PRINTIMUS PINBALL CUP 2017

• After this year’s earlier Mihiderka Pinball & Food Festival 2, we’re back at Printimus Pinball in Bytom, Poland for the Printimus Pinball Cup 2017.

The weather was good, with temperatures in the mid-to-upper 20s and lots of sunshine to enjoy in the breaks between games.

The machines had undergone a slight reshuffle since March with the addition of a couple of new titles such as Space Invaders and a Medieval Madness Remake.

The full machine selection was:

Addams Family, The Attack from Mars Bride of Pinbot: The Machine Bronco Cactus Canyon Cirqus Voltaire Demolition Man Dialed In! Evel Knievel Flintstones, The Funhouse Haunted House High Speed 2: The Getaway Hobbit, The: Smaug Edition Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure Jungle Queen Mata Hari Medieval Madness Remake

Monster Bash No Good Gofers Pinball Magic Revenge from Mars Shadow, The Sinbad Space Invaders Spider-Man Spirit of 76 Star Trek: The Next Generation Tales of the Arabian Nights Terminator 2 Theatre of Magic Twilight Zone Whitewater Wizard of Oz, The: 75th Anniversary World Cup Soccer

 

There was one other notable addition at Printimus Pinball.

The animated Rudy mannequin we showed you at the pinball hotel in our Mihiderka Pinball & Food Festival 2 report had travelled to Bytom for this event and was available to purchase.

Entry to the Printimus Pinball Cup was by pre-registration, starting in mid-June at €40 ($48/£35) with a reducing scale of discounts for those who signed-up early and a €5 increase every couple of weeks up to a maximum of €55 for registrations made in August.

The weekend was organised by Łukasz Dziatkiewicz and Marcin Krysiński.  Marcin is the owner of Printimus while Łukasz runs the Printimus Pinball club.

They were joined by the weekend’s special guest – Jack Guarnieri of Jersey Jack Pinball – who had flown in especially for this event.  Along with Jack was JJP’s latest game, Dialed In!

The Dialed In! game was supplied by Freddy’s Pinball Paradise in Germany – JJP’s super-distributor in Europe.

The twenty players who took part in the weekend’s competitions each received an impressive pack of promotional printed media including a bookmark, magnet, post cards and entries to the Roger Sharpe Contest and the Pac-Man competition.

There were three full-scale competitive events – the main Printimus Pinball Cup (PPC) tournament, the Classics Tournament and the JJP Tournament.  The PPC and JJP tournaments both awarded plaques to the top three finishers, while the four finalists in all tournaments received a mix of prizes from Jack and the weekend’s sponsors.

Finally, there was a casual Pac-Man Contest held on a home multi-game system.  This was just for fun with no prizes at stake.

Free tea, coffee and water were supplied, while a local beer could be purchased for 5 Zloty ($1.38/€1.17/£1.02) per bottle.

The main PPC tournament ran across Saturday and Sunday, with qualifying on Saturday and the field split into two divisions for their respective play-offs on Sunday.

A match-play format was used for qualifying where every contestant played a single game against everyone else.  With 20 players that meant 19 rounds which were initially played one-at-a-time, with all games in a round needing to be completed and the results entered into the computer system before the next round could begin.

The Classics Tournament ran alongside the PPC with players fitting-in qualifying attempts between rounds of the PPC and in a brief 30-minute window once the PPC play-offs had concluded.

Once all the questions had been answered and the formats were fully understood, play in the PPC began at around 11:30 on Saturday.

Let’s play pinball!

Machines were randomly allocated, while choice of play order was decided by a coin-toss.  A single game was played with the winner returning to the tournament desk to record their win.  On average it was taking around 25 minutes per round, so with 19 rounds and meal breaks to factor-in, the qualifying phase would be running late into the night.

The Classics Tournament’s qualifying also began on Saturday morning, continuing until 30 minutes after the end of the Main Tournament’s play-offs on Sunday, after which the Classics play-offs could take place.  This tournament used the eight older electromechanical and solid-state machines in the back-left corner of the room:

Bronco Evel Knievel Haunted House Jungle Queen

Mata Hari Sinbad Space Invaders Spirit of 76

Qualifying used an unlimited buy-in format where each entry consisted of a single game on any four of the eight machines available.  The set of four scores formed the entry with ranking points earned for each score.  All entries counted which meant it was possible to knock your best entry down if you had, say, a later entry with one great score but three poor ones.

One Classics Tournament entry was included with PPC registration, while others could be bought for 5 Zloty each.  When the initial entry was collected or when further entries were purchased from the front deak, the player had to choose which four machines would be played.  Their scores were recorded on a tablet which was pre-loaded with the four game selections.  The top eight players qualified for the semi-finals which would be played on Sunday evening just as soon as the extra qualifying period following the PPC play-offs was over.

There was also a JJP Tournament, held on the three Jersey Jack Pinball machines – The Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit and Dialed In!.

This followed a similar format to the Classics Tournament, except that an entry consisted on one game on each of the three JJP titles.  Again, one entry was included but further entries could be purchased for 5 Zloty.

After the first few rounds of the Printimus Pinball Cup has been played, it was time for lunch.

A vegan meal was cooked and served in the kitchen area, while those who preferred something meaty could order from a local restaurant’s take-away menu and have the food delivered to Printimus.  We chose the vegan soup and burger from Mihiderka.

Later in the day we had a vegan curry with rice, while on Sunday vegan pizza was served for lunch and again in the evening.

Although the PPC rounds were proceeding according to plan, the breaks for lunch and dinner meant a late finish was on the cards.  So, Marcin and Rafal printed out the pairings for the final half-dozen rounds so everyone could get on with their matches as soon as both players were ready rather than waiting for everyone to finish each round.  The only exception was the very last qualifying round which everyone played together.

The ten players with the most wins would form the A Division on Sunday, while the bottom ten made up the B Division.  Additionally, the number of wins each player had would carry forward into the play-offs, meaning the more wins you had the better your chance of progressing into the semi-finals.

When all the matches were over, these were the two divisions (in alphabetical order):

A Division

Artur Natorski Cezary Glowala Daniel Maczurek David Mainwaring Greg Mott Martin Ayub Radoslaw Slotwinski Rafal Bytomski Rich Malett Szymon Marciniszyn

B Division

Aleksandra Mamaj Andrzej Olszewski Christof Lazik Jerzy Weglarz Krzysztof Mamaj Lukasz Dziatkiewicz Marcin Krysinski Piotr Kochanski Tomasz Swierkot Wojciech Matura

But that wasn’t the end of Saturday’s events.

The Dialed In! machine needed to return to Freddy’s by Sunday lunchtime, so the semi-finals and finals of the JJP Tournament were played on Saturday night.

The format was similar to qualifying, with the eight players divided into two groups of four to play a single four-player game on each machine.  Points were awarded with the winner of each game earning seven points, second place got five points, there were three points for third place and one point for fourth.

After all three games had been played, the top two from each group went into the final which was played in the same way.

The four finalists were Artur Natorski, Daniel Maczurek, Martin Ayub and Rich Mallett.

Daniel put up a strong performance on all three machines to take first place.  Martin’s grand champion score on The Wizard of Oz was enough to give him second place, ahead of Rich in third and Artur in fourth.

The presentations were held over until Sunday morning when the Dialed In! machine was packed away for its journey back to Germany.

Then Łukasz and Marcin got ready to present the plaques and prizes to the top four in the JJP Tournament.

Before that though, there was a surprise announcement.

Marcin revealed that, with Jack’s agreement, Printimus Pinball would be changing its name to the Jersey Jack Pinball Flipper Club.

With the growth of his Mihiderka vegan catering business (there are currently four restaurants operating in Poland with more in the pipeline) Marcin’s printing business – Printimus – is no longer the main focus of his business interests.  Indeed, the lower storey of the Printimus building is being turned into the main kitchen for Mihiderka, so the dropping of the Printimus name for the pinball operation seemed logical.

Then the awards in the JJP Tournament were made.

Here are the full results:

JJP Tournament

1. Daniel Maczurek 2. Martin Ayub 3. Rich Malett 4. Artur Natorski 5. Radoslaw Slotwinski 6. Rafal Bytomski 7. Szymon Marciniszyn 8. Jerzy Weglarz 9. Piotr Kochanski 10. Greg Mott 11. David Mainwaring 12. Christof Lazik 13. Cezary Glowala 14. Wojciech Matura 15. Marcin Krysinski 16. Tomasz Swierkot 17. Krzysztof Mamaj 18. Lukasz Dziatkiewicz 19. Andrzej Olszewski 20. Aleksandra Mamaj

 

It is customary to make an award to the Most Stylish Player in the tournaments, someone chosen for their unique play style.  This time the recipient was chosen by Jack and it was Szymon Marciniszyn who earned a copy of the video adventure game Beat Cop from 11-Bit Studios who were one of the PPC weekend’s sponsors.

There were piles of promotional JJP material, including flyers, posters and pictures.  Players were invited to take one of each as a souvenir of the weekend.

Then came the play-offs for the Printimus Pinball Cup.  The ten players in each division played another nine rounds of match-play games – one game against every other player in the same division.  The number of wins in this stage was combined with the wins from qualifying to determine the four from each division who would contest their respective finals.

The four finalists in the A Division were Daniel Maczurek, David Mainwaring, Martin Ayub and Rafal Bytomski.  In the B Division they were Jerzy Weglarz, Marcin Krysinski, Piotr Kochanski and Szymon Marciniszyn.

Then it was back to the Classics Tournament for the semi-finals and the final.  Only the top eight players qualified and they were split into two groups of four to play four machines with 7-5-3-1 points awarded according to position. The top two from each group went into the final.  They were Greg Mott, Martin Ayub, Rafal Bytomski and Rich Mallett.

Each player could choose a machine to play which meant the final was contested on Haunted House, Spirit of 76, Mata Hari and Genie.

Rich was in great form, winning the first three games on Mata Hari, Haunted House and Spirit of 76, giving himself an unassailable lead.  Greg and Martin had the same number of points but Greg took second place for having won on the last game, Genie, with Martin third and Rafal fourth.

Apart from signed comemorative mugs, the top three also won free passes to the Budapest Pinball Museum.

Here are the full results of the Classics Tournament:

Classics Tournament

1. Rich Mallett 2. Greg Mott 3. Martin Ayub 4. Rafal Bytomski 5. Cezary Glowala 6. David Mainwaring 7. Piotr Kochanski 8. Szymon Marciniszyn 9. Andrzej Olszewski 10. Artur Natorski 11. Daniel Maczurek 12. Krzysztof Mamaj 13. Tomasz Swierkot 14. Jerzy Weglarz 15. Lukasz Dziatkiewicz 16. Aleksandra Mamaj 17. Radoslaw Slotwinski 18. Marcin Krysinski

 

The PPC Final was the only event still to be decided.

As with the Classics Tournament final, each player in the A Division final got to choose a machine to play in the four-game series.

David, as the highest qualifier, got to choose first and picked Whitewater.  Martin picked Attack from Mars, Daniel selected Revenge from Mars, while Rafal opted for High Speed 2: The Getaway.  A 4-2-1-0 scoring system would be used in each game, but the total number of wins from the qualifying and play-offs were also carried into the final, giving David a 2 point lead over Martin, who had a 1 point lead over Rafal who himself had a 1 point lead over Daniel.

David’s choice proved to be a good one, as he won on Whitewater.  Daniel was second, Martin third and Rafal fourth.

Play then moved on to Revenge from Mars, but the game didn’t play too nicely for Rafal who chose it.

Instead, it was Martin who won this, before moving on to start on his choice of Attack from Mars.

The last game was Getaway and again the machine wasn’t kind to the player who chose it, Daniel.  David put up a leading 90M total in the player two position and by this stage only Martin as player four could catch him and win the final.

After two bad balls, Martin’s 8M score going into the final ball didn’t look promising.  While he did get to play the third ball a little, his 67M end-of-game total wasn’t enough, leaving David as the overall winner.  Martin was second, Daniel third and Rafal fourth.

The top three all won plaques (bronze, silver or gold), copies of the Beat Cop game and passes to the Budapest Pinball Museum.  In addition, all players received cars with codes to download the Tower 57 shooter game from 11-Bit Studios.

In the B Division, Jerzy Weglarz won the final, with Piotr Kochanski second, Marcin Krysinski third and Lukasz Dziatkiewicz fourth.

Here are the full results of the Printimus Pinball Cup tournament for 2017:

Main Tournament

1. David Mainwaring 2. Martin Ayub 3. Daniel Maczurek 4. Rafal Bytomski 5. Rich Mallett 6. Cezary Glowala 7. Artur Natorski 8. Radoslaw Slotwinski 9. Greg Mott 10. Szymon Marciniszyn 11. Jerzy Weglarz 12. Piotr Kochanski 13. Marcin Krysinski 14. Lukasz Dziatkiewicz 15. Andrzej Olszewski 16. Christof Lazik 17. Wojciech Matura 18. Tomasz Swierkot 19. Krzysztof Mamaj 20. Aleksandra Mamaj

The final of the PPC brought the weekend’s procedings to a close.  Events wrapped up at the fairly reasonable time of around 8:30pm, allowing a little time for celebrations in the town of Bytom.

This was a significant and transitionary event for Printimus Pinball.  The attendance of Jack Guarnieri added a level of cachet and international recognition to the weekend, as well as giving all the visitors the chance to play his company’s new game and talk to the boss.  In the days after the tournaments, Łukasz and Marcin took Jack on a tour of Poland, showing him pinball and cultural locations across the country.

We enjoyed our weekend in Bytom, and appreciated the earlier finishing times each day – especially on Sunday when our return flight meant getting a taxi to the airport at 4am.

Thanks to Łukasz and Marcin for organising everything, to Mirek for fixing any problems with the machines, and to Rafal for the scoring system.