Slabtown Smackdown 11-7-09

[Kickback]

yup. Ever think about sticking to planet Earth? This has quickly become uninteresting.

[revtest]

Whatever your all point whores and you know it! how do I get on that list for whiskeys Deathsave? Bleh I'm pretty over all of you I'm moving to seattle where people play real pinball and drink real booze! .... ........FUCK PINBALL! GO DODGERS!!!! (shock) (&AHHHH)BLAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

[Kickback]

Seattle blows. We have better pinball and you know it. Elijah might have better hair, and Maka is a dead ringer for Ming the Merciless, but ...

[Dropshot]

well show up if you want and don't if you don't want to, I could give a shit. The tournament is the way it is. The $50 to top female is to encourage more woman to come out and play who may know they have no chance at winning it all but still have something to shoot for. For those that want a resource for competitive pinball then here it is and quit bitching, if you don't shut the fuck up and quit coming. I could care less.

[ROM]

Since no one's allowed to have any input or suggestions, all we have it bitching. Deal with it.

You should probably change the name of this thread, since this doesn't have anything to do with Seattle/CFF/Best of the NW anymore.

And you should care if you're alienating the people who are coming out regularly. If you're really gunning to rub butts with Keith and Co, you need local folks to actually care about putting in their big money, or else the events aren't anything.

[Dropshot]

I'm not trying to rub butts it would just be nice to have large tournaments here so we don't have to travel to Pittsburg or San Fransisco or Denver every year. Sorry for trying to do something for pinball in portland other than getting drunk and grabbing ass every other sunday. If you wanted say in tournaments get involved in the process of organizing them. Not after they have been announced. $30 is big money, announced a month in advance, get a fucking job then. $5 bucks a week should cover that...... oh and a few months ago a few people were like "yeah and maybe keith could like come and do a premiere of his video here. We could like pay him to do it." Well that's a great idea. Here's another one fuck this someone else can plan the tourneys next thursday is off too. Im sick of hearing everyones bitching every week over stupid shit.

[ROM]

Don't you think that what you perceive as bitching is actually people trying to get involved in the process? I wasn't able to make last thursday's tournament, where I think you guys were discussing the rumble. And because of that I get completely shut out of the process. Now any suggestion or input I have is met with angry dropshot telling me to shut the fuck up. That's bullshit, man. We're not allowed to say ONE thing when suddenly the tournament is drastically changed and the entire theme dropped off?

We all appreciate your work with the tournaments, dude. It's interesting to hear that people are harassing you every week over the weeklies - it seems to me like we have those down pat. Maybe you should create a weeklies/tournament suggestion thread, where people can give their input, and then a PR person (like me!) can filter the suggestions, respond to them, and then feed the good ones to you or whatever. There's no reason why you have to respond/yell at every comment, especially when you don't care anyway.

Also, remember how after one person brought up the idea of paying keith to come premiere his video, a bunch of people came in and veto'd that idea? cuz that's what happened....

[videomode]

I love pinball and you guys

[Dropshot]

Ok yeah I did over react a bit there. It's just frustrating as hell when everyone bitches to me whether it be how I randomly choose the game (at least twice a week) Which day its on ( every week) where it is (every other week) How you got screwed because the slingshot misfired the shot didn't register. All these things are all directed at me through phone calls, the board, texts, in person at each event. When I go 2 and out I have to stay and finish running the tourney, where as everyone (maybe not everyone but most people most of the time) get to leave and go home to their wives/girlfriends or just leave. I have to be at every tournament to run them, I don't get the option to skip this one. I know I am ranting a bit but it does feel good. I know and think I plan to pass off the weeklies to Fred and Eric for a while if they want them, but even that takes more work than they probably even know. Also on the bigger events it is not just myself planning everything. We usually go through about 15-20 emails and 1 to 2 2hour in person meetings. And then when we can't even get 10 people from CFF out of 40 interested we have to change ideas. Then no one likes how it's set up. It just get's frustrating, and sorry Rom I'm not directing this at you by any means. Dennis made a point to me last week and he said more or less I just realized how much shit everyone gives you all the time about everything but not much appreciation. Not to mention Eric or Fred and Jake who has helped quite a bit. This is the hardest part too, for the most part CFF doesn't show up or care about any of this or me from what I can tell, and it's the 'other' players that do. Yet almost all if not all of my frustration comes from CFF. I don't know maybe my perception is wrong but it seems that CFF only wants to hang out and play pinball, not improve their game and make Portland THE place to play pinball. And sorry for this I know Im gonna get it for all of this especially this but Jay you've traveled to PAPA twice and play in the b division and complain you get 'no respect' or something along those lines and as your 'profession' it states professional pinball player. I don't know maybe it's just me but if I went to PPE i wouldn't have played in the novice, not because I think i'm better or I could win. But to see what I could do and try to improve. Why wouldn't you want the best players to come to Portland? If anyone watched Josh destroy the hardest BSD on the planet on his first game in Seattle or Neil go crazy on ToM even after he had the highest score so far might no what I'm talking about. I don't know, how many of you were talking about new ways to approach the game or strategies after watching Cayle play? I guess that is worth $30 to me but then again I would like the chance to play the best the world has to offer on our home turf and play pinball for a few hours at a time.

[Dropshot]

think what you want, I may be crazy and have lost it. Or just over react way to easily or what ever. I'm sure this event is still ON if we can get a draw.

[ROM]

Good rant.

I agree that the "thurs not tues" "no, tues not thurs" complaints get old. No one day is going to work for everyone. And you switch them around at regular intervals. What more do people want?

Re: CFF - I think we need to remember that me and you and the other members that DO show up to events are the face of CFF. maybe this is saying too much, but the ones that you see as not caring are the ones who aren't showing up... so they don't have a say anyway, as far as I'm concerned. so who cares (well, maybe we should care a little...). The leaders, as far as there are any, are the ones who are actually leading.

Re: Jay - he has some selective memory. Maybe he forgot how we rallied behind him to win at Slabtown, and were stoked by how well he did. No respect!

edit: this is my 1,000th post on the message board!

[CAP]

The frustrating part is not CFF so much as being able to win out on weekly tournaments and realize you still won't have enough boints to crack the top 50. Dragging world ranked players here because you've hit the ceiling is not the way to go about it. You have to earn their respect by going to them, beating them on their own turf and taking their boints.

You're going to have to travel to crack the top ten. You're going to have to travel just to crack the top 40 because 'all' those guys travel to get where they are and 'still' end up getting beat by some podunk who knows his town's BK2000 better than anyone else. You can't just bring all the world ranked players to portland without paying your dues and risking your stake first. To expect anything else shows a lack of respect.

And beyond that, there's no reason for them to go all the way across the country to play a bunch of guys who can't even travel across town and crack the boards at the local pub.

I say, forget about how you rank in the world and start dumping $30 worth of quarters into Clinton Street every week until you own those boards. Make a serious effort there to back up your 'colors' before you start griping about boints and how you're going to rank against the rest of the world.

[Kickback]

I didn't say anything. Any complaints from me should not be quoted and twisted to fit in this situation. My loss of interest is simple. This thread was started over a proposed 8 on 8. That turned into 16 on 16. That turned into let's jump through hoops to get people in the top ten and change the format..... Get it together. My frustrations with CFF are about unrelated issues and not for this thread. I love CFF very much and felt it back at Slabtown. The Pro pinball player tag is funny . I make a few hundred dollars a year at pinball. As far as PAPA goes, go, then have an opinion on what to do. You do a pretty good job overall. You just need patience. Hairbrained ideas take time, lots of bullshit to sift through that stash. Meaning, it's not the worst idea, but the rumble was better. What it morphed into was just wild eyed and for down the road. Could you make it to San Diego next month if Kieth invited us on a whim? Doubt it. You made it to one event this year out of Portland. Seattle almost doesn't count. You should maybe look closer at the yearly schedule of events across the country and around the world and maybe pick your spots. I can't believe I got tossed in like that. Rude.

[Kickback]

Cap- Machine scores at The Clinton or any bar don't mean shit. i understand what you're saying, but what have you been to? Every one of us in town, other than Mehaffey, are B Division players. That doesn't mean we can't compete against them and earn good boints. It just takes money to travel to a lot of events and playing well. The formats we play in weeklies often have the best players in the top 6. But not always. It's way more of a crap shoot. The thing I take outta these more than anything is getting over pressure situations. Major tournies are more like Slabtown was August 22-23. The cream rose outta 2 days of qualifying and the final 16 were no surprise. Just the same at PAPA, Cal Ex, Denver, Vegas... The bar game doesn't really improve my game. That's part of why I'm not out giving a fuck about GC's. Flipper skill set is huge and can get you through many binds and get you into some good tourney finishes. But it is still something that decent mid range B players are mastering. Watching A division players shows you what you need to work on, and it's a lot. Worrying about pissing contests like GC's and turf and my weeklies record doesn't hugely improve my chances in bigger tournies. Nor do these things deter me from wanting to play with and compete with the best. Which a handful of us have done a number of times. I have never seen you at a table with an A division player. I'm basically saying you have no frame of reference and you are wrong.

[deathsave]

HAY GUISE I JUST SHOWED UP WHATS GOIN ON

[ROM]

[Opto]

(Warning - I just read the last 2 days on this thread so my post meanders a bit)

I tend to agree (and I hope we all can) that pinball means different things to different people. Hell, I wasn't even interested in competing, until I went to one of the weekly turneys and got my ass handed to me. The reason I slid to the B division at PPE was that the scores that were required to qualify were higher than I'd ever gotten on CFTBL and FT after playing them for 10 years. I'm all for making Portland known, but I just don't wanna throw my money away. Maybe if more CFF shirts were in the tournament, that might have helped the cause? Is the idea to make the heavy hitters want to come to portland and play in things like the slabtown showdown, or Ground Kontrol? I can't speak for ROM, but I think he was on the same page - he actually qualified in the novice division and had a shot a taking home a pinball machine! Can you really blame him? Also, if the new format of this tournament is disliked by enough people . . . it ain't going to work and we'll all learn what not to do next time. If people show up with money in hand - who gives a shit - it worked. It also seems appropriate that I give a big thanks out to Dropshot for throwing the weeklies (and the bigger tournaments). Sure we can all complain about the date or locations, but the bottom line is he's going through the effort to put 'em on. I sure have a hell of a lot of fun at 'em and I think most other people do to. Also, it should be noted that ROM holds this website (and portland pinball map) together, which allows us all to have these discussions and shoot ideas (and flames) at each other. So, thank you ROM! The important thing is that these guys are all giving back to the Portland Pinball Community and should be recognized as doing so. I tend to pay a lot more attention to peoples opinions when they have a history of positive actions backing them up. I guess all the negativity in this thread just made me want to share love, happiness and flowers with everyone.

[revtest]

And some of us that enjoy both! very much! I love pop'n GC's, I love the weeklies, I love our local majors, I love to travel to majors, I love working on my home games, I LOVE PINBALL!

If your into it do it, if your not don't! but stop shitting in your brothers for going after what they want just cause its not what you want, constructive criticism is great we all need that, bitching is going to happen you can't please everyone. Some people are not into tourny's and tha'ts fine they arn't trying to stop them they just don't play in 'em & the tourny's don't stop them from ragging around town loving life crushing games! BALANCE

Pinball is bigger than all of us & much bigger than Portland but some of us are trying to get Portland on the map for competitive play, If your with us great! If your not get out of the way or be crushed for we WILL play host to a major event in the near future!

OH AND ONE MORE THING GO MOTHERFUCK'N DODGERS!!!!!!

[Kickback]

I love the weeklies. The machines are really the only thing that I complain about. I like crackin' GC's like the rest of you. I just don't feel rushed to the Clinton to give a shit about scores. Or any bar. I'm over it. Hipsters and drunk 20 somethings are not my crowd. I quit drinking and the machines tend to be beat to shit. The Ricochet machines have been exceptional and fun to seek out. I'm not trying to travel to every tournament or be #1 in the world. I am trying to go to as many events as I can because I love them, and pinball and I want to get better. I would like to earn a spot in A division. Having scores up at the Clinton has no bearing on anything. There is no pinball to go dominate where Elwin lives other than his house (good luck). Same with Shatz and Sheets..... We are the only city that has pinball like we do. Period. Most cities are lucky to have 10 machines on location. It's awesome.

[Kickback]

And I agree that we will throw a serious major event some day. Just not a week before Shorty's.