FANTASTIC FIVE DAYS

The idea began in January 2019 when UK Tournaments head, Martin Ayub, was looking for ways to improve the annual UK Pinball Open and UK Pinball Classic tournaments.

These had previously been held as part of a larger national UK show, but restrictions on space, time, machines and building access had made organising two major tournaments on floor of a show increasingly difficult.

What was needed was a large permanent collection, where machines wouldn’t need to be transported and there was plenty of time to set up everything so the tournaments could be run without making the kinds of compromises faced previously. If this could be achieved, then it also offered the opportunity to extend the event beyond just those two tournaments, making it more attractive to international players and those who needed to travel from more distant parts of the UK.

We have featured the Flip Out London pinball club on this site before, as it offered the best range of machines and the most attractive location in the UK – the capital city, London. Martin is one of the founder members of Flip Out London and put his proposal to a special meeting of all the club’s founders in early February.

Martin’s idea was for a Fabulous Five Days of pinball tournaments, starting on a Wednesday and continuing through to Sunday. The UK Pinball Open and UK Pinball Classic would still be in their traditional Saturday and Sunday slot, but with new tournaments on Wednesday and Thursday, qualifying for the ‘Open’ and ‘Classic’ could begin earlier on Friday for those who could make it. Additionally, if there was time and machines available, a fifth tournament could be run on Sunday for those who didn’t qualify or got knocked out early in the Open and Classic.

Everyone knew it would involve a lot of hard work and the club’s facilities would need to be upgraded to cope with the expected number of visitors, but all the founders were all up for the challenge and the date was set for the middle of July. Neil McRae volunteered to run the Open and Classic as Tournament Director, while Matt Vince offered to do the same for the Wednesday and Thursday tournaments.

The original intention was to help support some of London’s other pinball locations by hosting the Wednesday and Thursday tournaments at Chief Coffee in Chiswick and possibly Brewdog in Shepherd’s Bush. Brewdog normally only has half-a-dozen machines, so that would have involved bringing more machines into an already-crowded location. Meanwhile, Chief Coffee is a relatively small location and changed their mind about hosting three weeks before the tournaments began, meaning everything ended up coming back to the known quantity that is Flip Out London.

Flip Out London would be hard to find without SatNav/GPS, housed in a fairly nondescript brick building on an industrial estate at the end of a bumpy road, but the surrounding area is actually rather attractive, with Waddon Ponds just a short walk up the road.

Walk (or drive) along the bumpy Mill Lane and you come to Flip Out London’s home in Unit 10 of James Business Park.

Registration opened on 1st June and immediately the tournament slots started to fill up. Wednesday’s mid-week tournament was expected to be the hardest to fill, but surprisingly the forty places sold out first.

Qualifying in the Classic would be open from Friday evening and run all through Saturday, but the Open qualifying was split into four time slots – one on Friday evening and three on Saturday. Saturday’s slots also sold out quickly, all of which helped establish a generous prize package of over £1,000 ($1,222/€1,100).

The improvements work at Flip Out London included knocking down and rebuilding an internal wall, carpeting part of the club’s floor, installing new electrical cabling, buying a vending machine to serve drinks and snacks along with bringing in extra stocks for the five days, and – perhaps most importantly – making sure all the machines were professionally serviced and fully working in time for the tournaments.

As is usual with UK Pinball Tournaments events this was to be a non-profit operation, with all entry fees being used either for prize money, buying the trophies, or the cost of operating the facility. Everyone from the club involved in running the five days worked as a volunteer.

Players were welcome to bring their own food and drinks to the club if they wished, with kitchen facilities, a fridge, freezer, microwave oven, cutlery, plates, bowls, mugs, glasses and a kettle all at their disposal.

In addition, a number of new machines were brought in especially for the event. Neil donated several from his Domino Arcade home collection, while Pinball Heaven and Electrocoin made sure we had the latest Stern Pinball title, Black Knight: Sword of Rage.

The final addition to Flip Out London was a late arrival, as the weather forecast revealed how warm the temperatures were likely to be over the five days.

The number of entries had been deliberately limited due to the size of the venue, but having eighty players and around forty powered-up pinballs in a confined space with no air-conditioning in 25C+ temperatures meant something had to be done.

Neil arranged for several industrial air-conditioning units to be hired and located around the building, generously paying part of the cost of hiring them himself.

Although the temperature didn’t reach the highs of the following week when a new UK record of 38.7C (101.7F) was reached, it was still toasty outside during the five days and would have been unbearable inside without the air-con units.

Neil also got the team personalised T-shirts and secured a sponsorship deal with London brewer FourPure Brewing Co. to provide players over 18-years-old with several cans each of their tasty Pils Lager, Session IPA and Indy Lager brews.

With everything set, the first tournament of the five days was the Flip Frenzy on Wednesday. Matt delegated the running of the tournament to Nick Hamill who briefed players about the format and how to submit their scores.

The format used sixteen machines and put a random pair of players on each to play a single game with the result noted on each player’s score sheet.

After the first game is over, player two leaves the machine to move onto the next available machine as player one in a new game. Meanwhile, player one on the original machine stays on but becomes player two in a new game against the next player in line to play.

In this way, everyone (after the first round) gets to play two games on each machine – firstly as player one, then as player two – against different opponents, before moving on to a different machine.

Play began at 7pm for ninety minutes, with a thirty-minute break at 8:30pm. Play continued at 9pm until the final games at 10:30pm.

The games were all set up to be tough to play, with no outlane rubbers on the posts and minimal or zero ball save timers. Although this initially came as something of a shock, most players soon embraced the potential for quick ball times and planned their strategies accordingly. It also ensured lots of games were played and there was minimal waiting involved.

Live streaming was set up by Neil on his own Twitch channel. He had a wireless mobile camera rig which could be wheeled around and positioned over any suitable game before the match began.

When 10:30pm came around and the last games were completed the results were announced, with the winner being the player with the most wins. No play-offs were used, so any ties were decided in favour of the player with the highest win percentage.

The winner was Nick Marshall who won seventeen games in the three hours of play. Jack Burden and Hugo Ritter both had fifteen wins, but Hugo had played more games, making his win percentage lower and giving him third place. Keith Burden was one win behind on fourteen for fourth place.

Nick Hamill presented the trophies.

The full results are:

1	Nick Marshall	17​
2	Jack Burden	15​
3	Hugo Ritter	15​
4	Keith Burden	14​
5	Daniel Nowak	13​
=6	Hervé Pierru	12​
=6	Matt Vince	12​
8	Rayne Passmore	11​
9	Archibald Lefèvre	11​
10	Stan Simpson	11​
11	Victor-Francois Machart	11​
12	Cezary Glowala	10​
=13	Martyn Iles	10​
=13	Rodney Comegys	10​
15	Chris Poyntz	9​
=16	Ben Pike	9​
=16	Vin Jauhal	9​
=18	Greg Mott	9​
=18	Nick Hamill	9​
20	Matt Silk	9​
21	Denis Ritter	9​
22	Dan Lewell	9​
23	Wayne Russell	9​
24	David Tucker	8​
25	Sam McCourt	8​
26	Ivan Miles	8​
27	Mike Parkins	8​
28	Tim Thornton	7​
29	Rafal Wasik	7​
30	Punk Stig	7​
31	Kirk Sadler	7​
32	Roy Smith	7​
=33	Alex Berta	6​
=33	Dan Andrews	6​
35	Edina Berta	6​
36	Kate Rothwell-Jackson	5​
37	Josh Iles	2​

Tidying-up then began for the Flip Out London team, so they could spend Thursday concentrating on getting the games cleaned and any repairs done before the doors opened for the second tournament of the five days.

The Club is normally open every Thursday evening for the Flip Out London League, but as this was a special event the Super League took over instead, keeping the same basic format but expanding it.

For the Super League there were twenty games available, from which players had to pick fifteen to play. They had to do this before they entered the building, so they couldn’t choose on the basis of how others were playing or how easy or difficult it looked.

The machines available were:

• Black Knight: Sword of Rage
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Metallica
• Iron Man
• The Walking Dead
• Attack from Mars
• Cirqus Voltaire
• Eight Ball Deluxe
• Robocop
• The Shadow
• Iron Maiden (2018)
• Terminator 2
• Dirty Harry
• Junkyard
• AC/DC
• Spider-Man
• Avatar
• Bram Stoker’s Dracula
• Medieval Madness
• Pirates of the Caribbean (Stern)

Other machines were available for general play or for practice.

All the scores on each machine were ranked and the twelve players with the greatest number of points moved on to the play-offs at 10:30pm.

They were: Cezary Glowala, Archibald Lefevre, Denis Ritter, Tim Thornton, Rafal Wasik, Matt Vince, Sam McCourt, John van der Wulp, Punk Stig, Mike Parkins, Greg Mott and Stan Simpson.

The first four players went straight into the semi-finals, while players ranked 5th-12th were split into two four-player groups to play a best-of-three quarter final using the 7-4-2-1 scoring format for each game.

The top two from each group then played the top four qualifiers in two more groups of four, with the top two from each of those groups making the four finalists.

They were: Tim Thornton, Rafal Wasik, Sam McCourt and John van der Wulp.

The final was again played on three machines. The first was Eight Ball Deluxe, where John’s 645,500 score took first place and 7 points. Tim’s 571,500 wasn’t far behind and got him 4 points, followed by Rafal in third and Sam fourth.

Sam won the second game on Guardians of the Galaxy, with John second, Rafal third again and Tim fourth. That put John in the lead on 11 points, Sam second on 8 points, Tim third on 5 points and Rafal fourth on 4 points.

The final game on Cirqus Voltaire provided a win for Tim, with Rafal second, John third and Sam fourth. That meant John was the winner with 13 points, Tim was second with 12 points, Sam third on 9 points and Rafal fourth on 8 points.

Tournament Director Matt Vince presented the trophies.

The full results are:

1	John van der Wulp
2	Tim Thornton
3	Sam McCourt
4	Rafal Wasik
5	Denis Ritter
6	Matt Vince
7	Cezary Glowala
8	Archibald Lefevre
9	Punk Stig
10	Mike Parkins
11	Greg Mott
12	Stan Simpson
13	Neil McRae
14	Matt Silk
15	Ed Rojas
16	Daniel Nowak POL
17	Hugo Ritter
18	Robin Kemp
19	Thomas Doepelheuer
20	Hervé Pierru
21	Peter Blakemore
22	Kirk Sadler
23	Ad Jonker
24	Ivan Miles
25	Joshua Iles
25	Vin Jauhal
27	Martyn Iles
28	Clive Bush
29	Nick Hamill
30	Barry Spours
31	Roy Smith
32	David Fowler UK
33	Dan Lewell
34	Suppressed Player
35	CJ Brown UK
36	Charlie Lawn
37	Rayne Passmore
38	Caroline Abbott
39	David Tucker
40	Tony Molloy
41	Victor Machart
42	Edina Berta
43	Alex Berta
44	Mark Reeve
45	Wayne Russell
46	Diane Bush
47	Ben Leigh
48	Patrick Doe
49	James Fowler
50	Russell Doe

Day two was then over. Some more clearing up and repair work was needed, followed by a complete re-shuffle of the machines before the club re-opened the next evening for the start of the UK Pinball Open and UK Pinball Classic.

The UK Pinball Open would play two groups (A & B) of up to ten players per group in the first round on Friday evening at 7pm. Groups C & D would play at 10am on Saturday, E & F at 2pm and G & H at 6pm.

Each group would be allocated ten machines to use, so the pinballs at the club were rearranged to provide each group with their own area in which to play.

Additionally, qualifying in the UK Pinball Classic began on Friday evening, giving those players with Saturday time slots for the Open a little extra time to get their Classic games in. There were ten Classic games set up in a side area of the club next to the tournament desk.

Neil McRae was Tournament Director for both the Open and Classic, so he explained how the games would be played.

Let’s begin with the UK Pinball Classic, which was played on ten pre-DMD titles using the Drains Tournament Manager (DTM) software to queue players on each machine, record the scores and display the standings. All the players for this were pre-registered and their details already entered into the DTM system.

Each player had ten entries, with each entry being a single game on one machine of their choice. All the scores were ranked, but only the highest score on their best six machines counted.

That meant players could play six different machines and then use their remaining four entries to either replay previous machines or try different ones. All the scores were recorded into the DTM system by volunteer scorekeepers using tablets.

The machines used were:

• Centaur
• Embryon
• Farfalla
• Fathom
• Flash Gordon
• High Speed
• Pinball Champ
• Quicksilver
• Space Shuttle
• Spooky

Qualifying in the UK Pinball Classic started at 7pm on Friday and continued until 11pm, resuming again at 10am the next day and running until 10pm. The top twelve players from the qualifying round would proceed to the play-offs on Sunday morning.

Meanwhile over in the Open area, the first games were starting. The format was a single game against each of the other nine players in your group, with the win or loss being recorded.

All players were all given personalised score cards showing the order of their games – who their opponent would be, which machine they would play, and in which position they would play (first or second). They could then record a ‘1’ for a win, or a ‘0’ for a loss.

This section of the tournament closely mirrored the Dutch Pinball Masters, so the organisers brought in Ad Jonker from the Netherlands, who designed that system, to help with the UK Pinball Open. Ad worked out the matches in each round to make sure players had a fair mix of opponents, machines and play positions, printing out all the score cards for each round.

The machines used in the Open were:

• AC/DC
• The Addams Family
• Attack from Mars
• Avatar
• Batman Forever
• Black Knight: Sword of Rage
• Cirqus Voltaire
• Creature from the Black Lagoon
• Dialed In!
• Dirty Harry
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Iron Maiden
• Iron Man
• Junkyard
• Medieval Madness
• Metallica
• The Shadow
• The Simpsons Pinball Party
• Spider-Man
• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Terminator 2
• The Walking Dead

Although four hours had been allocated to the first two groups, the choice of machines and the tough set-up meant both groups completed all their games within two-and-a-half hours.

By 11pm, everyone had completed all their Open and Classic games for the evening, allowing the Flip Out London team to prepare for Saturday’s busier day.

Groups C & D began their Open qualifying games at 10am, by which time any machine issues had been fixed and they had all been given a clean.

Qualifying in the Classic tournament also started at 10am, giving players plenty of time to play their ten entries.

Although the first round of the UK Pinball Open was like the Dutch Pinball Masters, the subsequent rounds were quite different. For a start, nobody was eliminated after the group stage.

That’s because the tournament followed the Flip Out format from Pinball Expo where everyone goes into a double-elimination ladder, but the better you do in your group, the more byes you get through the early rounds. There was a chart on the wall showing the system.

Those who finished at or near the bottom of their group started the play-offs at the far-left side of the ladder, which meant an earlier start time. The top players could enjoy a leisurely Sunday morning, starting their games in the afternoon.

A leisurely Sunday, that is, unless they were one of the top Classic qualifiers in which case they might have had to be back at Flip Out London at 8am for the quarter- and semi-final matches.

The top twelve qualifiers (with their points scores) were:

1	Cezary Glowala	494
2	Roberto Pedroni	492
3	Kirk Sadler	488
4	Nick Marshall	481
5	Stan Simpson	480
6	Daniel Nowak	477
7	David Fowler	469
8	David Tucker	466
9	Mirko Plumari	462
9	Vin Jauhal	462
11	Craig Pullen	460
12	Andrew Foster	458

The top four players got a bye into the semi-finals, but players in positions 5th-12th had the play in one of two groups of four using the 7-5-3-1 scoring system across three games. The top two from each quarter final moved on to the semis.

David Fowler, David Tucker, Daniel Nowak and Stan Simpson went out at the quarter final stage, while Cezary Glowala, Vin Jauhal, Kirk Sadler and Andrew Foster missed out on the final by losing in the semis.

That left Roberto Pedroni, Nick Marshall, Mirko Plumari and Craig Pullen to contest the final of the UK Pinball Classic 2019.

The first game of the three-game final was played on Flash Gordon.

Mirko had a great first ball scoring 627K, but Craig did better with 776K. Meanwhile, Nick only got 147K while Roberto had a bad first ball with only 25K.

Ball two only advanced Mirko’s score by 50K, while Craig solidified his lead on his second ball with a 941K score. Nick bumped his score up to 202K while Roberto was unable to move out of fourth place with his second ball.

On the final ball Mirko ended on 713K to take second, while Craig put in a great performance to more than double his score to 2.049M and take the win. Neither Nick nor Roberto did anything to change the situation, making them third and fourth respectively.

The second game was Quicksilver and it proved a near reversal of fortune for all players. Roberto won with 1.518M, ahead of Nick in second with 1.172M. Craig was third close behind on 1.117M while Mirko was fourth with his 281K score.

Going into the third and final game, Craig was in the lead with 10 points, Nick and Roberto both had 8 points, while Mirko had 6 points. That meant anyone could still win.

Game three was Space Shuttle and by the start of his third ball, Mirko was leading with 521K. Second was Craig on 321K while Roberto was third on 133K and Nick fourth on 85K.

The final ball only boosted Mirko’s score a little to 607K to stay in the lead, but Craig overtook him to finish on 808K.

Nick could only raise his total a little to 93K, leaving Roberto an uphill task of scoring 675K if he wanted to win the game and take the final into a tie-break.

The great last ball never came, with Roberto draining with his total on 218K which gave him third place.

So Craig was the clear winner on 17 points. Roberto and Mirko were tied on 11 points, with Mirko winning the tie-breaker game, while Nick was fourth. Matt Vince presented the trophies.

The final positions in the UK Pinball Classic 2019 were:

1	Craig Pullen
2	Mirko Plumari
3	Roberto Pedroni
4	Nick Marshall
5	Cezary Glowala
7	Vin Jauhal
7	Kirk Sadler
7	Andrew Foster
9	David Fowler UK
10	David Tucker
11	Daniel Nowak POL
12	Stan Simpson
13	Keith Burden
14	Robin Kemp
15	John van der Wulp
16	Rafal Wasik
17	Hugo Ritter
18	Tim Thornton
19	Thomas Evrenos
19	Wayne Johns
21	Matt Vince
22	Greg Mott
23	Mike Parkins
24	Denis Ritter
25	Hervé Pierru
26	Peter Blakemore
27	Jack Burden
28	CJ Brown UK
28	Rich Mallett
30	Sam McCourt
31	Tony Molloy
32	Chris Poyntz
33	Olle Strandh
34	Archibald Lefevre
35	Victor Machart
36	Nick Hamill
37	Thomas Doepelheuer
38	Ad Jonker
39	Rodney Comegys
40	Punk Stig
41	Ed Rojas
42	Alex Berta
42	Luke Grayson
44	Mats Sahlberg
45	Matt Silk
46	Enrico Giorgio de Stefani
47	Mike Kindler
47	David Mainwaring
49	James Fowler
50	James Adams
51	Roy Smith
51	Gabi Molotov Gavrilita
53	Arvid Flygare
54	Edina Berta
54	Wayne Russell
56	James Gadbury
57	Tom Fletcher UK
58	Francesco Sacco
59	Rayne Passmore
60	John Whitfield
60	Jim King
62	Dan Lewell
63	Caroline Abbott
64	Simon Harper
65	Phoebe Lewell
66	Johan Flygare
66	Ben Leigh
68	Rob Endo
69	Nick Baxter-Sibley
70	Effie Lewell
71	Lukasz Dziewulski
72	Lucy Vince
73	Antonella Iannotta

It was hoped to run a fifth tournament – the Pinball News Cup – as a consolation tournament for those who didn’t qualify for the Open play-offs but after the format was changed so everyone qualified, there was no time left to run the Cup on Sunday. It will take place at Flip Out London a little later this year.

So, only the UK Pinball Open play-offs remained.

Each round of the play-offs – both the winner bracket and the loser bracket – had a scheduled start time, and unlike some tournaments, the timetable proved to be accurate with some rounds even able to start earlier if the players were ready.

The first of the two players to make it to the final was Roberto Pedroni who remained undefeated in the winner bracket having qualified second in his group.

His opponent in the final was Craig Pullen who after getting knocked into the loser bracket straight away, won thirteen games in-a-row to win that bracket and claim his place in the final.

The final was a best-of three affair, with Roberto having choice of machine on the first and third games, or play position throughout. He opted to pick the machines and chose The Shadow, playing as player one.

Roberto’s first ball didn’t go so well. He scored 8.55M which wouldn’t normally put him in the lead, but Craig had a worse start, tilting his first ball while trying to save it, ending on less than a million

Roberto’s second ball wasn’t great either, boosting his score up to 12.8M. Craig didn’t do any better, finishing his second ball with a 2.9M total.

The third ball was where both players finally got to grips with the machine. Both started Khan multiball, but Roberto had a better game and got Sanctum multiball too to win the game by 166,330,330 to Craig’s 91,460,550.

Craig then got to pick the machine for the second game and chose Dialed In! which had been a reliable ‘banker’ game throughout the tournament. Again, Roberto was put in as player one.

It look to be a wise choice, as Roberto only scored 7,900 on his first ball compared to Craig’s 108,940.

Roberto almost doubled his score to 14,000 on his second ball. Meanwhile Craig cemented his lead with a ball two total of 532,470, which proved to be enough to win the game, despite a fight back by Roberto on his third ball to end on 73,230.

So, with one game each, the championship would be decided on the third and final game, picked by Roberto as AC/DC.

He got off to a good start this time, starting multiball and racking up a total of 42.263M on his first ball.

Craig also started multiball, but his was over all too quickly to leave him on a score of 11.187M.

Roberto’s second ball wasn’t anywhere as good as his first, adding just 7M to end on 49.380M. In contrast, Craig had a much better second ball as he added another, better, multiball to nudge ahead of Roberto with 50.420M.

It really was all down to the last ball.

Roberto had another impressive multiball, but also collected some valuable song and combo jackpots from the drop targets, taking his game end total right up to 210.524M.

Craig needed to match Roberto’s performance, and he too got multiball again. However he didn’t manage to earn so many points from it, and drained his last ball soon afterwards while only on 65.344M

That made Roberto Pedroni the UK Pinball Open 2019 champion. Craig was second, while David Tucker who lost to Craig in the final of the loser bracket was third ahead of John van der Wulp who was fourth.

Here are the full results.

1	Roberto Pedroni
2	Craig Pullen
3	David Tucker
4	John van der Wulp
5	Jack Burden
6	Mirko Plumari
7	Enrico Giorgio de Stefani
8	Andrew Foster
9	Nick Marshall
10	Rich Mallett
11	David Mainwaring
12	Matt Vince
14	Tim Thornton
14	Arvid Flygare
14	Wayne Johns
14	Hervé Pierru
20	Tom Fletcher UK
20	Tony Molloy
20	CJ Brown UK
20	Thomas Evrenos
20	Denis Ritter
20	Ed Rojas
20	Joshua Iles
20	Mike Kindler
28	Olle Strandh
28	Cezary Glowala
28	Sam McCourt
28	Kirk Sadler
28	Rodney Comegys
28	Matt Silk
28	Gabi Molotov Gavrilita
28	Paul Owen
36	John Whitfield
36	Archibald Lefevre
36	Greg Mott
36	Rob Endo
36	Daniel Nowak POL
36	Martyn Iles
36	Alex Berta
36	Mats Sahlberg
44	Vin Jauhal
44	James Adams
44	Antonella Iannotta
44	Simon Harper
44	Francesco Sacco
44	Punk Stig
44	Robin Kemp
44	Peter Blakemore
52	Luke Grayson
52	Victor Machart
52	Nick Hamill
52	Johan Flygare
52	Wayne Russell
52	Keith Burden
52	Thomas Doepelheuer
52	Caroline Abbott
60	Lukasz Dziewulski
60	Jim King
60	Rafal Wasik
60	Effie Lewell
60	Hugo Ritter
60	Nick Baxter-Sibley
60	Stan Simpson
60	David Fowler
68	Dan Andrews
68	Edina Berta
68	Mike Parkins
68	Ben Leigh
68	Phoebe Lewell
68	Roy Smith
68	Dan Lewell
68	Sarah Vince
76	Chris Poyntz
76	Justin Day
76	Ivan Miles
76	Adrian Terruli

The trophy presentations concluded the Fantastic Five days of pinball at Flip Out London.

The reaction to the move of the UK’s premier tournaments to Flip Out London has been hugely positive, and the expansion of the event into a five-day series has been much appreciated. Having completed this first edition there were lessons learned about the smoothest way to prepare the club, the number of people the club can happily accommodate at its present size, and the way information is conveyed to players.

These are minor issues however, and there is no doubt players are already looking forward to next year event. The challenge for the organisers is how to make it even bigger and better for 2020

Just before the doors were closed on Sunday night, five of the ten founder members of Flip Out London still in attendance gathered to mark the end of their first ever Fantastic Five Days.