Archive for August, 2010

58 people competed in the Open tournament, and 49 in the Classics tournament. Strong turn-out! And folks really put a lot of work into their qualifying entries. You had to put up some hot scores in order to make it into the final rounds.

And then once the final round started, oh man, things got shaken up fast. Some big names got eliminated in the first round of the finals.

And through it all Robert Gagno emerged victorious in – get this – not one, but BOTH tournaments! He swept it! No easy feat. He played great throughout the tournament. And when crunchtime came, in the final rounds, he pulled it off like a champ. He came down with this parents, Kathy and Maurizio, and they all basically operated as a team throughout the weekend. Team Gagno. (On a personal note: I got 2nd place in the Open, and while I felt like I played pretty well, I’m not sad! It was totally cool to watch Robert sweep the event. Major props.)

Nice showing by Portland players in the event. All our constant playing and competing must be paying off… with DIVIDENDS! Whatever that means. Nice showing by the core CFF contingent, too. But there were some notable absences (Replay!).

Here are photos taken by Robert’s dad of the winners line-ups. Check out their flickr page for a lot more great pictures.

Classics Division Winners. l-r: James Edes (4th), Cayle George (2nd), Robert Gagno (1st), Aaron “Dropshot” Nelson (3rd).

Open Division Winners. l-r: Fred “Fred” Franken (4th), Robert Gagno (1st), Steve Lampros (3rd), Ryan “ROM” Gratzer (2th).

Eden Stamm was top qualifier in the Open. Cayle George was the top qualifier in the Classics. Zoe “Legs” Vrabel was the top female qualifier, and she also won the PBR skateboard in a mini-tourney (thanks PBR!).

Big thanks to Aaron, Jake (Revtest), Fred, Eric, and Noah for organizing the event. And thanks to Slabtown for providing a rad venue. Mega thanks to Ricochet for their tight tournament machines, and for their really awesome mini-game machines. Here’s a video of Jeri from Ricochet showing off the NES Light Gun game.

Danny Backglass won the Time Machine reverse-flipper tourney, and Mike Smith won both the Tommy Bad Cats and the Star Trek NES Zapper tourneys. Way to go! Also, thanks to Quality Entertainment for their machine. Thanks to Chris Rhodes for bringing in Aztec, and for everyone who brought in their sweet machines. The line-ups were nice. Very well-rounded and interesting.

Check out this page on the message board for the full results.

Lastly, some pictures:

Grandmaster Danny Backglass watches, approves

Eden and Cayle in the Classics finals

More classics action

Eden rocking some Royal Flush

DDT rocking the Frontier

Robert in game 1 of the final round.

ROM in the final round

See you next year!

Posted: August 2nd, 2010
at 6:09pm by ROM

Categories: CFF,CFF Friends,News,Pinball

Comments: 6 comments

Showdown at Slabtown II – Casual Flowblock

At the stroke of midnight – two hours ago – dropshot called out, with his grotesque horsevoice, the final games of the qualifying round. And not too surprisingly, some mad rank exchanges took place right at that final toll. Danny Backglass, on a heroic 900,000+ game of Aztec, leaped from 12th place in the Classics (not a qualifying placement) to 4th. And in the Open division, Opto did something or other on Whirlwind to skyrocket his placement from so-so to good! A moment after these games were registered, all the machines were swiftly turned off – the mad shuffle complete, the qualifying round OVER!

There’s a lot to go over right now. And I do not think I will be able to cover it all, late as it is. But I will try to note the things that pop into my head. First off, Eden Stamm arrived today from Canada and succeeded in posting a slew of big scores in the Open division, thus securing his 1st place qualifying position. He was solid all the way through. And in the Classics division, Cayle George ended the night on top.

There was a very strong turnout in both tournaments. It was busy all day, but the final few hours were especially crammed with contenders jockeying for qualifying positions. Mega thanks go out to Sara, Nhu, and Katrina for managing the scoring in the final hours. It looked really hectic, and you all really took care of business. Also thanks to Emma for her superlong day shift. Plus thx to Isaac, Noah, DannyB, Jake, Dennis, and EVERYONE who helped out and/or took a scoring shift (I am missing many in that list).

Here are the leaderboards:

Open leaderboard (top 16 qualifies)

Classics leaderboard (top 8 qualifies)

And the individual machine scores:

Open:
Simpsons
Demolition Man
Whirlwind
Terminator 2
Frontier
Seawitch

Classics:
Royal Flush
Aces and Kings
Aztec
Solar City

Okay, I am super tired. Here are a bunch of pictures I took today! Click each image for full size. The pictures cover some afternoon action, mini-games (NES Gun Flippers, Reverse-Flippers, and Tommy mode), Classics set-up, and more.

And here’s a video I took with my camera of some Classics action! That’s Eric Hill, one of the event organizers, in the foreground playing Aztec.

So! The Classics finale matches start tomorrow, Sunday, at noon! If you’re in the top 8, ya gotta be there on time. This is IT!

And during the classics matches, there will be the side-battle for the PBR longboard. This battle will be with the 17th-20th place finishers in the Open Division (but it also depends on how they qualified in the Classics…?? I don’t get it, really – JUST BE THERE OKAY!), and will be starting at noon.

Then, around 2:30pm, the Open division final matches will begin. If you qualified in the top 16, be there earlier than 2:30pm. Don’t be lame (looking at you OOO).

The Ricochet mini-games! In the fourth picture above, you can see Jeri Ellsworth, one half (with Trish) of the inventive minds behind the fun set-ups, using the NES laser Gun to play Star Trek. As far as I know, Dave (10th picture) has the current high score on that machine – around 34 million. And Danny B (7th picture) has the current high score on the reverse-flippered Time Machines (around 4.2 million). I’m not sure who has the high on Tommy Bad Cats – but I’ve heard it’s around 25 million.

Alright, I’ll have another round-up tomorrow once it’s all over. I hope you found this post informative, and I hope I didn’t anything crucial out. See you tomorrow!!

Posted: August 1st, 2010
at 1:53am by ROM

Categories: casual flow,CFF,News,Pinball

Comments: No comments

Newer Entries »