It is day four, the final day here at IndyS. My name is Jeff Jules from Pinball Profile. Before we get started, we want to thank all the people that have helped make IndyS such a success. We certainly know about Jay and Bob and Jim and, of course, Carl D'Python Anghelo here at IE Pinball, but also the many volunteers. Matt, for example, behind the camera. Emoto, who's helped out from Marco remotely. Gene, doing wonderful photography. The list goes on and on, and we do want to thank all those wonderful people that sponsored and volunteered their time to make this wonderful event happen. And now the big action. Forty players in the playoffs. One of them will be the world champion. The IFDA World Championship, the Open here at Indus. Someone's going to win that gorgeous trophy. have their name on a banner, and also, thanks to the IFPA, win a brand new Stern Premium Pinball Machine. Who will it be? Let's find out. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Riverside, California. I'm Neil McRae. I'm Bill Mason from Huntersville, North Carolina. I'm Gene Exlong from San Francisco. And we're here to catch the end of round one of the open playoffs and into round two. So round one's been running since 8 a.m. We're going straight to Star Trek Next Generation, a game we're probably all very familiar with, I think it's fair to say. Yeah, I only played this one maybe twice during qualifying. I had a lot of trouble with it, but I had a lot of trouble with most of the games here. Wow. Jason, what a tremendous start. 1.5 on the start. Yeah, and we picked some names here. So Jason Zeller, winner of Classics. Brian O'Neill, a former winner. Carlos de la Cerda. And Nick, who's local from the Bay Area, I believe. Yeah, and Brian used to be from the Bay Area as well, so we've got two of our folks, sort of. So this game has one modification in that the drop target up here near the spaceship at the top is not automatically down. You've got to hit it. And that makes it a little bit tricky at the start of the game. So you can't just simply plunge for multiball in this game. Right. So Nick's off to a solid start. He's doing the warp theory, the warp strategy, which seems to be the prevalent strategy for most people. Start with warp factor four and just keep hitting the warp shots and cycling around. And the score built up pretty fast by doing that. You have others that will try the modes, but I think most people try the warp theory or the warp strategy, which is what I think Brian's going to do here. And he did. And you can see it bounce off that drop target at the top. You can't select it. There we go. There we go, yeah. Now we're getting that rhythm going. Oh, oh man. As soon as I say he gets the rhythm going, that's what happens to him. The curse of the announcer. Yep. Up steps Carlos. Yeah, here we go. Player four. Looks like Brian won the first game. For those of you who don't know, we're joining the second game of the first round of the playoffs. Brian looks like he won, and Jason looks like he got second. Carlos got third, and then Nick got fourth on the first game. Straight into the walk strategy here from Carlos. I expect him to really nail this. Carlos is a great player when it comes to these repetitive shots. Yes. And Carlos has his little thing where he flips the flipper in between shots, especially on classics. He likes to do that. I'll have to see how he does that. Yeah, I've picked that habit up for him. And I'll tell you why. Because as I've got older, my hands get tighter. And it just keeps your hands mobile when you're playing. Bad luck. And Carlos can see what happened. And it's kind of like on Ironman, those flings at the very top, how they're kind of angled to the outside and kind of promotes the ball to leave. So it can be kind of tricky there. So Jason's stepping up for ball two. You can tell he did the warp strategy because his option now is warp factor two instead of warp factor four. That resets to warp factor two. So I don't know if he's going to do that or choose to start a mission. This is, for as good as Jason is at making shots, I would assume he's just going to go ahead and keep going with the warp strategy. And also a recognition of how tough. We were talking about this earlier, Bill, before we came on air. You know, Jason is not a terrible player, but starts without a bye. And it just shows you how brutally difficult the qualification for this was. It was. It's some pretty good pinball players that did not make it. So Jason got his first lock. So now he's going to work that way. Oh, man. They use this kickback there. Good anticipation. Just kind of missed the shake on that. Unfortunate. Still not too bad. Jason sitting in a pretty good spot here. Nick with a solid start as well. Almost 900. Ball one. Yeah, Nick needs to get off the... to get some points in the bank. And actually probably in this format, if you don't pick up a win by the second game, you're probably in trouble. Yeah. So Nick's chosen warp factor two and is going to try the same warp strategy. Uh-oh. Yeah, you could tell that was trouble, especially the way it was going to spin off the sling there. This is a dangerous start. The outlings are just literally little bits of metal, and it's a killer. If the ball goes near the outling, you're dead. Yeah. The game, and all the games here are playing fantastic. The techs here did a fantastic job of keeping the game. Of course, there were a couple that went down here and there. That's going to happen as part of the tournament. But the techs, shout out to all the techs here. Staying on top of the machines and fixing them. Jim and others that were helping out keeping the games in top condition. Yeah, and I mean there must be at least 70 maybe 80 games in the tournament. It's non-trivial to keep that many games running where they're constantly used. Yep. So Brian got around to the spinner, over to the top. Hopefully he's trying to get a feed to the... He's going to bounce over and then spinner. There we go, see if he gets all the way around for him. There he goes. little bit late on that start. Oh no, this is a double. That's very dangerous. I can't tell you how many times that got me yesterday. And Brian, you know, he's on a cementing position. He wants to go through. There you go, that was out late. A fair tilt on this game. I didn't find any of the tilts desperately bad. No, no. There are some that are tighter than others, but this was certainly plenty reasonable. Last year, Batman Dark Tilt, as I like to call it. I don't know if you remember it. Holy moly. Yeah, I played Abracadabra yesterday, and it tilted, which ended the game yesterday. But that's okay. That's part of classics, I guess. So Carlos is stepping up. Less than desirable start. He's gonna start. Oh, I think he was a little early on that. Yeah, you got a multiplier He definitely did not want that but that's okay. He still got the ability to come back from that It's not the end of the world he definitely won it Yeah, he definitely won the war factor for so he was gonna cue shooting for the right ramp there to get that beat to the blipper On ball two, it starts on warp factor two, right? It only does that if you made reasonable progress in the warp strategy before. So since he did not get far enough in the warp strategy, it was still lit for him. Yeah, he plunged a little too soon and got the multiplier instead. So you can see how Jason only has warp factor two because he apparently did very well on ball one with the warp strategy. Does it go down from that if you keep doing well? No, War Factor 2 is the lowest it goes. So really your two choices here are to start the mission if you're a mission-based kind of person or to do the War Factor, which is what Jason's doing. If you can get a rhythm going on the mission, there's decent points there. You know, I always start with Q. You've got to grind that out. You've got to grind that out. Yeah, but just, I mean, his shot-making ability, this is certainly what he has to do here. And then it gets that spinner lit. And that spinner can be obscene sometimes when it gets those points up there. The 700 right now. Nice catch. Yeah, and welcome. We're on the front page of Twitch today. Welcome if you're new to pinball. This is the IFP Open Championships run by the great people from the Inland Empire Pinball Association. We have about 350 players here trying to win the competition. But welcome to the channel. Oh Yeah, he tried to balance it he anticipated it is just sometimes even if you anticipated even if you do it a good a Good balance. It's just not gonna come out You just got to keep the ball completely away from those outlets Accuracy is crucial in this game. Yeah, like I talked about how those slings are Seemingly angled more towards the out lane. This game seems worse than almost any other game I play Yeah, I agree. Really bad, right? I agree. There's actually a guy in Germany who sells, well, they've just increased the outlay by a little bit, and it just makes a massive difference to the game. But they're not here. No. Nothing here is making games easier. No. Nice choice to let the ball come down. That was smart. So Nick's clearly trying to win, but he has to at least get second in this. Yeah. to get the two points and give himself a chance on the third game. Brian's in a little bit of a hole. You can see he still has a choice for the War Factor 4, Gene, because he did not get through the War Factor strategy. I forget how far you have to get before it defaults to the War Factor 2, so he will have that choice, and so will Carlos when he gets up. I think it's War Factor 9. Is it 9? It's War Factor 9, I think. Pounce. Pounce again. Yep. Very nice. Nice. Brian's a fantastic player. That worked out well. Amazing player, Brian. I'm one of our sponsors, Brian works for Scorbitt. Oh, nice. Oh, regretted shooting that one on the fly. He knew right away. Yep, made him pay the price. He's like, I don't know why I saw that on the fly. I catch myself doing that too. Idleman, yes, we can see chat, and it's good to see you guys. But we're going to focus on the play as much as we possibly can because that's what people are here to see. Yep. So now Carlos is not going to select the multiplier this time. He's going to make sure he times this just right. There you go. Straight in. There you go. Points coming. Plunches in this strategy. This could be a... Oh, no. Look at him. No, I thought we were going to get some... So that makes the next round everybody can get through. Yep. So that will put Carlos at two points. Brian will stay at four points. Nick moves up to two points. And Jason has got a lead at six now going into the third game. So anybody can get through. That's true. Yeah, Jason in good position there, I think. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just needs a second, and he's pretty much guaranteed. He's driving. Nothing wrong with having the sticks and having his skill level. It's a pretty good advantage to have. Indeed. Fantastic player. Phenomenal player. Won the classics earlier in this weekend. And won it in style, actually. Knocked out some big names. Yep. And he's in the mix for the high stakes. Tremendous competition in the high stakes. I still have a couple more entries on that. But some of the scores in there are, wow, incredible. Someone put a billion on, I can't remember which game it was. Walking Dead? No, it was not a game you'd expect to see. Oh, and don't worry. Yeah. Someone said 200 billion on Johnny Mnemonic. Johnny Mnemonic, yeah. Is that right? Yeah, I know it was pretty high. It was insanely high. I know there's two scores in the 70s on Genesis, which is pretty ridiculous. You can follow on neverjanes.com slash 2023 if you want to have a look at all those scores. All right, so it looks like we're picking up with Tron. Jared August coming up to Tron with a real good score, 85 starting bar three. And this is a tight group. Four phenomenal players. Wow. Two former winners, I think. Jason Werdrick, winner of high stakes. Colin Urban, a former world champion, winning here. Zach Sharp, Pimberg champion. It's a big group, this group. Yes, it is. and then Jared's currently ranked fourth right now. Jared's a phenomenal guy. I was asking him what should I do on the game, and he's always willing to help. Yes, he's very willing to help. Escher is too. Escher and his dad are very open with strategies on different games. They love to help out. They like to give people tips on the games whenever you ask them. So nice staging by Jared. So he's holding that ball. He's going to play that one ball. And then when he loses that ball, he's just going to shoot the disc to restart it. Well, did you see something lovely here? I always love the separation. Beautiful. He was doing that stage. I mean, he didn't need to stage that part of it. But he was taking that. This is top play here for Jared. Yeah. Jarrod's making this look really easy. If you're a first-time pinball watcher, let me tell you, this is very hard. He's going to shoot the disc to restart it. That restarts his multiball. Now he's working towards his disc super jackpot, which he's making really good progress on. You can hit any of the shots, just the blue rich shots for that? Yes. Okay. It looks like he's got one more disc shot and then the visor will come up. Yeah, it's hard to read what it says. Or is that a seven? No, it's a seven. It's not easy. It's a seven, yeah. Oh, wow. Got double scoring now. That's pretty impressive. So It's pretty obvious that Jerry picked this game I mean he's player one 14 for a super jackpot Nice job Just go ahead and shoot the loop over there And finish it off Oh no That was some interesting backhand Uh oh That was a double Yeah you got lucky getting away with that I thought he meant to do that Yeah, I think he was gonna post pass. Yeah, or was he trying to backhand the scoop? I thought he was maybe trying to backhand the scoop. I think he was. Get him a little fancy. VIA simulation, nice. How risky does he need to take? Yeah, he's also got a good score, but any of the other guys he's got, yeah. Totally. Okay, so now he's at a clue, part of his VIA simulation, so he's got to finish the clue mode so that he can move on. Looks like he's got, it's kind of hard to tell, most of the rest, if not all of the rest. Yeah, he's in, he's got. Yeah, it's gone. That was a great ball, though. Yeah, fantastic game. And for those of you watching, I mean, this game set up pretty steep, pretty fast. And you can tell by his score. And look at the other three world-class players not even at 10 million, and he's over, what, 120? Yeah. I mean, that's the separation that he had on this particular game. It worked out pretty good for him. That might have been his second C assimilation then, right? Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. It's hard to tell. Yeah. But that kind of score, I mean, he was 85 going into ball three. So Zach steps up with the mindset that I have to get second place. I mean, you've got to be realistic whenever you have goals on something like this. I've got to try to win second. Sometimes you just can't win first. You just need points, right? I think game two, you're zero points. You want to win. Oh, he wants to, but you've got to set realistic goals. You're right. You've got to set realistic goals from the beginning, right? I mean, 120-something million is kind of difficult to, on one ball, it's kind of difficult to overcome. Not that it's not possible. It's a massive score. Yeah. No doubt about it. So, I mean, that's what Jason, Colin, and Zach are doing. They're sitting there saying, all right, let's try to get the two points out of it. I mean, not that one is out of the question, clearly. I mean, four points is out of the question. But that's the mindset you have to take is let's start with second place and then, you know, things string together, we can move up from there. Yeah. Kind of fast coming out of the scoop, too. So he's probably going to try to get the light cycle going. See these. Okay, so now his light cycle is lit at the scoop, which is what he wanted. Is he going to push past or is he going to back off? Yeah, he's going to push past. He just needs a multiball. Shoot the end of the line shot here and get some points. There you go, nice job, that's a little bit of a thigh right there. You know sitting there at five and then all of a sudden has a multiball going. Yeah, I mean he's guaranteed third. Probably guaranteed second and possibly second. Yeah, no lead to stay for Colin there though. True. They can keep control right from the beginning. And for light cycle, what do you hit? So the lit light cycle shots. You can see the left ramp and the right in between the pop bumpers. Right. I don't know if Neil can tell us right over there. Unfortunately, the tele-stream is a bit of an issue right now. So you can see they're flashing the cycles. And you can stack in the other multiballs too, that one? Yes. So he can get Cora if he gets enough. And that's kind of what he's shooting right now. Yeah, I couldn't move. There you go. That worked out good here. Yeah. Seems like what most people do, get light cycle on Cora. Yep. Two more for Cora. And see, that's the great part about this kind of strategy, too, is not only are you working your way towards Cora, but you can get the end-of-line jackpots as well, right? Those are open-ended per ball, right? So it just shows up in value every time you hit it. What does? The end-of-line jackpots. Yeah, it has to go with the combinations that you have going, the combination shots. The last one was 1.9. Yeah. Ooh. Still not bad, though. 12 plus bonus. That was impressive. Only had one or two more quarter shots to go to get it started. Yeah, I think you're right, Bill. If you're calling right now, you want 13 million. Yeah, that's your immediate goal is 13. I mean, he's already got a point to go with the four that he had on game one. So, yeah, if he can get 13 and move into the third game with six points, he would be happy with that. And two players go through each right. Right. And again, I'm not suggesting he's not trying for first, but your immediate goal is second. That's a tough catch out of there. Very nice. The speed that it comes out caught me by surprise yesterday. This is a blast. Yeah. So he's trying for Cora as well. Ooh, a little bit dangerous. Pounce it over. There you go. Oh, got a little Jim out of it. All right. Nice to hit that shot. All right. Follow Jim mode. You can also shoot that Jim mode. Some people have success shooting the Tron targets on the left and then banking it off of there. I've seen that work with reasonable success. Nice anticipation where it was going there. Gore is lit. That's what he wants, bounce over. Now he's going to shoot it. There you go. Nice awareness on his part that he only needed one more. Oh, oh. He's still got a point out of that. Yeah. Yeah, not quite enough. No. It shows how expanding that 125 million score is. Yeah, that's really impressive. Jared will have six. Colin will have five. Jason will have three. and Zach's still on zero, so that's tough. Yeah, Zach in a difficult situation right now. Yeah, mathematically, I think you see. Yeah, hard to see him come back, actually. Yeah, but, I mean, he's still fighting for position. Even if he can't advance, you still get position on there. So Gene's looking at the math right now to see where he is. So it was six for, I think maybe he can still get in if he wins. Or at least four for the tie. Doing some mental math. Yeah. Maybe for the second position. Yep. It was a tiebreaker. No, no, no, because if it's six and five, then he has zero for six and five. Oh, okay. Okay, so it is six and five. Because at the most he can get four, so yeah. Yeah. So Carl is going to move this over to something else. I think the group on rush is still playing. So what you guys are watching is the Open Championship after three days of brutal qualifying with over 250 or so people. I don't forget the exact amount, but it was over 250, around 250 last time I checked. Three days of qualifying from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. And then there was some classic tournaments that were Classics 1s was on Friday, and then Classics 2 tournament was yesterday. So you had those tournaments as well. And they do have a Sunday Strikes tournament going on back here on the other side for those of you who still want to play on Sunday. And don't forget high stakes. And then high stakes, yeah. Finals are later. But, I mean, just to give you an understanding of how tough this was, I'll just pull out a couple of names. Colin MacAlpine, Pimberg World Champion. didn't qualify. And a player with a big name, Jack Tadman, who was in both finals of the Classics. And he finished second in the New York too. I mean, fantastic player. Robert Gagnon, multiple world champions didn't qualify. You know, this was not an easy task to qualify. Makes me feel better. Absolutely, 100%. And the games are actually not, I mean, they're not unfair. they're just tough and the competition is tough and there's only 40 only 40 species that's it that's what i like is the machines are set up well you know since it's a ticket and you need to be consistent it's you don't need to make them so murderous that you just can't play them you can get a hold of most of them i love this format i i struggled with consistency and that's the key to this format is being consistent on five straight games so you can have a good enough card and invariably it seems like you get four pretty solid games and then the one game where the score is not high enough and it keeps on bleeding out and you just sit there and you watch your point until it will go down and down and down and that's what happened to me yesterday. I was trying to get another good card in so I could get back up into the top 40 but it just didn't work out yesterday. But I love this format. Fantastic format. Yeah, I really like it. When I first started playing card I wasn't a fan of it but I'm going to love it. Well, I think it's the hardest format, right? I think that's why it's the most frustrating. You know, you get like three games into a decent ticket, and then if you bust it, you're just like. But I think you could still, you know, depending on how high the other ones are, you can kind of get in. Because I think I've seen in past, I don't know about this year, where people had a zero even because they had, you know. But I think that was bigger cards or something. Yeah. If you were five, you don't have to do that. I think that's one of the bounties is to qualify with a zero. I'd be pretty impressive because you'd have to get like yeah, you'd have to get some first seconds and thirds and other games Yeah I tried I Got second on Tommy and then my mystery castle score was not very good So it caused me to fall down But you know there a lot of it been a lot of fun here really has this year doing it How many years have you done it Neil This is my third year as well actually I was at the last one in Banning and then here last year And they've all been fantastic events. Yeah. I just love the selection of machines, especially coming from Europe, where we don't have this wide a range of machines. You come here and you play something you've never seen before. Yep. It's just phenomenal. And if you're new to pinball, it's one of the big challenges. We have all these different machines, different strategies, different rules, they play differently, the flippers are different, and if you can master that, then that makes you the world champion and that's what these top 40 players have done. They've mastered that ability to adapt very quickly to a new game or a game that they may be familiar with but plays a little bit differently and if you can quickly turn that on you qualify and it's downhill from there. But I find it really difficult to adapt to a game that I already know. The mind muscle. I know a flip here and actually it works great at home, doesn't work here. That is the key. We know the strategies of Deadpool and you know the strategies of Rush and Star Trek and games like that. But your ability to adjust to how each individual game is set up, the steepness of the game, the rubbers that are on the flippers, the tilt sensitivity. Not that these were overly tight, but, I mean, you have to adjust to things like that. And that's what really elevates your game from a really good player to being at that elite level like these guys are here. And then extracting out the maximum points. We saw it last night on Cheetah where there was one shot that was found. I mean, it wasn't great for watching. In fact, it was terrible for watching, to be honest about it. But in this sort of situation, it is about the maximum points. So if you find an exploit like that, then you kind of murder it. And actually, that's one of the other great things about Indus, is when Jim and the guys discover this stuff, they try to bend it a little bit to make it a little bit harder so that it keeps the play exciting. And you saw that in Stars last night, if you watched the finals. It was just a phenomenal game that was really, really great all the way to the end. So we're back. Oh, here we go. And Neil was just alluding to the games that you don't see very often. This is Twister for those of you who don't see this game much. I love this game. Yep. I'd say I like this game. Yeah. I do too. I like the call-outs. It's not, you don't see it at many tournaments. This is one of those Carl games that he just kind of threw in. Fun game. Looks like he might be doing that, I forget what it's called, the Orbitz multiball. Yeah, it's with the cows. Yeah, it's with the cows. So he's shooting the left and right Orbitz, get the cows. Gets up there in the pop bumpers as well. Gets you pretty good points, pretty good action on the pop bumpers. Yeah, so this is a peak vision group. We're going to go back to Jason Zola's group after this. Okay. and yeah I mean a game that you very rarely play and this is great because everyone's kind of racking their brains from 20 years ago when this game came out, ok what's the strategy for this what do we do I mean I go for the simple lock shot which is straight in front of you and it's you know that gets you into multiball and then you can start to stack things from there the spinner, I love the way it sets the multiball up We'll hopefully see that later on, but actually quite a forgiving game. And it's all about not making a mistake. You can also short plunge it and then shoot the little disc magnet. Yeah, that's why I did that. And it's safe to do that actually. Yeah. I mean, if he knows where the plunge is, that's nice. And there's a multiball from that ramp as well, right? as well right? Oh that feed is it six multiball? Six ramps I think. Yeah that feed is tough it comes off that rail if you're not ready for it I mess that up on high speed all the time. Yeah those coming off those rails with no nice soft landing is pretty gruesome. You try to like live catch it or just shoot it on the fly? I was shooting it on the fly because the rubbers on this were so bouncy a catch was was not trivial. I hate how the ball saves, there's no grace period. So we have John Jones, top 500 player, just outside the 500, which is great to see. This is Jack, he's from Northern California. He won Golden State Pinball Festival. He's got a good score going here. He's trying to transfer it over so he can shoot the right orbit. Oh, it crossed over. Yep. Nice. He knew he was in trouble when it gets into the sling, right? Oh, crap. Yep, he did the same thing. He's still looking on the fly. Nice. Whoops. Whoo. Nice. Oh, he started it. This one's pretty lucrative, isn't it? Yeah, he's got a solid core going, too. It's 1.8 right now. You're just shooting the orbits for jackpots, right? Yeah. 43 for that one. Nice play. Very nice. Very nice. Three points right there. 51. This is a big score. It's a repeat. Alright. Separate one. Alright, separate one. In this game you can't stack any multiballs, right? I'm not sure. I generally don't play long enough to get to that point. I think you're right though. I think if you hit the drop target it will just kick the ball out. Ooh, got a little help from the disc. I'd say I hate discs like that. Last seconds. No no no grace period. Try to get one for the row. Try to get one for the row, but it just didn't work out for him. Hump uppers are very active in this game. Should I go back to that or try to advance the next? Yeah, I Guess it's really what you feel comfortable with. I mean if you feel comfortable with that ramp shot and clearly he does. Oh wow Wow, very nice. Five more ramps. Nice. And it looks like he got one point on the first game. So he is definitely so far liking this result. Oh, that was beautiful. Very good recovery. Nice timing. Just the right amount of nudge to get it out of there. Hard game to pass on. Good recovery again. Last moment I mentioned in chat, he's at his Guinness this morning, that's why he's playing so well. Great breakfast. Nice. Dead on in that shot, too. Oh. Oh. That was very nice. Very nice job by Jack. I mean, as far as skill making the shots, flipper skills, it's not just the nudging, too. It's the anticipation of what was coming and timing that just right. It was pretty impressive. Nice job. Yeah. Recoveries were awesome. Nice job by Jack. Zach's one of the locals in San Francisco. I play with him all the time. There you go. There's that lock that Neil was referring to earlier. This one looks like the right rampage of Jack's line. Yeah. And on the right run, he's just looking to get right up it to get that jackpot. You guys are just going to do it. It's not going to come by accident. You're going to nail it. Yeah. There you go. Woo! Double jackpot. Very nice. Very nice. That was huge. A triple. So you just keep hitting it. On a timer. Yeah, it is up and over. Oh. Shoot it. There you go. No. Oh. You got cheated because of the big nose ring straight in. None at all. Not. moderate You're worth it Temporarily moved itself the second place so he appears to be a multiball guy So he's gonna try to backhand that lock shot. There you go a lot of time. Yeah, I'm all five or something That's in million points to sir. Nothing on that Ball save, Gnark. Nice. The backhand seems pretty safe on that one. Shoot it while you got the ball save. There you go. I don't know that I noticed that when I was playing. It still had the ball save. Yeah, I noticed that too. That makes the strategy more viable. Nothing wrong with that. There is a tiny bit of ball to it. It's not long, but it is there. It's nice to get one at all. Good swing at it, right? Could have let that bounce over. Sometimes it's hard to think of that, right? All the skills that you have to employ when you're playing. I know for me personally, I have to tell myself to slow down and let it bounce and get control of the ball, right? Yeah, you've got to just use your initial reaction. You feel quickly. You've got to train yourself not to flip. Resist that urge. Yeah, you know, I was talking about yesterday with the post. Train yourself not to let it bounce off the post if you think it's going to give you a good return. That's the thing with some of these young players that probably learned to play pinball by dead bouncing right off. I think a lot of us had to learn to do that versus natively, initially deciding to not flip. Yeah, that's a very good point. Just enough of that to get the cow multiple started. That's all about it. It's time to line up the finish line. There we go. All right. Now he's going to figure out what he's going to do. He's going to do an up and over on the right. Which side does he like? He's going that side now. Oh, very nice skill there. Good job. Do it again. A little flick on the end. There we go. He was struggling to find it, but he got there. So that should probably, at least for right now, put him in second. Yep. Yep. Yep. Kind of an odd setup there. There we go. There it is. That's my skill shot. I've mastered that to where I hold it like that, and I'm able to flip it just right so I can make it go to the out lane. That's how I separate. Yeah. Probably shouldn't have gone for that. I think he went for that last-minute jackpot, especially on these things. There's no grace period, and then put him in danger. I mean, I would have done that. So Kyle's actually not in a bad spot right here. If he gets the multiball going with his full points that he has, and if he can pull a second place at least out of this, which is certainly achievable in the position he's in, Yeah, that'll be really good for him. Then he'll be at six points. Yep, and then Jack will be at five. Yep. And then Jaren will be at three, and then Jack will be at two. Yep, so he'd be in a much better spot. He's deciding what he wants to go for. He's going to time it out. Yeah, he doesn't want to play this mode. That's what the... Yeah, it's very boring to watch people time out modes. Yeah. This is the very smart strategy to do. Right. In some games, you do that on, and it'll let you do it. In some games, especially the more modern ones, we'll stop the timer, and you have to score, and then you have to restart the timer. Yeah. I do like when they do that just to kind of force people. You have to do something. Yep. Whether it's just a safe shot, you've still got to do something. He's still got his ball saving. Yeah. I like that he can time out of mode and keep his ball saving. Three more. That's his goal right now is three more of those shots to get the cow. Uh oh. Very nice. Oh no, nice throw. He took it over there, that's fine. Yeah, he needs about another 150 to at least get third. Yep. That would be a crucial point though. So now, you know, he's also recognizing his situation of currently he's in last on this game, right? He can be a little bit more aggressive with the shakes, right? It doesn't matter. Right. There gets to be a point where your bonus is going to carry you over one of your opponents, and you have to recognize that game awareness to where it's like, okay, don't tilt right now. I can get at least third or I can get at least second, right? Yeah. I don't think he has that here yet. And he's not there yet. So right now he can be more aggressive. Oh I was a chance fortunate bounce off there. Yeah, so that did not work out the way he wanted it to so Kyle's gonna be at four and then Jack is that five And then Jaron at four at four, oh man, this is a very tight group exactly what yeah. Yeah And welcome here over say California the open world championships were in round one and we're going to do some interviews shortly as we wait for some games to become available. I'm Neil McRae. I'm Bill Mason. I'm Gene Exlong. And we've seen some great plays so far. It's still round one. We've got another eight hours of this, which sounds staggering when you think about it, but you'll see some of these players that we've seen earlier on play for eight hours and just shoot as good as they did at the start or at the end. That's another thing that people often don't realize with pinball. This doesn't just walk up and shoot. We're going to jump to these interviews now. One of the greatest thrills of winning an event here at Indisc is getting your name on a banner, and this guy did it. Robert Byers was the Classics One winner last year. It had to be nice to walk in and see your name there on the rafters. Yeah, the first thing I did is Belfita was over there, so I said, let's take a picture, Jim. I've got to picture me and you in the banner. So that was awesome. It's such an amazing tournament. I know you look forward to this, and I remember the excitement last year when you won this. There might have been a chop, but you've won some big things before, Texas Pinball Festival. But this one goes right up there. Oh, for sure. I mean, Texas Pinball Festival is one thing, but this is, what, 300 people, best of the best, classics. I don't think I can top this. Hopefully I can match it, though. We'll have to find out. Robert Byers here at Indus. Yeah and Robert won I watched that and I think commentated for part of the finals last year, he won it with style actually some great games and available on IE Pinball's YouTube channel if you want to relive that moment head over to YouTube search for IE Pinball So as Neil mentioned it's going to be all day pinball into the late hours of the night here on the west coast beautiful Riverside California here at the convention center. So make sure you get yourself some food and sit down and watch our stream all day. We won't be in here all day, but you guys are certainly encouraged to watch all day from home. We're going to see some epic matches today. I'm super excited about it. People talk about pinball moments for me. Pinball moments are in the matches where people are playing each other and you see some great saves or some amazing strategies. Those are the kind of pivotal moments that I love to talk about and you want to go home. Remember that match where so-and-so, you know, it's just, this is a whole day of this. It's just, it's super exciting. Oh, here we go. Twister again. That's the thing, this tournament always had some new games that get popular after the stream. You know, last year it was Mystery Castle. Mystery Castle. This year I don't know what it'll be. Maybe the Twister. I think last year was also Diamond Lady. I went out and bought one after it. It's our game, but I love that. Here we go. Magic by Stern was in a high six last year. So back to the A Division group here with Jason sitting at six points and Brian in second place at four, and then both Nick and Carlos at two points. Going to Twister for the third game. We talked about this earlier about trying to short plunge and getting control of it and shooting the disc for the skill shot. Like he might be going straight for Cal. The other thing is the top-seeded player gets to pick machines to play on, or they can defer. But they can only pick a game once in the entire playoff, right? So sometimes maybe Jason feels this might not be his best game, but he wants to get it out of the way. Important board. You know, the strategy of game-picking is also a whole thing. Yeah, very important board. And we saw that last night. He's telling the picking tool shots, knowing that that was a big game for Daniele, and even that, you know, we don't know if that was Keith's strategy, but it effectively kicked Eric Stone out. Yeah. Keith knew Daniele was very strong on that game. So if you do all the math and the strategy that Gene was talking about, I mean, Jason is not locked to move on. No. The only way he could be locked is as long as he doesn't get last place. Yeah. He's guaranteed a playoff. Yeah, he's guaranteed at least a playoff, Assuming he gets last and other things work against him. So, you know, he's going to pick a game that maybe is not, you know, if he had to play for the world championship, would not be his first choice. Right. But, you know. Also, he feels confident enough he can not get last. Yeah. And clearly, I mean, at this level, all the players at that level know all the games. It's just a comfort factor that you have, right? Yep. You know, you choose a game. and it's not like you're trying to pick a game that maybe Carlos doesn't know or maybe Brian doesn't know because, you know, like I said, they all know how to play it. It's just based on your comfort level. Yeah, and that's what sometimes people try to pick. Maybe they overthink it and think about their opponents versus what they're good at. And, you know, you've got to win, you've got to advance. So, you know, maybe if you have to burn some of the ones you really like just to get through. If you're not through, it doesn't matter. I'm a big proponent of picking what you feel comfortable with. I mean, you can win or lose in any game. You might as well pick something you feel comfortable with, and hopefully you come through on that. Yeah, you don't want to lose off a bad pick. Don't fool me on that pick. Yeah. Save your best game, and then you're not in it, right? Absolutely. Yeah, you can't get cocky like that. No, it's at this level. Opposed pass to the right orbit here. I don't know, for those of you watching at home, I want you to notice how sensitive the slings are, not only on Twister, but all the games that we have here, Deadpool, that was just brutal. I mean, if it even looked at the sling, it just bounced off. Yeah, so the sling were the two things just above the flippers where you get a huge amount of safe-as-safe action, and then usually... That's one of the best ways to make a game tougher, just make the sets more sensitive. Slide to slide gets it going through the outlanes. And that's definitely a bad thing, right? Does the post have a rubber on it? It does not, I believe. Okay. That post is just, you're just going to train your brain that that post wasn't there. Yeah, when they don't have, when they're bare metal. You can. This is going back to cow. Yeah, so he's going to, oh, look at that anticipation. Yeah. So back to wood chopping here. He's got, what, seven more to do on cow? Yeah. That's a lot. Yeah. But I mean he's got the rest of this ball and the next ball for next two balls So if you look at his score compared to that last group, he's already, you know on ball one Would have been like in second 600. Yeah That kind of stuff happens when you're number three possibly moving into number two depending on how this weekend pans out That's true. Especially this year with the new rules with the points. Right. This is going to be hugely valuable. Oh, that makes a little tip over. So I'm not sure of the difference between him and Raymond Davidson as far as high FBA points, but I think it was pretty close. And then, like I said, depending on Jason's success this weekend, he may end up moving up to second. He's already had a good run, so. Yeah, I just said he's close. I just said he's close. Yeah, I would think so. Again, I don't know what the margin was. Very nice job between him and Ray going into this weekend. Those anticipatory nudges are what really separates this top level most. Sometimes people watch these things and they're like, oh, they're just getting lucky. But you know they're doing all these nudges up early, like even up here where you're trying to make sure. People see the nudges and they think, oh, it's just nudging. It's not the nudging, it's the anticipation. But yeah, they knew that was going on. But there's some subtleties to the game which are just so fascinating to watch. I was watching Keith Elwin in the Classics finals yesterday while we got a break in between balls here, and playing Arena and the way he was timing the shots so that they weren't all together. And, you know, if you shoot them and make them, it all feeds back to the right flipper. And he staggered them such that he could just continuously keep shooting. It's a subtlety like that. It's not just shooting the shot. It's the timing that he intentionally chose. And he was, I think, from memory, 13 million ahead of his competitors. It was a staggering award. It was a great technique. So Nick does these rolling catpats a lot of times. I think that's why he's kind of checking out the testers. He'll do that. Short blind. Didn't quite get over enough for him to get the disc. He would have preferred that. But he still got... That was a quick one. He's still got a cow. Not all together too bad. Post pass is so difficult in this game. I struggled with it as well. There you go. He's safe. A little bit earlier than you think it would be. And that gets back to what we were talking about. That was really nice. See how sensitive that sling was? But this is what Neil was talking about earlier, your adjustments to the game. That's going to decide. So critical. Oh, sitting there. Man, somebody get control. That's what he's thinking. There you go. That was so much fun. Jeez. So Nick is ranked 216th. Yeah, very nice. Right orbit again. Very nice shot. On the fly there. Nice. Find a rolling post pass. Or just catching it either way. Post catch. Oh. Oh, the medal. You made a liar out of your needle. He used the medal. Oh, man. I'm sure that wasn't deliberate. I hope it wasn't. Yeah, I was going to say he was being brave. But it's not necessarily being brave. It was more out of necessity right like yeah Perfectly down the middle. He was a cat. He just used the light. Yeah, yeah sure Somebody say that was crazy I know that that post will kill you because it kills me when I was playing this game Any comments from the chat on that? Oh, yeah, they're rather than a great trust in the in the Kirk post. Kirk, named after Steve Kirk, who was kind of the first person to really put a post like this in and make it work on a couple of games, one of them Meteor and another one Nineballs, games that were made for tournament football. Yeah, it's hard, you can just let it roll off the flipper or bounce off the post if there's a rubber on it and go to the other flipper. Yeah, if you have a hill to begin with, yeah. Yeah, check that out. Woo! Yeah, that was trouble. Yeah. Some great videos on that from the guys at Papa. We have Kevin here on the Compton. Yeah, 263 start and some progress on this cow. Yep. Brian's going to step up and... Log in and score a bit Probably yeah He one of the partners there That right You can actually see the real scores happening So Brian's sitting at four points, at least right now in a better position than Nick and Carlos, of course, pending the outcome of this game. There's that side-to-side with the sling. Wow. Stop doing that. Stop doing that. So he's going to go to the right orbit and try the cow strategy. You can actually see the score bit on the screen. It's got a name, I think, which is kind of like the entire connected way. Oh, yeah. I saw it scroll along the bottom. I don't know when it shows up. Yeah, when you log in, it just marks your player number. It's a great little feature that they've added to the platform. There it is. Nice job. Oh, nice save. No danger either that I saw? I didn't see it either. Yeah, one more for Cal. Wow, how did it go so fast? I thought you were just like eating those shots. There you go. That was a very nice shot. Oh, he wanted that one. Man, I can't believe that one snuck through all those balls. Good job, Brian. So he's playing chaos right now, basically, right? Now he's going to say, all right, there's a point where I've got to hold this, right? That's perfect. Yep. So he's just going to play the right side. There you go. Hoping to ideally catch it on the left and just rinse and repeat. Yep. Oh, very nice. Just sat there and watched it, right? You know, we talk about the anticipation of what's happening, but you also have to have the anticipation that you don't need to do anything, right? That was an easier read than some, but still, having that anticipation and knowing when to move and when not to is pretty important. Nice catch. I think the patience approach is the same. Yeah, he used to live in San Francisco, so I played with him a lot, and he's definitely one of the more calm players. He hasn't always given control. And if you want any advice on BR, Brian is the guy to go to. Yeah, that's true. He's the expert? He is a BR genius. Oh, no. Double dream. Everyone has a goal. Yep. It's all right. Still an okay start for Brian. I mean, was that 800? 800 something. Yeah. So, Carlos is stepping up. I mean, obviously his goal is to get first place here, right? Yep, yep. If he gets first place, then he's got at least a tiebreaker, right? Assuming Brian finishes second. Yeah, then there'd be a three-way. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's only if he can get last. Yeah, sorry. A little late on that one, so we'll see how he adjusts. Fake Mark Carlos. There's those slings again. Side to side. Get out of there. There you go. Look at that sling. That's classic Carl setup there. There you go. Still a little bit late. That's what you were talking about, Bill. with O making those adjustments. You have to see where you shot it, deal with it, try to get it under control, remember that he was late. And adjust. And it's difficult. It looks easy. Good players adjust quicker. The more skilled ones, I can miss a shot like four or five times. These guys probably only miss it twice. That's definitely one of the things I'm working on is my adjustments to the game. In game, nice catch. So he's sitting there thinking, oh, he's thinking, why didn't I get credit for the disc? That's what he's thinking. Skillshot missed? What? One more word, Cal. And he already did one, Cal, didn't he? Yeah, if I remember right. That is going to orbit the sky. He's going for control straight away. He's got everything there. That's not a bad strategy. Yeah, especially because there's so many balls. Three's been over. There you go. Nice little. That was lovely. Yeah. Oh, wow. Here we go. Yeah. Here we go. Yeah, I don't know the plan that, but that's fine. He'll take it. Yeah, right? There we go. Oh, now he's got all four. Ha! Wearing that with all five. This is an interesting way to feel like you can lose. Yep. Yeah, that's pretty good. Not bad for a jailbreak. I mean, especially with that many of us. Two, right? I know, two is not bad. And he's still got control. Up and over. Oh, look at that. All right. I'm going to ask Jason for his lottery numbers. Yeah. That is skilled, though. That one might be a little bit more skilled than the first time that happened. Yeah. Well, you can be done. Oh, he was trying to get the bounce off of there. With four, you don't really care too much. You're like, don't take it in. Now you care. You don't want to go down to two. The great recognition of the ball was failure. It's just the rolling off the end of the flipper. Yeah. That's still fine. He's pretty comfortable with that left orbit, so that's the one he's going to shoot and hold the left flipper up. Nice little pattern. Me trying to take it off the swing. Quite good Sling help him with the separation Nice pass before it got trapped over there He posed pass before the ball. Yeah, that was smart. Let it get very quick. Yeah quick reflexes there Nice catch. Now he's going to go back to the left. He likes that one better. Yeah, he likes that one better. He's having a good cow. Is there a super? Wow, I guess the jackpot's just going up. It just keeps going up. That's nice value. I'm just going to put you out of reach of anyone else and guarantee you. Yeah. Thanks, Ryan. That's exactly what he's doing. Yeah, 100. See why people go for cow. Yeah, exactly. Jason holding the clinic on ball control as well. Getting a little bit fortunate with the slings there. Yeah. You keep going that well enough, the slings are going to make you pay. But it's working out for them now. You going to do that? Want to get one for the road? Nope. Nope. Nope. A billion on. Wow. That's why people are going to cow. Yep. That's why that strategy is so huge. Yeah. Got to take advantage of those 100 million jackpots. He's going back. Mike, I mean, this is not the time to relax, right? No. He's in first, and he's got six points. Both three. Yeah. And with these skill level players that he's against, they could all do the same thing. And you have to remember that when you're playing. It's like you know this is not out of reach. Nope. Just because I mean you did it I mean certainly they can do it as well a nice job Looks like he's done for that ramp one though Yeah, 50 million to is that just something That's the normal value of it. I am not sure about that Maybe he's to the point where he just figures that the cows is just too much. Yeah, I'd buy it So much wood chopping just get to another multiball. She's a girl. There you go. He went with the risk-reward payout. There wasn't much work to get to that multiball relative to getting the cows. It was just getting control. I think both did well on this as well, actually. Yeah. Oh, look at that. Hanging on to the right flipper. Oh, and it's stacking up sweet for him. Just one ball come off. That's nice. This goes to the pop and to the orbit, yeah. I guess you got enough switch hits to light it. Boom. Boom. All right, no need to panic. Let it go. You still have three balls. There we go. Nice. There we go. Charging that jack ball. Huge. Yeah, it's 100 now. 111. Yeah. It gets it. Oh, it's out of all? 112. Very nice. 74 bar sketches. Look at this. Whoa. All right. So now he's like, okay, I got to go back to the cows. Three down. Sitting at three. What was the best qualifying? Four points or something? So Jason, just with a clinic in shot making, flipper skills, right, anticipation. Let's see, how many more? Eight. Eight more. Yeah, the best score was 4.8 billion from the qualifying. Really? 4.8 over the course of three days of qualifying. Hundreds of tickets. Yeah, right. Jason Tone's best score was 2.5, so he's already beat that. Yeah, on ball two. Yeah, and that put him in the 10th qualifying. Oh, this is the current score? Oh, the 2.5, yeah. 2.5 was his qualifying. Qualifying, yeah. That's what I love about finals. Players push themselves to beat the qualifying scores. Oh. Staggering with the score. Yeah. He's not mad about that. I can tell you that. See what that bonus is. 282. 282. Might as well throw that on there and make it almost 3.5. Nick and Carlos aren't liking that Jason's putting up the scores. They need to win to have a chance. Yeah, so Brian's sitting back smiling, but Jason's doing so good, right? Yep. Yep. As long as Jason wins, then Brian's through. Well, it could be a tiebreaker. It could be, yeah. Still a lot of pinball to play on this one. Yeah, I mean, Nick's best score on this was 400 million. and qualified. So, I think he played this game a great deal. Oh! That's not a negative ball save. Yeah, that's what the little smirk was. It was like, really? Yeah. Even Brian's taking his hits. Yeah, that's brutal. Yeah, I hate that. Sometimes when it drains and it doesn't drain fast, you know, and the ball plays going and kind of rolls up the side, you're like, just drain. Hurry up, hurry up. Lord Bowen once told me, never trust the Baltic. Oh yeah. Well especially these Vegas. The Vegas, you know, with the, all the other manufacturers as well more aggressive. Wooo baby! The Brian's best score on this in qualifying was 1.6 billion so he's got some way to go. Yeah he's halfway there. That was a nice one. Everybody else will have it. First try, yeah. Kind of deadly when it's coming from that right orbit. It just seems to find that sling. Yep. Seven more. I feel like it's that seven and then he hits another. It doesn't seem like the other guy's hitting it that many times. That's nice. Yeah, it's not only hitting the top. He's getting some nice smooth ones. Uh oh. A little early. See what he's got? Yep. He's definitely adjusted to the timing of the post pass. Yeah. As far as when to do the second flip. There we go. Nice on the... It's seven, right? Now it's... On the shot. On the fly shot there. Yeah. Seven save it. I didn't save it. It did say 7 before that one, so it should be on. You got credit for that five to be at 5 OK this time. Justice so they can shoot the left side now. Guys. 4 OK. 2. Nice. Let's go this side. This side is going to be good. Puts them over a billion. A little lower. Nice. Nice. Nice. Playing a little volleyball there. Very nice. That was a metal rail. And then shot making. Look at that. I mean, pretty consistent on the fly, hitting either orbit to get credit for the cow. obviously. Nice little in lane. What's wrong with that? It was eyeballing the lock shot there. Is it open right now? Yeah, it is. It doesn't work. Yeah. He's still going to shoot the orbit here. Yeah. He's like two away, I think. And then, like you mentioned, Gene, it's just too many points once you get further into it. So there we go. On the fly. Look at that. You've got that dialed in. Beautiful. On both sides. Yeah. So Brian employs the general strategy I do. Just do the K-offs, right? And at some point you have to trap up, right? When you get close to the end of your ball safe. Jason chose to trap up earlier. Immediately. Works for him. Sometimes it is hard to hit shots because of the chaos, you know, the other balls. But you also have the ball tape, though. On these things where the value escalates, it can be nice. And another strategy to employ is just to skillfully drain some balls so that you can make a shot. So they're not in the way while you throw that ball tape. I remember when I first learned that for the beginning of multiball. Do that. Not as successful. He's trying to get control back. He's like, stop doing that. There we go. Remember to have his lock lit. Try to hit it in the fly. Nice. Still wanting control. There we go. He's going to time this out. He doesn't want to. So we've got 30 seconds of time to fill while Brian sits there and looks at the screen and ponders his life decisions while he's sitting there playing Twister. He is repping a local location in San Francisco. That Outer Orbit shirt he's got is for, we have a team pinball league. He used to be on the Outer Orbit Otters. It's a Hawaiian restaurant with pinball that some local folks in the community opened up right before the pandemic. And they still are a fun spot to play in in San Francisco. San Fran, huh? Okay. Yep. Check it out if you're in the San Fran area. Outer Orbit. and while we're promoting local bars, Super Alvari in Charlotte, North Carolina. Check that place out if you're in that area. Very nice setup that you've got there. Oh. So we waited that whole 30 seconds, and then Brian gets a couple shots and then loses the ball. But still, 1.78. Oh, yeah. He should be happy with that. So Carlos, from a mental standpoint, is like, all right, let's get a multiball going. Right? Yeah. Right? Let's lay some foundation here. Let's get a multiball going. A little catch. Just showing off there. Does he count the ball safe? No. Yeah. It doesn't get triggered by the switch. It has to hit the chop for these. Right. There he goes. Yeah, he's like. That's rough. Yeah. Trying to get some consolation from Adam. But, yeah. He was kind of in trouble when he started shatting. Yeah. I mean, not that that was intentional. I don't think it was. Yeah, it was. He was just trying to get control. That shows you just gaining control on these games because they're so dangerous. Whenever you mess up, it's just instantly in danger. And the high-level players just do it less. So, Jason, when he steps up right here, the very first thing he's thinking about is, all right, I am player one. Right. And the key to that is if you plunge out of turn, you get a zero for that round. Right. And that's really the only thing that can hurt him right now is a zero. Yeah. Right. It happens. It happens. Yeah, it does happen. I think many of us might have done it at some point at some small attorney, hopefully. You always do it once, then you remember forever. Yeah, I always check. I'll tell you what, as a team leader, when someone does it, it still works. But I always enforce it, no matter what, even with new people, because I feel like, you know, you can't have exceptions. You've got to follow the rules. It's easier to always, even if it's a new player, I always feel bad the most when it's a new player. Well, they learn quickly. Yeah. It's tough love. Yep. So you learn and you adjust from there. Me personally, when I step up to a machine, I have what I call the three Ps. Does it have a post? Right. This one does. Right. Position. Am I player one, two, three, four? And then the plunge. How much do I want to plunge? Is there a skill shot? That's my three Ps. Post, position, and then plunge. And that's the thing here. Everybody's been playing these games a while, so they've learned where the skill shots are. Yep. You know, like you said, some games it doesn't really matter as much as other games. So on the games, it does matter, especially some of the older games. The plunge could be huge. Yeah. In an arena, you can get a million on the plunge. Yep. So learning that and learning from it, like you said, like if you miss it, how did you miss it? So the next time you come up, you've got to remember where it was. Or if you nail it, you're like, what did I do? And like you're referencing there, Gene, on the older games, a lot of times the plunge to the right top lane, to the proper top lane will light your pop bumper for a hundred or a thousand points. And depending on the game, that's a huge amount of points. Palooka comes to mind. If you can plunge that top lane up there, it's a huge part of the game. John Palooka, you're bringing back my trauma of playing that game. I know. I mean, it's been an impressive display from Jason. Yeah, beating the top scorer. Got the replay going. I kind of feel like he's... So he sees it coming. Yeah, that was a nice separation before the ball came in, even though it ended up... Yeah. Ooh, he's okay. Obligatory shake, but he's like, okay, if it didn't come out, that's okay. Four points. Give it a shot. A little round of applause for the people watching back here. He set up some initials for that one. It's always fun to put up your initials on these games. If you got your initials up. He was there for a while. So now Nick's stepping up. He has to beat Brian to force the playoff or the chance of a playoff. Right, and he needs Carlos to help him. Right, right. So Brian is in a favorable position, certainly not locked right now, but certainly in a favorable position. Yep, that's that. That's just a little smirk. It's like, okay, you didn't want me to play. That's cool. Yep. So Brian trying to build some margin. against a potential comeback from Carlos. I think Nick's out now, right? I mean, that's over for him. Yeah, Nick is out now. Holy Carlos. Maybe, it depends on what happens, I think. Carlos was the beat Ryan. No, so Brian's in. No, Brian's through. Yeah, because Brian's got at least one point. You're right. Yep. You're right. But Carlos has still gone up there for position, right? I mean... Oh yeah, because Nichols has last. Yep, it's IFPA points too. Oh yeah, and money. And money. I think it's group. I think it's group. If you get eliminated, everybody gets the same. Yeah, it gets the same depending on the range of terrain for the groups. Nice control, Brian. A little off on that shot. Yeah. They'll hit it this time. I think the next time through the host doesn't stop it so it goes all the way around. Boom. Alright, we're going to get some free jackpot here. I think he's going to start to control it soon. Yep. There we go. There's the ball safe turn. There we go. Yep. separation nice nice that's smart yeah you can see most of the players are more given the choice between the left or the right they're certainly more comfortable with the left. It seems I was when I played it. Oh, now he's showing off. Oh, that was it. That's actually kind of a neat thing. It looks like... Nice. Oh. Oh, that was nice. Two more. So he made his pass over in this part going for ramps. You know, return on investment. If I can make two shots and get to another multiball. I mean, again, not that Brian's playing for anything right now except for practice. That kind of looked like he almost did a little loop pass off that rail. Well, this will start the multi-roll. He's okay with that. Yeah, he's fine. He didn't fight it too hard, right? It's pretty rough when 2.9 gets you second place. Almost 2.9. Yeah. Yeah. No. That's insane. So we mentioned how Carlos is fighting for position, and it's not just position with Nick, But it's also the other groups that are going on, right? If he can get the two points or, you know, ideally he'd like to win, right? Oh, yeah. That would be an awful lot on this ball. But, you know, his position not only in this group, but also with everybody else that's playing for the IFPA points. Oh, yeah. And Carlos, is he like 10th right now in the world? Yeah. 9th is what it says. Oh, that's his highest. Yeah, I think he's currently 10th, somewhere around there. We were talking about earlier about how the high-level players share their knowledge, experience, and strategy on the game. Carlos is a wonderful resource. Oh, 100%. Whenever I've asked Carlos about certain games that I'm not familiar with, he's more than willing to give up what information he knows about it, which is really the right approach to have, right? I mentioned Escher does the same thing and his dad. There's one thing I noticed, you're still going to execute on it. Yep, and that's what it comes down to, right? Absolutely. Oh, there's the initials. Simulate. Yeah, that's the thing. I think most of the good players around here or everywhere are really happy to share knowledge. Sure. Because ultimately, you know, can you do the same thing? You know, like some of this stuff looks easy when you watch the game at this level, and then you try to do it yourself, and it goes terribly wrong. Yeah, like watching those bow and tutorials like oh this game's easy. Yeah You know Yeah, so we talked about the the three days of qualifying I want everybody to understand where we are right now There's 40 positions for the playoffs 1-4 got two buys early this morning, and then 5-16 get a buy. So now we have the 17-40 group playing right now. And then that group will advance and add in the group from the 8-16, or 5-16. And then the last group with Escher Zemak Keith and who was the fourth Eric stone Yeah Yeah so they have two buys So I don even know if they here right now They've got a long line in the ball, and they've got to sleep in. And the format for this is the top seed gets to pick the games. The top seed gets to pick three games, and it's what we call path of scoring. The winner gets four, second place gets two, third place gets one, And if you're last, you get zero. And that zero is painful. Very painful. And that's why those buys are so valuable, because if you get two buys, you don't have to burn any, like you were talking about. You need to advance, so you might pick the games you really know. And then you're suddenly playing games you don't like, because you don't have good options left. Yeah, and we had that on Classics last night. It was Keith DeFerra and a couple of games to stay picked for the final. Yeah, but you can only do that if you're in a situation where you feel comfortable enough. Absolutely. That's where if you win two and you've got eight going in and you know you're through, you can just, you know. You can relax a little bit. Yeah. Absolutely. So the top four actually are automatically, because of their good qualifying, are automatically in the top 16 as far as final finish with those two buys. Yeah. So that's only three games per round. So that's round of 16, round of eight, and then round of four. Yeah. So that's nine games. Yeah. and there's plenty of, the bank is pretty big. And let's just look at who's gone through. So Daniele, a good friend of mine, Daniele Arcari from Italy, he's gone through in round group one. There's a playoff between Andrew Roser and Neil Graff. We saw this group with Jason and Brian going through. Group three is still in progress with a tie between Andy Bagwell and Sean Lind. Group 4 we have the great Andrei Massenkov, former world champion going through and another former world champion Kayleigh George going through and then Group 5 Josh Sharpe going through with Corey Dunn and Group 6 that we saw a little bit of earlier on, Jared went through and amazingly there's a tie between Colin Urban and Jason Werdrick. Colin Urban, a former winner here in a tiebreaker situation, it just shows that in the space of a few years, the level of play that you need to do to win here has just continued to grow. I think it was 7.50 to qualify last year. We're now up to 7.65, 7.67. That's the points to qualify. Between five games. And that just shows the improvement in both the skill of players, but also when you first come into pinball, particularly some of the young guys like Jason who are really showing some of those older guys how to play differently. But it's fantastic to watch. That's what I get excited about, seeing these big games with these fantastic players and seeing those moments as they create them. We saw a couple there with Jason balancing the balls whilst he was getting multiball. It looks really easy. It's insanely difficult. Yeah, I'm reminded of a few years ago in Chicago when Alex Krasmarczyk was playing a black-knock sort of range. He had balls on both of the bottom flippers and was playing the upper play field and getting jackpots. It was just amazing to be able to, and the balls weren't moving on the bottom while he was staging, which is really impressive. So we talked about one of those ties between Andy Bagwell from the Chicago area and Sean Lind. We're going to see one of them on a great tournament game in Congo. It's a fantastic game. This is Andy stepping up. Beautiful playing game, too. Yeah. This set up is so nice. Andy's such a nice guy. I mean, I don't know Sean. I'm not saying he's not, but I'm pretty good friends with Andy. He's such an easygoing guy. I mean, how can you not like a guy with a mohawk, right? And a Snoopy teacher. And a Snoopy teacher. Nothing wrong with that. I think it's like a Beavis and Butthead Snoopy. It's a Beavis and Butthead Snoopy. Oh, he got a super skill shot because he missed the... What? No flippers. He's got no flippers. Oh. What's wrong? I don't know. Something weird happened with the flippers. Did something weird? I didn't catch it. He was asking for... It looked like the flippers stopped working. So he's raising his hand to get a tech over. So Bob is talking to Carl right now. Yeah. Bob Matthews. They'll take a look at what's going on over there. Yeah, the upper flipper had a problem. There's definitely some issue with the flippers. Okay. Yeah, I didn't see what happened or didn't happen. it looked like there was another flipper problem oh the flipper button fell off this happened at District 82 on one game too maybe it was Andy that did it as well I don't know I'm just sitting here picking on Andy it happened in the open when a button came off Led Zeppelin mid game very irritating spend all that time on a 59 cent bit of plastic Yeah. And ruined the game for someone. So we got a tech over there. What would your ruling be on this? I would assume they start over. I would assume they start over. Yeah, I would assume they start again. I think that's the right call. If we can fix the... It's obviously a failure. If we can fix the button. Yeah, that's a pretty easy fix. Especially with these fantastic techs we got here. This is Dave. He's one of the techs here. He's been flat out fixing games all day. All the techs have done a phenomenal job. Yeah, they've got their little emergency go bag with all their little parts in it that they carry around. Yeah, there's literally a small pinball shop. Yeah. You can actually open up all the stuff. Over here that you can't see. So many things that they've got. If you needed some parts, we have them over here. And there we go. Another tech's grabbed a handful of flip-a-buttons. Swap them out completely. We're gonna go ahead and do a quick pit crew kind of NASCAR type set up here Turn it off kind of 3D view. I know, it's trippy. I've never seen pinball before. It's kind of neat because you can see both, you know, the trough, through the trough there. Yeah, this game's a very kind of three-dimensional up and down game as well, so you get really good to see the view of it, and also the, is that a chimpanzee or a monkey? I can never remember what it is. Gray the gorilla. Yeah, you can see Gray the gorilla from the movie. I'm glad they disabled that if you get it started it just gives you the award that is kind of a turned it off I thought they might do that especially if they're restarting the game I would assume so so they're going to sit here and change out this flipper probably in the span of a couple minutes which would take me much much longer to do it at home And I don't necessarily keep flipper buttons hanging around the house either. My machines don't get played as much as these do, so they have to have that, right? Yeah. And this is a game that we'll see. I would predict we will see a lot of this game today. Yes. Had long queues all during qualifying. Everybody loves it. It's a fun game. Fantastic scores. Over 3 billion. Kaylee and Escher and others put them up tremendous scores. You see the little mini play field. That's like another little mini pinball game. You can just see underneath that rail as well. This is a very, very rare game. It's one of the ones on my list. It's a great game for tournaments, great game for fun. Hard to find. Very, very hard to find. People love them, and rightfully so. It's such a great game. We don't want to let them go. Yeah. They're expensive now. So while we have a second while we're repairing the machine, we talk about the general strategy of Congo. Most people will start with the gray shot, which I don't know if you noticed, but Andy was trying to shoot it. Look at that, just like that fixed. The gray shot just to the right of the left ramp there. Gray gorilla, and get some award for that. Get some diamonds. and then progress towards your locks and your multiball. And then there's a point where you will shoot the left ramp to work towards your map and get better rewards, increasingly better scoop on that scoop on the right-hand side. In tournament mode, everything's in predetermined order, right? Yep. Specific order. Carl's making sure everything's right. Fantastic job by Carl, rocking the T-shirt there with the duck on it. All right, so hopefully we got everything repaired, and Andy's going to step up again and say, all right, let's try this a second time, see how this goes. Are you going for that outweigh skill shot? I did not. Some people do. And I don't know if the K-League maneuver is disabled on this or not. But he's going to shoot the great shot here and then try to lock moving around the loop up there, that upper right loop. Pretty standard to spell gray. Oh, he's got that. Nice backhand. There you go. That's what you're trying to do, gray and then the shot right there. So gray again. Got to be quick on that one because of the speed he gets up. There you go. See how he adjusted like that? So now the first great gorilla is defeated, and he's going to get 20 diamonds for that. Which lights your locks and it feeds the flipper directly to lock it. So there's two, I don't know if the teleprinter is working. Ooh, swing, but yeah, it's not working right now. Nope, it's not. Sorry, I keep forgetting when I touch the screen. It's the left orbit and then up there towards the volcano. So he made progress, got the first rig, really got the diamonds, and then at least got his locks lit. So that's where he's going to be headed next is working towards his multiball. Wow. John stepping up to find a skill shot probably let it drain right here Well, maybe not I Would let it drain and try the shot again. Maybe he just wants control How many switch hits did he have? Okay, so he didn't have enough switches. So he still got a ball a bounce over here Yeah, that's catch out of that. You've got to nail it. This is not bad here. So he held it up. A little bit better live catch, and you can hold that. So he's working towards map in gray. There you go. She's fit as well. Down, bounce over. There you go. Very nice job. Very nice, Nicole. Everybody wearing their little specialized T-shirt. John's got a little different T-shirt on right now. I think this is his mother. There you go, back into the gray. I don't know if you saw Andy do it, but... Back to gray. So he'll go to gray again. Similar to the Core Shot. Yeah, very similar to that. Except this one's easier than the Core Shot. I mean if you've got Congo and Scrawn, they're very similar games. That's true. So he's trying to get that lock, there you go. Very nice, he's feeling really good about getting that second lock there. Let's just kill a shot. One more map and now he's going to shoot the Fall-Rise Goop there. Oh, missed. And paid the price for missing. That's what happens. All right. He was early. See if he adjusts next time. So, overall, Andy's not in bad shape. Like I said, he's got his lock lit right here. He'll go for the skill shot. Maybe he's going to choose. Oh, he's going to choose control. Control. He's planning to go down to the bottom. See what he does. Do you like catches? Yeah, Andy's really good at live catches. See that? That's what you want. That's a skill there that's nice to have. Yeah, he had no choice on that one. Maybe a little bit more than he needed to, but it's hard to do all that calculations in your head. And then if you don't move it enough, you're like, I should have moved it a little bit more to get control of the ball, right? So, you know, you do the best you can. Especially that early in the ball, too. He had no bonus. Yeah, sure. I mean, for what you're going to lose. So Sean's going to wait a little bit for the tilt ball to settle. And this is an opportunity for Sean, right? So Andy's at 56 after his second ball. This is a chance for Sean to open up a substantial gap on ball two. And then when Andy walks up, you know, when he's got that in his head on his last ball, that he has to at least catch Sean and then pass Sean. This is a tremendous opportunity for Sean to open up a lead and put the pressure on Andy. That's the thing with this game. Some of the newer games have a lot of risk-reward where you can really build up something valuable that's risky. This one is more just like playing through it, right? I mean, taking advantage of your multiball. So they're both opting for the control. I like the skill shot because you can still get the ball back. Yeah. Look at that sling. Making progress for Gray. There you go. So now the scoop. There you go. That's what he wanted. So the first map is $25 million. At some point, see, he got better on the catch. He may backhand the mystery shot. I don't know if you guys can see it. There you go. The scoop rare towards the middle. He may backhand it right here. There you go. Right? Diamond hunt? That's a good choice. Yeah, diamond hunt because he can get diamonds to light his other locks. And that's what he wants to work towards right now. There's nothing wrong with defeating Gray a second time. I think this gives you a multiball. Yeah. Gray awards a multiball as a second one. Which is different than his lock multiball, which is what he was trying for by getting the diamond hook multiball. You shoot the ramp again on this one as well. Yeah, obviously the left ramp being the preferred choice. I do love shooting that right ramp, though. But it is harder. It's very satisfying when you get it to the top. Look at that. Maybe this bounces off for him into the left side. Yeah. I'm going to shoot this upper loop right up here and get the five million. Oh! That worked out pretty good. That's what we call a tree. Yeah. Okay. So the lock is lit. So this is not a bad catch here. He shoots the shooter on the fly. And live to tell about it. Yep. This will be lock three, I think. Yep. So the orbit, this is his big opportunity. Ooh. Ooh. You can't just hold it up. It's going to bounce over. There you go. Now the orbit. I don't know what he's trying for. I think he's just missing it. I think he's a bit nervous. I mean, that's, yeah. Maybe there's a strategy. I don't know. There you go. On the fly. This is huge right here. That was Wild One. Okay. Okay. That was just the Fall One. Oh, yeah. It was Andy that had the other two flies. Oh. All right. Big Macs stay lit for him next fall. Yes. Okay. So Andy needs about 260 or so. 210. Oh, yeah. Without a doubt. At least, yeah, I mean, to make Sean do something, right? So Andy's only goal right now is to post-pass over and get the multiple going. Oh. How about that? That counts as a lock. Yep. Doesn't have to go in the thing. Got any? No. It's all one lock. Okay. You always want it to go that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good bounce. Greg. So he can get the multiple. See if he gets lucky on the choice. Oh, that's not bad. Lights is locked. Nice bounce over. Good life. I was going to do a grill and then first. Was that the first one? That's the second one, yeah. Yeah. So Sean was not as successful as he would like on that gray multiball. Yeah, there's one right there. The key, I mean, if you could just get them both, two of them on the left, and then just rinse them right over. Yeah. There it goes. 24. Oh yeah. Oh, the right. Now he's showing off. Try to get one for the road. That's over. He needs a lot more, though. He's player one. But at least he's made Sean have to play. Have to play so far. And he's still adding to it. Yep, so that lock is lit. Decided to backhand the mystery. Live catch to the left of it. It's an easy live catch for Andy. Oh, just a dead bounce. Kind of scary. Yeah. So I'm going to make the prediction that if he goes in that mystery again, it will not be a dead bounce. Oh, yeah. Oh, he. Oh, he. It's the big jump. It's the big jump. Yes. Yeah, that was. Oh, maybe several again. Trying to get the lock, there you go. Maximal one lock. 25 for it. Oh, yeah. Well, Tom's going to have to have a calm, calm way to go. Yeah. Yeah, never do that. Right? Whenever you hear that sound, you're like, okay, this is not good. All right. So he's about 100. 104 to be exact. I still like the skill shots. Oh, boy. Oh, so scary. Back to Travagon. Get away from that. Once controlled. There we go. You guys keep the mystery, or? I probably. Matt. Oh, yeah, Matt. There you go. Take a breath. Okay, so each of you are comfortable with the gray and the five million. There he goes, he's backhanded. Which helps his bonus, right? Yep. So, they've added Andy's first ball to our... Oh, really? He's actually got 409. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, okay. So, it's a continuation. Continuation. Oh. Nope. Not going to be a no. Nope. That would be a yellow card, I would guess. And then Sean yelled, shucks. Yeah. And he advances. And he's through. And he put the pressure on him, right? Yep, that's exactly what he needs to do. And he's breathing. Sometimes it's weird when you don't need a ton of points, you know, because it's like when the gap's bigger, sometimes it's a little easier than when it's something that seems manageable. So you're like, don't screw this up, just get some safe points, and then, you know, that happens. But these machines play tough. The slings are sensitive. It's out of control, you know. You can get a problem in a machine. It breaks your concentration. Yeah. And I think Andy, you know, had to get back into it a little bit, but, you know, did what he needed to do. Yep. Welcome back to the booth, everybody. You're watching the IFPA Open Championship. My name is Bill Mason. I'm Neil McRae. I'm Gene Exlog. Hello. Welcome to the stream, everybody. And we're in the first round of the Open A playoffs. And let's give a quick update. There's a couple of ties. We've just seen one. Andy Bagwell goes through with Jim Belchito. and the other tie was with Andy Rosa and Neil Graff sorry, Andrew Rosa the younger of the Rosas and Neil Graff went through with Daniele and then the final here's a shock the final tiebreaker, Jason Werdrick Colin Urban Colin Urban is out that's a massive shock that will have caused Much upset in the fantasy pinball, I would expect. Except for the people who took Jason. Yeah, the Pookie's are happy. Which is not a bad pick. Jason is a great pick. Let me show you. This was on Twister. And this is pinball. Colin Urban, 1.513 billion. Jason Werdrick, 1.54 billion. Really? Wow. So literally. A disc skill shot. Yeah, a disc skill shot in it. Wow, that's crazy. That is insane. And actually, it's similar with the – actually, not just similar with Andy Rose, but Neil Grafke. Neil really, really won it with style. So we're going into the second round. Yeah, who's in the groups? Here are the groups. Group one from Sweden, a young kid, great, fantastic player, Arvid Flyger. he's up against Colorado's finest Donovan Stepp, another brilliant player Daniele former world champion over from Italy Neil Graff who's in the top 10 of IFPA and District 82 how would I put it expert of the shadow he plays District 82 is his local pinball venue he's very strong there Group 2 Drew Germain, a good friend of yours. Gabe. I don't know Gabe myself. I don't know if you guys know him. I don't know Gabe. I know Gabe. He's a local player who's really, really great. Started coming out to more bigger tournaments, and we always encourage him. Everybody's got those locals that are good, and you want to kind of get them out to these big events. And we saw Jason Zoller earlier on. He's in Group 2. Corey Dunn, another great player in Group 2. Group 3, Tim Henson. Do you guys know Tim Hansen? I've seen him play. He's a phenomenal player. He used to play when Bowen was in the Bay Area. He's another Bay Area guy from my area, Tim Hansen. I was watching him yesterday in Classics and the qualifying, and phenomenal play. We get to see a little bit of Tim. This is the group that's bringing in the people that had won by the 5 through 16 qualifiers. So, I mean, you don't get 5 through 16 by accident. You've got to have a pretty high skill level in this format. Yeah, we've got Scott Macias, I was going to say. Macias, yeah, he's a local kid down here. Another local kid, yeah. Nice. Well, he's older, but, yeah, he's young. He's very young still. Andy Bagwell and Jason we just saw. We've then got Nick DiStefano from Massachusetts, another great football player. Fantastic player. Yeah. And another from Massachusetts, Bowen Kerins, multiple world champion, famous for his Papa videos amongst other things, works at Q3. another world champion, Andre Massing-Kopp another, I would say, local-ish guy Yeah, up in San Francisco also, yeah Brian O'Neill we saw earlier and then we got Travis Rure, great player from Oklahoma Jordan Chance, another Coloradoan there's a real Colorado mafia here, great player Yeah, they crank them out and they're all walking around with their blue Comet sweatshirts on like a gang, you know, a pinball gang We've then got Josh Sharpe and then Jim Belsito. Jim, I mean, Jim's running this tournament. I know. He's qualifying for the Classics. He's qualifying for the Open. The man is a machine. And he's a tech. And he's a tech, yeah. A fantastic tech. And he's dealing with all sorts of issues. Yep. I need to find out what he has for breakfast because it's just insane. Then another great name that went over is Steven Bowden, Group 6, with Steve Zahler, Jason's dad, Jared August that we saw earlier on and another Fulmer World Champion, Kaylee George. So an exciting group of players. Group one have gone to Tron, group two are on Tommy. Carl is trying to corral players to get going. Carl's just sitting there shaking his head. Not getting apparently the cooperation that he wants.