The Swedish Championships are played in Boras, Sweden from November 30th through December 2nd. This is the 23rd year the tournament is held. The first edition was held in 1990 but there have been a couple of gap years in the late nineties.
We have 295 registered players at the moment and 122 pinball machines, so it should be an epic tournament.
In both main and classics, players are assigned five machines. They play two attempts on each in qualifying.
The top 64 go on to best out of three finals/playoff rounds.
There is also a youth tournament, a split-flipper tournament, and several set-the-highscore sideshows (killswitch [ zone 4 on Earthshaker], one-handed GNR, one-ball DM, STHS TNA, and STHS Deadpool).
We will have three camera rigs going and there will be streaming all weekend. There will be commentary and interviews off and on all weekend, particularly for Saturday evening and all day Sunday (CET).
Streaming stuff from Pincinnati this weekend. No set times as this will just be to test the hotels internet and prep for next year. In a perfect world we will have streams of:
The 2019 Boras Pinball Classic Open will be streaming all weekend (3/8-3/10) from Boras, Sweden with commentary in English and three camera rigs.
We have 100+ players competing across four tournaments at Pinballseye with 80+ playable machines including around 30 classics machines.
The main tournament is the classics tournament. Players are assigned four machines and they get two attempts on each (both count. five-ball games). Top 32 to final rounds. The final rounds are played as four-player groups where only first and last place matters. Two firsts and you move on to the next round or two lasts and you are out. Super-fun, strategic format.
There is also a Pin-Masters style golf tournament on modern machines, a 3-hour frenzy tournament on Friday night, and a three strikes consolation tournament on Sunday.
There are also several sideshow tournaments (Congo killswitch with the slam tilt connected to the Travicom targets, BSD with no hold power on the flippers, etc.).
It should be a great weekend with lots of pinball on some great machines.
The four-player groups are seeded based on qualifying results for the top 32. Each group gets a list of six machines and goes off and plays. Only the first place and last place on each game matter. If you get two lasts, you are out. If you get two firsts, you move on.
Once a player has two wins or two lasts, they leave the group and the group continues down the list of six machines as three or two player groups until two players have two wins or two players have two lasts.
In some circumstances, a player can move on without the two wins because another player has two losses and is eliminated.
Strategically, it is a fun format since you are playing to have a foundational score to not get last, but also to win the round outright.
The only negative with the format, is that it is a non-standard format for WPPRs, so the actual number of games played by the winner determines TGP. Thus, if the winner plays efficiently and wins every round in the first two games, we could end up with slightly less than 100%. However, this has not happened the five or six times we have played this format in the past (knock on wood!).
Texas Pinball Festival approaches! We will be streaming the main, classics, and women’s tournament finals this year. A lot of top notch competitors are signed up to play, all competing for a whopping $4400 first place prize! I expect some intense competitive action!
While we are waiting for the classics stream to start tomorrow morning (10am eastern, 9am central), we can watch the live standings here https://neverdrains.com/tpf2019/
