Jack Wasserman Wins Five of Six Machines at Hyper Beer Co. Season IV #3
Jack Wasserman came into Hyper Beer Co. on Wednesday, July 15, played six games with the same three people all night, and put up the top score in five of them. That was enough for 38 points and first place in a 41-player field — a standard weeknight draw for this Anaheim room, and one that took 155 minutes and 66 games to sort out.
Group match play doesn’t reward one enormous game. It rewards showing up on every machine you’re handed, and the machines Fran Irwin’s Season IV #3 handed out ranged from a 1978 Williams to a Stern that arrived this past February. Wasserman handled almost all of them.
A 1978 Phoenix to Start, and a Group That Stayed Together
Wasserman drew James Gray (CA), Hillary Jacobson, and Tony Sorrentino, and the four of them opened on Phoenix — the oldest machine in a lineup that spans 1978 to 2026, and the busiest of the evening at 6 games. Wasserman took it for 7 points. He took the next one too, on Mousin’ Around!, and then King Kong: Myth of Terror Island, and then Metallica, and then JAWS.
Hyper Beer Co. is a bar first, with 25 machines and a tap list people talk about as much as the lineup, and the games are kept in the kind of shape that makes a tournament possible on a weeknight. The rating sits at 4.9 across 15 reviews. Doors stay open until 11 p.m. midweek, which is roughly how long a 41-player night needs.
Mousin’ Around!, Then Dave Maddux’s Third Try at It
Mousin’ Around! is a Bally from 1989, designed by Ward Pemberton with art by Pat McMahon, built 2,996 times, and pitched entirely at the idea of mice raiding a kitchen — right down to the pair of Ball Eater targets. It came out four times over the course of the night. If you draw it in a future round, know that the jackpot stays lit for roughly 15 seconds after multiball ends, so the shot is still there when the noise stops.
The machine also produced the closest group game of the tournament. Dave Maddux had finished 4th in each of his first three games before taking Mousin’ Around! for 7 points, with Nahas 2nd on 5, Canas 3rd on 3, and Cameron McPhie 4th. Maddux won Cactus Canyon next and came 2nd on Monster Bash to close, salvaging a night that had started about as poorly as one can.
The Alice Game, and the Only One That Got Away
The longest game of the tournament ran 136 minutes on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Dutch Pinball machine released in 2025 — designed by Barry Driessen and Melvin Williams, art by Freek van Haagen, from a concept by John Popadiuk. It was also the one machine Wasserman didn’t top.
James Gray (CA) took it for 7 points. Jacobson followed on 5, Wasserman on 3, Sorrentino on 1. Across the six games they shared, Wasserman finished ahead of Gray five times and ahead of Jacobson five times, and ahead of Sorrentino in every one — but Alice went the other way, and it went that way in the game that took the longest to finish.
Soon on 36, and a Tie at 34 Behind Him
Jonathan Soon finished 2nd on 36 points, and had a nearly identical night in a three-player group with Rob Mullner and Dana O’Hara: firsts on JAWS, Star Wars: Fall of the Empire, Monster Bash, John Wick, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, with only King of Diamonds getting away. Soon is IFPA #658 with a career peak of #374 in 2024 and 549 tournaments logged over nine years, one of the deepest résumés in the room.
Third place was shared. Evan Malanosky and Octavio Lobato both finished on 34 points by very different routes: Malanosky won Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Pulp Fiction, and World Cup Soccer, while Lobato took four — Pulp Fiction, Austin Powers, Cactus Canyon, and Metallica — after a 4th on John Wick early in the set. Lobato’s rating has climbed year over year to IFPA #9,719.
There was rivalry movement further down the sheet. Malanosky and Jacobson have now shared 10 tournaments and remain close to even, with Malanosky finishing ahead this time. Nahas, another familiar name across 10 events with Jacobson, also came out ahead tonight and narrowed a margin that has been slim all along. And Dennis Eichhorn — at IFPA #366, the highest-ranked player entered, and the only one from the top 500 — landed 7th on 32 points in a four-way logjam with Ian Maddux, Brian Diaz, and Irwin, the organizer, who played his own night out and finished level with them.
Wasserman’s First Result Since December
The tournament sheet said Wasserman was IFPA #5127 in a field averaging #9018, with 17 of the 41 entrants carrying no ranking at all. What it didn’t say is that this was his first recorded result since Asylum Brewing Season 7 last December, where he finished 4th, and that the two events before that had both ended with him one place short — 2nd at Asylum Brewing Season 6 in September, 2nd at the Evil Dead Launch Party in July. Ten years and 41 tournaments in, with a career peak of #3033 back in 2022, he came back after seven months away and gave a room full of Hyper Beer regulars nothing but Alice.
Final podium — Hyper Beer Co. Season IV #3, July 15, 2026
- 1st — Jack Wasserman (IFPA #5127), 38 points
- 2nd — Jonathan Soon (IFPA #658), 36 points
- 3rd (tie) — Evan Malanosky (IFPA #5881), 34 points
- 3rd (tie) — Octavio Lobato (IFPA #9719), 34 points
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