The Jersey Pinball Association is beginning a new season of competitive pinball play this Wednesday, March 10. Among the games available are: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Whitewater, Demolition Man, Monster Bash, Fish Tales, FunHouse, The Addams Family, Star Wars: Episode One, and Attack from Mars. Along with traditional league play, there will be another side tournament in the style of “Pinball Golf” where you have up to ten balls to reach a target score. Each entry builds up a cash jackpot which I will award at the end of the season. PinGolf replaces the Gauntlet from last year. I hope that many players, from inside and outside of the JPA League, will try to qualify for the PinGolf Final so that there will be a huge jackpot prize pool.
The International Flipper Pinball Association, in cooperation with STERN Pinball and the AMOA Show, held a Par 3 PinGolf Challenge event at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Competitors had to achieve a target score on two pinball games, NBA and CSI, while using the least number of balls as they could.
Players tried each game once, and then selected which of the two games would serve as their third game. The player with the lowest combined score won the tournament.
World Pinball Champion Bowen Kerins gives a detailed analysis of the pinball game “Attack from Mars” by Midway/WMS. He points out efficient ways to score high and play well especially on a tournament mode machine.
I hope that articles like this will give rise to an advanced version of the “Pinball 101″ DVD that would cover tournament pinball strategies. It worked for poker, why not pinball?
Read about it from The New Jersey Sunday Herald via AtTheCastle, but remember your grains of salt as this newspaper article does not give the whole story.
from ninjadoug92’s youtube channel:
“…The gauntlet tournament at PAPA’s Cupids and Canines event. For the tournament you had a list of 5 games, you started at the middle of the PAPA complex and had to run to each game, coin it up and attain a certain score before you could move on.”
At the Cupids and Canines Casino Night and Pinball Tournament on February 7, 2009, over 350 people played blackjack, poker, craps, roulette and pinball at the Professional Amateur Pinball Association’s (PAPA) headquarters in Scott Township (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania. Tournament players and pinball enthusiasts could play over 400 pinball machines from all eras, including CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Batman (The Dark Knight), two of the newest offerings from STERN Pinball, Inc. In addition to the admission fees, all coin-drop from the pinball machines went to charity.
Every paid attendee at the event received $20,000 in “play money” to use at the casino gaming tables. Each $5,000 in “play money” earned you one ticket to use for the chance auction and raffle. You could also re-buy “play money” if you were tapped out.
Among the charities that benefitted from this event were: Bob Wow Buddies (Camp Bow Wow) and the Pittsburgh-area Humane Societies with the goals of promoting canine cancer research and animal adoptions.
Want some "Candy"?
Though the event officially opened at 8:00 PM, PAPA President, Kevin Martin opened the facility at 11:00 AM for the pinball tournament competitors. Multiple time World Pinball Champion Bowen Kerins organized the event.
Among the games involved in the tournament were:
Batman (The Dark Knight)
Harlem Globetrotters
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Family Guy
The Simpsons
Flip Flop
Paragon
Jungle Queen
Medieval Madness
Judge Dredd
Joust - 2 Player Versus Pinball Game
A $10 entry fee bought you a slot in a group of 8 players for a satellite tournament/preliminary round (though, your admission into Cupids and Canines came with one free entry into the tournament). Each group of 8 players was split in half. These two groups of 4 played a “best of three” series where first place in each game earned 4 points, second place earned 2 points, third place received 1 point, and fourth place got zero points. This was later changed to a “best of two” series because of the high amount of people who wanted to enter the tournament.
Finishing first or second overall in your group meant you advanced to the next round of four players with the winner of that group reaching the final round. A great feature about this system was that as soon as you lost a round, you could immediately reenter. A new preliminary round began as soon as eight more players were ready. A portion of the entry fees for the pinball tournament also went to charity. Trent Augenstein, ranked number 6 in the world as of this writing, won the tournament and took home an electromechanical pinball machine donated by PAPA.
It was a fantastic event, and I encourage all, who are looking for a slice of pinball heaven, to come out to the PAPA world headquarters when it reopens for the PAPA 12 World Pinball Championships this August.
I realize now that it is not a particularly good idea to record by walking around with the camcorder at belt-level. It seems to produce a bouncy, first-person shooter type of effect on the video. “The More You Know…”
