A Pinball Tournament With No Power?

Savage, MN

I got to play on stream.  You can see it here at about the 2h4m mark.

Pinball in Savage

Today I went to The Northstar Pinball Collective to play in a tournament.  The collective opened at 3pm and the tournament was scheduled to start at 5pm so I got there around 4 for some practice.  When I arrived there were people out front as well as on the patio.  I walked up and was quickly told the power was out.  Well darn!  You can't play pinball without power unless you have one of these and they didn't have one.  I hung out with the crowd out front a bit and found out the utility company estimated the power would be back on at 5:30 and that the tournament was still on so I went in and paid my entrance.  We all hung out talking and at 5:08 the porch lights came on and everyone cheered!  I headed in and got 2 and 1/3rd games in before the power went out again.  Bummer.  I headed back outside and hung out some more.  The weather was great and I got to meet some new people so that was cool.  Soon people started getting bored and started making up games to play.

Fire Hole

Someone brought 2 tubs of the small Fireball Cinnamon "Whiskies" and shortly after drinking a few, a tossing game they called Fire Hole broke out.  It's like Corn Hole but you throw the empty plastic bottles into the tub instead of bean bags into a hole in a board.

People chit chat outside waiting for the power to come on.

Fireball was passed out but luckily no one else passed out.

The Fire Hole Game got intense.

People that were eliminated moved on to competitive hula hooping.

The finals matched 3 competitors in a round of single elimination.  I didn't get a shot of the winner but there was much rejoicing.

Feeeeeeeeeel The Power!

At about 6:15 the power returned and we all piled in for some quick practice before the tournament started.  After a bit of practice someone turned off the lights and everyone panicked but it turns out they turned off the lights to get peoples attention for announcements in the other room.  I attended the announcements while others continued to play.  

The tournament was a 9 Strike Tournament with a 0, 1, 2, 3 format.  Zero strikes for first place and then each place behind first gets 1 more strike than the place above them.

It was Dan's Birthday Tournament so they put a bounty on him.  

If you knocked him out you got $40 bucks.  In addition to Dan, you also got money if you knocked out Dan or Dan or Dana or Dani (basically everyone playing with the name Dan or Dan in their name).  The rest of the tournament money went to 1st - 4th place. Dan ended up winning so he got first place and also got to keep his $40 Bounty.

The space is great.  It's a warehouse with tons of machines and another ton of machines being worked on / restored.  It's owned or co-owned by, Luke Nahorniak, a top player who wasn't there because he was off in Edmonton winning 2 major tournaments.

Machines that are work in progress.  Me too machines, me too.

The machines were in great working condition.

I even got to play 5 or 6 machines I had never played before.

Also, tacos were provided!  It was a great spread.

I'm good at pinball, well at least getting the ball "stuck".

Here is a photo of the streaming rig.  They can move it around to different machines and I didn't know it at the time, but there was commentary going on in the other room.

Did I mention I am good at pinball?

I like to take a photo when I "roll" a machine.  this looks like a low score, and it might be, but it isn't as low as it looks.  You have to add 100K because the 100K light is lit.  You can see it in her crown.

Well now you can see it in her hat.

I ended up tied for 25th out of 50 players which is right about where I want for now.

I had some really good games and I had some really bad games.  I competed on a few machines I had never played before so next time things will go better, possibly.  I also learned that I don't need to worry about if I am playing "correctly", just go for a winning score.  A good example of this was I was playing Road Kings, a game I had not played up until today.  I played 1 game in practice and got 366,270 points.  When it came time for the tournament I watched a good player and tried to mimic what they were doing so I would be "Playing Right".  I ended up with 111,290 which was good for 3rd place.  If I had just done what I did during practice I would have gotten 2nd place.  Oh well,  Lessons learned.

Here are the raw numbers for the evening.

There were opportunities to do better but I still feel good about where I placed.  It's my hope to improve as I get to know the machines in the area but also to just have fun playing and enjoy meeting new people.  Round 5, the streamed round, was bitter sweet.  I had to come in 2nd or 1st to survive and we were all on the brink of being eliminated.  I ended up 2nd and got 1 strike which brought me to 8 in total.  That round ended the evening of competitive play for 3rd and 4th place but they both stuck around an played more pinball. 

We are really enjoying Minneapolis.  We were looking forward to it, but Donna and I keep saying stuff like, "this is way better than we expected".  It's a great place and you should visit us.  I am really enjoying getting integrated into a great community of people and being surrounded by fantastic pinball machines.  I am looking forward to exploring the food culture here too, and when I do I will write about it here.  If you want a jump start on the food culture thing you can watch this.

That's it for today.  If you missed, Let's Go Lynx, check it out.  We went to an awesome WNBA game!