Our last league night was the fifth of the season and we began the Bank 5/Bank 6 rotation. Bank 5 is named for Socrates, who needs no introduction. Bank 6 takes its name from pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximander, who along with Bank 8’s Thales is a member of the Milesian School. Philosophers from this school were particularly concerned with finding the fundamental origin or principle of all reality, which they often identified with one particular “element.” Anaximander had a particularly abstract version of this, identifying the fundamental principle with something called the apeiron, which is translated “boundless” or “indefinite.” I promise that each bank has some reason I connected that philosopher with that bank. Unfortunately, I can’t swear that I remember what my reason was in each case and Anaximander might be one of those cases…
Peter, Devon, and Curtis watch Joseph and Tim play Smackdown finals games.
Speaking of banks, we had originally created the banks this season with the idea of maximally spreading out the groups, so they were entirely based on game location. Sadly, the best laid schemes of league directors go oft astray, and our nice, neat banks have been overturned by the plough of a new game. When Star Wars: Fall of the Empire came in, Derik also did a fair bit of rearranging. While I lament our banks being in disarray, I do like the way he has put a lot of our Bally/Williams games together in a murderer’s row.
Everyone was happy to see a familiar face at league night: Cyndi has returned, maybe just for a night and maybe for the rest of the season. I believe I speak for everyone in the league in hoping for the latter.
Peter and Tim celebrating a B and A division Smackdown win (respectively).
It’s our tradition to use any newly arrived game for our Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament, so this time it was the new Star Wars: Fall of the Empire LE. Tim won the A division, and Peter won the B division on Scared Stiff (appropriate for Halloween season).
Speaking of spooky, our annual Fear and Trembling Charity Pingolf Tournament happened the following Tuesday. This year, Joseph and I drew the nine games for the course randomly, to stop us from falling back on the games we’ve used in the past. Some of the objectives we chose ended up feeling a lot harder at the tournament than they did when we tested them; it happens pretty much every time. I gave away several prizes including a Stern “High Score” embroidered hat. Derik was very enthusiastic about winning it (he declared it “sick”) and put it on right away, despite the fact that he is usually never seen wearing a hat. I tried pointing out that at a pingolf tournament he really shouldn’t be bragging about getting a high score. I’m not sure if he didn’t get the joke I was making or if he just didn’t find it funny, but either way it fell flat and my repeating it three times somehow did not improve it.
Tim went into the tournament as the returning champion, and they managed to pull it off again. Tim is now the four time consecutive champion of Fear and Trembling. Pingolf is evidently Tim’s format… though it doesn’t hurt that one of the games on the course was Getaway.
The 2025 Fear and Trembling Charity Pingolf Tournament, supporting the Capital Area Humane Society. From fourth place to first: Joseph, Danny, Derik, and Tim (four-time champion!).
Tomorrow at our next league night, we will be reviving the dormant tradition of the LPL Halloween costume contest. Wear your costume to league night and you might win a trophy or the top prize of a translite! Christy is bringing Halloween cookies. See you there!
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!
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 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.
The annual Stephen T. Kendrick Memorial Pinball Tournament, held in memory of my rabbit Stephen who died in 2016, returned to The Avenue on March 18. This tournament benefits RASA Rescue (Rabbit and Small Animal Rescue) of Westland, the rescue from which I adopted Stephen in 2007. In recent years this tournament has used a timed matchplay format with a Critical Hit deck. This deck, which for some strange reason is IFPA-legal, allows shenanigans such as putting tilt warnings on someone else’s game, forcing someone to switch scores with you mid-game, and shuffling players between groups.
Devon plays Getaway in finals.
Devon reacts to a drain.
Last year a half dozen of my Critical Hit cards were found to be missing at the end of the tournament, and despite appeals and searches, they never turned up. At the time the deck was out of print and impossible to obtain. This year, however, a new printing has finally come out, and I bought a second deck to combine with my original for more cards. The author recommends a deck for every 20 people or so and with only 12 players this year it was more cards than necessary, but it’s always better to have too many than too few.
Joseph and Peter provide commentary for the stream.
Joseph had an idea for a new rule to allow more cards to be passed out and hopefully encourage more card use earlier in the tournament. In the past we have often found that people hoard cards for the first few rounds and then never get around to using all of them by the end. This time we gave out cards not just for each extra ball earned as usual, but also for coming in last in a round. This new rule proved popular and did encourage players to use cards earlier and more freely.
Danny gives KISS his game face.
With twelve players, we played three groups of four every round, and what kept happening was people using cards to avoid being in a group with Danny. In one of the first rounds I used a “move player to a random other group” card to get Danny out of my group, but it was a tough group overall and I didn’t really want to play anyone in it. The next time that card came up, someone pointed out that it doesn’t say the random player has to be a random other player, and used it to move themselves out of a group. I realized that’s what I should have done earlier. Lesson learned. Another popular card was one that makes your group cover the game’s display, and since Derik ended up being dealt a lot of them, he used it several rounds running.
Another dismayed reaction from Devon on KISS.
In the last qualifying round, I was playing Stephanie, Greg, and Linda on Monster Bash, and I was very nervous. I was working on setting up the usual modes-into-multiball but I knew that Stephanie was holding one of the most powerful cards, the one that forces someone to take their hands off the flippers and drain their ball as soon as the card is played (and then they get a compensation ball afterward). Stephanie had shown it to me and asked me to explain it to her, and I told her how it worked and gave an example of using it to stop someone from playing multiball. So, as I got ready to start multiball on Ball 3, I was just waiting for Stephanie to throw that card down on the glass. I braced myself but to my surprise it didn’t happen, and I pulled into second (Linda won the match). Instead, she threw it down on Greg as he started his multiball, in order to get herself into third place instead of fourth. She just didn’t want to finish out the tournament with a last and figured Greg was a better target.
How are things going for Tim?
… Oh.
I had bought three resin rabbits to use for trophy toppers, two golds and a silver, and painted one of the gold ones with bronze paint so they would be Olympic medal colors. Only afterward did I remember that I always try to give four trophies for tournaments with a four-player finals. I was so busy I almost skipped doing it, but then I thought, “If I make finals I just know I’ll get fourth and I don’t want to be the one with no trophy.” I ended up having to make a very tiny and ad hoc trophy with a small plastic rabbit I had left over from some past set of trophies perched on top. The first through third place trophies were big and grand, and the fourth looked like the booby prize. I had a premonition that I was going to end up getting it.
Danny faces Godzilla in the final confrontation.
The four qualifiers were Danny, me, Devon, and Tim. Danny was top seed and got to choose a bank. I had created three banks, each of which had one modern Stern game, one Stern DMD game, and one Williams game. Danny grumbled, “All these banks suck,” and I pointed out that I had done him a favor and put Godzilla in one of them. Unsurprisingly, that’s the one he chose. The other two games were Getaway and KISS.
Devon anxiously watches Danny play Godzilla in the finale.
Possibly the most dramatic moment happened in the first game on Getaway. Tim played Trollololo, a card that allows a player to shake another player’s game before they plunge, in an attempt to give them tilt warnings. If they tilt instead, the affected player gets a compensation ball and a random card from the tilter’s hand. Tim played it against Danny, and appeared to neatly put two tilt warnings on the game, but then the ball plunged into play. The question was, should this be a disqualification, as though Tim had played out of turn? I delegated ruling to Joseph since I was in the match. Because the match was streaming, he was able to go to the tape, so to speak. Peter brought up the video of the incident and on careful study Joseph could see that Tim had not touched the shifter and therefore the ball plunging was the game’s error, not Tim’s. Joseph ruled that since the card permitted Tim to touch the game, but they hadn’t touched the plunger, it couldn’t be seen as player error. He ruled compensation ball for Danny but no disqualification and also Tim did not have to surrender a card as there was no tilt. When it was Tim’s turn, Danny retaliated by also playing Trollololo, walking up, and intentionally tilting. This is something I have seen players do before and I think the card’s author perhaps did not consider that the penalty of surrending a card in your hand for tilting is not high enough to stop people from strategically taking an intentional foul. The game ended with a first for Devon, a second for Danny, a third for me, and in a shocking upset, a last for Tim on one of their strongest games.
In the next round on KISS, Tim recovered with a first, I got second, Danny got third, and Devon got fourth. That meant that going into finals, the scores were Danny and me with three points each, and Tim and Devon with four each. With a near tie, it was anyone’s tournament, except for the fact that the last game was on Godzilla, a Danny stronghold. On Ball 1, no one did much and the scores were very low, but at least I had started setting some things up. Devon then played Bomba, a card that nullifies the current game after Ball 1 and causes a restart. After the restart, there was another low-scoring Ball 1, and Devon played a card that forces someone to switch players with you after the first ball. He played it against me as I had the highest of the group of low scores, so I felt like I had gotten disadvantaged twice this round. Ultimately, Danny got first, Tim got second, Devon got third, and I got fourth. The final scores were Danny 7, Tim 6, Devon 5, and Heather 3. Reader, I took home that afterthought of a fourth place trophy just as my intuition told me I would. Devon was very pleased with his trophy, as it was his first trophy in a tournament outside of league finals.
I asked Joseph to take this photo of Tim (2nd), Danny (1st), Devon (3rd) and me (4th). Somehow Joseph did not think to let me know that the ears were askew on my bunny-eared hood that I had worn for the occasion..
The tournament was a lot of fun as always and, most importantly, it raised $228 for RASA Rescue, which will be used to support their mission of fostering pet rodents and rabbits, many of whom have special medical needs. Thanks to all the player and other donors, including Pinball Pete’s.
This article was edited on 4/9/25 to include more detail on the final match, particularly the way cards were used.
Our annual pingolf tournament is returning to support the Capital Area Humane Society on Tuesday, October 29. This is a spooky themed tournament and costumes are encouraged! Anyone wearing a costume or Halloween gear will get an extra $2 donated to the Capital Area Humane Society for them by me, your TD. The 9-hole course will be available for play starting at 4 pm with last cards started at 7 pm. Bring a friend because groups must be 2-4 people. Once everyone has finished we will have a 4-person pingolf finals. The twist for this tournament is that each hole will offer a choice between two objectives to shoot for. Whatever objective you choose, that’s the only one that counts for you, and you will be scored according to how many balls it took you to get to it. (Last year’s 5-ball tournament ran way too long, so we are going to go back to setting the games on 3 balls this time.) The top seed will get to choose either bank or objectives (whichever of the two objectives they choose will have to be shot for by everyone in the finals group), and the second seed will choose whatever the top seed did not.
The cost to enter is $10. $9 goes to the Capital Area Humane Society and $1 to the IFPA. You will also be allowed to void your first card and start a second one for an additional $5 provided it is not yet 7 pm. All of that $5 will go to the Capital Area Humane Society. There will be prize drawings and the top four will get spooky trophies.
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 a designated time period 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.
The tournament will start at 6 pm on July 10, and the last round will start at or before 10 pm.
Derik does some quick work on Deadpool to get it running for league.
We passed the halfway mark of the season with our last meeting, at which we played banks 5 and 6, Argo Navis (the ship Argo) and Cetus (the sea monster). These were very appropriate banks for our first night with our shiny new Jaws LE game. Jaws was conveniently slotted into Argo Navis to replace the game that left to make room for it, Guns and Roses. This did mean we had to break our tradition of using the newest game for Tuesday Night Smackdown. Instead, Metallica got drawn for that honor.
It looked like we might have to replace Deadpool as it was suddenly not registering the scoop right before league was going to start. But Derik went and got his equipment and did some quick soldering, allowing us to start with the bank intact and just a few minutes late.
Mark plays The Mandalorian in Bank 6.
For some reason, it was a night with light attendance, and the number of people in attendance meant that some people were in two-player groups. I ended up playing with Ted and we both felt like we had solid nights. I had one embarrassingly bad game, but otherwise always felt like I was playing at least mediocre, and consistently mediocre is often enough to do pretty well. Everyone finished pretty early, and we started the Smackdown well before our average start time of 10 pm. So far, Derik is the champion of bank 5; appropriately, his Jaws score was huge. Tim has the lead in Bank 6 with big scores on just about everything in the bank.
Joseph plays in the Smackdown.
In the Smackdown, Tim won B division, which is well known to be the Best division, and Joseph was the overall champion on Metallica.
The following Tuesday was the Stephen T. Kendrick Memorial March Hare Madness Charity Pinball Tournament, named in honor of a very special rabbit. We had 15 people attend, which is around average for this particular tournament. In recent years it has been a Critical Hit tournament, using the original Critical Hit Matchplay Edition deck. This continues to be a popular format – well, except among who keep getting bad card draws. A standout moment was when Ethan played the most powerful card in the deck, one that forces another player to trade games with you after Ball 2. Danny was then compelled to give up two high scoring balls on Tales of the Arabian Nights to play Ball 3 starting from about a million points. Ethan was so delighted by this that he came over to tell me before returning to his game. A while later he reappeared and, while laughing so hard he was wheezing, eventually managed to get out that Danny had come back and won anyway.
B division winner Tim and Smackdown champ Joseph showing off their buttons.
Things ran fairly late as always, and a few people ended up dropping out before the end, including Derik who would have made finals but decided to leave without playing. That bumped me up into finals. Unfortunately, Brian started the round by making everyone discard a random card, and that cost me the card I had been saving, one that forces someone to stop playing immediately. I was left with only a card I drew at the beginning, which makes everyone in the group play an entire game with the display covered. The game I deployed it on was Willy Wonka, so we had the ridiculous situation of having to cover just about the entire backbox of the game with newspaper. I don’t think it could have really helped me at that point, but as I said at the time, “I just want to watch the world burn.”
Joseph, to his surprise, ended up winning March Hare Madness, with Tim in second, and Brian in third. I ended up with fourth. And that’s another March Hare Madness in the books. We made $256 for the Rabbit and Small Animal Rescue, thanks in considerable part to a $100 donation from Pinball Pete’s, as well as all the players.
The annual Stephen T. Kendrick Memorial March Hare Madness tournament, a charity tournament benefiting the Rabbit and Small Animal Rescue of Westland, returns to The Avenue Cafe on March 12, 2024. This will be a timed group matchplay tournament using the Critical Hit deck. If you haven’t played a Critical Hit tournament before, you’re in for a treat! Every player is dealt cards that allow them to “cast spells” during the tournament. You could force someone to play a game without viewing the display, shake the game to give someone tilt warnings, or even trade scores. It’s a wild time fitting for the name March Hare Madness! Plus, rabbits and magic… it’s a whole thing.
The tournament kicks off at 6 pm and we will play rounds until 10 pm at which point the top four players will play a three-game finals match. The entry fee is $10 which goes 90% to RASA Rescue and 10% to the Sharpe cartel.
