Aberdeen, SD
Do any of you participate in a pinball league, and if you do, have you ever been put into a situation where you & someone else would be playing for first & second place in your division?
I do participate in a pinball league, and I've participated for a few years, and I can tell you that being put into a "automatic forced win" situation is something that hadn't happened to me at all. That is, until the end of April this year. A few weeks before our final tournament, I ended up being the ONLY person in my family's history, and in the league's history to play 5 games in a row, and
W I N E A C H A N D E V E R Y S I N G L E ONE OF THEM! I gained the maximum amount of 35 points for that week (which was week 7, or week 8), and let me tell you, a situation like this had never happened even since the beginning of the league's history.
About maybe a week or two after the regular season was over, the entire league was invited for a night of free play at my friend Mark's house. I took this opportunity to figure out what games I should play during the final tournament. So what I did was I played 3 games on as many machines as I could (before I had to head home), and wrote down the scores for each game. Once 3 rounds were over on one machine, I'd move to the next one, and repeat as much as I could. Then, the weekend before the final tournament for the spring season of this year, I plugged in all my scores into an Excel spreadsheet, and calculated average scores for all the games Mark had available for the tournament. Then by graphing out the average for each machine available, I was able to see which games I was strong at, and which ones I was weak at. As for the ones I was weak at, I decided that I should avoid them if I could. Our league rules state that during the final tournament, everyone has to either choose a game or the playing order at some point. We always play best out of 3, and it's double elimination which meant that I could play 2 out of 3 games, lose, and play another 2 out of 3, but if I lost the next 2 out of 3, I'd be eliminated. Another rule in the league is that during the final tournament, I can only play against everyone in my division.
If I was required to choose the playing order for any of the games I was weak at, I always chose 2nd. This actually worked out really well for me. By observing my opponent's score, I could easily tell how much I was beating him/her by, and if I was not in the lead at any point, I could tell how much I had to make up. In the games that I was weak at, and obviously chose to be 2nd in the playing order, I always was careful on the 3rd and last ball on each game. By doing so, I virtually won quite a lot before I was eliminated once. I don't remember if I had been eliminated once before the middle of the tournament, or if I had been eliminated a little bit after that.
Anyways, I was only eliminated ONCE before it came to one of the most dramatic conclusions in the history of me playing pinball. I ended up coming to a point near the end of the tournament where I, and a friend of mine named Molly would be playing for 1st and 2nd place. 2 sets of 2 games each would determine who'd win the B division, which is what division I was in.
When I found out that I was going to either win 1st or 2nd place in division B, My brain virtually almost exploded. Alarms, bells, sirens, horns & other types of alarms were going off in my head. I couldn't believe that in just a short amount of time, I'd have an "automatic forced win" of some kind on my hands. My mind raced to memories of me playing pinball when I was only 10 years old.
I did very well in the first set of games. I beat my friend Molly in the first set. She told me that she was scared of me because of how well I played. I beat her in the first game of the final set, and then I thought to myself: "Nathan, you did an unbelievable job of playing this tournament tonight! You have automatically been guaranteed a very wonderful win of some kind, so let your friend Molly win 1st place." So, that's E X A C T L Y what I did. After it was all over, the people in the league who were still there shook my hand and congratulated me on a job well done. I was literally shaking at that point. I was in complete, utter disbelief. I couldn't (and I still can't) believe that I won 2nd place in division B.
I came home with a very nice trophy, and not just your standard run of the mill trophy either! It had 2 flippers, the steel ball, and a bumper on it. As soon as I arrived home, (I do live with my grandparents) I immediately took a picture of it, posted the picture on FB, and posted the results of the tournament.
It wasn't long before I had started receiving some of the most wonderful comments! "WAY TO GO, KIDDO! You deserved it!" "Congratulations!" "Unbelievable!", etc.
All in all, My 30th birthday in March, that 5 game win, either in week 7 or week 8, and my 2nd place division B win (both done within weeks of each other) started off what has been one of the most luckiest years of my life. I've heard that life is quite a lot of fun when you're in your thirties. I believe it 100%. I am very proud of these two milestones.
I hope some of you have had a forced win situation handed to you, and I want to know what it felt like, because I have already given you an idea of how I felt.
Perth
