Franck Bona wins 2011 European Pinball Championship!
2011 was the year for France to host the European Pinball Championship. Three kinds of tournaments were planned for this week : Team tournament, Individual Tournament and Kids Tournaments. Gary Stern was the special guest and arrived in France on Friday night, while the team tournament was in progress.
The team tournament saw the victory of the Hungary Team, who beat last year’s winners, Dutch Pinball Team into second place, with the Italia Tecnoplay Team in third.
The Individual tournament was held on Saturday and Sunday. The format for the qualifications was the same as the 2009 EPC held in the UK. Each player could choose six of the available machines on which to play a single qualifying game, plus a joker. The scores were ranked and ranking points awarded. The total of a player’s ranking points determined their overall position amongst the 154 players.
Timothee Hulin Bouard, Krisztian Szlalai and Daniele Celestino Acciari were the best players after the qualifications. The 36 qualified players took part in a second qualifying round which worked much like the initial qualifying round, except each player had to choose 4 from the 10 available machines to record a qualifying score, plus there was no joker.
After the two qualifying rounds, the format changed to knockout rounds all the way through to the final. The 16 qualifiers were split into 4 groups of 4 and each group played a single 4-player game on a randomly selected machine, with the top 2 going through to the semi-finals.
Finally, Daniele Celestino Acciari, Franck Bona, Jorgen Holm and Timothee Hulin Bouard headed to the final, which was played on the latest Stern pinball, The Rolling Stones. Timothee Hulin Bouard was the leader during the 4 first balls, but Franck Bona finally wins the tournament, after a thrilling fifth ball and two tilts warnings. Daniele Celestino Acciari got the third place, and Jorgen Holm the fourth.
The EPC 2011 team wants to thank all the players for their fair play, and we hope to see you at the next EPC, that will be help in Spain in 2012.
More details here : http://www.pinballnews.com/shows/epc2011/index.html
