Altermatt Runs the Table at Locavore’s June Shakeout

Ryan Altermatt Runs the Table at Locavore’s June Showdown

Some nights a player doesn’t just win — they take the building apart flipper by flipper, and everyone in the room knows it. That was Ryan Altermatt on June 27 at Locavore Beer Works in Littleton, where the Denver veteran topped the field on five of the seven machines he touched in the finals bracket and walked out with the June title in hand.

It was a long day of pinball inside the little Platte Canyon Road brewery — nearly eight hours from the opening group games to the last ball — and Altermatt was the constant. He came in as the finals’ top seed, and by the time the confetti settled (metaphorically; this is a neighborhood taproom, not the IFPA World Championship) he’d turned a strong qualifying run into a genuine wire-to-wire performance.

Thirty-Six Deep, With Two Names on Top

The qualifier was the heavier lift. Thirty-six players, four rounds of Group Match Play across a lineup spanning 1987 to 2026, and a field deep enough to make every group draw feel dangerous. Altermatt was locked in from the start, posting the top score on three of his four machines and refusing to give the room any daylight.

He wasn’t alone at the summit. Walt Wood — the strongest name in the building at IFPA #40, riding four wins in his last five outings — matched him stride for stride, and the two finished tied for first when the qualifier dust cleared. David Johnson and Marshall Weasel shared third, another pair of ties in a bracket that never wanted to separate cleanly. The clearest early hint of what was coming arrived in Round 4, when Altermatt and Wood landed in the same four-player group on The Uncanny X-Men (Premium). Altermatt took it 7 points to 5, edging the favorite on Stern’s mutant machine — the one where the surest route to a big score runs through the sentinel head, cracked open again and again until multiball erupts.

Eight Advance, and the Bracket Resets

Qualifying trimmed the thirty-six to eight, and the format shifted underfoot. The finals ran as a Group Bracket, re-seeded from the original standings each round, which handed a lasting edge to the players who’d earned the top lines — and buried the ones who hadn’t. That math didn’t spare Justin Hinman, Colorado’s NACS #1 and a player currently sitting at his own career-best rating; he entered as the bottom seed, couldn’t climb out of his semifinal group, and bowed out in sixth.

The semifinals split into two grinding groups. Altermatt simply overwhelmed his — first on X-Men, first on James Bond 007, first on an 84-minute war of attrition on Dune. In the other group, Wood answered with muscle of his own, taking King Kong, then outlasting everyone through the tournament’s marathon: a staggering 112-minute game on Pokémon (Premium), the newest table in the house at barely four months old and, on this night, the most stubborn. Wood closed his semi with an 88-minute X-Men win for good measure. Both favorites moved on, joined by Weasel and by John Devore, the No. 4 seed quietly playing his way into the last four.

Devore’s Ambush on the ’87 Bally

Then came the game that flipped the room. The finals opened on Dungeons & Dragons, the oldest arena in the lineup and a proper piece of pinball history — a 1987 Bally build with a confirmed run of roughly 2,000 units, drawn up by designer Ward Pemberton and dressed in artwork from Pat McMahon and fantasy legend Larry Elmore, whose dragons still glower from the backbox strobe. Its bank of three-in-line drop targets and ball-eater kickouts play nothing like the flowing Sterns that surround it, and that unfamiliarity is exactly where the upset lived.

By the ratings, Devore had about a one-in-five shot against Wood on any given machine. On this one, he ignored the math entirely. Devore posted the top score, dropped Wood clear to the back of the group in fourth, and suddenly the #40-ranked favorite was staring at a hole he’d spend the rest of the night trying to climb out of. It was the kind of result the older machines are built to produce — a great player humbled by a playfield that predates half the field’s tournament careers.

Altermatt Closes It Out

Wood clawed for footing after the ambush — a runner-up finish on Stranger Things behind a sharp Weasel, another second on a 96-minute slugfest on Venom (Premium) — but the door had already swung Altermatt’s way. He seized that Venom game, Brian Eddy’s bell-tower brawler where the smart play is to get Mayhem going before Carnage so the multiballs stack instead of stranding you, and from there it was cleanup. A Pulp Fiction tiebreaker went his way over Weasel; a one-minute John Wick sudden-death sent Devore past Wood for the final podium slot. When the last ball drained, Altermatt had his five-of-seven night and the June crown.

Behind him, the placements told their own small stories. Weasel and Devore have shared 26 tournaments and traded finishes for years, and once again it was Weasel who nosed ahead when it counted, claiming second over his longtime rival. Devore took third — a hard-earned bookend to the upset that made his night — while Wood, the highest-rated player in the room, had to settle for fourth after that Bally-shaped detour. There’s no shame in it; on a different night, in a different group draw, the story reseeds entirely. That’s the beautiful cruelty of bracket pinball, and it’s why the regulars keep coming back to the picnic tables and cold cream ales at Locavore month after month.

For Altermatt, though, this one was clean. No ties to untangle, no tiebreakers left to chance in the end — just a Colorado veteran, ranked third in his state and playing like it, who found top gear early and never let go.

Final Podium — Locavore Beer Works June Pinball Tournament

• 1st: Ryan Altermatt
• 2nd: Marshall Weasel
• 3rd: John Devore