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Introduction to Competitive Pinball with Sam Keogh

Pintastic New England·video·50m 31s·analyzed·Feb 7, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Introductory guide to competitive pinball emphasizing community, leagues, and realistic entry barriers.

Summary

Sam Keogh delivers a comprehensive introductory seminar on competitive pinball at Pintastic New England, covering motivations for competition, how to find and participate in tournaments and leagues, barriers to entry, and youth/women's participation. The talk emphasizes community, friendship, and fun as the primary drivers, with practical guidance on tournament formats, league structures (particularly New England Pinball League), and strategies for setting realistic competitive goals for newcomers.

Key Claims

  • Sam attended Pinburgh in 2022, which he describes as a 1,000-player tournament and 'the biggest, baddest, greatest show in the world'

    high confidence · Sam Keogh direct testimony about personal experience at Pinburgh

  • New England Pinball League now plays at 30-something locations across New England

    high confidence · Sam Keogh stating current scope of NEPL participation

  • Most of the top 10 players in the world are 16-19 years old, children of parents who were into pinball

    medium confidence · Sam Keogh's assertion about youth competitive landscape

  • Seamus Meader (age ~14 at time of seminar) is ranked 14th in the youth division worldwide and under 1,000 overall among approximately 5,000 competitive players

    high confidence · Adam Meader (Seamus's father) stating son's IFPA rankings

  • New Hampshire state pinball champion is a woman

    high confidence · Sam Keogh referencing local champion organizer

  • The IFPA was started by Roger Sharpe, subject of 'Mystery Pinball Theater 3000' biopic

    high confidence · Sam Keogh's explanation of IFPA history

Notable Quotes

  • “The number one reason is it's fun. And I don't want that to be lost at any point in this entire talk. Everything else on this slide is almost a sub-point to this. It's all fun.”

    Sam Keogh@ 3:26 — Core philosophy statement establishing fun as the foundational driver for competitive pinball participation

  • “You're competing against me against the other players, but a lot of it is me against the machine.”

    Nick Quadrini@ 7:24 — Articulates unique appeal of pinball competition: dual competitive dimensions (player-vs-machine and player-vs-player)

  • “I regret to inform you, you won't be very good when you start, but literally everybody in this hobby was bad when they started.”

    Sam Keogh@ 23:43 — Directly addresses common newcomer anxiety about skill levels with normalized perspective

  • “If I have a crappy tournament day, but I beat Bowen Kerins, I had a good day.”

    Sam Keogh @ Competitive objectives discussion — Demonstrates how beating elite players serves as meaningful achievement independent of overall tournament placement

  • “The beautiful thing about pinball is anybody can beat anybody. I've lost to players who have hardly ever seen a pinball machine before. And I've beaten some of the best players of all time.”

    Sam Keogh@ 25:38 — Emphasizes accessibility and unpredictability of pinball competition as empowering factor for newcomers

  • “It's not about like women not being able to compete with the men. All these women basically play in the open tournaments too and some of them are very good.”

    Sam Keogh@ 20:42 — Clarifies that women's pinball organizing is about networking/community rather than competitive segregation

Entities

Sam KeoghpersonNick QuadrinipersonAdam MeaderpersonSeamus MeaderpersonBowen KerinspersonRoger SharpepersonChrispersonMitch CurtispersonNew England Pinball League

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Pintastic New England hosting structured newcomer seminar and Friendly Flips Newcomer Tournament explicitly designed to onboard new competitive players

    high · Sam Keogh explicitly states the seminar goal is to introduce people to competitive pinball and mentions Friendly Flips tournament reserved for new players at 3 PM same day

  • ?

    event_signal: Bells and Chimes organization providing dedicated community space and networking for women and non-binary players with local chapters in Boston and Connecticut

    high · Sam Keogh discussing Bells and Chimes as 'nationwide organization for advancing women and non-binary people' with 'local chapters' and club room at venue

  • ?

    community_signal: Youth players increasingly dominant in competitive pinball elite, with most top-10 world players being teenagers

    medium · Sam Keogh claim that 'most of the top 10 players in the world are 16, 17, 18, 19 years old' and Seamus Meader example (age ~14) ranked 14th in youth division

  • ?

    community_signal: New England Pinball League operating at ~30+ locations with structured league play offering lower-commitment alternative to all-day tournaments

    high · Sam Keogh stating NEPL operates at '30-something locations' with weekly play over 5-10 weeks, explicit acknowledgment that some players participate only in league format

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.151

0:00
Hi, thank you all so much for coming. I'm really touched to see so many people here, people I know, new faces, people I just met this weekend, and people I've never encountered before. So this is really awesome. Thank you for coming. This is what we're going to talk about today. There we go, here's the slide deck. we're going to cover why we play competitive pinball. Why are the people who are gathered in that area down there, why are they all here, what drives us to be here. We're going to talk about how to find competitive pinball. Where can you find the tournaments that you have to go to? Where is league? How do you get involved?
0:47
We're going to talk about what it's like to go to a tournament night or a league night and what you can expect. We're going to cover youth players in pinball, so younger players who are looking to get into it, parents of people who are looking into getting into pinball, how can they get into it? What scares people away from competing? What are some common barriers to entry to pinball that you have to get past to start?
1:15
Navigating the tournament. What do I do once I'm there? And some do's and don'ts, some things you might want to look out for at the pinball tournament.
1:25
And then we're going to talk a little bit about the Friendly Fritz Newcomer Tournament, which is going to be at 3 o'clock right after the conclusion of this seminar. I'm going to say that a few times today in the Southern New Hampshire Pinball Room. And I hope to see as many of you, not the experienced players, they're not allowed to play, all just the new players, I hope to see as many of you as possible at that tournament right after this. and you will all have first dibs on entry as well if it happens to fill up.

  • “My number one goal, is to play good pinball. I don't care that much about how I finish in the tournament.”

    Sam Keogh@ 26:28 — Models realistic personal competitive philosophy centered on quality of play rather than placement

    • organization
    Bells and Chimesorganization
    IFPAorganization
    Ice Ice Arcadelocation
    Lower Playfieldlocation
    Double Bowllocation
    Pinburghevent
    Friendly Flips Newcomer Tournamentevent
    Cameron Silver Ball Rumbleevent
    Pintastic New Englandevent
    New York Pinball Leagueorganization
    Port City Pinball Leagueorganization
    Connecticut-Rhode Island Area Pinball Leagueorganization
    District 82event
    Mystery Pinball Theater 3000product
    1:54
    So who am I? Why does this matter to me? Well, my name is Sam Keogh. I've been playing pinball for about eight years. I live in New Hampshire. I'm 31 years old.
    2:06
    But I only started competing about two and a half years ago. In 2017, I went to my first pinball show, a show just like this, a little bigger. It was known as Pinberg. it was the biggest, baddest, greatest show in the world and there was a 1,000 player match play tournament I'm pretty sure that was the biggest tournament in the world at the time and I remember going to that show and being like wow, that's what I want to do I hope I can get there someday that would be awesome to play in something so big like that I didn't realize there was a whole world out there outside of just the biggest thing there were local leagues, local tournaments things that I could go to and meet people and that's what I hope to introduce to all of you today. Starting to compete was like one of the best things I ever did. It's introduced me to a lot of really great experiences and it's really enriched my life in a lot of ways and it brought me places like here and other places and I wish that somebody had like roped me into it a really long time ago, that I had somebody give a talk like this or do a tournament like the Friendly Flips tournament and bring people into the hobby. So that's what I hope to accomplish here today. So why do we compete? Why not just play pinball competitively? Why take our time out of our Saturdays? Why go to league on a Thursday night? Why do this? The number one reason is it's fun. And I don't want that to be lost at any point in this entire talk. Everything else on this slide is almost a sub-point to this. It's all fun. If you're not having fun, you should reassess what you're doing. and if it ever stops being fun, take a look at that. But it's fun to get way better at pinball. You're going to play with really good players. There's really good players in these leagues all over the country, all over the world, and they're going to teach you a lot of things, and you're going to learn a lot just from watching them, playing with them.
    4:05
    The first five years I played pinball casually, I didn't get much better, but once I started playing with other good players, I got a lot better a lot quicker. You can push yourself competitively.
    4:18
    The first few times you go out and play, you'll probably score close to the bottom of the table, but you'll keep playing, you'll keep getting better, you'll keep pushing yourself and finishing higher and higher, and there's a real satisfaction to that, at least for me and a lot of other people who compete. You can play some fun games you won't see in the wild. if you're playing in the club tournaments this weekend you may have played a game like Blackjack which is a great early solid state from the early 80s you don't see that game out in the wild you don't really see that game at the pizza place going to these tournaments gets you an opportunity to play some of these rarer, harder to find more obscure, older games that I really love as much as I love the new games and you can visit some private collections some awesome collections go to more pinball shows like this. We play our local league at a place called the Ice Ice Arcade. It's the world's premier vanilla ice-themed arcade. It's my friend Chris's house, and he has 20 games, and he has us all over on Thursday night every week, and we have a great time. And I wouldn't know about that place at all if it weren't for playing pinball league and hanging out with my friends. And that's really valuable to me. And the most important thing is you get to meet really cool people and make really great friends. And I'm so glad of all the friends I've made in this hobby, and it's been really enriching to my life, and I want that for everybody. And that's the most important thing to me here today. And here's a picture of my friends. We all went to Wisconsin to go play pinball together at District 82. We all traveled together, and these are all people I met through pinball, and that's really valuable and important to me. I'm going to ask my friend Nick Quadrini to come up and say what starting and competing in pinball means to him.
    6:17
    Yeah, thanks a lot, Sam, and thanks everybody for coming. I'm going to first off just echo and agree completely with everything that Sam just said. great community, great people, a lot of fun, love playing pinball. He's the guy who got me into it. He's gotten me into many hobbies, but I can say pretty definitively pinball is one of the greatest ones because of the huge community that's involved. For me, getting into competitive pinball, really the interest is kind of a combination of that competitive factor. I've always had the feeling of I want to do better. I like competing against people. I like the tournament feeling. But one of the things that's really great about pinball is that you're not only competing against the other players, you're really competing against yourself, right? It's you against the game. What can I do to get better? And, you know, if I go up against a player who's way better than me, maybe they put up a billion points. But if I've never cracked 100 million and I get 102, I feel really good about myself, even if I come in third place, fourth place, right? So that's one of the things that I really enjoy about competitive pinball. You've got that me against the other players, but a lot of it is me against the machine. And then building off of some of the other things Sam said, I mean, the community is just so fantastic. Everyone's super friendly. I can remember very well my first league night. It was a place called the Double Bowl. It's a tavern up in Peabody, Mass. And the guy running it, Mitch Curtis, super shout-out to Mitch. He's fantastic. But when I first met him, he said, welcome to Pinball League. I'm sorry I didn't make you dinner. And I thought that was a joke. He's like, oh, I'm not a very good host. Lots of these league hosts are happy to make you food. They're super friendly, really inviting people. And being part of Pinball League has been fantastic for me. When I moved back to Connecticut, went out of my way to bring the New England Pinball League back into Connecticut, now kind of helping support them in Connecticut as well. But love to play all over New England, all over the country. and then whenever you're traveling, it's a great way to just spend a couple of hours and say, hey, where's pinball near me? I can go and play some games, and it's always easy to meet people or meet people who know somebody who knows somebody who knows Sam and see the connection there as well. So, yeah, pinball and competing in pinball has been fantastic for me. I really enjoy it, and my timeline is very similar to Sam's. I didn't start really playing pinball until seven, eight years ago competitively, you know, about two and a half years ago. I've gotten so much better because of how friendly and helpful everyone is and I have a lot of fun with it and I'd highly recommend I'll just echo I think exactly what Sam said that I just wish somebody had told me how cool and how much fun this would be and not be intimidated by oh hey I'm not going to compete in this thousand player tournament like you know what it's not too challenging and I'm sure Sam will touch on a lot of the reasons why it's worth doing as well, but it's a blast, and I'd just say, you know, I wish I had started doing it sooner.
    9:29
    All right, thank you, Nick. So here's what a day at a pinball tournament might look like for you. This is kind of modeled after just a normal day at my friend's location, the Lower Playfield in Gofftown, New Hampshire. So the doors would typically open at about 10 a.m. We show up, We play some of our practice games. We hang out. We say our hellos. And maybe some of us are still finishing our breakfast. At 11 a.m., the host is going to say, hey, everybody finish up your practice games. We're going to get started. You're going to be assigned a game and a group of players. They'll say, all right, Mitch, Nick, Alyssa, and Eric are on high speed. And so that would mean Mitch is player one. Nick is player two. etc. And you'll go and you'll play that game and in the order you're asked to play, sometimes you might be asked to pick a game. That could happen too. And you're going to report the results of the game on match play. It could be on a sheet. We'll explain what match play is later. I'm sorry. Or with the host. Just let them know. It's like I was first, Alyssa was second. And you'll wait for the next round to start and you'll do that again until the tournament's over or you're out. It's really that simple. You don't have to get that tied up in knowing what the competitive format is. All you really have to know is you play the pinball machine that they ask you to play against the people that you play against, and you do your best. And if you do really well, you'll make finals or win. If you qualify for finals, you get to play more pinball, and you just play the game you were assigned just like before. Pretty simple. There's a lot of minutia that you can get lost in that's just not that important for you to know all about there are tournament directors there and rules people that know all the rules. And if you ever have a question about the tournament rules or anything, there are going to be a million people there to answer questions for you.
    11:26
    So that's a pinball turn, but what is Pinball League? This is really important to me, I think, because Pinball League was my intro to competitive pinball. I have to go back. There we go. Nope, that's... Here we go. Nope, here we go. There we go. what is a pinball league? So a pinball league plays over the course of a few weeks, usually one night a week.
    11:50
    Over about five to ten weeks, I've seen, typical of most leagues. It's a lesser time commitment. It might only be about an hour, hour and a half, two hours of playing, as opposed to taking all day on a Saturday, something that you can just do on a Thursday night. I play Thursday night at 7.30 with my friends in New Hampshire. and the other thing is like New England Pinball League you can miss a couple weeks and it won't really affect your score that much it's a lot more casual, it's a lot more social it's less competitive, hey we all want to win but it's for people who are it's for everybody really, it's for the most competitive players and the least competitive players that just want to go out and have a good time and say hello to people and have something to do on a Thursday night it a great way to get started It how I got started It how a lot of people in New England get started We have a lot of locations that run the New England Pinball League and they're really good at roping new people in. You score points in your league every week and at the end of the league period there's a finals that you might qualify for.
    12:56
    There's some local pinball leagues too and don't let me forget There's one more that I forgot to include an image of. There's the New England Pinball League, which we play at 30-something locations now.
    13:10
    And if you have a location near you, if you have a pinball place near you in New England, it is likely they play in the New England Pinball League. Ask people that play there.
    13:22
    It's a really great thing, and we have a finals every four months where we go and we all gather in the same place, a few hundred players from all over New England, and it's a really fun thing.
    13:32
    There's the New York Pinball League if you're in the New York area. It's a team league, a lot more casual. You're on a team with a bunch of players. You play like split flipper games, doubles games, lots of fun stuff. And then there's the Port City Pinball League. That plays in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I don't remember what day of the week they play when they restart, but that's a fun league if you're in the Portsmouth area. And then there's also the Connecticut-Rhode Island Area Pinball League that plays at the Sanctum and Pizza J's in Rhode Island. So if those are local locations to you, that's a great place to play, great people to play with.
    14:09
    A typical night at a pinball league is a lot more casual. The doors will open at maybe 6.30. We show up, we start playing our practice games, we sign in. At 7.30, the host is going to call everybody's attention, stop playing your practice games, and everybody gets to play in three- to four-player groups. and we each play four games just with your group, same people get to know them if you don't know them already usually that'll take an hour and a half, hour, hour and a half, two hours and then we have a score for the night we just have a fun time playing casual games until Chris kicks us out at 10.30 and your scores are added to the website and you will qualify for finals based on how you score over the course of the season I just wanted to take a minute to talk about youth players in pinball.
    15:01
    I think this is a really important thing, bringing new players into the hobby. The pinball community is very kid-friendly for the most part, and most tournaments are kid-friendly. Every once in a while, you know, there will be a tournament at a bar that's 21 plus, but for the most part, people are really cool about people bringing their kids or young players showing up, teens, college-age kids. Not the typical demographic for pinball nowadays, but we like to see the tide shifting on that a little bit. A lot of the best players in the world are 16, 17, 18, 19 years old. I think most of the top 10 players in the world are that young, and they're all kids whose parents were really into it and were brought into it from a young age. And they've had some really enriching experiences getting into pinball at that age. I have to acknowledge that there are some barriers to entry for young players. Like I said earlier, there are tournaments that are at bars that are 21+, that even with a guardian, the kid might not be able to get into.
    16:07
    It's, I think, especially hard for unaccompanied minors whose parents aren't into pinball, might not be bringing them to that tournament that they might need an adult to bring them to, won't have a PayPal account if their parent isn't registering them for tournaments themselves.
    16:25
    So I just think as TDs, maybe we could do better at navigating those accommodations. That was jargon.
    16:37
    But that was for the people who understand the jargon. I want to bring up my friend Adam Meader to talk a little bit about youth players in pinball.
    16:50
    Adam is the father of Seamus Meader. They're both very accomplished tournament players in New England.
    16:58
    And I'd just like to have Adam talk for a few minutes about his background in pinball, Seamus' background in pinball, and what pinball has meant for you two. over the past few years.
    17:16
    Yeah, so I'm Seamus' dad. A lot of you guys know him because he's kind of known. He's a very good pinball player. He's ranked 14th now, Shay, in the youth division in the world.
    17:34
    Overall, he's under 1,000, and I would say there's 5,000, I think, or maybe more. What's your experience been like getting into it? It's been fantastic. We've met lots of amazing people. We've traveled from Maryland to Pennsylvania, New York, playing, skating, and in all tournaments. And it's just been fun. We've met people. It's been awesome.
    18:53
    It's nothing. Have you seen any barriers to entry to try and get... I think this is in Oregon. and how they're not following the guidance of the barge.
    19:16
    As far as the service, there's not very much. There's lots of house furniture, and the leaves and plants, they're not necessarily done.
    19:32
    Pizza J's is great. I'm sure he is. No, not really. Thank you, Alex. Thank you. Yeah.
    19:46
    Thank you. Can I be here? So, so the son of the guy that you just Yes.
    20:00
    Yes. Seamus is a very accomplished player. He has kicked my butt many, many, many, many many many times i think if you go on my ifpa page my record against seamus is uh 0 35 and one but that one is a draw and i think seamus was 14 at that time so very happy to have adam talk i want to since i just talked about youth players i feel like uh it would i have i should be talking about the bells and chimes as well the bells and chimes are a nationwide organization um for advancing women and non-binary people in pinball and they have local chapters here's two of our local chapters boston bells and chimes and the connecticut bells uh they put on a lot of really great events uh it's really awesome um it's not about like women not being able to compete with the men all these women basically play in the open tournaments too and some of them are very very very good you know our new hampshire state champion is a woman but she organizes a lot of these events too and it's really kind of a networking thing it's awesome we've gotten a lot of new people into pinball through Boston Bells and Connecticut Bells specifically so if you're interested in this kind of thing I would encourage you to look up information about your local chapter because it's really awesome and they have a club room here thank you Dave they have a club room in the club room hall if you don't know it'll be close to where our friendly flippers tournament will be later down past the bar restaurant area, and it's going to be kind of far down on your right, the Bell's Room. Yeah, it's awesome. The people there are really cool. Talk to the people at the desk if you're interested, and they'll let you know what you need to know about your local chapter.
    21:42
    I want to talk about some things that scare people away from competitive pinball, and things scarier than the Bram Stoker's pinball Dracula machine that walks the ball really scary across the play field. um oh that's that's a few slides um here we go entry fees and prize money this is something that like it's not easy to talk about in pinball to new players um so tournaments are typically going to have like an entry fee if you're playing at somebody's house you'll toss them 10 bucks just instead of you know you're not putting coins in their games just for the maintenance in their games but there's going to be some sort of tournament fee most of the time that's like added to a prize pool and the winner of the tournament, the people who score in the top three will win the prize money. Um, you know, sometimes it's just five bucks. Sometimes it's 10 bucks. Sometimes it's 20 bucks. Sometimes tournaments are pretty expensive. Uh, you're not going to win money at the tournaments when you first start. Um, I think it's, it's important to accept this, um, because you need to consider what you spend on the tournament has spent money to me spending $25 to go play pinball all day with my friends and play in a tournament. Uh, That's totally worth it to me, and I don't expect to win any money at the end.
    22:58
    But if I do, it's a nice bonus. It's great. The important thing is just don't spend outside your means on tournament entries hoping that you're going to make money at the end. It's not even as good as gambling. Go play the slots.
    23:12
    You're going to lose your money to Brian O'Neill probably. So I think it's important to be realistic with yourself. If a tournament is too expensive for you, you don't have to play in it, and nobody's going to think you're a lesser player because you didn't want to play in a $50 three-strikes tournament, which I love, by the way.
    23:33
    Here's a common, probably the most common thing I hear from people who are thinking about getting into it but are afraid to get into it. They're not good enough.
    23:43
    I regret to inform you, you won't be very good when you start, but literally everybody in this hobby was bad when they started. every single person who's played competitive pinball was once bad and got their butt kicked over and over and over and over and over and over and over again it's part of the process of getting good and nobody's going to think less of you nobody's going to be like why is this guy here this guy's slowing down the tournament that never happens everybody is really happy to see new people in the hobby and you're going to get better um the important thing is to find competitive objectives for yourself other than winning the whole thing. If you show up at your first tournament and go, I'm going to win, and then you lose. And then the next one you go, I'm going to win, and you lose. The next one you go, I'm going to win, and you lose. You're not going to be that happy at the end of the day. So there's other things to be looking for other than winning the whole thing. Maybe you improve on your placements over time. Maybe you got 20th place last week, and then you got 17th place the next week. You get 15th place the next week. That means something. You're working towards something. You can get ranking points and boost your world ranking. If you play one tournament, you're going to be able to check on the website and see that you are ranked the 32nd thousandth ranked player in the world. There's a lot of people in the world to be 32nd thousandth. It's 32nd thousandth in something. It's pretty good. But you play more tournaments, you're going to jump to 25,000. You're going to jump to 20,000. You're going to jump to 15 And that exciting right Maybe your goal is just to successfully execute a strategy you been working on You know on Godzilla all right I can start Titanosaurus and then I start Godzilla multi and that going to give me a good shot if I do that And you get to do that in a game against other players. And maybe you don't win the game, maybe you don't win the tournament, but you know that you set an objective for yourself, and you went out and you did it, and those are sowing the seeds of good fruit in the future competitively. Maybe your goal is just to beat a highly ranked player in a game. You know, if I have a crappy, sorry, if I have a bad tournament day, but I beat Bowen Cairns, I had a good day. I had a good day. And you know, the beautiful thing about pinball is anybody can beat anybody. I've lost to players who have hardly ever seen a pinball machine before. And I've beaten some of the best players of all time. That doesn't mean I'm as good as them. Please don't interpret that that way. But in a four-player pinball match, you have a chance against anyone. And there's something really empowering and awesome about that. And maybe your goal is just to beat a good player. Maybe your goal is just to beat your buddy. I have a friend, Brian, who shows up at every tournament. He just wants to beat his friend, Mike. That's all he cares about. He just wants to beat Mike. And if he beats Mike, he's happy. He's buying us beers at the end of the day. So maybe that's your goal. And my goal, my number one goal, is to play good pinball. I don't care that much about how I finish in the tournament. If I feel like I played good on the games, if I didn't play bad on too many games, I know I'm working towards something and I'm having a good time. I don't win a lot of tournaments. I'll tell you that. But I'm happy when I play good pinball. And if you keep at it, you're going to get better. You're going to keep doing better. You're going to play better. You're going to place better the more you show up.
    26:55
    And the other thing, I guess, that scares people away is maybe level of commitment. right some of these tournaments are really time consuming um some cost more time or cost more money than you're comfortable with and you don't have to play in anything that you don't feel like it's worth it we have a lot of players in new england pinball league that show up for new england pinball league for the eight-week season three times a year and they don't play saturday tournaments because it's too much of a commitment for them and we are just as happy to see those people as anybody else we love those people uh those people are really the the lifeblood of the pinball community that keeps a lot of things going outside of these big destination events. And if that's your level of commitment that you're happy with, then power to you. You should show up to League and have an awesome time at League. You're here to have fun. If playing an eight-hour, ten-hour tournament on a Saturday is not fun to you, then it's not fun to you and you don't have to do it. And what's your idea of fun? I think that's important. And at a show like this, so we have a tournament here called Silver Ball Rumble where there's unlimited entries over the time period from Thursday night till about when the seminar started. And there are people that will spend the entire time putting in entries and putting in, putting, putting, and putting. And to be fair, that's what gives you the best chance of doing well in that tournament. But there's a time balance. I put in two entries. It took me three hours. This show for me is about spending time with my friends, seeing some seminars, playing these little casual tournaments. For me, that's the time balance that works for me. There are some people that put in one card. There are some people that are competitive players that don't play that tournament at all. So it's up to you what your level of commitment is. Time check. Okay. What is the IFPA? You're going to hear about this. I don't want to bloviate about this too much. The IFPA is the International Flipper Pinball Association. It was started by a man named Roger Sharp, who, if you watched that pinball biopic last year, the man who saved the game, he's the subject of that documentary. Very interesting stuff. Not a doc, it's a biopic. It's the central governing body for competitive pinball. So there's a standardized set of rules that we all abide to when we run tournaments, and they kind of maintain that rule set. Most of the pinball competitions that you go to are going to be run under the IFPA umbrella, and they also maintain a world ranking. So when you play in tournaments, you're going to get points for playing in that tournament, and you're going to eventually see your rank climb and climb and climb. and the best players in the world. You can see where they're ranked at the very top, way, way, way, way higher than I am. And then you'll get to see tournament listings and history, and that's something I'm about to delve into right here. This is a picture of the IFPA calendar. If you go to the IFPA website, ifpa.org, you can see in one of the drop-down menus, IFPA calendar. You plug in your location and distance radius, and click the button and it'll tell you every single tournament that is planned under the IFPA umbrella in your area.
    30:15
    As you can see, I took this a few days ago and it's all the tournaments from this weekend in Marlborough, Massachusetts, in this very location. But you plug in if you're from Des Moines, Iowa, plug in Des Moines, Iowa, you'll see everything you need to see there. That's a great place to find out everything you need to know about tournaments in your area. There's also Facebook groups, local Facebook groups.
    30:38
    Pinball, we have the New England Pinball League Facebook group here in New England. And pretty much everybody posts their tournament in those Facebook groups too. If you're on Facebook, that's helpful.
    30:49
    There's going to be flyers at your local pinball spot a lot of the time. So keep an eye open for those if somebody's running tournaments at your local.
    30:57
    And then some locations have their own website. And I'm sure somebody will tell you if they have a website for their place. registering for tournaments. I won't go on too long about this. Sometimes you need to pre-register.
    31:13
    It can be a little intimidating sometimes, but that information will be on the listing on the IFPA calendar page. And sometimes it'll be like, hey, registration is at 12 o'clock on this Saturday, and everybody logs on and just puts their name in a Google form, and then PayPal $20 or something.
    31:36
    Whoops. Oh, no. PayPal me $20 to get it back. Okay. Thank you. Sorry about that, guys. All right. So, yeah, check the listing on the IFPA page. That's going to have all the information you need to know about pre-registering for a tournament if that's necessary.
    32:08
    Fill out the Google form, Venmo, PayPal, somebody. And a lot of tournaments just show up at the door. They say show up. It's Thursday night at Bear Moose Brewing Company at 7 o'clock. Show up with your five bucks.
    32:21
    And so those are the easier ones. Those tend to be the more casual ones. The more serious tournaments that will have caps on entry that they're worried about hitting will have a pre-registration process. Match play, something I also don't want to spend too much time talking about. If you could pull this up a little bit larger.
    32:40
    Thank you. So this is the web app where we have our tournament. We do all the organization for the tournament. This saves the tournament director, the person in charge, from having to do too much pen and paper. It organizes the matches automatically and sends people to the games. if you play in a tournament you'll have a profile for you automatically made on match play you just have to register under it and this is where you get to see the current game that you're on who you're playing against what round it is what the standings are but you won't have to know too much about it it'll be on a big tv in the venue a lot of the time and you'll have people in your group that understand how to use it and you won't have to think about it too much if you don't want to think about it. But this is where all the tournament info is as far as what game you're playing and everything. I'm going to go over competitive formats a little bit, but the most important thing here is that you just play the game that you're told to play with the people you're playing against, and you do as well as you can, and you tell them how you did afterwards, and everything else will be taken care of. But quickly, we have something called match play, which is just you play against people, a three or four player group against people, and you report your results, and then you get to play against new people. And then there's some sort of point threshold usually, or time threshold, or round threshold at which the tournament ends eventually.
    34:15
    Strikes. We play in four player groups. If you finish third or fourth on a game, you get a strike. Three strikes, you're out. Pretty simple. Flip Frenzy and Max Matchplay these are like fun formats where you're going to get put 1v1 against people and play a bunch of 1v1 games and then your record in those games will determine how you do and then there's card qualifying like the Silver Ball Rumble, our big tournament here where this is for the big serious tournaments generally and you're going to play solo games and your score on that solo game will be compared to everybody else's score that played in it over the course of the event. That's a little bit of a simplification. There's some nuance to the different types, but that's the basic gist. If silly formats, we do too. Like The Amazing Race is my favorite one, if you've ever seen the TV show. The idea is that everybody, let's say there's 20 people, 20 people play the same game, and the lowest ranked score in that game is eliminated. And then 19 people play a different game and the lowest ranked person is eliminated until there's just one person left. And we've had some fun with that recently. That's a really good one.
    35:31
    Here, if you want to find out anything more about this on the Match Play website, on the sidebar at the very bottom here, there's a link called Handbook that has all the information about all the formats that you don't really need to know about. and yeah, if you have any questions, everything is there. They do a really good job updating that resource.
    35:52
    All right, I'm going to talk about some do's and don'ts in competitive pinball. Some things to look out for, some things to do.
    36:03
    Pay coin drop. If you're at the location, if you're at a public location like a bar or a restaurant or an arcade, the machines will take quarters. and so before the game starts make sure everybody puts their quarters or their dollar in the game so that you can start a four player game make sure you start the game with the correct number of players if you have four players in your group press the start button four times if you have three players in your group press it three times bad things happen when the wrong number of players is started in the game check the game for notes with important info you'll see there's a note on this copy of Matahari right here that says plunge extra balls. That's important in a tournament. Sometimes it'll tell you things about the game-specific rules. Sometimes it'll tell you things like that to avoid getting disqualified for the game. So always check before you plunge your first ball if there's anything you need to know about that specific copy of the game. Oftentimes the host will tell you this beforehand if you're listening.
    37:07
    Do chat with your group mates. This is a social experience. That's why 99% of us are here. Ask them questions. Ask them questions about the tournament. Ask them questions about where they're from, where they play league, where they play pinball. Ask them questions about the game. How do you get multiball on Godzilla?
    37:26
    People are really happy to share information. People are really happy to socialize. And, yeah, partake in that. Compliment others. Tell them if they have a nice ball. Tell them if they had a great game. Tell them if that mode into multi-ball stack they had was awesome. Be nice to people. People love hearing that stuff. And as a new player you like hearing it from an experienced player too when they tell you like actually that was awesome and do bring cookies unless you at a restaurant where they serve food and they'll be mad at you for that kind of thing people like goodies, bring goodies it'll endear you to the people some don'ts right don't crowd the game Alyssa don't stand too close to the player who's playing on the machine don't stand to the side of the game where you're kind of next to the screen don't hover over their shoulder don't stand within kicking range there are some people that are very physical players and kick when they play and you don't want to be kicked by them um don't talk to your groupmate while they're playing a ball um when people are playing the ball they want they want to be left alone and uh if you feel like you have something to tell them they can wait until after the ball over unless there's a fire and they can't hear the alarm, then tell them. Don't wander off. Don't, if like, you know, you just played your ball and you're like, oh, I'm going to go outside for a smoke. If you have to go to the bathroom, if you have to go to the bar and refill your drink and you feel like that can be done in a reasonable amount of time, these things are okay, but please tell your group mates, hey, I'm going to the bathroom. Otherwise, they're not going to know where you are when it's back to your turn and that's not it's not fun your ball might get plunged uh don't play at a turn make sure if you're player three you're always playing player three if player two gets an extra ball in a shoot again don't launch their extra ball you will be disqualified from the game not the whole tournament but the game and that's no good uh don't play extra balls um this is a in 95 percent of pinball tournaments this is a pretty standard rule um if you get an extra ball in a game, unless they very specifically tell you to play it, you just walk up. You can set up your skill shot by pressing any buttons you got to press before you plunge, but then once you've released the plunger, it's hands off, and it's off to the next player.
    39:55
    Don't abuse the machine, please. These are really expensive games, and the people love them and take really good care of them and have to repair them. Don't smash the glass. Don't put your drink on the glass. Don't pick up the machine and drop it on its front legs. You wouldn't believe people do that. That's not a nice thing to do to a game. Please be nice to the games. Don't death save or bang back. If you don't know what that is, don't worry. You're not going to do that accidentally.
    40:23
    If you know what it is, don't do it. It's an illegal maneuver. It's fun to do maybe on Euro games or the games who belong to somebody who likes you on location, but don't do it in a tournament, you'll get disqualified from the game. And the number one rule is don't be a jerk. Please be nice to people. We're all here for the same reason. It's to have fun. Please be nice. Almost, almost, almost everybody in pinball is really, really, really, really nice. Please continue to contribute to that reputation. I want to talk about the Friendly Flips tournament in probably about 20 minutes at the Southern New Hampshire pinball room. And all of you who are new players, new and barely experienced players, will be eligible for this tournament. It's in 20 minutes, right at the conclusion of this seminar at three o'clock in the Southern New Hampshire pinball room. If you don't know where that is, I will be leading you like the Pied Piper onto the next room and they're going to be passing around, Jerrica and Will are going to be passing around a sign-up sheet. If anybody wants to sign up for this tournament, you have first dibs. Please, if you are an experienced player, if you've been to more than a couple, two or three tournaments, please don't sign up for this. This is just for fun for the people who have never really played competitive pinball and want to get into an environment that it's going to be all new people and no players to be scared about. There's no tournament free. If you're in this room, you've paid for Pintastic admission. You can play in the tournament for free. It's going to be a short format. Four rounds of one game each probably won't take more than an hour and a half or something. And no early elimination. Nobody's going to take three strikes and go out immediately. And then there's going to be a one game final to determine the champ. And I believe there might be some t-shirts or something in play. something there's going to be something in play it's not going to be a big cash prize but there's going to be something uh something worth playing for you'll be happy to win in the end um and coaching is allowed and encouraged uh there's going to be a lot of people there to help out with the new people tell them what they need to know about tournament play tell them what they need to know about the game anything you want to know i believe people will be walking around with See, Jerrica has this beautiful glow stick on her neck. We'll all be walking around, the volunteers, with the big glow sticks on our necks. So you can come and find us if you have any questions, even if it's during a ball, which is not allowed in IFPA-rated tournaments. But this is not an IFPA-rated tournament. This is for super funsies. And, yeah. So I really, really, really hope to see a lot of you there. This is right after the conclusion of the seminar in the Southern New Hampshire club room. It won't run for a long time, and I think it would be a really fun thing for new people. I really wish when I was going to Pinberg in 2017 that somebody had wrote me into something like this, and I would have started playing competitive pinball four years earlier and changed my life in a major, major, major, major, major way four years earlier. And yeah, so I really hope to see some of you there and meet some really cool people.
    43:47
    Now it's time to take some questions. Does anybody have any questions? I saw that hand first. Yeah, sure.
    44:12
    Yeah, normally, yeah, I mean, it's fine. Yeah, sure. It won't run much longer than that. I don't think you'll be missing out on longer than one round. So, yeah, that's fine.
    44:25
    Next question. Next question on how the scoring happens. How do you get it? So, I'll give an example based on our format in New England Pinball League, right? So, you play in a four-player group and you each play four games. The first place on each game gets seven points, and then it's five points, and then it's three, and then it's one. So the worst possible score you can get in a night is a four, and the highest possible score you can get in a night is a 28. And there are some people that get 28s every night.
    45:03
    And yeah, and so a 16 is about an average score. And then yeah, your score over the course of the season is going to be your six best scores out of eight put together. And so, yeah, that sorts us through all 400 players into finals, NEPL finals, which is an exciting time.
    45:29
    Well, it depends on your, obviously it depends on your league location, right? If you're in the Port City Pinball League, they only have one location and they play at finals at Port City in Portland. I keep saying that, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. But New England Pinball League Finals, where we play all over New England. We have two finals locations that we shuffle between. The Western Mass Pinball Club in Three Rivers, Massachusetts, near Sturbridge. And Arcadia, which is a place in Portland, Maine.
    46:01
    Western Mass, does anybody... Western Mass, Seamus. Okay, cool. So like 75 games at Western Mass, 4550 at Arcadia. You know, so enough to... Yeah, Seamus is the expert on that information.
    46:26
    What's pinballmap.com? Thank you. That's a great question. Pinballmap.com. Maybe it's .org. I don't know. Google pinball map. It'll give you a listing of all the locations that have pinball in your area. Not necessarily competitive, but just the places that you can go play, go practice, go meet people. Thank you. .
    46:59
    Good question. So the question was, do you play the same game four times or different games? you'll get set to four different games. Yep. You may, in a larger tournament, get asked to play the same game two times in the tournament. Or more. Not usually.
    47:16
    Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, back there. I see experienced players move to the game a lot. How do you get more, like, to the game that has the wrong thing?
    47:30
    That's a good question. So that's something you'll definitely see the more experienced players do. Nudge the machine, move the machine, rock it a bit, slap it a bit in a tasteful way.
    47:42
    The penalty for moving the game too much is that you tilt the game. You lose your ball. Well, first of all, you don't move it in a way that is going to hurt the game. You could get disqualified from the tournament at the game. But when you watch players play, you'll learn where that barrier is. I think it's fairly obvious what hurting the game looks like. But if you move the game too much, you'll tilt. Your ball ends. You don't get a bonus.
    48:10
    There's a saying in pinball, if you ain't tilting, you ain't trying. You should be moving the game to kind of see what you can get away with. And the more you move the game, the more you push the boundaries of how you can move the game, the more you'll learn where that line is, be able to interpret where that line is on a new game that you walk up to, and it's a really big important thing in pinball, being able to control the ball and being able to nudge it against every surface that you can nudge it against really helps you get that kind of control to take controlled shots in the game.
    48:44
    Any other questions? I've got a last question. One more, okay. What happens when a tournament takes a ball against a doctor? Oh, that's a good question. Thank you. I should have covered that actually. Yeah, if you have a stuck ball in a tournament, raise your hand or alert your group mates if they're not already watching. They'll call a TD over. They'll usually have you hold the ball on your flipper, and then the TD will come over and come take the glass off, and then they'll take the ball, and they'll put it on your flipper, and then put the glass back on, and then you start the game again. So it can be a little distracting sometimes, taking you out of the flow, but we're able to get the game started again once that kind of thing happens.
    49:24
    My final question, when you play 10 tournaments, you should then go to the IFPA website and read the rules and learn all the rules and stuff. What is 10? How many tournaments will you play? This many, you've got to find out all the rules. I don't think there is really a concrete answer to that question. I think it really varies person to person. I think there are people that just show up to Pinball League and they play their games and they have a good time and they never really learn what all the different formats and all the different things are. And I think that's like awesome and like totally valid and cool. And there are some people that play two tournaments and they're 100% in and they have to learn everything. And that is also cool. And I think it's really great that pinball really allows for all that different room of involvement and engagement.
    50:19
    Thank you all so much for coming. I'm really, really, really delighted that all of you came. Thank you.