Weber Wins Her First Pinball Title on Bride of Pinbot

Becky Weber’s First Title Comes Down to One Game on Bride of Pinbot

Becky Weber walked into Aftershock Classic Arcade on June 28 with exactly one ranked tournament to her name — a 23rd-place finish back in May — and walked out of the Belles and Chimes Madison final on top. IFPA #37,967, one event deep, and now a winner.

The whole thing turned on a single four-player game. There was no qualifying grind and no bracket to survive, just Weber, three challengers, and a 1991 Williams machine with a rotating bride’s head to decide who took the afternoon. Her 7 points led the group, and that was the tournament.

A Four-Player Field, and the Veteran in It

The Belles and Chimes Madison chapter kept this one small: 4 players, two of them IFPA-ranked and two unranked, with an average national rank sitting around #22,450. The format was Group Match Play, where points come by finishing position within the group — 7 for the top spot, then 5, 3, and 1 on down. With one round and one game, that scoring was the entire ballgame.

On paper, the deepest résumé in the room belonged to Donelle Sauby of Sun Prairie. Seven years and 137 tournaments in, she sat at WI NACS #170 of 962 this season and IFPA #6933, a hair off her 2026 career peak of #6651, with 11 wins over the last three years and 26 top-3 finishes to go with them. She had also taken the chapter’s previous night at Jacque’s on June 10, so she arrived as the player to beat.

Weber came in from the other end of the experience ledger — WI NACS #686 with that single prior event on the books and a career average finish of 23. Kia Haugen and Mackenzie Reynolds filled out the group without ranked histories of their own, though Reynolds had also turned up at that June 10 chapter night. In a field this small, the arithmetic cuts both ways: one strong table wins the day, and one cold one leaves no round left to fix it.

Aftershock is the kind of place that hides its size. An unassuming East Washington Avenue front opens onto a big, well-kept floor where every cabinet earns its footprint, and a 4.8 rating across 389 reviews says the regulars have noticed. It’s a fitting room for a title to be settled in.

Bride of Pinbot Sets the Terms

Bride of Pinbot is a 1991 Williams table — a fantasy of outer space and robots conceived by Python Anghelo, designed by Anghelo alongside John Trudeau, and dressed in John Youssi’s art. The credits run deep from there: Brian Eddy on software, music from Dan Forden, sound by Jon Hey and Rich Karstens, and the mechanical work of Joe Joos Jr., Jack Skalon, and Zofia Bil. Williams sent roughly 8,100 of them out into the world.

Its signature is pure theater — a woman’s head on the upper playfield that rotates through different faces as a player brings the Bride to life. Below that sit two ramps, three pop bumpers, a lone spinning target, and a bagatelle mini-playfield up top; over on the right, two elevated chicane lanes thread their paths through one another. Even the plunge is a small drama, with an elevated skill shot that drops the ball to a kicker and fires it up into the pop bumpers, and a 2-ball multiball waiting for anyone who works the table right.

For all the spectacle, it rewards patience with its wheels. Finishing a small-wheel mode hands you 30 seconds of double scoring and lights a big-wheel mode, and catching a big wheel inside that doubled window is where the real numbers hide. On a machine where one game decided a championship, knowing where the points live was the difference between a good ball and a wasted one.

Weber Takes the Room, 7 to 1

The final was that lone four-player game, and by every account of it a close one. Weber came out in front for the win and her 7 points. Haugen tracked right behind her into second with 5. Reynolds took third and 3.

That left Sauby, the most decorated name at the table, in fourth with a single point. The veteran who had won the chapter’s last outing finished behind all three challengers, one of whom was playing in what amounted to only her second tournament. There’s no rivalry ledger to consult here and no head-to-head history to lean on — just one game in which Weber finished ahead of everyone, Sauby included, and let the placement speak.

The First of What Could Be Many for Becky Weber

Strip away the résumés and the size of the field and the picture is clean: a player one event into her ranked career won a tournament, on a demanding 35-year-old machine, over a group that included one of Wisconsin’s steadier competitors. First titles don’t come more first than this — IFPA #37,967, one event deep, now a winner. It happened on a rainy Madison Sunday, in a room built for exactly this kind of afternoon.

The final podium:

• 1st — Becky Weber
• 2nd — Kia Haugen
• 3rd — Mackenzie Reynolds