121 episodes tracked since 2023 about →
Episode 61 - Tournament Pinball
PodcastAnalysis updated 3d ago1 hr listen
Highlights
- Isaac Ruiz created Brackalope, the first iOS tournament management app for pinball, which revolutionized how tournaments were run by eliminating manual paper brackets and poker-chip randomization.
- Portland's Taxi Tuesdays, the precursor to Flip City weekly tournaments, started in 2008 as a $5 double-elimination event in someone's garage on a single machine.
- Isaac and the Portland tournament community effectively broke the IFPA's scoring system by min-maxing location-based point allocation, playing at 13 different locations four times a year to accumulate quarterly-level points weekly.
- The Pinball Map iOS app was created in Portland by Ryan and Scott for the local scene before being expanded nationally.
- Tournament management software transition from paper brackets to digital eliminated human bias in game randomization and match scheduling.
- Portland has the most machines on location of any city known to the hosts, supporting a large weekly tournament infrastructure.
- Being a tournament director requires volunteering time, emotional labor, salesmanship, problem-solving, and liaison work between venues, players, and organizers.
Notable quotes
“I'd go sneak into ground control. I'd get like five out, whatever. And then to not raise suspicion, I'd like go play pirates... They used to paint the quarters blue so people wouldn't do that. So sorry, ground control, if you're listening.”
“I was like well this is dumb i can like write a tool to like keep like randomized things... a little tool to like use as a companion app to the bracket app.”
“We were effectively playing quarterly tournaments every Tuesday... I was ranked like top 200 in the world for a while.”
“You just felt like you had to step up because... we can let the scene die something like that.”
“The growth of competitive pinball is from a lot of different places. And Portland was just a major hub. But everyone volunteers their time.”
“If it's not happening in your town... sometimes that's got to be you.”
“I think Josh at the IFPA, they have an unenviable position to be in... trying to do something that's almost impossible.”
“You're volunteering your time you're volunteering some of your social battery... it can feel like a thankless job because if you do it and you do it well it becomes just sort o[f automatic]”
Entities
- Flip City· event
- Pentastic· event
- Ground Control· organization
- IFPA (International Flipper Pinball Association)· organization
- Old Gilbert Tavern· organization
- Wedgehead· organization
- Alan· person
- Alex· person
- Greg Dunlap· person
- Isaac Ruiz· person
- Josh Sharp· person
- Kevin Wilson· person
- Pat Castaldo· person
- Zoe Vrabel· person
- Brackalope· product
- Pinball Map· product
