Shahan Wins Free Play Abilene Pinball Monday

Shahan’s Three-Game Head Start Holds Up at Free Play Abilene

The last game of the night took ten minutes — the quickest of the five — and it belonged to Christopher Reader. Iron Man (Vault) is not a machine that hands out long turns, and on the evening of July 13 it didn’t hand out any. Reader took the 7 points, Keith Shahan the 4, Sarah Kader the 1. It was Reader’s second round win in a row, and it arrived one round after it would have mattered.

Shahan closed out Free Play Abilene Pinball Monday with 29 points to Reader’s 23 and Kader’s 8. The shape of that margin is the whole story: three round wins to open, two seconds to finish, and a lead built early enough that a late turn couldn’t reach it. Three players, five rounds, 129 minutes from a 6:37 start under Chris Delp’s group match play format.

Led Zeppelin, the Tyrant’s Eye, and Mandalorian: the opening run

Round 1 went to Shahan on Led Zeppelin (Pro) in 19 minutes, with Reader second and Kader third. Round 2 moved to Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye (Pro), Stern’s 2025 machine and the newest thing in the tournament bank — 17 minutes, Shahan on top again, and the one round all night where the finishing order behind him flipped. Kader took second there; Reader took the single point.

Round 3 was the long one, 26 minutes on The Mandalorian (Pro), and it produced the same name at the top with Reader back in second. By the end of it Shahan had 21 of a possible 21 points and had put up the best score on three of the five machines the tournament would touch. In a three-player field, every game visibly moves the standings; three clean wins in a row is close to a foundation.

Reader turns it on The Uncanny X-Men

Round 4 broke the pattern. The Uncanny X-Men (Pro) is Jack Danger’s design, dressed by Jeremy Packer — Zombie Yeti, to most players — with mechanics by Jim Shird, code from Waison Cheng and Mike Vinikour, and a score by Charlie Benante. It played 23 minutes, and Reader came out first, with Shahan second and Kader third.

That machine pays for patience more than for panic. Save the City is where the substantial points live: three hits on each shot, banked across whatever multiball you happen to be in, then the center ramp once the playfield goes quiet and nothing else is competing for your attention. It is a mode that asks a player to keep count while the game is loud, which is exactly the kind of task a 23-minute game leaves room for.

Reader has been in this position often lately. He has finished top three in ten consecutive events, holds a career-average finish of 12 across 20 tournaments, and has averaged second place over the past year. His TX NACS line reads #342 of 1,122 ranked players, with 5 wins in 16 events this season. He and Shahan have now shared 21 tournaments, most recently on June 22, when Shahan won it and Reader placed third; across the five games here, Shahan finished ahead of him in three.

Kader’s second place on the D&D, and a year of climbing

Sarah Kader finished third, and the round sheet is blunter than that: third in four of five rounds, second in the other. The exception was Round 2 on the Tyrant’s Eye, where she got in front of Reader — the only time all night that anyone other than Shahan or Reader held the middle of a group.

The longer view is kinder and more interesting. Kader arrives with a podium streak now at three events, 27 career tournaments, and a career-average finish of 5. Her IFPA rank sits at #20,725; a year ago it was #37,507. That is real movement, earned across 15 events this season at a room she plays constantly. Shahan finished ahead of her in all five shared games and Reader in four of five, but a night spent in a three-player group with the strongest player in the field is not a wasted night.

Free Play on Cypress Street

The room helps. Free Play Arcade sits on Cypress in downtown Abilene, doors open at 3 on Mondays and stay open until 11, and the pinball row is one wing of a much larger floor — cabinets, basketball, a bar, a kitchen. Regulars talk about the flat cover charge and the fact that nobody is feeding quarters into anything, which is part of why a tournament here can run two hours on a weeknight without feeling like an imposition. It carries a 4.5 rating across 201 reviews, and the crowd on a Monday is the kind that knows which machines are playing fast this week.

Eight machines made up the tournament bank, spanning 2014 to 2025 and two manufacturers, with Godzilla (Pro), Cactus Canyon (Remake), and Black Knight: Sword of Rage (Pro) sitting unused as the five rounds played out.

What the night means for Shahan’s season

The machine that ended it deserves a word. Iron Man (Vault) is John Borg’s 2014 design, with art and animation from Mark Galvez, code by Lonnie D. Ropp and Lyman F. Sheats Jr., and sound and music by David Thiel. Its signature piece is the motorized Iron Monger that rises from beneath the playfield alongside War Machine and Whiplash — and the magnets underneath it are why the Monger is best approached from the sides, where the interference has less to work with. Ten minutes was all that game needed.

For Shahan, this is the maintenance work of a good season. He is TX NACS #36 of 1,122 with 152 points and 9 wins in 20 events this year, and he has now won two of his last five tournaments. His IFPA rank of #489 is a shade off where it sat a year ago at #423 and well off his 2024 peak of #271, which is the sort of thing that gets fixed by exactly this: showing up on Mondays, at the room where he has 250 tournaments’ worth of habits, and taking the games that are there to take. Reader takes a tenth straight podium into the next one, and on the evidence of Rounds 4 and 5, he will be a problem again in a week.

Final podium

• Keith Shahan
• Christopher Reader
• Sarah Kader