Someone asked me recently how many pinball tournaments I’ve run and I didn’t know off-hand. I said “around 20”.  But it got me thinking.

The first was Feb 6, 2010: “The Battle at the Beach”, which Josh Lehan won. I remember Nina G Comedian was there, as well as Hal Erickson, Andrei Massenkoff and Neil Shatz and Tim Hansen.

I spent a awhile going through old results and here’s what I got – (some dates are probably wrong):

GC = Grand Champion

Battle at the Beach Feb 6 2010 – Josh Lehan GC
Avatar Launch Party – NES GC
Battle for the Bay/Chrons and Colitis Benefit (Two in
one day – with Andrei Massenkoff) Nov 8 2010 (ANM double GC)
Ban Danish Pinball (with Mads Klæstrup Kristensen) Nov. 23, 2010 (NES GC)
Worse than Liquor January 2011 (Hal Ericson GC)
Pinball Mafia Stork Club 2-25 Emmett Cadigan GC
Pin a Go Go 2011 (Dave Esterlia – first time tournament player – GC)
Pacific Pinball Exposition 2011 (with David Baach) Kevin Martin GC
November 9 Vitus – first Vitus tournament ANM – GC
Import Danish Pinball Nov. 19 (with Mads k) ANM – GC
November 23 Vitus
December 7 Vitus
December 14 Vitus – TJ Beyer GC
January 4 Vitus (run by Zoe Vrabel) – Hal Erickson GC
January 18 Vitus Damien Charletty GC
February 2 Vitus
February 15 Vitus
ACDC Launch Party (with TJ Beyer and Jim Viera) 2/29 (Chris Kochan – GC)
March 14 Vitus
March 28 Vitus
April 11 Vitus – Hal Erickson GC
April 25 Vitus -Darren Ensley GC
May 9 Vitus (run by Zoe Vrabel) – Hal Erickson GC
May 23 Vitus (Zoe farewell) I took 3rd, gave my plaque to Zoe
May 13 STERN Determination special guests Julie Gray and Eden Stamm (ANM – GC)
Pin a Go Go 2012 – Josh Lehan GC
June 6 Vitus (ACDC Colonel Angus)
June 19 Vitus
July 3 Vitus
July 17 The Swedish Invasion – special guests Joe Said and Patrik Pal Bodin – Patrik GC
July 28-29 Fun tourneys at California Extreme – Dottie won one of these.

The description reads: Upcoming scene from Pinball Documentary. This is Peter from 5th Estate

http://vimeo.com/46722612

This pinball-themed apron came up on ebay.  Words sorta fail, but I think the divorce lawyer for the wife would describe it as “a slam dunk”.

Screen cap of the full creepy ebay listing here: http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/60/apron1.jpg

I was down at PPM tonight and Miss Alameda was there.  She was doing a little promo work for the Miss California pageant.  That’s when I had an epiphany: I would train her to be a pinball wizard.  In the talent competition, she would play a game of pinball, rack up a few super jackpots, maybe bust out a death save or three,  and blow the other entrants right off the stage.  She would win the title and the whole thing would be so crazy it would trigger a media circus that would catapult pinball back into the mainstream!

Then she said there’s no talent competition.

She hung out with Nina G, Erin Rey and myself for about an hour of X-Men pinball.  Oh, right, I forgot.  PPM got X-Men.

With two games done in the finals.  The scores were:

Jim Belsito: 0 points

Cayle George: 4 Points

Josh Sharpe: 5 Points

Andrei Massenkoff: 4 Points

At best, veteran Jim Belsito of Southern California could tie to force a playoff so the match was mostly between Josh Sharpe (Chicago), Cayle George (Washington), and Andrei Massenkoff (California) in the match up.

Andrei, again picked the game, and with his fast and loose, on-the-fly style play, in sharp contrast to conventional wisdom, showed there is more than one way to play the game.

Pinball never sleeps, my friends.

It’s time for another tournament.  Just got this one confirmed with the Pacific Pinball Museum for 8/26.  More details to come, but in the meantime, hit PPM to practice up on the latest game: X-Men!

Last year right around this time, San Francisco player Andrei Massenkoff traveled to Pittsburgh, PA and won the Professional Amateur Pinball Association’s (PAPA) World Championship tournament.  This 4-day annual event is the most respected tournament in all of pinball and drew nearly 500 competitors from around the world.

Banners hang from the rafters of PAPA Headquarters to recognize past champions

PAPA 15 begins this Thursday, August 9th, and you can check out live standings on their website: http://papa.org and blog: http://papa.org/blog/.  The most exciting part of the tournament – the Finals – will happen on Sunday.

As a teaser to the big event this weekend, the PAPA team has been feeding the pinball public a steady diet of footage from last year’s tournament via their blog.  Here are games one and two of the Final Four match-up.  See just how Andrei pulled off his championship win!

Comedian Amy Schumer tries to star in “The Accused”

Snowball has a few cool features and a steeper learning curve than most flash pinball games.

First, you can nudge in all four directions (shift + arror key direction) as much as you want, it just costs you points.  You can control magnets to make the ball collect scoring targets.  There’s a mini breakout style game, a few warps/subways and a few cannon launcher areas.  Multiball is interesting, with snow pinballs of different sizes.

The physics are merely average for a flash pinball game (in other words, pretty awful), otherwise this could be one of the best out there.  Still worth a look.

http://www.pixeljam.com/snowball/