Two Perfect Cards Split the Title at Colfax Queens

Grubbs and Woodhouse Go Undefeated to Share Colfax Queens #6

The 1up Arcade Bar on East Colfax runs loud and bright most nights, but a Tuesday in early July has its own rhythm — the after-work crowd filtering in past rows of restored machines, flippers clattering under whatever’s on the speakers. On July 7, 21 players claimed their spots for the sixth stop of the Colfax Queens summer season, a group match-play league night with two rounds and 36 games standing between the field and a trophy.

By the time organizer Deanna Scalf called the first ball, the room had settled into the business of pinball. What nobody in it knew yet was that the night would end in a rarity: two players walking away with identical, flawless scorecards, and a title that refused to break in either direction.

21 Deep, All Colorado

The 1up has earned its 4.6 rating across more than 2,700 reviews the honest way — regulars praise a lineup kept in genuinely playable shape, deep enough to run from a 1984 Bally solid-state to titles that shipped this year. The night’s floor held 27 machines spanning four decades and seven manufacturers, from Dutch Pinball’s cult-favorite The Big Lebowski to Stern’s newest premiums. Theatre of Magic drew the most action, cycling through four separate groups.

The field itself was a hometown affair, with every one of the 21 entrants coming from Colorado. Ten carried an IFPA ranking and eleven did not, the national average landing around #15,068 — a standard local draw rather than a stacked one. Scalf, running the event, was also its strongest name on paper at IFPA #3,675. Six players held state rankings, averaging roughly #221 in Colorado’s pool of 718 ranked competitors. It was, in short, exactly the kind of Tuesday these machines were bought for.

Two Perfect Cards, One Top Step

Group match play rewards consistency over any single blowout: three games a round, points by finishing position, six games for a full card. Win all six and you cannot be caught — which is precisely what both Yulie Grubbs and Maybe Woodhouse did, independently, in separate groups.

Grubbs opened by taking Creature from the Black Lagoon, Star Wars: Fall of the Empire, and The Addams Family in her first-round trio, then closed on King Kong, Medieval Madness, and The Sopranos. Six machines, six firsts. Across the tournament she finished ahead of every player she shared a group with — all six games against Keli Schmid, and every one of her three apiece against Julie Juarez, Markie Cecelones, and Elaine Grimmett.

Woodhouse’s path ran through a different set of tables and landed in the same place. She swept The Addams Family, Tales of the Arabian Nights, and Elvira and the Party Monsters in round one, then The Big Lebowski, King Kong, and Dune in round two — a clean six-for-six, top score on every machine she touched. Neither player dropped a game, and with nothing left for a tiebreaker to grab, the summit was simply shared. A league night that produces one perfect card is worth remembering; one that produces two, side by side, is the sort of thing regulars will still be bringing up next month.

The Sopranos and a 74-Minute JAWS

Not every table fell so quickly. In a three-player round-one group on The Sopranos — George Gomez’s 2005 Stern design, dressed up by Kevin O’Connor’s art and a cabinet cluttered with its infamous pole dancers, talking fish head, and Tony’s boat — Suzie Heller came out ahead of Liv Wilkie over a 43-minute grind, with Sarah Miler third. The machine builds its scoring around stacking the Bing multiball onto the Stugotz boat lock, and it does not give those shots up cheaply; 43 minutes was the toll.

The longest single game of the night belonged to JAWS, Keith Elwin’s 2024 Stern premium with Michael Barnard art and callouts voiced by Richard Dreyfuss himself. It ran a full 74 minutes in round two, a four-player marathon that Julie Juarez took ahead of Diana Miranda, Claire Sannier, and AJ Givens. JAWS keeps a life ring in reserve — an orange blinking button that arms the left-outlane ball save — and a game this long tends to hinge on knowing when that rescue is worth spending. Juarez would finish 11th overall, but for those 74 minutes on the biggest table in the room, she was the last one standing.

Mitrano’s Near-Miss and the Split at the Top

The player who came closest to spoiling the two-way tie never quite reached the top step, but her night earned its own line. Hayley Mitrano, a Denver local whose recent results had mostly landed her deep in the field, arrived at Colfax #6 with her rating quietly climbing and turned in the sharpest card of anyone outside the winners. She won Jurassic Park, both of her Theatre of Magic games, The Uncanny X-Men, and Pokémon, dropping exactly one result all evening — a second place on The Addams Family, where Scalf edged her out. One table swung the other way and the tie at the top might have been a three-way. Instead it stayed a bright spot in a rough stretch, and a reminder of why her ranking, now IFPA #7,910, has been pointing the right direction.

When the 36th game was scored and the 151-minute night wrapped, the standings read like the story they had been all along. Yulie Grubbs and Maybe Woodhouse shared first, each on a spotless six wins that left nothing to separate them; Hayley Mitrano took third, a single second-place finish shy of joining them. Two perfect cards, one podium that had to make room for both — a Tuesday on Colfax worth remembering.