Mitchell Loses Qualifying, Then Sweeps the EinStein’s Finals

Three Games, Three Wins: Joshua Mitchell Takes the EinStein’s Pinball Finals

Joshua Mitchell lost the qualifier and won the tournament. The Houston player came out of seven rounds of group match play at EinStein’s Richmond sitting second, a step behind the man who had topped the field — and then, when the bracket reset the board to four players and three games, he simply won all three. On a clear, sticky Sunday afternoon in late June, the thermometer reading 93 degrees and feeling closer to 101 outside the arcade doors, Mitchell closed the day with his third win in a row.

It capped a June to remember: four victories in his last five events, and three straight tournaments without finishing worse than first. At IFPA #810 he was the highest-ranked player in the room and #14 in all of Texas, though on this night the ranking mattered less than the plain fact that, once the finals started, nobody could get in front of him.

Katsarelis Tops Qualifying, One Machine at a Time

The road there ran through Ty Katsarelis, another Houston regular, who turned the qualifier into a personal showcase. Across the seven rounds, Katsarelis posted the best score on five of the seven machines he played — a stretch of ball control that left him first among the 13 entrants once the groups were tallied. It was a modest, all-Texas field with none of the state’s top ten in attendance, the kind of room where head-to-head results, not résumés, settle the standings.

One of those five wins came in Round 2 on The Mandalorian, Stern’s licensed sci-fi title, which is marking its fifth birthday this month. Designed by Brian Eddy with art from Randy Martinez and built in a run of 750 units, it is still best known for the Grogu sculpture perched on the playfield, and half a decade on it is still pulling competitors into its modes. Anyone stepping up to it should know the machine is generous with extra balls if you press it — the Foundry will sell you one, starting enough modes lights another, and the CHILD mystery award coughs one up now and then. Katsarelis took the group in a tidy 18 minutes.

Mitchell shadowed him the whole way, winning four of his own groups to settle into second. The two have crossed paths often — 38 shared tournaments between them — and in this qualifier they split the two groups they landed in together, Katsarelis edging the overall count by a hair.

Four Advance, and a Bond Upset Closes the Door

Behind the top two, the cut for the four-player finals came down to steadiness. Troy Witherspoon, a fast-rising Houston player who had captured his first career win earlier in June, won four of his groups to grab third. Caleb Wilson of Katy slipped into the last finals seat.

Wilson made his entrance memorable. In the seventh and final qualifying round, on James Bond 007, he beat Mitchell head-to-head in their three-player group — an outcome the ratings would have called maybe one time in eight. George Gomez designed that machine, with Kevin O’Connor art and a rocket-and-gantry centerpiece that rewards a confident first shot into the left scoop for jetpack multiball. The result also tilted a long, even rivalry Wilson’s way: after 19 shared tournaments split almost down the middle with Witherspoon, he finished ahead this time to nudge in front. Witherspoon, for his part, held serve in his own coin-flip rivalry with Matt Katsarelis across their 16 shared events, finishing a place ahead of him; Matt ended the day fifth.

Mitchell Wins Every Game That Mattered

The finals were a four-player group bracket — one round, three games, every result visibly swinging the standings in a room that small. Mitchell answered whatever questions the qualifier had left open. James Bond came back first, and this time he won it, turning Wilson’s Round 7 result on its head. Then came the marathon: 98 minutes on Medieval Madness, the longest single game of the whole tournament. Chicago Gaming’s Royal Edition remake carries Brian Eddy’s design — the same hand behind the Mandalorian — with its trademark exploding castle and an 8.0 rating from the pinball faithful. Mitchell won that one too, then closed the sweep on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The striking part was the symmetry of it: in all three finals games, Mitchell finished first and Katsarelis finished second, without exception. Katsarelis had come in as the bottom seed of the four and still walked out as runner-up, a deep run from the back of the bracket. Wilson, handed the top seed by the manual draw, took third; Witherspoon finished fourth.

A June That Belonged to Mitchell

Some wins arrive out of nowhere. This one arrived on schedule. Mitchell has spent the year near the top of nearly every leaderboard he steps onto — a career average finish inside the top ten, and a summer in which the podium has started to feel like his mailing address. Losing qualifying and then sweeping the finals is a hard thing to do against players who know your game as well as these did, and he managed it without a wasted turn.

EinStein’s Richmond, the neighborhood bar-and-arcade that hosted it, will run the series back soon enough — skee-ball and air hockey up front, a dog-friendly patio out back, and the kind of regulars’-club warmth that shows up in its 4.6-star standing across better than 500 reviews. For one hot Sunday, though, the room belonged to the player who finished second in the morning and first when it counted.

Final standings — EinStein’s=MatchplayCompetition² (6/28)

• Joshua Mitchell
• Ty Katsarelis
• Caleb Wilson