Tune in to the Colorado Pinball Collective’s live broadcast at 11am today of the North American Championship Series and Women’s World Championship happening at Game Exchange of Colorado in Denver.
Hint: Colorado’s rooting for Donavan Stepp, Helena Walter Higgins and Snow Galvin
Live at 11am – CPC Twitch Channel
NACS – Bracket | Tournament Rules
WWC – Bracket | Tournament Rules
The heavy hitters of North American pinball will be descending upon Denver soon. Why? The North American Championship Series (NACS), Women’s World Championship (WWC) and IFPA Pin-Masters are all going down March 5-8 at Game Exchange of Colorado.
In order to keep the traveling players entertained there are several side tournaments being held throughout the Denver-metro area. Thanks to all those who stepped up to TD these events.
1up Welcomes the State Champs!
Location: 1up – Greenwood
Start time: 6:30pm
Entry: $10 entry
Player Limit: 72
Format: 3 Strike Knockout, heads up matches
Reserve your spot
TD: Donavan Stepp
NACS and WWC Tournaments
Location: Game Exchange
Start time (both tourneys): 11am
More info NACS | More info WWC
Pre-Pinmasters Tournament
Location: 1up Colfax
Start time: 6pm
Entry: $10
Player Limit: 88
Format: 5 Strike Group Knockout, Progressive Strikes
Reserve your spot
TD: Mat Brundage
IFPA Pin-Masters – SOLD OUT
Qualifying Groups 1 & 2: 10am & 3pm (both days)
First round of playoffs (seeds 9-24): 8pm Saturday
More info Pin-Masters
IFPA Pin-Masters – SOLD OUT
Finals (top 16 seeds): 9am
Blizzard Masters Flipper Frenzy
Location: Blizzard Mountain Pinball
Start time: 10am
Entry: $10
Player Limit: 60
Format: Flip Frenzy (two 90 minute sessions), followed by finals, ending at roughly 5pm
Reserve your spot
TD: Kevin McCarthy
Join us for our live Twitch broadcast of the 2020 NACS, WWC and IFPA Pin-Masters – March 5-8. We’ve put together an A-Team of volunteers to pull off this effort and have some very cool things in store.
We, Paul Preston and Snow Galvin, have put a lot of effort and resources into beefing up our gear, production value and tournament coverage.
For NACS and WWC we’ll have an in-the-field reporter who will be monitoring matches for noteworthy events as well as fetching information on viewer requested updates. In addition, Paul’s been working on a Challonge (bracket) widget that will display player records and match updates on screen in real-time.
On top of all that we’ll have a team of viewers watching remotely to help tell us where to move the cameras in order to catch upcoming meaningful matches – a deciding game that sends someone home or a match involving a player requested by our chat.
For IFPA Pin-Masters we’ll be using Karl DeAngelo’s super awesome Drains Tournament Manager and Scorbit will be installed in all but the EM machines.
In an effort to help viewers understand the strategy of all 20+ games being used in the tournaments and avoid over-explanation of rules during the match, Snow’s created mini PinPals to help you get up to speed. We want to bring you coverage that focuses on the players and action that’s happening; not glossing over their victories and follies with more chatter about how to start a mode…again. So make sure you RTFM.
All of this couldn’t happen without our fantastic team of volunteers. We’d like to give the warmest of thanks to Dave Johnson (aka Pez), Ryan Wanger, Jordan Dechaine, Howard Dobson, David Barber and Neil Oney.
If you’re new to Twitch, we suggest creating an account and following our channel by going here and clicking the heart at the top righthand corner. This allows you to be notified when we go live and more importantly interact with other viewers as well as our broadcast team during the event.
While watching you may be curious about the status of a specific player, game strategy or tournament format. Ask us in chat and we will get that info to you by chat message, live commentator response, player interview or through our in-the-field reporter. How’s that for on demand?
With a Twitch account you’ll also be able to use chat commands. Type one into the chat while we’re live to see what they do. (Yes, you must put the exclamation point before the word)
!bracket
!standings
!tips
!pinpals
There will be 54 players representing 7 Canadian provinces, 46 US states and the District of Columbia in the 2020 NACS. Click here for tournament overview & rules.
Thursday March 5 starting at 11am be sure to cheer on Colorado’s State Champion Donavan Stepp who is entering the NACS tournament as seed 13. Up for grabs is the title of North American Champion but also an invitation to the IFPA17 World Championship being held at The Pinball Asylum in Fort Myers, Florida May 29-31, 2020. I got a good feeling about his chances of grabbing that Florida spot. Go DNO go!
But there’s more cheering to be done on Thursday because Colorado has two players competing in the Women’s World Championship: Snow Galvin and Women’s World Champ 2017 Helena Walter Higgins!
There will be 24 women competing – 16 from the open rankings and 8 from the women’s rankings. Click here for tournament overview & rules.
With an expanded field of 144 players and a full 18 hole course this year’s IFPA Pin-Masters won’t disappoint. Qualifying is spread over two days and players are broken into two tee times – 10am and 3pm.
Click for tournament overview, game list, participants, rules and results.
Friday and Saturday will feature qualifying for IFPA Pin-Masters and we’ve got a lot of Colorado players in the mix. For broadcast purposes we will be following one group from each tee time on each day. That’s 4 different groups total. Though your favorite player may not be featured during the qualifying broadcast, we will do our best to keep the live audience updated with stats and ‘in the field reporting’ of notable events.
Playoffs will begin Saturday night at 8pm and continue Sunday morning at 9am. The top 24 players will be taken into the playoff rounds.
Friday and Saturday – Group 1 – 10am
Aaron Johnson
Adam Lefkoff
Bridge Morgan
Dave Andersen
Donavan Stepp
Escher Lefkoff
Jason VonLembke
Mat Brundage
Mateo Leyba
Robert Slyker
Ryan Altermatt
Shawn Savageau
Friday and Saturday – Group 2 – 3pm
Adam Higgins
Adam Jordan
Dean Grover
Elliott Layne
George Fisher
Helena Walter Higgins
Jason Thomas
Jordan Dechaine
Justin Rausch
Kevin McCarthy
Nathan Hart
Nick Brown
Ryan Wanger
Snow Galvin
Zach McCarthy
Zen (yea he’s a NYC guy now, but we still claim him)
Help spread the word! Every so often I meet a pinball fan from Colorado Springs and they feel like they’re all alone. I’ve always responded that it’s not true and now I have a post to prove it!
North Side Social – First Sundays Monthly Tournament
Starting Sunday March 1st @ 2pm
$5 to enter plus cost of games
Format: 3 strikes
The format will be 3-strikes for the first tournament and subject to change for future months based on player feedback. $5 to enter and your IFPA fee is sponsored so cheers to Russell and the crew at North Side!
There is a good chance that Colorado Springs could also see its first pinball league as their player base starts to grow so if that’s something of interest to you, make sure you attend this Sunday and let Russell know you want to play!
Beginning tonight at 7pm, the Belles & Chimes Fort Collins chapter is starting up a new season at Pinball Jones – Old Town.
It’s free to join and they encourage all skill levels. They meet every other Tuesday and run a very casual group match play format. At the end of the season there is often a 3-strike tournament.
Follow the Belles & Chimes Fort Collins Facebook page to stay in the loop with their season’s events.
Thank you to all the players who came out for our Women’s Match Play Tournament at Game Exchange on February 15th. We had 24 players compete for 8 rounds of group match play qualifying (7/5/3/1 scoring) with a one game final to determine places first through fourth.
Congratulations to the winners!
First – Laura McCarthy
Second – Shannon Stein
Third – Summer Puente
Fourth – Hannah Martinez (first time competing!)
Rookie move…I forgot to take a photo. Trust me, they were all smiling.
The tournament was broadcasted on our Twitch Channel and I’ve also archived the video on You Tube. The You Tube video has handy links in the description that helps you navigate to the start of each game and find the player you’d like to watch. Click ‘See More’ in the video’s description to see those timestamped links.
If you enjoyed watching, be sure to tune into our live coverage of the Women’s World Championship, North American Championship and Pin-Masters events all going down at Game Exchange March 5-8, 2020. So make sure you follow our Twitch Channel to be notified when we go live!
The final standings have been submitted (though not approved as of yet) to the IFPA and all players will receive Women’s WPPRs for their participation which will contribute to their rank in the Colorado Women’s State Championship standings.
And if you’re out of the loop – Yes! Colorado Women’s State Championship is now a thing. I will make a separate post with all the details you need to know for how to qualify and how to ensure your women’s leagues and tournaments contribute to the state standings.
