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I don’t know why…but this seemed appropriate.
Alright Pinside II
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We need Jack Nicholson golfer T-shirts for next PinGolf event
Design I created for our weekly pingolf league between NEPL sessions. Should start requiring golf attire! Would be entertaining.
Tim’s blow up at me was in reference to the nudge/slapsave I made at 24:55 -
www.twitch.tv/iepinball/b/643200280
The meltdown is 2 minutes after that.
He came up and got in my face/blew up at me for punching the glass. Might be time to upgrade that headlamp 
Other than that and the Tron thing, I thought the event was really great. Solid amount of pinball for the dollar. Good mix of games with good/tough target scores. I guess i would have preferred the first group start at noon and the 2nd be scheduled for 4pm, but that’s a minor gripe.
Oh and Rock Star . . .nothing positive to say about that game.
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Honest question — is that type of save really considered unreasonable/bad form, or is more of an operator thing? I always want to respect machines on location, but totally assumed that this is exactly the kind of play they’re built to withstand.
(Asking as a guy who makes this type of save on location on the reg)
If you had this, you could have called him on his analogy.
That move on Metallica was perfectly reasonable and didn’t even tilt on a fairly tight setting. Tim was out of line to get in your face for that. Not everything that makes a loud sound is machine abuse. At that point he was already heated from 3 days of competition with plenty of rage tilts, expletive shouting, Tron slides and glass smacking, so any loud sound was going to set him off.
Personally, I know I slid Tron farther than intended on Thursday and Friday before the tilt was adjusted. Part of that was the fact that the games are on a slick concrete floor. More often than not, I’m playing on carpet, so a slide on a smooth floor will usually move more than I expect it to. A possible solution would be to use the rubber pucks to keep games in place.
Sal was doing a good job trying to keep everyone informed about behavior and Tim being ready to shut it down. Most players took his warning and adjusted, but it really shouldn’t even have to come down to that. When you’re playing games that belong to someone else, treat them with respect. Got screwed on a shot or something didn’t go your way? Tough shit! Deal with it and move on. Slaps, slides, nudges, etc during gameplay need to be policed by the tilt bob. Nothing else is going to get players to ease up quicker than knowing the game has a tight tilt. You didn’t see anyone throwing AFM around because it was really tight, but still very playable. The airballs off the saucer gate made things pretty interesting though.
The big question… If Tim actually did shut it all down, would we have gotten refunds? There was a time on Saturday night, I was playing a game over by his workshop and he was going on and on about pulling the plug and how he hates all this “pinball as a sport bullshit”, etc. I really thought he was about to call it off.
Final thought… Old Chicago is a trash game.
I don’t blame the players for the moves on Tron, I blame the setup of the tilt bob.
The move on Metallica looked legit to me as he tried to save the ball…
Im not familiar with anyone hitting the glass on the game during the competition, but i wasnt there and didnt see any on parts of the stream ive watched.
I’m not sure how formal this event was between IFPA and PHOF but it seems like either a new location needs to be chosen or a contract in place for next event. If the owner can simply closed down a huge event like this, it doesn’t bold well for the IFPA/participants.
Some further thoughts on the the event…
The good
- It’s always fun playing in groups where the group members aren’t your only competition. There was a lot of strategy talk and tips on how the machines were playing. Legitimately helping out and rooting for the players in your group really adds something genuine to the experience.
- Loved the difficult target scores and score ranges for 6-10. Really awards those who get it done quick, but doesn’t hurt so bad if you just miss the target, getting a 6 rather than a 10.
- Solid value for the money. 18 games doesn’t sound like that much, but when you’re in 4 player games, playing 5 balls on most of them, you’re in “competition mode” for a long time.
- Video broadcast was spectacular. Much thanks to @kdeangelo for all the hard work and all his time doing commentary along with the others who assisted throughout. I really enjoyed Dave’s commentary during finals on Sunday.
- Rulings were fair, and the adjustments made when necessary (EATPM single player, Old Chicago player 2 and Tron Saturday tilt setting) were all good moves and fixed active issues as well as possible.
- The IFPA crew did a great job setting up the games and doing their best to make them tournament ready. When I arrived on Wednesday and played some games from the initial list (Firepower, BDK, MM) I was seriously bummed because they were barely playable, and definitely not ready for competition.
The bad
- The actual tournament area was very tight and was a challenge to be in such an enclosed space for 5 hours at a time. Given the setup of the PHOF and the needs of the video equipment, I don’t know how else it could have been done, but it was pretty cramped and uncomfortable.
- I felt bad for the late group on Friday since our early group played longer than expected. I heard some groups were still playing after 1am. That’s really not what anyone would expect when signing up for a 6pm start. Tee times of Noon and 5pm would make more sense.
- This has been discussed, but there needs to be a better rule enforced for players who wander off unannounced. I’m sure they’d stay put if their ball got plunged.
- I’d like to see fewer single player games, as taking turns adds something to this format. By the end, we had 5 single player games and 4 multiplayer games. There were good reasons for Count-Down, Old Chicago and EATPM being single player, but in the future it would be cooler to keep it to 2 or 3 single player machines of the 9.
- Superbands. I realize they’re useful for a location like the PHOF where games are just getting played constantly, but I still don’t think “Superbands on everything!” is good for tournament lineups. If I recall, they weren’t on the EMs, but all the modern games had them. I’m really not sure if this was a TD decision or they were just already on there (probably the latter), but swapping for regular rubbers would have probably been preferred by just about everyone.
Thanks to all who helped make the whole weekend happen. It was a lot of fun!
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Nothing formal at all besides my personal relationship with Tim of him begging us to come back to the PHOF to run a ‘big’ event, and me letting him know that the timing hasn’t worked out (after running IFPA5 out there, and the first Pin-Masters a few years later).
Personally knowing Tim as well as I do, his bark is much louder than his bite. My actual worry level that he was going to pull the plug on the entire thing was 0%.
We’re committed to doing this again at his place next year since the Amusement Expo is signed up to be back in Vegas. Current schedule per the website would make Nationals on Thursday, 3/17, and Pin-Masters the weekend of 3/18-3/20.
I already know that 2017 we will NOT be in Vegas for the trade show. Plans are to move to Dallas for at least that year from talking to the Amusement Expo staff. This would give us the opportunity to tie Nationals and potentially the IFPA Pin-Masters into the Texas Pinball Festival weekend. At that point the Tim rants will be minimal 
If you remember the area by the popcorn machine, we were actually supposed to get that entire space stretching down to there (I would say another 50% worth of space from what we had). Unfortunately someone at the PHOF booked a birthday party for Saturday afternoon, so Tim shortened the amount of space available to us. Tim had put up some tarp that marked where our area ended, but Karl and I secretly moved the tarp back about 6 feet to give us a littttttle more space, and Tim totally didn’t know
Definitely the latter with respect to the Superbands
Thanks for the feedback! We’re definitely keeping a list of notes handy for when we start organizing for 2016.
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Why are so many people disliking OC? Am I the only one who thinks it’s awesome? There’s a spinner, saucer, drops, & lots of nudging! What more can a player want?
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Some reason I missed this post and I’ve never seen someone do that before!
Sure, but was it a Heavy Metal Meltdown? No, I guess it wasn’t.
Hey, at least he melted down about something that actually happened.
Before Nationals, I got accused of smacking the glass on a game I wasn’t even playing. I was on my way to the bathroom and passed by the change machine where I saw my wife and Andrei. Andrei was looking for change for a $20, and we were able to accommodate him. In the middle of this, a woman comes up and accuses me of abusing a machine because “I heard a noise and turned around and you were there.” None of us were able to convince her that not only did I not abuse a machine, I wasn’t even playing one. Soon after, I saw her complaining to Tim and pointing in my direction.
Needless to say, this put me in a sour mood and after I bombed out of Nationals we promptly left rather than give this guy any more of our business. Seeing this clip of Tim going off on Eden doesn’t really make me think this was an isolated incident. And good lord, I just watched the Noah Davis slide-save, he didn’t hit anything. That’s just a normal slide-save, perfectly fine. Apparently Tim doesn’t want people to actually play his machines.
So to bring this back on topic… feedback on the venue would be “find another venue where the owner isn’t a psychopath.” As a player I am very put off by this, I’m going to be wondering in the back of my mind whether me executing an accepted pinball move to save a ball is going to get me ejected from the building. That’s not right.
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I had a similar experience to this a couple years back at the PHOF. I got an incoherent yelling at by Tim for making an ordinary slap save on Neptune. I’ve never been back to the PHOF and will never go back. It’s not worth the time and money to travel to a tournament where I might get lectured like a grade school student every time there’s a “big noise” move. So my feedback on the event, even though I wasn’t there, would be to hold it somewhere more tournament player friendly.
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Once Karl gets the videos uploaded to YouTube, if someone can do the time stamp direct link thing I would actually love to be able to send that to Tim (showing the actual incident followed up by his comments). This should hopefully clearly show that his disrespect towards the players were completely out of line. Please DON’T forward any time stamps of people actually abusing the games 
They may be his “customers”, but I want to let him know that he’s representing the IFPA in a bad way based on his inappropriate outbursts. Ultimately the IFPA is his customer similar to any other private party he may rent space out for.
It will be a moot point soon enough with the announcement of the Amusement Expo moving to Dallas starting in 2017, but we will be back in Vegas for 2016 (both for Nationals and the Pin-Masters).
Dates have been set for the show, which means our dates are also set:
Thursday, March 17th 2016 would be Nationals
Friday, March 18th through Sunday March 20th, 2016 would be Pin-Masters
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From Skip Bayless
“Tiger still most entertaining player in golf, dropping club on bad shots, angry backhand swipes, wild fallaway swings off sidehills.”
Professional.
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