We move on to Friday and the first day of the first year of the new format for the Texas Pinball Festival Wizards tournament. For those who don’t keep up with the ins and outs of the competitive pinball scene, I will summarize the changes briefly.

In 2024, players had 25 entries (game plays) of which the best 12 counted towards the final score, and at least three games from each of the three eras had to be played. The highest score on each machine scored 200, second place 195, third place 190, fourth place 189, and then each additional lower place was worth one point less. (In 2022 it went 100, 97, 95, 94, etc which resulted in a lot of players winding up with zero ranking points, including yours truly. Most of these zeroes probably did not affect the final ranking, but it was changed nonetheless due to player feedback.)

In 2025, all of that went out the window in favor of a group matchplay format, split across two days. Standard IFPA matchplay scoring is used, with first place getting 7 points, second place getting 5 points, third place getting 3 points, and fourth place getting 1 point. (In three player groups, second place gets 4 points and third place gets 1 point.) The setup was ten rounds of two games each, or 20 games in total. I will discuss in detail what I see as the pros and cons of each format in a later post.

I didn’t get to practice on anywhere near all of the games during the allotted practice time (which had been moved up a half hour from previous years to 08:00-09:00; I didn’t arrive until around 08:15 or so). That said, many of the games were set up reasonably, with only one tilt egregiously tight and unpredictable to the point of being insulting (Black Pyramid).

I’m just going to summarize each game and briefly list any highlights I can remember, as there were a lot of games and a lot of things that happened. I may mention a few scores in passing but not many. The final scores are all shown in the pictures and will only be mentioned in the text where the pictures are difficult to read (mainly for Road Show which had some display issues).

My group for the first two games would be Mark Gunter, Daniel Martin, and Tom Graf. Game 1 would be on White Water. I just never got a lot going this game. The first ball was basically a house ball and the other two weren’t much better. I’d start off the tournament with a disappointing last place.

Game 2 would be on Grand Prix, same players (two game rounds). This was a much closer game, and I feel like I had a decent chance to at least finish second. Unfortunately Tom’s come-from-behind ball five would dash those hopes and I’d have to settle for third.

On to the next round, grouped with Jack Revnew, Ken Kemp, and Laurie Abel (née Bender). If nothing else, regular readers will remember Jack from previous TPF tournament posts, while Laurie I haven’t played against since league nights in 2019 and even then not a whole lot. We would play Black Pyramid and Foo Fighters. I somehow squeak out a third place on Black Pyramid, despite having a really lousy first ball.

The second game of this round would be Foo Fighters. I had a decent first ball (playing fourth). Unfortunately, Jack just ran away with the game early on, posting an impressive 441M+. I would wind up taking third behind Ken.

My luck would change a bit in the next round. My group assignment this round would be with Susie Sprankle, Seth Gibson, and Tracy Abrahams. While Seth would run away with the game on Pulp Fiction, I would manage to squeak out a low scoring second place (in fact, embarrassing would probably be a more fitting descriptor). Our game on Attila the Hun (a relatively rare GamePlan title) wouldn’t be nearly as kind. Again Seth would run away with the lead. This time the other two players would both catch up leaving me in last.

The next round would finally be what I’d consider my first real highlight of the tournament. My group would be Clark Ogrin, Chris Noah, and Christopher Welch. Our first game on Jaws would end in a rather disappointing third place for me (behind Christopher and Chris). But our second game on Ali would be an entirely different story. I would ride a nice 194k+ ball one to a first place finish with 257k+, narrowly edging out Chris’s 221k+.

My relatively good luck would continue into the next round. The other players in my group would be Clark Ogrin (again), Paul Borth, and Elaine Hecht. We’d play Rush first. I had what could only be described as a real stinker of a game. It probably shouldn’t have been good enough for third place, but somehow it was. We would then move on to Bow and Arrow. I would manage to stay in contention and take a small lead into ball 5, finishing with 65k+. Clark would almost catch up with 59k+ but I get to celebrate another win. I call this a highlight as well; I had never even played Bow and Arrow prior to this tournament.

On that note, we would segue quite nicely into the next round where I would find myself grouped with Marc Gammons, Phillip Pomeroy, and Jokton Strealy. Our first game would be on Flash Gordon, which is a game I’m at least fairly confident on having played it extensively at the Houston Arcade Expo in 2021, and which I played as part of TPF Wizards qualifying in 2022.

I would start off this particular contest on Flash Gordon with a decent lead after each of the first two balls (105k+ to Marc’s 66k+ after ball 1, 152k+ to Marc’s 102k+ after ball 2). That’s already superb, but then the real magic happened. My third ball was probably my best ball on a single-ball game in the entire tournament. It’s almost like I couldn’t miss anything I aimed for. By the time I finally drained and the bonus finished counting, I had 883k+. This would dwarf the rest of the group (Marc would sign off with 252k+) and easily be good enough for first place. (For comparison, my weekend best was 920k+ at Houston Arcade Expo 2021. My score in Wizards qualifying in 2022 was a mere 751k+.)

If only my luck on John Wick was as good. This would be a relatively low scoring game, but I would never really get anything going. Philip’s rather meager 4.4M+ would be good enough for third place, the other two players would finish with a bit over 5M each. I would not even break into the seventh digit, signing off with 728,750. This is an unfortunate “low-light” immediately following a great game.

That would conclude Friday’s play, with the final four rounds set to take place Saturday morning. My update on Telegram would read:

That’s a total of 44 standings points on the day, with the current B division cut off at 53 and the current A division cut off at 54. I’m currently sitting in a tie for 56th of 80 in the group.

So at this point I wasn’t looking too bad despite my actual ranking being near the bottom of the group. I held out hope as I got a well-deserved meal and proceeded to check out some of the games on the show floor. (I elected not to try to participate in any of the other tournaments this year due to concerns about scheduling.)