REPORT: Asylum 3rd Annual PAPA-Style Tournament

[doghouse]

Our 3rd Annual PAPA-Style event was this past Friday and Saturday.  It was a long, but wonderfully frenetic weekend, with lots of new faces, and many of our great loyal Florida tournament players and Inmates making up the rest of the crowd.

Thanks again to Eric (Khabbi) for loan of the Jersey Jack "Dialed In" which was set on Freeplay, and got pretty much constant attention all weekend.  Prizes were given for 1st-2nd-3rd high scores on both Friday and Saturday.

Great also meeting world-ranked pinball players (and super nice people), Californians Louise and Eric Wagensonner.

Friday night started both our Pro and Amateur's PAPA-Style Tournaments. The selection of games seemed to spark a lot of conversation in both divisions, but the games held up well with over 14 hours of play, except for an early failure of Target Alpha, which was quickly replaced with Mata Hari. Saturday saw the most action, beginning at 9:00 am.

The Professional Division had 21 players, and was played on nine (9) games, with the number of plays each machine received relatively balanced: Pokerino (26 plays), Aerosmith (31 plays), Kiss (36 plays), Cherry Bell (31 plays), Avatar (41 plays), Mata Hari (39 plays), Bon Voyage (35 plays), F-14 (35 plays), and Hotdoggin' (46 plays).

Top eight qualifiers, in order, for the semi-finals were Nick Mueller, Lee Moscaritolo, Carlos Porta, Eric Wagensonner, Sebastian Bobbio, Jeff Palmer, Norma Jennings, and Eric Leon.

Finals were exciting, with congrats to Jeff Palmer for winning the whole PAPA-Style in a tight contest. First game of finals chosen was Kiss which saw fairly close 2nd and 3rd place scores in the 70K range, however, Eric Leon spun up a final 114K to grab the high.  Carlos Porta took second in the whole PAPA-Style after a stellar 3.3MM game on F-14, which amazingly Palmer crushed on his third ball, ending up with 4.07MM. The final game of the finals was on the much loved (and hated-LOL) Cherry Bell.  Once again Porta grabbed the lead with 497K, but did not have the points to eclipse Palmer who snuck out a 2nd on his favorite  game with a 391K, and won the whole PAPA-Style contest. Final standings: Palmer (1st), Porta (2nd), Leon (3rd), and Bobbio (4th). Very well-played, well fought, gentlemen!

The Amateur Division had 10 players, and was played on five (5) games: Dragon, Farfalla, High Speed, Sopranos, and Tommy. Congrats to the winner-- new-comer, Doug Smith. Second place was taken by Mark Mueller, dad of the young ace-player, Nick. Third went to our local Asylum Inmates League player, Louis Kimzey. Fourth went to the smartest kid in the room, Sebastian Vidal. 

As always, this fun weekend was brought to you courtesy of MANY people both working the event, before the event, and behind the scenes. Scott Kakavis and Michael Huff especially should be thanked for helping move, prep, level, play test, clean and ready nearly every machine in the Asylum. Rhonda Johnson likewise was on hand helping clean and prep machines. Matt Malone is our head genius at fixing machines, and without him you'd find many, many more broken machines at the Asylum. Helping him was the TD's indispensable old friend, and consigliere, John Ilgenfritz. Score keeping duties were so expertly handled by Ceil and John Beagle that you might of thought you were at the World Championships.  And we could NOT have done it this weekend without Jeff Webb, who also provided score-keeping for all the amateurs, and dug in on the finals for both divisions making it possible to keep the contest moving smoothly.

And in case you were wondering, our NEXT EVENT is Saturday, October 7th, our famed (and FUN) Asylum Pin-Brawl-- our 4th Annual teamed match.  We may also be adding an IFPA point-getting tournament into the mix. More details to come soon!

Best,
David (and Matt B., Mike, Matt M., and Jeff)

[pinballcorpse]

Good job to David and the Asylum crew for running this event. The tourney went very smoothly.

It was a 2-day qualifying event, but I decided last minute to attend (based on a coin flip) so I was behind the 8 ball, driving across state on day 2 and scrambling to qualify in the final 4 hours. Settled in at 6.  Good enough to get invited to the party. 

This style of event is very hard to qualify in, because a single bad game can wreck your whole ticket. And with only 8 spots to get in, there is not much room for error.

PAPA style qualifying tip (Don't waste time trying to qualify on games with large queues and long gameplay time-in other words I did NOT play Aerosmith to qualify.)

I really enjoyed playing in the final 4 with my fellow FLiPS Special Forces members.  Great battles on the games. Sebastian and Eric L. are awesome players. (Sebastian has 2 banners there, so he is really going to be a threat every single time... everybody knows )

I was not the bus driver, not even close, so it was relaxing for me to not make any strategic choices. I'll play whatever Carlos chooses and play the latest position I can-I was 3rd player every game.

The game on F-14 was reminding me of Sopranos at the recent Point Monsters. I was way behind the leader, and needed to pull everything together to win the game. Carlos had a score that was already 1 million above the top qualifying score all weekend. (Incredible to see the finals game WAY higher).  So I had lots of work to do.  Carlos, ever the gracious competitor with a big smile, congratulated me for pulling it off, much like Dan Coyle did when I passed his Sopranos score a couple months back.  That's what is great about these events, class act competitors regardless of outcome.

I knew exactly what Carlos was going to do on the final game...pick my Eleanor, Cherry Bell.  It was the smart move.  But it was interesting for me because I actually had the top qualifying run that day on it by rolling it, with my score about 400k above the number 2 score on it.  I was actually comfortable on the game. Oh, and Ceil put some magic spell on the game to help me, so it worked out well.

Was overall a great day for me.  I received the banner presentation from Point Monsters (a nice surprise for me) and won the PAPA style event and got to hang out with my pinball friends.

Thanks for reading

The coin knew what it was doing

[getyourselfahotdog]

Sounds like another great event at the Asylum, Thanks for the write up Jeff and Dave, You only get a small piece of the puzzle looking at the brackets.

[pinballcorpse]

Right, the brackets only show scores now how it came about.

For example in semi-finals, on Kiss, I walked away midball as player 4 since I knew I beat the top score even with bonus, but I played a little more to be sure. I also had a nice ball 3 come behind win on Mata Hari to pass Norma. I think I was in 4th and came back to pass everyone. She played a great game. 

Also Carlos needed a big score to pass Lee on Aerosmith to advance.  He was way behind on Aerosmith on ball 3 and had a great multiball and almost passed my score.

Eric W. had a killer 1st ball on Mata Hari.  The next 2 balls were house balls.  But that 1st ball as player 1 applied a lot of pressure.

There were lots of great comebacks and back and forth tensions that the bracket can't capture.

That's what makes it exciting

[doghouse]

This style of event is very hard to qualify in, because a single bad game can wreck your whole ticket. And with only 8 spots to get in, there is not much room for error.

PAPA style qualifying tip (Don't waste time trying to qualify on games with large queues and long gameplay time-in other words I did NOT play Aerosmith to qualify.)

I really enjoyed playing in the final 4 with my fellow FLiPS Special Forces members.  Great battles on the games. Sebastian and Eric L. are awesome players. (Sebastian has 2 banners there, so he is really going to be a threat every single time... everybody knows )

I was not the bus driver, not even close, so it was relaxing for me to not make any strategic choices. I'll play whatever Carlos chooses and play the latest position I can-I was 3rd player every game.

The game on F-14 was reminding me of Sopranos at the recent Point Monsters. I was way behind the leader, and needed to pull everything together to win the game. Carlos had a score that was already 1 million above the top qualifying score all weekend. (Incredible to see the finals game WAY higher).  So I had lots of work to do.  Carlos, ever the gracious competitor with a big smile, congratulated me for pulling it off, much like Dan Coyle did when I passed his Sopranos score a couple months back.  That's what is great about these events, class act competitors regardless of outcome.

I knew exactly what Carlos was going to do on the final game...pick my Eleanor, Cherry Bell.  It was the smart move.  But it was interesting for me because I actually had the top qualifying run that day on it by rolling it, with my score about 400k above the number 2 score on it.  I was actually comfortable on the game. Oh, and Ceil put some magic spell on the game to help me, so it worked out well.

Was overall a great day for me.  I received the banner presentation from Point Monsters (a nice surprise for me) and won the PAPA style event and got to hang out with my pinball friends.

Thanks for reading

The coin knew what it was doing

We really enjoyed doing this style tournament a lot. Nice insider's reporting, Jeff. Thank you.

If I had to do anything different, I think I would do four games per round for the finals, rather than three.  What's the player's opinion on this?

[pinballcorpse]

We really enjoyed doing this style tournament a lot. Nice insider's reporting, Jeff. Thank you.

If I had to do anything different, I think I would do four games per round for the finals, rather than three.  What's the player's opinion on this?

Out of curiosity: why?

My opinion: The 4th game adds a completely different dynamic to the finals and it would feel more like Point Monsters setup EXCEPT the scoring would be original PAPA style 4 2 1 0.  The PAPA format is known to be 3 4-player games with scoring of 4 2 1 0, so I'd keep it that way.  There are already a variety of other formats for other tourneys. 

[k7]

I like reading these threads. it tells you WHAT happened, not just a flowchart of results.

thanks for typing, jeff. and of course, nice work playing...

keep that coin. it's smart.

[pinballcorpse]

I like reading these threads. it tells you WHAT happened, not just a flowchart of results.

thanks for typing, jeff. and of course, nice work playing...

keep that coin. it's smart.

Thanks! Yeah, I kept the coin with me all day and put it with my trophy

What I left out about the coin story was that I flipped it, caught it and put it on top of my other hand.  When I moved my hand to reveal it, the coin fell, went rolling across the floor and I had to chase it down like out of a cartoon.