From 25th to First in Two Weeks: Sterling Vine Takes the Season 29 Opener
On July 1, Sterling Vine finished 25th at PBJ League Season 28. On July 15, in the second ranked tournament of a career that is now two events long, Vine won PBJ League Season 29 Week 1 outright — top score on 4 of the 5 machines played, in a 21-player field where every entrant carried an IFPA ranking.
The night ran 30 games in a single round of group match play at Pinball Jones in Fort Collins, with four-player groups where the numbers divided and three-player groups where they didn’t, points paid out by finishing position. Vine drew a three-player group alongside James Schiffer and Zac Elliott, and dropped exactly one game in it.
The One That Got Away: 35 Minutes on King Kong
The blemish came on King Kong: Myth of Terror Island (Pro), where Schiffer posted 19,249,200 to Vine’s 12,430,940, with Elliott third at 9,056,780. It took 35 minutes to settle.
Stern put the machine out in April 2025 on a Keith Elwin design, with art from Jeremy Packer, Greg Freres and Kevin O’Connor and callouts voiced by Brian “Q” Quinn. If it lands in your group on a league night, the drop targets tucked by the upper-left flipper are the road to King Kong multiball — clear them twice to start it, and remember the action button raises a block that makes feeding that upper flipper considerably easier. Locks live on the center ramp.
There’s a nice symmetry to that group, too: Schiffer arrived with one prior tournament to his name at IFPA #58522, and Elliott, the bottom seed of the 21, was making his own early appearance at #62031. Three players near the start of things, and one of them left with a trophy.
Black Knight 2000, White Water, Pokémon, Attack from Mars
The other four games went one way. On Black Knight 2000 — Williams, 1989 — Vine’s 1,504,600 tripled Schiffer’s 500,100. White Water (Williams, 1993) was the tightest of the set, 20,640,780 against 16,045,110 from Elliott. Pokémon (Pro), which Stern shipped in February 2026 and which stands as the youngest title in a lineup reaching back to 1975, went 47,743,220 to 28,223,780.
Then Attack from Mars, the most-played machine of the evening with 3 games on it: 858,693,040 for Vine, 611,339,020 for Schiffer, 374,669,420 for Elliott, 68 minutes gone. Across the five games they shared, Vine finished ahead of Elliott every time and ahead of Schiffer in 4 of 5.
All of it happened in a basement room on Linden Street that regulars will tell you is the best-kept setup in town — 38 machines from 8 manufacturers, spanning 1975 to 2026, kept clean and playing straight, staffed by people who will happily talk rules with you between games. The 4.7 rating across 474 reviews is not an accident.
Joey Mitchell’s 125 Million on Guardians of the Galaxy
Third place went to Joey Mitchell of Fort Collins, IFPA #29442, whose three-tournament career had produced nothing better than a 20th before this. His 125,459,570 on Guardians of the Galaxy was the widest margin anyone opened on any machine all night — the next-best score there was Aprille Sonnier’s 31,855,120, and she finished 11th.
Guardians is a John Borg design from November 2017, built around a Groot bash toy whose motorized jaw swallows balls for multiball, and its scoring rewards patience with the multipliers. Park the shot multiplier on Groot for 2X, start Groot multiball with 2 balls locked to reach 3X, then add Rocket’s 2X scoring — the Groot shot is suddenly worth 12X. Margins that size come from stacking, not from luck.
The rest of Mitchell’s night held up too: White Water at 71,216,890, Fathom at 477,510, and runner-up finishes on both Dune and Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure. He finished ahead of Josh Rhodes in all 5 of their shared games and ahead of Sonnier in 3 of 5.
Jerry Valentine’s Second, and 119 Minutes on The Sopranos
Jerry Valentine, second overall, was the steadiest hand in the building. He sits at IFPA #993, a career peak reached this year and a long way up from #2223 twelve months ago, and CO NACS #12 of 723 ranked players on 139 points and 5 wins across 17 events this season. Over 80 career tournaments his average finish is 8th. He won Lord of the Rings with a tidy 48,000,001, took Fathom at 6,300,000, and put 5,128,540,000 on Attack from Mars, giving way only to Daniel Albeyta on Funhouse and slotting third on Dune.
Albeyta himself came in as the top seed at IFPA #914 and CO NACS #9 — the lone Colorado top-10 player in the room — and finished 7th, taking Funhouse over 102 minutes and Dune along the way. Nights like this are why seeds are a starting point rather than a forecast.
The longest game of the tournament belonged to another group entirely: 119 minutes on The Sopranos, decided by 24,000 points when Devin Halsey’s 15,976,000 held off David Klausa’s 15,952,000, with Clint Reeves at 14,627,000 and Allison Simons at 4,467,000. Halsey and Reeves have now shared 12 tournaments with 3 tied finishes between them, and Halsey finished ahead this time; the same was true of Halsey and Klausa across their 8 shared events. Halsey and Simons have crossed paths 8 times as well, familiar company more than a duel. George Gomez’s 2005 design still rewards a short plunge — set up your boat locks before the ball saver wakes up, and the 260-pound cabinet becomes a good deal friendlier.
What a Win Does for a Two-Event Résumé
Season 29 has weeks left in it, and Vine now enters them as the player everyone else has a result to chase. The numbers on the board are still those of a beginner — CO NACS #419 of 723, a career average finish of 25th — but a first win recalculates what comes next, and Valentine, Albeyta and the rest of the regulars will be back on Linden Street with that in mind. Paul Kardell ran a clean 158-minute night and finished 14th himself, which is roughly the deal every tournament director makes.
Final podium, PBJ League Season 29 Week 1:
- Sterling Vine — IFPA #30115
- Jerry Valentine — IFPA #993
- Joey Mitchell — IFPA #29442
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