Yes theoretically it could add an hour to an event that large, but it never does. I don't use the full 30 seconds, I just test the skill shot, tilt sensitivity and sometimes the flippers or a key shot. Other than that you aren't going to pick up nuances. Many people don't even use the time and if you are playing the same game more than once, it's polite to pass.

The rule was developed for big tournaments like Pinburgh that had 800 machines and very limited practice time. It that case it was highly unlikely you would have any time on the machines you are playing. Their tilts were so tight and set up so hard, it was really important to get a few shots on the machine.

If you are running a tournament, provide plenty of practice time and don't use the rule.

As a player, I like it. Say what you will about nuance, but some players may happen to get to play a game already in tournament that some of their opponents haven't, so it's good to make sure everybody has a feel for it.

I certainly didn't think it slowed things down noticeably in FLorida. What slows things down is people playing 30 minute games of F14 but thats the price of doing business!

In a way, the analogy fits tho.. in chess, if your opponent has a strong lead, even if you have a technical chance, it is not disrespectful to your opponent to concede the game depending on the circumstance, particularly if you respect their abilities and person.

Perhaps the same here.. like a hat-tip to the opponent. GGWP. That's how I'd see it.

Just make it a 4 day event. I think given that its one of the majors and that the days are 13-15 hours stretching it out to 2 for qualifying and 2 for finals would be a lot more pleasant. Sure people might not be able to take the time off, but plenty of notice is given.

They're good when prepared properly. I had some awesome shrimp and grits in Georgia.

Has anyone mentioned that Billy Mitchell is a cheater yet? Seems like that kind of crowd.

People in sports tank and throw games, at bats, etc all the time.

Boxers fight like pussies just to rack up points and win (undefeated Floyd Mayweather?) or lose rounds on purpose to save energy if they are tired.

I played competitive tennis for years and if way down in a set players constantly bail out and tank to save energy for the next one.

In the olden days of exhibitions in tennis the matches were literally scripted like pro wrestling.

This shit happens all the time in actual sports. who cares.

The interest in this discussion is more about who did it than what was done. If player 2 was Levi and he plunged his final ball in the same situation, most people would think “wow, Levi can actually play pinball. He is more than just sarcasm and wit.” Taking Escher to a ninth game would be an accomplishment for almost any other player.

This issue is this is Elwin, who most consider the GOAT of competitive pinball. The few hundred people that watch competitive pinball on a routine basis are used to seeing Keith playing well. Plunging that ball in a deciding game of a world championship makes the GOAT debate much more argumentative. I have always been partial to Daniele and feel Johannes will take this title over the next decade. Perhaps Keith now cares more about his reputation as a designer instead of a player… which IMO he is clearly the best in the industry.

I do hate when people call disc golf "frisbee golf" or worse yet "frolf". Yuck. Makes me sad, I need a Kleenex

4 hrs for one match, holy moly. I didn't know one match lasts that long. Admittingly I know nothing bout pinball tournaments.

As for grits, with lots of butter and S&P they are good, especially when paired with shrimp.

You can't really legislate this. Other games like Magic the Gathering have tried and struggled with how to do this, but they always find out that you can't stop someone who wants to lose. It can always be done just slightly more subtly than whatever the rules disallow. If you legislate against plunging and walking away, you'd just get Elwin making a couple careless stabs with the flippers until losing the ball anyway. You can't make someone try who doesn't want to.

...forcing him to look bad flailing on stream, which is maybe part of what he was trying to avoid in the first place.

I was there for that. Josh just totally flubbed it. When Andrei won he literally had tears of joy. It was cool to see such an emotional reaction to winning it all!

Don't knock grits until you've tried them. When I was growing up I thought they only existed on The Beverly Hillbillies, but now I know they are real and they are spectacular. Of all the things at the Cosmopolitan buffet in Las Vegas the absolute best thing is the shrimp and grits.

Ok, first of all, what in the name of Christ is a “house ball”?

2) that game of Dialed In took FOUR hours?!

and D) grits rule. Butter, salt, some yolk from a soft poached egg? Yum!

No, the nine game match took 3+ hours. A house ball is when you plunge and don’t get a flipper on it before you drain.

The house always wins, bro-stein!!

Why does it take 4 hrs to determine who is better that day at pinball? This blows my mind.

Clarification: Not for whole tournament, but between two people.

What? No. The dialed in game was about 15 minutes.

1. It's the world championship
2. It's a best of 7 match between elite players
3. It went up to 9 games because they were tied 3-3 after 6
4. It was still probably closer to 3 hours

Not taking anything away from the venue, but the games could have been set up harder, like that of PAPA back in the day. It certainly was a test of endurance.

It would be interesting if Keith and Escher get down to play a deciding future match and Escher chooses Dialed In as one of his games. Same situation as the past, wonder what Keith does then.

Games were set up perfectly. There's a point where stuff becomes dumb (lightning flippers, ripping out posts, etc) and it becomes much less of a game of a skill.

Some Matches ran long because players were good, not because games were too easy. In fact, if you look at the Dialed in scores all weekend, they were very low. I never played it but I'll assume that game was hard enough just based upon the scores of most 4 player games.

Why go up if best of 7? Does there have to be a 2 game lead? That would be something to look into to keep things moving along.

It's a Sharpe / IFPA rule, and it's there because they like it.

I still don't see why this needs to be "moved along." It was all over by 6pm on Sunday, and that's LATE for an IFPA worlds to be over in my experience (I've played three and qualified for finals in three).

Seems to be a solution in search of a problem. The Sharpes/IFPA came up with these rules years ago, and they like them, so I don't see any of them changing. I don't hear any complaints from players about any of them.

Player complaints for tournaments seem to be more of the "it's too quick!" variety rather than the "speed things up!" variety. People want more qualifying time, they complain when long-playing games are thrown out of tournaments for time reasons, they would prefer to have ball saves and easy rules. The only people who complain about tournaments being too long are those who generally don't go to them.

For them I say: go to shorter events. Pintastic, Allentown, even NYCPC. League nights. Saturday afternoon bar crawl leagues. Plenty of different options for everybody.

It happened to a couple of matches and as someone who was just watching the stream, I was all for some bonus action. Not sure how I would have felt as a participant.

There is a clear difference between the game play at PAPA (and it was 4 players not 2) and at the pinball asylum on F-14. Thats only 1 game as well.

You would have noticed that Eric was taking advantage of a favourble feed everytime he locked a ball/ put it in the top right saucer. You can also clearly see the difference in ball speed around the flippers

https://www.twitch.tv/pinballasylum/video/1312226112 (4:48:00 onwards)

~37 mins for 3 balls, Eric's ball 2 was ~25 mins.

Papa: 12 balls in 7 mins.

I didn’t say the games were the “same as papa,” I said they were difficult Enough.

This wasn’t papa. It was the pinball asylum. Also there is no more papa.

If it makes you feel any better, I got 2 million on f14.

I’m still not sure what the problem is. Why do you think the games need be made more difficult or the event needs to run quicker?

The guy who has won two straight world championships rolled f14. Nobody else did. Short of breaking Stone’s fingers or making him play blindfolded I’m not sure what else was supposed to be done to keep him from playing some long games.

Obvs I am using it as an example. F-14 was not difficult enough. 2 million on the "Papa" machine would have been a monster score. Thanks for clarifying that PA aint PAPA and PAPA is no more... I had no idea.

I think that due to players being so good, machines unfortunately need to be set up extra hard due to games/days going far too long. It will also prevent walk offs

Either make the games harder or stretch it out to 4 days...

I'm with RGR on this one - i think games should be set up super tough for major tournamnets. That way, it makes players have to be adaptable. There are some players who regularly do quite well, who typically play quite rough (lots of hard slapping and constant moving the machine - not abusing it), but when they get to a tight tilt game, they turn to custard. That to me, is not a top level player - that player should be adaptable. Play a new stern, and 90s, and EM and undstand the differences in phyiscs, bounce etc. The player should look to see if outlanes are mega wide, or even if lightning flippers installed etc and adapt thier play style appropraitely - maybe go for safe return to flipper shots than go for the 'blow the score up strategy'.

While i've said the above from the perspective of ensuring the best all round skilled player is rewarded, i also think it goes a long way for the viewers and fellow competitors. No-one wants to watch a 1 hour long epic on LOTR, however the one at Brisbane Masters last year was set up brutally hard and it worked - Good scores were over 5 or 6M, many were aroudn 1-2M.

Only lesson here for any of these guys is if you are going to tank at least try and make it look good like other "sports".

slap the ball around or try and nail a post and drain so people wont complain.

If he wanted to bail out he could have made it look better and no one would be the wiser.

I don’t think time had anything to do with the plunge quit. I think KME didn’t want to try to figure out rules for DI, and try to execute, and he would have likely failed and maybe then the thread could be “Elwin can’t play Dialed In!”
In any case, I tried to do what he didn’t at TPF, and felt a fool, cause I don’t know the game either. He made a smart play, imo.
As to the game setup/ time factor. Some of the time was actually waiting for games that others had chosen as well, not actual playing.
Sharpe’s don’t care how long things take really, it’s a world championship and nothing should or will be rushed.

A lot of pinball guys are overgrown, baby d-bags, so this behavior should be expected. "One ball to rule them all!" is my motto and while I would never consider a pinball player an athlete, a competitor would always show fellow competitors the respect of playing out their games. It just sucks the wind out of the sails of a winner to beat a quitter. I also see how a lot of guys on this board would support this sort of douchebaggery... It's really emblematic of what's wrong with pinball in general.

Then it's not "sports". It becomes drama.

I've got a name for people like that "sports ___".

Classic SadSack!

Yes... Elwin's games all have tons of ways to score big, you can blow up so many different things. From what I understand, DI is just one thing: SIMs. Exact opposite type of game, and I'm sure that contributed to him just saying fuckit.

Picking games/banks you know your opponent hates is definitely legit strategy, even if they're not your best games either.

Haven't seen it but...

...plunging and walking off reads disrespectful, yeah.

...plunging, turning around and congratulating the other doesn't at all.

So did he srsly just "walk off"?

No he didn’t. It was respectful

Eric, would you have done the same in his position?

All ready asked and answered.

Sure didn’t bother him on Fathom

Nope.

I’ll take a pass this time.
Wait. Does anyone get slapped?

No doubt...and GNR is even worse (in terms of arcane, really unbalanced scoring). One of the reasons JJP games don't seem to last in my collection.

After reading many pages of this thread, I put some things together, and I think I have the answer:

Elwin had some grits for breakfast, asked for a soda, they asked "a Coke?" but got a Pepsi. He played Frisbee golf on his Rollerblades between rounds. He didn't feel Dialed In and suddenly felt the "urge" brought on by those buttery grits. I don't blame him, he had to go!

Its the only logical explanation. Pinside is the best!

Obviously I'm not Keith Elwin but I cannot imagine he gives a damn about how he would look if he managed to 'flail' on a game on stream. He literally has nothing left to prove in the world of competitive pinball and every single person in the building and watching him on stream KNOWS he's the GOAT for a reason. Everybody is capable of having an off game every now and then.

Combine that with the fact that he highly respects Escher and this entire 'controversy' is a complete non-issue. Any sort of negativity levied in his direction is feigned outrage at the most pathetic level.

My only thought is, why enter "any" type of tournament if you have nothing left to prove and don't intend to finish? Thats a general thought on sportsmanship in general, not this specific case. I'd love if someone let me have a win!I am surprised this thread is still active though.

Let's talk about the featured tournament!

Of coarse he intended to finish. He didn't fly to south FL to work on his tan, but sometimes things don't go your way.

Including this tourney, he has played in 7 this year averaging 64 'whoppers' per tourney (541 total) which is f'ing epic, so clearly he is not showing up to chew bubblegum.

Can you believe they never made a They Live [1998] pin??

1_j_o05IUmWRVEdE5Vp20MrA (resized).png

There's an IFPA rule against wagering on events you're involved in. If busted, you lose IFPA privileges for a year.

While I can understand this is an attempt at humor, it's a very poor attempt and, to me at least, it's in very poor taste.