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UK Open 2023 - A Stern Pro Circuit Event & ECS Qualifier

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johnwhitfield said:
Just got home.

Got to say Neil and everyone else involved have put in a fantastic event.
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Yes. Well done to Neil and all the volunteers 🥰 It has been run really smoothly and professionally (so far)🥰

johnwhitfield said:
Wait times were really short for most games.
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*except Star Wars in the main bank, which attracted multiple players scoring in the billions. Getting billions on Star Wars takes a fair old time, and it turned into a running joke between myself and @MadMonzer about getting a score in on SW before the high-ranked German and Dutch players came back… :D

Good luck to everyone in the finals ❤️
 
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Commentary towards the end of this had me in tears a couple of times that was quite entertaining.

Mind blank in trying to figure out where I met Rich Mallet before but I think it was in Salisbury a couple of times.
 
Don’t know whether he’s there but there was talk elwin was coming did he turn anyone know ?
 
That was a marathon I had it streamed all day from 8am. I think those Stern games are too easy for them and too long winded.

Getting that kind of score in a ridiculously easy video mode isn't right in Star Wars. I don't think any video mode should outweigh what you're doing on the playfield.

I didn't mind that game and I have very few Sterns that I like but that one has to go and that leaves me with IM and Tron.
 
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It was the marathon Congo game. If it wasn't for the excellent commentary team during it, I would have nodded off. Had the stream on right from Friday and it was excellent. Only thing I'd say is during the head to heads the box bottom right was too small to squeeze all the names in and be legible.
 
VeeMonroe said:
He bitched out Katie Vince’s sharpie. Never meet your heroes 😭
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He signed my GZ Pro, and we had a bit of a chat on both Sat and Sun. Didn't want to encroach too much while he was competing and concentrating.
He must get pestered constantly about what machine's coming next, or when.
He came across as shy and reserved but a great guy and polite.
 
Want to give a huge congratulations to Neil and all of the staff who made this a massive success.
Lots of lessons learnt from last year and everything ran as smoothly as you could wish for so many comps running at once.

Biggest issue was the woefully slow service at the bar (again) as well as running out of half of the draught. Who knew that over 150 pinball players would want to drink?🤔
 
Wayne J said:
He signed my GZ Pro, and we had a bit of a chat on both Sat and Sun. Didn't want to encroach too much while he was competing and concentrating.
He must get pestered constantly about what machine's coming next, or when.
He came across as shy and reserved but a great guy and polite.
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He had an issue on de Jurassic Park, while I was score keeping. He called me over, and I had to go find Neil to sort it. When he finished his game, he thanked me for being helpful, and apologized for being a pain, because he didn’t take a pic of his score on the dmd. So yeah, very polite. Unlike some other well known American players !
 
Wayne J said:
He signed my GZ Pro, and we had a bit of a chat on both Sat and Sun. Didn't want to encroach too much while he was competing and concentrating.
He must get pestered constantly about what machine's coming next, or when.
He came across as shy and reserved but a great guy and polite.
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Yeah, to be fair to the chap, he was concentrating hard and we barely spoke - so, it was very difficult to tell if he just made a bad (first) impression due to being quite shy and reserved! :)

We didn't have a permanent marker at home, so I borrowed one from Katie and a TV camera came over... and the sharpie didn't work. And he just exclaimed, "What is this? I need a PROPER sharpie! This is a fine tip!" And I just felt so defensive of poor Katie whose sharpie was being slighted so!!

I ended up going to Wickes next door and buying a twin-pack of chisel-tipped sharpies and then he happily signed my translite (with the TV camera rushing over again)! This was while he was queuing for the UK Open finals. I suppose he could just have told me to faff off, but my general expectations for politeness are higher than that :)
 
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I would like to add my huge, huge thanks to Neil, all the PBR crew, techs, Claire and the front of house team and all the other helpers that made the UK Open possible. Thank you, doesn't do it justice, but it's all I have, so thank you. I felt so so much gratitude throughout the entire weekend. To have an event like this, in our country, is something I have always dreamed of, but in reality never thought would happen.

For me, this is the thing that I love doing more than anything else. It was completely surreal, competing against the very best players in the entire world, at an event that I drove to! Its overwhelming to be honest.

Incredible matches and moments were happening in every single round, the gasps and screams from everyone watching on the big screens was just an incredible thing to be a part of.

I'm completely broken today, back in work on the biggest come down ever, but overall feeling just so grateful for the experience.

Thank you Neil for the vision, passion, finance, dedication and bloody stubbornness to bring us something so special.
 
What an amazing event!

Neil - you did an amazing job and pulled off a better event than last year which is saying something. You're probably still asleep at the mo as I was still watching at 1.45am but from home and you were still clearing up after that!

Personally didn't have a successful run in the tournaments but humbled by the elite players and the skill levels were out of this world.

School report says "must try harder"

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:
 
On the train back now but for my first ever time ever at the UK Open it was a fantastic experience, lots of friendly people with a great atmosphere whilst watching the games too. I probably had a handful of good games all weekend so tons for me to learn still but watching some of the world's best go at it is a great way to figure out what you're doing wrong!!

Huge thanks to Neil and all the team who helped make the event happen. I tried staying to the end yesterday but it got to Midnight and I was absolutely shattered.

I'll be back again next year that's for sure.
 
roadshow16 said:
I would like to add my huge, huge thanks to Neil, all the PBR crew, techs, Claire and the front of house team and all the other helpers that made the UK Open possible. Thank you, doesn't do it justice, but it's all I have, so thank you. I felt so so much gratitude throughout the entire weekend. To have an event like this, in our country, is something I have always dreamed of, but in reality never thought would happen.

For me, this is the thing that I love doing more than anything else. It was completely surreal, competing against the very best players in the entire world, at an event that I drove to! Its overwhelming to be honest.
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This 🖕

Extra special thanks to the volunteers, techs and front-of-house team who were running around madly all weekend to keep things running smoothly. Also, the people who donated pins to the tournament - I noticed several machines that weren't from either PBR or Medway, as well as the pins kindly donated from public display at both big(ger) venues 😍

And congratulations to all the UK finalists - a huge achievement 🎉🥳

I had a weird weekend in that it's given me a huge amount of confidence going forwards. I played my first game of (full-sized) pinball in July 2021 and only started going to PBR Thursday night league regularly in the last six months. I had a very distorted view of how well I played - mostly, that I believed I totally sucked because I came in dead last at league every week (except the weeks when I beat @MadMonzer). Literally, I thought that I was one of the worst players in the UK collector/pinball community, my scores were laughable and I just couldn't just understand how I was getting replays/high scores on pins on location (I assumed most walk-up players were drunk/had never played pinball before) or how I kept beating people who got into casual two-player games with me in the Pinfest main hall.

I didn't actually realise until midway through Saturday that it was an international tournament with players flying in from across Europe and the United States (!!) 😲 I guess I should have realised when I got two multiballs, two Jackbots and a super Jackbot in Ladies with 798,534,930 and it didn't even scratch the paintwork on the top score for that machine! Some of the scores were wild - even in qualifying. I queued behind Paul Englert for Star Wars in the UK Open Main Bank several times, and he was wracking up 6 billion, 9 billion, 12 billion on consecutive tickets.

All of that made it pretty weird to be above the Ladies finals cutoff until 11:30am on Saturday, only missing out to better tickets that came in the last thirty minutes. Also, that I came 113/153 in Classics II with the 26th best score overall on Centaur (which I'd only learned vaguely how to play at PBR about a week previously) and 43rd on Farfalla (and that wasn't my best score on that machine)!

I looked up some of the players afterwards and was often playing against people who'd been playing competitively for 12+ years, who'd flown to the UK for the competition and I'd come in literally 9 points behind one of them in Ladies, which is pretty amazing under the circumstances.

I'm currently going through the scores from the tournament to reset my targets on our home machines!! :)

So, to cut a long story short, thanks again everyone! 😍 Definitely want to come back next year! 😍
 
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Got to echo Craig's comments as he's nailed it and put it much more eloquently than I can esepcially in the drained state that I'm sure i;m not alone to feel.

Huge congratulations thanks to Neil (and all the myriad of helpers who make it all happen) for putting on the biggest and most prestigious comp we've ever seen in the UK. An absolute privelege to be able to watch and compete against the best players in the whole world. I was hoping I might get the opportunity and huge honour to play against Keith in the knockout of the Classics I even if it might have significantly reduced my chances of advancing further but was not meant to be.

It was just an incedible event with some unbelievable scores most of us could only dream of getting once let alone consistently.

Lastly huge congrats to Craig and Josh for making the last 16 amonsgt the very best in the world - a massive acheivement to treaure!

Thanks again to everyone who made it such a memorable weekend.
 
What a weekend! Just in after a fantastic UK Open. Didn't play particularly well but it was a joy to see players like Escher, Keith Elwin, Johannes, Ray Day, Peter Andersen etc showing pinball at a completely different level.

Neil has put on an amazing event, fully supported by sponsors and an unbelievable team of people from Pinball Republic, technicians, volunteers, donors, and front of house staff. Claire did a superb job of organising the volunteers, which I can imagine was like herding cats at times 🤣

This event surpassed last year's and was great to be a part of, I can't wait until next year. Gonna need to get some sleep and let the body recover first though 🥱
 
Exhausted beyond belief... I can't comment on the comps as didn't get to play a single game over the weekend (until we stole Big Lebowski for the tec area) and I didn't really get the opportunity to sit and chat with participants either but hopefully people enjoyed the event.

Well done to the rest of the tec team (Bob, Clive, Kirk and Mike) for keeping everything running and it was a pleasure to turn some screws and fiddle with some wires with you all once again.

Well done and thank you to all of the other volunteers, PBR members, scorekeepers and of course the chief scorekeeper keeper(?) Claire for rallying up all the troops!
 
Sven Normansson said:
If it wasn't for the excellent commentary team during it, I would have nodded off.
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Well I don't think you're being totally honest there if you watched it all at least anyway some of it was atrocious. The language and attitude towards other players especially.
 
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