Seven players filed into Tik Tok’s Workshop on a warm Bremerton evening — broken clouds, 86 degrees — for eight rounds of group match play, and by the time the flippers went quiet Jared Doss had authored the kind of night that leaves little room for debate. The Bremerton local put up the top score on five of the eight machines he touched, finishing first on the floor while the two players closest to him settled a tie for the runner-up spot.
It was the latest chapter in a quietly excellent stretch for Doss, whose IFPA number sits at #8,840 but whose recent form runs hotter than that figure suggests. Three podiums across his last five events told the story coming in; this one made it four in six, and it was easily the most commanding of the bunch.
Doss Finds His Stride After an Opening Stumble
Doss did not start like a runaway. Round 1 pitted him against Kate Janeway and Bruce Cherry on Centaur, and it was Janeway who claimed the machine, leaving Doss second and Cherry adrift in third. For a player carrying a career average finish of sixth across 212 tournaments and seven years on the circuit, an opening second was hardly a crisis — but it hinted at a grind rather than a coronation.
Then the switch flipped. Doss won Round 2 on Hot Wheels, Round 3 on Harley-Davidson (2nd Edition), Round 4 on Eight Ball, and Round 5 on Devil’s Dare — four straight games at the top of his group, a streak that turned a shaky start into a stranglehold. Against Kelly Frost he finished ahead in all four of their shared games, and he took three of five from Janeway. Whatever the format threw at him, from Bally solid-state classics to Zaccaria oddities, Doss kept finding the winning line.
Five Years On, The Mandalorian Still Pulls a Crowd
The lineup itself was a museum tour, spanning 1977 to 2025 across eight different manufacturers, and one machine on the bank quietly marked a milestone. Stern’s The Mandalorian (Premium) turned five this month — released in July 2021, Brian Eddy’s design with Randy Martinez artwork and that instantly recognizable Grogu sculpture is still earning tournament reps half a decade later. Richard Godwin was the beneficiary in Round 2, topping the machine to bank an early seven.
If The Mandalorian brought the modern spectacle, Devil Riders supplied the vintage weirdness. Zaccaria’s 1984 stunt-motorcycle table is a genuine oddity — two playfields, six flippers, including a pair of “React” flippers that kick the ball back up from the outlanes, plus mechanical backbox animation and Lorenzo Rimondini artwork. It played twice on the night, fast and brutal at seven minutes a game, and it produced two of the evening’s most consequential results. In Round 6, Cherry took it with Doss second; in the final round, Godwin claimed it in a three-way with Cherry and Anna Francolini. For a table pushing forty years old, it decided as much as anything on the floor.
Francolini’s Round 7 Ambush and the Race for Second
Doss’s only real wobble came late, and it came at the hands of Anna Francolini. In a tightly contested Round 7 three-player on Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye (Premium) — Stern’s 2025 dragon-chaser, another Brian Eddy design — Francolini edged out Janeway and dropped Doss all the way to third, his lowest finish of the night. It was a satisfying beat for Francolini, who eventually placed fourth and split their two shared games right down the middle. Doss answered emphatically in the finale, closing on The Wizard of Oz (LE) with a win to seal the title, but the ambush proved that even a dominant night has soft spots.
Behind him, the fight for second was its own little drama, and it involved two of the circuit’s most familiar sparring partners. Godwin, the vastly experienced local with 663 tournaments and twelve years logged, ran a steady book — winning on The Mandalorian, Vulcan, Harlem Globetrotters On Tour, and Devil Riders — but a fourth-place clunker on Harley-Davidson in Round 3 kept them from pulling clear. Cherry, the strongest-ranked player in the room at IFPA #6,672 and the reigning field leader on paper, matched Godwin step for step with wins on The Wizard of Oz, Batman, Eight Ball, and Devil Riders. When the dust settled, the two shared the runner-up step outright.
That deadlock carries history. Godwin and Cherry have crossed paths across 24 shared tournaments, and Cherry clawed back tonight to tighten an already-razor-thin rivalry. Godwin’s rivalry with the champion runs even deeper — 23 shared events — and this was the night Doss chipped into the slim edge Godwin has long held between them, finishing ahead in both games the two played.
What Doss’s Big Night Means Heading Into August
For Doss, this is more than a single trophy on a weeknight. His WPPR standing has climbed steadily over the past year — from a rank near #7,087 twelve months ago to his current position — and a win over a field led by a state-ranked #216 player only accelerates that trajectory. With four podiums in his last six outings and a peak of #3,720 still on the résumé from 2023, the Bremerton regular looks like a player rediscovering his ceiling right as the summer schedule at Tik Tok’s Workshop stays busy. The Workshop itself remains one of Washington’s most welcoming rooms — a 4.7-star bar stocked with vintage iron and the kind of crowd that makes a Tuesday feel like an event — and it will keep feeding these weekly matchplays straight through the season.
If Doss keeps stringing together nights like this one, the rivalry ledgers with Godwin and Cherry are only going to get more interesting. For now, though, the record from July 21 is clean and simple:
- 1st — Jared Doss
- 2nd (tie) — Richard Godwin
- 2nd (tie) — Bruce Cherry
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