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ROME PINBALL |
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Date: October 6th - 8th, 2010 Report by Alessio Crisantemi The Rome Pinball Tournament - the International pinball tournament valid for the classification in the World Pinball Player Rankings (the classification of the world's best pinball players, managed by the International Flipper Pinball Association) was a big success. It was organised by Tecnoplay with the support of the Rimini Fair and the magazine Gioconews – and took place at the 38th edition of Enada Rome trade show. With more than 30 “professional” players coming from ten different Countries (France, Belgium, Sweden, Holland, Germany, Turkey, Switzerland and San Marino) to participate in the tournament, it gained big attention at the continental level, being only at one week away from the European Pinball Championship being held in Zurich from the 15th to the 17th of October.
The finals of the Rome Pinball Tournament were contested on the very latest Stern pinball “AVATAR”, presented at it's official European preview at Enada Rome.
The Dutchman Rene Van Gool won the title, together with the greatly desired first prize, which was a very new Stern pinball, provided by Tecnoplay and the American Stern Pinball Inc.
In the final match, Rene overcame the other Dutchman Brenn Oosterban, the Italian Daniele Acciari - who already is the world champion - and the Frenchman Michel Dailly.
Franck Bona, also from France, was in fifth place and in the first two days of Enada Rome he also won the two mini tournaments (single day tournaments) that were also valid for the World Pinball Rankings. In the first competition on the 6th of October, the Frenchman - number 32 in the worldwide classification and a real veteran of the pinball sport (he has appeared on the podium many times in the world's most important events, with the third place at the EPC of 2008 and the tenth place at the 2009 - prevailed over Michel Dailly of the same country, ending the first day in second place, ahead of the Swiss Michael Trepp (third place) and Levante Tregova (fourth place). On the second day of the Rome Pinball Tournament, Bona also defeated Daniele Acciari who also lost against Bona in the final match as well as Michel Daill and Michael Trepp. There was great satisfaction from Tecnoplay about the success of the event. “We are very satisfied with the very good result we received from the international pinball tournament", Mauro Zaccaria of Tecnoplay, the organizer of the tournament explains, "and of its part in Enada. The beautiful aspect of this competition is that we can see some persons of different ages that are entertained with the pinball game, and it still proves that this is an immortal game, clearly demonstrating that “pure” entertainment is not finished and that the pinball industry, like the video games one, can still offer us a lot”. © Pinball News 2010 |
