All right, welcome back to another episode of A Pinball Podcast, and today we have a special guest, the number one pinball player in the world, Raymond Davidson, multi-time world champion, national champion, state champion, champion of everything, pretty much. He's a tremendous pinball player, a great guy, and today we talk about a lot of things pinball, Avengers, tournament tips, basically everything. You guys are going to enjoy this. Without further ado, Raymond Davidson, thank you so much for joining me tonight. How are you doing this evening? Doing good. All right, so we got ourselves here the number one player in the world, not in the state like I am in this Oklahoma that's spelled totally wrong. This is legitimately the number one player in the world. Ray, can you tell us, plebes of the world, what is it like truly being the best player in the world? statistically speaking the number one player what is that like i mean it's uh it's weird to hear hear that in front of your name all the time when it was like well you know just a couple years ago i was like ranked fifth which is pretty good but you don't hear people call you the fifth ranked player in the world it's not not until you get to uh rank one that now every single time Your name is called, you know, it's led with that. So it's a little weird, but it's cool. You know, you got to keep going to tournaments to keep that number up. And it's not easy, but it's fun. And I love doing it. Yeah. And I find it very fascinating, too, because, you know, the way that my mind works is there's so many of us that play pinball. There's so many of us that try to get better and try to do the best that we can. but there's only going to be a handful of people that will ever actually achieve the things that you've already achieved. And you're relatively at a young age, correct? You're what, 26, 27? Yeah, 27. 27. 28. Well, yeah, you're becoming an old man now. Holy cow. But, I mean, you're a multi-time world champion. You've won, of course, state tournaments, correct, like at least two or three times, right? Yeah. Now, have you ever won a national title before? I wasn't sure if you have or haven't. Uh, yeah, I won the, um, the nationals when it was in Las Vegas against, uh, Carl Python Anghelo in the finals. I don't even know why I ask. Of course you won nationals. Of course you did. So, I mean, that's, that's quite amazing. And, you know, just like you're talking about, I'm sure that with that, it, there might've been pressure there upfront when you first became number one, but is that something that you feel like you've just naturally just kind of grown accustomed to? because I've seen you play in pressure situations to where it looks like you don't even have any pressure at all. You're loose, you're fine, and you're just crushing games left and right. Really? It doesn't look like I'm under pressure because I sure feel it. It doesn't. It doesn't at all. It can be stressful. You were the guy that had like $2 million on Black Rose when we played at Ndisk, and then you just walked up to it and you're just like, okay, I'm going to score $150 million or whatever it was on my ball three. Well, that one, you know, I had the plan solidly in my mind, and I had played, you know, my parents have had a Black Rose forever, so I knew that game left and right. I knew I could do it. I just needed to get the ball into that Pirate's Cove, and then, like, you know, muscle memory would take over, and I could relax a little bit. It was just those first two balls, just so brutal, you know? Yeah, and that was actually quite an amazing game. I actually, I had to take a moment to just walk away, because I was just like, I could tell that you were in the zone when you were plunging just because you were taking your time plunging. And I was like, oh, shit. Ray's going to make sure he gets his ball in a flipper, and he's not going to let it drain anytime soon. I would have never been able to forgive myself if you plunged an out lane to eliminate yourself from a tournament. Oh, gosh. Yeah, as soon as I saw you get a ball in a flipper and you start hitting shots, I was just like, okay, I'm going to go use the bathroom. I'm going to go get a drink. I'm going to take about a 15-minute break. And sure enough, I did. I took a solid 10 minutes. I come back, and you're still playing. I'm just like, of course, of course. That's Ray. Well, speaking of great players, and somebody that actually just briefly took over the number one spot, I think for what, about two weeks, if that? Yeah, right, the last two weeks of 2019. I mean, it was really quick, and then you were right back in there. But I'm talking about Johannes Ostermeyer from, I believe, Germany, correct? Yep. I think that's where he's from. And he had a hellacious game on Avengers, a game that you happen to, you know, know a little bit about. I don't know if you've heard it. You know, Stern came out with this game called Avengers Infinity Quest. But, yeah, he basically crushed that game. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? That was absolutely insane. I was actually waiting to get my car oil change done. I was in the lobby. And I was like, oh, man, I've got to wait like an hour and a half. and so I pull up my phone and I see he's he's like live doing this and I'm like well okay this will be cool to kill some time and then I'm just like glued to the screen for the whole hour and a half until they tell me my card's ready I'm like wait no he just started trophy manio well is this is this happening like what is going on it was insane I couldn't believe it I was like giving updates to people I'm like he's got a billion ball one you know me I said this when he had like 800 million assuming he'd drain about a billion but no he drained at like two billion on ball one or something yeah it was nuts i um i was actually with uh luke nahorniak who was visiting to pick up a pin and we went to the local arcade and he told me he's like yo johannes is on avengers and then i was like okay yeah cool he's probably gonna do well and he said yeah he has he has about a billion on it i'm like wow wow you put up a billion on it he's like no he he's on ball one yeah and i'm like what i'm like okay and so we end up i i play literally i'm on location and i play about five games i'm feeling good about those five games just getting practice in check back up on it he's still on ball one i mean if you guys have not watched this legit his ball one lasted i think about 50 minutes 55 minutes some somewhere around there i just yeah this was um on the stream it was like the last game he played so it was like two and a half hours in or something uh he might have posted a highlight on youtube of just the one game but yeah yeah it i had the same thing it was like still ball one it was incredible it wasn't even like the bonus was 260 million it's like what what do you do yeah he he easily had i think 115 or 120 combos on ball one. Yeah, he basically started super combos and just kept them going the entire ball. So every combo was giving him two combos. And boy, that man could combo. He was hitting combos just like they were nothing, like center ramp, right orbit, left orbit. I'm scared to shoot the left orbit on the fly, but not him. He's like, oh, it's a shot. It's a safe, good shot. He knows in his head, oh, the ball is moving too fast. Shooting the center ramp is more risky than hitting this left orbit that I can hit. And he like does that calculation instantaneously. And he's always shooting the safest, most reliable shot and nailing them. Yeah. And I mean, it's fascinating that you talk about that because that is such, it seems like such a simple thing to do to make a decision just to take the safe shot. Yet when it's happening on the fly, it's actually insanely difficult to do. I mean, can you kind of go into that a little bit about what type of mindset that takes to understand the geometry of just the play field in general to know to know your type of gameplay to take that shot to me it's it's a lot of uh trial and error kind of like how you'd program a machine learning algorithm it's like you know i've tried this before and it was early i tried this and it was late i tried this as early as i can and then it doesn't have enough power like you just as you're playing you take any sort of feedback you know you store it in your brain for the next time that similar situation arises with little modifications based on other information. But, you know, of course, you don't feel like you're a machine programmed that way. It just, you kind of pick it up the more you practice, and it becomes intuitive. Although sometimes you do have to remind yourself, if you find yourself draining a lot or missing a lot, sometimes you need to realign and be like, okay, why did I drain? I probably shouldn't have shot that shot that way. you know, that sort of thing. Yeah, and you know what I found really incredible about his game also is it seems like he has this unique ability to do these little flicks with the flippers. Yeah, Adam Lefkoff calls that the Ostermeyer, the little, like, balls coming and he's like, stay on there. Yeah, yeah, and not only that, it's almost like when he knows that the ball isn't going to stay on the flipper, he doesn't just shoot it away. He flicks it away in such a way that it still keeps the ball relatively safe. It's rare that I see him hit a post that comes screaming back at him. It's almost like he lays it up at a 45-degree angle, either off targets or off somewhere that keeps it safe. And I find that really unique watching him. Yeah, he's very preemptive when the ball is starting to approach the danger zone. Although he didn't even need to. If you watch that video, he barely touched the game. There was a couple times when the ball was in danger, and he would realize it. But most of the time, it was literally he could have played that game without even touching the machine. Like if there was just a video game controller, he probably could have played that game. Like it was insane how accurate he was. Yeah, and I think really, to me, watching that, it confirmed a couple of things for me. One, he's a hell of a pinball player. That's one thing. That's what it definitely confirmed. I mean, obviously he had his massive Dracula game last year during Worlds. That was basically the same thing. It was just shot after shot after shot. Me and Kaylee, just eyes wide open, could not believe what we were seeing. Yeah, and that was the most hilarious. I saw a still of you guys in the announcing booth as soon as he did that, and just your mouth just wide open in the background. I mean, that was insane. We can talk about that here a little bit more as well. But number two, what it confirmed to me was how damn great of a design Avengers really is. Just seeing all those combos in unison, I mean, it's rare that we get a game in which it feels like you can hit nearly every shot to be a combo, and it's highly satisfying, especially when that ball's returning back to the flippers and you can just send it back somewhere else and it's just as satisfying as the last shot that you did. Yeah, I think one of the major things I realized watching that game was how important that Hawkeye loop is. Because, you know, most upper flipper shots either loop the ball or put it in danger or bring it to someplace else on the game. But that game, if you hit that shot, it brings the right to your right flipper back under control. And, you know, my accuracy on that's like maybe 50%. His was like 95%. So anytime the ball was on that upper flipper, combo, you know, keep it going. Yeah, literally on some of my pinball chats, we've already just started calling that the Johannes combo. When you hit that left ramp, center ramp, Hawkeye, and just repeat that over and over and over again. I mean, I've tried to do that. I have a, for those that don't know, I got an LE back here. It's off camera. I've tried to do it, and I've maybe been able to do it three times in a row together. and I'm just excited about that. Johannes was doing it about five times in a row with three balls at the same time. It's just the damnedest thing. I don't even know how that's possible. Yeah, he really showed, you know, that Avengers, you can have some nasty balls where you're just, like, draining instantly, and it seems like the ball is always out of control. You know, you've got the spinning dits, you've got the drop targets, you've got the side loop that kind of brings it down to the death drain angle, drangle. and uh but he showed well hey if you're hitting your shots you got nothing to worry about yeah and it just well the other thing it confirmed me too is that there's a lot not only is there a lot of satisfying shots but this game is very well coded out of box i mean there's there's a lot of different ways to attack it i was so happy that the game made it through all that honestly I was like yes yeah he put it through the ringer if that game if that code survives a Johannes way you know a game it will survive anything Although I will say I did notice and we talked about this that was on the screen afterwards I think it said trophy encased right afterwards or something like that. So what was that a placeholder or what does encase mean? Is that part of it? So I didn't really know what to do. If you got the trophy mania, Keith was like, well, it could be like Walking Dead where you have the burning stakes, where if you get to the last man standing, then your bonus includes like a pile of zombies or whatever, plus all the new zombies. And so that was basically what we did with Trophy Mania, where your trophies will include all of your previous trophies. And I just called it encased because it was, you know, you've completed the case, and so now that's its own separate thing. But it ended up just looking confusing and weird on the bonus screen, so I've updated that, so it won't say that. It'll just, it'll, no, it'll have a total. So if you, you know, if you get your 24 trophies and then get more trophies, now you'll see, you know, 20 bronze trophies, eight gold trophies, seven silver trophies or whatever. Very cool. So Johannes, you hear that? The next time you do that, it'll be a little bit different for you. Something new. For me, that's a mere mortal. I don't have to worry about it. But for you guys, you guys can worry about that. But so with that being said, like, what was Keith's reaction to it? I got to assume he's such a competitor. He probably tried to beat that score within a week. Oh, yeah. He sent me a photo like two days later of him getting a billion or 2.3 billion. And he was like, no extra balls, outlay posts all the way up. And I'm just like, man, Keith, I poked the bear. I poked the goat. I shouldn't have because I was like over the moon. I was sending Keith the video. I'm like, oh, my God, look at Johannes. Look at this. This is crazy. He's insane. And I must have talked a little too good about Johannes. He was like, hey, don't forget who you're talking to, buddy. Well, you know, and that's one of the great things that I love about Avengers, the fact that obviously with Keith Elwin that the majority of people consider the greatest of all time. And I honestly think when it's all said and done, because you're still at a ripe young age, and you've still got years and years ahead of you, So you're definitely going to be in that conversation soon enough. But having both you and him on this pen at the same time, for me, that's a dream come true. Because that's a lot of pinball IQ going into one pen. And it really shows. Like, for anybody that hasn't played it yet, when you play it, you'll see. I mean, the shots are there. The code is there. It's a fun game. And it's actually one of those games that it's made me fairly, I'm a little bit there. I have an Iron Maiden, and I'm considering being okay with letting it go now, now that I have Avengers. Like everything else, I did want to do it, but this game is so damn good, Ray. You guys did a tremendous job. And, I mean, what is the one thing when you first started working at Stern and you knew you were going to be on Avengers, what was the one thing that you were most excited about, knowing that you were going to be working with Elwynn, with Stern? I mean, what really excited you about that in general? I just loved so it was really cool to like just actually figure out the because when you first start it's all new so you're looking at all the how the shots the modes work how you sequence the programming and like you know okay now this shot's lit now this shot lit and so that was just really cool to me to kind of see under the covers of how it's all working and so I didn't really mind just taking instructions straight from Keith without much input and just implementing exactly what he said because that was really cool but then as it went on I would start to have more and more ideas that I'd talk with him about and that was really cool to be able to actually have a direct influence of something that the end player ends up seeing it's like ha that was me you know that little detail or whatever so that I just I love that feeling and then I was really ecstatic when Keith basically told me uh trophies are all you man i don't have any i have they had an original like 24 list of uh achievements okay and basically the trophies were kind of there and skeleton but they they weren't really being used and they didn't have the three levels of bronze silver and gold um and it was all kind of a mess and so keith is like yeah you do whatever you want with trophies you take it and so i was so happy i was like i'm gonna make this as awesome as i can um you know that's what i came up with uh well what if um because originally it was going to be more like jurassic park where you have the fossils which correlate to specific spots in the case right and then you have wild card fossils where they'd fill in left to right and that sort of thing but i was like well what if um you just needed to get to 24 and there was more than 24 trophies available it doesn't matter which ones you get you didn't um because that kind of uh it didn't bug me but you could kind of work your way into a hole in jurassic park where it was like oh i'm upset that i got this wild card fossil in this order because it filled in this one when i could have just got this other one and so i was like well let's let's try something a little different and so i was super happy with how it turned out and i was super happy that the number of trophies worked out to 32 it was like a perfect nice number um it fit perfectly within the you know in 32 uh 32 bits or eight right i don't know how many bits whatever i'm not on the clock so don't worry about it but but everything about it was perfect when it was all said and done so i was super happy about that um and i got to no like the trophy thresholds too right and something like that i'm so happy that you put that in as well because i feel like it adds another nuance like a definite nuance layer in it that you have something to legitimately shoot for all the time that you don't necessarily even have to worry about or think about score to the point that you can really focus on one tasks to do now of course you got to get a little bit of score to get a bigger trophy but at the same time for novice players or for intermediate players it gives them something to naturally shoot for because it is satisfying to see the trophy pop up to let you know hey you've made an achievement here yeah i really liked um how it worked out where basically it makes you play every mode that you get so it's like oh i got a super mode and you can't just blow it off because you're missing out on an easy spot in the case. Same with a super skill shot. You know, no one's going to go for a super skill shot, but it, ooh, I could fill in that one missing trophy I need just by getting a super skill shot. So it really helps fill out the game and make you feel like you're making progress in every way. Yeah. And I really love that. And that's one thing I've been wishing that a lot of pinball would do eventually to where it would have some type of achievement in there. Like even if it's trophies or anything, just different little goals to hit that you can feel satisfaction by achieving that goal. And I find, honestly, Avengers, like you said, it has 32 options in there. And that makes it, I mean, I think the awesome part of that is too, and I don't know if you guys can do this from a code standpoint, but I would have to think in the future, especially whether it's this game or other games, that you might see something that people, like how they're playing the pin or how they're attacking the pin and it might give you give you information on another trophy that you could do or another achievement that you could do in a future code like does that make sense yeah um just incentivize different behaviors um right the way we usually do that is with um extra balls or other uh you know carrots that we can dangle um for instance you know the captain marvel shot uh keith found he wasn't shooting it very much and he's like let's put an extra ball in there or the Hawkeye combos. Let's make it Spot a Grid Award. So that way, if you're Johannes, you never even need to technically hit the drop targets. You can just get 30 Hawkeye combos. That's for sure. And that's, I mean, that's the genius part of this. And also, I mean, can you talk about mystery a little bit? Because I know I was talking to you about that here last week, that one of the things I love about Avengers 2 is that the mystery awards feel like they matter. In a lot of games, they don't feel like they matter as much, but in Avengers, it actually feels satisfying to actually get a mystery award. Yeah, that was something I wanted to do from the get-go when I joined and I saw the mystery awards. I was like, we should, like, make mystery awesome. Like, every time you get a mystery, it should be a surprise, like a mystery, but it should always be good. You should never be disappointed. It should always be like, what kind of good am I getting? you know um and also the fact that the mystery doesn't start lit you know means you have to work for it so it kind of works hand in hand it's like well i have to work for it but i get something good out of it as opposed to the bozo you know something useless but it starts right yep yep and you know we guys if you haven't seen it yet please go find the i usually just search johannes Avengers gameplay. And it's on there. I think it's Pinball Boy Germany. Is that how it's on? I think that was on Twitch. I'm not sure who has it on YouTube. I don't think it's them that has it on YouTube. He posted it to YouTube, so you can probably find it. It's like Johannes versus Avengers. And Avengers lost. Let's just put it that way. Yeah. He took down all of the Avengers. And Thanos. And the Black Order. Yes. Yes. I feel like I need to just get Johannes's face and put it on the trans light now for myself, man. But, um, okay. So besides that, you know, you have done podcasts in the past. You had the, the, uh, do or die podcast, which for those that haven't heard it before, it's an excellent podcast where you talked about your gameplay at different tournaments. And now you're onto Stern with the Raymond files, but with the do or die podcast, what was really your main goal with that was it a way that because i find when i whenever i'm podcasting and talking about games i find myself actually learning a lot by feeling like i'm teaching people yeah uh there's definitely some of that um i i just liked it because it would help me reflect on my uh you know performance of of things i did right and things i did wrong uh so that hopefully the next term I go to, I can do better. That was like the main, the main actually reason for it was kind of selfish. It was like, I just want to get this out because I'd find myself driving home from tournaments talking about in my head, like reliving it. And I'm like, I wonder if this would make an interesting podcast. And so then I, I kind of came up with the idea and it wasn't going to originally just be about tournaments. It was, that was just going to be one little section of it. and then I was going to do the rest like news and events and whatever things people do in podcasts. But I think I only stuck with that for like the first episode. And then after that, it was just whatever tournament I had gone to and kind of talked about everything. And because people I found people like that, too. They were telling me like, oh, it's awesome. I get to hear, you know, situational play because you don't get to hear about that very often. And you just usually hear about the grand picture, how to blow up a game sort of stories or podcast rule strategies. Right. And I feel like something like that, it really helped me a ton as a pinball player, just getting to hear that. Because the insight of hearing a high level player, not just a high level player, but the number one pinball player in the world talking through a game. I mean, it makes you see it from a different perspective. And I find that it's really fascinating to learn that way because there was constantly every single episode I listened to. I swear to you, Ray, it was probably three or four new things I learned. And it's not just like a new rule or a new way to approach. It's just a new way to think about how you're going to reflect on your games, because I I struggled with that early on when I was playing. You know, it'd be one of those things where I couldn't really pinpoint where I went wrong with things or what decisions I could have made better. but after I heard you able to articulate that, I found myself going and playing the same games on purpose because luckily we have an arcade here with like 50 or 60 pins And I found myself playing the same exact pins and trying to figure those things out myself And it was just it was a great podcast I loved it And hopefully you bring something like that back soon, as soon as we get to do tournaments again, because I mean, you have incredible insight. Yeah. I mean, I want to, I love getting them done and hearing the results and it feels good once I'm doing them. It's just so hard to put aside the time and force yourself to do them because you have to, that means you have to take a little bit of notes while you're playing and you have to kind of compile them in your head and you got to set aside the hour and then the hour of editing. And so like all that kind of, that's why when I started, you could see I was doing them like every week, no matter how small a tournament. And then as it went on, I kind of like only did the bigger ones and that sort of thing because it burned me out a little bit. But now that I haven't done them in a while, I'm definitely eager to do them again once tournaments start happening. Yeah, you're getting that itch again? Mm-hmm. Yep, yep. I don't blame you. I don't blame you. It's one of those – like this whole year, it's been weird, especially from a pinball perspective because I know once we were at pinmasters and nationals, it just – nobody was talking about things shutting down at that point. It was – we were all talking about TPF. we were expecting just in a couple of weeks to play again. And then all of a sudden just everything's just done. And so that's, I mean, how has it been for you not being able, because you've been on the tournament circuit for what, about 10, 12 years now at least playing? Yeah, that was like what I'd always be looking forward to is when's the next tournament? You know, great reason to fly different places you've never been and just always improving on the last tournament you were at. You know, it was at Nationals where I, you know, I lost to Colin Urban. And I was like, well, I'm going to get him at the next tournament. Like, I can't keep losing to that guy, you know. But the next tournament is still, who knows. Yeah, yeah. It's, I mean, as of right now, I'm not sure. Nothing's been really said about InDisc as of right now. But, of course, I'm anticipating it not happening since it's only just in a couple of months. and nothing's been said. But TPF, I know that they've announced that, but I'm cautiously optimistic, I guess, if that will go off. I mean, are you planning on attending that? It's interesting. If it is going on and they don't stop it, and if they have all the same stuff that they had the last couple years with big tournament, big prize pool, if the points are back, if it'll count for Stern Pro Circuit, like then I would, I'd probably go, even if it would require mandate masks and, um, lots of hand sanitizing, that sort of thing. I don't mind always wearing a mask. I think if everyone did that, then we'd probably be okay. Um, and I've, you know, I've flown back to Seattle and a bunch and I'd wear my mask the whole plane ride. Um, and I, I think it's okay if everybody is on board, but if you can't get everybody on board and it's safer to just call it off completely, then that's the decision that has to be made. And I'm glad I don't have to make that decision because that is a hard decision. Yeah, that's a big one. And I know right now it's stuff that they're currently looking at for the coming months, but obviously it's all up in the air right now. And I mean, as it should be, it's not to me, it's not something that we can necessarily just rush back into, because just like you said, I mean, it's it's got to be a tournament director nightmare as well just to police that. I mean, yeah, I have a hard time just trying to police it with like eight or 10 people locally. I can't imagine trying to do it with any more than that, especially when it's people from all over the country. So who knows? But yeah, I was at the the Bang Back Arcade down in South Carolina and everyone was pretty respective of the respectful of the the mass. And it kind of it went off without a hitch too much. And, you know, the tournament director there was very adamant of like, hey, your mask, you know, you're done. You're done drinking that beer. It's time for you to go back on. Well, let's talk about that for a little while. How was being back? Because I considered going to that tournament like I'm so tournament starved that I was 50 50 on going out there and just taking a family trip, just seeing it. But how did you like it out there? Because it's probably your first time in South Carolina to play pinball, correct? Yeah, that's the first time I'd even been in that area of the country, really living in Washington. That's like the farthest possible direction. so I was super happy when I found a really cheap flight good times and Fred let me stay at his place which was super nice if you don't know Fred Richardson owner of Bang Back and he been on the tournament scene he spent I think maybe 2018 going to almost every circuit event really nice guy and really I enjoyed the Bang Back arcade they had their machines in little pinwheels they called them so like little uh heads up against each other in four uh little spots around the the room and so you never felt like well there literally was never anyone on the side of you because they were all 90 degree angles um and so that well that was pretty cool to be able to feel like uh not crowded and uh it was like i said there wasn't it was only like 16 people so it It was a nice size where you had kind of a one-to-one ratio with machines. And I think that might be where tournaments need to be at right now, if you're going to have tournaments, is no more than one-to-one ratio of machines to players. And, yeah, I really enjoyed myself. I really liked the – they had these magical boneless wings that I just ate, like, way too many of. In fact, they had, like, seven different sauces. And I think by the time I was done with the weekend, I had tried all seven of them. So you thought you went there for pinball. Instead, you went there for the wings. There you go. I think it's even Fred's birthday today. Yeah. Yeah, October 9th. Yeah. Fred, if you're watching this, happy birthday. We're recording this on your birthday because it's your birthday, obviously. That's totally why we're recording this, just so we can get that in. But, yeah, I mean, that's why it was funny, too, just seeing you guys. out there and I know Jason was out there playing as well. And I saw Dalton out there. And so it was nice just to see people that you see out and about at different events. And it was nice to see, I guess it brought back a little bit of normalcy, just getting to see some type of competition and getting to see people that you're familiar with at these competitions. So that, that was nice to see. And that's why I was really happy to see that Fred put this on. I'm glad to see that it went off without a hitch. I mean, it seemed to be a success. Yeah, it was, uh, it was super fun. Um, and I liked that you played match play. Uh, it wasn't just about the Avengers. That was just the last game, you know, one game out of the whole tournament. Um, so, you know, I was playing games I hadn't played in a while. Um, I, I, I had that, that tournament feeling of the first game I played, believe it or not, was Iron Maiden. And I got like 18 million points and it got fourth place on it. And I was like, oh, man, it's good to be back. It's good to be back in the tournament scene, just getting absolutely crushed on a game that you know you can blow up. But, you know, I shook it off and then, you know, blew up the next couple games or whatever, and it was all good. Yeah, I guarantee somebody was in that group thinking, that's the number one player? Really? Like, it happens. It happens. Like, you know, not every single game could get blown up. And I mean, just circling back around to competition, you mentioned that earlier about discussing little nuances in games in terms of, you know, just trying to get points and not necessarily trying to blow stuff up. And, you know, what I found talking to people that are brand new to pinball or at least brand new to tournament pinball is that a lot of them have it in their heads that they have to basically GC every single game that they play, especially when they're playing high level players. But I try to tell them that it's not necessarily that. You just need to make sure that you play under control and that you try to be as accurate as you possibly can. What do you think is the secret sauce? Like when you were first starting, you know, you're Raymond Davidson. You're not the number one player yet, but you're playing great, excellent players. What was the one thing that you ended up learning early on that really helped you skill-wise to really level up? um i'd have to say uh i think like dead passing specifically not not flipping all the time to slow the ball down and also learning learning some sort of basic rules enough so that you know what you're doing when you step up to that machine because i was finding i would lose more often when I had never seen a game before. And, you know, I was like, oh, well, that game is just stupid random. Like, I lost on that because I got unlucky. And then I would learn a game and find out I would lose less often on them once I learned them, particularly with like, Valley, early solid states. You know, I would lose on those because I had never played valleys before. So I didn't even know what a super bonus was and so i would see people blow it up and then i would step up and be like yeah i know pinball i can hit shots and i'd be shooting stuff and they wouldn't amount to any points um so really you just got to learn some sort of direction um is one of the biggest things you can do even if it's as simple as this will start this multiball this will start modes Like even just having those two things is infinitely better than not knowing, you know, those things. Right. And so let's lean into that a little bit. Let's say you are, of course, now you probably know pretty much any game out there that you run into at this point, at least the majority of games. But let's say you happen to run into a game that you haven't seen before. And it's we'll say it's a modern game, right? like an early 90s modern game how are you approaching that off the bat like what are you looking for right off the bat you're player one two so you can't watch anybody else play it uh yeah like i said definitely those probably those two things like multi balls and any sort of uh features or modes um so i'm looking for uh basically any scoops that have lots of things in front of them and figuring out like, okay, how do I qualify this or this multiball? And then also finding out as I'm playing my ball one, like what shots are easy and which shots are hard. And if I can find a strategy that involves the easy shots, even if it doesn't earn as many points or is less exciting, you know, I'll aim towards that strategy as I'm going. because as you're hitting shots, you're not draining. So you have even more time to sort of discover what everything is doing. You know, you don't want to step up to a game and just start shooting at the hardest shot in the game because somebody told you, oh, shooting that starts this crazy mode. And it's like, well, maybe I'm not good enough to do that yet or maybe I don't know this machine enough to try that strategy. So, yeah, you have to figure out what your – you have to have a plan and then like a backup plan. So your main plan, and then if you find that that plan's not working, you switch maybe to your backup plan. And then maybe go back to your main plan once you've gotten some more, once you got more comfortable. That's interesting. So in your head, you're really looking at maximizing your efficiency. Yeah, I mean, that's really all it comes down to. Yeah, it's efficiency. Because you're only going to get a certain number of flips before the game decides your time is up. And so you want to make sure every flip is doing the best it can, yeah. Yeah, so that's tremendous insight because I know a lot of times, a lot of tournament players, like we just talked about a second ago, they think that they have to do more than what they're capable of. And I think that's so important that sometimes just doing what you're capable of and doing it consistently is sometimes good enough. I mean I have found that I been in situations where I am clearly the worst player of the group but I able to hold my own just simply by doing that by just staying consistent by not trying to do anything crazy And so for anybody else listening to this if the number one player in the world can do that and that what he doing it going to work for you that one thing you can do pick out the shots that you can handle and try to repeat those until you figure things out along the way is that is that fair to say ray yeah i mean you obviously don't want to keep hitting something if it's literally giving you zero points um so you gotta try to find the best risk versus reward you know combination of like, okay, this is getting me somewhere. I can keep doing this. And basically, yeah, just try to find something that works and feel out the game. And if there's a multiball, that's the best way to do that because when you have multiple balls in play, you're not in danger. So you can get to that multiball right away and then feel out the rest of the game from there. So going back to that then, when you're talking about figuring out a game, What is, I've been curious, and this is just my own personal question, what is usually your strategy when you're at a Herb event, when you're at a Pump and Dump? Are you picking out games ahead of time that you absolutely know that you're going to play? And then, well, of course you probably are, but are you also finding games that might be a little off the beaten path, that might be that one game like a Rescue 911, that not everybody's going to play, that you might be able to sneak in a high score on that you might not be familiar with? uh yeah so for it depends on if it's the actual like unlimited qualifying or if it's the in-disc uh ticket-based qualifying let's go with unlimited qualifying okay so if it's unlimited then i will pick the games that i uh i like the most because you're going to be playing them over and over and so you want to play games that are interesting you want to play games that you know you can blow up because you have in the past. You don't want to play a game that you don't have any experience on because it's very unlikely that you're going to be able to get a score required. So it might be tempting to avoid the 12-person deep Attack from Mars line to go to the crazy Gottlieb game that no one's ever played before line. And there is a time and a place to do that. But in general, I feel people might do that too much where they don't, you really should pick games that you know that you can blow up. Now, when it starts getting different is for especially when it's really close and you just need a little bit more to get you over the finish line then you can start looking at those other weird games and start formulating plans of well, I've never played Waterworld before but I know I can get 600 million by doing X, Y, and Z and that's fine as opposed to I need a 13 billion on attack from Mars. I've done that before. I'm going to have to do it right now. Like that's kind of what you're weighing in your head. Yeah, and it's one of those things that's funny because I have this problem. I know you most likely don't have this problem, but I always at these Herb tournaments, I'll be selling right along to where I might have that one, like two or three pins in a row that I put up pretty good scores on that I feel good on, right? And I just need that one last game. and that one last game just whips my ass non-stop for like two or three hours straight to where I just feel like I'm just stuck I have nowhere else to go and so I mean in that situation what would you what would be your advice to players that that know that they're on that game that they know they can blow it up they need it but they can't quite get over the hump and there's somebody like me that is literally, like, for instance, I had to play Iron Man about 14 times at Cleapin just to get the do or die, just to finally get there. Like, what would you say to those players that are doing something like that? Perfectly fine. If you're going to say I'm batshit crazy, I'm perfectly fine with that as well. Like, I'm trying to figure out the right way to do it. No, I mean, you just have to, that's one where you actually have to be really relaxed and not worry about it. You're like, all right, I'm just going to play, and if I drain or if I don't get it, I can just get back in line. and just you have to have that mentality of it's just like you're on location trying to gc a game for fun um even though it is stressful you have to yeah try to not think about that um because once you once you're relaxed then you can start playing it and you'll get into that zone where now your heart starts beating and you're like oh okay wait crap this is this game really matters and your mind will switch into that whether you want it to or not um but the more relaxed you are going into it the longer you'll have before you switch to that uh panic mode um so if you can just start at a nice like all right let's do this rather than a oh no from the get-go uh that can definitely help yeah and there's something to that because i find that a lot of my my decent scores come in very early like it's really weird i always thought that i need to take a few games get warmed up But for whatever reason, during my games that I feel like I'm just warming up on, I end up turning in decent scores. And I think there's something to that. Like you're saying, when you're playing loose, you're not as tense. You seem to do overall better, especially if you're letting muscle memory take over as well. If you're familiar with the rule set and the basic shot geometry of whatever pin you happen to be on at that time. Yeah. Well, then let's talk a little bit about your tournament career a little bit more. Now, you made the interesting decision to go from one pinball hub of Seattle in the Washington area, and now you're in Chicago, to where it seems like every single Shark is, except you're another great white that's just coming in to play in that area. And I can't imagine what that state tournament will be like once you guys start back up. I mean, who all is located in Illinois that would be able to play in that? I mean it's got it's got all everyone you know it's sharps keith uh jason wordrick um you know I I need to learn you know go to some leagues and start finding out uh the other uh locals because I know you know there's a lot of people that just can't travel um and they must be pretty good if they play in the with the other Chicago people uh so I'm excited to you know play against uh everyone and uh yeah so there's no no shortage of good competition um so that it's kind of nice well you're of course you're insanely battle-tested too i mean you had what was it just last year you played uh kaylee george in the finals for washington oh man that was that was so tough um i had to play him and he almost put me to well he did kind of put me to sleep on a world rumble what wwf uh daddy's wrestling game thing royal rumble he put like three billion on it and i was just like oh my god it's 1 a.m uh but finally once that was over i'm like all right my turn to pick a game um and so that uh i was able to i think i think i said i picked deadpool or maybe um maybe he picked deadpool i don't know but i was able to eventually put that behind me and focus on the next game ahead. We also had that battle on Tales of the Rabid Knights where I had like 80 million ball won, and then he's like, that's cool. Let me just get infinity points with the Genie Harem stack, and we'll just call it once you think I have enough points. And that's basically what happened. He just played it until the ball got stuck, and then he had to stop his game. And I was like, all right, well. Yeah, that was – I actually watched that finals as much as I could. But I think, I forget how many games it went. Did it go six games or did it go seven games? I think it went the full seven. Did it go the full seven? Because I remember watching it afterwards, and it was just like, I mean, if you guys haven't seen it yet, I highly encourage you guys to see it. I'll leave it in the show notes for sure. But, I mean, that was some high-level entertaining pinball. Because just like you said, it seemed like everybody had an answer for each other. Like if somebody put up a score, the next person put up a score. I mean, it was just amazing to watch. Yeah, it was tough. And that kind of happens where you'll almost play at the level of your opponent just out of weird, like, you feel it. You're like, I need to crush it because I'm playing against someone who also feels like they need to crush it and is really good. And so, yeah, it's like you just got to do it. And it's motivating because when you're playing against someone really good and you know you have to crush it, then almost like some of the pressure goes away of like, well, if I house ball three balls in a row, whatever. I wasn't winning that game anyway. As opposed to if you play against someone who puts up a medium score, now you're like, oh, crap, don't drain, don't blow it. You've got this. So it's just funny how your mental state can change as the day goes on. yeah and that's I mean that's one of the things I found too I mean I had the pleasure of playing Kaylee actually at pin masters I mean he is an excellent player you can just tell when he's stepping up to a game he's thinking about it on a whole nother level that a lot of us can't even think of I mean it's like he he can find a way to basically find scoring in a pin that I didn't even think was possible yeah oh yeah that's his his specialty um he actually uh he told me about the the whodunit thing in the pinberg finals did you uh catch that i've heard about it but you'll have to i know i've heard something about this so kaylee he has a whodunit or he had one at one point so he was knowing that game inside out and he had a hunch that he'd be able to pull this off at some point and he pulled it off against carl d'Python Anghelo who put up like 30 billion or some 20 23 billion or something on whodunit like just grinding like carl just had the most amazing game of whodunit ever and then kaylee goes up and he knows exactly what he needs to do he he sets up the some elevator multiball grace period shot thing which then causes the elevator to get stuck down and so now he can just shoot the elevator for everything for the rest of the ball and so he just just like nothing just chops wood all the way to catch carl and carl is just like well wasn't that that was on stream wasn't it because i could have swore i've seen him play whodunit yeah that was on stream and the best part was after that game that you they immediately brought over the hand truck wheeled it off stage no that's a that's amazing i mean and that's so dangerous too when you're as skillful as he is and then you can figure those things out that nobody else knows. It's like, I mean, that is literally like giving Superman a power-up. That's what that's like. Yeah, I mean, luckily now with the Internet, you only get one or two good uses out of that before everyone else can do it or knows about it. But just because people know about it doesn't mean they can execute it. So you can still get some mileage out of it even after the secret's out. Yeah, that's a whole other thing. I mean, because it's just like the Iron Maiden glitch that everybody's figured out. Or Icarus and Mummy. Like, I've been trying to do that, and I've got like a 10% success rate to even get it started. For whatever reason, I just can't do it. I don't know why. But I want to do it. Well, yeah, it's difficult. You've got to not double flip. You've got to, like, pay attention to this. Don't hit this. You know, you have to do everything just right. But, man, I wish tournaments were still going on, and I wish whoever found that didn't tell anybody, and they just waited for the perfect moment. and just drop it on someone. Maybe that's a little cruel wish, but it would have been pretty funny. No, that would have been funny. Somebody steps up and they put up like $50 billion on Iron Maiden. Nobody knows where the hell that came from all of a sudden. That would have been the way to go. Well, Raymond, I thank you so much for being here today. Do you got anything that you want to leave the audience with? I don't think so. Thanks so much for having me on. I love your podcast and look forward to more pinball and hopefully tournaments. No, yeah, I hope so too as well. Well, guys, you guys can find Raymond at, of course, on Stern. If you go to the Insider's Access, he has his own podcast on there, The Raymond Files, which I highly recommend. I've been listening to it where he's discussing all things Avengers. So anything we didn't go over today, I promise you it's on there. I've already learned a lot from listening to it. I've actually listened to every single episode three times already, three times just to figure things out. So, I mean, it's very informative for sure. But, Raymond, thank you so much for being here, and I really do appreciate it. We'll have to do this again. All right. Thanks, Travis.