My Biggest Tournament Yet, and in Germany

This weekend we are in Bielefeld Germany attending the German Pinball Expo. It's exactly like Chicago Pinball Expo only a lot smaller, a lot less Englishy, and in Germany. We happened to be in the area so we went.  

The Expo opened at 1pm on a Friday so we got there at about 12:40. It was a process getting checked in but eventually we were in and playing pinball!  The first thing I did was head upstairs to play my 5 games of Pinball to qualify for the main event. 

I got to wait in another line to check in but soon I will be playing pinball!

All these machines are for the tournament and I only get to play 5. I really love tournaments but I am always a little disappointed when you can't play or practice on machines. I'm there to play my best. The 5 machines I chose were

Ali

Star Wars (2017)

Blackout 

Playboy 

Star Trek (Bally)

All of these machines play quick so I was done qualifying in less than an hour. I wasn't overly happy with my performance but after refreshing the tournament page for 9 hrs, I ended up 53 out of 359 entrants. 128 players qualified for the main tournament so I would be playing at 10 on Saturday!

After qualifying Donna and I each had a 5 Euro beer. I think Germans would take to the streets if they were asked pay $18 for a Budweiser at an event like back home. 

After qualifying Donna and I played Pinball!  We played machines we had never played before as well as machines we know and love. 

Tournent Trophies!

This was a speaker lighting company making accessories so you can plus up your purchase. 

Pokemon, which I still haven't played. 

Pinball and Heavy Metal seem to go hand in hand here. I played with this guy the next day and told him l liked his jacket er vest. 

More machines than I expected, in the free play area, had issues. This Aztec had outlane save protection. 

Later in the day I played two 5 Euro Classics Cards. You buy a card and you play 5 games. When you finish, you are given points based on where your scores fall amongst all other scores on that same machine. During the day you can watch your card sink lower and lower and then below the cutoff line. I used my cards to play games I had never played before. 

I fit right in with all of the old white men. After putting up my first card I took a break from playing pinball to play more pinball. 

You can plus up your machine with a cool $2000 animating topper, an ornament that goes on top of your Pinball machine and looks bad ass!  Because pinball machines aren't expensive enough. 

Time for another beer and this cool beer tag. 

This Aztec (the same one shown earlier with the outlane ball saver) had a window cut in its side so you could see its guts. 

The show closed at 11pm on Friday but we were out of there much earlier. I need a healthy dinner and a good night's sleep in case I make the main event which I already spoiled for you. 

The walk back to the hotel was good and soon Donna was taking photos from the room, of me buying dinner, Doner Kebabs, or shawarma as we call it. 

Did I say Healthy Dinner?  Well clearly that was a lie. 

The next morning we got up and ate expensive hotel breakfast. It was the first breakfast we have paid for on this trip and the worst breakfast. We had to be back at the Expo for tournament check in at 9:30 so we took the easy out and I can't play pinball all day on an empty stomach. 

On the walk over we saw;

A German Cat

A German Gnome that loves trains mural

and these cute small houses with lovely gardens. 

Also this German trailer that had a I Love Pinball bumper sticker. 

When we got there we waited I line to get in.  They announced, in German, that all tournament players should skip the line. Donna tried to get in with me but was denied. 

Setting up the streaming rig

Again more pinball machines I can't play even though we are just waiting around. 

My wristbands and my lunch!  

Soon the tournament started, just kidding, we had to wait around for quite a while. I sat and listened to people talk to each other in German. 

When the tournament started, I was on Ali. I was glad to play on a machine I had already played and one that I know exactly what to do. I have 1 ball that didn't even touch my flippers, a house ball or maybe a haus ball here in Germany, but still scored enough for a 2nd place in that round. We were playing 9 rounds today and the first round took an hour because one of the machines broke. Luckily the rest of the tournament went well. 

The 128 people sometimes felt like 150. It was packed and kind of hot so between rounds I sat in a room that had the windows open and the fewest number of machines. 

About halfway through the tournament a fellow player came by and asked if I was the guy from Minneapolis and, he asked me in English. I said yes and it turned out to be a player from Portland and Seattle living in Berlin. We talked between rounds for the rest of the tournament. It was really great and it's just a small example of the great people you can meet playing pinball.

The following rounds went as follows;

Arena 3rd Place (I had never played this one before)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2nd Place 

King Kong 4th place (boooooooo!)

Flash Gordon 4th place. This one was very disappointing. 

Iron Man 1st Place, yay!

Blackout 1st Place, we are picking up steam!

John Wick 3rd place, bleh!

At this point, with 1 more round to go, I looked at the standings. I was just out of contention for the finals, so the pressure was off. 

My final round was on World Cup Soccer or Doggy Soccer as it is lovingly called. I played great and got 1st place!  

I ended up with 39 points, good for 40th. If I had finished 1 place higher in any of my rounds, I would have been in the playoffs for finals. If I had finished 1 place higher in 2 of my rounds or 2 places higher in 1 of them, I would be in the finals. I am really happy with how I did having not played much pinball for the past month and being in a completely new environment, but there is that thought of, just one spot better!

Oh well. It was a really fun experience and I met some great people, and even connected with one of them through social networks. 

To celebrate playing pinball pretty good, we got German Indian take out and watched Snooker on Eurosport in German. 

Our pinballing in Bielefeld isn't done yet, we still get to go tomorrow and play pinball just for fun. Monday it's off to one of the north most cities in Germany, right on the border with Denmark, Flensburg!