Archive for the ‘casual flow’ Category

Portland Pinbrawl 2011

Pre-registration is now closed. Thank you to all that have pre-registered. It’s not to late to be apart of Pinbrawl 2011. You can still sign up when Ground Kontrol opens Sunday morning at 10:00-10:45. The tournament will then start at 11:00. See you all there!

The tournament will be held on Sunday April 17th.  Entry is once again $20 this year.  The format is the same, head to head, best 2 of 3, double elimination.

We will be giving away a TBD pinball machine as the grand prize along with cash prizes for top finishers.

Brawlers (37 spots left):

Meilani Allen
Jason America
Drew Anderson
Brian Barbeau
Bonnie Bedford
Mindy Bert
Brandon Bras
Dennis Brenhaug
Billy Brown
Abra Cadabra
Steve Cartoon
Carlos Cash
Pat Castaldo
Raymond Chau
Adam Chesbrough
Brian Chesbrough
Sid Conner
Bobby Conover
Chris Coyle
Miles Craig
Chad Darnell
Erich Demerath
Dave Dimoff
Noah Davis
Mickala Duprey
James Edes
Emma Eichhorn
Michael Farber
Kris Fast
Matt Fentress
Harry Ford
Fred Franken
John Fujita
Maurizio Gagno
Kathy Gagno
Robert Gagno
Jeff Gagnon
Ryan Gratzer
Julie Gray
Louie Hamlett
Philip George Hammil
Hayden Harker
Ashley Harris
John Harris
Mike Hassenpflug
Eric Hill
Jason Hill
Brian Hinz
Ben Hoerth
Maka Honig
Paul Kalk
Gavin Keable
Kevin Kerr
Jared Kramer
Jeff Kraus
John Kremmer
Bill Lascher
Dottie Ledesma
Seth Longmire
Mike Mahaffey
Mark Mahoney
Jake McGhee
Eric Merchant
Jason Nagy
Edmund Nash
Aaron Nelson
Mike Norman
Andrew Nunes
James Pace
Jay Pankratz
Keith Parkins
Brian Richardson
David Rebal
Chris Rhodes
Mark Rubial
Isaac Ruiz
Matthew Siltala
Brandon Smith
Jarrod Smith
Pirate Mike Smith PDX
Jeff Spaziani
Eden Stamm
John Stein
Nathan Stellhorn
Richard Stemson
Rob Timberlake
April Vo
Zoe Vrabel
Donald Warren
Jeff Weston
J.D. Yeager

Showdown at Slabtown III Recrap

Th’ third Showdown at Slabtown is complete. So here’s a picture post.

But first, some fun facts:

The final results can be found here.
A quick recap on pinballrankings.com is here.
Drew Multiball interviewed Bowen, Neil, and Todd MacCulloch:

The tournament was awesome. Competition was way srsly tight. Pretty good CFF turnout and showing, and a good Portland turnout; solid Seattle and VRPA turnout; and some solid ballers came from other places (Neil Shatz and Bob Matthews and Keith Elwin from Caliornia, Bowen Kerins from Massachusetts). Gotta say – this tourney is really developing into Portland’s biggest and best one. The Ground Kontrol Pinbrawl is another big one… but it’s a different format. Thanks everyone for coming out and entering and trying really hard. And thanks to all the organizers and techs and scorekeepers for putting this together and keeping it running. I can’t wait for next year.

Eric Hill took most of these pictures. But I took a few, too. So I captioned them. Thus, hot pics:

Read the rest of this entry »

Showdown at Slabtown LIVES

UPDATE:

The Classics is over. Mike Mahaffey wins! Full standings will be posted later.

Check @portlandpinball on Twitter for some updates.

FINALS UPDATE: Bowen Kerins wins the Open tournament! Congrats, Bowen.

Final four: Bowen Kerins, Cayle George, Maka Honig, Keith Elwin.

Check back in the next couple of days for a more detailed recap.

That was a whole lot of pinball!

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So the tournament starts today! Today and tomorrow is the qualifying round.

Hours:
February 18 3:00-Midnight
February 19 12:00-Midnight

Location:
Slabtown
1033 NW 16th
Portland, OR

The scores and rankings during the qualifying round are updated live (about every 15 minutes), and can be found here.

Open Division Live Results

Classics Division Live Results

So you can keep track of the action from afar! (Note: Those are just the rankings for the qualifying round, not the final. See above for final results.)

Discuss stuff in the comments!

Anyway, don’t forget to try hard, every body! Good luck, and have fun.

Some notes:

-All the machines in the Classics bank are set to 5 ball.
-Some of the machines have very sensitive tilts and are set to “difficult” – so be careful.

Memories of Bygone Days

And by “bygone” I mean “two weeks ago.” And by “memories” I mean “pictures.” And by “of” I mean “like, totally.” So, when you put it like that, “Pictures, like Totally Two Weeks Ago.”

Our local tournament organizers have been busy these past few months coming up with sweet tournament ideas. The most recent one was the C-Bar Charbroiled Schoolyard Rumble. You can read about it in that post. But the gist is: Once upon a time there were four team captains. And one Saturday night those team captains got together and drank a bunch of beer. And then they each drafted their teams from a pool of players. 7 players a team. And on Sunday we all got together and rumbled like asshole school children!

The format was designed just for this tournament. In the first round, each player played four person games against the other teams’ players. After a game was over, you got shacked up with three different players from the opposing teams. Plus you were awarded points based on how you placed (4,2,1,0). And so on for, uh, 7 games in total? At the end of those games, each teams’ points were totaled.

Then the 2nd round began. In this round Team 3 played Team 4. Regular games were played, except at the same time it wasn’t very regular because the players rotated after each ball. So, the pressure was on! When you stepped up to play you knew you could only contribute one ball at a time. This made for an interesting atmosphere, with teams huddling together to come up with their plans, and everyone playing spectator – standing back and focusing intently on whom ever was up at the plate.

Anyway, Eric Hill took some rad pictures throughout the day-long event. Here they are.

Sigh, fun times.. And you can find some bracket stuff here.

For upcoming tournaments, check that section of the message board, or the Events page on the Portland Pinball Map.

Ricochet C-Bar Bounties + Cascadia Cup Registration Reminder

Two hot items for you to munch on, swallow, and then belch out.

First off: a reminder that the First Annual Cascadia Cup* is happening on November 7. Registration is now completely full. Thank you for those that have signed up. It’s gonna be fun!

If you didn’t know, Cascadia is the bio-region commonly known as the Pacific Northwest. It’s a lush enviro, all green-like and pretty, super casual and phased, and some people here want the United States to just get the hell out of it forever.

So this tournament is a celebration of the super rad Cascadia pinball scene. It’s an all day tournament, and you’re guaranteed to play 9 rounds! Basically, you get matched up with three others and play a game of pinball, then you get matched up with a different 3 others again and play a game of pinball and you get to do this 9 times. Then the top 12 advance to the final rounds. Dropshot’s testimony: “Those that attended last year’s event, the Slabtown Smackdown, will likely testify that this may be the most laid back tournament in the history of tournaments.”

You need to sign up ahead of time for this tournament. We are making t-shirts and stuff, and the prize packages will be SWEET. Pre-registration ends TOMORROW, Oct. 1. So sign the eff up. We currently have 29 registrants, and we’re gunning for 36 so that we have a nice clean bracket. AKA space is limited! More information can be found on the Cascadia Cup page.

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Item number dos: Casual flow knows no bounds! Much to everyone’s happiness, local operator Ricochet Pinball has taken over the C-Bar. They’ve added seven machines to the place. And in celebration, they set up an amazing bounty hunt on the machines there (well, on five of them).

The bounties are thus: Whomever holds the GC on a machine on the deadline of Oct. 15 wins $100! Uh yeah… that’s huge, people. That’s $500 in total prizes. There’s already some tight competition on them. But some of the machines are still just waiting to be slayed. So have at those machines!

The machines in the bounty hunt are:

Twilight Zone
Rollergames
Judge Dredd
Road Kings
Jack*Bot

Discuss the bounties here. Thanks, Ricochet!

*it’s sort of the 2nd annual… I dunno. whatever!

Cascadia Pinball Cup Registration

Registration for Cascadia Pinball Cup. is now limited to 48. Please contact Aaron/Dropshot to register. Thank you to those that have signed up, so far there are 46 players this year. Looking forward to seeing everyone in November.

We had 7 people pre-order a t-shirt, we plan to make a few extras to sell the day of. If anyone knows they are going to probably buy one please let me know.

Registered Players (48): All full

Fred Franken Aaron Nelson James Edes Cayle George Kris Fast Maka Honig Zoe Vrabel John Stein Ryan Gratzer Andrew Nunes Jason Hill Robert Gagno Kathy Gagno Isaac Ruiz Kevin Kerr Dave Dimoff James Nye J.D. Yeager Mike Smith Miles Craig Paul Kalk Chris Coyle Chris Heilig Coryn Walker

Jared Kramer Danny Backglass Belrose Julie Gray Emma Eichhorn Mike Hassenpflug Dennis Brenhaug Jake McGhee Steve Lampros Jeff Gagnon Mike Mahaffey Louie Hamlett Maurizio Gagno Bobby Conover Rachel Cooper Brandon Smith Jason America Pat Castaldo Ben Applebaum Jamie Beth Einsohn Bob Skinner Adam Johnson Mindy Bert Billy Brown Rodney Olsen

Quest for the Beta Test – Pre-Avatar Pinball Tourney

ROM from Casual Flow Headquarters here, bringing you news about an upcoming Slow-Flow tournament being run by local operator, Quarterworld.

Stern’s next machine, Avatar, is coming out soon. Avatar is already known among some circles (namely, the circle made up of me and my cat) as one of the most pixelated pinball games ever made. Take a look at this screenshot for an example:

It’s like freaking Monet met up with Buzz Aldrin and they had a baby together. And then they smashed the baby onto the playfield and then cranked up the pixels. Amirite?!

But wait, there’s more! Now’s your chance to finally see the pinball machine in person.

Quarterworld is being rad enough to let some top ballers get an early taste of the machine. To be granted access, all you have to do is hold a GC or #1 score on one of the two machine at the Langano Lounge by the tournament’s end.

Check out Qdub’s post about the tournament.

And here are some additional details:

Casual Span: Aug. 20 – Sept. 12.
Casual Loc: Langano Lounge. 1435 Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard.
Casual Crush: The Simpsons Pinball Party, Indiana Jones (Stern)
Casual Flow Rating: 5/5 (due to length of the tournament)

There is the potential for four people to win this tournament. So don’t fret! You have a chance. And if you win, it would be cool if you could use the message board to give us fans and early review!

Showdown at Slabtown II – Casual Flowblock