Lansing Pinball League

Tag: finals

No bad luck here: Danny wins Season 13

Derik (third), Danny (first), and Mike (second), in front of the tournament-ending game, Deadpool.

Thirteen must be Danny’s lucky number as he emerged from November 12’s final tournament as the victor of Lansing Pinball League’s Season 13. In fact, since things wrapped up after midnight, that added another 13 – November 13 – to the count. And another three, since Danny is the league’s third-ever champion, taking the crown from two-season winner Mike (who in turn wrested it from 10-season winner Chris). Mike joked that, like Chris (who took a season off after his first loss), this means he can now quit the league. I don’t think anyone really expects that to happen, at least not as long as The Avenue still has Ghostbusters.

Danny finishes putting in his GC initials after his tournament-winning Deadpool game.

Seventeen people qualified to play in finals, but Jon didn’t attend (we miss you, Jon!) so we had an even eight people in the A and B division brackets. I had squeaked into A division with a one-point lead over Biff, and my reward was having to play top seed Mike in the first round. Surprisingly I got him on one of his choices, which tipped the balance of power and should have made it possible for me to win. Unfortunately, I lost on his next choice and then again on my own ace in the hole, Medieval Madness (despite a strong start). In the ~~loser~~ second chance bracket I faced Josh, again won on one of his choices, lost a heartbreaking game of Batman in which I put up a personal best of something like 680M (he responded by nearly tripling that on a third ball rally from around 300) and then, demoralized, completely choked on Medieval Madness. I went out like I went in: 8th place.

Winner Jason and second-place Biff with their plaques. Jason also wants us to see his Jurassic Park flyer for some reason.

Meanwhile, we had a very heated B division battle. No one was looking forward to facing Jason, who is frankly too good to be slumming it down in B but was knocked there by missing too many league nights. Although Jason did end up winning the bracket, it was only after a very tough, two-round fight against Biff. The B bracket took so long that third place Lexi had to leave before the winners’ photos were taken.

Lexi with her third place award.

The A division took even longer, of course. In the early hours of the morning, Mike had to slog it out and see if he could win two rounds against Danny. Fortunately for everyone’s bedtime though not fortunately for Mike, it ended after one round, on a game of Deadpool. Danny walked away with over a billion and Mike, as player 2, had to try to beat that on what would have had to be an epic third ball rally. Mike didn’t give up and did start to creep his way up with a lot of work on Ball 3, but ended up draining somewhere in the 200 millions.

Biff playing in the final match against Jason. This is my favorite cheap camera trick…

I had predicted a win for Tim this season, but maybe next season will be Tim’s, since this one only got him a 5th place (“only” – I’d sure trade for it). Mike predicted “the season of Derik” but Derik went home with the third place plaque. My own nemesis Josh got fourth. If you’re going to knock me out of a tournament you could at least have the courtesy to go all the way!

A less arty picture of Biff in B finals.

Everyone who did not get a plaque took home a Lansing Pinball League “LOSER” ribbon. Matt had originally had those made for a past season and found his stash of the remaining ribbons when he was moving to Kalamazoo. He passed them on to me and then I proceeded to forget where I had stored them, causing Joseph to go home during the tournament, fail to find them, come back, then go home again because in the meantime I had remembered where they were and couldn’t raise him on the phone (I mean the landline, Joseph does not generally carry his cell) because he was already on his way back to the bar.

Danny and Tim, hard at work in the pinball mines.

The night wasn’t all disappointments for me either. At the start of the night, Tim announced that he wanted to present something to thank me and Joseph for the work we do for the league. He then pulled out a plastic cut-out of Rudy from FunHouse that he picked up at Chicago Pinball Expo. They used to cut these “keychains” out of the unused parts of the game’s plastics to give away as promotional items. I was really touched. Everyone knows I am a huge fan of FunHouse. A lesser known fact is that it is also Joseph’s favorite game. He’s the one who got me into it.

My Tuesday Night Smackdown medal (designed by Joseph) and my plastic of Rudy.

The other thing that happened is that I won Tuesday Night Smackdown for the first time. I was sulking from being knocked out of the tournament and had not done any qualifying on Scared Stiff. Joseph encouraged me to go put a game on so I grumpily stomped over and started a game with a few minutes to spare in qualifying. I ended up getting to Scared Stiff and nearly but not quite finishing the Stiff-O-Meter. I hadn’t looked at the qualifying scores and it turned out I had the #2 seed. It didn’t matter much because it turned out that (even though Joseph made medals for two divisions) we only had three people qualified who weren’t either gone or still playing in the main finals. Thus I won a three-person game of Scared Stiff against Joseph and Bryan to take the title of Tuesday Night Smackdown Champion. In addition to this being my first ever Smackdown win, it is technically my first ever open IFPA tournament win. I have won an open tournament before (the non-IFPA-sanctioned first Fear and Trembling, which only three people showed up to) and I have won several women’s tournaments. But this means my IFPA record no longer has “0” in my “wins” column. No, I now can proudly display a “1” there for having one a single three-player game of Scared Stiff. It’s both sad and funny in equal measures that my longtime earnest desire to win an open tournament has been fulfilled by that. This is why the philosophers say that life is absurd.

Tonight is the traditional split flipper tournament, Super-Ball XIII (AKA the Zen tournament). Teams have the chance to win a pair of spectacular trophies from our friends at Prime Time Awards. We will also have a Tuesday Night Smackdown and will give out the (so far secret) Most Improved award and the (not so secret) Worst Score ribbon. I hope to see you all tonight at 7 pm sharp to start the tournament!

November 26, 2019
We have a winner: Mike becomes second-ever LPL champion

Joseph gets the brackets ready.

When the Lansing Pinball League was young, there was Chris, and there was everyone else. Chris’s victory was so certain that everyone focused instead on who would be the runner up. Matt called it “the Battle for Second.” After we switched to having a final playoff tournament instead of just basing standings on the points earned in the regular season, he had to work harder. There were some close calls, including a skill shot plunge on Addams Family that won him a narrow victory over Alex, and the time he had to battle out of the second-chance bracket and defeat Mike S. in two matches to defend his title. Yet for 10 seasons he remained the undefeated champion of the league. As Season 11 dawned, murmurs began: it’s time for a new champion. Who will it be? The strongest contenders were Mike, Tim, and Danny. I think Danny was generally favored, but Chris himself told me he thought it would be Tim.

Tim plays his last ball in the deciding game against Chris.

We did get a new champion, but it didn’t happen the way people pictured, with a tense final match between Chris and the new winner. Instead, Chris got knocked into the second-chance bracket by Danny and had to fight Tim there. It went to a third game on Getaway, Tim’s choice. I wondered if Tim had chosen wisely; he’s very strong on Getaway but so is Chris. In fact, it was an epic game of Getaway in which Chris put up about a billion points that stymied Mike in his near-miss season. I got up on a chair to watch the playfield without distracting the players, because in a previous game there had been a flipper issue reported that I was not able to replicate. In the time it took me to get up on the chair and get situated, Tim had finished Ball 1 at over 200 million. I was stunned. “How did you get that score so fast?” I said. He replied, “Loops.” He had done something crazy like 10 speed loops, maybe more, whereas the most I had ever done in my life was five. I had never seen someone use speed loops as a tournament strategy before. In the last ball, Chris went up needing to make up something close to 300 million points. I thought he might do it as he seems to thrive on this kind of pressure. Sometimes I think he only really starts in Ball 3. But this time it was different. He drained early as spectators gasped, then went over to shake Tim’s hand. Tim had slain the giant. Chris didn’t even take home a third place trophy.

Tim and Chris react to Tim’s victory and the audience’s applause. Sorry for the quality, but it does capture something of the moment.

Tim wasn’t close to finished climbing the hill yet, as he had to go on to play Danny in the semi-finals. He lost that battle, though everyone thought it could have gone either way. Tim got third place this season, but he had two accomplishments that couldn’t be taken away: he had finished the regular season in first place ahead of Chris, something that has been done only once before; and he knocked Chris out of the finals, so far a unique accomplishment (though he certainly had considerable help from Danny). After Tim and Danny finished their match, I wanted to take the “alternate reality” photos. This is a tradition that allows the third place player to go home without waiting for finals. We take two winners’ photos, with the potential first and second place winners switching trophies so we can use the “correct” one after the winner is decided. This time Mike refused. “I’m not touching it,” he said, of the first place trophy, believing that doing so had robbed him of wins in the past.

Chad and Mike working on their B and A division wins, respectively.

Danny and Mike went on to finals, with Mike in the winners’ bracket. They had a very high-scoring game of Star Wars, both around 1.8 billion. Mike tilted away a bonus that would have given him perhaps 100 million in breathing room, which he was quietly cursing himself for as Danny stepped up. Danny seemed sure to win, especially when he started a multiball; but he drained early and ended up about 2 million points short. Danny chose to play Deadpool, and himself had a very unfortunate tilt which may well have cost him the bonus he needed to win. It ended there, with Mike as the league’s new champion and Danny in second.

Third place Tim, second place Danny, and first place Mike. Unusually, this picture was taken when we actually knew who had won!

Joseph wrote up his own account of the night on his Livejournal (don’t laugh) and in it he said, “It tells you of [Chris’s] skill that, ultimately, it took the cooperative work of three people to dethrone him.” Mike said that he had to admit that there was “an asterisk” next to his win in the history books because he had not had to play Chris at all.

Meanwhile, the B division was itself fraught with drama. Most people assumed Jason, a long-time player who was in B only because he joined midseason, would just mow his way through the bracket. I felt sorry for the B players for having such a ringer in their midst. Instead, Jason had a bad night and was knocked out of the second-chance bracket by Ed, Terry’s brother who is a relative novice. It just goes to show one of the charms of pinball: once in a while, the most seasoned player can have a bad night and the greenest player a great one. Karen took third place and the final battle was between Tyler in the winners’ bracket and his father, Chad, in the second chance bracket. In an upset, Chad battled his way out of the swamp to win two matches against Tyler and take home the B division first place trophy.

The B division winners: third place Karen, second place Tyler, and first place Chad.

The Smackdown finalists: Jason, Heather, Derik (the winner), and Dan. Dan wasn’t quite ready with his dukes when Joseph snapped the photo, so it looks like he’s just making a subtle threat.

We also had a Smackdown on Theatre of Magic, though the participation was limited due to some people still being in the main tournament when we held finals for the Smackdown. Derik won, causing Mike to say, “It’s just like you said, your plan was to throw the main tournament so you could win the Smackdown.” Derik replied, “You weren’t supposed to tell anyone that!” Mike said, “You said it right in front of three people!”

I went home without a trophy this time, but with the glory of having played in A division and a big box of karate trophies. Wait, what? You read it right: Danny donated a huge number of old trophies for me to recycle – sorry, “upcycle” – into trophies for my charity tournaments. Joseph noted, “If you’re good at karate, you can just take whatever trophies you want.”

The Undercard winner, Joseph. The other two Undercard players had left before I took the photo.

Tonight is our post-season “Zen” (split flipper) tournament, known as Super-Ball XI. Matt started the tradition way back in Season 1, when he went to the trophy shop and said, “just give me the cheesiest thing you have for trophies.” Since I’ve taken over, I have just told them “we want the same thing again” and they have continued to pick out something great for us. This time they’re a bit wider than usual and a nice sparkly green color, with angels (or maybe they’re Winged Victories) on top. They say “Super-Ball XI Zen Champion” and they can be yours! Anyone can win the Zen tournament since skill is equalized by the unusual play. We will also be randomly giving away two translites courtesy of the Stern Army. I hope to see you tonight at 7:30 for the Super-Ball.

November 27, 2018
Plus ça change: Chris wins season 10

Chris playing Iron Maiden in the finals… and valiantly concentrating despite the person walking by in his peripheral vision.

The league’s tenth season, and the first of the post-Matt era, ended Tuesday night with another victory for the undefeated defending champion. Chris made his way through the winners’ bracket of the A division playoffs, ending with a 2-0 win against Danny on Iron Maiden (which had just arrived at the bar that day) and The Walking Dead. Third place went to Tim.

Danny playing Iron Maiden in the finals while Joseph and Derik watch.

In the B division, I defended my top seeded position and paralleled Chris by finishing in the winner’s bracket with a 2-0 final match. I had to face league newcomer Lupe in the finals after knocking her into the second-chance bracket with a hard-fought 2-1 victory in the third round. The third place finisher in B, Chad, was also new to the LPL this season.

We did also have Smackdown and Rookie Challenge tournaments, though several of the would-be qualifiers were still playing in the main tournament and had to forgo finals. Joseph was the Smackdown champion, while the Rookie champ was Caleb.

A division winners Chris (1st), Tim (3rd), and Danny (2nd).

B division winners me (1st), Lupe (2nd), and Chad (3rd). Lupe is also wearing her “most improved” ribbon. Photo by Joseph.

I attempted to start a new tradition this season by giving out a pair of recognition ribbons for specific accomplishments. I asked Joseph to plot a graph of scores and use it to choose the person who had the best claim on being “most improved” over the course of the season. His calculations pointed to Lupe, whom I bestowed the ribbon on as we began the evening. She said she couldn’t wait to show it to her students, and wore it on her shirt for the rest of the evening. I also had long been planning to give a ribbon for the most catastrophically bad single game score of the season, but late in the season, Chris unintentionally went and stole the award by slam tilting Indiana Jones for an official score of 0. Fortunately he took the award in good humor (as did the rest of the crowd when I announced it). Derik surprised us with six T-shirts donated by Pinball Pete’s, which I did a random drawing to give away.

I was very nervous prior to running my first finals, but everything went very smoothly, helped considerably by the good sportsmanship of all the competitors. The only confusing ruling I had to make was about a glitch on Game of Thrones that resulted in Player 1 not being able to choose a house, but that was solved by plunging off Player 1 and having the opponents play as Players 2 and 3.

Dan and Lupe take time out from their match to mug for the camera.

Sadly, Matt was not able to attend finals, since he has already moved to the Kalamazoo area for his new job and didn’t want to make the drive. I am hoping that with a little cajoling we may still be able to get him to come out for Super-Ball X, the Zen Tournament. What’s that, you might ask? It’s our traditional post-season, just-for-fun tournament! We play as pairs, with each partner taking one flipper. It’s a rare chance to enjoy the camaraderie of team play in pinball, and it’s invariably very entertaining. There will be trophies for the top pair. I still cherish my first Zen trophy because it was the first pinball trophy I ever won.

Thank you to everyone in the league for a successful and fun season. I will see you all (I hope) on May 22 for Super-Ball X. All league members for this season, including those who did not meet the requirements to play in the finals, are welcome to play.

P.S.: Don’t forget to check out all the photos I have taken Tuesday night and all season! There are a lot more in the gallery than are posted in my recaps.

May 11, 2018
Unbelievable – Undefeated!

Season 9 of the Lansing Pinball League came to a close on November 7 with the final playoffs in which Chris retained his undefeated status. He has won every season in the league’s existence.

Third, first, and second place: Joseph, Chris, Mike. I try to tell Joseph not to bug his eyes like that in photos but he insists he’ll look asleep if he doesn’t.

Due to low attendance, this time we had a single division playoff with a ten person bracket. The semifinals were between Joseph and Mike, culminating in a low-scoring game of Monster Bash in which Mike edged Joseph out by about 20K in bonus.

Mike walks away happy from a ToM game in which he put two billion plus on ball 1. (EDITED: my mistake, this appears to be from a different game.)

Mike went on to play Chris in the finals once again, winning the first round and knocking Chris into the ~~loser~~ second chance bracket. Chris thrives on pressure and I sometimes think he doesn’t really start playing until he’s got his back to the wall. So, once again, he came back with a vengeance and won the second round and the season championship. It should be noted, though, that at one point during their matches, Mike had a ball 1 of Theatre of Magic that was so high – over two billion – that Chris decided to walk away and concede the game.

Also worth noting was my third game against Matt in the ~~loser~~ lower bracket. Matt was player 1 and his first ball of Indiana Jones went on for what felt like forever and finished at about 1.3 billion. He didn’t do much after that but it hardly mattered. I can say I never gave up (even when Matt, not realizing I had an extra ball to play, mistakenly went to shake my hand after I drained ball 3 I defiantly said, “it ain’t over yet!”) so I got myself 200-300M for the sake of my pride and walked away at least not humiliated.

I got quite a few good photos of the night, so make sure you check out the photo gallery as well as the final standings.

Matt, Mike, and Joseph, after the end of the playoffs.

The ever-popular Super-Ball IX split-flipper tournament, AKA the Zen Tournament, is tonight at 7:30. I always think it’s the most fun night of the season because everyone gets really into it but no one gets in bad spirits when it doesn’t go well. Pinball so rarely allows for cooperative play that it’s a rare treat when it happens. I hope you will come!

November 21, 2017
Eight Seasons, One Champion: Chris Wins LPL Finals

Chris watches Mike play Ghostbusters in the final match.

The final tournament for Season 8 of the Lansing Pinball League, held May 9 at The Avenue Café, ended with another win for Chris. Chris has won the league all 8 seasons, and once again did so without losing a single match in the double-elimination tournament. The final match was between Chris and the ultimate second place finisher, Mike S. Rounding out the top three was Adam, who forfeited his first match due to a late arrival but battled through the second-chance bracket to take home the third place trophy.

Mike plays Ghostbusters in the final match.

In past seasons, A division has been the top eight qualifiers, but due to the low attendance at finals, Matt put the top six qualifiers who attended into A and the rest in B. Kristen, who returned to the league this season after a long absence, won B division, with Russell in second and Dan in third. Kristen looked very happy and said that this was her first pinball trophy.

There is one bit of unfinished business left in Season 8: the traditional post-season Zen (split flipper) tournament, Super-Ball VIII, taking place at The Avenue on Tuesday, May 23, at 7 p.m. The dates for Season 9 are yet to be determined, but will be posted at lansingpinleague.com when they are announced.

Mike, Chris, and Adam with their A division hardware. Mike is, in his words, “always a bridesmaid, never a bride.”

B division winners Kristen (1st) and Dan (3rd). Russell (2nd) ran off before I could get a photo.

May 23, 2017
Chris Still Undefeated in Lansing

No drinks to pass this point… but trophies are OK! Joseph, Chris, and Matt (2nd, 1st, and 3rd).

Lansing Pinball League held its final playoffs for Season 7 on November 8 and Chris once again walked away as the undefeated champion of the league. Chris has won every season since the league’s inception, both in the previous “points only” format and in the current playoff format. Second place went to Joseph and third went to Matt, giving him his first A-division hardware in the league.

Chris plunges his walk-off Ball 3 in the final game against Joseph.

The final battle was tense. Chris won handily on his first game choice of Getaway, but on Tales of the Arabian Nights, Joseph rolled over Chris with 30 million or so points. This made Joseph the only person to win a single game against Chris all evening. Chris chose Austin Powers for the third game and won the night with a walk-off Ball 3, giving him the championship but also burdening him with the knowledge that he made someone play Austin Powers.

Meanwhile, thanks in part to a miscommunication that resulted in Sam not attending, B division consisted entirely of three people: Jake, Dan, and Mike B. The three played off to determine the allocation of the three B-division trophies. The first went to Jake, the third to Dan, and the second to Mike B., who does not appear in my photo because he left to go walk his dog and never returned.

Jake and Dan. Jake won B division and Dan came in third.

My own night started with having to play Adam. (Matt offered to just divide the present people between A and B so that the divisions were evenly populated, but I didn’t want to because I had earned a top 8 position and wanted to play in A, so he kept the original 8-person bracket. I came to mildly regret that decision.) I was ahead going into Ball 3 on Jack-Bot (my choice), but Adam (as player 1) proceeded to get multiball out of the slot machine and make plenty of hay out of that. I repeatedly yelled “bulls—!” as Adam said “Tournament setting is a beautiful thing.”

Joseph plays his final game against Chris.

On my ball, I had a lot of work to do and got multiball going again (on my own, thanks very much) but didn’t make quite enough out of it. The game ended up at about 3.0 billion to 2.9 billion in Adam’s favor. Adam declared the game “epic.” Actually, I think he might have said “kind of epic,” but I’ll take it. For the next game I picked Indiana Jones and had a similar situation of having a really great game by my standards beaten by an even greater game. So I lost to Adam, but I felt good about losing.

Sadly my tour of the loser bracket was brief and consisted of having it handed to me by Jason on the same two games I chose in the winner’s bracket, and without any dignity this time.

I got a lot of nice photos of the night, so I hope you will check out the photo gallery which draws from the group’s Flickr pool (which at the moment is all my photography, but other Flickr users are welcome to add to it). The final standings of Season 7 are also available.

Tonight is Super-Ball VII, the traditional post-season “Zen” (split flipper) tournament! It’s always a ton of fun and nothing is at stake except some endearingly cheesy trophies, so you should definitely attend.

November 22, 2016