TIF Italian Pinball Championship 2010

After having a great time in Italy last year, we were interested to visiting Italy and the Italian pinball championship again this year.
The main difference was that last year we had combined it with our holiday, first a few days Milan and then a week of holiday.

This year it wasn't possible to combine it with a holiday, so we chose for a long and exhausting road trip..

We started our road trip around 4.30am. Almost had no traffic jams at all, only in Switserland at some road works where we had to switch highways.. Here's a view of the highway in Switserland which we passed in the early afternoon.
Only at the Gotthard tunnel there was a lot of traffic. Waiting time in the traffic jam was almost 2 hours. Because we didn't want to wait that long and the weather was good (and because the past two years we've always taken the tunnel and said one day we should take the pass), we decided to get off the highway and take the Gotthard pass mountain road.

We were not the only ones with this idea. It seemed a German Porsche club also wanted to drive on these mountain roads. There were 6 Porsches right behind us, and behind a few other cars there was another group. At least 15 Porsches on this mountain road was quite a sight.

Although it was around 30 degrees C outside there still was a lot of snow and ice on top of the mountain.

After checking in at the hotel in the later afternoon, we visited the location where the pinball tournament was held. Said hello to the people we knew of last year and met some new people.
Everyone was going to meet around 8pm to go to a restaurant. The Spanish players decided to stay in the hotel (as Spain was playing in the world soccer cup), some dutch players had left on their own, and the rest all went to a local bar/restaurant.

Two pinball players from France.

As the tournament would start on sunday at 2pm, we had all morning to get some rest and do some sight-seeing. First we went to the center of Milan where we visited the Duomo.

Next to the Duomo there's a famous gallery, La Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle II.

Nikky's enjoying the view inside the gallery.

After visiting the center of Milano it was time to do some food shopping. When we're on holiday in Italy we always visit an Esselunga superstore. We both enjoy Italian food, so when we're there we might just as well buy enough to last us until the next year (and now we had an almost empty car booth so room enough to fill up..).
Here's a view of about half of the pasta they have for sale.

Time to play some pinball now ! This year it wasn't outside anymore. The organisers of the show had bad luck with the location they chose, only a few days before it had been vandalised and the electricity and airco wiring had been destroyed. The civil protection of the village had setup this generator to provide electricity for the whole building.
Unfortunately this also meant there was no airconditioning ! As we had noticed yesterday already it became very hot inside with all these pinball machines set up, and the sun shining.. Let's hope next year will be a bit better.

At the entrance hall there was a small exhibition from a local photographer. Some nice closeup pictures of pinball machines, also of people in italian bars around amusement machines like jukeboxes, pinballs and wallgames.
It seems you can still find a lot of pinball machines on location in Italy. While in the northern parts of Europe you have to search for them and most pinball enthousiasts have their pinball machines at home, in Italy there are still a lot of bars where you can play games. A lot of Italian pinball players I spoke to didn't own a pinball machine but only played on location.

Everyone in the tournament was split up in groups of 4 players and had to play a game on 9 machines. It was scheduled to have a final round between the top 4 players of this ranking.

The machines to play were 6 recent games: Monster Bash, Cactus Canyon, Champion Pub, Scared Stiff, Congo, Medieval Madness.

To provide some cooling, fans had been placed between the games to provide some airflow. The other machines were 3 electro-mechanicals: Moon Flight, Super Sonic and Best Jump.

Dutch Ad Jonker playing on Cactus Canyon.

Winner of last year, Daniele Acciare was also present this year. Only a month ago he had won the IFPA Pinball World Championship in the USA and he had brought this trophy.

The trophy was taken care off..

Daniele playing his round on a Monster Bash pinball machine.

Dutch player Paul Jongma was playing excellent. He's won a lot of tournaments in the past and played very well here, seems he had adapted very well to playing the heat. This high score on Medieval Madness was already reached on his first pinball (+ extra balls) !

The setup of the games was different from other tournaments. Extra balls were active. On almost every other pinball tournament they are turned off as an extra ball (especially on a 3 ball game) can provide a large advantage for a player that can earn one, and will also increase the time of the tournament a lot). Medieval Madness and Congo seemed to be set to an easy setting, as locks were already lit. Starting a multiball wasn't very difficult to do. Monster Bash on the other hand did not have a ballsaver at all, something which surprised some players..

Several players played barefoot on the pinball machines.

by the end of the day most players were exhausted from the heat.

The trophys to be won.

Loris, the italian pinball collector who provided all the game was packing up everything again at the end of the day..

As the tournament took a long time, in the end there was decided not to hold a final play between the 4 top ranked players, but instead to use the ranking of the qualifications as the final result.
Below are the final results of the tournament, which was won by dutch pinball player Paul Jongma.