Boooooooom News Presents:

Coverage from the IFPA Pennsylvania State Championship

CDS on the left and JON on the right. These 2 are fantastic! Photo taken by Doug Polka.

The IFPA Pennsylvania State Championship is one of the best competitive pinball events every year. The top 16 players from Pennsylvania competed in a head-to-head best of 7 single elimination bracket. Think the NHL playoffs, and that's pretty much what it is. The higher seed has 'home-field advantage,' and if you lose at home, you're gonna have to steal one on the road. Yep. This was the basically the NHL playoffs. Without all the hitting. If it all happened in one day. Without the thousands of fans. And there weren't too many fights. Or penalties. So, not really like the NHL playoffs at all. Anyhow, moving on...

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I was bounced by an on-fire Matt Schwab in the very first round. I was really impressed by the methodical play Matt employed right from the beginning. He could have beat me 4-0 if not for my scraping out a pair of wins with a lot of luck. Once I went down 2-0 I was pretty much toast. Congratulations Matt, who made it all the way to the final four before getting knocked out by eventual champion Cryss Stephens! Here we see Matt with the ball on the flipper waiting for the mode to time out:

Good Thinking!

The Complete Bracket

So many close matches, so many good games. I was able to get on film a real treat - one of the greatest balls of pinball ever played! JON, who eventually finished 2nd, played an incredible ball in the semi-final round against opponent Greg Defeo. Let's take a look, shall we?

Wow, just wow! Over and over again, we see the consistency and accuracy needed to play competitive pinball at the top level. Sorry we don't have a better shot of the playfield, but I have done my best to let you know what you're seeing with a bit of commentary.

Thank You

Thanks Doug Polka for running another top-notch event in Pittsburgh. Thanks to the IFPA for running the State Championship Series so that we could do this thing! Thanks to New Great Valley Lanes in North Versailles (just outside Pittsburgh) for hosting our event. And thanks to all the players and spectators that came out to make the event what it was. It's an honor to play alongside Pennsylvania's top players - best of luck in 2018!

With that, this is Boooooooom News, signing off.

Special Thank You

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