We will be hosting two launch parties for the new Stern pinball, “Star Wars: Fall of the Empire”! The open launch party will be on November 18 at 6:30 pm and will be free to enter (besides coin drop). The format will be four strikes, head-to-head, with arena priority on Star Wars. The women’s launch party will be on November 8 at 4:30 pm and will cost $1 to enter plus coin drop. The format will be five strikes, head-to-head, with arena priority on Star Wars. Both events will be at The Avenue Cafe in Lansing.
We will have random drawings for prizes including a Star Wars translite, and the winner of each of the tournaments will receive an official Grand Champion plaque. All are welcome, no tournament experience required!
When I showed up for our last league night I was looking and feeling quite scattered. Unfortunately, this year I am serving on Academic Senate at CMU, and the meeting dates all this semester coincide exactly with league meetings, including the times that additional weeks get skipped. As a result, I will only be able to make it just in time for the start of our league meetings and Joseph will have the responsibility of setting up the Smackdown and checking people in. When I arrived and started trying to double check Joseph’s attendance sheet, I found that he had missed a few people and I got a little frustrated and complained that he isn’t very good with names. Linda said it sure sounded like I was throwing Joseph under the bus and I joked that Joseph is always happy to go under the bus for me. Then I felt bad for being a bit of a jerk and made clear to everyone that in fact, Joseph is an invaluable league assistant without whom it would be impossible for me to keep the league running!
Tim busy working on a billion-plus game of Godzilla.
Last time was our third night of Season 23, so we started a new pair of banks. The current set are known (by me and possibly Joseph, if no one else) as Democritus and Heraclitus. These two pre-Socratic philosophers make a natural pairing for a bank rotation, because there is a tradition of referring to them as “the laughing philosopher” and “the weeping philosopher.” Baroque painters loved to depict them representing those opposite attitudes. In reality, they didn’t quite live at the same time. Heraclitus was already gone when Democritus was born. Heraclitus is known mainly for various cryptic aphorisms (hence his other nickname, “The Obscure”) and for his belief that fire, representing change, was the fundamental principle of nature. He’s also my favorite pre-Socratic philosopher. Democritus is best known for having the most developed early theory of atoms.
Mark and Brian coining up on King Kong.
Perhaps it’s appropriate that I played bank Democritus, because I can only laugh at a night in which I managed to both set a personal best on Godzilla, have probably a personal top 5 game on Indiana Jones, and then also struggle to eke out 5 million on Metallica. Meanwhile, Tim was also in my group and managed to competely tear up Godzilla and then have a great game on Indiana Jones too, so those games were treating us well.
With only half of everyone having played each bank, the results aren’t too meaningful yet, but as things stand, Mike has the lead so far on Bank 3 (Democritus) and Danny on Bank 4 (Heraclitus).
Lexi playing James Bond in the Smackdown B finals.
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was Ghostbusters, and the B division played James Bond. Danny won with a walk-off on Ghostbusters (which he then didn’t actually walk off, but finished playing, because it was a great game) and I somehow managed to win on Bond, a game that frequently kicks my ass, including this past Friday when I got completely pulverized on it at RLM Amusements’ weekly tournament in Grand Rapids.
Joseph has an inexplicable knack for getting photos of me with my eyes closed. This is actually the better of the two photos he took of us. In the other one my eyes are completely closed.
I’ll be seeing everyone soon, though don’t forget that I won’t be around until shortly before the start of league due to my Senate service. We’ll have a Smackdown game TBD, which Joseph will get started for everyone when he arrives about 6 pm. See you soon!
It was our second league night of Season 23, so we finished the first full rotation of banks 1 and 2, which are named (for reasons best known to myself) Anaxagoras and Aristotle. We were also joined by a few new pinball seekers. The first was Brian, who was invited to join the proceedings late but who decided to just watch and hang out instead. (I kidded him that we already had a Brian/Bryan quota, but I’m pretty sure that isn’t why he declined to compete.) Brian had noticed an unusually large number of pinball players a couple of weeks previous when he had dropped into the Avenue to get a few games in, so he tracked down the league’s Facebook page and figured out how to find us again. Unfortunately, his schedule will prevent him from playing as a regular member, but he did put in a game for our Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament on Attack from Mars.
Josh hard at work pulping some fiction.
The second was the mysterious, pseudonymous Hayley Hyena, who did not join the league but whose name showed up on my Smackdown score sheet. Linda was able to point out Hayley in the bar, and I got to break the news to her that she had qualified for A division of the Smackdown with a 3+ billion AfM score. She ended up coming in second, not bad at all for someone’s first ever official IFPA tournament.
Nathan seems less than impressed with his bonus.
The third new player did actually join the league properly. Christy’s friend Jonathan, who has often spectated league in the past, and has played in one of the charity tournaments, decided to take the plunge and pay dues for the season.
I can’t resist writing a little bit about my own modest accomplishment of the night, which is that I set the top score for the league on Medieval Madness with about 67 million. There was a time when that wouldn’t have been expected to give you a first, but it seems to play tougher in recent times. I got about halfway through beating down the King of Payne’s castle when I drained my last ball. I haven’t finished the final castle in years so I fell to my knees with disappointment, but overall I really could not be sorry about that game!
Jason and Hayley playing in Smackdown finals.
Now that we have finished a complete rotation of banks 1 and 2, we can see the true winners of each bank. Danny took first on bank 1 with a whopping 494/500, giving him a 6 point lead over Tim. Over on bank 2, the winner was Brian K. with 492/500, giving him an impressive 14-point margin of victory over runner-up Joseph. At this point there is no way to say who is winning the league, because everyone drops the two lowest nights and we have only had two. After the next bank we will begin to see people break away from the current 25-way tie for first place.
Devon (Smackdown champ) and Jason (undercard winner) asked me to take their photo on the pool table. A pool player politely waited for them to get off before resuming his game. Apparently this was a parody of (or maybe I should say tribute to) Christy taking her own pool table portrait.
League ran a bit late due to having to switch out Star Wars (the substitute was Tales of the Arabian Nights), then we had our Smackdown finals on Attack from Mars and Black Knight: Sword of Rage (the B division game). Devon was the night’s champion, and Jason won the undercard.
That’s it for my recap of the good times! See you again very soon.
The second Tuesday in August marked the beginning of Season 23 of the venerable Lansing Pinball League, after a two month summer break. Everyone was anxious to start again, although we did have quite a few events to tide us over during the break. First we celebrated the end of the season with a league pizza party at Peter and Abi’s house. Then in June came the Rocket Robin round-robin charity tournament (won by Brian K. after a tiebreaker with Joseph) and the King Kong Launch Party (also won by Brian). The women’s club also had two tournaments during June and July, a King Kong launch party (won by me) and a July regular tournament (won by my longtime rival Karen C. from Grand Rapids).
New league member Craig plays while another new league member, Abi, watches.
We had three new joiners so far this season. Chris A. is a Detroit-area player who has previously attended one or two of the charity tournaments but hasn’t played in our league before. Craig is new to competitive pinball (but not to pinball). Abi has played in the Lansing Lightning Flippers tournaments and some of the charity tournaments, but not in the league before. We also had a couple of players returning after an absence of a season or two: Curtis (the director of the Royal Scot League) and longtime league member Mike.
Hanging out in the cool kids’ club with Linda and Devon.
The banks have been rearranged and given a new naming scheme this season. I decided rather than trying to group them by theme, which is getting harder and harder unless you want two banks called “movies” and “bands,” I would just group them spatially to make sure the crowds are as spread out as possible each night. That way we won’t have two groups playing side by side if it can be avoided. I then mostly arbitrarily named each bank after an Ancient Greek philosopher, although in each case there is one game in the bank that connected with the name. So far no one except me knows what any of the game connections are (and some of them are pretty thin).
Christy partying with AC/DC.
As in past seasons we will be randomly assigning players to one of two banks on odd-numbered meetings, and then they will play the other bank on the next meeting. The two meetings’ banks were named Anaxagoras and Aristotle. Anaxagoras was a pre-Socratic Ionian philosopher who believed in Nous (mind) as the fundamental cosmic principle. Like many pre-Socratics, he was also trying to explain nature and the heavens, and came up with a correct explanation of eclipses and meteors, among other insights. Aristotle you probably already know. He was a student at Plato’s academy who went on to have the second most distinguished career of the ancients, especially in creating an ethical theory that was extremely influential on subsequent periods of philosophy (and still is).
Oh yes, but back to pinball: I got to play in the cool kids’ group with Devon and Linda, though I didn’t exactly start the season by covering myself in glory. Getting into A division is going to be very tough with it capped at 8 people again so I expect a few of us are going to fight over the cut line all season. With only one night in the books it means we have not completed a full bank rotation so the overall standings don’t mean too much yet, but the first-half winner in bank Anaxagoras was Danny (surprise!) and in Aristotle was Brian (shocker). Tonight we will finish the rotation and then we’ll have the final positions.
Linda playing X-Men on the Twitch stream.
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was Elvira’s House of Horrors and my random drawing for a nearby B division game happened to hit on Scared Stiff! Curtis was the champion for Elvira’s HOH and our B division “undercard” champ was Peter. Peter also generously provided the streaming rig for league play and for the Smackdown finals again.
Smackdown undercard winner Peter and champion Curtis celebrate their wins.
Looking forward to seeing you all tonight for our second meeting and finishing up the first two banks! And if you didn’t make it to the first night it’s not too late to join as we drop the two lowest nights from everyone’s score, and allow anyone who has attended at least four of the eight nights to play in the final tournament.
Our annual charity pingolf tournament, known as Fear and Trembling (not, as popularly believed, “Fear and Loathing”) after the classic work by 19th century existentialist Søren Kierkegaard, will be held on October 21st at The Avenue Cafe in Lansing, Michigan. This tournament supports our regular charity, the Capital Area Humane Society.
In this format, you are scored golf style, according to how quickly you are able to achieve a goal. That goal might be something like “start any multiball” or “destroy two saucers.” If you complete it in one ball, that’s a hole in one. If you don’t complete it in three balls, your score is 4. The unique twist that as far as I know is only used in this specific tournament, is that you have to choose between two possible objectives, and are committed to that objective even if you accidentally achieve the other one. Hence, we make our dreadful choices with fear and trembling, knowing regret may be around the corner.
This will be a 9-hole course and the best (i.e. lowest) four scorers will go on to a three-game final round with pingolf match play scoring. You can start on the course anytime after 4 pm when The Avenue opens, with 7 pm being the cutoff for starting on the course. If you decide to start your card over, you are allowed to, for an additional buy-in cost, but you have to surrender your current card (no further play will be allowed on it). You will be allowed to keep your best score if you play more than one card.
The cost for your first card is $10, and additional cards are $5. The first $1 from each player is the IFPA sanctioning fee, and the rest goes to the designated charity, the Capital Area Humane Society. An additional $2 donation will be made by the tournament director on behalf of anyone who wears Halloween-themed outfits or a costume to this tournament!
It’s time for Rocket Robin, the summer charity tournament to benefit the Capital Area Humane Society! The entry fee will be $10, with $9 going to the charity and $1 to the IFPA for sanctioning.
The format will be straight up head-to-head match play in a round robin style. Because we almost certainly won’t have the time to do a complete round robin, we will instead use “Strict Swiss” pairing to do as much of a round robin as possible. At the end of 11 rounds the tournament will end and the person with the most wins (1 point per win) will be the champion.
As far as I know this is the only IFPA tournament in Michigan to use this format, so it’s unique if nothing else! There will be trophies, a translite giveaway, and the satisfaction of knowing you supported a worthwhile cause.
In a late-night two-match finale, number one seed Danny C. wrested back the LPL championship title from number two seed Tim Treichel. Derik took third in A division. There would be no repeat of Double Dan-ger, though, as Heather defeated Dan N. in B division finals, and Bryan got third in the division.
Derik plays John Wick against Tim in A division semifinals.
This was our first season using the new rule capping A division at eight players. This was an attempt to avoid having another very late night and having to resume the last round at a later date as in the past. It was not wholly successful, since the tournament still did not wrap up until around 1:30 am and could have gone even longer. By the time things finished, bar staff had turned all of the pinball games off upstairs, leaving the players to turn Foo Fighters back on during the match.
Danny playing John Wick against Tim in the first of their two-round finals.
Danny, as the winner-bracket winner, had a very long wait before finals started. There is always a big delay as the second-chance bracket finishes playing out, which is why some leagues have single-game matches in that bracket. The league may be forced to institute that change for next season because the players keep getting better and matches keep taking longer. The tendency for some of the modern games to have long ball times is also a contributing factor. The league director was very worried when one of the games chosen in the second round of the final match was the infamous tournament-wrecker James Bond.
Third place Derik poses with Tim, who had not yet played the final match.
In the first round of A division finals, Tim swept Danny, winning on both Danny’s pick (Foo Fighters) and their own (John Wick). Since Tim was in the second-chance bracket, this sent them into a second round. This time Danny picked Bond (to the TD’s silent dismay) and won. Tim made an unexpected choice for the second game, taking Danny a couple of steps over to play Medieval Madness. An old saying about Medieval Madness goes, “Madness for show, castles for go.” In other words, stacking up Madnesses on the saucer is flashy, but the real points in the game are all in knocking castles down. Danny disproved this by playing Madness for show and go. To the delight of onlookers, he lined up four Madnesses on the saucer with Trolls lit. This allowed him to defeat the trolls during multiball, thus bringing Troll Madness into it for the complete set of madnesses. It was the highest-scoring Multiball Madness this reporter had ever seen, totaling about 27 million points. Neither player ended up with a gigantic score, but the Medieval Madness at The Avenue has not been known for huge scores in recent times. Danny took the win and the championship, commenting that he thought Tim was going to take him out.
Second place Tim and new-old champion Danny.
Eleven players played in B division, which finished a couple of hours ahead of A. Due to the awkward number of people, there were a lot of byes in the first round. The rule was that only important ties for seed would be broken, which means ties to get into A division or to get a first round bye. Otherwise, ties would be broken automatically according to which player had the highest scoring single night. The only two players who tied this season were Devon and Heather who tied for the top of B division. It turned out that they both got byes, sparing everyone the wait for a tiebreaker game. The automatic tie went in Devon’s favor so he got top seed in B division.
Dan plays Dungeons and Dragons against Heather in the B division final match.
The final match in B division was between Heather in the winner bracket and Dan in the second-chance bracket. Heather chose Dungeons and Dragons and rode a good set of multiballs to victory. Dan then chose Deadpool, and neither did all that well, but Heather managed another win to take the B division without having to go into a second round. Despite having expressed disappointment at not making A division this season, she later commented, “It’s better to reign in B than serve in A.”
The B division podium: Bryan (third), Dan (second), and Heather (first). Photo by Joseph.
The Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament was also contested, on The Beatles. For obvious reasons a lot of people did not play in finals, so we had only a two-person B division. The Smackdown champion was Danny and the B division winner was Peter.
Although Season 22 is officially concluded, the post-season split flipper tournament known as Super-Ball XII will take place tomorrow at 7 pm. The format is the same as for league playoffs, except there will probably only be one division. A Tuesday Night Smackdown tournament will also be open to all. The Best Game, Worst Game, and Most Improved awards will also be given out at the Super-Ball.
This was our last qualifying night for Season 22 and perhaps the biggest thing it decided was who would make it above the cut into the newly truncated A division. In the past we have often had 10 or 12 people play in A, but the league had voted to cap A division at 8 people this season in order to allow finals to retain its current double elimination format while not spilling onto an additional night. We’ll see if that desideratum is obtained. Peter, Devon, and I (Heather) were all on the bubble within a few points of each other going into the night. I have played in A division for many seasons running now, usually around 9th seed, and I really did not want to drop into B. The three Bubble Kids were all snooping around peeking at each others’ games and score sheets through the evening.
Derik and Dan demonstrate that LPL is, at heart, a beer league.
The biggest event of the night, though, was a guest appearance by past league member Allen, who was back in town (from his home state, Texas) for Pinball at the Zoo. Derik texted me ahead of the meeting to ask if the Smackdown game could be Deadpool in honor of Allen, and I reluctantly set aside the game the random number generator had come up with – The Beatles – to do that favor. Don’t worry, we’ll play The Beatles for our Smackdown tonight instead. Everyone who knew Allen when played in the league, while he was temporarily living in the area, was delighted to see him. He also got to meet the newer league members who arrived after his departure. It made for a jovial night despite the tension of the end of qualifying.
Allen plays Deadpool in the Smackdown finals.
Peter was streaming the Smackdown as usual, which allowed him to show off the rig to Allen. Allen had already been following some of our streaming on Twitch and I saw him in the chat a few times. Probably unsurprisingly, Allen tore up Deadpool in the Smackdown finals for the win, but there was a dark horse contender in the form of Abi. In her first Smackdown finals, she qualified as third seed, and went on to come in second in the finals. Derik triumphed over the B division on Monster Bash.
Smackdown champion Allen and undercard winner Derik celebrate their wins.
After the dust settled, it turned out that Peter had squeaked into A division, leaving Devon and me tied at the top of B. Using my automatic tiebreaker, Devon will get the better seed since he had the highest single night performance between us. If, however, there turns out to be a significant tie (meaning a tie for a bye), we will play an actual tiebreaker on a random game.
The Smackdown A division lineup, from first to fourth: Allen, Abi, Peter, and Heather.
I’ll be seeing everyone soon for the dramatic conclusion of Season 22! Make sure you’re there at 7 when I take attendance!
In accordance with the adage that anything worth doing is worth doing late, I bring you the recap of the Ethan Reynolds Memorial Pinball Tournament. The tournament was held on April 1 at The Avenue Cafe in Lansing and used a group strikes format. I chose the format because I thought that group play was most suited to Ethan’s gregarious temperament. The charity beneficiary was the Capital Area Humane Society. Although they are already the most frequent beneficiary of the Lansing Pinball League’s charity tournaments, in this case they were chosen by Ethan’s family as a charity that was important to him. Twenty-eight people played in the tournament, which is one of the highest turnouts I have had for a charity tournament. Attendees included both league regulars and some of Ethan’s friends who were new to playing pinball tournaments. There was a wonderful spirit of joy and fun in the crowd despite the sad event that had brought everyone together.
Shylia shows off the Foo Fighters translite she won in the charity raffle that Mike conducted.
I did not want my usual $10 entry fee for charity tournaments to be a barrier to anyone who wanted to celebrate Ethan with us, so I made the entry fee “pay what you wish” and did not even have to collect $1 for the IFPA because an anonymous donor covered our fees. Despite this, I was overwhelmed by the generosity of attendees and received many large donations, including a big roll of bills from Pinball Pete’s and a Foo Fighters translite that Mike Stewart raffled off to bring in even more money. I had an anonymous donor pledging to match any donations dollar-for-dollar and at the end of the night I was a little nervous to present them with what was frankly a higher bill than they expected. (“I hope you’re sitting down,” I texted.) Not only did they cheerfully make good on it, they later went on to secure a matching donation of $1,000 from their employer. I received $1,226 in donations from players and other donors and another $1,226 from the anonymous matching donor, allowing me to present a check for $2,452 to the Capital Area Humane Society in Ethan’s name. They were rather startled (in a good way) when I read the amount to them. With the matching donor also garnering their own matching donation of $1,000, that brings the total amount raised by this tournament to $3,452!
People hanging out in between rounds.
The tournament itself was also a success, though I may be rather biased in saying so, for more than one reason. I was originally going to run a seven strikes “fair strikes” format, but I began to worry at the very large number of people who had marked themselves “interested” on Facebook. In the past we have been able to finish a seven strikes tournament by about midnight, but that was with a relatively small group. I cautiously decided to have a sliding number of strikes based on how many people attended. For 25 or more I announced that it would be six strikes, so that is what we ended up doing. We got done around 11 pm, which I consider optimal for a tournament, although there was some luck involved in things ending quite as early as they did.
Peter tending his streaming setup while talking to Orneal.
The tournament came to a dramatic conclusion and one that I most certainly was not expecting. I was playing remarkably well all night and had not taken last in any round, so with four people left standing, I went into finals with four strikes, against Tim with four, Danny with five, and Joseph with five. The final game drawn was Dungeons and Dragons, which was still quite new to all of us. When the game ended, I had won it, so I knew I was going to finish high in the tournament, but I didn’t realize just how high until Danny said, “She’s knocked us all out.” I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen this happen in a group strikes tournament: a three-way tie for second. Joseph and Danny each took one strike and Tim took two, leaving everyone but me with six strikes. It was my first major tournament win in a long while and broke me out of a slump.
Dan, Lexi, and Mike waiting for their next matches.
I had previously announced that any tiebreakers would be ceremonial only, so the official results have the three-way tie intact. I offered for the other three to play off to decide who got which trophy, and they agreed to do that, playing one more random game, though I forget which one. I think my head was still spinning too much from the excitement of winning. Tim got second and Danny got third. Sadly for Joseph, I had only made three trophies, and he ended up in fourth.
Fourth place Joseph, third place Danny, second place Tim, and the winner Heather (me). I like how this is in order of height, but reverse order of finishing position. Thanks to the random bar patron who took this for me.
Let me express my gratitude one more time to our wonderful matching donor, to Pinball Pete’s, and to all the players and spectators who gave so generously. This was an amazing tournament both for contributing so much to charity and for being a lot of fun. The only thing that would have made this tournament better is if Ethan had been able to attend it himself.
