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.

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.