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Episode 4 - Yegpin

Do or Die Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·48m 23s·analyzed·Apr 29, 2019
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Raymond Davison's detailed tournament report from Yegpin 2019 covering three competitions with strategy analysis and personal reflections.

Summary

Raymond Davison recounts his competitive pinball tournament experience at Yegpin 2019 in Edmonton, Canada, organized by Derek Thompson. He competed in three tournaments (High Stakes/Pro Division, Classics Division, and Open Division), detailing game setups, strategies, notable plays, and emotional moments. The episode covers specific game performances, tournament formats, and lessons learned about pinball competition and mental discipline.

Key Claims

  • The Pinball Pro Division at Yegpin uses a card format similar to It Never Drains' high-stakes division, with entry cost of $25 per try

    high confidence · Raymond Davison describing the tournament format and pricing structure at Yegpin

  • Attack the Planet was set up so hard at Yegpin that Raymond's qualifying score of 1.5 billion ranked only 9th

    high confidence · Raymond Davison recounting his qualifying scores and their rankings

  • Jermaine won both the High Stakes and Classics divisions at Yegpin 2019

    high confidence · Raymond Davison explicitly stating 'Jermaine takes first in Classics adding to his win in high stakes'

  • Shadow at Yegpin had a particularly hard setup that Raymond's loop combo strategy exploited, achieving 1.4 billion in qualifying

    high confidence · Raymond Davison detailing his qualifying performance and strategy on Shadow

  • ACDC at Yegpin has a Rock and Roll Train mode where the left ramp does not divert to the cannon, unlike normal premium/LE setup

    high confidence · Raymond Davison explaining a technical detail he learned from observing other players on ACDC

  • The Classics Division at Yegpin guarantees players will play at least one EM game regardless of bank selection

    high confidence · Raymond Davison explaining the tournament structure and game bank arrangement

  • Centigrade 37 at Yegpin had an unusual tilt sensitivity where pushing up caused a tilt, but side-to-side was allowed

    high confidence · Raymond Davison describing the specific setup configuration he encountered

  • Raymond finished 3rd in the High Stakes Division, winning approximately $400 CAD with about $75 in entry fees

    high confidence · Raymond Davison reporting his final placement and financial outcome

Notable Quotes

  • “Attack the Planet was on another planet. Like it was ridiculous.”

    Raymond Davison @ ~5:30 — Emphasizes how difficult the game setup was at Yegpin, making high scores particularly impressive

  • “If you don't extinguish the flame early, sometimes it blossoms into a raging Jermaine fire. Or any other good pinball player.”

    Raymond Davison @ ~35:00 — Humorous commentary on momentum and skill in tournament play, using Jermaine's performance as example

  • “That's pinball. That's pinball tournaments, man. You just gotta, not only do you have to play well relative to what you think is playing well, you've got to play well relative to how everyone else is playing.”

    Raymond Davison @ ~38:00 — Philosophical reflection on relative scoring and competition dynamics in tournament pinball

  • “Don't let the emotions get to you. Be calm. More than zero is fine.”

    Raymond Davison @ ~55:00 — Self-directed lesson about managing frustration and mental discipline during competition after Con multiball gave only 2 balls instead of 3

  • “I should have just rolled with it. I should have just been like, whatever, two balls, that's fine, that's enough.”

    Raymond Davison @ ~54:00 — Reflection on how emotional reaction to equipment anomaly (Con multiball glitch) directly caused tournament failure

Entities

Raymond DavisonpersonDerek ThompsonpersonYegpineventDie Hard PinballcompanyIt Never DrainseventJermainepersonTrevor McDonaldpersonIron MaidengameAttack the PlanetgameSorcerer

Signals

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Yegpin uses format inspired by It Never Drains high-stakes division with card format, $25 entry, and selective game mix

    high · Raymond describes format details and compares to It Never Drains model

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Jermaine dominated Yegpin 2019 by winning both High Stakes and Classics divisions, demonstrating consistent excellence across formats

    high · Raymond explicitly states Jermaine won both tournaments and analyzes his strategic decisions

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Attack the Planet was configured extremely difficult at Yegpin; Raymond's 1.5B qualified only 9th place, indicating exceptional setup severity

    high · Raymond's specific score and ranking data; his commentary on game difficulty

  • ?

    design_innovation: Raymond discovered/learned that ACDC's Rock and Roll Train mode changes left ramp behavior (no cannon divert), providing strategic advantage

    high · Raymond watched other players and learned the mode-specific ramp behavior, plans to use it in future play

  • ?

    operational_signal: Yegpin uses structured game bank arrangement ensuring all formats guarantee exposure to specific eras (EMs, solid state, modern); swapped games between qualifying and finals

    high · Raymond describes game selection mechanics and notes Space Station/Grand Lizard swap for finals

  • ?

Topics

Tournament Strategy and Decision-MakingprimaryGame Setup and Configuration ImpactprimaryCompetitive Pinball Formats and RulesprimaryMental Discipline and Emotional Management in CompetitionprimarySpecific Game Mechanics and Scoring StrategiesprimaryTournament Organization and StructuresecondaryPinball Community and Regional Playerssecondary

Sentiment

neutral(0)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.145

Welcome to Do or Die, a podcast about competitive pinball. I'm your host, Raymond Davidson, here to help you stay up to date on the latest strategies, tournaments, and happenings in the competitive pinball world, but also sharing direct stories of me as I go forth on my pinball tournament adventures. Welcome to Do or Die Episode 4, Yegpin. It's a show put on by Derek Thompson and the wonderful folks at Die Hard Pinball up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It's a wonderful pinball show where they have tons of games on free play and lots of different tournaments you can play in and it was a heck of a time so let's jump right in. The first of the three tournaments I competed in was called the Pinball Pro Division, also known casually as the High Stakes Division because it uh... the format very similar to the never drains in southern california high-stakes division where you have five games uh... four of them you choose to play in a row in a pop-a-card style and each entry is as the name would suggest uh... a little pricey it's like twenty five bucks uh... a try uh... but not you know it's not too much it wasn't wasn't like indisc i think they were fifty bucks a try that was that was the really really high stakes so this was a nice middle ground where You definitely felt like you had a lot on the line but it wasn't going to totally break your bank. The five games in this bank were Iron Maiden, Attack for Mars, Sorcerer,Paragon, and Centigrade 37. So if you did the math you might find out, oh hey, I'm going to have to play a Paragon or a Centigrade 37, you know, some older game in my set of four. And that's generally held true for all the tournaments where you had to play a mixture of old, middle, and new games as the tournament progressed. The games were set up pretty hard. Iron Maiden had lightning flippers, no ball save, no secret skillshots. It didn't have the full competition install, which I thought was odd to turn off secret skillshots but not install the competition settings. I've never seen a weird mix and match like that, but basically it meant your trooper locks started on easy and your mode started on flight of icarus. The attack from Mars had also lightning flippers. and these giant rubbers blocking the lock shot to make it a little harder to hit and the flippers were kind of drooped a little bit making the shots even harder. The sorcerer also had lightning flippers and basically no rubbers anywhere on the outlanes and was just very steep and mean in general. And finally Paragon, it was actually set up pretty stock. You don't really have to do much to Paragon. It was, you know, mean as usual, but this one I actually found was pretty playable. Centigrade37, on the other hand, had three balls instead of five and a super tight tilt in one direction, which I thought was weird. Like, if you pushed up, it would tilt, but you could do some side to side. We'll get into that later. Anyway, it was a little brutal. The only top four made finals, unless there was 40 or more people, but there was only 30 or so. So you needed top four to move on to the finals for the Pinball Pro Division. I ended up squeaking in fourth place with my ticket consisting of a 334,000 score of Sorcerer that was ranked 21, Attack from Mars score of 1.5 billion and that was actually ranked 9 if you can believe that. That's how hard that Attack from Mars was. It was on another planet. Like it was ridiculous. Iron Maiden Pro I got 267 million, that was rank 3, that was a killer game at least by those standards. And then Paragon I squeaked out 103,000 for rank 34. So that was enough to get me into the top 4 of the Pinball Pro division. The finals for it started Saturday morning around 10am and the final format was you play 4 games Pinberg style, so 3-2-1-0 and position is determined by the order you finished on the previous game and of course since there was only four people, that final finishing positions added up all together determines who wins Game 1, I got to play Paragon and I basically got a few shots here and there on balls 1 and 2 but everyone else was kinda doing the same thing, you know shot a couple drop targets, drained before getting super bonus Not a whole lot of scores to be had. It was, uh, everyone was kind of in the, like, 50, 60k range. Uh, going into ball three, because nobody had their superbonus locked in, I started looking around the playfield to see, you know, what should I do, what should my gameplan be, and I noticed the Paragon scoop was actually set on sequential letters, so every shot to the Paragon scoop would give you the next letter in Paragon, and the special was 50,000. I actually had only a couple of those left and so instead of doing the normal tap pass to drop target which had actually drained me on an earlier ball where a drop target went straight down the middle, I actually started shooting back up top. And this was mostly because the paragon was so close to getting that 50,000 and I thought if I could do this it would at least put that amount of gap in front of me so that I wouldn't lose to somebody who gets a bunch of Golden Cliffs action. and I was hoping maybe I could get some golden cliffs myself. Well, I threw it up there again and again and eventually spelled Paragon and got to 50,000. At that point, I'm like, alright, I got a nice little buffer. I'll start going back to drop targets. And so, you know, once you're kind of in that zone where you've got a little bit of a lead, you kind of relax a little more. And so I was, you know, able to hit those targets pretty easily, was doing some tap passing, got up to 5x, ended up finishing at For uplifting wollte Personallyativo I'm gonna read my notes here. Centigrade 37 fail. And, well, that's pretty much what happened, unfortunately. Because I won the Paragon game, I had the honors of going first on Centigrade. And I didn't really touch this in qualifying very much, so I, you know, I was just gonna kinda flip my best and hope to get some points, but it was only on 3 ball, and Jermaine actually warned me the up nudge was supersensitive. I was like, yeah, okay, yeah, sure. And of course, going into ball three, the ball was kind of coming down the playfield, kind of bouncing off some rubber on the right side, and I had seen it drain before where it would just kind of slowly go down the middle, so I gave it a little bop to try to stop that from happening, and of course it went straight to tilt, and my centigrade ended with like 30,000 points, so that was pretty sad. Falstaard's Kin Carmen, Jaw Microft FH617 GeorgiaCivan5 he's JX104 Randombins дужеXУ0 núxD Speaker 14 all that stuff but i was stepping up to ball three with about ten million points and so i had to really think i had to figure out what was i going to do so my current situation you know i had four points or three points rather three points for winning paragon going into game three the scores were thirty five million fifteen million and then two hundred million and i had ten million my goal was i had to beat the thirty five million I had to get second on that game in order to give me an out on the third game where if I won the third game I could still win the whole tournament. If I went for some risky strategy to try to win the whole game and didn't pass the 30 million, I'm pretty much done. Because of the scoring where it's 3-2-1-0, a win on the next game would not make up for getting another last or third on Iron Maiden. So I step up to my ball, I look at the playfield, I survey my options, and it looks like I have Hallowed Be ThyName as my next mode. And, you know, I only need about 25 million to pass Jermaine, and I was like, oh, perfect, Hallowed BeTheName is like the recipe. If you're ever down by 30 million or so, start Hallowed BeTheName. It's the most efficient, probably safest way to get some points on the board. So I started Hellobethename, I was able to shoot a ramp and then the captive ball and then I shot an orbit and then the fun part was I needed to hit the drop targets. The drop targets become lit for 10 million in that mode and I was short about 10 million and the ball was coming down to my mini upper left flipper and there was two drop targets left and I went for it. I went for the mini flipper to drop targets. I actually shot them. I didn't try to hold it up because in my experience, holding up the flipper, sometimes it hits a drop target, but oftentimes it just misses or doesn't hit them the right way or hit the right ones. So I just, I waited a little bit and flipped and it was so beautiful. Just nailed those two drop targets. And so with that one little mini flip, I had gotten life back into the tournament past Jermaine. And then of course, pень, soon after that, so never got a chance to catch Derek, but that didn't matter, I got my thirty five billion, I was heading into game three with a hope that if I win it, I'm pretty much guaranteed a tiebreaker, most likely. The final game was that attack from Mars that I told you 1.5 billion was a top ten score. So I thought and thought and thought what my strategy was going to be and I ended up trying to go for the The lock multiball it was hard but it wasn it seemed fair Like if you shot the shot it went around it gave you the locks it was set on easy so you only needed four shots just one to light and three to start and I figured you know I pretty good at accuracy and if I can hit those four shots I probably going to beat anybody who just saucerbashes and I shot it up the lock on ball one unfortunately it didn quite go all the way around the lock and because of the big rubber they had there and some of the best Angry Coin 글icop wouldn't even understand the list of starting pinball You know, I got like 20 million and I am like, okay, well I'm committed, or at least I'm going to, I'm going to try one more ball and I nailed the lock light lock and I'm able to lock ball one. So I'm like, all right, I just need two more locks. And unfortunately I just could never, never do it. Uh, because the giant rubber was blocking the lock shot, you could not backhand it from the left flipper. So there was a couple of times where I had the ball on my left flipper and I was kind of I was aiming for the right orbit cuz that's usually my go to on that game where if you don't know what to do just shoot an orbit but I just I couldn't do it I kept missing and I just never never got the multiball started it was it was really sad I ended up getting last place but I I still kind of stand by my decision to go for multiball because I needed a win I needed to get first place in order to win the whole tournament and just trying some other I don't think I could guarantee myself a win any other way because I don't know what these guys are going to do. Are they going to blow it up? You know, are they going to Total Nuclear Annihilation? You know, so I just basically played textbook Attack4Mars where you go for locks. Unfortunately, the way the scores shook out, Trevor McDonald, who was the fourth player, it was Jermaine, Derek, me, and Trevor, he got $700 million to win that game of Attack4Mars. So, you know, I Okay, in hindsight I'm thinking about it more and I'm actually looking back to what Jermaine did on his very first ball and Jermaine had the right idea. He actually superskilled into the saucer and did not bother with multiball. Same with Trevor, he didn't bother with multiball. Derek was going for Total Nuclear Annihilation so I felt I was kind of the lone wolf going for that multiball and you know maybe I should have gone for that superskill on the saucer because just keeping the ball alive and getting it as well as of course some recommendations for M 이름 Dataproof contains are at link in info Museum if you have an nerves and Nところ of person are not mentioned atến 요ар д będziemy כיинне esca implantаний ^^ invited facebook dow and the game was a success. Jermaine won the high stakes division because he was leading going into that game and he got at least a point on that game and it worked perfectly for him. So he did exactly what he needed to do. He needed to knock it last and he did that with the super skill and saucer strategy. He ended up with like four or five hundred million which was enough to get a point. So congrats to Jermaine for winning the highstakes tournament. I ended up tying for third and fourth against Trevor, so we had to play tiebreaker on sorcerer and I mean I started a multiball, so that was an accomplishment, but nothing really exciting happened. I got 160,000 total, but Trevor did basically houseball after houseball and got like 30,000. So I kind of lucked out, got third place, got 400 or so can of dollars and It was not bad investment on my... I think I put like maybe $75 bucks into the high stakes division, so it was fun. I'm glad there was 4 games in the round, I thought that was cool, and I'll definitely do it again next year. The next tournament I played in was the Classics Division. There was 8 games and your best 5 counted for qualifying. It was unlimited entry attempt style. and that ran until Saturday night where the finals were held that night. The games for that were this weird EM called Astronaut, Gottlieb's Atlantis, Joker Poker , Fireball, Kiss, Lectronimo, Nugent, and Trident. So I got to play a game I had never played before, Electronimo by Stern Electronics. It was actually kind of a fun little game. I recommend checking some of the stream footage of that. It's kind of an interesting game. It's got like a Munster style super jackpot collect on the left and then it's got like a juicy spinner on the right. And you can kind of, you basically, as soon as your bonus gets to 10,000 it lights a spinner for the rest of the ball. You can collect bonus with multiplied value by hitting super jackpot shot. Even though it will reset your bonus, it won't unlight your spinner if you've already had it lit. It's kind of this cool back and forth where you don't want to collect your bonus until you've got to the 10,000. After that, it's up to you whether you like getting thousand spinners or getting super jackpots. It's kind of a cool game. Anyway, by the time finals rolled around, I got to play Atlantis, Electronimo, and Kiss in the first round. So top 16 made finals, so I'm playing in the quarterfinals against Jermaine, James Stadden, and Trevor Wattman. Our first game, Atlantis, I basically got maybe two, three house balls, and then on I'm ball five ahead like 10,000 points and I was able to salvage a pretty decent ball five getting up to about 35,000 or so. If you don't know Gottliebs Atlantis, it's basically this game with a giant bank of drop targets on the left side and the goal is to actually hit two of them down at the same time, which is pretty odd for an EM because usually you're told on EMs don't ever hit two targets down at the same time. Click Landesregierung Thanks for watching! I ended up getting third on that game. So I squeaked out a point which was good. I hate getting last place on the first game. It feels so bad. So even a third feels like a victory, especially if you're having a rough game. So next we played Lectronimo and I had done pretty well on this in qualifying. Basically my strategy was always hit the spinner from either flipper. This one you could actually backhand it if you did it just right. I'm not sure I can get a good description for this, but I've never tried to shoot that stupid super jackpot shot. I just went for the spinner over and over again and racked up 367,000 points, which took first, second was 175,000, and then 89 thousand and 31,000. So I got 5 points after 2 games. Going into game 3, gotta play KISS, the old solid state valley. And that game, it's all about if you You can plunge that middle line and from playing it and qualifying, we or at least I had a pretty good idea of where the skill shot was to try to get it. I don't know if I ever actually plunged it. I might have got it once maybe. But I got it kind of in that vicinity and I think I got some lucky up and down action on those pops to give me some of those lines. The strategy is to keep the kiss up top, try to get the center lane to give you all of your kiss letters, try to fill out your bonus card and then eventually light double bonus by shooting the ABCD targets on the right side. So I, you know, I got some nice luck that gave me kind of a feel good. And then once I kind of had that, that pump up feeling, I was actually doing some pretty cool stuff. I was drop catching hitting the spinner, um, just kind of gotten the zone. And so I ended up putting up 400 K on that and it won the, won the game. And I sailed on into the next round. Um, I actually helped Jermaine out because Jermaine got first on Atlantis third on Tokari Akaneva,went Records Synige,Playpoint México, Dallasinline- Younger 3rd grader, I was in danger as well, right? If I got last place and I had to go first, so I had to try my best. There was no, you know, just get it, squeak by. I had to ensure that I did not get last place and since I was player one, I had to play my hardest. So, you should always play your hardest, by the way, in case that's not clear. So, yeah, there wasn't too many decision-making points or any really exciting things to talk about in those three games. They were kind of self-explanatory. The Bunch on like Toronto mo I got some good lane action on kiss Got a double bonus in there. I guess that was one thing I could talk about where you know and kiss at some point You should go for your double bonus, and I kind of did it I think I did it before I got the full card I think I had like three fourths of it and then I started going for double bonus I'm just cuz I was like one or two shots away and getting the double bonus that can really help separate you from someone who doesn't get the double bonus, you know It's a real shot efficient way to get points on that game where you get you know real rewards for your for your flipping right double bonus is huge so I would definitely recommend going for that in kiss once you've once you've built up a nice bonus the next round I got to play in a group with Jermaine again and Mike W. I'm not going to attempt to pronounce his last name. You can look all this up on neverdrains.com slash yegpin2019 and the Robert Gagno was the other person in my group. So we got to play the same three games again, Atlantis, Electronimo and Kiss. They were basically probably the best games we could play. Oh, I forgot to mention. So the picking of games for all three tournaments actually was done by bank. So you just chose the first game and then the game to the right of it and the game to the right of that were your next games. And the games were all staggered in a way so that you were guaranteed to play one EM if you were in Classics and in Main you were guaranteed to play one Solid State and then high stakes there was four games out of five so you basically played all of them in the order leaving out one Monally flav danunu FI kilometer Toldand lay a ratios while I I think he practicediced kiss a lot more, at least by practice I mean he had to play a bunch of entries on it so he was familiar with it. I did too as well. So I was okay with that bank choice. We started with Atlantis and I got basically a rerun of the last time. I even finished with about the same score, 38,000. Unfortunately it was 1,000 short of 39,000. Funny how that works. which got me last place instead of third place. So as I mentioned, not a fan of getting last place on the first game, so I got to play Electronimo basically trying to get a first and my goodness, it was just, it was not being nice. I, you know, I managed to get like one or two shots whereas poor Mike, he basically got no flips. And so I got 114,000 for third, I'm sitting there with one point after two games and now we have to play kiss but luckily since Jermaine won both games it was actually still wide open so any whoever won the kiss game between us as long as it wasn't Jermaine would would move on well I didn't get to touch the I watched the ball on ball one or ball two. There was video evidence of this and the tilt was really tight so you couldn't really try anything. So I was just kind of laughing. I was like, well, I guess it's just not going to happen. But I guess I'll play my ball three. You know, you never know. Might get a good run. And the ball makes it to my flipper, which was pretty good. I was happy. Celebrated a little bit. I took one shot at the spinner. It went partway up the spinner. I tried to catch it with the flipper and it did a perfect trampoline like the flipper end of stroke must have been not aligned or something cuz it just boinged perfectly down the middle in like the most beautiful arc you've ever seen and I finished that game with 22,000 points. No tilts. Just like that. That's like a game for the ages right there. I should have posted it to the low score group on our Facebook group Pinball In a oftidal way. Jermaine and Robert, no not Robert, Mike moved on. There was actually a tiebreaker between Mike and Robert on Astronaut and Mike won that. So Jermaine, Mike and then from the other group there was a Todd and a Paul who advanced to the finals. And the finals were again on the same bank of games, Atlantis, Electronimo and Kiss. I mean, put up 43 thousand on Atlantis, which, you know, wouldn't have won in the last group, but in this group, the other scores were twenty thousand, twenty-nine thousand, and twenty-three thousand, which was especially painful for me to see because I got thirty-eight thousand that got last place. You know, that's just pinball. That's pinball tournaments, man. You just gotta, you gotta, not only do you have to play well relative to what you think is playing well, You've got to play well relative to how everyone else is playing. And if everyone else is playing a game well and you're not, you go home. That's just how it is. Anyway, the next game, Electronimo, Jermaine wrapped it up with 178,000 to basically a bunch of nothing balls from the other players. I don't think any of them really got to flip much. It was like 30,000, 38,000, 70,000. So, you know, Jermaine, he did what he needed to do. He got some good points and then he, I think he also won KISS too, so he got the old 12. And I think he had a 12 the last round. Actually, I think he got a 12, no, he got 12 the semis and the finals. The 5 was in my group where he barely squeaked by, so it just goes to show you, man, if you don't extinguish the flame early, sometimes it blossoms into a raging Jermaine fire. or any other good pinballplayer. Anywho, so Jermaine takes first in classics adding to his win in high stakes and now we play open and the open games were on Sunday morning. I got a bye, I was number two qualifier so I got to skip the first round of, or the 24 and made it right to the round of 16. The games in the main bank were MetallicaLE, Grand Lizard, Demoman, ACDC, Shadow, Transporter, KISS, Indiana Jones,LaserQ,Ironman,Twilightzone and SpaceStation. The KISS was the Stern newer KISS. As I mentioned they were arranged in a way so that you had to play at least one of the solid states in your bank no matter where you started in the bank. The twist was in the morning they actually swapped out Spacestation for Electronimo and Grand Lizard for Trident. So, some classics games ended up going in there for the finals in the morning. And that changed a little bit of what I might pick otherwise. My ideal pick was going to be the Twilight Zone, Spacestation, Metallica Bank because I felt like those were by far the most controllable games in a row. and I actually had pretty good qualifying scores on each of them. But I had to settle for the Trident ACDC Shadow Bank instead, which I thought was a good choice on my part because the Shadow I had blown up in qualifying, I got a 1.4 billion where the next highest score was 600 million doing my loop combos where you go left orbit, inner loop gives you a 10 million combo bonus and then the next time you do a left orbit, inner loop you get 13РЕ第一個roid OTPS.C lovingxe disloc at Charnty Pneumonic Working στα Tel spaneveried reload, sunezal podcasts HDMI sedimentate the I'm not a fan of the word pinball because I don't know what it is. I'm a fan of the word pinball. Unfortunately, I had to play Trident, which, uh, let me tell you, it gave everyone a pretty hard time. Um, Trident, if you don't know, is a game where you have a five bank of stand-up targets and a five bank of drop targets. The drop targets advance your bonus X and the and stand-up targets advance your spinner values and you basically just shoot spinners because your bonus is never going to get anywhere near the value of how much a spinner rip can give you. It maxes out pretty early and it's just not worth shooting those drop targets when you can just shoot the stand-ups and get major spinner rips. The group of players that I got to play Trident, ACDC, and Shadow with were Robert Gagneux, Richie Terry, and Michael Corvette The end of the day, I'm going to be playing with my friends, Mike and Richie, who are all from the Northwest. Mike and Richie play in Seattle with me and Robert from Vancouver, so it was kind of a brutal group to start the morning off. I unfortunately got the lowest score in Trident that I had pretty much gotten the whole weekend, because I had played it in Classics a bunch. I got 68,000, which meant I never shot a spinner and basically never got control in any meaningful way. Out pinballductate part timer ellasний, There appears in full width сожалению, 40 minutes lateredietytharily mounted the main screenоть Inn Hers universe Is an Zeitgeist keyframe,uration�' pol份' Корu and a fon' Music Rュ bar by The only exception was the ball save was basically gone on the multiballss. So you had to do your five shots for your addaball or else your multiballs were not going to be worth anything. I started off, I picked Hell's Bells just because my strategy is I basically shoot a ramp, it loads the cannon, You shoot the bell with the cannon that lights all your other shots with Hell's Bells and then you basically combo ramps until you get to multiball and then once you're in multiball you shoot the bell a bunch, gets your playfield X up and then you can get double and quadruple jackpots during jam which also build your song jackpot. Unfortunately, my first ball I trapped up, shot the ramp, shot the bell with the cannon, straight to the outlane. Well, not straight. It visited the scenic right slingshot and the scenic left slingshot before heading to the right out lane. But it was basically instantaneous, like, couldn't really save it. It just perfectly went there once I shot the bell. It made me think, you know, this might not have been the best choice. I watched and actually learned something from the other players who were picking Rock and Roll Train. And apparently when you choose rock and roll train, the left ramp does not divert to the cannon. So normally on the premiums LEs, the first shot to the left ramp will divert the ball to the cannon to give you a shot at the song jackpot. Well, in the mode rock and roll train, the left ramp always feeds to the left flipper, presumably to set up a combo, which is what the mode is all about. I'm definitely going to use that the next time I play ACDC because it means you can just backhand that left ramp and light jam perfectly safely. You don't have to take any risk. You don't have to shoot the cannon at all. So I definitely am going to keep that in my back pocket for the next time I play ACDC. I did play a multiball. Nothing really happened in it. And then I drained out and got I in jail with like 15 million points I got third in the bank but the next highest score is 50 so I you know I like well I guess I go back to a third jam and just you know couldn survive that many that many rounds Each pinball I used two VIP passes and it didn't add a ball because in order to add a ball you have to hit each of the shots each of the five shots once and I had only hit two shots and I knew this in the back of my head I knew it I knew I only hit two shots but I hit the button anyway I instinctively hit the button twice praying that it would add a ball and of course it did not so now for my second jam I have no VIP passes and of course the second jam ends very quickly and and I'm in jail and I get third on ACDC. So, let that be a lesson to ya. Save those VIP passes until you know that they're gonna be good. Finally, we're going into Shadow, game three. I have one point and exactly one out. That is Richie Terry takes last place and I win first place. Well, I, uh, you know, I gotta tell ya, my heart, it was not really in it as much. Like, I was kinda feeling sad, um, I was just really mad at myself. and my play showed that on ball one and two on shadow. I I mean I missed the left orbit and Kept missing it and drained and then I did a flipper fumble ball two that was just entirely on me and I had 12 million points going into ball three however the stars had aligned Richie was in last place and I needed 600 million to pass Robert and To pull the miraculous comeback and sail into the next round or at least get a tiebreaker and so I'm staring, sitting there with twelve million on shadow going to ball three and you know I lit up a little bit I was like alright you know now I can actually do this and I look at the playfield I have one con letter left to spell con so my plan is I plunge into the con letter get con multiball lit shoot the left orbit shoot the inner loop get my loop combo hold up the left flipper and then it sort of does this like bounce thing where it bounces back up to the upper flipper and then take a shot at the con hole That's how I was hitting it in qualifyingifying. I would loop it up a couple times and then hold up the flipper to slow it down and then take a shot at it. And I ended up basically doing that. I got loop combos, I started con multiball, and I was on my way. I had about 250 million within a few, you know, within a minute or so of just hitting a bunch of loop combos. Unfortunately, when I started my con multiball, it only gave me two balls instead of three. I don't know if it was a trough issue or a software glitch or what the deal was, but it really got inside my head and I was constantly like, what the heck? I only have two balls. There should be three. Ah, ah. And it just completely threw me off. And I let my emotions get to me and I basically double drained. And there was really no excuse or reason why I should have double drained. I should have just rolled with it. I should have just been like, whatever, two balls, that's fine, that's enough. You know, more than zero. I would have been able to stay calm. I think I could have went all the way. I was on the way. I was going, hitting loops, hitting combos, hitting jackpots, but for some reason, it really got inside my head and it made me die. Instead of doing, I died. So let that be a lesson and I'm trying to teach myself. Don't let the emotions get to you because that is a huge, huge part of pinball. I had a plan. The plan was con and loop combos. I was executinging the plan and then I just let the distraction get to me. I should have focused on the goal and that's how you win tournaments. You just stay focused. So anyway that's how I got eliminated unfortunately but not all was lost. We still had a few Seattle people in the fray. Top 8 Jermaine Mariol, Robert Gagnon, Phil Birnbaum, Mike Corbett, Dave Stewart, Mike T, Eden Stamm, Kevin Rutt Jermaine got 7 points on Twilightzone, Electronimo, Metallica. They added a new rule for the main finals where you couldn't pick the same starting game twice. That also contributed to my pick of Trident, ACDC and Shadow because my other pick would have been LaserQ, Ironman and Twilightzone. However, I know Robert is very, very good at Twilightzone and Mike and Richie are also very good at Twilightzone and I'm okay at Twilightzone but I don't think I can grind as well as those guys could. So my hope was to loop it up on Shadow, get through the ranks, Termsix. Intertechnology Lanka adjusts communication and has values for maneuvers withgirlinshow, img� essere,teleonorr forgiveness and The rest of the tournament, Jermaine put up 160 million on Twilightzone for second place, 75,000 onlectronimo, which squeaked out a third. Man, thatlectronimo was not treating people well in the finals. The winning score on it was under 100,000. And then in game three of Metallica, Jermaine, he needed 20 million and he played his Sparky and did nothing. He had like 3 million. So then In the end, the game was over and he went back around to another Sparky which got him up to about 20 million which is what he needed to get third or second, but he needed to win and the winning score I think at that time was 30 million. So he needed about 10 more million and oh my goodness it was the most beautiful strategic decision I've ever seen on Metallica. He was down by about maybe 8 million or so and he had the ball trapped in the right flipper and we're all watching on the screen. He shoots the fuel Ro Rogers ietsodezhDesboreto sentence Right greatest time Paupers It days Try He's in the clear He's really to do Kot rice, Mora expectancyownersplus niewport Yazn immersed viktigt¢$- u multiplicative FileIDFandagai Part Eight Kevin Rett and that finals was on Laser Finals was on LaserQ, Ironman and Twilightzone. Basically the bank that I wanted to pick. It definitely was probably the best bank available. To give a quick rundown on LaserQ, you basically complete the pool balls in order, 1,2,3,4,5,6 on the left and then 7 on the right and then the 8 ball is up on the right orbit. But there's different ways to kind of get points along the way. So the 6, 7 and 8 have a The first thing you do is to get a light track underneath them and every time you hit an unlit 6, 7 or 8 it advances that light track. The 8 can go up to 100,000 so the primary strategy is you shoot the 8 four or five times, get that up to 100,000, work the pool lanes to get your bonus multiplier up and then work, you know, collect the 8 at the max 100,000, collect your 6s and 7s. At some point the spinner will light. I believe that lights whenever you spell ball and the ball targets are kind of and a scatter throughout the playfield. So, it'll usually just light itself. You also, when you spell pool, it will spot a ball letter. And so sometimes spelling pool can actually advance, when you spell ball, in addition to lighting the spinner, it also gives you a free ball. So, basically, you kinda go for the balls, but you also keep throwing it up top, is like the main objective on LaserQ. Jermaine put up 660,000 on LaserQ, which just barely passed Kevin, Kevin637000 Ironman, Jermaine just shot nothing but ramps. I don't even know, he might have started in multiball but it was irrelevant because he played almost a perfect bogey. It was like 8 million point bogey, just nothing but ramps. And he took Ironman and then the last person who could do anything about it, player four, had double-dangered and was playing on eggshells. He managed to perfectly start War Machine and then After it kicked back the war machine, I think he might have freaked out a little bit cuz it just screen went to tilt. It was crazy. The crowd was cheering when he hit the war machine shot. Everyone was cheering and then everyone was just silent cuz it went to tilt and we were just like, oh, oh no. So that was it. Jermaine locked it up with the two first places. The second places were split between Robert and Kevin, so it didn't matter what the third game was. RazaConnieas, um, well, it mattered to Robert, he blew it up, he got 600 million on Twilightzone and started playing one-handed, it was actually pretty awesome to watch, I recommend checkingout the stream for sure, that's the diehardpinball is the twitch channel. Anyway congrats to Jermaine for the clean sweep, he won all three tournaments, the Highstakes, Classics, and Main. Great, great job by him, and thanks to everyone I want to thank everyone at the Die Hard Pinball and everyone involved in that Yagpin show. Shout out to Derek Thompson, great guy, unbelievable fun this whole weekend. I recommend everyone check it out. Yagpin, same time probably next year around April. Make sure you mark your calendars and check tilt forms for whenever he announces the Yagpin 2020. It's a great time. Lots of different tournaments. There's also a kids division, a women's division, a novice division, BASICbrance �s Hi everybody, I'm outta here. Oh, one quick shoutout to Maka. Maka Honig from Seattle took down the pinball tournament in Portland. There was 128 really good players at that tournament and it was Maka who came out on top so congrats to him and congrats again to Jermaine and I will see you all next time. Don't be like me at this tournament. Make sure you do. Don't die. Get that hurry up. That's all life is, right? One big hurry up, flash it in your face, and taunt people. Whatever, whatever. See ya!
game
Paragongame
Centigrade 37game
ACDCgame
Shadowgame
Kissgame
Lectronimogame
Tridentgame
Metallica LEgame
Richie Terryperson
Mike W.person
Robert Gagnoperson

community_signal: Strong Seattle/Northwest regional pinball community (Raymond, Mike, Richie) competes together at Yegpin; regional groups form competitive cohorts

medium · Raymond notes playing with Seattle-based friends and Vancouver player; characterizes group as 'brutal'

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    product_concern: Shadow multiball at Yegpin produced 2 balls instead of expected 3, causing possible trough or software issue; affected player performance psychologically

    high · Raymond explicitly describes Con multiball only giving 2 balls and analyzes how this mental disruption caused him to double drain

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    gameplay_signal: Raymond demonstrates advanced techniques (drop catching, mini-flipper precision, loop combos, mode-specific strategies) across classic and modern games

    high · Detailed descriptions of specific flipper techniques, mode selection strategies, and score achievements

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    competitive_signal: Raymond identifies emotional management as critical competitive factor; failure on Shadow directly attributable to frustration over equipment anomaly rather than skill

    high · Raymond's explicit self-analysis of emotional response affecting tournament outcome; lesson learned about emotional discipline

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    event_signal: Yegpin 2019 featured high-quality game curation, diverse tournament formats, streaming coverage, and professional organization by Derek Thompson/Die Hard Pinball

    medium · Raymond references stream footage availability, detailed game setup, multiple tournament options, game bank swaps