Episode 6 - Howdy Pardner!

[00:00:04.420] - Alan
Howdy, partner. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. My name is Allen. I am one-half of Wedgehead, a pinball bar in Portland, Oregon. I am joined today by my co-host, Alex the Waterboy.

[00:00:35.300] - Alex
Yeah, I'm Alex. I'm one-half of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. We're also joined by our friend Zoe on the East Coast.

[00:00:43.270] - Alan
Hello. Zoe is a fantastic human being, but she is also a former IFPA, Women's World Champion, and an IFPA director. She's run a lot of, what did you say, over 500 IFPA-related pinball tournaments?

[00:00:58.740] - Zoe
Yeah, if I had to guess over the years.

[00:01:01.290] - Alex
Insane amount, frankly.

[00:01:02.820] - Zoe
There is also stats on how many IFPA tournaments people play, and I think I'm in the top five, top 10 area of all time. Like, for all time. Oh, my God. It's very embarrassing.

[00:01:13.400] - Alex
It starts making sense. When I see you play, this is all as making more sense now.

[00:01:19.440] - Zoe
I've been doing this for a while, let's just say.

[00:01:21.840] - Alan
Probably the most prestigious, though, is your number of Howdy partner, Team Captain victories.

[00:01:27.900] - Zoe
That is my defining achievement.

[00:01:31.690] - Alan
Oh, that's good. Well, because that is our topic for this podcast today, the one you specifically chose to come on and talk about.

[00:01:39.190] - Zoe
Yes, I am really excited to talk with you all about Howdy partner playing in it, running in it, running it. It's going to be a blast.

[00:01:49.150] - Alan
Good. I think I'll just start off with Howdy partner, and I'll just describe it. I created the format as an answer to how intimidating traditional, especially IFPA-ranked tournaments can be to people, to the new players to the hobby that just are learning to play and are looking more for community and for some help and to learn how to play different games and improve their skills. I feel like while tournaments are fantastic, I don't know if it's the greatest thing at bridging the gap from brand new player to tournament player.

[00:02:26.590] - Zoe
It's not the most inviting environment. When you have to show up, you're not sure who to talk to. Everyone seems to know each other already, and you're just crossing your fingers and hoping you know where to go, what to do, and can play up to the level that you know you have when you've been by yourself.

[00:02:44.720] - Alex
Yeah, and it can be tough even just from, without getting into the whole admin side of things, just asking people for general pinball help when you know they're your competition. It just makes for a different atmosphere.

[00:02:56.130] - Zoe
Yeah, it's definitely intimidating.

[00:02:57.790] - Alan
Yeah. I look at things just like: you don't know the rules of games. I remember the first time I played at a pinball tournament. I had to play two games that I had never played before. I had to play Bram Stoker's Dracula and I had to play High Speed Getaway. I had no idea how to play either of those games and nobody was there to help me at all.

[00:03:18.080] - Alex
It's hard to imagine an Alan that hadn't played Bram Stoker's Dracula or High Speed Getaway. I'm picturing you being 11 years old at this point because those are two staples, I feel like.

[00:03:29.200] - Alan
I think it was in the womb. I was in utero at the time.

[00:03:33.200] - Zoe
That's an achievement. Youngest IFPA pinball player ever, Alan Robertson, negative nine months.

[00:03:39.770] - Alan
Yeah. I didn't know you then, but I believe you probably had something to do with it because it was a Tuesday night tournament.

[00:03:48.220] - Zoe
That is probably true. Yeah, Portland has had a long, strong tradition of weekly events, and it has done its job as far as broadening the pinball community, getting people hooked, getting people into it. But like you were saying, it's not the most inviting. I basically started playing in tournaments when I started playing pinball. I've never known anything else. I've never had an environment where it was just me and the pinball machine. Because I got into pinball, I was someone's girlfriend who went to their first pinball tournament while I was trying to do my homework. I was in college and I was like, In between games. I'm trying to write my senior thesis. For me, it wasn't really like, I'm going to prove my skill by getting into this tournament. It was like, All right, I guess. Whatever, these are my friends and I'll show up and probably lose. For me, I feel like it was a very easy on-ramp into the tournament community. Whereas for someone who's been playing by themselves, who doesn't really know other people who are into it, it really is a barrier to show up and maybe get your ass kicked for three games and then go home.

[00:04:51.840] - Alex
Do you think that had any effect or do you think that's a big part of what made you such a good competitive player is the fact that you got into it without caring how you did?

[00:05:01.060] - Zoe
Maybe. I think there's some of that for sure. Starting my pinball career, hearing people who are better than me, seeing people who are better than me, and being able to talk with them about it, that is how I got good at pinball, was soaking up the knowledge around me. If you're someone who's into it but playing by yourself and maybe you only have YouTube videos, if that, you're not getting that same on-the-ground knowledge. I think part of it was, Oh, this is the only environment I've ever known to play pinball as the competitive one. Also, I'm gaining a lot of strategies from the people I already am friends with. But I don't think that that competitive brain is healthy for everyone or that it isn't all the time way to enjoy a hobby.

[00:05:41.960] - Alan
Sure. Because you're a naturally competitive person, but in a friendly way. I think that's the beauty of it is if someone goes to their first tournament and they run into you, you're a great steward for the game. We're not talking about that. We're not talking about how I'm sure in every community across the country, there's some version of you, maybe they're not as skilled as you, but there's some version of a great pinball steward to help them in their tournaments and they're growing and all that thing and taking a new player that's interested in pinball, pinball curious, and making them a convert and a true pinball head. But that was my big hang up with Howdy Pardner. And before Howdy Pardner existed was, I also enjoy pinball, but I never play in tournaments. And part of it was just the community aspect of it. I just want to hang out with my friends and then play pinball. It's like, I don't want to see my friends as competition. Not that I'm not afraid to compete against anyone. It was more just like, I want to be there and I want to talk through the rules.

[00:06:41.580] - Alan
When I'm having a good ball, I want you to be able to coach me or me to coach my friend or cheer them on when they do well. I was just like, How come this doesn't happen in structured events? I know why it doesn't. I know it's against the rules, explicit or unexplicitly stated, where there's not coaching in IFPA tournaments. But that's the fun part to me is discovering a game with my friends.

[00:07:04.890] - Zoe
Yeah. Howdy Pardner was, in essence, created to fill that void, meet that vibe.

[00:07:10.730] - Alan
Yeah, I was trying to create something that, one, I was told I was crazy when I was doing it. I think Alex can speak to that.

[00:07:18.890] - Zoe
Yeah, what was the development process? What is Howdy Pardner? Then how did you come up with this hare-brained scheme?

[00:07:26.510] - Alex
Yeah, do you want to talk on that first?

[00:07:29.220] - Alan
Yeah, I guess I was just sitting... I'm trying not to... I want to preface this by saying because there are some people in the local pinball community who shall remain nameless, that paint me as a anti-tournament player or that I'm against tournaments, and that is not true. I'm not against them. I just don't play in them. I think that they're awesome for the people that are seeking that. The IFPA does a great job in far as rankings and setting up events. Because you have to be ranked and you're incentivized to play in more tournaments and to do well, and then those things accumulate into state championships. Then so you can get entry into bigger tournaments and all that stuff. That's great for those people that are of that mindset. But I always felt like it was just lacking a different component. There's a different type of person that also plays pinball that's just not represented. I felt like one of those players. Then instead of being like, Oh, I'm never going to play in a tournament. I'm just going to create a tournament that I would want to play in instead. I think about the things that when I do play with other players, what is fun to me?

[00:08:37.480] - Alan
Just like I described, it's playing with your friends and cheering them on. I love figuring out a new game or even an old game and just being like, What if we try to do X, Y, or Z? What if we try to get all the way to a wizard mode? Or what if we try a different strategy? Or what if we just try to see who can get the most warp ramps or whatever? Let's see, warp 9.9, or let's do any of those sidequests on a pinball machine. That's the stuff that I really liked, then was backtracking and trying to figure out, Well, how do I make that experience in a structured event? Because the strength of a tournament is like it's a structured event, and a lot of people have a social aspect to it. I think while you're playing in a more serious tournament, it's not while you're playing the game, but it's the in-between rounds that all the socializing happens. I like that part more than I care about the structure of perfect competition, if that makes sense. I just wanted more interaction. I wanted people to play on Teams. I think my crazy idea was, what if you had a team score?

[00:09:46.840] - Alan
Not like you're on a team and then players play other players on a different team, but what if every team played the same machines and we added your scores up? I want to throw this to Alex because he was the one of the people that I threw this to when I was developing it. I want to see how he remembers it. But everyone when I said that looked like I had three heads. I don't know.

[00:10:08.900] - Alex
I feel like I wasn't immediately because I can't remember if this was... This would be after I played TNA with Co-op on it. It's like the idea of co-op pinball is immediately something that I love because it's something that me and my wife, Megan, it just gives a lot of likes to games I wouldn't really play normally. I feel like if they had co-op like Mandalorian, I pretty much only play because it has co-op, I feel like putting that into a tournament made sense to me. I remember our buddy Jay just immediately being like, This is going to be a logistical nightmare. Because part of the Howdy Pardner thing is trying to balance teams, which comes with its own headaches, but I think makes it fun and it's never too serious. I guess that's the nice part about it not being an official tournament is that you never have to worry about anything too much..

[00:10:53.430] - Alex
Zoe, that's the one thing I remember from the couple of Howdys that I've run is that you get to just tell people that are trying to nitpick rules or take something too serious. You're like, Hey, none of this actually matters. Do you get to pull that on people in Boston? Ever?

[00:11:07.220] - Zoe
Oh, absolutely. Well, actually, I took notes for this podcast, and this is the last line of my note. Honestly, less whining because it's Howdy and who fucking cares? 100%. 

[00:11:23.220] - Alex
Yeah, that's maybe my favorite part about Howdy is that it's like, Dude, none of this matters. It brings pinball back to what pinball is in that it's fun to compete, but it's not competing is the actual important part.

[00:11:36.190] - Alan
The important part is having fun. That's really it. I'm glad you said that, Zoe, because I say that all the time. Whenever I'm running a Howdy, I'm like, Who cares? They're like, Well, the ball got stuck. I was like, I'll put it on your flipper or I'll put it in the in lane. They're like, Well, but such and such. It happened last week. We ran a Howdy. Another thing, we'll talk about some of the distinct differences. I think Zoe can speak probably most eloquently about it because you're an expert in both worlds, which I don't think Alex or myself definitely are not. I created Howdy Pardner, but I'm not a tournament player. You'll get to speak to the true differences, and that's where I really want to get your feedback. But last week, we had a ruling, just as an example for the audience is, they were on a team, somebody got an extra ball, and in Howdy Pardners, we play our extra balls, which is I know a big no-no in tournaments. But somebody had played their teammates' extra ball and then they got an extra ball and they came to me and they're like, Well, who should play it?

[00:12:39.620] - Zoe
I was like- Their teammates should play it.

[00:12:41.340] - Alan
Yeah. I was like, Okay, you played theirs, play theirs. They're like, Yeah, but it was their ball. But then I played theirs and then if they're going to play mine, I was like, I'm just going to add your score together anyways. It's Howdy. Who cares?

[00:12:52.310] - Zoe
Just figure it out.

[00:12:53.360] - Alan
It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. That was the biggest thing to me. I love that freedom of Howdy. When I put Atlantis in, which is an old Gottlieb EM, sometimes you can get a ball stuck between two down drop targets or it'll stick on one and they would be like, Oh, we got a ball stick. I go, Part of that is getting that ball out without tilting. That's the real... They're like-.

[00:13:18.460] - Zoe
Well, now that you put your tilt bob back on Atlantis, it's a little harder to get it out between the tiles.

[00:13:24.360] - Alan
That's true.

[00:13:25.490] - Zoe
I am realizing, not to host your own podcast for you, but I think the three of us are potentially three of the only people in the world who have ever run a Howdy Pardner, let alone gotten an opportunity to play in it. Do you want to quickly summarize the format for your listeners? Since we've been already going off the rabbit holes of minutia?

[00:13:44.600] - Alan
I feel like the best person to describe it is you. You've run the only satellite event so far of a Howdy Pardner in Boston. 

[00:13:56.430] - Zoe
I'm honored to have been able to do that.

[00:13:57.400] - Alan
Well, it was an honor that you wanted to, truly. But I want you to speak to the format as both a player and then as someone who has now run it.

[00:14:06.820] - Zoe
Sure. Howdy Pardner. You have teams of three or four people. They are balanced based on skill level. You have people self-report their skill level when you sign them up. You also use your basic knowledge of your community to make sure that the people who are saying they're expert are really well distributed. People aren't sandbagging and saying they're only advanced because they don't want to brag too hard. There's a lot of, as you mentioned, the balancing of the teams. But you have people self-report your skill level, pretty balanced teams, have a captain who's in charge of at least the fun aspect, if not the rules aspect. Then all the teams play the same five games, add their individual player scores together for their cumulative team score on each game. Those cumulative team scores are compared to the other teams. Then whoever has the best first, second, third on each game over the course of five games is declared the winner for the evening and wins a Polaroid on the wall, swag that you can't buy, et cetera, and glory. Those are the basics, that's the gist of it, right?

[00:15:08.190] - Alex
Yeah, that was a very succinct answer. I don't think I could have summed it up that well, and I've run three or four or something.

[00:15:14.220] - Alan
I created it and I could have never done it that succinctly, so I appreciate it.

[00:15:20.650] - Zoe
I had to sell people on coming to it because you have the leg up of having founded it and having a core group of wedgeheaders that wanted to come to begin with just to see what you were on about. Whereas I had to sell the Bostonians on the idea when I moved out here. Everyone was like, What are we doing on Thursday? I was like, You'll figure it out when you get there, but here's the basics. That's probably the same spiel that I just gave to you guys.

[00:15:45.080] - Alan
I think it's fantastic. That's exactly what Howdy Pardner is. Just like you said, we try to balance the teams by skill level. That's really important. Every team has a captain, and the way I usually announce it, because being a captain sometimes brings people anxiety because they feel like they need to lead the team and they have to be the best player. You were there for so many of them, and you did such a great job that people were like: Well, I'm not Zoe. I can't be a captain because I'm not Zoe. I don't know how to play like Zoe knows how to play. I don't have rules knowledge like Zoe has rules knowledge.

[00:16:18.570] - Zoe
I think what you say at the beginning of every event or most of the events that I've been to is your captain may not be your best player...

[00:16:24.700] - Alan
But they are your best friend.

[00:16:26.640] - Zoe
I love that. It's about a person who is making sure you're having a good time.

[00:16:30.480] - Alan
Yes. I never choose captains based on skill level. I always choose based on their personality and charisma. I want people to be good stewards to the game. I want new players to be paired with captains where they're going to have a good time. That's very important because, again, like I said, Howdy's a social event. That's what I want. I want people that are afraid or nervous to go out and play organized pinball to come to one of these events and have a good time. Someone that might be intimidated to go to a different event. That's the biggest thing about Howdy. Having a good team captain makes that very easy, and you were the best at it.

[00:17:09.480] - Zoe
Well, don't say that when Alex is in the room. Alex, you've been a captain as well. Did you have any strategy?

[00:17:15.430] - Alan
We've had feedback from players and people do not like him as a captain.

[00:17:20.010] - Zoe
I thought you were just going to say they didn't like him in general. I was like, Yeah, that would be-

[00:17:23.410] - Alex
That'd be understandable too.

[00:17:26.980] - Alex
I don't know, I feel like sometimes I'm a decent captain and sometimes I'm not, which is the difference between you and I, Zoe. I have bad days of pinball and then I feel like I'm letting my team down, which isn't supposed to be how it is at Howdy, but that just always hits me too hard. I'm like, Oh, no. Then I get in my head. It'll be like game two. I'm like, Oh, this night's a wash. I'm sorry, guys. Everybody, let's go home. Usually, if you're with a group of people that drink, that's about when I grab a round of shots for the team and I'm like, Okay, this is going to be a good Howdy Pardner night. We're going to get a bad spot, but we'll be good.

[00:17:58.920] - Zoe
We'll have fun. Yeah. For me, it's not really about the feeling like I need to play for my team. It's the social aspect. Sometimes I'm like, Oh, do I have enough wherewithal to put on the Zoe show? Or am I overwhelming my new friends with my enthusiasm? You have to figure out the balance of how do I teach them the amount that they want to know? How do I give them the social experience that they want to have? I think that's why it's great to have captains who are not the people running the event, having Alan or whoever doing the administrative paperwork and then having the captains really responsible for being welcoming and making sure people are having a good time. That's a really good delegation of the different things people are trying to get out of the experience. The administrator gives good structure, the captain gives a good social life, and your teammates are the ones who are teaching you how to play the game.

[00:18:47.240] - Alex
Yeah, for sure. It's very difficult if you're trying to run the tournament and everyone comes up to bullshit with you. It makes your admin duties very difficult. It's nice to have the ability to say, go talk to your captain.

[00:18:57.090] - Zoe
Yes, absolutely. I also think that on the topic of captains, having a cumulative score means that there isn't one person can't win Howdy Pardner for their team. I've heard many times because I am a successful captain and my teams do win a lot, but people will be like, Oh, I'm not about Zoe's team. Zoe's going to win. I can't do it on my own. Number one, I have bad games just like everybody else. But number two, not all games are exponential scoring. If we're going to play Foo Fighters and I'm going to get a billion points and no one can beat that, it's going to be like one good Hulk score and three mediocre Hulk scores is not as good as four decent Hulk scores. One person can't carry the whole group on most games.

[00:19:39.930] - Alex
100%. I think it's funny because people do do that, especially with you specifically, where it's like, Oh, Zoe is going to win this whole thing. Then when you look at your teammate scores, a lot of the times, they're some of the best intermediate player scores of the night. You realize having a captain that stays positive and actually does successfully coach people will impact the team as a whole.

[00:20:02.840] - Zoe
I get carried some days, some weeks. I just get completely carried, someone else does all the work and everyone's like, Oh, Zoe, you did it again. I'm like, I got two million on FishTales. Someone else got a video mode because I told them it existed.

[00:20:16.030] - Alex
Yeah, that's actually some of those things where it's like, oh, if you just keep hitting the left orbit of Black Knight, you'll get an extra ball and you tell someone that, and then they execute it first ball and you're like, Oh, my God, we're going to kill it now. It's just great. I love that feeling of when you can actually relay some simple knowledge like that that somebody else wouldn't have realized and it ends up making a huge difference. That's the best part about Howdy.

[00:20:38.940] - Zoe
Yeah, and the bite-size knowledge is key because we all learn from each other, but a lot of tournament players try to explain the whole game in one download, and that's not digestible. Give me a little bon-bon of information. If we're playing Guardians of the Galaxy, hit Groot in the mouth, we'll all do great.

[00:20:59.080] - Alex
Exactly. Exactly. That's the one thing that I can really rattle off. Here's my basic strat or whatever, and you realize quickly, that doesn't work with some people. Some people, they do want that. But 100% being like, this is how you get a multiball, that helps so many beginner players so much and it'll completely change how they're playing the game and if they like a game or not. It's just nice to have that opportunity with some of the beginner players or even the intermediates. I mean, every once in a while, you have someone that's played a ton of pinball. They kick ass at it, but they just don't know the rules of some games. It's just fun.

[00:21:31.740] - Zoe
The people who want to go deep will seek you out and say, I want to talk more about this. You just don't have to do it for everyone on your team all at once. This is making the initial connection and then they'll keep on talking to you.

[00:21:43.320] - Alan
Yeah, I think you're really so good at being like, We have one goal. This is your goal. Zoe can really read the people on her team and know how serious they are or how much of an appetite they have for a deep download of rules. You're like, As long as we all start Groot, we're all playing Guardians. As long as we start Groot, just start Groot. You're like, Just bang away at that. Or if you're playing medieval madness, you're like, Just hit just... What would you say to a team that's playing medieval madness for the first time?

[00:22:13.900] - Zoe
I mean, not to sound like a broken record, but hit the big thing that's in the middle of the playground over and over again. Hit the castle.

[00:22:20.340] - Alex
It's funny how many games that will work for.

[00:22:22.770] - Zoe
Yeah. I do not tell people on attack from Mars, just hit the spaceship, though. That's the one outlier, I would say, of those fan layouts. Attack from Mars, we're going to talk about lockshot and only lockshot.

[00:22:34.130] - Alan
See, there you go. But that's a good example of how you run your team and how your team learns from you and why you're such a good coach is because Zoe brings the floor up. Because in pinball game to game, ball to ball. There's variation. But the thing that you're really good at is you bring the best out of the players on your team. And what I love about the format, Howdy Pardner, is how much it allows you to do that. And when your teammates do well, you share in their success. And that's such a great feeling. And the final reading of the scores and how other teams did is the other thing that I do and how they Pardner is, your progress is unknown to you as a team. You don't know how well your score is compared to the other team scores. It's further obfuscated by the fact that you're used to playing, you know what a good score for you is on a certain machine, or what a good score in a tournament is on said machine. You don't know what a good four-player combined score is. Nobody knows what that is.

[00:23:38.850] - Zoe
Yeah. Then you're not playing with the looming, I have to get exactly this many points that a lot of tournament games end up being like. Because you're not seeing what you're playing against, you're just playing for you. What's the personal best you can do in this particular context, in this particular moment?

[00:23:54.270] - Alan
Yeah, I think it's a very funny... The moment of reveal is my favorite part of Howdy Pardner. I love that people just don't know. I love when people walk up just dejected like, Man, I don't got it. Not today. When they're turning in a team score on Fun House of nine million points and they're like, That ain't going to get it done. You're like, And in first place on Fun House this week, somehow...

[00:24:21.460] - Zoe
These bad weirdos who thought they were bad. Yeah, exactly. I also think that funny team names is key here. One other thing is that it's not always the same winner's circle. Even if you have the same captain over and over again winning, you've got different people on their team, different people are getting the experience. But having the funny team names is key. Having funny hats, funny names, funny kayfabe, those are the things I wrote down. Tournaments can have those, but most don't. Every Howdy, you are required to have all three.

[00:24:51.500] - Alex
I feel like the best IFPA tournaments do have goofy shit, stuff that makes it memorable or fun or whatever. That's just built into the Howdy. We just take that for granted because that's part of it. Speaking of which Alan, did you want to talk about where the name came from? For anyone that's not aware?

[00:25:06.950] - Alan
The name came from my favorite game of all time, Whitewater. When you press Start on Whitewater, it goes, Howdy Pardner! I love that game and I love the callouts in that game. I really did spend, I was like, Okay, what's the name? What's in the name? What's the name going to be? I had a scratch paper and I probably went through, I don't know, 50, 60, 70, like phrases and words. I was like, It's got to exude friendliness. It's got to exude casualness. It's got to mean all these different things. Then it just became I went to go play a game of Whitewater and I pressed start and it said Howdy, Pardner! Then, I was like, That's it. Obviously, that's it.

[00:25:50.630] - Zoe
You don't have to be a pinball dork who knows the minutiae and all the callouts or is even familiar with the perfect game that is Whitewater.

[00:25:57.760] - Alan
You heard it here, folks. You heard it here. Zoe Vrabel, on record saying it's a perfect game.

[00:26:03.320] - Zoe
I mean, it's one of the greats. I would put it in one of my top five games that I would like to play.

[00:26:09.380] - Alan
See? I'm vindicated. I'm totally vindicated.

[00:26:11.940] - Zoe
Has anyone been telling you you're wrong? They're wrong. Whitewater is a-.

[00:26:15.340] - Alex
Some people don't like that game.

[00:26:17.290] - Alan
Some people really don't like that game, which is okay.

[00:26:19.570] - Zoe
Wrong, wrong, wrong. This is why I don't have a podcast. I would say wrong to everyone's opinion. I guess maybe that's why I need one.

[00:26:24.470] - Alan
Yes, you do. You're welcome on our podcast anytime.

[00:26:29.260] - Zoe
Thank you. I had one. I had my own podcast for seven episodes back in the day. But when your co-hosts are Jack Danger and Bowen Kerins, things get busy really quick.

[00:26:39.310] - Alan
See? Humble brag.

[00:26:40.430] - Zoe
We're on hiatus.

[00:26:41.580] - Alan
She's slumming it with us, Alex.

[00:26:43.790] - Alex
How unbelievable. I'm just shocked that you would bother doing this.

[00:26:47.960] - Zoe
This is what I love about pinball. I think that, like I said, tournament brain is not always healthy, especially for people who are trying to build their skills. It can be demoralizing to be so focused on how am I doing versus another person? When I was playing soccer in elementary school, I would always ask my dad, Who are we versing today? I think that being so focused on who you're playing against isn't necessarily the right mindset for building your skills. Have a good time, have fun playing, and then it can be a joyful experience when you do your best rather than, I'm pushing myself to the limit, I got to do well.

[00:27:22.830] - Alan
Oh, especially because if you're in a certain competitive market, Portland is a good example. Seattle is another good one. I think Denver has some really high-ranked players. It's like if you show up and you're competing against Escher as a local guy that plays in your local tournaments, that's got to be demoralizing. No matter how well I play, I'm not even going to come close. I have no chance.

[00:27:47.960] - Zoe
Yeah. Howdy Pardner, if you do have a great game, everyone is really cheering for you, honestly, even the other teams. Not to do another humble brag, I think this is making me sound... It's late on the East Coast. I'm allowed to brag a little extra. But you remember what I just destroyed the universe? What is it called on Attack for Mars? When you do all this stuff- Rule the universe. I ruled the universe. I ruled the universe during a Howdy Pardner game. Everyone was crowded around getting to see this cool thing that a lot of people don't get to very frequently or even at all. Seeing like, Hey, look, someone I know can do that, and sometimes I beat that person, so I could maybe rule the universe is what I hope other peopleare seeing.

[00:28:28.050] - Alan
Yes. I think it's very helpful, too. Just like what you said is to see a superhuman player like you are have a bad game. I'm shameless about it. I wear a giant foam cowboy hat. I have a big bullhorn that I announce things through. When I'm like, Just so everyone knows, they feel bad about their Jurassic Park scores, Zoe just scored four million on it. 

[00:28:51.690] - Zoe
*Sigh* That's a real example. I hate this.

[00:28:55.260] - Alex
I think that's the best. 

[00:28:56.450] - Zoe
It really is what happened.

[00:28:57.900] - Alan
But what it does, is it makes everyone feel better because like, Oh, my God, I know how awesome Zoe is. I know what a great player she is and she knows this game. It's not like she's playing it for the first time. It means if it can happen to her, it can happen to me. I don't need to be so hard on myself.

[00:29:14.800] - Alex
Exactly. Right? Yeah. I think part of the Howdy atmosphere is never punching down. I think we only really insult the very best players in the room.

[00:29:23.910] - Alan
The great players.

[00:29:25.250] - Alex
Then the regulars that we really know are okay with it.

[00:29:29.290] - Zoe
Yeah.

[00:29:29.750] - Alex
Because that is definitely part of... I don't know, I think the shit talking is part of pinball culture and it's very embraced at Howdy Pardner, and it's, I think part of the fun.

[00:29:39.250] - Zoe
I've booed Alex more than I've cheered for him, I think.

[00:29:43.600] - Alan
Exactly. Even just like when your partner, Daniel, who is also an incredible pinball player, when he would play at Howdy Pardner, and I remember he used all his torpedoes on Fish Tales, and so he didn't get a chance to shoot for his extra ball. He's typically a tournament player, so I guess that mistake doesn't really matter to him most of the time. But it's funny to watch it happen and be like, wow, that's a rookie-ass mistake, and he put up a terrible score. It is funny to watch. Then everyone feels better about it because then when he blows up Skateball, and everyone's like, Oh, my God! I'll never play like that ever in my life. But then they're like...but I beat him in Fish Tales. It's that great equalizer.

[00:30:21.000] - Zoe
Absolutely.

[00:30:21.890] - Alan
The last thing we're going to talk about with Howdy Pardner before we end it, is just to retouch on a few things that I think makes it different. It's one, the social aspect. Two, you're playing on Teams. Three, the teams change each and every week. There's a community. What's fun about it is you're going to get to know and become friends with your teammates while you play that week, but then next week, they're on a different team. They're your competitors. Just like we were saying before, it's like you root for them even though they're not on your team. Because now there's a community like, Oh, well, so-and-so won their first Howdy, and I'm happy for them because we were on a team two weeks ago and we finished dead last. You're genuinely happy for how these people do. There's a nice friendly rivalry where you have roommates that show up or you have romantic partners show up and they're on different teams and they're definitely keeping a score of how many times they've won Howdy versus how many times their partner or their roommate or whatever has won Howdy. I think that makes it really fun. 

[00:31:23.440] - Alan
I guess the last thing we'll talk about on it is just the prizes. I'm very adamant about keeping the casual nature. What's common in a lot of tournaments is where you have a buy-in. A buy-in is so that there could be cash prizes to give to the winners or the top finishers. But what happens to a lot of bad players when they start out playing is they feel like it's just a tax to the best players in the room, is you're just paying them to basically hand you your ass. With Howdy, I was very adamant with like, I never want a cash prize. We're playing for stickers, we're playing for keychains, we're playing for these pint glasses or whatever that say, Howdy Pardner champion on them, that you can't purchase, and they're cool pieces of swag, but there's no cash value and there's no IPA points. Because, one, the format is completely not supported and will never be supported by the IFPA. So you're not concerned about your ratings being affected by any goofy ruling we make. Because we're there to have fun and some of those rulings are just on the fly. I'm just like, Well, this makes the most sense, so this sounds fun to me.

[00:32:24.240] - Alan
You've been there, Zoe, where you're like, Alan, I need a ruling. I'm just like, Well, what do you think? You're like, well, in IFPA, we would do this. I go, Do you want to do that, Zoe? You're like, No. So I was like, that sounds good.

[00:32:35.840] - Zoe
Yeah, it really truly doesn't matter. You're just having fun with your friends every week for some cool swag. That's all it comes down to.

[00:32:43.780] - Alex
It's very cool swag though.

[00:32:46.410] - Alan
The swag is cool. But I will give credit, we just started doing a grand prize raffle, which was actually Alex's idea. I want to give him credit for that because I think it's made it extra cool where it's basically we host seasons because Howdy Pardner is pretty much more like a league. Every season, every time you show up to Howdy Partner, you get a raffle ticket. After 12 weeks, we do a raffle and you get a free pinball machine rental in your house for a whole month. You get your own pinball machine in your house on free play for a whole month. What I think is really cool about it is, that Alex came up with the raffle idea because I was hesitant. I was like, I don't want to give away this big prize to just the best player because I don't want to upset the balance of people get too competitive at a Howdy. I don't want them to get too upset by who they get teamed up with or whatever. We have new players coming in like, These people don't know what they were doing. I had no chance. They were on a better team, all that stuff. So we made it a raffle instead.

[00:33:38.350] - Alan
The more you come, the better your chances of winning. But it's still totally luck and it's based on just number of entries and a random draw. It has nothing to do with how well you did in the tournament, which I think is unique and I wanted to preserve in any prize structure that we do in the future.

[00:33:55.290] - Zoe
Yeah, I think that that's a great way to do it because you don't want to feel like you're just donating to someone else. Why would you participate in something that you have no chance of winning other than because it's fun and you enjoy it and forcing people to pay for the privilege of getting beat at pinball is silly. It's a tough ask. Yeah, it doesn't make people want to come back. I've talked to more than one person who's come to a Howdy saying, Oh, I came to one or two Tuesdays, but I didn't feel like I was good enough to be there. Even though that's not true and we try to cultivate a welcoming atmosphere at tournaments as well, if that's not the right vibe for you, Howdy is perfect for that.

[00:34:31.550] - Alex
100%. That's one thing. It's like my wife, Megan, would have zero interest playing in a tournament, and she'll come out to Howdy's with me whenever she can make it out on a Thursday or whatever. It's just a huge part of that is the fact there's no buyin or anything. It's a place we like hanging out anyway. You're like, Yeah, you may as well play pinball. I know it's made her a better pinball player because Megan regularly kicks my ass on stuff. But it's funny when she knows stuff about games that I haven't taught her and it's like, Oh, someone must have actually showed you how to play this. That just cracks me up.

[00:35:00.190] - Zoe
I think she might have been in my shoot Groot in the mouth group because it was like me, her, and Crystal. It was a very female-forward group of people just hitting Groot in the face. We all got over 100 million on that occasion. It was really the right strategy.

[00:35:14.990] - Alex
That Guardians is not a nice Guardians either. 

[00:35:19.780] - Zoe
Just hit that guy in the face. I've never seen almost any pinball IP. I didn't have a TV growing up. I don't watch a lot of movies, so I don't know the names for things. Then I can get my teammates involved by being like, Here's the guy you should shoot. Does anyone know what his name is? Because I could not tell you off the top of my head.

[00:35:37.970] - Alan
You're like, It's Stumpy. Just hit Stumpy in the middle there. He's the tree guy.

[00:35:42.080] - Alan
Well, Zoe, I think that was a nice chat about the history of Howdy Pardner and what it means to play in Howdy Pardner and what makes it different. I want to thank you for joining us on the podcast. Absolutely. I would hope that you would come back because I think that you'd bring a lot to this podcast, and I miss you now that you're on the opposite Coast. I know that everyone else that comes out to each and every Howdy Pardner, that they miss you as well. In the future, we'd love to have you come back on the show.

[00:36:09.480] - Zoe
Absolutely. I'm there whenever you want me.

[00:36:11.560] - Alan
I'll end this episode saying what I always say at the end of these episodes, which is if you're listening, go out, find some pinball on location to play, put some coins in a game, go to your local spot, play those games, have a good time. And since we're speaking about friendly competition, get your friends involved or find a local group or meetup or league or tournament and play in it. Maybe in the future, as this Howdy Pardner thing grows, it'll spread to more cities and you'll get to play in one of these yourself. But if you're ever in Portland on a Thursday night, come on down and play in Howdy Pardner yourself. It's a damn good time.