Full Tilt Tavern: the first-Wednesday womxn's night, one year in
Twenty events, one director, and a monthly that has not missed since October 2025. A small room doing the unglamorous work of getting new players their first IFPA points.
·3 min read·Tilt Stats
Full Tilt Tavern does not run the biggest tournament in the metro. It runs one of the most consistent, and it has done it on the first Wednesday of the month for a year straight.
Twenty events, all directed by Erika Corio, all group match play. Fourteen of them started at 7pm on a Wednesday, and those are the womxn's nights. The other six went off at 7pm on a Tuesday and were open.
What the year looked like
The first tracked event was Womxn's Full Tilt Wednesday's on 1 October 2025, twelve players, won by Angie DonCarlos. It has run every month since, occasionally under a slightly different name. January went to Corio herself, February as well, May to Aubrey Miller, June back to DonCarlos, and July and August both to Whitney Lindaas. The September night drew ten and DonCarlos won it again.
Fields sit between six and thirteen. The biggest was thirteen, hit three separate times. That stability over a full year is harder to achieve than one big night, and it is the reason a small venue like this shows up in the record at all.
The Tuesday events are the outliers in size. The Random Tuesday Tournament in February 2026 is the venue record at eighteen players, won by Paul Tvedt, and the October 2025 Tuesday had fifteen with Chris Vaaler taking it.
Across the twenty events: 190 entries, 272 completed games, 43 distinct players.
The machines
Full Tilt has no Pinball Map listing, so this site has no synced lineup for it. What it does have is the tournament record, and in a room this size that covers nearly everything on the floor.
| Machine | Tournament games here |
|---|---|
| Foo Fighters | 35 |
| Godzilla | 34 |
| Jurassic Park | 33 |
| Medieval Madness | 32 |
| John Wick | 31 |
| JAWS | 29 |
| Deadpool | 26 |
| Elton John | 25 |
| Twilight Zone | 21 |
That is a modern bank with one Chicago Gaming remake and one Bally from 1993 for balance. A Beatles Gold and a James Bond 007 show up with a handful of games each, which usually means they arrived recently or left early.
If you are coming from Blainbrook or 3rd Lair, this is the opposite end of the spectrum: everything here has a mode start, a screen and a rule sheet you can actually read.
Who wins
| Player | Titles | Events played |
|---|---|---|
| Erika Corio | 4 | 15 |
| Angie DonCarlos | 4 | 9 |
| Michelle Ebert | 2 | 6 |
| Whitney Lindaas | 2 | 4 |
| Chris Vaaler | 2 | 3 |
DonCarlos, IFPA 2104th and rated 1569, has the best conversion rate of the regulars. Lindaas has won half of the four she has entered.
The attendance list is where the venue's real story sits. Corio has played fifteen of twenty. Alison Van Heel, Melissa DonCarlos and Elizabeth Boelke have ten each. Alyssa Tourdot, Kate Abraham and Angie DonCarlos have nine, Brooke Hipsher eight, Kristin Lund seven.
Several of those players do not appear on many other venue lists in the metro, and a few of them have taken their first IFPA points here. That is what a monthly like this is for.
If you want to play it
First Wednesday of the month, 7pm, for the womxn's night. Tuesday events appear irregularly and are open to everyone. The venue page carries the full list of past events and whatever is scheduled next.
Since the bank is modern and small, preparation is mostly about rules. The machine pages for Foo Fighters, Godzilla and Jurassic Park have playbook tabs with strategy notes and video where they have been collected, and ten minutes on the right one is worth more here than at a classic venue where the answer is usually "hit the thing".
Your own profile's All machines tab, from the players directory, will tell you which of those nine you already have a record on. For the head-to-head picture against a specific opponent, the comparison tool has it.
Other rooms running womxn's and Belles and Chimes events: Stray Dog, 3rd Lair and LITT.
More from the blog: where to play competitive pinball in Minnesota lists the rest of the circuit, and how WPPR points are calculated explains what a night here is worth on your IFPA ranking.
Featured image generated for this post. Full Tilt Tavern has no Pinball Map listing yet, so there is no synced machine lineup or photo for it on this site.