Interview with:
DOUG POLKA
Interviewer:
Louis Marx, Owner/Director, DFW Pinball League (Rowlett, Texas).
Why is Louis qualified to interview anyone:
Louis has been a pinball collector since 2001, has been involved in the Texas Pinball Festival (mostly as a volunteer) since its inception, was formerly part of an pinball arcade ownership group, and was the twitch voice for many events from 2015-2020.
Most importantly, he loves talking pinball with anyone who will listen.
KEY:
LM = Louis Marx
DP = Doug Polka
Hello again and happy holidays!
For my next conversation, I had a Zoom meeting on December 22, 2024, with Doug Polka. I met Doug via phone through a mutual friend, Lewis Bevans. Doug is most known for his role in the annual Pinburgh event and the Pittsburgh Pinball League. This was a great conversation. The interview took about an hour, but we stayed on the phone and continued talking about tournament pinball for another 30 minutes. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed the actual conversation.
LM: Let’s start with biographical info. Where are you from originally?
DP: The Pittsburgh area – Vandergrift, which is about 40 minutes east of Pittsbugh.
LM: Where do you live now?
DP: Still in the Pittsburgh area.
LM: Have you ever moved out of town?
DP: Pretty much rooted in the Pittsburgh suburbs.
LM: What is your first pinball memory and how old were you?
DP: First game I ever remember playing was Pinbot at a grocery store down the street from my parents’ house. I had to be just over 10. maybe 10-11 years old?
LM: Are there any unique memories, not related to directing tournaments that you want to share?
DP: My other turning point in the pinball hobby – a friend had a machine at his house. He kind of introduced me to the collector’s world. He said, “Oh yeah, you can buy these things”. The first machine I ever owned was a Data East Jurassic Park.
LM: How long have you been Directing Tournaments?
DP: The first thing I was involved with was the Pittsburgh Pinball League (PPL). It’s been going on for decades now. Then I volunteered at PAPA 10 and met Kevin Martin. They ramped me up over time, doing more volunteer work out there and then eventually started helping direct the tournaments and helped set things up. That eventually led to TD-ing in the World Championships and Pinburgh. The first World Championship that I TD-ed at was in 2007.
LM: Who was the first pinball person that you met and are still friends with today?
DP: Pete Hendricks – he started the PPL with me and a couple of other players. We used to meet up at various locations around Pittsburgh and we’d get together and play for fun.
LM: What about memorable pinball contacts that are no longer around?
DP: The first person that I think I ever talked to that was a famous person was Lyman Sheets. He was in the practice area at PAPA 10 and I knew who he was and I knew the work that he had done. I went up and I introduced myself to him and he said, “Ok, cool, want to play a game with me?”
LM: How many participants did you have at your first solo event and/or the first event that you were the head TD for?
DP: We started with about 20 people at the PPL, but that wasn’t solo. There were a few of us in charge of that. That was how our league started. That was somewhere around 2006-2007. That was before the IFPA even recognized leagues, so there aren’t great historical records. 2014 is the first year we used the Joe Schober software.
LM: Joe Schober software?
DP: People still use it, but we don’t use it anymore. Its actually a really neat piece of software because our league was originally run on spreadsheets. This was the first piece of software that was designed for pinball. It keeps a lot of data points that you can reference.
NOTE: Since LM was unfamiliar with the software, DP shared a link to the PPL page for this software. LM looked through this page after the interview was over. The amount of statistical data, badges, and individualized player data found in this tool/software was very impressive.
LM: Do you have any machines at home? If yes, how long have you been a collector?
DP: Nope, not one – I own 300 games, 184 of them pinball machines and none of them are at my house. All of mine are either on location or at the shop.
LM: At the shop?
DP: So, I started a business in 2009 called PGH Pinball. It grew out of our league, a little bit. We were meeting for league in the south side of Pittsburgh. We had to bar hop to complete league because each place only had one or two games. Then one of my friends who has a bar, Steve Zumoff, asked me to put a couple games there. That’s where the business came from. Not many people were putting pinball out of route around here at that time. So, people would see my games on location, and call me, and that’s how we grew.
LM: Do you have a game that you regret selling?
DP: Currently it would probably be World Cup Soccer. I’ve owned something like six of them and then I always end up wanting it back. It’s a game that was usually always out there so when I needed space, it was the ‘go to’ to sell, knowing I could get it back again in the future.
LM: Is there a game you could have bought, but didn’t, and regret not having bought it?
DP: In the 2008-2009 time frame, I was looking for a Bram Stoker’s Dracula. A person at one of the shows had five of them in various states of dis-repair. None of them worked. He was going to sell all five of them to me for $1000 total, but I told him no.
LM: How different is it to run larger versus smaller tournaments for you? What stands out?
DP: Logistics of the large tournaments are difficult to coordinate. There’s all of the help, all of the games and making sure everything’s just how you want it be. That’s as opposed to running a strikes tournament on a Wednesday night in a bar, which is much more casual and relaxed. When you run a major event, a lot of times people don’t understand all of the effort behind the scenes to bring it all together.
LM: A lot of people feel intimidated about the phrase ‘competitive pinball’. From what I’ve read, some people will go to their first tournament, but never go back because of feeling like an outsider. So what do you do or suggest to help new players feel welcomed?
DP: If you run stuff in your local area, you know who your regular players are. When I see new people, I try to give them one on one time and talk to them about how it works, rules, and get to know them. We also tend to have raffle prizes so they don’t have to win to have fun. They run up against people that do this every week so a lot of time they lose so, as long as they have a good time and you create a good atmosphere, they tend to come back.
Monetary “longer” conversation:
LM: ‘talked about making it fun for everyone so newer players would come back next time, even if they don’t win.’
DP: ‘talked about how that tends to be an issue, pretty much anywhere.’
LM: Directing Pinball Tournaments can be a thankless job, especially when some players take it more seriously than others. So, do you have any regrets or second thoughts?
DP: No regrets at all. No second thoughts.
LM: What’s the craziest or most unusual ruling you’ve had to make as a director?
DP: A lot of the rules that exist in the IFPA and PAPA rules exist because of stuff that’s happened at some of our tournaments, so I’ve seen a lot. One of many memorable moments was in the C Division of one of the PAPPA championships. It was not my ruling but I was there. The game was Twilight Zone. The player had the powerball in the shooter lane. The player didn’t like ‘the little white ball’ because it was too fast and it wasn’t fair. He wanted us to replace it with a normal pinball. He had gotten the powerball before and, obviously, hadn’t gotten the gumball machine and clearly didn’t know the rules or details of the game. We told him that the game was playing as intended and to play on. Let’s just say that this player was unhappy.
LM: Yeah, Twilight Zone was way ahead of its time. We had one in my arcade when it was open and it was down more than it was up. It had so many unique parts, we were always waiting on a part. It’s a great game, just hard to keep running.
DP: Still, there are a lot of games today that aren’t as deep and unique as Twilight Zone. Another of my most problematic route game is Star Trek The Next Generation. It’s a great game, but with the optos, the guns, and other concerns, there’s always a new problem with it. Luckily, its in a location with 50 other games. Although it stinks for the person that says, “I drove two hours to come play that game”.
LM: What is your preferred or favorite tournament format to run? Why?
DP: Four player Matchplay is the favorite – its more inclusive and less waiting. Any version of four player matchplay – everyone plays to the end (except during strikes). You don’t have to wait hours to get on a game like a pump and dump style tournament. Matchplay is better for new players because they have time to socialize. Its an escape, a way to relax, and meet new people or just talk to the people you know.
LM: Is there a specific format you don’t like to run? Why?
DP: I’ll run anything. I think there’s room to do just about anything, but for the larger tournaments, I don’t think pump and dump works out very well anymore. I can’t tell you the last time I ran a best game format as regular event.
LM: Talk to me about your involvement over the years (pre-COVID) with Pinburgh.
DP: The Matchplay version of Pinburgh started in 2011. There was a Pinburgh before that, which basically became the PAPA World Championship, and started in 2004. The Matchplay Version was Mark Steinman’s and Bowen’s brain child. It pretty much grew every year after that. I think I may have played in the first one. After that, I just volunteered to TD the rest of the way.
LM: In 2024, Pinburgh made its return, granted on a smaller scale for now. So, what are your thoughts on the rebirth?
DP: I think it went pretty well. We had some challenges logistically since we didn’t have the financial backing that we used to have. This was basically a few enthusiasts, all of which had pitched in previously, who stepped forward to make it happen in 2024. There were some people disappointed at the size, but starting over at zero, it was where we had to start and we intend to grow every year going forward.
LM: Do you have any partners in pinball that you feel like you need to recognize?
DP: I always thank Kevin Martin who used to run the World Championships in Pittsburgh. My tournament addiction traces back to him, but there are SO many other people, that I hate to call anyone else out. For example, we had dozens of people who helped us pull of Pinburgh together in 2024.
LM: What haven’t I asked that you feel the IFPA World needs to know?
DP: I’m a pretty boring guy, there’s not much to know. I don’t really have any shocking secrets.
