A record number of players showed up for the 11th Annual Shorty’s Pinball Tournament this year. With 116 players this year, and time becoming a factor, the best-of-3 matches became one-game instead after just a few rounds of play. Despite the potential to just be unlucky and have a bad game, Cayle George advanced straight through the winners bracket into the Finals for the 2nd year in a row, and just like last year, won the Final match, this time against newcomer Justin Howard, to bring home a Gottlieb Sinbad pinball machine for his efforts. 3rd place went to Tim Gregich, and 4th place to Lonnie Langford.

We would like to in wite everyone to uor next HPO (Hungarian Pinball Open) in Hugary/ Budapest. On the 29th of november 2008 Budapest (lurdy haz, game world playing room  http://www.lurdyhaz.hu/index_lurdymain_eng.html ). Details, registration coming soon on my webside: http://ptrklub.hu/news/

October saw the list of players ranked in the World Pinball Player Rankings eclipse 3000 players, increasing (10%) from 2835 players on September 1st to 3124 players on October 1st. To have started with 400 players in April of 2006, and have grown so quickly only goes to show that demand for competitive pinball is at an all time high. 

Biggest movers during September included Christer Carlsson moving up 1493 spots by qualifying for the finals of the Boras Pinball Open in Sweden. Karin Kolbe moved up 1488 spots by qualifying for the finals of the Karbener Pinball Tournament in Germany. Dean St. Antoine moved up 1444 spots from his 4^th place finish at the Stern-IFPA AMOA Pinball Championships.
 
Upcoming events in October include the 24^th annual Pinball Expo Flip-Out Tournament in Chicago (http://www.pinballexpo.net) and the Pacific Pinball Exposition in California (http://www.pacificpinball.org/).

The first ever Canadian Pinball Championships were held at the end of September in Toronto, Ontario. Almost 100 people participated in the event hoping to be Canada’s first national pinball champion… 2 days of qualifying on Stern’s latest games, Batman and Indiana Jones, resulted in the top 32 players moving on to match play. The top 16 became group A, and the remaining 16 became group B. Each match was best 2 out of 3 on the higher seed’s game choice…after several rounds of play, and some huge scores, the Finals match was between Eden Stamm (group A winner) and Michael Higginson (group B winner) in a best of 5 match on Indiana Jones. It came down to the 5th game of the set, but Eden Stamm pulled off the victory with his bonus to become the 2008 Canadian Pinball Champion!! Other top finishers included newcomer Zeus Manolis, Andrew Aiken, and Kirk Hutton.

The first Boras Pinball Open, to be an annual event, took place in Boras in September with 58 participants. After two days of qualifications on the eight qualification machines (CV, Congo, I500, T2, MB, DH, Flintstones and JY), 24 players went on to the finals. The finals were played head-to-head, and Flintstones were replaces by DM. At the end, former World Champion Jorian Engelbrektsson met Patrik Bodin in the final. Starting on DM, Patrik was way behind at the last ball, but managed to pass Jorian, and then won the next match on CV. Third came Martin Tiljander and fourth came Johan Genberg. The top-4 in the Classics division were Markus Salo, Bjorn Pilefelt, Stefan Romberg and Richard Nauta. For more details on the tournament, check out:

http://bpo.boraspinball.se/

103 players competed in Flip Out this year, with the top 16 scores on Stern’s latest Batman advancing to the final round. The finals consisted of a best 2-out-of-3 head to head bracket, where Zach Sharpe made it two wins in a row defeating Josh Sharpe 2-0 in the finals. Other finalists included Bowen Kerins (3rd place) and Greg Davis (4th place). For more details on Pinball Expo, check out the review at:

http://pinballnews.com/shows/expo2008/index.html

The Showdown at Sundown tournament at this year’s Heartland Pinball & Arcade Supershow once again featured four different games from 4 different eras. Zach Sharpe made it two wins in a row down in Southern Illinois, beating Derek Fugate (2nd place), John Miller (3rd place) and Adam McKinnie (4th place). For more information on the show, check out:

http://supershow.popbumper.com/

In an event to raise money for Talk About Curing Autism, players that donated $40 to enter the tournament had a chance to walk away with a World Cup Soccer pinball machine. 18 players competed by qualifying on 10 different machines (Medieval Madness, Godzilla, Volley, Whirlwind, Indiana Jones, Monster Bash, Tommy, Varkon, Family Guy and Joust). A head-to-head double elimination bracket was held the following day with Keith Elwin making it a sweep on the weekend and taking 1st place (he also won the AMOA tournament held that same week). Other finalists included Josh Sharpe (2nd place), Jim Belsito (3rd place) and Zach Sharpe (4th place). For more details of the show, check out:

http://www.retrogameconnection.com/

Stern Pinball and the IFPA teamed up once again to host a tournament at this year’s AMOA show. 22 players competed by qualifying on either the Family Guy or Shrek machine, and then playing out a single elimination head-to-head bracket. Keith Elwin emerged victorious, surviving a near comeback from Zach Sharpe (2nd place) in the final game played on Family Guy. Other finalists included Trent Augenstein (3rd place) and Dean St. Antoine (4th place). For more details on the AMOA show, check out:

http://www.amoa-show.com

Mike Parkins defeated 31 other players on his way to victory at this year’s Inaugural Welsh Classic Pinball Open. Other finalists included Terry Sullivan (2nd place), Greg Mott (3rd place) and Martin Ayub (4th place). For more details on the event, check out:

http://pinballnews.com/shows/welshclassic2008/index.html