Flippers in Grandy, NC. Is hosting a release party for the new Stern Pinball – The Walking Dead on Friday night.  On Saturday, they are having a Fall Tournament.  Sam Rugg from our league provided the following description to explain how the Flippers tournament is run and to help you get ready for it.

They set up ten machines for the tournament. They are all in a single row. Not sure if they announce the games ahead of time or not. It’s a coin drop tournament, so bring some cash! Best deal on tokens is the coin machine in the big back room that is more or less behind the wall of drink coolers.

Tournament play is single player. Stand in line for the machine you want to play. Once you finish your game raise your hand and the scorekeeper will come and record your score. Then go get in line for another table!

Scoring for the main tournament is on a 100 point scale. Best score on each machine gets 100, everyone else gets their percentage of the high score. So if Taylor puts up a high score of 1 billion and I can only manage 250 million Taylor will get 100 points for that machine and I’ll get 25. There are ten tables, so you can (at least in theory) get a score of 1000. I think the high score in the last tournament was somewhere near 800. There will be some pretty tough competition.

You can play each table as often as you want. Only your personal high score will count for each table. If you know your second score was lower than your first you don’t need to call the scorer over, just move out of the way and let the next player start his/her game. If you aren’t sure about your score have them enter it. A lower score will not displace a higher score.

They have live scoring, so bring your fancy phone/iPod/tablet and you can track your performance against the group in real time. Or just check on the scoring screen.

The wait times to play can get long, so make sure you have played and recorded scores on all ten tables, then start working on improving your scores until the time is up. At five you have to let your ball drain and score whatever you have attained at that point if you are on a table.

As far as strategy goes, I think the best thing is to look at your scores relative to the current point leaders and pick games that you have a good shot at closing that gap. If you are already at 92 on one table and you are at 38 on another you should probably play the 38 again. Unless you think you can run up a new high score on the 92.

Top eight players move on to the playoff round. I missed the playoff round by about eight points last time, so I’m not sure how it works. I think it’s a head to head knockout format of some sort. But I might be wrong on that.