Date: 1st March 2009, continuing the first Sunday of each month.
Location: Pinball Plus, 1001 Marie Ave South, St. Paul, MN, 55075, USA.

Report by Derek Fugate, pictures by Tina Curtis

The first Pinball Plus Open Monthly Tournament went over great. There was a nice mixed collection of pinball machines, all playing perfectly, and even a few classic video arcade games. Free soft drinks, snacks and pizza were also included for all the participants.

Games set up at Pinball Plus

There were 13 people who participated in the tournament. The qualifying/tournament machines were:

• The Simpsons Pinball Party
• Eight Ball Deluxe
• The Flintstones
• F-14 Tomcat
• Twilight Zone

More of the machines at Pinball Plus

These machines were set extra hard without extra balls to keep play time down so that everyone could qualify in a decent time. Here is a list of all the machines available to play at Pinball Plus;

Further games at Pinball Plus

All the qualifying scores were recorded and put into the computer to calculate the points which were; 20 points for 1st, and then 15 to 1 for 2nd place through 16th.

This made for a possible 100 points for a perfect run on the five select machines.

Players in the first round

Here are the total points ranking results by player for qualifying;

Players in the first round of the tournament

After qualifying, the players were grouped together in three groups of three and one group of four players because of the odd number of players.

Derek reads out the groupings for the next round

The first round was played on three of the same qualifying machines while dropping F-14 Tomcat and replacing The Flintstones with a Williams Diner. The points were PAPA style, 4,2,1,0 for 1st through 4th place.

First round play on The Simpsons Pinball Party

After the first round was completed, the six players with the most points moved on to the semi-finals with two groups of three.

This time The Simpsons Pinball Party was dropped and the semi-finals consisted of Eight Ball Deluxe, Diner, and Twilight Zone.

Derek Fugate and Chris Frame tied with seven points each and played off on Eight Ball Deluxe, Derek won and advanced to the finals.

The finals were played on Eight Ball Deluxe and Diner. Tim Hudalla ended up taking 1st place, followed by Derek Fugate in 2nd place, and Patrick Sperry in 3rd place.

Patrick Sperry, Tim Hudalla and Derek Fugate

Tim Hudalla won his choice of a Williams translight along with WPPR points, which will be awarded to the three finalists along with participation points to everyone who took part in the tournament.

Tim with his prize

It was a great time and we would like to all thank Pinball Plus for hosting such a wonderful event!

We'll be looking forward to next month and look for this to become bigger and better each time throughout the year.