Thanks to our Sponsors:

In the Kids tournament 14 kids challenged on three machines: Lawman, Sunshine and Silver Slugger.  Kids played all three games and then got to replay a game of their choice to improve their score.  If their new score was worse than the original, the original stood.

Normally, no Final is scheduled for the Kids tournament because often times families have to leave at a certain time, however, with ties for the top four spots, a playoff was held and fortunately we were able to round up all the kids.

Dalton, Jesse and Paloma tied and had to play off for the 3rd and 4th places.  Dalton took first followed by Jesse and then Paloma.

Monica and Bella tied for 1st and 2nd with 35 points.  Monica won the playoff.  Congratulations to Monica!

Winners took home plaques, Gift Certificates for Playland not at the Beach and either a Pinball 101 or Pinball Collector DVD from Pinball Video.  Congrats to all the Kids!

Tonight will be the last tournament for Zoe “legs” Vrabel as she’s moving back to the sunny skies of Portland at the end of the month.  Come on out and see Zoe off.  Plaques to top 4 if I can make them in time.

7pm. $5 Vitus 201 Broadway.

Format: Whatever Zoe wants.

Novice qualifying went all the way down to 4oth place overall this year with a monster six-way tie for the last two novice playoff spots.  Two groups of three were formed, and the winners, Marcus Petersen and Chris Deleon advanced to the quarter finals.

Congrats to Chris for squeaking in via tie-breaker and going on to take 1st.

In Open Division action, the competition was fierce.  The top qualifier, Andrei Massenkoff, scored a dainty 10 strokes, and the cutoff to make the playoffs was 17 strokes, or an average of 2.83 strokes per game!  Compared with last year: top qualifier Chris Heilig scored 18 strokes, and the cutoff was 22.  Though last year there were more EMs in the game mix which might explain some of the difference.

There was a five-way tie for the last four qualifying spots.  A tie-breaker would be held with the lowest score dropping out.  However, if one of the novices ended up being the loser, he would go over to Novice and create a six-way tie for the last novice spot.  Both novices ended up advancing in Open, however.

KIDS DIVISION

Thanks to our KIDS Division Sponsors:

In the Kids tournament 14 kids challenged on three machines: Lawman, Sunshine and Silver Slugger.  Kids played all three games and then got to replay a game of their choice to improve their score.  If their new score was worse than the original, the original stood.

Normally, no Final is scheduled for the Kids tournament because often times families have to leave at a certain time, however, with ties for the top four spots, a playoff was held and fortunately we were able to round up all the kids.

Dalton, Jesse and Paloma tied and had to play off for the 3rd and 4th places.  Dalton took first followed by Jesse and then Paloma.

Monica and Bella tied for 1st and 2nd with 35 points.  Monica won the playoff.  Congratulations to Monica!

Winners took home plaques, Gift Certificates for Playland not at the Beach and either a Pinball 101 or Pinball Collector DVD from Pinball Video.  Congrats to all the Kids!

FINAL RESULTS FOR NOVICE/OPEN

(Note: Only Open qualifying and Finals are counted for World Pinball Ranking purposes. Novice points are awarded based on their qualifying round performance.)

ACDC cover band Colonel Angus and Pinball Bay Area have teamed up for a night of music and pinball.  Free entry.  Novice Pinball tournament.  $5 entry + Quarters for games.  All $5 entries paid out to winners.  Raffle prizes for all entrants and plaques to winners.  Also enjoy playing the six pinballs, including Medieval Madness, Elvira Scared Stiff, Twilight Zone, Getaway, Theater of Magic and ACDC.

Format: Play one game of ACDC and one game of Getaway.  Your combined rank across the two games will determine if you play in the Finals.

Finals will be top 8 overall on ACDC.

Who is a Novice? A novice cannot have a World Pinball Player Ranking of 500 or better, and cannot have won a previous tournament at Vitus.

From the collection of Dan Fontes.

At game start, all balls are kicked into the air to randomize them.  The player can select to kick all the balls in a vertical row into the air, or all balls in all rows.  The goal is to get the balls in 3, 4, or 5 in a row, or four corners (very rare, and high-scoring).

Unfortunately, some of the switches weren’t working on the two left rows and I didn’t get full credit.  :-(

(note: full results will be posted within the next day or two)

The Pin a Go Go 2012 tournament sold out fast and was a big success.  Over-sold-out, in fact, and we rolled right over our cap of 64 players with 70 before we could put the brakes on more entrants.  Though last-registration was scheduled for 2 PM, we hit max occupancy before our noon start.

“We’re going to need a bigger boat”, I said, as I looked down the line 30-deep to register.  We also got 14 kids in this year’s event.

Needless to say, yours truly was running around like a mad man to cover the bases, but that’s the nature of the game, and since we made a few bucks for the Boys and Girls Clubs and Dixon Teen Center, it was worth it.

Above: The top 8 semi-finalists in the Novice Division.

Just like last year, we had a majority of first-time players, and a few of those never-befores surprised themselves by making the top ranks.

Above: The top 8 Open semi-finalists.  Somehow this photo came out looking like a suspect line-up.

The games that Pin a Go Go supplied us with were nothing short of phenomenal.  The star of the tournament was undoubtedly ACDC: Back in Black Edition, so new out of the box that when we lifted the playfield, a long-time tech said, “Smell that?  New pin smell.  Nothing else smells like that,” which reminded me of a certain movie scene.

Above: Chris Deleon, Bay Area Pinball Association Player, took the Novice crown and World Poker Tour translite, donated by STERN.

Also in the top mix was a TRON LE with external sub-woofer, overhead speakers and all the mods.

Then there was a custom-cabinet painted Harlem Globetrotters that looked and played brand new, with some not-overpowering LED touches.

We also had a mod’ed Attack from Mars.   The jet fighter mods distracted some, but they sure loved everything else, especially the play.  Flawless.

A perfect-playing Pirates of the Caribbean rounded out the top-notch games.

Honestly, it’s the best tournament line-up I’ve ever been given and the players loved it.  Huge thanks to the PAGG folks for putting such a stellar line-up together.

The final 4 in the Open Division: Bob Matthews, Josh Lehan, Josh Warner and Danny Rockholt.

STERN donated five translites, including an ACDC, Ripleys Believe it or Not, World Poker Tour, Monopoly and Roller Coaster Tycoon, as well as T-shirts to the event.

STERN’s generosity supporting local events has been incredible this past year, with 5 translites for our ACDC launch party, ten(!) for our STERN Determination Tournament, and this latest five for Pin a Go Go!  Big thanks!

We also got great stuff from PPM, Playland not at the Beach and Pinball Video (The Pinball 101 guys).

Danny Rockholt was the big surprise challenger in the Open.  In finals, in his first tournament, he took 4th.

Bob Matthews, always a class act of the tournament scene, took 3rd.

Josh Warren is typically most often a threat on EMs and Solid-State games but he took his DMD vitamins this morning and pulled out a great performance to take 2nd place overall.

Josh Lehan is a real stealth player.  Using a minimum of fancy moves, but with astounding game knowledge, years of competitive experience, and that all-important “never gets rattled in pressure situations” factor, Josh navigated each level of Finals play to emerge on top.  Josh took 2nd at last year’s Pin a Go Go.  He came back to finish the job!

As always it’s not possible to make events like this happen without a lot of help and coordination.  Big thanks to Damien, the founder of the Capitol Corridor pinball league, for all his help on Saturday running the event, as well as everyone else who helped with score entry, game tech, play testing and just helping us stay sane.

$5.  12 PM start.  Entry capped at 64 players.  Format: Pin Golf.  Show up early to practice.

Click for larger pic.

We had a big 55 players turn out for STERN Determination, aka, “The STERNament” at the Pacific Pinball Museum, including a couple import players: Julie Gray from Seattle, and Eden Stamm from Vancouver British Columbia.

There was some debate at first as to whether we should allow a Canadian to play, and the arguments went back and forth.  However, an anonymous person shouted “Well you let those DANISH guys play!”  And we had to agree it would only be fair to let the Canadians in.  We also agreed Canada is a much better country than Denmark because it’s far easier to find on  a map.  But I digress…

The impetus for this tournament was to celebrate the Pacific Pinball Museum’s latest acquisition of STERN’s newest game: ACDC Premium Edition, so it was a natural to run an event with all STERN games, both moderns and classics.  STERN backed the event HUGE with promotional plastics and TEN translites.  The combined value was well in excess of $1000 in prizes.

The line-up was:

Moderns:

ACDC Premium

TRON

Ironman

Tranformers Limited Edition

Classics:

Sea Witch

STARS

Galaxy

On a sunny Mother’s Day weekend, I wasn’t expecting so many players, but the more the merrier, and things went great.  Plus, I set up a potluck competition, cause if it’s one thing I know: pinball players love food.  Around a dozen tasty dishes showed up.

Above: Keith Parkins in the Finals.

The big surprise in the OPEN Finals was Keith Parkins, edging out solid competition heavies Josh Lehan and up-and-comer Damien Charlety  in the semi-finals, to wind up in the Final Four.  Keith fought valiantly, but in a group where half the players knew almost nothing about ACDC, yet still were putting up 40M+ scores, it’s a tough battle.  Keith took 4th overall, and took home a plaque and translite for his efforts.

Above: Andrei Massenkoff in the final game.

In the Playoffs and Finals, it’s 4-player group play.  1st gets 4 points, 2nd 2 points, 3rd 1 point and fourth, a big ol’ zero.  Finalists play three games and your total points determine whether you advance to next round.

Andrei won the first two Finals games with monster 70M+ on TRON and 800k+ on Galaxy scores.  He already had a lock on the win, with 8 points, making it a three-way horse race for second.  Keith had 1 point, Alex had 3 points and Tim had 2 points.  This meant that if anyone took first on ACDC, they’d clinch 2nd or force a playoff.

Andrei could only grief at this point, but set the bar high at 51M for the other players.  Alex put up 38M, and Tim was sitting just below that going into ball 3.  If Tim took 2nd on ACDC, for 2 points, it would leave Alex in 3rd, for 1 point, and they would be tied.  They would play a one-game tie-breaker in that case.  But Tim went the distance and eclipsed Andrei’s score with 57M+, earning 4 points on ACDC and  securing 2nd place in the Finals.

OPEN Results:

Above: Andrei (left) took top honors.

2nd: Tim Hansen

3rd: Alex Samonte

4th: Keith Parkins (Congrats to Keith for his first final-four showing).

Tied for 5th: Josh Lehan, Josh Warren

Tied for 7th: Glenn Bedford, James Squires (Congrats to Glen Bedford on his first tournament)

9: Damien Charletty

10: Eden Stamm

Tied for 11th: Chris Heilig, John Lautmann

NOVICE Results:

(Note: Regarding World Pinball Player Ranking Points, Novice Finals do not affect position.  Rank is based on Qualifying Performance)

1st: Mike Schiess (translite + plaque)

2nd: Devon Kelly (translite + plaque)

3rd: Chris Gershtein (translite + plaque)

4th: Debbie Cluney (plaque)

5th: Chris Lindboe

6th: Chris Harkins

Tied for 7th: Lilia Bedford, Jeannie Rodriguez

Several novices were MIA at the end of qualifying so we kept going down the list to fill the bracket.  Novice qualifying went all the way down to the 34th place overall!

Possible major boo-boo on my part in Kids.  I think I may have awarded 1st to the 2nd place player (Bella Gershtein) instead of Kevin Bedford, who I think might have been 1st.  Hopefully the Bedford family sees this post and contacts me, and we’ll make it right.  However, Bella will not have to return her prizes.  Also, Glenn Bedford was the 4th place winner of the side pot and I owe him 14 bucks.

Qualifying Results 

1 Andrei Massenkoff 352
2 Tim Hansen 348
3 Josh Warren 317
4 James Squires 303
5 Alex Samonte 300
6 Josh Lehan 298
7 Damien Charlety 290
8 Glenn Bedford 289
9 Chris Heilig 287
10 Keith Parkins 282
11 Eden Stamm 281
12 John Lautmann 276
—————————–
13 Julie Gray 265
14 Chris Lindboe 257
15 Jon Olkowski 250
16 Kevin Reiki 245
17 Michael Spears (Cal) 244
18 Darren Ensley 242
19 Hal Erickson 240
20 Eugene Gershtein 235
21 Zoe Vrabel 233
22 Chris Gershtein 227
23 Per Schwarzenberger 226
24 TJ Beyer 224
25 Jim Vierra 223
26 Jeannie Rodriguez 220
27 Debbie Cluney 218
Chris Harkins 218
29 Ric Craig 213
Michael Scheiss 213
31 Devon Kelly 212
Jim Anderson 212
33 Rumtin Rahmani 208
34 Lilia Bedford 205
35 Nina G 197
36 Matt Willlmarth 193
Dylan Jolliffe 193
38 Chris DeLeon 189
39 Selena Shook 187
40 Nicole Anne Reik 173
Andrea Hartman 173
42 Chris Hoff 165
43 Jem Gruber 157
44 Kevin Bedford 149
45 Jeff Ridenour 141
46 Reno Reiki 136
47 Bella Gershtein 133
48 Bob Schwarzmann 132
49 Erin Rey 124
50 Andrew Hoff 122
51 Alex Kirsonis 121
52 Edward Dobson 98
53 Symphony Bedford 94
54 Dottie Ledesma 58
55 Sandra Lennie 57

SIDE POT: A $10 optional side pot was held with 14 entrants.  Payouts were to top 4 (40%, 30%, 20%, 10%) 1st: Andrei Massenkoff ($56), 2nd: Tim Hansen ($42) 3rd: Josh Lehan ($28) 4th: Glenn Bedford ($14).

POT LUCK Grand Champion: Nicole Anne Reik won with her Italian Wedding Soup.  Keeping with the Italian theme of the soup, Nicole went into Italian Mom mode and made it a point to introduce indecisive eaters at the potluck table to her offering, even going so far as to serve her soup to them.  The combination of her awesome soup and hospitality was irresistible to voters.   Nicole can no longer compete in Novice in future potluck competitions.  Nicole got a Ripley’s Believe it or Not translite for her culinary skills.  Personally, I consider her win a fluke, as Andrei Massenkoff is known to bring a mean package of Oreos, but sufficed with just winning the tournament. :-)

VOLUNTEER AWARD: All scorekeepers, techs and other do-goodniks were entered into a drawing for a translite.  Eugene Gershtein won and took home a Monopoly translite.

Thanks to everyone who came.  See you next week at Pin a Go Go!

Nicole Anne Reik submitted some more pics: Click Here

Big thanks to Zoe for running this one.  I was zonked on Nyquil and sound asleep.  The next Vitus event will be on Wednesday 5/23.

1. Hal Erickson
2. Zoe Vrabel
3. Chris Harkins
4. Matt Wilmarth
5. Darren Ensley
5. Eric Wagonsonner
7. Glenn Bedford
7. TJ Beyer
9. Erin Ray
9. Chris Lindboe
9. Echa Schneider
9. Liz Davies
13. Symphony Bedford

Full article: http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2012/05/10/pinball-bones-and-animal-skins-howie-tsuis-wonderful-horrors-of-the-war-of-1812/

Format: Single game double elimination. $5 entry.  7pm start time.

Also, don’t forget the STERN Determination tournament is this Saturday 5/12 at Pacific Pinball Museum.  Check the tournament link for details.