A New Pinball Format

 Portland, OR

This isn't a pinball tournament photo

International Women's Day Pin-Golf Tournament

This evening I went over to Ground Kontrol and played in their International Women's Day Pin-Golf Tournament.  The entry fee was $10 and $5 of the fee goes to the Portland chapter of Women Who Code.  They picked out 9 machines where women were involved in the making of the game and we played Pin-Golf on them.  This is a new format for me and it was a lot of fun.  Each machine had a target score associated with it.  If you hit that score on your first ball, you get a hole in one.  If you get it on your 2nd ball, you take 2 strokes, and if you hit it before the end of your game you got 3 strokes.  You were allowed to play extra balls when you earned them.  If you didn't hit your target score by the time your game was over you had to figure out how many more strokes to add to your score.  The max was 6 strokes.  

So here you can see the target score is 50 million on Deadpool.  If you get 50 million on your first ball you get a hole in one, if you get it on your 2nd ball you get 2 strokes and if you hit 50 million on your 3rd ball you take 3 strokes.  After your 3rd ball if you are still under the target but have 40M+ you get 4 strokes, 25M+ 5 strokes, and if you have a terrible game you get the max, 6 strokes.

Each machine that was chosen also had a card on it to show the women that worked on the machine and what they did.  

Practice

Ground Kontrol opened at noon so I headed over there to practice a bit.  I had found the list of games they used last year in this tournament so I used it as a guide for what might be played this year.  I still didn't know the target scores at this point so I decided to play each game and log every score so I could tell if I was in the ballpark when I knew the scores.  These were the games on my list to play:

Deadpool

Theater of Magic

Tales from the Crypt

Spider-Man (Stern)

Godzilla

Junk Yard

Doctor Who

Champion Pub

Bram Stoker's Dracula

I felt pretty good on Deadpool and Godzilla as far as knowing the rules so I focused on the other games during practice.  I couldn't find Tales from the Crypt so that would be out and there would be a replacement for it because you need 9 holes.  I practiced from about noon to 2pm and then walked home to have lunch and watch a few videos on the machines I still wasn't totally clear on.  Knowing what shots to shoot makes a big difference and then being able to hit those shots is the next step for success.

The Tournament

At 4pm I walked back over.  This tournament had a qualifying window.  You could play from 4pm to 8pm at your leisure and then turn in your scorecard.  If you made the top 8 you got to play in the finals.  I arrived as they were setting up so I could now see the score cards and referenced my list of scores to see what I needed to work on.  They asked that once you enter the tournament you played your card without practice so I practiced before I entered.  I found out that Tales from the Crypt was replaced by Dialed In (bleh) and Doctor Who was taken out due to it having issues and Mandalorian was added.  I was happy about this because I knew Mando better than Doctor Who.  I played Mando and Dialed In to get target scores.  My Mando was fine but I am trash at Dialed in.  I just don't like the game so I don't play it and I am not interested in learning it.  Maybe one day this will change.  I also played a few of the other machines I watched videos on to help it all sink in and then decided to play for real.

I paid my $10 entry and another $5 for a play card to play for "free" the rest of the evening.  The $5 card was a good deal because I was going to be playing 9 games and then probably playing more games after I finished my 9 holes just for fun.

Womandalorian!  I have gotten 55M on Mando many times but not on this machine which seems to play harder than others.

I didn't have a good game and took 5 strokes.  Not a great start but I can shake it off!

I chose Godzilla for my 2nd hole.  I had gotten 100M on this machine just a few hours ago so I felt pretty good...

until I missed my target score and took 5 strokes just missing out on 4 strokes by a few million.  :(

I wasn't off to a good start seeing as these are the machines I know.  I told myself I didn't take any 6 stoke games yet so that was a good thing.  I decided to play Deadpool next.  That score seemed pretty low for me so maybe I can have a feel good moment on my hole 3.

50M is VERY achievable for me so I hoped to get at least a 3 stoke.

My feel good moment came on hole 3 by taking a 2 stroke!  I was very happy with that.  I know it shows ball 2 and that would show I made the score on ball 1 but this was an extra ball and I had already played my first ball 2.  When I took the photo to prove my score if they asked I thought that someone could easily say hole in one for this photo but hopefully everyone was being honest.

I took a 6 on Dialed In so I figured I didn't need a photo to prove it.  I was kind of expecting a 6 or a 5.

I also took a 6 on Spider-Man.  I have the skills to take a 3 but it didn't happen today.

Junk Yard was a game I was mostly unfamiliar with until today.  I had played it but was just flipping to see what happened.  I really had no idea what I would end up with.

Turns out I took a 3 on it!  This was very good news for me.  I was happy with this result.

Champion Pub was another game that I didn't really know how to play until today.  I had just watched another player excitedly take 2 strokes.  He marked his score and happily left without playing his 3rd ball.  The cheater in me realized I could just play ball 3 and mark the score and take a 3 but I am not a cheater so I plunged the ball and waited for the game to end and then started my game.

I took a 4 on this one.  I felt good about that because it was a newer game for me and it was only 1 more stroke than I would have taken if I had cheated (I guess I wasn't considering me cheating when I was thinking of this but I was thinking how others might cheat).

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a machine I am hot and cold on.  Sometimes I get a great score and sometimes I fail miserably.  Let's hope this one is going to be a hot game.

And it was a warm game.  I took a 3 and was happy with that.  I am sure there will be a few 6 strokes on this machine by others.

I took a 6 on Theater of Magic.  I know what to do on this machine but I just couldn't do it today.  Oh well.  

I ended up with a 40 which is 4.44 strokes per hole average.  I felt this would put me right in the middle of the field and not in the top 8 for the finals.  I turned in my card so they could log my score.

After finishing the tournament, it was still pretty early so I stayed and used my prepaid card to play some more machines.  I had a great game, for me, on Kiss (Stern) and played a few other games that weren't in the tournament and then headed home.  It was about 7pm when I got home.  I had another hour to wait for all of the cards to be turned in to see if I was in the finals.  I watched as scores came in and at about 7:45 it was confirmed that I wouldn't be in the finals, which was fine with me.  It would have been fun but I was already home and in comfy clothes.

As expected, I finished in the middle of the field, 18th out of 35.  But I only missed the playoffs by 4 strokes, or 3 if I wanted to play in a tie breaker.  If I had just had a better Mando, Godzilla, or Spider-Man.  

It was a fun but different tournament.  Usually I am playing with and meeting other people, but in this tournament I played by myself.  There were other groups playing together so I guess it would have been different if I knew others in the tournament.  That's one of the things about being on the road, you don't build up a base of friends where you are.

I played a lot of pinball today!  It was a good day!

That's it for today.  If you missed, Getting Mail Where You Have No Address, check it out.  I explain General Delivery, a service of the USPS.