No drinks to pass this point… but trophies are OK! Joseph, Chris, and Matt (2nd, 1st, and 3rd).
Lansing Pinball League held its final playoffs for Season 7 on November 8 and Chris once again walked away as the undefeated champion of the league. Chris has won every season since the league’s inception, both in the previous “points only” format and in the current playoff format. Second place went to Joseph and third went to Matt, giving him his first A-division hardware in the league.
Chris plunges his walk-off Ball 3 in the final game against Joseph.
The final battle was tense. Chris won handily on his first game choice of Getaway, but on Tales of the Arabian Nights, Joseph rolled over Chris with 30 million or so points. This made Joseph the only person to win a single game against Chris all evening. Chris chose Austin Powers for the third game and won the night with a walk-off Ball 3, giving him the championship but also burdening him with the knowledge that he made someone play Austin Powers.
Meanwhile, thanks in part to a miscommunication that resulted in Sam not attending, B division consisted entirely of three people: Jake, Dan, and Mike B. The three played off to determine the allocation of the three B-division trophies. The first went to Jake, the third to Dan, and the second to Mike B., who does not appear in my photo because he left to go walk his dog and never returned.
Jake and Dan. Jake won B division and Dan came in third.
My own night started with having to play Adam. (Matt offered to just divide the present people between A and B so that the divisions were evenly populated, but I didn’t want to because I had earned a top 8 position and wanted to play in A, so he kept the original 8-person bracket. I came to mildly regret that decision.) I was ahead going into Ball 3 on Jack-Bot (my choice), but Adam (as player 1) proceeded to get multiball out of the slot machine and make plenty of hay out of that. I repeatedly yelled “bulls—!” as Adam said “Tournament setting is a beautiful thing.”
Joseph plays his final game against Chris.
On my ball, I had a lot of work to do and got multiball going again (on my own, thanks very much) but didn’t make quite enough out of it. The game ended up at about 3.0 billion to 2.9 billion in Adam’s favor. Adam declared the game “epic.” Actually, I think he might have said “kind of epic,” but I’ll take it. For the next game I picked Indiana Jones and had a similar situation of having a really great game by my standards beaten by an even greater game. So I lost to Adam, but I felt good about losing.
Sadly my tour of the loser bracket was brief and consisted of having it handed to me by Jason on the same two games I chose in the winner’s bracket, and without any dignity this time.
I got a lot of nice photos of the night, so I hope you will check out the photo gallery which draws from the group’s Flickr pool (which at the moment is all my photography, but other Flickr users are welcome to add to it). The final standings of Season 7 are also available.
Tonight is Super-Ball VII, the traditional post-season “Zen” (split flipper) tournament! It’s always a ton of fun and nothing is at stake except some endearingly cheesy trophies, so you should definitely attend.