Sometimes all it takes is the right state of mind. And in this case, I more than made up for my sucktacular first day at the tournament with a completely unexpectedly good finish.
Here's what happened. Mrs. Entropy is away at the Ladies and Gentlemen of the 1860's conference with our daughter, so I'm home alone with the pets this weekend. I put Darwin into overnight dog storage for Friday night, because I correctly predicted that I would be home late. But I expected to be finished pretty early at the tournament on Saturday, so I took him on two walks (with a little running thrown in to make him extra tired) so that he'd sleep while I was gone. I left at about 3:30 to get down to John's Place before the playoffs started at 5.
I will say that in retrospect, the initial omens and portents were favorable: I found 37 cents on the ground in various places throughout my day, and I'd had good practice games at home on Paragon and Eight Ball Deluxe (Doctor Who is down for board testing). And then at the bar in a practice game on Strikes and Spares I put up a score of 500K to beat Justin, who is a _way_ better player than I am (last Wednesday in league he smacked down the King of Payne in Medieval Madness with an amazingly relentless assault on the castle).
My standings had improved relatively. Whereas on Friday I had been #8 of 10 in B Division, at the end of qualifying I was #10 of 19. Still out of the top half, which meant I was in single elimination... if I lose one best of three match, I'm out (the top half was double elimination, meaning that if they lost they would play winners in the loser half).
Things were not looking good in general, because the bar was having serious power issues. Games were resetting right and left, and somebody mentioned that even the street light outside was flickering. This worked out pretty well for me Friday, because Monster Bash reset on a crappy game and my next game was a lot better. But Saturday it was nuts. They even had Quicksilver turned off, despite the fact that it uses 1/3 less power than a comparable pinball game (I was going to cite a link to that in my blog, but I guess I haven't blogged about it... when I replaced the GI in QS with LEDs, I did a before and after comparison with a power meter and discovered the power savings).
Anyway, so my first match got under way with the #19 guy. I was extremely nervous and tightly wound, because I knew from keeping score for him that he had not developed his competitive skillz, and in spite of my "here to play not to win" philosophy, losing to him would have, to quote my college French professor Mlle Schoonmaker, sucked dead donkey dicks. I need to retroactively amend my philosophy to say that I'm here to play not to win, but not to crap out in the first round either. I just barely beat him on Mousin' Around (another terrible game! what is it with me?), Big Buck Hunter, and some third game which I forget.
By then the power problems were out of hand, so they called a break so they could deal with the problem and I went to dinner with Brian, who I hang out with when I can... he came in first the season that I came in second, and we seem to be pretty evenly matched. By the time we got back, they had pretty much fixed the power issue by bringing in a generator.
The guys whose match would result in my next opponent apparently did not have a dog to get home to so they took their good old time playing their match. But by the time they finally got back into playing, I had entered a state of mind that was extremely conducive to my pinball playing: I didn't really care if I won or lost, because both were good things. If I won I got to advance, and if I lost I got to go home and take care of the dog. Once there, I was nigh invulnerable.
The loser of that round had my same first name and owned a Quicksilver too, so it was the Plate o' Shrimp Lattice of Coincidence round. I think I won that one 2 to 1, and I didn't need to finish my last game because by the time I hit the third ball I had beaten him, including another good game on Strikes and Spares.
Now the pace picked up, because I knew almost everyone I played after that and they were aware of my urgency to not clean up dog poop when I got home. Next up was Ken, who plays in Baltimore. We pretty much trade off beat downs... sometimes I'll school him soundly, and other times he'll knock me off my high horse and make sure it tramples me in the process. I won that 2 to 1, and again the denouement was on Strikes and Spares. This time, I destroyed him utterly and salted the earth he lived on. I frickin' turned over the game and lapped him on the fourth ball. He recovered somewhat on his final ball so that I only almost beat him by a million points, 1.2M to 270K.
By now I was feeling pretty good. I was not scared at all. I just felt kind of... invincible. I had a very positive attitude about it. I think I could have taken on Lo Pan in a game of Chinatown or San Francisco if I had to.
Next up was Brian for 4th place, and I pretty much toasted him on bread, 2 to 0. He had watched me roll over SandS so he knew to steer clear of that train wreck. I think I beat him on Who Dunnit first, getting that ol' reliable spank mode Penthouse Party and becoming Roof Champion. The last game he picked was Sorcerer, and I managed to pull ahead on the last ball so I didn't have to finish that game either.
Then I went against Ralph for 3rd place, a guy I met for the first time on Friday but a lot of people knew. Ralph must not have been watching my previous Who Dunnit game and he picked it. It was touch and go until the last ball, when I got Penthouse Party again for a billion points. I didn't finish the last ball on that one either. I think I won that match 2 to 0 too.
And on to Kendall for 2nd place. He plays in the VA league and is working on a homebrew pinball project like I am, though he's a lot further along. He had a bad game of Sorcerer, then an awesome come-from-behind game of Monster Bash. However, that loss allowed me to pick... wait for it... Strikes and Spares for another erect nipple victory, 500K to 2 or 300K.
And finally, there could be only one. I was playing Jason for first place, another guy I'd never met before but everybody seemed to know. Since he was in the double elimination bracket and I was the plucky newcomer from the bottom, I had to beat him twice. He picked Big Buck Hunter Pro and I managed to pull off a narrow victory there. There was one awesome moment: He hit the Ram target and it kicked the ball straight down the middle. He looked at it dejectedly for a second, then said, "I got ass-rammed!" Working as I do with a lot of Indians, that just made me laugh and laugh. So he picked the next game, which was No Fear. Now, he had put up 1.5 bill on his first ball against Kendall earlier, but this time he just couldn't get it started. He got an easily beatable 450M, but unfortunately for me I couldn't get it started even worse than he did and took a loss.
And here we come to what proved to be my fatal mistake. I lost the game, so I could take a game pick or an order pick. Looking back at this narrative, that choice would be obvious: Strikes and Spares. But because my nascent strategic pinball mind has apparently not developed to the level of even basic common sense, that never even occurred to me. I thought back over the games and what I came up with is how well I did when other people picked the games. So I picked the order and allowed him to pick the game (in retrospect: Fuck you Robert Frost and your road less taken!). He picked Getaway, which was in the bar portion of John's place, hoping that the smoke and incredibly loud and mostly bad karaoke would distract me enough. It didn't really, but even though he did a beatable score, I came in about 8 million short for second place in B Division.
But despite that, I was so happy with my performance. I had six straight wins in single elimination, I played great most of the night, and I placed second when the most I was hoping for was to get through a few rounds. Everyone I played were great sports, we all had a great time, and we got to play a shitload of pinball.
After that we goofed off, watching the A Div players duke it out and playing games here & there for another hour or so until they got around to giving out the prizes. For second place, my prize was $62.50, which pretty much pays my expenses for the tournament and then some. But that also means that I am now a Professional Pinball Player. If/when I go to the Pro-Am Pinball Association Championship in July or August, I can hang out with the Pros and totally snub the Ams. Yeah! I'm quittin' my job tomorrow and following the Dream!
To add a cherry on top of my victory was the fact that Quicksilver -- WHO DID NOT DIE! -- got a semi-permanent fix to the flippers from Scott, the guy who repairs the games for the league. (I'm all about the movie quotes today.) It was turned off initially, but it was on for the bulk of tournament play.... and Scott even put a couple of bucks into it at the end of the night, probably because he was learning and trying to beat the game (they have one at PAPA, so it could show up in championship play some year and it never hurts to know the spank-worthy shots to make, such as the sweep shot on the center targets when 20K per target is lit). I'm going to pick up the game tomorrow after work, and in theory I'll get a little more cash from the quarters that QS has been taking in all week.
And when I got home (9 hours after I left) Darwin had been a super-good boy and managed to keep his wits and bladder about him. So all in all, it was a very good day.
No comments:
Post a Comment