Yeah. No, no. Yeah. All I was going to say is sometimes when you turn up at a tournament and there's one person that's always a complete cunt, and they turn up and you just go, oh, this is going to be interesting. I noticed one player, I'm not going to mention their name, and the next person, but they, on four games within a short period of time, complained about this, this, this, this, this. I flagged that person. Okay, guys, this guy is just nonstop bitching and, you know, just keep an eye. Just trying to get an edge or whatever. and maybe a lot of times this is a location pinball. So imagine you're there all the time. You're there all the time and you're used to everything being such and such. And we come in there and we change the settings. It's going to be, whoa, whoa, what happened to this game? I thought I knew like the back of my hand. It's something like that. Yeah. So you have to have software and you have to be knowledgeable of software. Yes, correct. There are two that I think are elite. And, of course, never drain software is used in a lot of these pump and dumps That is Carl DeAngelos. You see it at Yagpin. You see it at InDisc. A lot of the major Stern Pro Circuit events. That is what we used. We also used Andreas' wonderful MatchPlay software, which is just actually a lot better, the Next.MatchPlay events. You probably haven't even been on it since he revised it. It's really good now. Yeah, no, I haven't. And when I was doing monthly competitions or tournaments, MatchPlay was the go, the big Melbourne Super Bowl championship, because of the number of players, Neverdrain's was better. Actually, I'll tell you the reason why Neverdrain's is better, and maybe match players like this now, but Neverdrain manages the player registration and also the monetary side of entries as well very well It elite for that And in fact, it has a prize pool function that a lot of tournaments don't use, but I advertised that I was going to show people, and I physically showed at least 10 different people, here's $20 for entry, look at the prize pool before I enter it. And then, okay, I'm going to enter it now, look at the prize pool. Oh, look, it went up by $20. I showed that aspect. I thought that was pretty cool that Carl had that. And MatchPlay is great for, it helps the streamers a lot too. Like I wanted to make sure we had streaming and the wonderful people at TPN, the pinballers, the Castlemans from Ottawa did a fantastic job. Their first big, big event. They stepped up their gear and their equipment and I can't be more happy than what they did. They're already on board for 2024. But the MatchPlay really helped them with their software too and being able to link that on the stream. A couple of tournaments I ran, and that would have been the three strikes tournament on Sunday and then the Thursday warmup. I had it set up so that players can enter their own results. You don't have to put in scores, but who's first, who was second, who was third, who was fourth. A godsend. It was absolutely great. And that's one of the benefits of match play. Yep. Absolutely. We talked about changing the machines. I've got it written down here. You really do need to do that. And you have to think of, if you watch any IFPA big events, especially on EMs, when you get to that playoff, if there are four different score reels for an EM, like we had on, say, bow and arrow, we actually played them as one player games. It is a lesson learned from years ago. You would hate to see a tilt through affect somebody. So we do it for that reason. We also did the biggest reason, I think, and Adam Becker told me this, is I know score reel number one is working. It's been working all weekend. I don't know about score reel two and three and four. and what if we get to player four and it's buggered up? So that's another reason they do the one-player EMs. Make sense? Yep, it does. The changing of the software, we talked about mechanical things. If you can avoid anything mechanical that could possibly screw up, virtual locks are an absolute must. Now, some people don't like games that have ball stealing, a game like Sorcerer. I'm fine with games like that. Just, you know, it's not going to affect the game when you're playing in the pump and dump, but you need to make sure if you have a game like that, that Marty plays a game and he leaves two balls in the lock or the Powerball is the next one to come up on Twilight Zone and the next person comes up there, all right, I start with the Powerball or I've got two in the lock. It's going to be a lot easier. You've got to think of if games like that make sense to play in a pump and dump. Or how do you reset them? Power cycle. Correct. It's also, again, knowing your audience. If you've got the top, top players, they're all going to understand the strategic side of lock stealing. There were some players that just won't understand it because they haven't experienced it. I learned something at the Beast I didn't know, and I bet you didn't know this, and anybody who's a TD should know this. Somebody asked me, is it okay if I use Insider Connected? And I thought, oh, yeah, what's the big deal? And quickly, it was abolished. In fact, we took the dongles out of the machines that had it because on some games, especially Venom, and we're going to talk more about Venom, by the way, later in this program, a game like Venom, you can have progress on your Venom machine at home and apply it to wherever you're playing. And I think Turtles does that too, and some other games, which, by the way, is a great feature for a home game. I think that's pretty cool that you can do that. I know I can go play Rush anywhere and bring on the special songs I've unlocked on any machine, which is kind of fun, but there are point advantages, so you have to disable that kind of stuff. I didn't know that. Yeah, there you go. Yep. I haven't played Venom yet. I've watched a lot of the streams. And again, we're going to get more into it. But I do like that kind of feature. I think if it's really, really hard to get to this whatever level and you can just keep progressing every time you do it, isn't that kind of like a video game? Yep. I think it's a great idea. So all of these things we talk about. Oh, you have to have equipment too. So I've got a lot of volunteers. I've got a lot of scorekeepers. I had to get a bunch of tablets, you know, to make sure the software is being used. I can't ask people to use their phones and their data and all that kind of stuff. Do you have monitors for cues? Do you have a laptop for administration or for, again, showing these cues? These things are all really important. Do you have a lot of cords for charging? Is the equipment out of people's way? Things like that. The last big note I had was, again, transparency. And you don't have to show a balance sheet to everybody. But you have to explain where the money's going. And sadly, Marty, there are a lot of tournaments, not a lot, there are a few, and there are Stern Pro Circuit events that every year get questioned about the transparency. And they're not doing themselves any favor by not being transparent. People will show up anyway, but transparency just goes so far. And again, if you're paying a tech, if you're paying delivery, if you're paying a TD, great, no problem. Just let people know because people can add up the entries and figure out how much money is going into a pool and they wonder where the hell it's going. Okay. Here's the question then. Is there a problem putting on a tournament to make money? No, as long as you're transparent. But even if you're not transparent, what does it matter? I think it's optics. I would imagine that there's not that many people that truly care. As I said before, I think the most people are just there, put their hat in the ring, have a bit of fun. Maybe they'll do well. Maybe they'll get into the finals. But I don't think the majority of people care. I think it's the top players and the people that stand to earn money. I think that's important to them. But the reason why I bring that up is I think that there's a stigma that people think that you should not make a dime in a tournament. And I know there was a tournament a few years ago that is no longer, that might have been near where you had yours, that was criticized because they did make money. I don't care if that's what you want to do. If you let people know beforehand, that's great because you can make the choice whether you want to go or not. When you go to a Stern Pro Circuit event and you go to Pinball at the Zoo, which is in Kalamazoo, Michigan, you know that every dollar minus whatever the admin fees are going into charity. Okay, great. Got it. Piece of cake. I know that. Eric Thorne, again, District 82, you know it costs this much, and he tells you this much is admin. It covers the wonderful facility and maintaining 100 machines and teching and parts and power and all that kind of stuff, buying trophies. And then this is the money that's going into the prize pool. You know that going in and you can choose to go or not go. And again, I cannot stress enough, transparency is the key. It just takes all the weight off your shoulders. People then can do what they want. If you still complain after the transparency, well, that's on you. I mean, you knew about it going in and you can choose to go or not go. But I don't think you can bitch about it. I've seen some tournaments wrongly get criticized for being transparent. I think that is ridiculous. Yeah, agreed. And look, again, no one's buying a Ferrari from these tournaments. And if they are making money, I can tell you now it's probably to cover the expenses that they've already had three months leading up to the event. So it's coming back to my point. I don't, me personally, I'm only one person. I don't care whether someone makes money and I don't even need transparency. It's not a fucking public company. You know, it's just a fucking tournament. It doesn't matter. You don't need to be scrutiny. You don't have to open your fucking books. I think that's bullshit. True. But do you know what I mean? Like this is just a hobby. It's just a hobby where people are having fun. But if you know that certain practices put people's noses out of joint, don't do it. There's that. And you're right. The best way to do that is to be transparent. It's just advice. My number one goal was for people to have fun. So I wanted to eliminate any question of a doubt where any dollar was going. I didn't want to make a cent off this thing. Any money I made was that I earned by playing in the tournament. Oh, but you're a TD. You shouldn't be playing. Ah, fuck off. That was my payment for I'm going to play in the tournament whether I'm running it or not. And if I'm not running it, the tournament doesn't exist, so fuck off. There. Did I say that? Is this it? Yeah. Sure. Anyway, I think you made a mistake. I mean, maybe you're just a better person than I am. I don't think you should have paid. I was not ever going to pay a cent out of my pocket for this. To do this, my payment was a lot of time. Same with the profile tours I did. I didn't want to make money off it. I just wanted to cover all the costs I have and keep the cost as low as possible for the player and give back as much as possible. Everybody got a shirt. They got something out of it. A lot of these prizes. You know, I made the value what I think was good, and I did the same for, I believe, The Beast. I think a lot of better shows, there are shows that you're paying an admin fee, but you're also getting to go to a great show like Brisbane Masters, like Yagpin, or games are on free play. There's big value in that too, but you have to decide as a player what is worth your time and money. and again, it's available right now for any TD to create a tournament where they don't play in it and they pay themselves. It's available right now. Very few do that. Very few. We've just covered so much stuff and it's trying to be the definitive view. All of it is recommendations. It's advice from you that's just recently had a very successful tournament and I know that, as I said, I've seen so much positive feedback. The tournaments that I ran, I had really positive feedback, had very, very little negative at all. So we've also been in a lot of big tournaments as well. So I think we are well-versed in this situation to give you some good advice. So it is just advice. Take it for what you will. Do we talk other things now? That's enough. Yeah. So let's talk about Venom because we recorded the podcast, I want to say maybe two days before it was revealed. And I don't necessarily want to talk too much about Venom because it is what it is. It's interesting because from what I've seen, it hasn't sold as well as the likes of Foo Fighters. and the only thing that I can really put my finger on is one, is the theme. I don't think Venom is a theme that's for everyone. I mean, I still haven't seen any of the films and I don't think, I personally don't think Venom is an A-list superhero. There you go, I've said it. But I've read a lot of people's thoughts and people will sort of say, oh, you know, the theme's not for me. But also the one thing that people keep bringing up is that it's a fan layout. and I wanted to talk about that because there has been some negative connotation with fan layouts. First things first, we're going to get to the fan layout. The theme, my thoughts, I think it's a great theme. I think it's perfect for pinball. I love the comic book edition. I love that Jeremy Packer did incredible artwork on it. It looks pretty deep, looks fun. I'm dying to play the game. I like that there's, on the premium and the LE, three unique kind of playfield settings. That's pretty funky. Yeah. That is really, really cool. Really cool. I mentioned about the Insider Connected Progress. That's awesome. I sent Dwight a text. I said, this is going to be a homeowner's delight. But I get the fatigue of, oh, fuck another superhero. It's the same with seeing movies, right? There's a lot of freaking superhero movies. That's all Hollywood can make nowadays. And I get that fatigue. But all I care about, I've never cared about theme, although a lot of people do, is does it shoot well? Is the code? Going to be good? For the eyeball test, yeah, on both counts. Now back to the fan layout. I'll just double down on that in that I think the code looks really inventive. Just Dwight's just trying some new stuff, and I think it's going to land quite well. I also like the look of that. I was sort of saying I'm a bit fatigued with the comic book art. With this in particular, the side art on the LE, it just looks amazing. I think they've done really well. But the reason I wanted to say fan layouts is because people were just sort of saying, oh, you know, all the shots seem the same and everything's right at the back. I think some facetious comment was it might as well be a multi-morphic game because it's all at the back quarter of the game, which... First of all, multi-morphic games are fucking awesome, so I don't agree with that. Yeah, well, and even if so, it's a compliment, so thank you. But then I just thought to myself, I wonder how many fan layouts are in, let's say, the top, I don't know, 25 or so on Pinsight. and you only have to go to number two, which is Medieval Madness. Medieval Madness is a fan layout. Yeah. Does it feel like you're just shooting all these things at the back of the playfield? I think the saucer is kind of mid-playfield, a little higher up, closer than the back end. You've got the side catapult shot. You know, the trolls and they come up there mid-playfield. Yep. Okay. I can see the fan layout argument, if that's a concern of yours, but it doesn't bother me. I mean... No. No, my argument is that I like fan layouts. I like them. Listen, the Foo Fighters really was a game changer, right? I remember seeing it. I'm like, wow, you know, you look at a game like Radical, and you're like, that's fucking crazy. And Foo Fighters is the first game that reminded me of Radical. And when I told Jack that, he said I couldn't pay him a higher compliment, right? And I was sincere.