I woke up Saturday morning and immediately checked the standings. My memory is a bit fuzzy here, but I believe the first time I checked I was still hanging on to the last spot in novice division, but I do remember I would finally be knocked out of contention well before noon.

My first stop this morning was the 7-Eleven for breakfast, and then on to the show floor. Highlights of the day included getting to play the new Pulp Fiction and Galactic Tank Force pinball games.

Notable scores of the day include:

• Mata Hari, 426k+
• Mouse Trap (video game), 81160
• Banzai Run, 1.21M+ (second player of three player game, despite it being the lowest of the scores in that game, it was my best all day)
• Target Alpha, 230k+
• Pulp Fiction, 1.43M+ (third player of three-player game)
• Funhouse, 13.2M+

This is not a complete list but just what I consider to be among my better efforts. My apologies for some of the weird crops; a lot of the exhibitor stickers with phone numbers were pasted on the backglass, in some cases very close to the player scores. In some cases the name of the game is not legible but can be validated by other backglass art. Also, this gallery is not entirely in chronological order as two scores had to be documented with video and I would then extract a frame from that video to include in the gallery.

After getting a good night’s sleep and waking up early Friday morning, it was time to head up to the tournament room. This year, the registration desk position during the practice hour was my only shift. As previously mentioned, the volunteers for this shift got their own practice time in the half-hour between 9:30 am and 10:00 am, without having to fight the usual practice queues–a really nice perk on its own.

As it turned out, the other volunteer on the shift did most of the registration-related work; I helped move a game as well as put up a sign regarding unavailability of one of the doors as an entrance to the tournament room. Practice went smoothly; I feel like I got a feel for each game in the lineup except for Taxi (which I skipped over and forgot to go back to–oops!).

And so after taking a brief walk around the concourse to clear my head, I began my qualifying attempts. Following is the log from DTM, with commentary interspersed. (This year times were in local time from the beginning, so no adjustment was needed.) An asterisk (*) denotes a score that was later superseded by a higher score. An octothorpe (#) denotes a score that was lower than the previous high score to that point that does not qualify for an asterisk (i.e. an entry that many players would just ask to be voided).

Mar 24, 10:22am Foo Fighters 27,243,320

I chose to start the qualifying run with a game I had never played before. The only reason I chose this game is the queue was either short or non-existent (I think the latter, but I didn’t take notes on things like this).

Mar 24, 10:29am Firepower 70,900 *
Mar 24, 10:33am Firepower 85,100
Mar 24, 10:37am Wild Fyre 61,560 *
Mar 24, 10:45am Spirit of 76 16,440 *

A lot of real stinkers here. I know I’ve put up much better scores on Firepower, I have never played the latter two games before but these are clearly not my best efforts (though I would do better later, as noted).

Mar 24, 11:20am Taxi 1,188,200

My first attempt on Taxi, the game I skipped during practice. It was really hard to make the ramps on this game, it felt like one of the Taxi machines I had played in the early 1990s in arcades that just didn’t give a toot about maintenance.

Immediately following this game on Taxi was when I was queued up to play Alien Poker. Escher Lefkoff, the #1 ranked player in the world at the time of this tournament, put up a score of 1,147,980 which was good for first place on this game at that point in time (it would eventually settle down to 13th). I could have chosen to switch queues after seeing that, but I instead chose to step right up and try my best.

Mar 24, 11:36am Alien Poker 588,020

I forget where this score was right after I played it, but it would eventually settle all the way down to 53rd. I want to say it was somewhere near the bottom of the top 20.

Mar 24, 11:40am Alien Poker 50,170 #

This was an immediate re-queue on the same machine as I believe nobody was waiting (or the player in queue was not present when called). I did so poorly this time that I actually tilted one ball during this game–not good.

Mar 24, 1:02pm Volley 45,030 *
Mar 24, 1:08pm Volley 53,610 *

I enjoyed playing Volley. I had felt at the time these were at least decent scores; as it turns out “decent” in this qualifying run wouldn’t start until around 100K.

Mar 24, 2:11pm Godzilla 13,296,860

This score on Godzilla was one I knew straight away was not going to get it done. I quickly decided to move on to other games.

Mar 24, 2:28pm Grand Prix 318,280
Mar 24, 2:49pm Grand Prix 297,460 #

Another case where I immediately re-queued on the same game and it didn’t work out.

Mar 24, 3:33pm Wild Fyre 276,550

There’s a big six-hour gap after this last score. This was the point at which I went back to my hotel room and took what I had planned to be a short break, but which wound up being around a four-hour nap. The original plan was for me to pause qualifying and watch one or both of the movies being screened in the seminar room; I woke up close to 8 pm when the documentary about Roger Sharpe had already started, and I still had not eaten dinner yet.

I had dinner (a beef quesadilla with a Coke) and after finishing up, walked back over to the tournament room to finish playing my entries. Toward the end of the qualifying run I was choosing games based on the likelihood I could improve upon my previous score and thus improve my ranking.

Mar 24, 9:42pm Walking Dead 27,156,700

I thought this was a decent score but it was about 1.4M short of the threshold to get even a single ranking point (Shawn Lee’s score of 28,537,190 was the eventual cutoff).


Mar 24, 9:52pm Mars Trek 216,300 *
Mar 24, 9:58pm Black Knight 475,710
Mar 24, 10:10pm Mars Trek 517,600
Mar 24, 10:19pm Atlantis 29,830
Mar 24, 10:25pm Firepower 38,300 #
Mar 24, 10:40pm Spirit of 76 40,760
Mar 24, 10:45pm Volley 64,410

Finally, a somewhat decent score on Volley, though this too wasn’t anywhere near what I would need to rank (Christopher Doyle’s score of 73,740 was the cutoff).

Mar 24, 10:55pm Foo Fighters 10,296,500 #
Mar 24, 11:13pm Attack From Mars 653,167,330
Mar 24, 11:21pm Taxi 758,960 #

It was oddly appropriate that I end qualifying with three real stinkers, the last on Taxi. I’ve done so much better on Attack From Mars, but this time just couldn’t get anything going.

And so it ended. Dee-duh-duh-deet-deet, deet-deet.

At this point I’d like to note that this year, we had wi-fi available at no charge–a really nice touch, which enabled me to live-toot every single score without any technical issues whatsoever. I’d like to give a big thanks to Embassy Suites for this welcome change from last year.

The only thing left to do now was see if I would hang on to qualify for novice division, as any hope of making A division and B division had sailed. I wouldn’t know this until Saturday morning; I left the tournament area Friday night with some hope of still qualifying in novice.

With all 25 entries played, I headed down to the show floor to get in a few games before deciding to call it a night.

Miscellaneous/pre-tournament pictures:

Tournament entries:

Show floor scores:

Before I start telling the story for this year, I want to flash back to the posts covering my experience last year. I will be doing a lot of comparison and contrast with that experience.

We start with the tournament entry and pass purchase. Last year, the tournament waitlists from 2020 were cleared. (The 2020 and 2021 festivals were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic). This left me a chance to get in the tournament; it was potentially small, but ultimately I did get in and play. This year, I knew I was going, and so I was at my computer when the tickets and passes went on sale (I don’t remember the date off-hand, but I may come back and add it later).

And so, I’m in, and not a lot happens until a few days before the event. Except that the anticipation builds, and I actually take vacation time from work (unpaid) this time around. In retrospect that was a wise move as I can’t imagine dealing with work in the middle of trying to get ready for the trip.

So fast forward to Sunday night. Colin, the lead tournament director, tells us that two volunteers are needed for the registration desk shift immediately prior to the tournament, and he had zero. Actually, if you want to get technical, he typed “ZERO” in all capital letters just to make sure we all saw it. Not that I blame him; as an event organizer I’d start to freak out if it was that close to the event date and I had no volunteers for a potentially vital shift.

And so, after sitting on the fence about volunteering this year, I took one of those two shifts, with the main benefit being that I would get to practice on my own with the other volunteer for that shift, and not have to fight through the queues. This dropped my stress levels significantly. (I’ll get back to this in part 2.)

After taking care of a couple of last minute details, I finally set off for Frisco early in the afternoon on Thursday, March 23. In order, my stops were: Golden Chick on Remington Valley Drive and I-45 (near Airtex Drive) for lunch; Buc-ee’s in Madisonville for fuel and a T-shirt; the rest area in Navarro County (going towards Richland); and a convenience store in/near Rice for a drink and snack. Along the way, near Fairfield, was the only notable traffic delay for road work, and that delay wasn’t but a few minutes.

After getting into the area just north of downtown Dallas on US 75, I ran into some traffic. I decided to detour down some side roads. Specifically, my route used Knox Street, Abbott Avenue, Armstrong Parkway, Inwood Road, and finally Royal Lane and Quincy Lane to take me back to the Dallas North Tollway. The original directions from my satellite navigation software were to stay on US 75 to I-635, then get on the Dallas North Tollway there. As it was, I may not have saved a lot of time. However, I don’t like just sitting in slow-moving freeway traffic.

I finally arrive at my chosen hotel, the Hotel Indigo on Avenue of the Stars. I’ll go into more detail on this later but this turned out to be a great choice for a hotel. My room was near the end of the hallway on the sixth (top) floor. Throughout my stay, at least once I realized I had to go back down to the car to get something. This was a bit of a chore between the elevator ride and near-worst-case walking distance within the hotel.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind getting the extra exercise, but I’m already doing a fair bit of walking. I’m walking to and from the hotel, walking around the conference center, and walking to and from the 7-Eleven. It adds up rather quickly in fatigue (and shoe wear, for that matter).

About the only real minuses to this hotel were the lack of a mini-fridge and lack of an in-room microwave. (Supposedly, there was a community microwave somewhere on the first floor. I never cheked into this as I don’t normally use microwave ovens.)

(Quick sidenote: I didn’t ever get around to writing the post on Rant Roulette regarding last year’s lodging situation, so I’ll summarize it here: I wound up at a cheap hotel otherwise known for being a good brand, but this particular location was awful. The joke I made was that the address may as well have been on Tobacco Road, between the in-room smoke smell and people smoking just outside their rooms.)

So, back to Thursday night. I settle in to the hotel room. After unpacking and taking a quick break, I drive down to Domino’s (Gaylord Parkway and Preston Road). I chose Domino’s to cash in a free pizza from the rewards program. (I was going to do this  at some point during the stay, it just happened to be the first night.) The reward was for a free medium two-topping pizza. I opted for pepperoni, ham, and onions paying the extra $2.38 (after tax), for the extra topping. Drinks came from the nearby 7-Eleven (Gaylord Parkway and Parkwood Boulevard). I chose two one-liter bottles of Brisk Tea (two for $3). My usual 7-Select sweet tea (which would have been two for $2.50) was sold out, unfortunately. This parallels last year’s experience of cashing in the free Qdoba entree.

After dinner, I took inventory of my personal care items. I immediately had the sinking feeling I left my (face) shaver handle and blades back in Houston. I put my clothes back on and uttered some very bleepable words to myself. Then it was time to make a quick run to Target before they closed for the night. (This was at 9:30 pm; Target was set to close at 10 pm.) My total came out to $10.27 ($9.99 plus tax minus the 5% RedCard discount). But more importantly, I now had a Harry’s handle and blades I could use for the duration of my stay. Honestly, even though this was technically an avoidable expense, I was probably due for a new shaving handle anyway.

At this point, it was time to wind down. I took a badly-needed shower and did a couple of other personal care tasks. After checking a few things on my laptop computer, it was time to call it a night. I had a busy weekend ahead of me.