Pinball Tournament Winner Winner #1!

 St. Paul, MN

I took a selfie with some pinball tables tonight.

Bad Penny Weekly Tournament

Tonight I went to Bad Penny in St. Paul to play in their weekly tournament.  I have been practicing at home and my ball control skills are noticeably better so in my mind I set a goal to win a tournament this year and to play more tournaments.  Tonight was the night!  I played pretty well for 8 rounds and was able to pull off the win.  I placed 1st out of 24 players.  Pinball tournaments, in general, contain a fair amount of luck.  I was matched with the right players on the right tables.  The tournament went from 7 to 10pm with as many rounds as fit in that time frame.  You play 1 table per round with 4, or sometimes 3, players per round.  Each group in each round gets points, 7 for first, 5 for 2nd, 3 for 3rd, and 1 for 4th so you really don't want a 4th place.

Round 1 I finished 3rd on Pharaoh for 3 points.

Round 2 I finished 1st on Metallica Remastered for the full 7 points.

I was player 1.  Players 2, 3, and 4 still had a ball to play but they didn't catch me.

Round 3 I finished 2nd for 5 points on Sinbad, a classic table.

On round 4 I took 2nd place on Jurassic Park.  This is one of my weakest games so I was very very happy with 2nd.  I really need to practice this game more or maybe even buy one.

Round 5 was on Big Guns and I took 2nd.  At this point I was bubbling up to the top of the field and as you move up you have to play the players at the top that are having a good night.

Round 6 was another 2nd on Theater of Magic.  At this point I was in the top 6 or so.

Round 7 was a very good draw for me.  I was on Pharaoh again with some of the top players in the state.  I have a much better chance at placing well on Pharaoh than I do on modern game like Venom.  I had a clutch game and placed 2nd and this put me in 1st place at about 20 minutes to 10pm.  This meant there would be 1 more round.  I would be matched with the top players and needed to play well.

Sitting tied for 1st going into what would be the final round.

Play well I did!  I had an amazing ball 2 with 1.5 billion and it carried me to a win which put me in first place outright.  For modern games, Star Wars was a good draw for me.  I am confident on it and some other players, even top players, don't like it.  

When the dust settled, I was in first place.  There was a playoff for 2nd and I was really glad I didn't have to play another game to secure the win.  

I took the mandatory photo of my cash winnings, on the table I won it all on, with the scores in the background as an added bonus.  I was player 3, the player with the biggest score.  :)

It was super fun to play and even more super fun to win.  Since it was the first tournament in the area for the year, I will be the top player in Minnesota, if just for 1 day.  :)

That's it for today.  If you missed, A Not So Silent Night of Player Pianos, check it out.  We watched a silent movie in a guys garage while a piano played itself.