Date: 2nd June 2009
Location: Cesano Maderno, Milan, Italy

Report by Federico Ravagnati

The idea of a pinball tournament in Italy started in February, when the "Amici di Binzago" organization asked me to organize a display of pinball machines, to be held during a local two day party celebrating our town.

I thought about it and proposed something more... a pinball tournament, to be held during the local event. They accepted and the whole matter started.

In order to organize something really interesting, we decided to play the tournament outdoors and to use different generations of pinballs, from the '70s onwards.

I contacted a famous Italian pinball specialist and collector, Robero Bruni, asking him if I could use some of his EM pinballs for the event. I also contacted Loris Trevisan for dot matrix pinballs, since he owns lots of the newer generation pinballs. He offered me 5 pinballs from his collection!

Finally, I also decided to use some of my personal pinball games.

Some of the games used for the tournament

The tournament was also a big chance to get in touch with many international pinball lovers and specialists, like the famous Steve Richie who's still in contact with me after
the event, and Gary Stern, who appreciated the idea of an international pinball tournament in Italy.

Trophies for the tournament

We had players from all over Europe and lots of mail and communications from people who were supportive of our event. Everyone who loves pinball in Europe was contacted with the information about the tournament and positive responses gave me really strong emotions!

Some more of the tournament games

As the scheduled date for the tournament was getting closer, I got many, many phone calls from players, people curious about the event and journalists too, who wanted to get information about the Championship.

TG5 - the most important Italian news programme on TV - was at the event. We were on TV that evening and I was also interviewed by the reporter.

Click to visit YouTube and watch the TG5 report

At 8:30pm we had the final ceremony with the awards for the winners and medals for all the players. The winner was Daniele Acciari, second place went to Davide DelPrato and third place to Omar Spada.

The tournament organisers with the top three players (L-R):
Davide DelPrato (2nd), Daniele Acciari (1st) & Omar Spada (3rd)

In a short time I'll open a space in Cesano Maderno with my pinball collection and we're also thinking about creating a organization in Italy for pinball lovers and players, in order to create more and more interest about pinball.

So there are a lot of opportunities, events and surprises for the future, and Pinball News readers will be informed about every event as soon as possible.