IFPA 19 - The Recap

By Rick Brewster

One man’s descent into IFPA madness

Writing this intro a couple of days after the fact, I’m still blown away at the quality of pinball I watched all weekend. I’ve been in a bit of a pinball slump lately; I haven’t been playing a ton (hello, golf season) and when I have, the results haven’t always been great. But ,I feel inspired after watching IFPA 19. I’m reinvigorated. I know I can’t loop ramps over and over and over in a two ball multiball the way Jason Zahler can, but after watching pinball at its highest level for so long, I wanna try. Here’s my running diary.

What is IFPA 19?

For those who didn’t sit in front of their laptops for three straight days watching pinball, let’s set the stage. IFPA 19 isthe world championship of pinball: the top 80 players as of the end of 2023 are invited, representing 18 different countries. 32 qualified for finals over Friday and half of Saturday, with the latter part of Saturday comprising the first three rounds, getting us to our final 8. (They didn’t wrap up until after 1am local time on Saturday: even the best events in the world run on pinball time. This was a marathon.) 

Our set bracket going into Sunday 

Johannes Ostermeier (1 seed), defending world champion & IFPA 16 winner, vs Matthew Richardson (25 seed) in his first IFPA championship. With respect to how well Matthew is playing this weekend, Johannes is my pick to take it home. 

Arvid Flygare (4 seed) vs Viggo Löwgren (5 seed), the Swedish Wunderkinds. They’re 16 and 18, and 3rd and 5th ranked players in the world, respectively. Woof. 

Escher Lefkoff (2 seed) vs Zach McCarthy (23 seed), the Coloradan Wunderkinds at 2nd and 6th in the world. Again: woof. 

Jason Zahler (3 seed), current #1 in the world, vs Keith Elwin (6 seed), the all-time #1. I’m praying to the IEPinball gods this is where the stream starts. I wanna see this matchup BAD. 

(And, here’s your VOD link for the IFPA 19 Sunday stream on IEPinball. Ya know, so you can see some of this for yourself.) 

Quarterfinals: Here we gooooooooooooo 

The stream starts up at 11am CT, and by the time I finish fumbling around with my Playstation and firing up Twitch, there’s already 1.1k viewers. I’m still blown away by the staggering viewership numbers IEPinball can pull for INDISC and IFPA. The stream starts on Arvid/Viggo: a top-tier matchup, but it’s not Jason/Keith. I’m feenin’ for some Keith! What can I say. I notice Arvid and Viggo are wearing matching Lund Pinball Academy shirts. I now conclude that they couldn’t not cover this match. 

The booth for round one is Steve Bowden, Tom Graf, and Paul Englert. Top-tier players, top-tier commentators. This really is our Super Bowl (with respect to INDISC). Steve’s hat simply reads “SPORTS!” - this checks out with my knowledge of him as a person. (He’s locked in as a first ballot selection to the pinball broadcaster hall-of-fame.) 

Lotta pinball knowledge in this booth. All screengrabs are courtesy of IEPinball. 

Arvid/Viggo start off on a single-ball only Centaur, and I watch on with confusion realizing I couldn’t play it the usual Jersey Jack-style: start a multiball, and keep starting more. Viggo takes a game one win as they move to High Speed, which unfortunately, is not Getaway: High Speed II. Chat chimes in with a note that the average age of players in the final 8 that aren’t named Keith Elwin is 19 years old. Even adding Keith to the equation, we’re at 23. This is fine, I say, as a 30 year old aspirational competitive pinball player. This is completely fine. 

Watching High Speed, I’m taken aback not just from their consistent shotmaking, but their consistently applied advanced flipper skills. Obviously, this is why these guys are here, but the on-the-fly alley passes, rolling tap passes, tip flicks on games of all eras… I don’t have enough words allotted for this piece to break down just how difficult all these moves are. Learning these shatzes, flicks, bounces, etc on one game is a challenge in and of itself. Doing it on every game, with every flipper style, all the time, is why these guys are here (and why I’m at home writing next to my cat). 

The rig moves after Viggo wins High Speed to tie the match 1-1, and I throw in a load of laundry. I may not be in the world championships today, but at least I get to try to get my arms around the 87 piles of clothes scattered around my living space. Chat mentions this match is destined to go to 9 games (if tied 3-3, a best 2 of 3 is then played to determine the victor) and I wholeheartedly agree. It feels like these guys can’t not go to 9 games. I feel like Vegas would set going to extra games around the +120 range, and I’d lock that in all day. 

An out-of-focus look at a pile of laundry I didn’t get to. (cuz Pinball Madness)

Arvid rolls Bad Girls to go up 2-1, a Gottlieb I don’t see myself seeking out in the future. Moving to High Roller Casino, my internet keeps cutting out. Twitch uses this opportunity to feed me a 30-second ad every time I have to reload the stream. Lovely. A flipper malfunction occurs and a comp ball is handed out, but it’s ultimately irrelevant as Viggo ties things up at 2-2. 

Chat starts talking about gambling as we go to Ripley’s, and I can’t help myself but jump in with some fake odds. I really wish we could gamble on these larger events. Yeah, it’s probably not a good idea… but think of how fun it’d be! I’d sprinkle $5 on Johannes. Arvid annihilates RBION (a first-round draft pick for unsettling machine acronyms) featuring an insane shimmy on his ball three to go up 3-2 over Viggo as they move to Hokus Pokus - yikes. Not the game I’d want to see with my world championship’s life on the line. 

Again, a win by Viggo would force an additional three game set, so we’ll see what Viggo can do. I’m wondering why I’m having a hard time thinking, and realize it’s almost 1pm and the contents of my stomach is nothing but coffee. Time to fire up Uber Eats. I miss most of Viggo’s excellent game carefully considering my options from Smashburger, as he ties the matchup 3-3 to force extras. My hypothetical +120 odds to go to extras would have cashed! I really should be a bookie. The rig moves to Godzilla. Perfect time to throw in some more laundry. 

Let’s touch on the other round one matchups: Escher sweeps Zach McCarthy 4-0: wowza. Johannes & Matthew go to a 3 game tiebreaker, and Johannes takes it, 5-4. An excellent run for Matthew Richardson, as the currently-ranked 69th player in the world (nice) and incoming 25 seed. Keith and Jason are tied 2-2. We’re officially averaging 45 minutes a game in that matchup: it’s now 1:45CT, and my plans of meeting a pinball buddy for his birthday around 6 is in serious jeopardy. IFPA 19 is scheduled to wrap up at 5pm CT: this is already out the window.

Arvid cruises to 800m on GZ to go up 4-3, while Viggo struggles and is up against the theoretical ropes. My Smashburger is delivered and I eat most of it while watching Party Zone.

A look at my sustenance for the day writing this article. I didn’t get a straw with my Diet Coke, and I felt absolutely helpless. Something feels very wrong sipping out of the side of a 30oz plastic cup. 

Viggo plays an excellent game of Party Zone to tie it up 4-4 and set up a single game on Iron Man (!) to advance. I couldn’t pick a better tournament game for these guys to play. We’re quickly up to 9k viewers due to being featured (somewhere) on Twitch, from our cruising 1 to 1.5k up until this point. Chat quickly gets hectic with new viewers, confused questions, and the occasional troll. Thankfully, there is a team of 10 mods in the chat keeping things on track. Again: this stream is truly top-notch. A huge shout out to Tom for running things, Karl for being Karl, and everyone who helped out streaming and commentating. We’ve come a long way, and we’re in a great place. 

Arvid CLUTCHES out a Monger multiball after dealing with a stuck ball on the front of the Monger mech, costing him a danger to save it. No matter: he pulls out two supers to get past 20m. Viggo gets Iron Man’d on all three balls (so classic: happens to the best of us) and Arvid advances to the final four. A congrats to both on an excellent match, and we move to Johannes vs Arvid’s final four matchup, starting on Joker Poker. Keith and Jason are still at 2-2 after High Roller Casino gets thrown out. Wowza. If this were the PGA Tour, how hefty would these slow play fines be? 

Semifinals, part 1: Eurovision 2024

The commentary team switches to Adam Lefkoff, Zach McCarthy, and Cayle George. I’m incredibly excited for some deep cut pinball knowledge, and a healthy dose of Cayle snark. Nothing but bangers in the booth today. Cayle’s loss of a world title due to a tilt-through, resulting in older games being played on players 1 and 3 only, is a good piece of pinball history from the commentators as Arvid goes up 1-0 over Johannes on Joker Poker.

Arvid goes up 2-0 after grinding out 1.3 million on our modified single ball Centaur. Johannes elects to go to Grand Lizard. Before I can even digest what’s happening after grabbing laundry to fold (forgive me), lost in thought about how I can throw 1 Bounce sheet into the dryer and somehow come away with 8 in my laundry pile, Arvid goes up 3-0 over defending world champ Johannes. Arvid’s primary motivation might be to get away from the streaming rig at this point. 

Viewer count check: 12.5k. Chat reflects the chaos of that many viewers, but what a cool thing for our sport. (Sport? Activity? Hobby? The correct descriptor remains unclear to me.) Regardless, my pinball heart is full. Johannes takes off his sweatshirt and looks like a man ready to step onto a sailboat, and my intimidation of his pinball ability triples. We move to Bad Girls. 

I’d sail the Baltic Sea with this guy. 

Maritime enthusiast Johannes grinds out 9m on Bad Girls and gets to 1-3 against Arvid. They move to Scared Stiff, and I move to my deck with my laptop to get some fresh air and sunlight today. It’s almost 3:30CT. I realize this is overdue. 

Johannes is down after two balls on Scared Stiff, and can’t pull out a hero ball three, putting him out of the tournament. Arvid moves to the final match. Good thing I didn’t have a chance to bet real money on Johannes, I guess. I’d be $5 poorer. Around the same time, Jason beats Keith 4-2 to advance to the semis and play Escher.

Semifinals, part 2: Kids in America

We move to Jason vs Escher’s final four matchup, starting from game one: players currently ranked #1 and #2 in the world. You love to see it. Booth swap time: Carlos Delaserda, Richie Terry, Jim Belsito. Again: bangers in the booth. Los gets a spot on my commentator Mount Rushmore next to Bowden. Who gets the other two slots? Feels like an article for another day. 

Jason is hoodie-free, a rarity: between that and Johannes losing his, I’m concluding it’s pretty damn hot in the Belsito barn. I’m mentally noting how much emotional expression we’ll get out of Jason now that he’s on camera. I’m setting the line at O/U 2.5 facial expressions in this matchup. I’m also hammering the under. Playing as stone cold as Jason does is aspirational to me, but alas. My pinball spirit animal is way closer to Josh Sharpe than it is to Jason Zahler. 

My first Escher exposure of the day is him doing rolling tap passes on 90s Bally flippers. Holy shit. As someone who’s played as much pinball as I possibly can for about seven years now (also, holy shit), I can’t imagine doing this. 

Jason proceeds to hit approximately 200 ramps in multiball, triggering my favorite Elvira callout: “I’m having multiple jackpots!” It gets me every time. He puts up over 30m to go up on Escher 1-0, as the commentators mention Jason is now on a shot clock. Even though it’s the world championships, after an almost 5 hour first round, I have no qualms hearing this decision. There are rumors of extended restroom breaks flying around in the chat, which cannot be confirmed or ruled out by anyone. This guy not only has to (maybe) deal with an unfortunate situation in a huge moment for him, but he also has thousands watching and talking about it. And, chumps like me writing about it. Poor bastard. 

A stogie and some sunshine was an excellent way to watch pinball. 

Jason puts up a triple-rolled 356k on Bow and Arrow. Holy saucers, Batman. Someone should count how many he hit. (I’m not going to.) Escher chops some serious wood to get to 266k, an excellent score but not enough as Jason goes up 2-0 moving to Medusa. There’s some tech discussions and delays as I move back indoors, absolutely wired off Diet Coke and a cigar. I feel like shit. Who could have seen this coming? 

Escher puts up over 2m on Medusa, much of it in the bonus period after ball three, giving him what looks like two (legal) extra balls. The bonus period system is opaque for most of us, but: it’s legal. Jason gives Escher a fist bump walking up to ball three. I always enjoy seeing camaraderie between high-level competitors. 

Jason tilts out during his bonus period, well short of Escher, and the match is 2-1 Jason as we go to (single player) Car Hop. Jason proceeds to hit the 2-shot combo and earn points at an insane clip to beat Escher on ball one, going up 3-1 on our way to (again, single player) Grand Lizard. 

Only 296k for Escher with some bad feeds: Escher is officially in grave danger. Jason quickly catches his score on ball one, and Jason advances, earning the opportunity to play Arvid in the finals.

Confession time: at this point, I make the short drive to the-bar-formerly-known-as-Tilt, Litt, for my buddy Jonah’s birthday gathering and to sneak in a couple games. The next couple games were covered via a mix of me listening to audio in the car there and back, streaming in the bar, and watching the VOD for those games in full the next day. Sorry, but not really sorry. I couldn’t sit at home all day after all. This won’t happen once Nudge puts me on salary. 

(Editor’s note: the way we’re going, you’ll be lucky if you have a mountain dew can to piss in next fall)

Finals Time! How many flights have already been missed and/or rescheduled in SoCal? 

The finals kick off on single-ball Centaur, while I listen to Twitch audio in traffic and my phone does its best to overheat. Jason almost tilts out his winning score: four unnecessary up-nudges as Jason had it in bonus but hadn’t yet realized. Thankfully for him, no tilt! Jason goes up 1-0. 

Back to Bow and Arrow. Jason displays some championship nudges (and catches, and tips, and all the stuff Jason does) to quickly go up 2-0. The boys move to Bad Girls, and I get a TV at Litt to put on the finals. Thanks Blake! Good lookin’ out. 

Bad Girls takes a ball to warm up: both for the players to find a groove and put up points, and for the commentators and chat to figure out how the scoring worked. And, for me to pull up the stream on my phone so I can actually read the scores on the puny Gottleib display. We got there, though! Arvid puts up 5m on ball two, but can’t fend off Jason’s ball three as Jason goes up 3-0. Arvid is now in a must-win situation, as we go to the now-infamous-but-we-don’t-know-it-yet: Car Hop. 

As we wait an eternity for the game to start watching the display cycle, note that the GC is at 94m. As I’m wondering why we’re playing Car Hop single player, Andy Bagwell explains it’s played solo because of the ball three score catch-up feature. Well, it’s technically the Ketchup feature, because it’s Car Hop. Yuk yuk yuk yuk yuk. 

Jason’s looks uncharacteristically inaccurate on his first two balls, but settles in on ball three. After double dangering at 30m, Jason just keeps grinding his center loop, right orbit, upper flipper to left spinner combo. Wash, lather, rinse, repeat. He does this over, and over, and over, as the player cam gives up and dies out at 87m. Jason finishes at 98.9m points, and the game’s high score: a ridiculous display of Gottleib grinding. (Someone else could have stepped in for the last 10m, for all we know.) 

Arvid’s ball one lasts a total of 12 seconds; we now need 100m in 2 balls to stay alive. Arvid’s first couple shots show just how good Jason’s subtle nudging is on the quick return feed on the center loop, as Arvid’s first couple shots go flying out of control instead of to a slowly-returned, controlled trap. 33m on ball two as Arvid finds shots, gets comfortable, and figures out just how early the fast feed shimmy from the center loop is. Ball three, Arvid takes an early double danger while using the center post, and is truly on the ropes. You need 60m, you have no dangers on a game you need to wiggle, and you need to hit a spinner shot in a combo that often rejects. Again: the GC going into this game was 94m. As good as these guys are, this is no joke. 

Arvid gets into a groove, loses his groove, has to make inlane & center post saves, and manages to start finding shots again. My emotions watching the VOD bounce back and forth between oh no, this kid looks like he’s done, and this kid isn’t gonna miss his next 12 orbit/spinner combos. Arvid toys with our heartstrings for his 9 minute, 30 second ball three that feels like an absolute eternity, scrapes his way to 99m, and pulls out a win to make the match 3-1 and to live another game. 

Even watching the VOD, my heart was racing. Watching in real time at Litt, I realize around the 60m point: I need to get home and watch this STAT. If you watch one game from IFPA 19: pull up the VOD to 7:59:10 and watch Car Hop. Seriously. High level pinball at its highest level. 

While Car Hop was being annihilated somewhere in Southern California, here’s my double roll of Future Spa. Litt caps credits on Future Spa at 10 instead of 40. It’s a damn shame. Repeatedly hitting specials feels so, so good. 

Hotdog Vision: More than meats the eye

The kids move to Ripleys, a game I am terrified of in a tournament setting. Down on ball three, Arvid plunges an outlane (no ball save), but: no playfield validation! He’s really trying to scare us as much as he can possibly scare us. Arvid cashes in some supers, Jason can’t do much, and we go to game 6, Jason up 3-2. Jason now has his third opportunity to close this out. 

I am happy to be back on my couch, as I sweat along with the competitors watching Tron. Jason’s 22m point lead after ball three isn’t enough - Arvid intentionally drains 3m short of Jason, and trusts his 4.2m in bonus to take the win. (I wouldn’t trust it.) We are NOW TIED 3-3 and going to extra games! Holy Hannah, what a tournament. 

Arvid, on the ropes for three straight games, bounces back and throws a haymaker to force extras. Andy Bagwell can’t contain himself, with incoherent noises coming from the booth. Neither can the rest of the people in the building. Neither can I! Andy notes all the momentum is in Arvid’s favor. It’s hard to disagree; it feels like it’s Arvid time now. Jason isn’t looking rattled, but I’m not sure we could tell if he was anyway. New round: more scared Scared Stiff. Jason loses his ball one with only 300k. 

For the rest of this game of Scared Stiff, I’m leaving my notes as I took them. I think it tells a better story. 

• Arvid misses two wheel awards, yikes. Those are as close to a layup as you can get on Scared Stiff. 

• The tap passing starts during multiball, and I’m impressed every time.

• Jason Zahler looking more chaotic than usual, taking two questionable dangers: but doesn’t stop moving the game in multiball. Ahhhh! I’m yelling at my TV during these nudges, fully expecting to see a Luke Nahoriak-esque multiball tilt. (Love you, Lukie.) 

• Jason has a big multiball and gets a round of applause post-multiball, which is kinda weird, but deserved. Usually it’s when you start something or finish a ball, not finish a thing and keep playing. 

• Arvid misses his third wheel award! Oh man. No double trouble going into mulitball as a result. This feels big.

• I now remember one of my favorite parts about past IFPAs: the applause and support from the other players you can hear in the building, when everything else is silent except for one person playing pinball. It’s beautiful. 

Arvid’s reaction to missing a wheel award. We all know that face. 

Arvid can’t grind out 25 jackpots he needs in multiball, and Jason goes up 4-3. He’s now one win away from a world championship, for the fourth time tonight. They go to Godzilla. (Thankfully for us, not Sega Godzilla.) 

A nothing ball from Arvid on ball one, as the commentators encourage us to blow up the chat and trigger slow mode on Karl’s channel waiting for Jason. (Chat succeeds.) The booth is forced to entertain during the long, MIA Jason periods before each ball, and they deliver. Jason’s effortless flipper skills are on full display, making multiple tip saves in quick succession at the start of his ball to grind out a 500m ball one. 

At one point Jason traps up, stares at the DMD for a while, and says out loud: “there’s so much stuff in single ball, oh my god.” Not wrong, Jason. Not wrong. He also appears to get a phone call, and has to silence it during play. Gotta put that phone on do not disturb, dude! A necessity ANY time you’re playing pinball. Dalton confirms Jason is VERY sweaty. Dalton is functioning as our Nudge boots-on-the-ground reporter, but he doesn’t know it. We appreciate you, Dalton. Come hang with us any time. 

Arvid puts up 100m on ball two, and the game state is juiced and ready to roll for Jason. He quickly does all the stuff you usually do on GZ: as he passes a billion, it’s finally starting to feel like Arvid’s time is up with only one ball left to go. Not that he can’t make it, but that is a lot of points, on a hard Godzilla, in an enormous situation. 

We get a BIG Jason clap after starting Monster Zero at 1.1b! Emotion!!! Some said it was impossible. He builds value in MZ like crazy, and I finally notice how sweaty he looks. The kid is drenched. Arvid’s gotta be mentally sweating as Jason comes out of Monster Zero at 1.4b. He drops an 80m, 5 way rage combo, and gets another clap in while the ball is coming out of the tail whip to a dead pass. The hype outweighs his usual reserved self as he risks safety for expression, and it’s incredible to see. He’s stoked, he can’t hide it, and I love it. The chat goes nuts, the commentators go nuts, I’m going nuts, and my cat is startled. The small crowd in the Belsito barn roars as Jason walks away with almost 1.6b. 

Arvid drains quickly on his ball three, and Jason is your IFPA 19 World Champion! His first major. The best-player-never-to-have-won-a-major monkey is off his back, Dalton points out from the booth, just like Xander Schaffule at Vahalla last month. A huge congrats to Jason, and Arvid for an absolute hell of a battle to stretch the match to 8 games after being down 0-3. Incredible stuff. The awards process begins immediately due to folks needing to catch flights - fair enough, as it’s now 10pm CT and 5 hours over schedule. 

Your IFPA 19 top 4

1. Jason Zahler

2. Arvid Flygare

3. Johannes Ostermeier

4. Escher Lefkoff 

Suspiciously missing: Escher. Photo courtesy of our WPPR overlords at the IFPA. 

We get some real emotion out of Jason holding up the World Champion trophy, and rightfully so! He looks like he’s on top of the world, as I and everyone else who’s watching would be in his position. IFPA 19 ends with the number one player in the world taking home the world championship: things feel right. The stream cuts off as everyone quickly disperses to either catch flights, or sleep. I’m drained (no pun intended) from watching this much pinball. But I’m also rejuvenated, and ready to play pinball tomorrow. Not at this level. But, perhaps for a few moments here and there. That’s what keeps us coming back. 

Look how happy Andy looks! And, Jason too.