Tourney Off the Hill 1.0 Report - Discussing Pinball Tournament Strategy (Ep.60)

A Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·34m 2s·analyzed·Jul 16, 2021

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.026

TL;DR

Tournament strategy & machine scouting guide from Tulsa sanctioned match play event

Summary

A Pinball Podcast host reports on a sanctioned pinball tournament (Tourney Off the Hill 1.0) held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, detailing tournament preparation strategies, pre-game checklists for machine evaluation, and game-by-game analysis of their tournament matches. The episode focuses on practical competition advice including how to efficiently scout machines during practice time and tactical approaches to specific game rule sets.

Key Claims

The speaker treated the tournament like a Stern Pro Circuit event despite non-sanctioned status, emphasizing controlled play and strategic shot selection over rushing
high confidence · Direct statement about personal tournament approach and mindset going in
Ball save mechanics are typically absent on solid state and EM machines but present on modern DMD/LCD games, though tournament directors may disable or reduce them
high confidence · Speaker's explicit machine knowledge about ball save availability across machine types
Ripley's Believe It or Not was disliked by the speaker before this tournament but became enjoyable after playing it twice during the weekend
high confidence · Direct speaker testimony about sentiment shift toward the game
Oktoberfest multiball mechanics were unclear to the speaker; choosing 'duck target' instead of the correct multiball mode resulted in a very poor first ball (4,000 points)
high confidence · Detailed play-by-play account of mistakes on Oktoberfest
Game of Thrones Premium is frequently played at the speaker's home location and is a go-to machine they feel most comfortable with rule-set-wise
high confidence · Speaker's personal statement about location preference and skill level
On Avengers Infinity Quest, the 'World Breaker strategy' involves getting the reality gem, putting it on the Hulk spinner, and spamming the Hulk spinner for rapid point accumulation
high confidence · Detailed strategy explanation with specific rule mechanics described
The speaker ended game play on Ripley's deliberately (on purpose drain) after accumulating 40+ million points to avoid delaying other players who had been waiting
high confidence · Explicit statement: 'I ended up actually just draining out on purpose'
Simpsons Pinball Party's alien invasion mode is a stall-ball lock mechanic requiring three physical ball locks before point accumulation occurs

Notable Quotes

“I've made them to where they just play like death. There's no ball saves. It's just waxed down, outlaying posts wide open.”
Host/Podcast presenter @ Early segment — Describes personal practice philosophy emphasizing difficult machine setups for skill development
“30, 45 seconds is really all you need if you know what you're doing.”
Host/Podcast presenter @ Practice time discussion — Core advice about efficient machine scouting during tournament practice periods
“there's really no room for error at some of these places, especially if you want to be able to compete at a high level against players that are also traveling”
Host/Podcast presenter @ Tournament mindset section — Reflects competitive intensity and rising player skill levels in sanctioned tournaments
“I ended up actually just draining out on purpose just because it was like 40 million of points ahead by then and we were already about an hour into our game and everybody else was just waiting around”
Host/Podcast presenter @ Ripley's game discussion — Demonstrates sportsmanship and awareness of tournament etiquette/pacing concerns
“I absolutely love Game of Thrones as a pinball machine. I really do. I know there's people out there that just loathe it, that it's not really the pin for them.”
Host/Podcast presenter @ Game of Thrones section — Acknowledges polarized community opinion on Game of Thrones while expressing personal enthusiasm
“If I see this at a tournament against people that are high level that know what they're doing, I might be in a little bit of trouble. But other than that, what I tend to do is I try to at least get a couple of dinosaurs picked off or captured.”
Host/Podcast presenter @ Jurassic Park game discussion — Honest self-assessment about Jurassic Park rule set knowledge gaps and play approach

Entities

KarenpersonMikepersonMonicapersonRusspersonStern Pro CircuitorganizationTourey Off the Hill 1.0eventAvengers Infinity Quest PremiumgameRipley's Believe It or NotgameJurassic Parkgame

Signals

?
community_signal: Speaker treats non-sanctioned tournament with Stern Pro Circuit discipline and preparation standards, suggesting continued engagement with competitive pinball during sanctioned play break and anticipation of resumed IFPA season
high · Direct statement: 'I had decided right off the bat that I was going to go ahead and just treat it as if it was a Stern Pro Circuit tournament'
?
community_signal: Tulsa, Oklahoma has active organized pinball tournament infrastructure (Tourney Off the Hill 1.0) with welcoming player community and tournament directors, suggesting growing regional competitive scene
medium · Positive feedback about 'Tulsa crew' and tournament organization quality; location approximately 1.5-2 hours from speaker's home
?
competitive_signal: Game of Thrones strategy meta centers on Lannister house selection with gold/playfield multiplier farming via yellow targets and action button spam, enabling 600M-1B points before wizard mode
high · Detailed strategy explanation with emphasis on timing and combo execution for multiplier building
~
sentiment_shift: Notable opinion change on Ripley's Believe It or Not; speaker moved from disliking the machine (prior opinion from 2-3 years ago) to enjoying it and seeking additional play opportunities
high · Explicit statement: 'I actually had a lot of fun on that pin this weekend' and 'now I find myself wishing I could find a Ripley's, believe it or not, to play a little bit more'
?
competitive_signal: Speaker consciously practicing outside comfort zone (unfamiliar machines, unfamiliar locations) and implementing discipline in play style to prepare for high-level sanctioned tournament competition

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.102

0:00

Sanctioned Pinball is nearly back, so today we have a tournament report and we're also going to go over what to look for during practice time right before a tournament, and we're going to talk about what to look for in a pinball machine right before you start your game. All that right now on A Pinball Podcast.

0:23

Man, so that intro was a little bit of a tongue twister for me, but hey, I got it out. So anyhow, just like I talked about just a second ago during the intro, we're going to talk about a tournament today that I played in here just this past weekend. I think today, obviously today is Thursday, I think. Well, I say obviously. You guys don't know that. Anyways, today's Thursday, and I played in this tournament a few days ago on Sunday, I believe, up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is like about an hour and a half, hour and 45 minutes from where I'm at. And it was actually a pretty fun tournament. And so I got to where I'm starting to play a little bit more as much as I can right before sanctioned pinball comes back. And I'm trying to get in as much work as possible in different pins outside of my comfort zone, outside of the location that I usually play at, and different pinball machines that aren't necessarily mine either. Now, that being said, all my games at home, I've decided I've made them to where they just play like death. There's no ball saves. It's just waxed down, outlaying posts wide open. And I think that's the way I just prefer to practice. I mean, rule sets, I pretty much have them down. That's here at the house. Now it's just, you know, it just becomes about just maintaining flipper skills and developing those skills just day by day. And I really believe in doing something like that, putting a lot of practice time in, because obviously if you prepare before, you're going to be ready the day of. I fully do believe that. Now, before I get started, I do want to say big shout out to the Tulsa crew. they were very welcoming lots of cool people up there now one of the somebody up there in particular her name is karen and oh my gosh karen you are by far special shout out to you you are by far one of my most favorite people to have in a group this woman she is i mean she's just a jovial spirit but my god she makes a pinball highly entertaining so big shout out to you karen and also big shout out to Mike for directing that tournament. So I really do appreciate it. Now, what we're going to do, I'm going to talk about it. Now, of course, you guys have already heard, you know, that's all we're going to talk about today is just tournament pinball. We're going to talk a little bit about the process of getting ready to play right before a tournament. And I think, yeah, that's about all we're going to cover. So if that's kind of your cup of tea, feel free, stick around. We're going to get right straight into it. If you're looking for news or something like that, might need to wait till the next one. and I bid you adieu and have a great weekend. But if you're still with me, let's just get right into this. Now, the first thing I want to go over a little bit is what I like to do during my practice time whenever I'm getting ready for a tournament. And when I say practice time, I'm meaning basically the hour before that you have at a particular place in order to get used to how the pins are playing or if you get a chance to actually play the arena bank. Now, what I prefer doing, you know, in most cases too, it'll kind of differ. Sometimes you'll just have an hour to do whatever. Other times you're supposed to only have about 30 to 45 seconds on a pin. And in all reality, 30, 45 seconds is really all you need if you know what you're doing. So whenever you do have an opportunity to practice on a pin, and this is just considering that it's on free play, or you could even do this if it's on coin drop too, just keep in mind, you want to be very efficient with your time. You don't want to necessarily just go up there and play a full game. And the idea is, if you don't know the particular pin, if you don't know the rule set or anything like that, that's not really the time, in my opinion, to figure out the rule set. Now it's good to kind of figure out maybe where the mode start is, maybe where a multiplier is, maybe where a multiball is, but I wouldn't take too much time trying to figure the rule set out right then and there. What I would do, though, and I kind of have this checklist that I generally follow, and it's in really no particular order, but I like doing this whenever I step up to a pin and I only have 30 or 45 seconds to go. Now, the main things that I like to do is, one, whenever you plunge, check and see if there's a ball save. That'll give you an opportunity right there just to see if there's a light that's flashing that indicates there's a ball save, or you pretty much know there's not. Now, for people that are new to this, most of the time if you're playing on a solid state or an EM, there's not going to be any ball save whatsoever. So keep that in mind. Modern games that are DMD or LCD, you'll typically find a ball save on those. But at some tournaments, they could be turned off or even very much turned down. So keep that in mind whenever you're checking for that. I would also look at the machine pitch before you even plunge. see where that bubble's at on the leveler to the right-hand side. You need to notice if it's 6 degrees, 7 degrees, 7.5 degrees, because that does play a little bit into where you can think about what type of shots you could possibly hit, whether the ramps will be accessible, and so on and so forth. Hopefully that makes sense so far. Another thing I like to do is check post-passing. I like to know if a particular game allows for a post-pass, whether it's easy, whether it's hard, if it's early, if it's late. That's valuable information right there. I also like to use this time to find the shots, mainly on the ramp, sometimes on the orbits. But typically what I like to figure out is whether or not a shot is early or late or mid-range on a flipper. So once you figure out where one shot's at, you can pretty much just assume where other shots are at, especially if you've been able to play on that particular layout before at other places. Because obviously the geometry pretty much is exactly the same across the board. The only difference is maybe a ball guide might be a little bit different, or maybe the flippers themselves might be a little bit different. So that's another thing to check on. You want to see are the flippers sagging? Are they up a little bit more? Is it lightning flippers? You want to check the rubber. You want to see how the bounces are. And that's all valuable information. You also want to see basically where are the posts at. You want to know if the out-lane posts are wide open. You want to see if there's rubbers on the post, on the in-lane post, on the out-lane post. So, again, all good information to have. And then the final thing you want to do is what I like to do in particular is just check the tilt. I like to see how much I can get away with with an upward nudge, with a side-to-side, and with slaps. So that seems like a lot to go over. Now, all of this I don't necessarily do on every single pin, or I do this on basically every pin. But what I'm meaning is I won't necessarily do this entire checklist on every single pin. Because sometimes you've got to kind of wind down the checklist. So kind of get in your head what you want to see. And these are just things to look out for. And it's going to be awfully hard to check all these things with just 30 or 45 seconds. But at the same time, if you can come back around and do it again, perfect. Now, if you're just looking at one pin in particular that you're a little bit worried about, maybe you might want to go through this checklist a little bit more or a little bit more in depth. and that could help you in particular. And I'm like that sometimes. I got certain pins out there that I feel comfortable on no matter what, no matter where it's at. And then there's other pins out there that I know for a fact I'm going to have a difficult time with it, and so I want to see how that particular pin will play. That's typically how I approach it. Now, the other thing that I like to do right before I start an actual game, And this is just like a mini checklist to go over that's useful if you're in strikes, match play, basically any tournament. And the big thing that I like to do is I like to check where the flipper position is at, just to remind me. Where is it at? I like to check for the outlane posts to see if they're wide open, to see if there's a rubber on there. I like to also check the orbits to see if there's normal-sized rubbers on the posts that go around to the orbits. because some of these games, the tournament directors will actually put a rubber on there that's much larger or much fatter than what the normal size rubber would be And the reason for that is to make that shot a little bit more difficult or make the return a little bit more difficult So that something to kind of look out for I ran into that before on Game of Thrones I know I been talking about it with several other people that Mandalorian is probably going to be the type of pen that will have this done. There's a few other pens out there too, in which something like that has happened before. And I've seen it happen a lot on EMs as well to kind of make it to where that feed is a little bit more erratic back to the flipper. So be sure and check for that. And then I also like to check for the flipper strength right before. So if you ever see myself or any other player just kind of shotgunning the flippers before we plunge, there's a reason for that. One is for me, it's just to kind of get a feel for the flipper. And then on the other hand, it's also to see what the power is to that flipper. And I like to kind of get a gauge on whether or not I'm going to send the ball out of control or whether or not I feel like I can make a particular shot. So all these things just kind of come together and you can kind of just use this as a roadmap to where you're going to go because it just kind of, it's just a lot of, it takes a lot of time to get used to doing something like this. I'll just put it that way, but this is something that can get you going on the right road and kind of get you into the mindset. And then of course, if you're watching this on YouTube and you have something in particular that you do, it helps you feel free to share in the comments down below because I am curious if there's a more efficient way to do this but that's kind of how I figured that works for me and I've been doing that for well over a couple of years now all right so let's go ahead and get right into the tournament report after all that of course I say right right into it when I take like 10 minutes to go over everything else but we are going to do the tournament report right now so this was a target match play that I think we ended up ending a little bit early. I think we ended up stopping right at 10 rounds or maybe it was nine rounds. I can't remember, but the games lasted a little bit long, but that's okay. I ended up going to this tournament and I had decided right off the bat that I was going to go ahead and just treat it as if it was a Stern Pro Circuit tournament. So no matter how these pins were set up, I was going to take my time. I was going to actually measure out my shots. I wasn't going to play rushed. I wasn't going to play on the fly as much. I was going to stay in control. I was going to make moves when they were necessary and I was going to hold back when it was necessary also. So I picked my times to tilt and I was picking my times to not take necessarily a chance at tilting and tilting away bonus. So I was very aware of all these things more so than what I've been probably in any other tournament during the pandemic break or during the non-sanctioned break from the IFPA. But I do know now I got to kind of zone in a little bit more with these big tournaments starting up and there's so many great players out there, so many solid players out there, that there's really no room for error at some of these places, especially if you want to be able to compete at a high level against players that are also traveling to compete at the same tournament. So that's kind of my mindset going into this.

11:32

And so the first game I ended up playing was Avengers Infinity Quest Premium, and now, of course, obviously you see an Avengers Infinity Quest behind me, so I felt pretty comfortable in that. and spoiler alert, I ended up getting first place on that game. Of course, Monica, my wife, was in that group with me, so that was hilarious, but no mercy on her at all. But the way that I approach Avengers, and again, this is just my competition approach, it might change according to if it's a herb or maybe if it's pin golf, obviously, but for match play purposes or for any purposes, anything I talk about right now, it's just match play centric. And one of the things that I like to do with Avengers is I have a strategy in which I call the World Breaker strategy. And my goal for this is basically to work my way to getting the reality gem, and then I'm going to put that gem on the Hulk spinner, and then I'm basically just going to spam the Hulk spinner for as much as I need to in order to build up the points as fast as possible. Now there's a couple of things that I like to do in between here, mainly bring in a portal lock into my first quest. And the way that you do that is you hit four combos, and then that will light your portal lock, which in this case, because we were on the premium, so in that case, it opened up the disk, and then we hit it into the disk. If you're on a pro, you have to actually spin the disk. So that was a little bit easier to get started just because it was a premium, and we had the portal right there. And I ended up bringing in, I think, one portal lock into my quest, and that essentially made it to where it was a 2x mode during that time. And what I like to do, too, whenever I start stacking that together is I'll sometimes bring in Thor multiball if I feel like I need to, but a big thing that I like to do during this as well is I'll just do Black Widow and Gauntlet Ramp just nonstop, just back and forth, because that's one of the great things about this particular quest is as soon as you hit one shot, it won't be lit for the very next shot, but it will be lit after you hit a different shot. So you can pretty much just combo your way back and forth, and you should be able to get through it pretty quick. And I feel like the Reality Gym is a very valuable gym to have since it does two extra shot, basically. And I like just putting that on the spinner and then going and juicing up Hulk and getting through my Gamma Spins. But I will typically bring in another mode with that. Sometimes it just depends what I'm feeling at that time. Sometimes I might do Mind Gym and then do Time afterwards. Other times I might do Power. it just really depends where I'm at and what I'm feeling and how well I do after my first ball. So the strategy does kind of change a little bit, but in this particular time, I think I had like 180 or 160 million, somewhere right in, right around in that after ball one. So I felt pretty good about that. And then I went on to Ripley's, believe it or not. And in this one, I actually, I hit the struggle bus bad on it. Like I'm not very good at Ripley's at all. And I think I ended up taking third on that, but something weird kind of happened to where I had the, not the idle, I guess the shrunken head, and I had a multiball juiced up ready to go, and then I decided to do a mode to try to bring some modes into my multiball, and I ended up playing North America, which was, I think that's a two-ball multiball, I'm not too familiar with the rules, but as soon as I came out of that, all of a sudden the other multiball was not there anymore, and I wasn't really expecting that, so I don't know if that was a game malfunction, I don't know if that's part of the rules. Maybe somebody can let me know, but that was a little bit disappointing because I did all that work to get the multiball ready to go and I had it lit. And then all of a sudden it was not there anymore. After I finished off one of my modes, that was a multiball mode. So that didn't go too well for me. I think I had maybe 11 million. I really didn't do too much on that. Then my next game, I went to Jurassic park, ended up taking first on this one. And basically all I did on Jurassic Park is I tried to get, and again, my knowledge of this rule set is kind of all over the place right now. I really need to dig in deeper. If I see this at a tournament against people that are high level that know what they're doing, I might be in a little bit of trouble. But other than that, what I tend to do is I try to at least get a couple of dinosaurs picked off or captured. And then this was a premium, so I decided to go ahead and just play Raptor multiball instead. And I would bring in a control room with my Raptor multi-ball. And as I did that, I was just kind of able just to kind of woodchop my way to a decent score. I think I ended up being around 280 million or so. And to be honest with you, I couldn't really tell you exactly what I did outside of just hitting lit shots and making sure I stayed in as much control as possible and just kind of just felt my way through the game, found the shots, I'd brick it a little bit, get back under control, find a shot, hit it, just kind of rinse and repeat, hit a few jackpots here and there. And that's typically how this game went for me. But I love the game. I love Jurassic Park. I just need to spend more time on it and just kind of fill my way through it a little bit more and kind of get an idea of what my roadmap exactly would be whenever I am playing that in match play. So I did notice while I was playing that, I was like, I might need to shore things up on this game a little bit. So my next one going forward was on Oktoberfest. Now, with Oktoberfest, I have not played this game in probably about two and a half years. I think the last time I played it was TPF 2019, and that was just for a couple of games at their booth. I've never played it on location At least I don think I have If I did totally forgot And I not gonna lie I was completely lost on this game I just jumped right into it didn look for any notes I kind of had an idea that you need to hit the scoop to start a tent mode and that you would pick your mode and stuff like that, but what I ended up messing up on, I knew that there was some type of multiball mode in there, I just could not remember for my life what it was. So I had a chance to choose between juggling, and I think it was duck target, and I ended up picking duck target. And that was the most horrible idea ever in the history of pinball for me playing because basically, one, I did not get a multi ball out of that. And two, it just lit targets all around for me in which I did not want to hit. And you know what? After it was so weird, after about four shots, I was just ripping ramps and I could not hit the target. I was missing the target and just hitting the ramps. I ended up draining out, and legitimately, I think I had 4,000 points after ball one. It was just so bad. But anyhow, somehow, right around ball three, I ended up just kind of grinding my way back. I finally started finding some of the shots, and I learned my lesson that any time I got into the tent, I would take juggling, and I think I somehow was able to kind of go around that twice. And I realized, too, by hitting, I guess it was the October and the Fest targets, Those ended up lighting my locks somehow, and I nearly got a multi-ball off of that, but didn't quite get there. I think I had the side ramp to go, or maybe it was just one more left ramp, and I ended up draining out right before them. But I ended up taking second. I think I was around 700,000, but my opponent, Russ, he just blew it up on his ball one. I mean, he was playing forever, and I think he ended up with right around 900,000 or so, and that was without playing one of the multi-balls. And I say blowing up because, quite frankly, I could not find any points in it outside of going back and playing a multiball later on in the day just testing out. And then all of a sudden, oh, there's two or three million points in that. So that was a little bit rough. But, hey, we got through it. And I ended up moving on to blackout. And blackout's a solid state. And basically all I did on this game, it was just if I was on the right or left flipper, I was hitting the targets that were in the upper right-hand corner. and those targets, I believe it was supposed to light my spinner to the right, if I remember correctly. So once my spinner was lit, I would just throw it back up top. And even sometimes when it wasn't, I would still throw it back up top. And then I just started getting my rollovers all completed. So that way I had my bonus multiplier. And then once my bonus multiplier is built up, then anytime I got on a flipper, I would just start just shatting the end lanes back and forth. And I think if I remember right, that was worth about 3000 points or somewhere right around there and would just keep gradually building up my bonus. And so long story short, got through that first place. I think, I can't remember, I was right around 350,000, 400,000, somewhere right around there. But that was my general plan on that. And I think even if I play it again in a competition, I'd probably do the same exact thing. And so my next game, I believe this would be my, how far have we gone? One, two, three, four, five. So this is my sixth round game. And I get back on Ripley's, believe it or not, and I learned my lesson, what happened with my multi-ball last time. So I made sure to take that into account. And I also ended up trying to get a 2X play field going. I think it was a 2X play field. It was on that grid that was in the middle. Again, not too familiar with the rule set, but I ended up getting that done. And then, you know, one thing led to another and I just made sure that I just decided I was not going to drain no matter what. And next thing I know, I I'm right around like 50 million points or something like that. And this is this is right around ball two or maybe even ball three, because I might even. Yeah, that's what it was. I had a long ball one. I was right around 20 million, 22 million. Then my ball two wasn't near as good. I think I only had like. five million or something like that and then my ball three was lasting a long time to where i was cycling through multi balls and i was just i was just playing for a long time and i realized pretty much that this game i was just i i had a handle on it was one of those things where you just knew you weren't going to drain so i ended up actually just draining out on purpose just just because it was i think it was like 40 million of points ahead by then and we were already already about an hour into our game and everybody else was just waiting around so i didn't want to be that guy But it's funny. I ended up playing this game just two times here. And admittedly, I was not a fan before this weekend. I played it before just a couple of years ago. And maybe I was just a different player back then. Maybe I wasn't as skillful. Maybe I just had my head up my butt. But I actually had a lot of fun on that pin this weekend. And it was starting to make a little bit more sense. And now I find myself wishing I could find a Ripley's, believe it or not, to play a little bit more.

21:56

So, again, ended up taking first on there. We go to the next round, and now we're on Simpsons pinball party. And this game, I looked at it. I saw where everything was at, and I just knew I was in for the long haul. So my goal with this, whenever I do play Simpsons, my goal is just purely to get to alien invasion, no matter what. All I'm going to do is just get the ball into the garage. I'm going to start. I guess it's a TV mode is what it's called. Then I'm going to relight it to the right spinner, and then I'm going to go back up to the garage again. Eventually, I think you've got to hit it one time to open it up and then put it back in there. So it's basically two shots, if I remember right. And then I just keep stacking TV mode on TV mode because the great thing about it is once you start another TV mode up top, it restarts your whole timer to all the modes in particular. So that was just kind of my goal is just to grind through them, and I wasn't really worried about finishing them. All I wanted to do was just keep starting them. keep the ball alive, get it back up top, just rinse and repeat. And then maybe, maybe get lucky and start a couch multi-ball because there's another flipper up there too. There's actually two, two small flippers, one to put it into the TV mode, another one to where when the ball does come out of the TV mode area, I hope I'm saying that right, but when it comes out of that little lock area, you can be able to hit it back up into the couch through another flipper. So that would start your couch multi-ball from there and i just kind of just grinded away to doing that maybe got an itchy and scratchy multi-ball which is at the three drop targets to the right hand side that you'd light eventually after hitting it so many times and yeah so one thing led to another and i think on trying to remember i think ball one i ended up dumping out with only about like 1.4 million just had a weird drain on it and then by ball three i had alien invasion lit before my ball three started that's what it was i played a long ball two just got through everything and then once ball three was there i did alien invasion which of course you've never been there before it basically what it is is you start out off with i think it's three balls if i remember right and then you have to lock them it's like stall ball basically to where you have to get the ball stalled out and then it's basically like locking three balls physically. If that makes sense, I hope I'm explaining this correctly. And then that would kick out another one, points just start piling up, and after you do that, one thing leads to another, and you got a lot of points. Let's just put it that way. So I ended up getting through that game, got first place on that. Also, I think I had around 95 million, 90 million, somewhere right in that area. And then my next game was Game of Thrones. Now, Game of Thrones, this particular one was on the Pro, and I absolutely love Game of Thrones as a pinball machine. I really do. I know there's people out there that just loathe it, that it's not really the pin for them. For me, I enjoy the Pro. I enjoy the Pro a lot more than I do the Premium, but we also have a Premium on location, and it's pretty much like one of my go-to pins, believe it or not. It's probably the one that I feel most comfortable with, rule set wise. And I have many different ways of approaching it. And that's what I like about it, that you can kind of pick and choose which house to go with. And it just depends how the pin's set up. But my main go-to is just to use Lannister. I know some people swear by Tyrell. Me personally, I like using Lannister just because you can basically use the action button to spam play filled multipliers And typically you can hold back on that until the time is right And in order to build up your playfield multiplier well of course you got to finish through modes and collect swords But another way that you get everything ready is you hit the yellow targets that are out there on the playfield, and that gets you gold. And you get so much gold, that's when you can start buying playfield multipliers. And to me, that is so powerful because if somebody doesn't know that that's there, they still have to play very well to put up a lot of points on there. And you can basically, if you time it right and you do your combos correctly, you can have 600 to a billion points before you even get to Hand of the King, which is a wizard mode built in halfway through the game after you get through, or you complete four of the houses. But what I like to do on Game of Thrones whenever I start out is, one, I will short plunge. That way I'm not validating the play field. I won't bother trying to save the ball, assuming it's not validated, until if I don't have a ball on the right flipper. Let's just put it that way. If it's not going to stick on my right flipper, I let it go. I don't flip it away. I don't put it out of control. I just let it drain, go back to my plunge, short plunge. I just keep repeating that process on a pro. On a premium, I might do it a little bit different, but on a pro, that's what I like to do. From there, I'll usually hit my Baratheon targets, which are on the left-hand side. You got a three-bank drop target that's there. and after you hit that, that'll light your, I believe it's called Lord of Light, which is basically an outlaying ball save, which is huge because once I get that done, what I like to do from there is I'll just start spamming the Tyrell targets, which is two stand-up targets on the right-hand side. And what this will do, that'll get that house ready for me to play and then it'll also light a lock up the middle. And whenever I do get my lock, I will pass on the mode. If it's just one mode, I'll pass on it. I usually keep passing on modes until I have both Lannister and Tyrell ready to go. And then I have my Blackwater multiball ready to go also. And I'll just stack that all together. It just makes it incredibly easy to finish. I would say nine times out of ten, I'm finishing both those modes while I'm in Blackwater, even with a short ball save, just because you can spam a lot of shots very quickly. Let's just put it that way. Another thing I like to do, I like to finish off Stark. And you can get a lot of points off that as well if you do use Lannister. But a big reason why I like to use Stark is because once I do get into Hand of the King, one of the house powers that Stark brings is that after you finish all your jackpots or whatever it is, the play field will stay lit for X amount of times with all the shots being lit. And then that's when you can really cash in with that Lannister action button because you might have two, three, or four X. and you're just able just to ride that center ramp over and over and over again, and the points just pile up. Now for my fourth house, sometimes it'll be Martell, sometimes it'll be Greyjoy. It just really depends. In this case, I think I played Martell just because it was safe. It's just very orbit-based. I think it's three orbits and then right up the middle for Martell. And usually if Martell is your final shot up the middle, you can also finish that mode or that house and go directly into Hand of the King, which is really good. I mean, if you can be efficient with your shots, that really does help out as well. So I think I ended up with around 3.1 billion after two balls and got the plunge off my third ball. So that was another first place. And then we went to Ironman. And Ironman, again, one of my favorite pens of all time. What I like to do on Ironman is I just ride ramps. That's all I really worry about. I don't really do monger too much because I feel like it gets in the way. If I can dial in ramps, I'll stay with ramps the whole time. and that just typically will pile up the points. From there, if I am getting close to War Machine, I'll consider finishing that off because I like to do War Machine and Whiplash stacks. And I think in this case, that's exactly what I did. I think I ended up going ahead and playing my Ironmonger also by accident just because I just accidentally hit an orbit at some point. And I had a pretty good ball one. I got all the way through nearly having do or die ready to go, which means you complete your Ironman targets, you complete your Whiplash, you do War Machine, you do, oh gosh, Drawing a Blank Ironmonger, and there's one other thing I'm completely forgetting. Anyways, you've got to do basically five things to get there. And I had one target left to go on the left-hand side for my Ironman targets, and of course, I brick and drain it. It's just horrible. And just a comedy of errors for my next two balls, too, where I was just one more shield insert away from, or whatever that's called. Not shield insert. What is that? His chest thing. I can't even think of it. You guys know what I'm talking about, though. If you've seen Iron Man, you know exactly what I'm talking about. But I was just one more away from lighting Jericho, which would have been up the middle. And I just could not hit anything my next two. So I had maybe, I think, 15 or 16 million on ball one, and I ended up with 17.8 or 18 million after three balls. It was just a comedy of errors, my next two balls. But I survived, and we got first place on that one. So basically, I entered my last game on Avengers Infinity Quest, and all I really had to do was just take second or first. If my wingman on the other game didn't survive, which I think they didn't, and I ended up taking second on this just because I knew that I just had to cruise for second place. I wasn't really trying to blow it up or anything like that. I was playing very conservative. And although it's kind of a mistake, I think I should have just went ahead and approached it as I normally did because I noticed as soon as I started turtling up a little bit and not playing like I normally would, not as offensive-minded on ball one, I ended up just basically not really doing much on there. and I only had about $45 million going into Ball 3, which for Avengers, if it's set up favorable, honestly, it's not that good, and something like that will not cut it against the competition that's out there. So I know that that's something I need to improve on personally, and I plan on doing that just because it's just, I'm just an anal retender like that. I have to do better. Let's just put it that way. But I was happy overall with my performance. I think I ended up winning by one point, I think. I think it was like 26 to 25 with Brian Daniels taking second, who's a Tulsa pinball player up there. Good one at that. So I was happy overall with that. I think I found some stuff that I need to work on a little bit more, but I was really happy with where my nudging's come along. I feel like I've worked hard on that over the past year. I've worked hard on my accuracy, and I've worked especially hard on knowing when I need to go ahead and play on the fly. because I got to where I tried to play in too much control sometimes and it led to just unnecessary flipper fumbles and I kind of caught myself doing that at District 82 a couple of months ago. And I've tried to right the ship on that and it's kind of funny and I might have to talk about this a little bit later since this podcast is getting a little bit longer. But I started making some adjustments after talking to a few other players about what they thought about it. And it turns out they were absolutely right and the adjustments I've made since then have really paid off And really just Reader's Digest version is that I'm learning when I need to go ahead and hit the ball away to a safety shot, almost like a preemptive bell out shot to where I'm not trying to stay in precise control because sometimes that's just leading to me just kind of fumbling the ball around anyways. Whereas if I go ahead and hit the ball away, maybe I'm putting it somewhere that will be safe, that will score some points, that will give me some progression on that particular ball. So that's a little bit, that's probably a conversation for another time, but I felt good about all those things I was doing. And so I definitely look forward to sanctioned pinball coming back. It's going to be here in just a couple of weeks. And yeah, I can't wait. That's basically all I got. I appreciate you guys listening. Thank you guys so much. If you guys have any questions, if you have any comments, if you have any advice for anything that I've said on this that you feel like I could have done something a little bit better in terms of my decision making or how I approach a game or just rule set knowledge. I'm definitely open to any of that just because I want to learn. But that's all I got. You guys have a great weekend. Thank you guys so much once again for listening and for watching. And you guys have a good one. Later, guys.