Sam and Jared's farewell party: fifty-seven people show up to say goodbye

Most send-offs get a card and a round of drinks. This one got fifty-seven entries, thirteen rounds and a place in the top ten biggest tournaments ever recorded in Minnesota.

Sam and Jared's Farewell Pinball Party ran on the evening of Saturday, April 20, 2024 at Northstar Pinball Collective and finished at midnight. Jared Eshelman, whose player page now lists Nashville, had been a fixture of the scene for a couple of years. Sam Eshelman played too. Neither of them got anywhere: Jared went out 23rd and Sam 31st, both on their own night. The room turned out anyway.

The numbers

Four states were represented, which for a Saturday-night three-strike is a sign that people rearranged plans to be there.

Eric Fryc goes eleven for thirteen

Eric Fryc survived every round and took a non-strike finish in eleven of his thirteen games. Tony Midtling went the distance with him and finished second on ten.

Luke Nahorniak going out in a tie for eighth is the line that stands out. He is on this list four separate times as a winner or near-winner, and here the sixth-ranked player in the world collected his third strike in round nine.

Two of the three strikes came in games where Eric Fryc was standing next to him. They were drawn together four times and Fryc won both decisive meetings. Across their whole careers, Luke leads 40-26 over twenty-nine events, so this was the exception, timed well.

The machines

Forty-three titles, and the modern Sterns did most of the work:

Twenty-nine of the forty-three machines were used only once or twice, which is what a thirteen-round knockout does: the field halves every few rounds and the machine pool shrinks with it.

The long ones

• 42m47s on Terminator 2 in round three, Daniel Hammond and Jeremy Polomny through.
• 35m50s on Jurassic Park in round three, David Marcis and Angie DonCarlos through.
• 35m27s on Transformers in round three.
• 32m56s on Terminator 2 again in round five, this time with Luke Nahorniak and Eric Fryc both surviving.
• 30m11s on Mustang (LE) in round seven, Nahorniak and Fryc through together a second time.

The quickest full game was 7 minutes 57 seconds on Totem in round two.

Two brothers, one tournament

The two largest upsets of the night belong to Jai Rademacher and Joe Rademacher, and neither has played a tracked tournament since.

Jai, unrated and sitting somewhere past 32,000 on the IFPA list, beat Jim Hartley, ranked around 1,134, on Paragon in round four. Joe beat Lisa McGrath on Meteor in the same round and Lua Wilkinson on The Walking Dead in round three.

One tournament each, four upsets between them, gone. Somewhere out there are two people who went to a pinball party once and beat a top-1,200 player.

Joe Heil, again

Joe Heil turns up in the upset column of this list more than anybody. Ranked around 11,400 at the time, he beat Daniel Hammond (then #496) on Blackout in round six, Tate Nahorniak (then #604) on Deadpool in round seven, and Zack Schuster on The Getaway in round five. He finished equal fifth.

He did the same thing at the NPC Spring Classic two weeks earlier. Whatever the ratings think of Joe Heil, the people in his group know better.

Jurgen Hagedorn added one of his own, beating Matthew Sommerfeld, then ranked #272, on Monte Carlo in round four.

The rivalries

• Nathan Reardon vs Tony Midtling: five meetings. All-time they have played 67 tracked games across twenty-six events, 32-26 to Midtling, which is about as evenly matched as two people get.
• Eric Fryc vs Tate Nahorniak: four meetings, 2-0 to Fryc on the decisive ones. All time it is 15-13 to Nahorniak across nine events.
• David Marcis vs Tate Nahorniak: four meetings, 3-1 to Nahorniak, against an all-time record of 21-11 in Marcis's favor.
• Luke Nahorniak vs Chad Lietz: three meetings, 3-0 Luke, one of the few things that went his way.

Scores worth writing down

Jacks Open, a 1977 Gottlieb, produced the night's best numbers. Tate Nahorniak hit exactly 80,000, Eric Fryc 70,430, Daniel Hammond 68,790 and David Marcis 64,970. Four scores within sixteen thousand of each other on a four-player EM game is tight.

David Marcis also put 59,000 on Spanish Eyes, with Luke Nahorniak at 44,890 behind him.

What a going-away party is worth

Thirty-five WPPR points and a spot in the state's all-time top ten. Jared Eshelman has played 41 tracked events in Minnesota and still comes back for the big ones; he was in the field at Last Chance at Lukie's in 2023 and qualified sixth. Some goodbyes do not take.

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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 (this post)
10. NPC opening day: sixty-eight people in a brand new room, and Neil Graf wins eleven of twelve

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.