Baking in the sun, having a beer, maybe a hot dog, and then just shave the lid. I just want to see the tan line. That's it. That would be awesome. I've got some fair skin. I don't tend to go outside too often. Plus, I'm not a Cubs fan either, so I wouldn't even try to be at the Cubs game. So, yeah, Cardinals fan. Cardinals? I was thinking Southside, and you can't be a White Sox fan this year. I grew up six hours south of here. Oh. Yeah, not my area. Okay. The cards aren't bad this year. We'll talk baseball maybe another time. Right now we've got to talk some pinball. You don't need to stay outside and be in the sun for pinball. You need to be at Hentarium for Papa 21 coming up the first full weekend of September, 5th to the 8th. Tell us about it. Yeah, we're bringing Papa back. So Kevin Martin was nice enough to lend us the name and give us tons of support with this. So it was Penny and Josh's kind of idea after doing a charity event for Lyman and Interium a year ago. They kind of started to discuss amongst themselves and decided, you know, maybe we should talk to Kevin about this and see if he'd be interested in lending us his support. He was 100% in as soon as they talked to him about it. So they ended up reaching out to me and asked if I wanted to TD it. And I was like, nah, I'm good. Josh was like, yeah. And I'm like, no, of course I'm in. I would not miss it. Okay. If you did say no, I would understand because it's not like just running any event at Antarium. I mean, you run some big events. You just ran the huge SSS tournament. Congratulations on that successful event. This is different. Extremely different. You know, Silver Bowl Super Social, SSS 3 this year was enjoyable. I learned some more lessons to apply for next year in terms of time on it. But it's nowhere near the amount of effort that this is taking. So, you know, Gavin's Game Repair added a couple of games into SSS3. We have over 30 games coming into Interium additional on top of the 35 that they have for this. So that on its own is a massive lift. You know, we have John Peterson's offering us classics from his collection. And Trent at Tilt Amusements is offering us 10 new in-box turns as well that he's shipping out. So those guys are extremely, extremely thankful for them. and they're literally making this event possible pretty much in what they're providing for us. But the logistics of something of this size is insane. We have 75 volunteers signed up already. Brian Dye has been managing that for us. He's a saint. So, you know, three different divisions, Classics, Maine, and Women's. And Terrium is actually giving us the entire left side of the restaurant for Thursday through Sunday, the entire event time. So it includes a 250-person ballroom there. You know, the whole area is all being given to us. So it's a big deal. So it's a lot of moving parts. Wow, you can see it all on Fox City's Pinball. Tom Graff will be doing that commentating and streaming. Good to have a Twitch partner for such a big event. It is a major in pinball. All five are now in existence here in this calendar year in 2024. The fact that we're in Chicago, some people might say, well, wait a minute, wasn't it always in Pittsburgh? Well, actually, no. Wasn't it in New York and Las Vegas even at one time? Oh, gosh, I've only been in this wonderful hobby competitively for like six years, Jeff. So I'm going to defer to you on that. So I'm not sure that it may have done that back then, I guess. I'm pretty sure New York, Vegas kind of rings a bell, and I think Penny might have mentioned that too. So forgive me. I'm not going to edit this out. If I made a mistake, it's okay. But I do know it has rotated. So being in Chicago certainly makes sense. And the fact that you're doing this at Ontario, you mentioned bringing in a lot of different games. And I guess that's the case because you are having a Classics event, and some of the classics kind of get interspersed with the main event as well, I believe. That facility, I've only been to once, and obviously people in the Chicagoland area have been many, many times. I said to you, I can't believe how great a place this is. I was there for the Stern Pro Circuit event, and you told me, oh, you wait and see what's happening, and maybe you knew this was coming. But also, you've been doing so many other tournaments there, and it's a perfect venue. Definitely what I was alluding to, Jeff, when we talked at the circuit final that day. because that was already underway as far as planning goes. It's an amazing venue, and it's got a full-service restaurant. It's attached to the Woodfield Mall, which is one of the biggest malls in America, one of the busiest malls in America. There's an infinite number of shops. There's a massive food court outside of there. They have a chef in-house that designs their menu and stuff. It's not your typical arcade fair. The food's quite good. Benji, Michael Benjamin, the GM, he's the reason this is all so easy anyway. outside of how much work it is, he is 100 million percent supportive of everything we do with pinball. We run late. He's there for us. You know, whatever we want to do with pinball there, he's been extremely supportive of it. He grew the place from maybe five to seven pinball machines into the 35 that it has today where we're averaging. We had 107 players show up for the monthly tournament last month just for a four-round monthly local event. We had 107 people, and we've been averaging about 80 to 90 players every month for the last six or seven months. So it's really been, you know, if you're someone who follows pinball tournaments, that is not normal to have that many people showing up for your events. Usually you might get, you know, somewhere between 10 and 30, and that's kind of the average number I feel like. So, yeah, it's an amazing location. Shout out to Benji indeed. You introduced me to him when I was at the Stern Pro Circuit event, and, yeah, you could really see the enthusiasm he had for pinball seeing certainly that event. And I assume with your other events mentioning 100-plus people, He'll fall in love with Papa for sure. But what's amazing about that is typically these type of venues, and understandably, their business model isn't really long-term pinball play. It's get a few quarters in, maybe play some redemption games. There's bowling there. There's the food. Pinball really requires a lot out of a facility, a manager, a lot of moving parts. Things can break down. You've got to keep the maintenance on the machines. and Benji's all about this. Well, and you mentioned the lack of classics. It happened to me, brought some in. Again, that goes back to your point, which is Interium is an FEC, a Family Entertainment Center. Their goal is to earn. And pinball machines, they don't earn like redemption games do. Redemption games print money effectively. And with pinball, the classics games there generally don't earn either. So we've only got a Gorgar and a Paragon there. Everything else is newer than that. So we don't really have that kind of lineup. He has to focus on what brings in the people the most. The newest games obviously bring the most attention. So there is definitely a very large aspect of just love and passion from Benji about enjoying the pinball community. And we definitely provide a substantial amount of food and drink sales at these events for him and stuff, but it can't compete with the redemption. So it doesn't happen without his love of pinball itself and of the competitive scene. So you mentioned Woodfield Mall there in Schaumburg, just north of Chicago. And of course, those who know Pinball Expo certainly know Schaumburg. the great thing about this venue too is I mentioned it to Mrs. Pinball Profile my wife Ann and she's like you know what I'm coming too so my wife is people always say you know where do you always go to these pinball tournaments and where's your wife and I'm like she not going to come to a pinball tournament when it at the Woodfield Mall and there Chicago there Piece of cake I got some company this time So again great venue You 30 minutes from downtown Chicago pretty much So, like, you know, if you want to even go do some sightseeing and stuff while you're here, it's an unlimited qualifying thing. There's no, you know, I've had a couple of players ask me if they had to be here for the whole time. I was like, no, it's just you could show up and put one card in, you know, if you're someone named, let's say, Keith, to, you know, qualify. and then you could go spend the rest of the time if you wanted to, you know, traveling about or something in the area. So there's a lot to see even around Schaumburg. But like I said, downtown Chicago is only a 20, 30-minute drive away from there. So it's, you know, 15 minutes from O'Hare Airport. So as you said, people familiar with it with Expo, it's literally across the street from where Expo is hosted now, at the Renaissance in Schaumburg. And Benji's actually hosted the pre-Expo tournament and the pre-Expo party, two separate things there for the last two years. so we had 100 people show up for the pre-tournament last year and that sold out in about six minutes I think when those tickets went on sale and then they also had like 200 people there for the pre-tourney part of that pre-expo party so pretty familiar place if you've been to Expo at all I feel like yeah you don't have to be at the facility for the entirety of Papa 21 because of the format which we're going to get into in a bit in fact yours truly and Travis Murie us and our better halves are going to go see the Cubs beat the hell out of the Yankees, I think, on Friday afternoon. So I told him we'd get back to baseball. There's lots to do, and I'm sure I've got a couple of deep dish pizza dinners already lined up. So that's the nice thing about this format is there are different formats. When you're playing match play, you kind of have to be there. When the round starts, you've got to be there. With this Herb style or with a card-based format, you can come and go as you please. The more you play, the better your chances, of course, but you can put up a great set of games and maybe be able to do things. Plus also, endurance-wise, I like to take a break once in a while. I can't just go, go, go. I was just talking to some friends after a recent event, actually after SSS3, and I was lamenting the fact that kind of going to the TD angle of this somewhat and about my newly developed passion for incentivizing player bases is that I feel like a lot of events, there's very little time to just hang out with people outside of the pinball unless they're unlimited card type events, then you have a lot more free time, I feel like. So that's already kind of taken care of itself for Papa in that sense. So, yeah, I agree with you, Jeff. Breaks are important and necessary, I think. I think people don't want to play pinball for 12 hours a day straight. It's a challenge to try to find the right balance of game playability and not having your games run too long to kind of strike that perfect midpoint where people have a good time playing pinball, but also you're not stuck there until 2 in the morning or something. Okay, so you mentioned that, and you said you learned some lessons from SSS3. You talked about some of the timing of games. What can people expect for Pampa? And I say that because I, myself, with The Beast, which just happened, I'm always conscious of the last day. How long are we going to be there on the last day, knowing people might have flights, might have to get out of there? How does it work for you? Yeah, so with SSS3, I have the settings from that the same way as the previous year of SSS2. and we had 100 players, actually like 85 players last year, and we finished main qualifying at about 8 p.m. on Saturday night. So I felt really good about that. It was 45 points to reach for the target match play. So this year I said, well, let's go to 50. But I also increased the player field from 85 to 120, and I didn't account for the increased player skill. Left the game settings all the same. Well, that turned out to be a big, big mistake. So we ended up being there until 3 a.m. on Saturday night this time. Huge mistake on my part. 100% my fault. We'll fix it for next year. We're going to go from 50 points to 35, and I may toughen the games up a little bit more, but generally the consensus was that the games are very approachable and playable for the most part. Ball savers off on the plunge, and that was pretty much it. Turnip mode on, extra balls off. For Papa, they're going to be harder. We're going to have the outline rubbers removed. We'll have rubber feet on all the games. We're going to have the slings tightened up to be a lot more whisper sling sensitivity to fire, much easier. Tilts will be moderate. My goal with tilts is one big move on a modern should get you a double danger. So tournament mode will be on on the games, obviously. I'm not planning on changing any default multi-ball ball savers. I'm not planning on changing any game settings, like in the actual operator settings for features and stuff. So that's kind of a snapshot of how the games are going to play effectively. SSS3, with those settings that were easier, our playoff rounds averaged about two hours and five minutes on that Sunday. So that eventually included a round of Carlos, Raymond, Z-Mac, and Greg Kennedy, who also played for two hours and nine minutes with the old mid-new selection restrictions, which we're going to do for Papa as well. After the feedback I saw from SSS3, we were originally going to have choosing just three of any era that you wanted to, and we realized that was going to be a huge time mistake if we did that. Good call. I think that with the more difficult setups and the old-mid-new restrictions that are going to be in place, I'm hoping to still shoot for two-hour rounds. We have six rounds to get through on Sunday. It starts at 8 a.m., so my hope is roughly 8 p.m. But obviously, I can't control that to a perfect level, and I don't want to make the games overly difficult for players, so I feel like I can strike a good balance there between the two things. But the wonderful thing is we'll be able to learn from this year and adjust for next year because, obviously, the format is unique with having 72 people getting into the A playoffs. Well, that's interesting, too, and kind of attractive, too, because 72? Let me see. Indisc, which is a major, it's top 40 and difficult to get into that. Pinberg was just top 16 in their reincarnation for the new Pinberg that we saw, 2.0, if you will. It was fabulous. difficult as it should be to get in. So 72, it's not a guarantee you're going to get in, but it's again, probably a little more relieving to players thinking, okay, I have a chance. It is Jeff. And this, this is getting to the core of what my passion has been really growing with these last year or two of running larger scale events and running bigger tournaments and stuff is that I'm watching my local players and I want them to get more excited about playing competitive pinball and some of those players, you know, I haven't talked to a lot of people at InDisc who, I love InDisc. InDisc is probably the best run tournament on the planet, best run machines on the planet. I have no complaints about them and I understand them taking 40 to playoffs, but I talked to some players who, you know, said that they just didn't feel like they had a chance. Like, because they were like a 60 to 80th type player. And so they just felt like no matter how hard they pushed, they could not break through that level of that 40-player cutoff. And as you said, it's not a guarantee you're going to get in, but what I'm interested to try to do here, and the team's interested to try to do here, is to create a situation where not just 1 through 72, and then 73 through 80 get into B division as well, so there's a small B final. And Indisc has B divisions as well, too. Yep. My point is, the players that are, if you have, let's say, 40 people make playoffs, well, that means that those 40 are obviously always engaged. Then you have 41 through, let's say, maybe 60. Those players are kind of engaged, maybe 70, because they have a chance, they kind of feel like. They're kind of close, so they'll come back. With this, I'm really hopeful that 73 through like 110 or 120 or 130th, those players all become more engaged than they normally are at an event of this size and this prestige. And, you know, it's like sports playoffs, Jeff. It's March Madness is what I want to create here. you know, anybody that gets into the big dance can get hot. So, like, a player gets in here, some local player, an unknown player, scratches in at the 60th or the 50th spot or something, and they survive the big first round, and maybe they get hot, and they advance two, three more rounds, you know, and suddenly this local player who nobody knows becomes, you know, another pinball known person, another pinball celebrity, you know. There's more people than just their local scene sort of take notice of these players. And that's my really hope. I hope so much that this kind of event creates that course order environment and inspires more places to maybe adjust your formats and adjust your setups to maybe account for a larger playoff field so you can start to engage a bigger portion of your player base to have more fun at pinball and have a chance to make playoffs. Because especially in the match play playoff format, group elimination, we're top two advance. You don't even have to be the bear in your group. You just have to outrun the bear. So, you know, you just have to outrun the other two people. So there's a chance there that players that maybe wouldn't always advance every time have a better chance of making it through and top two advance. I like your analogy of March Madness because you're right. Anybody can get hot and just get me to the dance. It's that kind of thing in poker, a chip in a chair. And you're right. It can happen. You just never know. Somebody could have a bad game. You could have an outstanding game. It happens in pinball. And stars are born, like you say. And maybe you get streamed on Fox City. And, oh, wow, look at this. Here I am at a major event. It's fun and it's excitement, and kudos to you for doing that and giving this 72 a try. It is a major attraction to me and many other people I know, so well done on that. You were talking about you've only been doing this competitively for six years, and I remember it was 2019 at Jack Danger's old studio. I ran the Pinball Profile World Tour event. I was in ten different cities, four different countries, and Jack was kind enough to let me come there, and we played. And this unknown guy that I knew a little bit, Andy Bagwell, beat all the Chicago greats. I assume your greatest win ever. It's up there, honestly. I remember the final, if I remember, was Josh Sharp. Dalton was in the final, I believe.