The A division winners: 2nd place Mike, 1st place Chris, and 3rd place Adam.
Chris emerged from the second-chance bracket to defeat Mike S. and win Season 6 of the Lansing Pinball League. The nail-biting finale required him to win two best-of-three rounds against Mike, whom he had already faced, and been defeated by, in the first round. In a surprising twist, Adam and Chris – the favored finalists – met up in the second-chance bracket’s semi-finals, leading to a victory for undefeated league champion Chris and a third place finish for league newcomer Adam.
Russell gets ready to dominate B division.
Meanwhile, Russell had his second consecutive B division victory, defeating Terry in the finals. Matt came in third, resulting (surprisingly) in his first-ever Lansing Pinball League trophy.
Matt declared the bracket a “home-wrecker bracket,” since in the first round, I played Joseph, and Matt played his own roommate Aaron. The two trolls (as I call them), Mike S. and Chris, also had to meet up in the first round.
The trolls.
Mike stands by while Chris puts a billion points on Getaway. Hey, it’s only pinball.
Although Medieval Madness was out of commission (Joseph said it appeared that someone “took the castle out and shot it”), the night still ran very long, with the end of things coming at about 1 a.m. This was due in part to Chris’s repeated choice of the long-playing Austin Powers. He must have really wanted to win to subject himself to that. He also played a game of Getaway during the last round of the finals that finished just shy of a billion. This is not to say that his victory over Mike was easy: at one point he had to make up a significant deficit on his third ball of Fish Tales in a do-or-die game. Unfortunately for Mike, third ball miracles are something of a specialty for Chris (see his win over Alex on Lord of the Rings in the Season 4 finals).
After the end of the tournament, Adam and Sam were still up for going to Theio’s, so Joseph and I headed over to meet them after saying good night to Mike, who said he was too tired to come along. When we got out of the car in Theio’s lot, who was standing there to greet us? It was, of course, Mike, who had decided he really wanted to have a milkshake. It was a short visit to Theio’s (everyone except Joseph just had dessert or milkshakes), but it still provided a fitting and traditional end to Season 6.
Well, there goes my strategy.
And with that, Season 6 is a wrap, to be followed by the traditional post-season Zen (split flipper) tournament on May 24. Thanks are in order to Matt for getting us through another successful season. This league is the one that introduced me to the fun of competitive pinball and got me into the Michigan pinball scene. I can honestly say, therefore, that Matt is responsible for something that has brought a very significant amount of joy into my life. For that I cannot thank him enough.
I hope to see you all at the Zen Tournament! Lots more photos of finals can be found in the photo gallery (which is plugged in to the Flickr LPL photo pool) and the complete results are also available here.