STOCKHOLM OPEN 2007
| Date: 6th & 8th April 2007. Report by Mats Runsten The Stockholm Open, one of the three major tournaments in Europe, was arranged for the fourth year. It´s a hectic weekend filled with many different tournaments, the singles tournament being the main attraction. The qualifications for all events opened on the sunny, but cold, Good Friday.
There were four different mini tournaments. The One Handed was won 2-1 by Fredrik Malmqvist in a fierce duel with last years singles champion Fredrik Lindberg (who scored over 1B on Dirty Harry in the first set). Helena Walter and Sebastian Evans finished third (shared).
The Reversed Flippers (rewired Twilight Zone) was won by former Swedish Champion Jörgen IFK Holm. Mats Runsten finished second and Stefan Arkinger third.
New for this year was the Parallel Pinball. Two NBA Fastbreaks side by side (not linked), two contestants - foaming with adrenalin - side by side, two minutes each to get some scoring going. The winners climbed the ladder until only three players remained.
Jorian Engelbrektsson, who - as legend has it - never has lost a game on NBA, beat Henrik Tomson and Michael Lindström in the final . The Set the Highscore was played on Big Bang Bar, and Jörgen Holm was in the lead a long time with 800m. But in the very last minute the reigning Swedish Champion Reidar Spets put up 1.1B and won.
The classics tournament was run by collectors Leif Spångberg and Dan Hagman, with Johan Småros as the omniscient referee. They had 12 machines in place: Cleopatra, Mata Hari, Haunted House, Mars - God of War, Nightrider, Freedom, Hotdoggin´, Amigo, Super Soccer, OXO, Nip It and Kiss.
When the qualification time was up, the twelve players with the highest scores on each machine made the playoffs. If the same player had the highscore on two or more machines, a deciding game between the runners up was played. After a fair amount of house balls, cursing and nudging, four players had made it to the final: Patrik Bodin (the Stockholm Open organiser), Mats Runsten, Martin Tiljander and Dan Hagman. The final was played on OXO, Hotdoggin´ and Mata Hari.
With only one game left to play, only Mats and Martin had a real chance of winning, and this time Mats Runsten came out on top. Patrik snuck past Martin and grabbed the silver medal. Martin got the bronze and Dan finished fourth. The Split Flipper Tournament This year no less than 19 teams participated. The qualifications were entry-based, just like the main tournament, and the top-8 teams made the playoffs. Some noteworthy scores were made, e.g. Betandlose´s 50B on Johnny Mnemonic in the semifinals. The final was played between Betandlose (Patrik PAL Bodin and Stefan FEZ Andersson) and JFK (Jörgen IFK Holm and Jorian JOE Engelbrektsson). JFK immediately put the pressure on Betandlose with 150 on their first ball on NBA, and they won the first set. JFK also won the second set on T3 and were crowned Split Flipper Champions.
Fred Perry (Fredrik FL Lindberg and Per APB Holknekt) beat The Dutch Pinball Elite (Albert ANO Nomden and Paul PFJ Jongma) for the bronze.
The singles tournament saw 78 participants from Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands. Each player could play as many as 12 entries, where each entry consisted of three games on machines the player himself had picked. The 25 machines in the tournament line up were: The top 24 players would make it to the playoffs, and the top 8 got the added bonus of getting a bye, and thus skipped the first round in the playoffs. Qualification winner was the Dutch pinball magician Albert ANO Nomden, 10 points ahead of Svante SVE Ericsson (“the hardest working man in pinbiz”) and the elegantly playing Jorian Engelbrektsson (four out of his eight entries would have made the top-8).
The playoff was a straight cup ladder (no winner and loser sides this year) where the combatants played best two out of three games on three different machines. Before the final, the two losers from the semifinals, Helena YOO Walter and Per APB Holknekt played for third place on IJ. Helena was victorious and got the bronze medal. Two players had made it to the finals: the former Swedish champion Mats MCR Runsten and the reigning Stockholm Open champion Fredrik F L Lindberg. Even if Mats hadn´t lost a single set on his way to the final, most people had their money on Fredrik, who had been playing uncannily well through the playoffs. For instance, in the semi final Fredrik beat Helena Walter on IJ and TftC by getting 1.5B and 1.1B respectively. The finalists got to choose one machine each. Fredrik chose Dirty Harry on which he had scored very well (2.8B) during the qualifications, and Mats picked Pinball Magic without really knowing why. The third machine (RS) was randomly picked.
Fredrik showed that he had chosen wisely, and won the first set on DH in a very convincing way: 2B against Mats' 840m. On Pinball Magic Mats got two really lousy balls and was down by 140m (30-170) On his third ball he played a decent multiball and finished on 280m. Fredrik had a good opportunity to win the match there, but got jinxed. On Road Show, Fredrik had an unlucky first ball (35m) while Mats played a lot of modes and got 730m. On ball two Fredrik plays a good multiball and gets 450m. Mats finishes his second ball on 1.3B after blowing his Super Payday. On the third ball Fredrik struggles and fights and reduces to 934m, but then unluckily drains.
So, Mats Runsten is the new Stockholm Open champion!
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