So with that, another Texas Pinball Festival is in the books, for me and for everyone.

First, a review of the tournament. It has been long enough since the event that I now know my overall tournament standing for IFPA purposes: 112th out of 167 total players (one player withdrew before playing half of her games). I had hoped for at least a little bit better than that. This is even after It was obvious I was not improving on last year’s 60th out of 152.

There are a lot of things I dislike about the new format. The least of them is that a player now has almost no flexibility on when to play. There is an early group and a late group, and either way, a player will be in the tournament room for about 7 hours on Friday and 5 hours on Saturday, with very limited opportunities to get a break from the noise. With the old format, one could queue up for a game, play it, and immediately take a short break before the next one.

Now I get that this format is much more forgiving if a machine breaks down. Example: In 2022, as a registration desk volunteer I got to void out a bunch of scores when a game was removed from the lineup. Those players all got their entries back. When this happens, it can result in players thinking they are done qualifying actually having an entry or two or three to play again.

But in the end, it is what it is. I expect the new format to be what we will probably have going forward.

Anyway, it was nice to get to play the games on the show floor, including a couple of new titles. It was nice to meet some new people, both on the show floor and in the tournament room.

One thing was more obvious this year than the last. That thing would be the festival is running up against the size limits of the Frisco Conference Center. This is a good thing, but it also means at some point TPF will be looking for a new venue. I personally would welcome this change of scenery even though I have become quite familiar with this section of Frisco over the past four years.

I am still undecided about attending TPF in 2026. I have other options I need to evaluate. That shouldn’t be interpreted as a statement against the TPF team, including the tournament directors. It is more an acknowledgment of other goals I may wish to pursue.

After the closing ceremonies it was time to make my way back to Houston. Due to road construction in Huntsville, I decided to take a rather indirect route down I-35 through Waco, picking up Texas Highway 6 and later Texas Highway 105, FM 1774, and Texas Highway 249.

But wait a minute, why not check out a location on Pinball Map that hasn’t been updated in two years? Especially since it is now on the way?

And that’s exactly what I did. The place is called Truelove Bar. After an ID check and being asked if I had any weapons, I was admitted. The bar was nearly empty, not surprising for a Sunday evening in Waco now that I think about it. The game was a title I’ve never played, Sharkey’s Shootout (Stern, 2000). As an added bonus, the game pricing at least appeared to be the original 50¢ for 1 and $1 for 3 setting from that year.

I insert the first two quarters. “CREDITS 1/2” and then “CREDITS 1”. I insert the next two quarters. “CREDITS 1 1/2” and then… “CREDITS 2”. Well, I’ve paid for two games in advance. At least I got credit for all four coins.

I didn’t make the high score board, but I feel like my top score of 175.7M+ was a decent showing. I wound up playing five games for my $1. Not too bad, I say.

The rest of the trip into Houston was relatively uneventful. It was dark by the time I passed through Plantersville and by the Texas Renaissance Festival grounds, and I got home late. I was exhausted, but happy for the overall experience despite my disappointing tournament finish. More on that in the recap.

Despite spending what seemed like almost the whole weekend in the tournament room, I did have some time to check out games on the show floor.

It’s hard to pick out highlights from these, as in a lot of cases I don’t know what constitutes a really good score. To be honest, a lot of the time on show floor games I’m not really going for high score. Yet I do manage to really run up a few anyway:

• Golden Arrow, 112k+
• Swords of Fury, 4.3M+
• Pin-Bot, 2.5M+
• High Speed, 1.9M+
• Airway (pre-war non-flipper game), 3000
• Devil King, 2.5M+
• Future Spa, 129k+
• Labyrinth, 34.4M+

By no means is that a complete list, just the ones that appear to be particularly high scores. As always, these are all the highest scores of the weekend on those particular titles. I played many, many more games of pinball on the show floor than those shown here.

Of particular note here, some of the scores from Sunday were two-player games. The second player was a new acquaintance I happened to meet on the trip, Matt Lemoine from New Hampshire. In addition to being a great guy to hang out with, Matt was one of the top finishers in the tournament this year. (He played in the late group, so this is why you do not see his name anywhere in the tournament recaps.)

After some time on the show floor (which I will cover in the next post), lunch and dinner, some rest, and breakfast, it was time to get back to the tournament. Saturday’s play would have four rounds or eight games.

It was already looking rather bleak for me, but I decided to stick around and play the remainder of the tournament for the experience. Prior to this year, I had zero experience with this format.

My group for Round 7 would be Michael Hendrick, Laurie Abel, and Nolan Mitchell. We would play the first of the two games of the round on Road Show. This was another game where I just couldn’t get much going and signed off with an embarrassing 53M+. (The scores in order were 119,743,750 for Michael; 141,941,940 for Laurie; 202,080,490 for Nolan, and 53,101,240 for yours truly.)

The choice of Grand Prix for the second game offered some hope. Unfortunately, I was equally unlucky here as well, only able to cobble together a 165k+ which was well out of the running.

For round 8, I’d be grouped with Ariel Dutton, Kris Thompson, and Scot Love. Our first game would be on Foo Fighters, a game I at least felt reasonably confident on. I would get off to a rather miserable start with all of 1.6M+ on ball 1 and 33.3M+ after ball 2. I would be staring down 87.7M+ from Ariel, 105.3M+ from Kris, and 123.1M+ from Scot. It would take a minor miracle just to salvage third place, and a spectacular performance to squeak into second or even first. Amazingly, I did manage to come all the way back and sign off with 115.1M+ good for second place, which I believe to be a personal best on this game. I’d consider this another highlight of the tournament.

If only I were able to do just as well on Rush, the second game of the round. Scot would run away with the win; I only needed to beat Kris’s 25.0M+ to at least salvage a third place. I really never got much going this game. My first ball scored only 21,320 (that’s unit points, not thousands or millions). I would sign off with a very disappointing 7.6M+.

In round 9, the penultimate round, I would find myself playing against Ethan Wade, Paul Borth, and Josh Craig. We would start on White Water. I got off to a slow start but did have multiball ready to go on ball 2. Somehow I manage to hit quite a few jackpots worth 28M apiece to catapult in front to 147.4M+ (helped also by a good bonus with multipliers) after ball 2. Ethan was the only serious threat the whole way but his 43.8M+ would only be good for second. I would sign off with 154.3M+.

The second game would be F-14 Tomcat. I consider this a game I am competent at. The settings included turning off flight insurance, and possibly making the table steeper than it ordinarily would be. It turned a game where the strategy would normally be “go for multiball” into “just try to survive and scrape together points”. I managed to salvage a 400k+ for second, which at this point feels like a moral victory.

Finally, the last round of the tournament was here. I would be grouped with Brandon Chapman, Clark Ogrin (again), and Seth Gibson. We would play the first game of the round on Road Show. I would get a multiball going, though I would only score the one jackpot despite having it maxed out to score again. Nevertheless I would finish with enough for a decisive first place with 436.4M+ (scores were  323,175,810 for Brandon; 49,443,800 for Clark; 436,470,020 for yours truly; 161,409,980 for Seth). Another moral victory, and perhaps another highlight of the tournament overall.

The last game of the tournament for me would be Iron Maiden. It would be the first game I played in which there would be a major malfunction during the game. Brandon would have the unfortunate luck of the right flipper button coming detached during his first ball. The repair would delay the game by a good 12 minutes or so. I had a relatively lackluster game but it was good enough for second given at this point I was being grouped with the lower part of the standings. Brandon would get a consolation ball but he would not score enough to move out of fourth place.

And so that was the end. Dee-duh-duh-deet-deet, deet-deet.

Adding all the standings points up, I would finish tied for 53rd out of the group with 76. This was only 4 points out of the running for novice division, and 12 points out of A or B division. (In our group there was a massive 6-way tie for the last A division seed, with four of the six players only being eligible for A division playoffs.) Four points is two places (in a four player game), so basically a couple of games where I finish higher would have been enough.

Despite it being 20 games instead of 25, this format felt like much more of a grind. I’ll come back to summarize all of the highlights after the next post about the games I played on the show floor.