There's an IM on route in Milwaukee right now. It's setup far easier than the ones I've played in IL, unfortunately. But its a blast.

I have been told there is a third. It hides in their smoking room or something like that.

Maybe depends on the game you've played and where. The route ones on Milwaukee are often in dark locations, with poor lighting (broken GI?), and the ramps are cloudy. That, and the ones on route on Milwaukee tend to break a lot. So as someone who doesn't do home games, its tough to see I think, especially the area around the pops.

Oh, and ditto what others said about Creature growing on you. It takes some time to appreciate what the game is about, and how to do well.

All this talk about Creature reminds me:

This Sunday is Blackbird Bar's monthly pinball tournament in Milwaukee!

Lineup: The Shadow, *Creature from the Black Lagoon*, Medieval Madness.

3007 S Kinnickinnic Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53207

This Sunday (August 4th) at 6PM. Only cost is coin drop (50 cents a game).

You can win free beer from Milwaukee Brewing Company! A casual, non-IFPA tourney!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/326079024126407/

Any other WI computer nerds following this list going to That Conference in the dells next week?

Would totally be up for meeting a few others and play WOZ at Moosejaw sometime.

2013 WI State Championship Update (from jpolfer, one of the WI State Championship directors)

- There are only 2 months left to qualify for this awesome tournament at Tom Taylor's. If you are "on the bubble" to be in the top 16 (see http://www.ifpapinball.com/ranking_view.php?id=51 to find out) and have the time, please go and compete to ensure you will have a shot for the glory! See the IFPA Calendar for IFPA events in WI.

- Players who are qualified (and some below the top 16 spot) will be contacted via email in the first week of January. You will have ONE WEEK from the receipt of the email message to respond whether or not you will be able to attend. Note that a non-response will be treated as a negative response after this one week deadline. The top 16 players (by ranking) that state that they will be able to attend will be accepted into the championship.

- If you are on the ranking list in WI, at any spot on the list, you need to have your email address registered with the IFPA on your IFPA profile to receive the above email. This is the primary way contact with players will be done. If we cannot contact you and get your attendance response, you will be skipped.

If you haven't yet registered your email address with your player entry on the IFPA website (http://www.ifpapinball.com/user-profile), do so. Many WI players haven't done this yet - if you do it, it may actually increase your chance of making it into the championship.

For more info, please see this IFPA blog post: http://www.ifpapinball.com/ifpa-state-championship-series-november-2013-update

Joe Katz *
Chris Basler *
Mike Sievert *
Sean Spindler
Yancy Blaylock
Steve Tully
Jim Radovich
Lewis Miller
Greg Gessner
Robert Stickney
Timothy Enders
Maya Nigrosh
Chuck Blohm
Eric Strangeway

Right now, the above WI pinball players might not receive the 2013 WI State Championship email, even though they have a potential of at being contacted due to being in the top 50. The ones with stars are qualified at this time, but don't appear to have filled out their IFPA profile. Please fill out your IFPA profile at http://www.ifpapinball.com/user-profile and add your email.

Board regulars, if you know/see these players IRL, please encourage them to fill out their profile at http://www.ifpapinball.com/user-profile. Thanks!

If competing in the WI state championship is not of interest to you, feel free to ignore this notice.

Emails for the 2013 WI State Championship have been sent.

If you are in the top 50 for WI and have not received the email, please contact me via Pinsidemail and we can get things straightened out.

Hello cool WI (and MN, if you want to come this far) pinball people!

Next month I am going to be a co-director for the 1st (ever) IFPA WI State Championship. We are in need of a few volunteers to be scorekeepers at this event for the main and two side tournaments.

The commitment: spend Feb 8th, 11AM until the evening at a large pinball collection within 30mins drive of downtown Milwaukee, recording scores and handling questions.
The benefits: you get to help out a great event that is supporting two different charities, and get a chance to play on many fun pinball machines from the 50s on up!

I've already identified five individuals who are interested in coming - we could use a few more. Feel free to contact me via PinsideMail if you'd like to help out!

Stay warm today,
Jon Polfer

I run the monthly tournaments at Uptowner and Fink's Bar in Milwaukee. Next Fink's Tournament is 1/13 at 7PM, next Uptowner is 1/15 at 7PM.

They are really casual. People of all skill levels show up. You pay quarters only (a lot of monthlies ask for pot contributions), and prizes are basically beer, brewery tour tickets, and gift cards to businesses (a few people have won massages). There's door prizes that we do too (Pinball 101 DVDs right now), and anyone can win that.

Michelle and I, our primary goal with the tournaments are for fun and a place to hang with other pinball people.

There's IFPA ranking if that's something your'e interested in, but most aren't there for that reason - they just want to hang out with other pinball people. We ran the tournaments for 3-4 months initially with no IFPA ranking, and it really hasn't changed our turnout. If we dropped it, I doubt anyone would really mind right now.

If anyone is interested in competing in the side tournaments at the WI State Championship, please send me an email at [email protected]. The side tournaments are open to anyone, but the address is being provided only on request.

WI State Championship volunteer info messages/emails went out today. Most of them were via Facebook contacts, so I think I've covered everyone at this point. tmac should have a pinsidemail message right now.

If I forgot to send you one or there were technical difficulties, please PM me or send an email to [email protected] so I can send you the details.

INFO UPDATE

Hope everyone is as excited as I am that the first-ever WI State Pinball Championship is tomorrow!

Weather: We are still go - looking at a 60% chance for 1" or so in the evening hours.

Game List Updates:
Star Trek: TNG (out)
Scared Stiff (in)
Spaaaaaace Station (in)

Woodrail Challenge: Humpty Dumpty (confirmed)

Those are good ideas - PAPA has shown pinball is a great spectator sport when you have cameras on the game. Expensive and tricky to implement though, unless we know people willing to lend cameras or lend/install large mirrors. Sometimes you need to get special antiglare playfield glass if the lighting causes glare, which is *really* pricey at a couple hundred dollars per sheet.

I think the easiest way would be to run a Kickstarter to raise the money for it, or if someone is willing to donate the $500-$1000 per machine it would cost to build the camera mount and buy a rudimentary camera.

Arcade Adventures in Crystal Lake, IL (not too bad of a trip from Lake Geneva) has one right now: http://www.arcadeadventures.com/gottlieb-strikes-n-spares-pinball-machine/.

My opinion of MGC (2nd year).

The Good:
- The additional temp structure worked out great. The only place where I found myself chronically bumping into people was that structure. lol
- The additional vendor space down the hallways was nice.
- The foot traffic pattern was definitely thought through better this year, and I want to say props to the MGC event organizers for putting some effort into improving that.
- I thought that putting some of the videogame equipment in the hallway would be weird... but it actually worked and was kinda nice. And they put fun random stuff out there like some Cave import shmups...
- The cosplay competition by the Spooky Pinball group and the sweet sounds of BEAKER on Saturday night were just right. Wish there was more space to get in there and see, but they were perfect for the vibe of MGC.
- The tournament rule changes, I thought, were handled well given the constraints they had.

Room for improvement:
- Putting the pinball tournaments right near the entrance was... even more cramped than last year. It worked okay, and maybe that's the best spot for it given the environment we had, but it was cramped.
- It seemed like all the console + vid stuff got smushed into the old arcade hall... wonder how that went for them. The Tetris people got moved to the corner of the hallway.

Pretty bold to speak for Milwaukee when that isn't your town.

Pretty bummed I will no longer be a Milwaukee citizen after this weekend.

I'm moving to West Allis from apt to rented house. It has room for a few pinball games in the walk-in basement, and has no neighbors who bang on my floor when I play them.

*Sharing here for my friend Michelle who is kicking this off*

There's a new ladies pinball league starting in Milwaukee, WI! Non-IFPA. Just a nice casual night where ladies can get together and play pinball.

What? Ladies Pinball League!
Where? Veggas Pub (2479 Fratney Street, Milwaukee WI)
When? First Thursday of each month at 7PM (Starting May 1st!)
Format? Play each qualifying game. Your game score will be ranked/compared to other scores on the 100-90-85-... scale. Your scores from each qualifiying game will be added together to form your cumulative qualifing score. Top 4 qualifiers go to final.
Coin Drop? 50 cents per credit.
Games? Pinside listing for Veggas Pub

RSVP on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/events/291173617710576/

Milwaukee has Fink's Bar and Blackbird Bar which both have five games that get maintained fairly often. GNR is at Blackbird, along with TZ, CFTBL, and STTNG. Finks has WW and RG.

http://pinside.com/pinball/map/where-to-play/blackbird-bar-2862-milwaukee-wi-united-states
http://pinside.com/pinball/map/where-to-play/finks-4950-milwaukee-wi-united-states

The Skill Shots MKE pinball tournaments made the *front page* of the Shepherd Express weekly magazine!

http://expressmilwaukee.com/article-23311-milwaukee%25E2%2580%2599s-pinball-wizards.html

My player's condition Solar City EM is for sale in Milwaukee. Pictures are at https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B89lz6xWH85BSldyYUo4RmlXT2M&usp=sharing. It is player's condition - there's a couple wear spots on the playfield and the backglass is flaking in the blue areas. Comes with manual + schematic. It scores fine on everything but the final ball double bonus. Asking 450.

Game quality in the Waukesha/Milwaukee area has done two things since 2012:
a) gotten better, believe it or not
b) where the quality games go has shifted

Games in Milwaukee:
- Probably the best operator is Wisconsin Amusement. They have been buying new games (AC/DC, Metallica, Star Trek, Wizard of Oz) and putting them on route. But they don't clean their games and let get them very dirty, often buy games with old code and don't know how to upgrade them or are afraid to (particularly AC/DC). The games they put out are nice, but I don't know how well they will hold up in the long run as an operator, honestly. Usually the games are level.
- Mitchell is second, I'd say. The tournaments I run are on Mitchell games. Over half the locations you find in Milwaukee are Mitchell locations, and they have a wide selection of games. Mitchell games are usually clean, but often way off level, and there is always something that is broken that is very noticeable and affect game play quite a bit. They are hit or miss when responding to service calls, although they do better when the service them before the bars get popular in the evenings. Last three months I've had a game go down or become unusable at the Uptowner tournament, and this last month almost had a second game go down because a diverter got stuck. However, there's a few good locations that you will probably have fun at. Blackbird Bar in Bayview usually has good, playable games (Wizard of Oz, Tron, TZ, STTNG right now) and so does Finks Bar in Riverwest, and both locations have 5 games. It used to be that Landmark had quality games, but not so much anymore. I think Mitchell has been focusing most of their efforts on Blackbird and Finks - lots of players go through there and they are known as pinball bars. Tournaments have changed that I think.
- Red's Novelty does Milwaukee too. Because they get greater number of plays though... they break down more.
- There's also Sam's Amusement that has a few route locations. These games are serviced even less frequently than those above.

Games in the Waukesha area are handled by two operators, Red's Novelty and another that I have not been able to find the name of (they service Fox Run Lanes and Hannon's). Red's games often work but something on it will just not work right. Like a diverter, or magnets, or a wonky shooter lane. But nothing that makes it unplayable. If something is broken and you call them, they will come fix it. I really can't comment on the other operator - I haven't visited his locations lately. There's no number to call on their games.

Probably the best operators in the state are near the Madison area: Hilton's group at Pooley's and Quartertime (Steve Tully). They do a much better job interacting with the player community, and Hilton's group is doing some smart stuff with making reporting problems easy via QR code. Doesn't mean the games work perfectly, but I think there's more attention to detail.

In Milwaukee, that really isn't the case (yet).

For the tournaments I help run in Milwaukee, we've been working with Mitchell Novelty and have met with them on a few occasions. Game quality has improved as a result, but I think there's some distance we could go.

I really hate to say this because it sounds so mindbogglingly cliche, but the biggest thing that the operators around here could do to improve their business is to get into social media. Really. We talk about their games on a monthly basis on Facebook in the Milwaukee Pinball Academy group.

If there was an operator that was more willing to interact with their customers in Milwaukee and perform better maintenance (code updates, repair, etc), methinks there might be some extra cash there that hasn't been tapped from the playing public. I don't know if it would be enough cash for an entire startup company, but definitely enough to add to the bottom line.

It did/does.

I find that super-surprising. They are so similar. The playfield is just about the same between the two.

I disagree - I find Space Jam more fun in comparison. It has a sweet habitrail, it has modes that seem to utilize more of the playfield, and it doesn't have that stupid spinning disc on NBA which just makes ball times long (hold the ball long enough and it stops spinning). They both have the cool basketball hoop mechanism, and the layout with nice long shots. The feel of both tables are more layaway than pick and roll (ala Hoops).

Or maybe I just hate spinning discs. They seem to be my nemesis in games.

I'll just say this - I wish we had an AMH on route in Milwaukee.

The one pin built in this state, and we don't have one on route in Milwaukee.

Our tournaments would make a great testing platform for the game, beyond the location prototype near Spooky. We have more players.

You assume I have the cash to get one... lol

I have other priorities right now.

I shouldn't be complaining.

I had a friend looking at that one... thanks for sharing.

Milwaukee Tournament News:

The Uptowner IFPA Monthly Tournament on September 16th 2014 is cancelled due to scheduling conflicts among the directors that day.

The Uptowner monthly tournament will return on October 15th 2014.

I am stepping down as one of the director, and Michelle will be the primary director and contact.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

I have a conflict on those Wednesdays with something that takes priority over pinball.

I might come in and sub in the future, but I've been in talks with Michelle about stepping away from Uptowner over the last couple of months anyway, so this is a good transition opportunity.

Current plan is to still be point-person for Fink's, at least through EOY 2014.

There is talk of starting another tourney in the Water Street / MSOE area of Milwaukee. I'd say its still 50/50 whether its going to happen. If its happening though, I will be involved.

I think that's why P3 is important (despite its impracticality and price tag).

2016 WI SCS news
============

Just wanted to communicate to everyone that I am stepping down as director of the 2016 IFPA WI SCS tournament to be held February 2017. Paul Okruhlica of the Twisted Flippers league will be taking point on getting it organized for next February.

If you have any questions, feel free to PM me.