SWISS OPEN 2011


Dates: July 9th, 2011
Location: PinballEd GameRoom, im Tösspark, Weisslingerstrasse 1, CH 8483 Kollbrunn, Switzerland.

Report by Phillip Eaton
Pictures by Edy Flammer and Phillip Eaton

Following the closure in early 2011 of the Hurricane Flipperclub near Zürich - venue for the European Pinball Championships 2010 - some of the Hurricane regulars decided to get together to open a new place to play pinball, and so PinballEd in Kollbrunn came to be.

The venue is so named after the man who put his name to the lease, Edy Flammer, but also as a kind of play on the words in English, as in “I’m pinballed out!”.

Located around 20 minutes drive from Zurich near the large town of Winterthur, PinballEd played host to the inaugural Swiss Open 2011, filling a vacant calendar slot traditionally occupied by the former Hurricane annual “grosse Turnier”, and with the same tournament director, Robert Sutter, or Röbi to his friends.

So, it was time to brush up those German language skills, meet up with some old acquaintances and get stuck in.

Turning up late to the event due to not reading the instructions properly, I was expecting the event to be well into the first round and my scores to be zero, but fortunately, I wasn't the last to arrive.

Really, I had no excuse for being late as I’d been to the location on a previous occasion, but our visitors from other countries did have an excuse, because finding the venue is not that easy, and the sketchy location info on the PinballEd website isn’t really the best guide (and that’s not just because it's in German, sorry Edy).

Not the easiest place to find, but worth the search
Not the easiest place to find, but worth the search
(picture: Google Maps)

The PinballEd venue is located in some sort of ex-commercial building that looks to have been re-purposed as a bunch of art studios, with some woodworking and mechanical areas, and a small cafe/restaurant.

Once at the building, and you’ve found the right door (no signs yet), you have to board a dubious-looking, unmarked industrial lift with big garage-like swing doors.  You take it to the second floor and then walk down an anonymous corridor with yet more unmarked wooden doors.

The main PinballEd hall, with around 15 machines on offer
The main PinballEd hall with around 15 machines on offer

However, once you make it to the pinball venue, things start looking up. The main room is around 5 metres square and filled with machines, and on the side of that is a bar room with a stereo hi-fi, TV, large drinks refrigerator and some odd triangular tables with benches. (The bar was the only area in the venue where smoking was allowed.)

The bar area  (Pink fluorescent outline at left end of the bar is the 2010 EPC winners trophy)
The bar area (the pink fluorescent outline at left end of the bar
is the 2010 EPC winners trophy)

On the other side of the bar room is a second games room that is about half the size of the main room. Altogether, there are about 20 to 25 machines in the venue, almost all being late DMD, plus both Pinball 2000s. Weather for the event was quite warm, but luckily the place is on the 2nd floor and is surrounded by windows.

The second games room
The second games room

Registration for the tournament was 35 CHF (~€30) and that included morning croissants, a rather good Thai red curry lunch provided by a local restaurant, with a choice of rice dishes with or without meat, various other accompaniments and some large help-yourself cakes later on in the evening.

Having visited Thailand recently,  I can confirm that the food was of a good standard, but to standard Swiss heat levels  i.e. “Chilies? What chilies?”. The lunch was actually a conspicuous break with tradition; for most summer Swiss pinball events, lunch is typically an outside grill.

Drinks on the day were at regular prices, which is 3 CHF (~€2.50) for a bottle of water or can of Coke, and bottled beer or Red Bull at 5 CHF (€4.25), among other choices available. (If you're not a Swiss local and therefore somewhat used to the prices, sorry,  I should have given you a warning!)

Did you remember to equip your new pinball room with a trophy cabinet?
Did you remember to equip your new pinball room with a trophy cabinet?

The tournament format was fairly simple.  Röbi Sutter had devised a new Excel spreadsheet system where all players were pitched into rounds of pre-determined 4-player groups which eventually ended up with similar performing players against each other.

Röbi’s systems are well-crafted, as they allow him to re-jig player groups, and then print and hand out score sheets to each group after every round.  These are then filled in by the group members themselves and handed back. (It’s simpler than I make it sound!) This makes it possible for him to run the tournament pretty much single-handedly.

Röbi Sutter (right, out of picture) explains the tournament format and schedule
Röbi Sutter (right, out of picture) explains the tournament format and schedule

Scoring was relatively straightforward; 7 for the win, 5 for second, 3 for third and 1 for last place.  Each round consisted of a game on two different machines, the scores being added together to give a total score for each round - maximum 14, minimum 2 - for each player.

In total, there were 8 rounds, 3 before lunch and then 5 afterwards, which meant that you were playing roughly two 4-player games per hour. This provided plenty of time for socialising, visit to toilets or to enjoy a drink.

Lunch time, in the smaller of the two games rooms
Lunch time, in the smaller of the two games rooms

To avoid any big delays during the rounds, all machines in the tournament were given a target score and any player topping it would automatically get maximum points, meaning you could end up with, for example, 7-7-3-1 points for the four players, if two people beat the target.

Get ’em started young, and what better way than with a Pinball 2000?
Get ’em started young, and what better way than with a Pinball 2000?

Machines for each group were chosen at random at the start of each round.

What do you think the chances are of actually getting to play a different machine every round when machines are chosen at random?  My maths & statistics education was long ago, but from empirical experience, the chances are a lot less than playing the same machine from the fourteen machine pool, four times in fifteen plays. This happened to me with two different machines on this occasion! Still, at least it wasn’t on Indy 500.

Once play got underway, around 30 minutes late, the first game for the group of four I was in was Monster Bash.  But straight away it started kicking our extra balls, so we quickly moved onto another machine, this time Twilight Zone. That change was going well for me and I was looking good for a win, but then it was suddenly noticed on my last ball that I was now scoring for player 4, when I was actually player 3. So we moved on again to Jack-Bot, which behaved itself much better.

Play gets underway in the morning rounds
Play gets underway in the morning rounds

First tournament teething problems, I guess, but from then on there didn’t seem to be many other machine problems at all, which is not surprising as a good few of them had come from the Hurricane Flipperclub and all were in very good condition.

As a side tournament event, a pair of NBA Fastbreak machines, connected together, gave some additional entertainment. Everyone had to play once on each half of the machine pair and record their number of baskets over a 2 minute period in a special NBA two-player mode.

Genuine innovation or parts game? You decide... Either way, it’s something different.
Genuine innovation or parts game? You decide!
Either way, it’s something different.

Here are the results.


As the day wore on, the temperature outside (and thus the temperature inside) rose, and we all became thankful for the two or three large fans and the air conditioner unit that were dotted around the place. I'd forgotten just how smelly groups of hot people can get in an enclosed space.  

Something that also became apparent later on, when it became dark, was how the games with LED conversions became more difficult to play due to strobing effects. The Monster Bash was certainly headache inducing and I’m glad the Getaway didn’t feature in the tournament - in the recreational play afterwards, I played into Secret Mania and could have had seizure!

“I don’t care if you bagged 2nd at the IFPA, you’re not beating me at my own tournament.”
“I don’t care if you bagged 2nd at the IFPA,
you’re not beating me at my own tournament.”

Then, as the evening went on, it inevitably came down to the finals between the usual suspects, with the final game on Doctor Who between the top four qualifiers; Michael Trepp, Martin Wiest, Klaus Erhard and Robert Sutter.

Here are the qualifying positions:

The room fell silent as all the other machines were turned off.

Towards the end of the evening, the final kicks off on Dr Who
Towards the end of the evening, the final kicks off on Dr Who

By 21:50 it was all over. Robbie Sutter had pulled off another win, despite a spirited final come back by Martin Wiest. After a lot of handshakes and pictures, people slowly made their way home and Edy’s team of helpers cleared away the remaining snacks and rubbish.

The finalists, L to R, 3rd Klaus Erhard, 1st Robert Sutter, 2nd Martin Wiest, 4th Michael Trepp
The four finalists (L-R):
Klaus Erhard (3rd), Robert Sutter (1st), Martin Wiest (2nd) and Michael Trepp (4th)

In conversation with Edy, Röbi and the rest of the organisers, they were very happy with the way the event had turned out and they have future plans to add yet more interest to the event and perhaps increase the numbers somewhat, following this years deliberate lack of publicity, to get things rolling for the first year.

Personally, I had a great day - lots of good pinball on some machines I rarely get to play, socialising with many good friends, good food and (for me) a short drive home.

Edy Flammer, the ‘Ed’ in PinballEd
Edy Flammer, the ‘Ed’ in PinballEd

PinballEd is currently run on an informal basis without a set opening schedule or membership system. They do however have a web forum, where you can register and find out the latest, including announcements of upcoming game evenings.

Find it at: http://www.pinballed.ch.

 

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© Pinball News 2011