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Pinbrawl Is Forever

I’m told that Pinbrawl is a specific style of pinball tournament, and that last Sunday’s enormous pinball tournament at Portland’s retro-amusement palace Ground Kontrol was not, despite calling itself “Pinbrawl,” technically a proper pinbrawl. The response I saw online was, “Yeah, but Pinfracas just sounds plain old weird. If there’s significant confusion or a cease and desist order we’ll change the name of next year’s tournament.” For a pinball outsider, the learning had just begun.

Pinbrawl was put together by Fred Franken, Eric Hill, and Crazy Flipper Finger Aaron Nelson. Crazy Flipper Fingers (CFF) is a Pinball Club* that is easily mistaken for a biker gang with the skull logo on their black t-shirts and many of them actually riding motorcycles to the event.

*In an Oregonian article a CFF member says, “We’re not a club; we’re a gang. A club is for Boy Scouts.”

Josh Berezin/Portland Sportsman

The Crazy Flipper Fingers had about 20 of their 37 members in attendance, and in the early rounds it seemed like every win I saw belonged to someone wearing the intimidating black t-shirt. I had the CFF pegged as the villains, but as the tourney progressed it was clear they were Good Guys Wearing Black (YouTube).

Although he does ride a motorcycle, Pat Castaldo, a long-time pinball player, has no pinball affiliations. “I love pinball, and in Olympia there weren’t that many other people who’d play that long with me since I tend to keep balls alive a long time. My friends would get bored. I thought [Pinbrawl] would be a good way to see other folks with the same affliction.” I was curious how Pat would do at Pinbrawl, as it was his first tournament.

Pat arrived at 12:30pm to register, and with the 128-man bracket*, he didn’t play his first game until 3:15pm. He played Road Show and he won 2-0 (twitter.com/patc: First game: Road Show against “Steve”). By 5:30pm Pat had still only played one game as his second match was a no-show (twitter.com/patc: I’d love to play again, but the other player is a no-show) .

*Seriously, you need to see this beast.

The tournament was a head-to-head double elimination, best two out of three matches, and no extra balls. Games were randomly chosen from 24 machines. Highest score at the end of the match is the winner, with that number varying from the hundred of thousands to the billions, depending on the player and which game. (A highlight was Eden Stamm putting up a 3 billion score on Theatre of Magic after which he guarded the machine while someone went to find a camera. Theatre of Magic was later removed from the machines in play.)

Former NBA player Todd MacCulloch and current NBA player Brent Barry discuss pinball tactics.

As the evening progressed so did my knowledge of pinball and pinball players. I met Todd MacCulloch, the former NBA player who is ranked 160th in the world and I quickly noticed the exceptional skills of Seattle’s Cayle George (ranked 27th) and Canada’s Eden Stamm (ranked 23rd). The presence of these last two specifically seemed to up the ante for the hometown team. Screw the prizes, none of the organizers wanted to lose the first annual Pinbrawl trophy to the away team.

Pat’s next game was Dr. Who. I had learned a few things about Dr. Who over the past nine hours. The game was tricky in two ways. First, a player could gain a huge amount of points in a short time by looping a certain a ramp over and over, and secondly, the game has a very misleading ending in which it seems like your game was over, but it isn’t. Many players would sigh and walk away from the machine after losing the last ball and then have to shove their way back as they realized it was still their turn. Pat won the first game pretty easily, his 124 million against 41 million. The second game was also going smoothly until the third ball when Pat’s opponent got almost 90 million on one ball! The final game of the match Pat played slow and careful, gaining an early lead which he kept throughout.

At this point it was ten hours into the tournament. Skill was still important, but now endurance was becoming a bigger factor. People started to play a little sloppy and feeling frustrated. There seemed to be a gradual shift from Miller High Life to Bawl’s energy drink (the “Winners Don’t Use Drugs” flashing on machines all around them). As the night progressed, the crowd thinned out as players were eliminated and went home

Pat’s first loss of the night came courtesy of Aaron “Dropshot” Nelson of the CFF. The game was Pirates of the Caribbean, one of the more modern machines in the rotation, and not well-liked by the better players as far as I could tell. This was not a match of equals. Pat was bringing a knife to a gun fight. Dropshot is ranked 124th* and played undefeated until the end of the tournament (twitter.com/patc: Got humiliated at Pirates of the Carb).

*Ranked 124th may not sound that amazing, but there are 5,353 people listed in the World Pinball Player Rankings.

Pat played very well on Attack From Mars, winning 2-0, but his tournament elimination came during Terminator 2 (twitter.com/patc: About to lose, 2-1 on Terminator 2.). It was 1:16am. Pat had been at Ground Kontrol for thirteen hours and came in 7th out of 120 people, and he’s now a ranked World Pinball Player.

Josh Berezin/Portland Sportsman

During Pat’s final game there was a heated battle between Aaron ‘Dropshot’ Nelson and Cayle George on Lord of the Rings. The game went on longer than any other of the entire night and the Portland crowd was rooting for Dropshot to kick Cayle to the loser’s bracket (I should point out that all the players were the best of sportsmen, as were the fans. The “rooting” is all very quiet and hushed in order to not distract the players and the closest thing to trash talk was someone mocking the Crazy Flipper Finger’s merch table). Dropshot did indeed beat Cayle, which seemed to set up an almost certain win for the remaining CFF players. The only way they could lose the tourney was if Cayle beat his next three opponents (all CFF), and then beat the best-ranked of the winners’ circle twice!

And, as I roamed from game to game, it seemed like Cayle was just a different breed of player. As it got later and later he seemed to get more and more focused. I would like to take a moment and mention a tactic for the CFF in winning more tournaments: get Cayle George to move to Portland! Cayle beat his way to the end of the losers’ bracket and faced the one player who had beat him before: Dropshot. I had talked to Aaron outside after his first match with Cayle and he told me that he had been somewhat lucky. He was especially good at Lord of the Rings, and he was pretty sure that Cayle could beat him in most of the other games. And he did. At 2:40am they played Attack From Mars. In round one Cayle killed him with 2.3 billion to Dropshot’s 589 million. Round two was about the same. Both men now had one loss and the final game was 3:00am on Road Show. Cayle killed it again in the first round with 529 million to Dropshot’s 102 million. After recording these scores in my notebook I scrawled, “Aaron is fucked.” Cayle won, taking not just the first prize (a wonderful King Pin machine) but also creating a new Seattle vs. Portland rivalry.

When I asked Aaron about the loss he said, “It does sting. There are two events in Seattle, the NW Pinball Show and then Shorty’s, a lot like our tourney with a grand prize pinball machine. Eye for an eye! We will take home that machine!”

More photos by Josh Berezin.

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