PINBALL EXPO 2017 – SUNDAY

The final day at Pinball Expo is really only for the play-offs and finals of the tournaments.

The vendors and machine-bringers started packing up and loading their vans and trucks first thing on Sunday morning, so that by lunchtime pretty much everything had gone.  We believe next year’s show will only be advertised as a Wednesday to Saturday event.

So, to the tournaments.

There were several Flip Out tournament events at Pinball Expo, with the Main Tournament being the biggest.

The machines for the Main and Classics tournaments were in their usual spot in the corridor between the hotel’s lobby and the Seminars Hall.  Entry to the Main cost $75.

Seeding in the Flip Out tournament began on Thursday morning when each player got two attempts on each tournament machine.  Scores were ranked, with the top 40% of players going into the A division and the rest into B.  Some highly-seeded players would have to play in A, while the winner of B would also get a spot in A.

The B Division play-offs began at 9am on Friday morning

The play-offs were all best-of-three head-to-head matches played in a double-elimination format.  So the winners of each match continued int he winner bracket while the losers went into the loser bracket with the chance to fight their way through to the final.  The highest seed got choice of machine for the first game while the loser got the choice for the subsequent games.

The B Division was won by Zachary Parks, with Tom Knorst in second.  Zachary then got a place in the A division’s play-offs.

In the Classics Tournament, there was unlimited qualifying from 10am on Thursday until 11pm on Saturday, with the top 16 players qualifying for the play-offs on Sunday.  The top 8 received a bye through the first round.

The winner of the winner bracket was Ryan Spindler, and he met the winner of the loser bracket, Fred Cochran in the best-of-three final.  Fred won the first best-of-three which evened the score, making the next best-of-three the decider.

Fred won that too to win the final.  Ryan was second, Adam Lefkoff was third and Keith Elwin fourth.

In the final of the A division it was a battle between Keith Elwin who remained undefeated in the winner bracket, and his Stern Pinball colleague Zach Sharpe who won the loser bracket and so needed to defeat Keith in two best-of-three matches to win the final.

In the first game was on X-Men where Zach put up a game winning score of 180M on his second ball, causing Keith to conceded so they could move on to his choice of WWE Wrestlemania.  He had an impressive first ball and an even better second to win that game, making it 1-1 going into the third game.

Game three was on AC/DC and Zach had a disappointing first ball.  In contrast, Keith put up a massive 288M on his ball one which looked like a game match and final winner.

Zach’s second ball only bumped his score up to 20M while his third only made it to 120M, aking Keith the winner of the final.  Zach was second and John Replogle third.

The A division final brought the schedule of events at Pinball Expo 2017 to a close.

We will continue to update our reports to add seminar audio and Vendor Hall pictures, as well as a full list of games and vendors.

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