Gottlieb System 80B games in the tournament bank

    high confidence · Rachel describing the Pinsonati event

  • Rachel won the Pinsonati strikes tournament (Friday) and gauntlet tournament (Sunday)

    high confidence · Rachel recounting her tournament results

  • A major power outage occurred at the Pinsonati venue on Saturday for approximately six hours

    high confidence · Rachel describing the Saturday power outage and its impact on tournament scheduling

  • The Frosty Flippers Friday pre-tournament had 114 players, significantly higher than the typical 20-40 person turnout for such events

    high confidence · Rachel noting the unusually high attendance for the Friday night three-strike knockout

  • The first Frosty Flippers tournament used incorrect scoring (7-5-3-1 instead of 3-2-1-0), requiring the point target to be adjusted from 30 to 70

    high confidence · Rachel explaining the scoring error and correction at District 82

  • Rachel finished 16th place in the first Frosty Flippers tournament with 58 points after a comeback from two consecutive fourth-place finishes

    high confidence · Rachel detailing her tournament results and tiebreaker position

  • Alberto Santana won the first Frosty Flippers tournament, with Rodney Minch second, Carlos de la Serda third, and Jason Werdrick fourth

    high confidence · Rachel announcing the final results

  • The lights-on/lights-off vote at District 82 was 40 in favor of lights on and 32 in favor of lights off, out of 72 total voters from 119 weekend participants

    high confidence · Rachel discussing the controversial venue lighting poll

Notable Quotes

  • “It was kind of cool because, you know, you had to figure out how to play it and see what you could do on them.”

    Rachel Ristel @ ~5:20 — Rachel describing her experience playing unfamiliar Gottlieb System 80B games at Pinsonati, highlighting the challenge and appeal of learning obscure machines

  • “And I screamed and yelled when I won the game. I can't repeat what I said because it was quite a few curse words, but it was funny because I was so excited.”

    Rachel Ristel @ ~30:15 — Rachel's emotional reaction to winning BMX at the District 82 tournament, illustrating the intensity of competitive pinball play

  • “You're still in it. Go for it. You can rebound with the first? No problem.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~35:00 — Raymond providing encouragement to Rachel during a difficult tournament stretch, highlighting the supportive dynamics between the co-hosts

  • “If you were playing against players who did well in the tournament, it assumes that you were playing against better players than someone who was playing against people who didn't finish as well.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~45:30 — Raymond explaining strength-of-schedule tiebreaker logic, demonstrating the technical complexity of tournament formats

  • “I am not having fun. I'm not fun to be around. I really just want to go back to the hotel room and sleep.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~50:45 — Raymond acknowledging burnout during the tournament and choosing self-care, modeling emotional awareness in competitive gaming

  • “District 82 felt like a much more warm and welcoming environment instead of like this dingy place... everybody's attitude was better and people were like more uplifted with the lights on.”

    Rachel Ristel @ ~65:30 — Rachel reflecting on how venue lighting affects the psychological atmosphere and player mood, raising important considerations for tournament hosting

Entities

Rachel RistelpersonRaymond DavidsonpersonEric ThorinpersonJen RuperpersonTim LeepersonAlberto SantanapersonRodney MinchpersonCarlos de la SerdapersonJason WerdrickpersonJohn Delzoppoperson

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinsonati attendance and structure; power outage impact on women's finals streaming

    high · Rachel details Pinsonati had unusual power outage on Saturday affecting scheduling; women's finals moved to Sunday and streamed as result

  • ?

    event_signal: Frosty Flippers featured experimental tournament formats including triple-up match play with mixed game eras

    high · Rachel describes three-game banks mixing old, mid, and modern games; series point accumulation format across multiple tournaments

  • ?

    venue_signal: District 82 venue lighting debate affecting player mood and performance perception

    high · Close vote (40-32 out of 72 voters) on lights on/off; Rachel notes psychological impact on venue warmth and ball visibility during certain game modes

  • ?

    community_signal: Unusually high pre-tournament attendance at District 82 Friday event

    high · 114 players attended Friday three-strike knockout, compared to typical 20-40 person turnout

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Rachel's strong performance at Pinsonati and Frosty Flippers; comeback victories after early setbacks

    high · Rachel won strikes and gauntlet at Pinsonati; won five consecutive games at District 82 after two fourth-place finishes

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Tournament organizers experimenting with mixed-era game banks to balance player strengths and accessibility

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.216

0:00
It's Raymond and Rachel, Rachel and Raymond, tournament pinball is what they really know. It's Rachel and Raymond, Raymond and Rachel, giving all of the info for the travels we go. It's like free college and the sharing the knowledge, so if you don't listen, you won't know. It's the Ray Ray Show.
0:23
Hello friends, welcome to the Ray Ray Show, episode 3. I'm Rachel Ristel along here with my pal Raymond Davidson. Welcome to the show. We are here to talk and chit chat about tournament or competitive pinball play. In this episode, we're going to dial in on the Frosty Flippers series that took place at District 82 that took place in mid-December. How you doing, Raymond? I'm doing all right. Me too. That was a fun weekend. It was called the Frosty Flippers because in Wisconsin it can be, as you can imagine, pretty chilling, pretty frosty. And that weekend actually wasn't too bad. I don't even think there was much snow on the ground, so we lucked out that way. I know some people had to come up through a little bit of a blizzard down in the Chicago area maybe to make it there, but it wasn't too frosty at District 82. No. Minus some of the fans that were on, maybe. yeah but uh you need the fans in there to keep uh to keep keep everybody else yeah it's amazing how much it warms up later on yes absolutely you take people are taking off their sweater taking off their hats uh especially the folks from the warmer states you bet before we jump in and talking about the tournaments of the frosty flippers series in between you went to pincenatti so i'd like to see if you've got maybe a little recap about pincenatti you could give us and what that was like for you attending that regional show. Yeah, so first time in Cincinnati area. Wanted to check out this show because it looked interesting, and it was, you know, the tickets went on sale in July. So this July, make sure to keep an eye on that if you're interested. And the unique aspect of this tournament was that there are a ton of Gottlieb, like, System ADB games. So very weird collection. Very weird games from the tournament bank. So I got to play a bunch of games I had never played and sometimes never even seen or heard of. Like I'd played Deadly Weapon for the first time, Big House, like just all these bizarre ones. But it was kind of cool because, you know, you had to figure out how to play it and see what you could do on them. And it went pretty well. So the first tournament, it was kind of like a Frosty Flipper series. There was three tournaments, a strikes tournament, and then a match play tournament, and then a gauntlet tournament. And the strikes tournament, I remember starting off kind of shaky, but then I kind of found my groove, and I was able to basically survive till the end. and I had a little help from, there was, I think it was like me, Mike Dimas, and John Delzoppo in the final three, and it was big game. And I unfortunately didn't quite get that many points, but luckily I had enough strikes built up, so I was able to take the hits. And then it was me and John, and so we were just head-to-head, and I had to beat him twice. And I got so fortunate that they drew Dirty Harry, and I got to be player one on it. So if you don't know, playing Dirty Harry, the flippers can get a little soft after a while. Okay. And the upper side ramp is, like, such an important shot that once you play it for a while, it's really hard to make. And so I got to go first, and I put up, like, a billion on ball one because the shot was there. I was hitting it. Everything was great. And John, to his credit, put up like 500, 600 million. But I didn't even have a good ball two or three. And that side flipper was getting weak. So I was able to hold strong with that. So then it just came down to me and him on fast draw, which is a EM. I think you've probably played it before. Yep. It's got those holes at the top. And we basically matched each other like every ball. Like whenever I had a good ball, he had a good ball. Whenever I had a bad ball, he had a bad ball. And it all came down to ball five, and I played a little bit longer on my ball five. It was really close. And all this is you can watch on STDM Pinball. Straight down the middle, STDM Pinball on Twitch. And probably, I think, if it's not on Twitch anymore, it's probably on YouTube. Oh, yes. But, yeah, I'm sure you can probably find it on YouTube. Search Pinsonati. I'm sure it'll pop right up. Absolutely. Pinsonati pinball I'm sure will come up. Yeah, and one thing that was kind of cool is before every game in the finals, Eric would show like a minute little video for the Gottlieb games so that you could learn how to play them. That was amazing. I've never seen that on a stream before. I thought that was so brilliant because it saved the commentators or announcers the breath too to like have it explain the game or to point out all the things and also gave you a very complete picture of what's going on there and what you want to be doing uh or generally what you want to be doing it was super helpful yeah yeah it was really cool so yeah and i also got to play gold wings which i've never seen before it's got like these weird offset flippers yes and I've played that before. Yeah, so I recommend that show and tournament. So I actually won that first Friday Strikes. And then the Match Play tournament, I was cruising along okay. And then I had a couple of rough rounds. But I ended up doing just good enough to qualify. And then it was finals, group finals, 4-2-1-0. and I was able to squeak by my first round with a nice kind of the points worked out in my favor where I got just enough when I needed sort of thing. But then the second round, I started off slow and didn't have a great first or second game. And then it was on Walking Dead was game three. And I needed to get first and I needed Steve Bowden to get last. and I needed the other two people to go or the other person to go in in between me you know sort of thing you needed the pinball math to work out perfect is what you're saying yeah well and I needed to do well which after ball one I actually I had less than a million points going into ball three on walking dead oh my god so on walking dead I was kind of just like all right you know normally i'd go for multi-ball but i was just kind of like you know what i don't really think i'm gonna survive that many hits to the multi-ball and even if i get multi-ball it's i need to win this game so i need a lot of points so i'm just gonna go straight for the mode straight for barn and if i drain shooting those targets well it wasn't meant to be you know that And it was basically win or lose, you know, all or nothing. So I ended up starting barn and shot like six shots and put up like 45 billion to put me in the lead. And then I just needed the other things to happen. And, oh my God, it was so close. It was so close. It was like 5,000, 50,000 away from, yeah. I would have been in a tiebreaker. Wow. But the tiebreaker did not happen. But, you know, I was still happy being eliminated that way because I did what I needed to do. And, you know, that's the way it goes. That's right. I did end up winning the third tournament on Sunday, which is the gauntlet, which is goal-based and how fast you can do a bunch of goals. It is bonkers. I was watching the stream of this, even though there was some commentary and stuff. It was kind of like a side view. So you got to see, what is it, eight games or nine games, whatever the challenges were. Yeah. With the timer and everything, and that was bonkers. Oh, yeah. Like, bonkers, bonkers. Yeah, you're just, like, running back between all the games. Yeah, it was pretty cool. And so if I would have won all three events, Eric has this triple crown award because, you know, it's in Cincinnati, which is really close to the Kentucky area. Kentucky Derby. And nobody has ever gotten it, and it keeps growing each year for how much it's worth. so when someone finally does get that triple crown it's going to be pretty pretty big does that encourage you to attend that show again next year yeah i mean it does seem like uh something to go for but it's so hard you have to win all three like it's nobody's ever done it and uh
Mike Dimas
person
Steve Bowdenperson
Pinsonatievent
Frosty Flippersevent
District 82venue
Ray Rae Showpodcast
Poor Man's Pinball Podcastpodcast
Rated Pinballperson/content_creator
Chai Multimalpodcast
Stern Armyorganization

medium · Frosty Flippers second tournament used old/mid/modern game trios; Rachel and Raymond discuss how this helps players with varied expertise

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Detailed strategy discussion for Post Time and Fireball Classic games highlighting risk/reward decisions

    medium · Rachel and Raymond discuss ball control on Post Time (avoiding tilts), extra ball mechanics, and fireball disc interference on Fireball Classic

  • ?

    content_signal: Raymond creating tutorial videos for complex pinball games to help players learn rules

    high · Rachel thanks Raymond for five-minute tutorial videos on Avengers, Led Zeppelin, and Turtles posted to Rated Pinball YouTube channel

  • ?

    mentality_and_psychology: Raymond recognizing tournament fatigue and making conscious decision to withdraw for self-care

    high · Raymond opted out of first Frosty Flippers tournament due to grumpiness, fatigue, and rage tilting; chose to rest rather than force continuation

  • ?

    community_signal: District 82 serving as central hub for regional pinball community with regular attendees and visiting players

    medium · Rachel describes 'family reunion' atmosphere; regular League night (Tilt and Tuesday); players traveling from across region

  • ?

    operational_signal: Scoring system error at District 82 first tournament requiring mid-tournament correction

    high · Wrong scoring table (7-5-3-1 instead of 3-2-1-0) entered; target adjusted from 30 to 70 points to compensate

  • ?

    regulatory_signal: Tournament organizer conducting player vote on venue conditions but with incomplete participation

    medium · Eric Thorin held lights vote with only 72 of 119 total weekend players participating; Rachel notes this limitation

    • 9:15
    close yet yeah well we'll see we'll see but uh overall i had a fun time uh i did check out i I did check out the show. That was fun. Awesome. There was a big power outage on Saturday that was basically no power for the whole hotel for like six hours. And that was kind of scary from Eric's side because he didn't know what to do. Like, do we start the tournament three hours late? Like, what do we do? And luckily the power came on right at like the last point it could have come on. so we ended up starting three hours late and i think the then saturday tournament went till 3 a.m instead of midnight women's finals got moved to the next day yep and so but the benefit of that is women's finals got streamed so that was really cool too so yeah yeah that was an amazing race format and i believe jen jen ruper won that yes she did she and uh the video i was watching because i had was actually home that weekend so i had the opportunity to tune in while I was puttering around my home, and when she won, holy cow, like the excitement and the joy on her face and just the reaction was amazing. Yeah, she was. It's just like one of those moments of pinball that just makes your heart swell. She's a great person, so it's so nice to see her win a big tournament. Yeah, it was really fun, really great to see.
    10:35
    Yeah, smiles, good time all around. Yay. And you got to see Tim Lee. I did briefly. I bumped into him, yes. Yes, that's awesome. Yeah, that was cool. I did not expect him to be there. yeah well he was he was on the lookout for you Raymond for those that don't know Tim Lee is the co-host of my other podcast because who am I I have two of them of Chai Multimal and uh he's a big fan of Raymond's and he likes to tell Raymond he's going to beat him at pinball all the time and he makes threats it's kind of funny but uh and and Tim also does the editing for our show so thanks Tim anyway that sounds like it was a great time I think I'm going to put Pinsonati on my calendar for next year. You said the sign up is in July. And we also talked about the folks that streamed it. So I think we're good there. Thanks for the recap. Yeah. The second order of business is I want to talk about and say thank you on behalf of myself and like a bunch of other pinball enthusiasts and players that you're on this role of making these babies first tutorials. You want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah. Well, my YouTube channel has been active lately, So I've been uploading little five minute videos for various games that I have access to. And I think Avengers Led Zeppelin and now turtles are all up there. So if you just want to learn those games real quick, if you didn't know anything about them or you want a refresher, you can check those out. Yep. Rated pinball on YouTube. We'll check that out. Thank you for that. I really mean that Raymond, like sometimes just having like Tim Lee. and I'll have a conversation about that. He doesn't know how to play a game. I try to explain it to him. And other folks will give him a couple pages of chat of what to do in a game. And sometimes just watching a very short tutorial, I think, for me, is a lot easier way to learn than trying to, like, figure it out from text. I don't know. But I'm appreciative.
    12:29
    Good. Yeah. All right. So now we're going to jump into the main dish here, which is the Frosty Flippers that was held in mid-December at District 82. as you all know that is my home my home quote-unquote pin palace this is an overall series kind of like the super series where based upon where you finish in the tournament say you finish first you receive 100 points for that tournament not whoppers you just receive 100 points or if you finish 50th then you'll receive 50 points and over the points that you receive over all three tournaments total up to an overall winner. I think I explained that the best I could. I think that's a fun way to play. I like having that series where you're kind of building and building. This was kind of like a mini Super Series, I guess, because what was the Super Series? Six or seven tournaments? So this was a very exhausting weekend for me, Raymond. I'm not necessarily an endurance pinball player. I'm a person where I can go play for 12, 13, 14 hours, but then the next day I don't want to do anything, you know, that was enough. So for me, like this was fun. This was, I think the right amount of pinball. I do want to mention that as usual, District 82 was open on the Friday night before for a Flippin' Friday three strike knockout. It was a Stern Army tournament. District 82 is always open to the public on Friday night and Saturday during the daytime. Now, usually these three strike knockout tournaments on Friday, which are free, included with the price of admission to D82. But usually these tournaments are about 20 to 40 people maybe. This Friday night there was 114 players. Wow. So a lot of people came out to pre-play, which is if you're into competitive or tournament pinball, you're doing the right thing. Plus at District 82 with 115 or whatever games he has there now, it gives you the opportunity to pre-play those games. Literally, I just use that tournament to practice all the old games. That's what I do. Since I'm so fortunate to be able to play there as frequently as I do, I usually think about, okay, today I'm going to work on classics, or I was there this week for Tilt and Tuesday for the quote-unquote league night, and I worked on, like, one whole row. I went and played a whole row of games of, like, 12 games. I played them each, like, five or six times. Sometimes I focus on moderns. It just depends. But anyways, I used that Friday night just to practice all the old games, and that really did help me out. So the next day, I don't even know who won the three-strike knockout. I know that I was out in three rounds, but it didn't matter. I had a fun time. And, you know, the thing, too, there, that was actually such a nice mixer for people that are coming back to District 82 or it was their first time ever being there.
    15:15
    You can always tell those folks because they're walking around with their phone taking video, which is so cute. So it was a lot of fun, though. So on Saturday was tournament number one, which was a classic target match play to 30 points. However, for pretty much, I think, the first time ever, a tournament actually got screwed up there. And instead of playing 3-2-1-0 scoring, we ended up with 7-5-3-1, which is like the standard match play scoring that ended up getting entered. So instead of a target of 30 points, Eric just adjusted it to 70. things happen right yep that all worked out it did for sure so uh again this this was the best tournament of the weekend for me i it's interesting because sometimes i think we've talked a little bit about how i struggle with consistency being consistent player but and this is why so i'm gonna look at the different games that i played i played the very first game i got to play was dolly parton which is one of my favorite games but i had i think two house balls on it and was a very frustrating way to start the morning. But then we moved to BMX, which is, I guess, technically a classic, I guess. People sometimes question that. I'm like, I don't know if Eric says it is. It is. But I had a really good game on that where I ended up winning. I won the game by 550 points, which is not much. Wow. I screamed. And I think I was player four, and I screamed and yelled when I won the game. I can't repeat what I said because it was quite a few curse words, but it was funny because I was so excited. so we moved on to volley and I did okay I took a third on that took a third on magic and then and I did okay on melody and I took a second but then I ran into two trouble games post time and fireball classic now I took a fourth on both of those back to back do you have a good strategy for post time for me generally I just like I keep that ball alive because I feel like I don't know if I tell if I nudge that game too hard I know I'm going to tilt it I'm just just flipping the ball. The point of the game, or one of the features of the game, is to travel around the little loop that's in the middle of the playfield so that you can light your extra ball. You can move your guy around the playfield by shatzing, right? Well, once you are in the winning position, then the extra ball lights on the inlanes, but it's kind of hard to actually get in that winning position, so you kind of just keep the ball alive and try to send it up top where the yellow targets are, because they're worth 1,000. So that's where all the actual points come from, is just bouncing off of those yellow targets. And don't even worry about going for the extra ball. So if I happen to have it lit, then I have it lit. Yeah and if it lit and you have it trapped you could try one shot to try to shat it but I saw Escher drain himself trying to do that a couple of times So it almost isn even I don know it tricky You'll also get an add-a-ball just for finishing four races. Almost just by playing, you'll get at least one. So you don't need to go all in on those horseshoe add-a-balls. I guess not. And then the other thing I should mention about that game, which is unique, and it's the only one there that does this is when you get that extra ball, as soon as you drain your ball, the ball shoots right back out of the drain.
    18:33
    And for people that don't know that, it can be pretty shocking. Yeah, luckily it's a single-player game, so you're not walking away, you know, so you're still there when it happens. Right. Yeah. But most people are used to just popping out in the normal spot and not out of the drain. Right. So that's just a good thing there to mention about that game. And then Fireball, classic. So I feel like this game is totally feast or famine. And I had, now here, I was playing very good players. But the problem is, is everybody had a pretty good game. And it was frustrating because I think I had like, I don't even know. I definitely had like 300,000 or 400,000 less than everybody else. But I just really struggled through that. What do you focus on in that game? Do you try to go for your locks right away? Do you even bother with the skill shot on there? and do you go for your multiplier right away? What do you do?
    19:27
    Or keep the ball alive? You definitely want to get your skill shot because that turns your bumpers on for 1,000 a pop or 3,000 a pop. And then you basically hope somebody left a ball locked for you and just hit the ball into the other little mushroom to release them and try to get multi-ball as quick as possible and then just keep it alive. Yes. with that spinning fireball disc in the middle that's always spinning that makes it so terribly hard. And I think actually what happened in that game was a scenario where it was going to go into the left out lane where there's a kicker there, and the kicker was lit, but on the way the ball sailed over there and went over one of the few rollovers that's on that game to turn the kicker off. Oh, yeah, that's a classic, classic frustrating game. Yeah. So it was like junk. You know, it was not good. But so then I thought, man, this is not going well. So I'm going to message my buddy Raymond because I've now taken two fourths back to back and my attitude needed to get checked. It was just just struggling, struggle, struggle.
    20:33
    So I messaged you, Raymond, and you gave me some really good advice. You said you're still in it. Go for it. You can rebound with the first no problem.
    20:44
    That's what you said to me. And I appreciated that so much because I'm like, I need, you know, sometimes when you're playing bad, it's like I need that little pat on the back, that little encouragement. So anyways, after that, then I proceeded to walk myself back into District 82 and I won Viking. I won Mata Hari. I won Stars. I won Papa Card. I won Sky Kings all in a row. Wow. And the tournament. Woo. So that felt amazing after taking those two back back to back last. And the best part of that is that really skyrocketed me into the standings, and I ended up tying with 58 points, and it was a target of 70, and I ended up in 16th place, which was amazing. Wow. That's amazing. It's interesting, too, because when I look at the tiebreakers, now, I want to talk a little bit about that because there was one, two, three, four, five, six of us that tied with 58 points. But I had this magical little number, which is a 4.02 after my 58 points. And then looking at the person who came in 11th with 58 points, they have 4.57 as the tiebreaker. Can you explain what that tiebreaker is or how that operates? Yeah, so that's strength of schedule, where it basically takes into account the types of players you've been playing against. And if you were playing against players who did well in the tournament, it assumes that you were playing against better players than someone who was playing against people who didn't finish as well. And so it gives that more weight. So, yeah, basically, the better your opponents do, the better it is for you. So the reason you had a lower tiebreaker is because you lost the first few rounds. So you were grouped with people who also lost the first couple rounds. And so they had less points overall. And so when you started winning all those rounds, you were beating people like you're kind of clawing over them in the standings, right? So you're kind of jumping on top of them. But your opponents in general have lower points than people that were kind of just cruising at the top the whole time. and so the person in 11th that you're talking about probably on average was playing in the higher groups more of the tournament all right that's that's that's that's what i thought how it worked but i appreciate that uh because it makes more sense i really wish they wouldn't have the tiebreaker thing on because coming in 11th would have been a lot better than 16th but i also understand it i understand yeah it's it's kind of a blessing and a curse because It is nice when you're doing well And then you kind of blow your last round And you're like well at least my tiebreakers are good But on the other side if you have a good comeback Then you kind of get punished It's like oh man I did all this work And I still didn't Okay thank you So the winner of the tournament was Alberto Santana Second place was Rodney Minch I think that was his first time at D82 Third place was Carlos de la Serda And fourth place was Jason Werdrick But my final thought about the first tournament is this. What happened to Raymond? Oh, after getting a total of probably two flips on my first two rounds, I was also very tired from having to get up, you know, a 9 a.m. start. And I was just kind of like, man, why am I doing this? Like, I was really grumpy. And I started to get, like, I rage tilted my last game. And it felt so bad because the people I was playing, you know, one of the girls after my bad ball too, she's like, well, that's what ball three is for like being all positive. And then I, you know, house ball three, of course. And I rage tilt. I'm all angry. So I just, I kind of put a, a check on myself and I'm like, you know what? I am not having fun. I'm not fun to be around. I really just want to go back to the hotel room and sleep. And so I did that. That's exactly what I did. So I got all rested up and came back in for the next tournament. I think you made the right call there because if you're not feeling it, sometimes you're not feeling it. And if I was in your shoes, I might have done the same thing, especially if I was feeling like some exhaustion and just being tired. And if sometimes if you're just not connecting or need additional rest, all of those things. Also, Raymond, I'm also the same way. Like when I get grumpy and we've talked about this and working so hard on like getting the attitude right, keeping the right attitude. But like when I get grumpy, it's really hard for me not to spiral or get out of that grumpy mode. So good for you that you did the things that you needed to do in order to get through. I'm proud of you. Yeah, thanks. I mean that in the most affectionate way, not in any kind of condescending way. Ideally, I could have, you know, pulled myself together and started coming back, and I'd have a great story, a great comeback story, similar to yours from the other night. But it was just, I was, I think I was just, I just was really like still kind of, I hadn't woken up all the way. Like I was still like just sleepy and groggy and grumpy. So it wasn't more, yeah. It had nothing to do with District 82 or the players or anything else. You just, just wasn't, you weren't connecting. That's okay. Yep. So there was a big drama at District 82 about the lights being on and the lights being off. Eric Thorin, I think this is in the morning tournament, he took a vote, a poll of people that were in the main room up by the desk, a poll of hands of who wanted the lights on and who wanted the lights off. Now, there was 119 total players over the weekend, and only 72 of them got to vote.
    26:30
    I'm just going to put that out there. And 40 voted for lights on and 32 voted for lights off. How do you feel? You want to put the lights on or the lights off? How do you want to play pinball? I didn't really notice a difference either way. I think it's nice to have more light so that you can see a little better, but it doesn't really affect me personally too much either way. Right. I understand that. It probably affected me more because I play there frequently. For me, I'd definitely like to have the lights off while I'm playing pinball. I guess at that arcade feel, I'm used to being able to track the ball with my eye, generally with that, those lighting conditions. But what I will say, two things. One, it was pointed out to me with the lights on, District 82 felt like a much more warm and welcoming environment instead of like this, you know, not that it's a dingy place by any means, but it just felt better. Like everybody's attitude was better and people were like more uplifted with the lights on. Like that was a really interesting perspective. Oh, and the second thing is that when there's certain games that I call them seizure mode games. So like Last Action Hero or the old Jurassic Park where they have these modes where the lights just sees and sees and sees at you and they're flashing and flashing and flashing. And I find with the lights on, being able to find the ball during those type of modes is a lot easier. So I think I'm 50-50 on it. I know for big tournaments that are coming down the road, it sounds like the lights will always be on. I did ask Eric what way he preferred to play and he said he preferred to play with the lights off so i did try to remind him that it's his house his collection his tournament series i couldn't quite convince him to turn the lights back off but uh we rolled through anyways just interesting there was a lot of discussion about that and people yeah it's amazing how how close it was the the vote yeah and then the people on either side are very very vocal about it too so it's very That was part of it. People screaming, but yelling and trying to cheer their side on. It was fun. All right. So back to the series, to tournament number two, which was a triple up match play. This was a three game bank per round, five rounds total with 7-5-3-1 scoring. This was different. I don't think we've done a style tournament like this there where we played an old game, a mid game and a modern game in the bank. I definitely I struggled bust a little bit I ended up like 63rd out of 117th but obviously it didn't really matter because I was super stoked of how I played in the morning so I didn't let you know the bad games that I have I didn't let it affect me my attitude was in check I just had fun and again you know pinball there's so many cool people in it it was kind of like a family reunion usually when people people are coming to visit me at district 82 so it was nice to have some socialization with that too. I liked playing that three bank. I thought it was fun. I liked having to switch my brain from one game to the next. That might sound weird, but playing an old game, playing a classic, like Stingray, and then going playing No Fear in the same bank, that's practically different games, right?
    29:46
    So to me, I think that was good. It's a nice little trip for your brain that way. uh tell me about your games here raymond yeah so it's weird that there's only five rounds because each round has three games uh but it was a really cool format i liked how it was kind of stacked more towards the modern games like you'd only have one classic in your group and then two kind of more modern ones so great uh that was kind of neat um so that way if you you know had a maybe one particular classic you didn't like you would have a better chance of getting a modern you like or if you have a modern you don't like your your other modern might be one that you do like so it was kind of a nice way to to smooth things out i started out pretty rough with uh a nine after on my first round which is a second a third and a fourth uh where it was roller coaster tycoon which i did not want to play and didn't really know how to play um and i only got second by like you know a hundred thousand or something like everyone had the same score basically nobody started multi-ball it was just kind of like just who survived a rough out yeah a rough first out yeah yeah and then we played no fear and i had the best ball one but unfortunately i had nothing on ball two and three and everyone else started their multi-ball i never i never did start my multiball and I actually learned something on that game which is if you start a mode you can't start multiballs so on ball three I chose the start mode skill shot not knowing I had just basically resigned myself to third place. Oops. So that was a good lesson.
    31:37
    And then the third game was Stingray and that's yeah nothing happened there so that was kind of annoying to start the tournament like that but at the same point i kind of looked on the bright side i was like well at least i got nine you know i didn't get three which can happen if you got last on every game so i was still kind of i was disappointed but i was ready for the next round that was nice because i was playing with the metallica silver ball mania and braum strokers dracula right behind you yeah so it was nice to actually be able to watch your games a little bit and keep an eye on you creepy creepy no no it was it was fun we got to hang out and uh lament together with our yes yeah so terrible games the next the next round we played uh aerosmith which i that thing is set up too hard like it was just brutal yeah there's no ball save on it for some reason and no ball save and you barely nudge it you're gonna tilt it yeah and then like every everything is just deadly on it so i i had like everyone had like three million and i had like two million going into my last ball so i was about to get like fourth place if i didn't do something um and luckily i was able to shoot it into the uh the multi-ball lock and then i got a freebie lock after that and started multi-ball and everything was fine but it was like i was like panicking like oh no i don't want It was so scary because there's no points in that game until you start the multiball. That's correct. Yeah, so it was rough. I need to learn some more strategies for that to see what is a safe way, like what modes can give you some easier points.
    33:25
    Which are the modes that are the easiest to complete. Yeah, so that might be worth digging into a little bit because you might not get multiball every game. No, that's a very hard game to get it on. That particular Aerosmith is very hard to get that on. Yeah.
    33:40
    But I got a first on that, and then I got to play Harlem. And I only got like $155,000, but it was enough for first. It was like nobody got anything going. Every ball, everyone would drain right below the $20,000 bonus threshold. and the difference was I was able to get 3x or 4x each ball. So I was able to hit those drop targets, able to do some tap passing, and I didn't blow it up, but I did enough. So that was good. I like that Harlem too. That's the one that I rolled on camera. That was sweet. I remember that like one of the previous tournaments. I have to go back and watch that. I love that game. I had a really good game on it this past week. Yeah, it plays really good. Yeah. And our third game was Tommy, which I did okay on. I got second. I was in the lead until player four, who was in last place, and then he just went all the way. You know, you can only nod your head, like, smile, clap, golf clap, and be like, yeah, nice. Went all the way. Yeah.
    34:52
    Do you, on Tommy, this is a good question, do you like to go for the skill shot or do you like to let the ball come around and hit the mirror and work on your multi ball or do you like to have it go for the skill shot and then just work work mode wise what do you do yeah i mean i'll go for the skill shot um but i usually end up missing it long and then i'll just shoot the mirror like if i overshoot it um if i make the skill shot then i'll want to shoot into the uh the lane that feeds the upper flipper yeah and Just try to keep hitting the mirror. But anytime I have it trapped, I want to start a mode because that's like, you know, free points that you might as well take. Yep. Easier to start a mode to stick it in a scoop. Yep. And I actually saw, maybe it was Trent that I saw, that on that particular one, he post-passed it. I want to see he backhanded it in every single time. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the Mozart backhand was pretty good. Yeah. All right, cool. So that was a much better round too. Yeah. So I was feeling pretty good. And then we got to play, the next round was Johnny mnemonic, uh, which I was super stoked to play cause I love playing that game The ramps are so smooth getting those spinner millions But unfortunately I drained right when I started my spinner millions And so it meant basically I had to just try to shoot a bunch of ramps and get multiball on ball three. And I came back pretty close. If I would have just kept it going a little longer, I probably would have won because nobody ran away with it. If somebody does get spinner millions and they keep it going for a while, you can almost be 100% locked out of catching them. Like, there's not enough points in the game. Just score that high. Okay. So you kind of have to be aware of that, but don't let it get to you. Like, it's weird. It's a weird game. Like it's the only one I know where if you have a good spinner millions on ball one or two and then hold your bonus, you've got like 10 billion and there's nobody that can catch you. Nice. So basically make sure when you do light spinner millions, you either start a multi ball right away or you cash in lots and lots of spinners. And don't drain. Yeah. And don't tilt. I tilted, which that cost me too a little bit because I had some spins. Not a ton, but I did have some. so you got a second bonus in that game too so yeah so a second though i was like okay with that and then we played melody and i i got to go like first on it it was like an em and uh i was so mad i had all four out of balls lit like it just needed to go in any of the holes and i would have got four extra balls and it just danced around like i had two balls left and it never went in a hole and so I ended with like 2100 or something and I was super mad I was like grumpy and so I walked away and and this came back later and I ended up getting second so even though I didn't you know I was like okay well you didn't put on a big display yeah I had a game like that too the day before on melody where I had two extra balls sitting there and I think I had two balls as well to try to get those extra balls and I totally biffed like I got a house ball and the second one I just got one flip or something, but it was enough to take second. My recommendation for Melody is just always be shooting that center target because it's worth 100 points and it lights your bumpers, and then it can also ricochet into the holes. So, you know, when your holes are lit, don't really shoot at them. Just keep shooting that center target because 100 points at a time is big on that game. Yes. I never even thought about that. That's actually a good strategy there too. I usually shoot to the left I try to flip it over to the left somewhere on that side and I feel like that generally is that the white hole that's lit? I don't know but generally that helps me to pop it in there but I'm going to try that method next time I play it, thanks for that yeah, give it a try and also those side lanes can be deadly too so if you keep it in the center you can avoid those side lanes yeah, for sure so our last game was Twilight Zone and I think I biffed the powerball like twice like i like i stepped up to the game and had the powerball served to me and then failed to put it in but then on my third time i did and then uh i went to town on it pretty well like once i was jamming i did like one big save that i thought was gonna tilt it was like coming down the middle and i just like gave it a big shove and it was danger danger and it didn't tilt and like once you get it forward or did you shake it back and forth it was just a big you know slap save like okay big side to side because it was going straight down the middle um and i uh i somehow got it saved and after it didn't tilt it felt like i you know it kind of powers you up a little bit like all of a sudden you're you're feeling like you're playing with house money and you're like all right let's go let's let's capitalize on this now right yeah so i won the twilight zone to cap off that round so 17 for the round pretty good really good i'm kind of just slowly climbing up the standings i'm not in the top group i'm still in group six and uh this is the group that kind of really threw me a bone because i got to play black rose palooka and spider-man and the black rose i mean i love black rose black rose yeah exactly so i um i didn't actually blow it up but i did enough on it and i found that right ramp and i just kept hitting it Like once I lit my lock, I still just kept hitting the right ramp because it was worth a million. So I just kept hitting it until I missed. Yeah, you've given me that advice before. And I get very nervous about finding that shot, especially in that particular copy of Black Rose, because it has that weird thing between the flippers. You know what I'm saying? Yep. Like there's like a mylar. There's some kind of little bump. The cannon, yeah. Yeah. Is that what it is? The whole cannon mech is in the play field. so it has to carve out it's not perfectly level so the ball catches the cannon and kind of does crazy things. Yeah, but I've been able to overcome that because I'm so familiar with playing that game, but I have used the right ramp strategy on different Black Roses that I played. Yeah, this one was being really nice. I was finding the right ramp really easy for some reason. I flipped anywhere it seemed like it would just suck the ball up the ramp and I just kept doing it. I was like, all right, sweet. Like, I don't know, sometimes you're just locked on. So, yeah, that was a nice win. And then Palooka, oh, my gosh, I had the best game of Palooka, I think, ever. I rolled it, which I didn't even – Yeah. Wow. I think the next highest score was, like, 2,500 or something. So, like, it was total overkill.
    42:02
    I love that. So, obviously, Noor, the skill shot is on that game. Yeah. I got the skill shot. It raised, it raised my value, lit an extra ball. Like everything was going, I would, I was completing the four targets. I had my center target up to a thousand, like right away. And then I was just cashing in a thousand points. Like it was crazy. That's amazing. Yeah. And so I was feeling good going into Spider-Man and, uh, was able to do enough on that. I didn't, I didn't totally blow it up, but, uh, I was able to, you know, crisscross start doc ock and then use that to light black suit and then play black suit and then use that to light doc ock and you just kind of bounce back and forth between those and then also making sure to hit your sandman because sandman's actually where a lot of your points come from is actually hitting sandman uh gives you lots of points so billions yep make sure when you're in multi-ball or even if you're not in multi-ball you need points uh just go for sandman he's good. Sandman or Left Orbit are my two favorite shots when I don't know what to do and I don't have a good shot at the Doc Ock.
    43:11
    You don't backhand the Doc Ock ever? Yeah, if it's trapped you can backhand it. Sometimes it's a little tricky because that upper flipper kind of gets in the way but it's doable.
    43:24
    Cool, so that was a really good round for you. First, first, first. Yep, so that meant Going into round five, if I won out, I actually had a chance to top four. And I, unfortunately, my group was a pretty deadly group, which makes sense. It was group two. It was, you know, at the top.
    43:44
    And I had to play against Zach Sharp, Rodney Minch, and Carlos de la Cerda. And my first game, eight ball champ, I got like five and a half million. I'm feeling good. Like, that's a big score. and then Zach Sharpe's like I'm going to get 8.5 million that's exactly what he said to you I'm going to get 8.5 million Raymond oh my god but that game all you do is shoot the left orbit over and over and over and over and make sure change lanes to get ham, ham doubles and triples your score and you just keep it going and me and Zach basically had the same game but I kept draining whenever he started triple scoring or as he did all his on one you know triple scoring ball so sure yeah and what we mean by uh spelling ham is that on the the two bottom in lanes the top three in lanes it spells c on the bottom left h a m in the top and p and the right in lane right they say that right in lanes so on top it spells ham h a m so every time i go play that game i'm Like, I'm going to go eat some bacon. Let's go collect some ham.
    44:58
    It's a fun game. I think that game is really fun. Even though it might seem boring, but, like, the ball bounces around enough, enough chaos that it makes it interesting. So a second to Zach Sharp is nothing to shake a stick at anyway. Yeah. And then we got to play Corvette, which I was super excited about. But it was just killing all four of us. I was in a narrow lead going into ball three, But then one by one, Carlos passed me and then went on to blow it up and got a couple billion. And then Zach Sharp managed to start his multiball and then got even more billions.
    45:33
    Actually, no, he fell short of Carlos, but he was on his way. So I managed to get a third on Corvette just because I don't think Rodney ever started his multiball. I think everyone else did. So I took a third. But I was really hoping to get a second or a first because I usually love that game. But I just, I could not get a handle on the ball. Like, it just, it was slipping out that right out lane way too much. And we did learn a few things where you could short plunge on that game. So that was kind of interesting.
    46:09
    On Corvette? Yeah. Oh. Yeah, if you wanted to get to your flippers. But unfortunately, it's kind of, you're missing out on a lot of skill shot points. So you kind of just full plunge in hope, especially because you get one ball save per game. So if you haven't used that ball save, always full plunge. You know, get those skill shot points. Oh, I didn't know you get one ball save per game. That's a nice factoid to know. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. The little tow truck pulls your ball out of the mud. But only once. Once you use that, don't expect any more. Okay. Yep. uh so then our last game was lost world which i was like uh i don't want to play lost world but that's the first game i owned but yeah it's that's me and carlos both both absolutely despise that game so at least i was in good company um zach i don't think is a fan of it either basically you just have to keep the ball alive and hope you get 5x and lots of bonus there's not really like any one particular shot or thing that scores a lot it's just keep hitting the ball like yeah collect your collect your ab was abcd abcdef yeah targets you want to collect all those and that's all you really want to do in that game yeah so i i basically i was able to keep the ball alive i also started finding the holes which was good and I found the spinner shot and things were happening. I managed to just actually have a good game on that for once. So now I can't say that I never have a good game on Lost World because I finally had one.
    47:48
    And so I won. And so that put me at fifth, which I was kind of upset about because Escher passed me in tiebreakers and got fourth just on tiebreakers. And I was like, no, I just wanted to finish higher than him once. Like, come on.
    48:07
    Well, I can't blame you. So do I. Yeah. Don't know a lot of people. It was fine. It was a good way to end, and I got cash for that and some Whoppers. Yay. That's nice.
    48:20
    So Stephen Bowden, he won it with Colin McAlpine in second, Ken Grant in third, and Esher Lefkoff came in fourth, and Mr. Raymond Davidson in fifth. So that was pretty good. You turned it around, too, from where you started out. And you came back and you fought for it. Yeah, I was playing pretty consistently, keep myself in the running. And if that last round just went a little better, but I was pretty happy with it. So something happened during the finals of that tournament. And Tim Lee submitted a question. This is what he said. He said the finals were being streamed on no good gophers. The game shot out too many balls while in multi ball. However, it was Tom who was running the stream who called for a review. And he asked if that was standard protocol. So what I told him is that Tom Graff was also a TD that day. And I think it's kind of the idea if you see something, say something. Do you think that's like a standard thing to have a TD that's on stream catching that and stopping the game? What do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, if anybody sees anything, let someone know. Yes. Especially if there's something that can be done about it, you know. and if it's on camera you can just go back and look at the uh footage so yep and i don't know how it resolved because i was well asleep in bed by then yeah um oh actually no i wasn't no i was still playing it was no uh you know i was still playing at that point uh so i didn't didn't see that but it was interesting but yeah again see something say something i think is the point there and that applies to everything in pinball uh if you see something that's weird weird or a player being weird or whatever the case may be you should just always pipe up and say something so i thought that was a good question uh he's a newer tournament player timley is so he he finds these interesting things when he's watching stream like why is this that or why is that this so and i know like our podcast does help him a little bit there too to understand the different styles of tournaments and strategy to play them and so forth too so that brings us to the final tournament of the weekend which was on sunday morning it began it was a modern 10 strike progressive knockout so you get 10 strikes and uh first second third fourth would receive zero one two or three strikes per round and it was all modern games i'm pretty sure this might have been the very first all modern tournament yeah uh and i was okay with that it's been a while since i've I did not play this tournament at Pinball at Chicago Expo. So to me, like this was maybe the closest to that. I, you know, I go back and forth, Raymond, do I play classics better? Do I play modern better? And I think I play them maybe equally. So let's see. My goal usually in knockout tournaments, like we've talked about in the past, is always three rounds. But I made it my goal for this one to make it past five. And I struck out on my sixth round. Now, I played really well in my first four games. My Godzilla game was player four. I came back on ball three and just blew the game out of the water. And so that was my only win that morning. And let me tell you, the people I was playing against are no joke. I think it was Cody Webb and Jim Radovich. Wow. They're very good players. And so I really like – it's funny because I usually get to play Godzilla Premium, but I really have been turned on to that pro. And I find that sometimes somehow maybe like the MechaGodzilla is just easier. Some things are just easier to achieve, but I do love that game. So I moved on from there, and my last two rounds did not go so hot.
    51:54
    So going into round four, I only had two strikes, and that was very good. I think that was very, very good for me. And I went on to play Attack from Mars. I ended up taking a third, and I beat Nick Kennedy by only, I think, was like less than a million points or something really big. Wow.
    52:12
    Yeah. And I was playing Trent Augenstein and Colin McAlpine in that round. You know, Colin, I just have to make this little side comment about him. He's the nicest guy. It was so funny because he comes up, oh, Rachel, I'm so happy to be playing pinball with you. I'm like, oh, God, Colin, I don't want to play with you at all, you know, because he's such a good player. And it has nothing to do personally. It just has to do like it makes me nervous. It's the death groups that we've talked about. So I felt like I held my own. It was a terrible game, but at least I took third and not fourth, so I picked up two more strikes.
    52:45
    So after my Godzilla game, I went to go play Whitewater. I died so hard on stream. I'm going to mention right here that you can go check out Fox City's pinball stream on Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, all those things. Now, I want to give a little back story on this Whitewater and why I think I died so hard on that game and taking a last. I want to note that I played it twice the day before, basically back-to-back in two of my rounds, and I had big monster scores. I took a first and a second. So walking into this game, I was feeling pretty good. I think after the first ball, player three's first ball, they noticed that the left ramp was not scoring. And I didn't even notice. I don't think I went up that ramp at all. I was just going to say, I've seen that happen on that whitewater. It seems to be a common thing. It's just that little switch when you enter it on the left. Yes. Exactly. It gets out of alignment or something. Yeah, it was broken. I guess it had busted off or whatever. So we called over Luke Nahorniak, who is also a tournament director this weekend, and we ended up getting Eric Thorne and Tom Graff all involved, pulling them away from the games and everything. But what I will say, it was so neat in the middle of our game that Eric just opened up the game and soldered it back together, repaired, no problem, in the middle of our game. Wow with it on With it on We in the middle of the game with it on He repaired it And it was kind of cute because tom was was talking to eric and eric was talking to tom and kind of coaching each other through repairing it while the game was in play it was just a really neat thing uh then tom decided that the game would be streamed as it was likely going to be the last game going in that round and it was so man i forgot that you can steal ball locks on that game for whatever reason So by the time I got to my ball three as the last player, I had a ton of work to do to not get struck out. And I was sitting at this point with, I don't know, quite a few strikes. And then one of the most nerve-wracking things that ever happens is number one and number two best players in the pinball world walk into the streaming booth right behind me. Oh, no.
    54:51
    You know, Raymond, I love and adore you, but I can't tell you how nervous that made me feel knowing that you and Escher and Tom were sitting literally like five feet behind me talking about my game and telling me not to biff it. It's okay. And that's the thing that like, I don't usually get nervous playing on stream. I usually never do. But ma'am was my adrenaline and my heart racing. Escher gave me a really good tip about not hitting the skill shot so that if I biffed after hitting the lock in a dream that I would still have a ball save. And this actually worked to my surprise and so much that I walked away. I gave him a fist bump and I walked back to the game. I really appreciated that. I think that was me who gave you that little tidbit. Yeah, it came. Well, Escher was in the booth, so that could have been it. So, I mean, it was – I died so hard on that game, but it was okay. I had – like I said, I had two big games on it the day before, and who cares? It's just pinball. And I felt really good overall in the tournament because I played some really hard players. And the overall series, I feel like I played the best that I could have, given the competition, given the games. And I just I had such a such a great time. Raymond, you had an interesting kind of a fairy tale story during this tournament. Tell me about that. Yeah, yeah, you can call it that. So I started off the morning, another early morning. I'm already kind of like, you know, trying to catch my bearings. And I got drawn on my worst modern in the entire building that I did not want to play, especially early in the morning, which is that Star Trek premium from hell. It is. There's no there's no outlane post. No, no. There's like a gap where like a post should be. And there's no ball save. And it's just like death on every flip. Yeah. And I, you know, I took a last and like I it's not like I wasn't trying. It's just every time I made a shot, you know, oh, I have the ball trapped to my left. I'll shoot vengeance. I hit the target. Boom. Sling town out. Gone. You know, or I'll shoot this shot, hit this shot and it's gone. Like it's just comical. So starting off with three strikes, I'm like, OK, that's annoying. and then I have to play Monster Bash which I just don't really like playing that game it's too like I don't know you gotta like either shoot the scary Frankenstein target or shoot the center spinner a lot and you just gotta survive you gotta make sure you set stuff up right you can't drain at the wrong time and everyone's kinda good at that game too so like I finally on ball three I managed to hit the center spinner two more times and start multi-ball mosh pit multi-ball that was my whole strategy was just go for the center spinner mosh pit and i play that for a little bit and i get like 25 million and i'm pretty happy and then every single person passes me one of them passed me by like a million like another person passed me by like two million like it was just i was just watching in horror as my strikes just kept rolling in.
    58:09
    So then I have six strikes after two games. I'm like, okay, so now we play Tales from the Crypt. And the only saving grace for this round was somebody didn't show up, so I was guaranteed to only get two strikes.
    58:24
    And it turns out that's exactly how many I got. Oh, my God. That's awful. This one was even crazier because I played a good multiball.
    58:36
    Okay, I didn't play a great multiball. I played a multiball, and I played a bunch of modes. I played the six-ball electric chair multiball mode. I ended with like $256 million, and sure enough, two people back-to-back start their multiball. Both of them drain out of their multiball without hitting a jackpot, restart the multiball, and then like within their next two flips jackpot double jackpot and pass me i'm just like oh my god like how did this happen and i face is melting off at this point yeah i lost by a million on that too it was like 255 256 264 like is that the score that you showed me or was it a monster yeah that That was the Tales score.
    59:23
    And so I'm like, okay, all right. I guess I'm playing on expert difficulty today. So then I'm, like, just kind of ready to, like, I don't know. I'm kind of like, whatever. At this point, it's just not working. Like, I wasn't mad at that point. I was kind of just laughing. Like, I was mad after the first game. I was kind of mad after the second game. After that, I was just laughing. I was like, whatever.
    59:51
    So now you're sitting with eight strikes out of ten. Yeah. Not good. Not a good first three rounds. I like to call that – I have a friend, Tara Hengem. She likes to call that dancing on eggshells. Oh, yeah. You're moving forward. You know that you've got to go win it. If you want to stay in, you're dancing and dancing on those eggshells, trying not to crush any of them, just trying to keep yourself alive. And so, Raymond, you went on and did a pretty cool thing here. Yeah, so Dracula was the next game, and I was doing okay on it, but then Matthew Stacks blew it up and got like 800 million. And so I go into ball three, and I've already gotten second place in the bag, and so I'm chasing 800 million points. And I just kind of relaxed and was like, okay, this is fine. Like I'm guaranteed to only get one strike and if I catch him, that's great. But if I don't, I'm okay with that. And so I just kind of played relaxed and set up my three multi balls and I got the triple stack and, and, uh, oh, actually I got the double stack and I kept missing my triple stack. If I would have made the triple stack, I would have won way sooner. Uh, but I kept missing that, but I ended up winning with the rats bonus at the end. So. Rats and bats, baby. That's right. Yeah. So I came back down 800 million. And then after that, it was just first place, first place, first place, first place, first place, first place, first place, first place. Like, yeah, you took one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight first place in a row after that. Yeah. And the only the only first place after that were in the finals against Escher. Escher gave me both of my last two strikes. What a kind guy. I know, with his billion and a half on Data East Jurassic Park that I didn't even know was possible.
    61:45
    I went through the whole game, and I had a fourth of his score. Like, it was insane. Yeah, you played the whole game. That's right. It was quite something else. Oh, man. So then you met your end on the getaway. Yeah, I had multi-ball lit, and I just couldn't hit that left orbit. I don't know. I just didn't. I couldn't find it. Just kept missing it, and then it died. But Escher was on fire. So even if I would have, I would have had to beat him like four more times in a row or something. So it was kind of a blessing to get out of there so I could head home and get home at a reasonable hour and take second. So I was happy with that. Yeah, and you took second. That's right. Usher won the tournament. You took second. Zach Sharp took third. And Adam Lefkoff took fourth. It was, I'm just going to say it's really awesome when you're able to do that and to come back that far from just like, you know, we've talked about that, about spiraling and building yourself back up and just going and doing the thing. And you did that. He went and rebounded big time. So congrats, man. That's pretty awesome. Thanks. Yeah, it was fun. I actually did watch the finals of that because by the time I got home, the finals I think were maybe like an hour out, so I flipped on my TV and just had that running for a little bit. So I did get to watch the last final games there. So it was pretty cool. The overall series winner was Usher, followed by Zach Sharp, then Carlos, and then District 82's O'Neal Graff. Okay, so overall of the tournament, the three tournaments I played, there was a total of 119 players and I ended up 44th overall in the series. I thought that was great. Yeah, top half, more than top half. And I think this is the best part of it all, Raymond, is that you didn't even play one tournament and you know what, you came in on the overall series, you came in 27th. Wow.
    63:30
    But that just goes to show you took 96 and 99 points over those two tournaments. Yeah, if if a series. Well, first of all, I actually totally wasn't even thinking about the series when I dropped that that tournament. I just forgot that that was the thing because it had never been a thing. I thought it was only at Super Series, so I totally forgot about that. But I would have needed top three. And I don't think I would have placed well enough in that tournament the way I started out to get top three. so I don't think it would have mattered anyway. But, yeah, it was, other than that tournament, my other two tournaments were pretty good. Really good. Yeah, and you won money. Did you win trophies? Did you get trophied out? I think I did get a hard one. A trophy as well? I got a trophy, yeah. Nice. Yeah, and those last couple rounds were fun too because I was on stream, and I got to play against Ryan Spindler. Good old Ryan. He's such a nice guy. And and he was on Simpsons Pinball Party and he had been aware of how I had been been the Grim Reaper, basically, like you're like just knocking out every single person that came my way. And he was like, oh, well, I'm going to I'm going to try my darndest. And he put up like thirty five million on Simpsons. Oh, that's good. And he made me sweat because I had nowhere near that. But I was able to, I realized I had Alien Invasion ready to go. So I just had to time out the last mode, start Alien Invasion. And then once I started that, I started hitting Bart the Daredevil captive ball so that I could play my Daredevil modes during Alien Invasion. So even if I lose Alien Invasion, I would get enough points just from all the bumpers and ramps and things.
    65:18
    Good strategy. And Ryan just, you know, he nodded his head and shook my hand and was like, well, I know I felt bad because he he's so nice and he had such a good game. Yeah, Ryan is a great player. He's a Wisconsin player. He's one of my favorite tree trunks to hug. Oh, yeah, that's a good way of putting it. He's very tall. And there's probably like four. Sometimes when I'm in a group with all these, I'm five foot four and a half. Sometimes I'm playing in a group with guys that are all over six foot, and I'm like, I'm just in a forest here. You know, like these big trees. Yeah, Ryan, he is really the nicest guy. And not only that, he's not only being a great player, but he's so nice and kind to the other players when you play with him as well. He's so helpful. He is. Be like Ryan, everybody. Be like Ryan.
    66:09
    And I think that's everything about the series. And I do have a final question for you. As we talked about, listeners may know, yes, I play league, quote, unquote, or Tilton Tuesdays at District 82. And I play my Fox Cities Pinball League, which is actually a true league in style format. So we haven't talked about this, Raymond. Do you play any type of league in your area or tournaments in the Chicago area? Or do you prefer just to go to big shows?
    66:34
    I've only been going to the big stuff recently. but I'm going to be starting a, like the Chicago pinball league next year, which I'm super excited about. I guess they're pretty exclusive and I had to wait for someone to, you know, drop out of the league before I could play in it. So I'm really excited because you kind of go to different people's houses. It's kind of like one of those deals and you get to see really cool collections. And I remember doing that in Seattle with the Seattle pinball league and I absolutely loved it. So I'm excited to start that up again. uh sometimes i'll play in the monthly tournaments at interium which is near where i live um but i've been kind of not going to those as much because you only get four rounds and that's just for me that's not enough where i feel like i have enough chance to show my skills where like you have a couple bad games, even if you have one bad game, you might be done.
    67:32
    Like, it's just, I, and I understand you can still have fun, and it's the most popular tournament in the area. There's 60 people every month. It's crazy. But for me, I enjoy the whole, like, trying to do well, trying to be consistent, and, like, coming back from a loss to make finals, and I just was finding I'd get upset with that format because like you're just always one missed shot from going into a death spiral where not only is it hard for you to come back but it might actually just be impossible like so i i was finding myself being being kind of frustrated but i still might play in it here and there i just don't prioritize it as much anymore i think that's being fair to yourself and playing the things in style tournaments that you like to play and where you feel when you are having fun and pinball is always fun but it's also frustrating too and sometimes the style of event can cause that frustration and I can totally understand that but back to the Chicago league that you're going to play I'm really excited for you I love playing my Fox News pinball league do you get to go play at the legendary graph basement I do I get to play in the graph basement than all the premiums and LEs. And I think the only pro or bro is... Oh, he's got a whole pro room. It's all the best pros. It's like Guardians Pro. Oh, maybe they are all pros. Yeah. Maybe they are. He has a Stranger Things Pro. Yes. Yeah, I mean, there's only like four of them, but they're all there. Everything else is super fancy, and it's great. And he and Eric Strangeway actually run that league, and it's just really neat being able to go to people's places, checking out their arcades that they have in their house and the games that they love, the things that they collect. And then you get to go bang on their games on a Saturday night. How much fun is that? Yeah. So I'm excited for you, too. And get to talk to people, too, and try to build some connections and kind of get to know people. And people that normally don't come play District 82, they only play that league. And it's kind of like a little exclusive league, too. Like, it's very full, and you have to wait for people to leave in order to get asked to be into it, too. So it's kind of fancy schmancy. so I feel very lucky being able to play with play in it but the problem with that league it's very hard there are several top 100 top 200 players in that league um and so I look at that as usually as a social Saturday night and not like I'm gonna go win kind of Saturday night well yeah because the the league um when I was in Seattle that's what it was to a lot of people because every league match you'd get food provided someone would usually bring a cooler full of booze you know it was a very social thing and uh and what's cool about league format is that you usually let you drop your worst two or three or something and so i feel like this is perfect because it's the best of both worlds of it's only it's probably only four or five games but i don't feel as pressured or frustrated because it's your aggregate of all your leagues that end up mattering and as long as you have a good night here or there you can make finals and and in the meantime you can kind of just hang out with everybody yeah and and just enjoy yourself and in that league we play it's a seven rounds is what we play a match play so we'll see what yours is like too so maybe we'll chat about that in the new year yeah i think that i think that is everything for today's show all right wow we uh we're pretty efficient there clocked in under under an hour and a half actually it's probably going to be around an hour after we remove all of our nonsense rambling maybe hopefully uh it's a little bit better but uh it did help that we were both playing the same event I know that maybe looking out towards the future, I know you're going to go be playing in disc in a couple of weeks here. I know I'm going to be taking care of the Women's State Championship, Pinball Championship here in Wisconsin, and a couple other little things. And I think you and I will probably meet again at the Winter 3X or whatever he's got going on in February. Yeah, Stern Pro Circuit event. Ooh, super fancy.
    71:39
    So until then, happy flipping. all right take care bye it's Raymond and Rachel Rachel and Raymond tournament pinball is what they really know you're Rachel and Raymond Raymond and Rachel giving all of the info for the travels we go it's like for college and the sharing the knowledge so if you don't listen you won't know it's the Raymond Show