Date: 10th April, 2011
Location: Planet Bowling, Lomme, Nr Lille 59160, France.

Report by Franck Bona

Editor's note:

On the 10th April 2011, Franck Bona held a special pinball party and tournament to celebrate his 20 years of playing in pinball tournaments.  As it turned out, there was an even more special achievement to celebrate, as Franck had just recently won the European Pinball Championship for the second time.

So it was that 67 competitors gathered to toast his recent and not so recent victories and compete in the 2nd annual Ch'ti Pinball Party.  Now, over to Franck for the details and some pictures from the weekend.

The poster for the Ch'ti Pinball Party

The first player to arrive at my home on Saturday night (some players stayed here)
downstairs with Whitewater and Demolition Man.

Foreign players Stan Simpson from England and Andrew Heighway from Ireland

Kate Morris and Nick Marshall, also from England, upstairs with Twilight Zone Medieval Madness, Dracula, Shadow and The Lord of the Rings

We had a BBQ dinner with merguez, very good Belgian beers, and we put some smelly cheeses on the BBQ to eat hot with some french Bordeaux and Burgundy.

After playing pinball for fun on Saturday night and going to bed very very late, we woke up at 7.30am !!!

It's never too early - Franck playing on his TZ

Stan Simpson and Eric Rousseau with big headaches...

...but with a Red Bull you can play pinball!

It's time to leave the house. Let' s go bowling!

We arrived at the venue - Planet Bowling - on time (just the first miracle).  Zero games were installed at 9 o'clock (no stress!!!)

We began once everything was ready at 10.30am (just 19 pinballs to install!).  Everything is working quite fine and it's time for Junior Tournament.

The Kids Tournament

The Kids Tournament

The Kids Tournament results were:

Kids Tournament winner, Clément Carré

After lunch it is time to welcome French television station Canal+ with Daphné Burki.

Daphné Burki

You can see the Canal+ report on the Party here.

After that it is time to take an international picture with Stan, Andrew, Kate and Nick.

Andrew, Franck, Kate, Nick & Stan

And then it is time to play the finals.

Here is the final ranking :

Thierry, Jean Philippe and Franck with their trophies

Stan in fourth place

The winner and his trophy

After that it is time to thank everyone for coming, and tell everyone that the bowling remains open until 2 o'clock in the morning.

It was also the time to take pinballs home.

All the collectors brought 1 pin minimum

In spite of everything and the tiredness, we really want to play!

The two organisers of this really big event at the restaurant

Six players that are not wishing to go home, so after the dinner, why not play pinball

More than 1 o clock in the morning : we will have to stop playing, the bowling is closing in 1 hour and we still have a little job to do.

Putting the pins into the bowling centre

Nearly 2 o'clock - everything is done and the last beer has been drunk!

Finally, here are the full results for the 2nd Ch'ti Pinball Party tournament:

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