Gonna get up on my soapbox right here for a minute... so for those of you impatient and don't want to read all this, the summary is that unless more people start showing up, there is no prize. I'm just venting a little, and if you're looking for a place to play cheap pinball and drink with some friends, it's a great place to do that....just don't count on a prize payout.
Last week the owner set that ridiculous 227 mil score on a game set at ~4 degrees slope, admittedly with a VERY tight tilt... but this week, the game is set up like it should be slope-wise, the tilt is still fairly tight but manageable, and you get 3 warnings before the tilt, but still had a lot of warnings and a few tilts. I do tend to shake the crap out of a game though, but I'm tempering my bias with the fact I watched two other people tilt the thing. 
What's not being mentioned on their facebook page, or here, is that the owner is not actually paying out the 100 bucks. Bakushan told me last night (as I was leaving like an hour and a half after I got there...) that basically if they don't pull in at least 10 customers, then the owner ain't going to pay, and the deal THIS WEEK was apparently you had to beat his 227 million score on a much faster playing table. I think he was probably blindsided by the owner on that, because more people didn't show up and that decision was made on the fly. I got 179 million, and nothing to show for it. Whatever. I get that the guy is running a business and the point is to bring in BUSINESS, but don't say you're doing one thing then do something completely different or not at all. Charge an entry fee for playing in the tournament, or a door fee, but don't pull me in by telling me there's a 100 buck prize for "high score" and then tell me an hour and a half later that it's "Beating your high score you set on the machine you play every day while it was set at half the slope it was supposed to be." I have a pet peeve with people that don't follow through on their word, but it's FREE PINBALL so it's really hard to be upset. I'm more pissed off that I "wasted" time that I could've spent with my wife trying to win a prize that didn't actually exist for all intents and purposes.
Caveat emptor, if you're coming to just compete for a prize, don't count on it being paid out unless you check Bakushan/Main Stage's event page and see 15+ people say that they're coming. If you want to go out to play pinball and drink with other local players/collectors, then by all means, please go and have fun. Location is easy to get to, pins are very playable for the most part, and the owner is willing to listen to feedback on how they're set up (At least he did with Metallica..) and he's a very skilled player to boot. They just added Johnny Mnemonic which even a few degrees off to the side was a very fast player and the glove and everything seemed to work.
I'd love to be able to support this more, but it's a bar, basically. I can't bring my family in because of liquor laws and the owner doesn't want to deal with kids in the venue anyways. That's his choice, and I respect that. It's going to be an awesome location for single adults to go and it's getting better. I just can't keep finding excuses to be there on a wednesday night when I have to leave my wife and kids at home, or spend a wad of cash trusting some moron teenager to watch my house and kids and pins, all my most valuable possessions....and then go to the bar and spend 20-30 bucks on beer and food (Come on, I feel bad not supporting the guy's biz in any way, when the games and entry are free!) it's just not going to happen for me. I suspect my wife and I will go out on a weekend when we can get the kids out of our hair, but this wednesday thing is for the birds.....until we can get more players in there anyways. It's gonna be interesting to see an IFPA tournament get run in this place..
Fool me once, shame on me... fool me twice... I'll be back when I don't have other obligations to attend to, and I don't have to worry about 'winning' some prize that's not going to get paid out anyways. Would love to spend some time learning Champion Pub and Addams Family. I'll be back after he takes everything off free play, because I don't really drink.....I'm not there to take advantage of his games. I enjoy competition more than just playing for fun, I'm probably in the minority on that locally, but it is what it is. Hope that more people will start showing up.
Bakushan, you should see if Craig (Yeah, I know he posts here and will probably see this and think my post is too negative lol...) will post an announcement to the mailing list for next week. Maybe dig some of those people out and get them out there.. I don't think most of them are even on any of the (three?) facebook pages, and if you can get enough to actually guarantee the prize might get some good competition. High Speed should be a good addition too.
I'll be at home. Let me know when he takes the games off free play so I can feel like I'm actually contributing something other than just being a pin-leech. And FFS, if he's not going to honor the "ad" then tell him to get rid of that whole gimmick and just make it a social meet and use the free entry/play and cheap drink prices as a lure....or lower the prize amount to something he can reasonably pay out without losing his shirt.
End soapbox.
Rockwall, TX
