NPC opening day: sixty-eight people in a brand new room, and Neil Graf wins eleven of twelve

Two of the three biggest tournaments in the Minnesota data happened at Northstar Pinball Collective. So did the sixth. And the ninth. The room is the single most important address in the state's competitive pinball, and it started with this.

NPC Opening Day ran on Sunday, December 3, 2023, starting at five in the evening. Sixty-eight people came out to a converted space in Savage to play a three-strike on forty machines that had mostly just been unboxed.

The numbers

Fifteen minutes and forty-six seconds is a brisk average for a four-player field, and it is what happens when three quarters of the machines are seventies and eighties games with no ball save.

Neil Graf's twelve rounds

Neil Graf is the highest-ranked player who appears in this whole top ten as a winner other than Luke Nahorniak. He was #16 in the world that December and sits at #27 now, with a career best of #5, and he plays relatively few local events: twenty-seven tracked tournaments, ten of them wins. This was one.

He went through all twelve rounds and took a non-strike finish in eleven of his twelve games.

Tony Murphy came down from Sartell, two hours north, for an opening-day tournament at a room nobody had played yet, and finished equal eighth. Chris Frame, who was ranked #85 in the world that month and is on this list as the winner of a 101-player field three years later, went out tied for eleventh.

The round that decided third

Round eleven, Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast, thirty-three minutes and fifteen seconds. Four players, two spots. Nathan Reardon and Neil Graf came through it. Terry Weber and Whitney Lindaas, who had been level with each other all night, both took their third strike in the same game and finished tied for third.

That is the cruelty of a fair-strike format in one paragraph.

The longest game happened first

The single longest game of the night was round one: 39 minutes and 21 seconds on Deadpool, with Luke Nahorniak and Phil Frazier surviving while Jared Eshelman and Leah Odegard took opening strikes. Starting a twelve-round tournament with a forty-minute game is a good way to make everybody nervous about how long the night is going to be.

The rest:

• 33m15s on Iron Maiden in round eleven, the one described above.
• 27m58s on Guardians of the Galaxy in round five, Eric Fryc and Neil Graf through.
• 25m37s on DE Jurassic Park in round five.
• 25m16s on Mustang (LE) in round seven.

The quickest was 6 minutes 15 seconds on Comet in round five, which is a 1985 Williams that will end you in ninety seconds if you shoot the skill shot wrong.

The machines

Twenty-six of the forty machines took one or two games. NPC's floor now runs to fifty-five listed titles, and the venue page tracks what is actually in the building.

The upsets

Chris White, unrated and sitting past 22,000 on the IFPA list, had the night of the tournament. He beat Leonard Passofaro, ranked around 1,602, on Sure Shot in round two. He beat Landon Acre-Kendall on Jungle Lord in round four. He beat Aileen Beno-Lietz on Attack From Mars in round five. Three wins over rated players in four rounds, and he also put up 72,080 on Sure Shot, the second-best raw score recorded all night.

Others:

• Marisa Patrin beat Zack Schuster, then around 1,670, on DE Jurassic Park in round three.
• Michele Johnston beat Jason Bolish, then around 1,582, on Black Jack in round four.
• Neal Schmidt, around 7,000, beat Keith Hanson, then #468, on Metallica in round one.

The rivalries

• Whitney Lindaas vs Eric Fryc: four meetings, 2-0 to Lindaas on the decisive ones. That is worth flagging because the all-time record between them is 38-9 to Fryc across twenty-two events. On opening night she took both.
• Neil Graf vs David Marcis: four meetings, 2-1 Graf. Their career record is a dead heat, 10-9 to Marcis over twenty games.
• Neil Graf vs Daniel Hammond: three meetings, 2-0 Graf.
• Whitney Lindaas vs Dan Hansen: three meetings, 2-0 Lindaas.

Scores worth writing down

Spanish Eyes and Sure Shot, a 1972 Williams and a 1976 Gottlieb, took the honors. Eric Fryc put 80,050 on Spanish Eyes. Chris White managed 72,080 on Sure Shot and Matthew Sitko 70,760.

Three years on

Northstar Pinball Collective has hosted 319 tracked tournaments and taken 4,794 entries since this night. It runs a Friday matchplay, a Sunday strikes event, a monthly, and the two biggest tournaments in the state's history. Fifty-five machines are listed on the floor.

Sixty-eight people on a Sunday in December turned out to be a modest start.

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The full top ten

Ranked by the WPPR value paid to the winner, which folds field size, field strength and TGP into one number. Recurring events appear once, at their best edition.

1. Last Chance at Lukie's 2025: the biggest pinball tournament in the Minnesota data
2. Last Chance at Lukie's 2023: thirty-seven players, 233 games and a year-end scramble
3. The NPC Amazing Race: fifty machines, sixty-nine players and a Friday night that ran past midnight
4. Eighty-five players at LITT: the October 2023 open that set the template
5. One hundred and one players: the Kentucky Derby Tournament at LITT
6. Thirty players, 188% TGP: the NPC Spring Classic and the value of playing all day
7. The day LITT opened: 87 players, 261 games and twenty-eight people's first tournament
8. Sixty-five players, thirteen machines: Broken Clock runs the tightest room on the list
9. Sam and Jared's farewell party: fifty-seven people show up to say goodbye
10. NPC opening day: sixty-eight people in a brand new room, and Neil Graf wins eleven of twelve (this post)

Every number here comes from the tracked Match Play data behind Tilt Stats. Tournament, player, machine and venue pages update as new results land, so the live figures will drift from the ones written down above.