Play (pin)ball at Georgetown tournament

Call it a pinball tournament for players who like to take things easy.

The First Annual Georgetown Invitational Pinball Tournament, kicking off on Sunday, is the brainchild of Georgetown booster Larry Reid and pinball aficionado Mike Poetzel. They started it, in part, because the Annual Pinball Tournament held each fall at Shorty's in Belltown has gotten a bit too intense for some Seattle locals.

Last fall the Shorty's event drew 116 participants from nine countries. "A guy flew in from Sweden," Poetzel says with some amazement. According to an article in Skill Shot ("Seattle's pinball zine"), tensions ran high, and one competitor later got a "public hazing" on Craig's List Rant and Raves.

What Poetzel and Reid are after with the Georgetown event is "a fun, laid-back tournament" that will take the pinball scene "back to its local roots." It will also, Reid says, be a bit like a pub-crawl between three hangouts on Airport Way South: Jules Maes Saloon, 9 Lb. Hammer and Calamity Jane's.

I dropped by Shorty's on Wednesday to see what kind of buzz was building up around Sunday's tournament. Shorty's, according to Reid, is "the premiere pinball emporium in the Northwest" and people drop by there every day of the week to get some game time in. Sure enough, the backroom arcade began to fill with players shortly after cocktail hour.

Tim Smith, who got the "drunkest contestant award" in last fall's tournament (he won a PBR snowboard), said Shorty's clientele consists mostly of locals who "don't really get out of Belltown too often." But most of the people aware of the Georgetown festivities plan to go.

There are civic reputations at stake. As Poetzel explains, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., all have pinball scenes, but of strikingly different character. Portland's Crazy Flipper Fingers are "kind of like a pinball gang. They have colors, they have nicknames, they yell a lot."

At the other extreme is the Vancouver Regional Pinball Association. "They all own their own games," Poetzel explains. They meet for games in private homes, in get-togethers that are "almost like Bible study."

Seattle is somewhere in the middle "both geographically and ideologically. We don't want to rumble and we don't want to Bible study."

To that end, he and Reid have spearheaded the Emerald City Slackers: a club for people who lack the energy to actually form a club.

"We're all pretty mellow about it," he says.

One gal practicing her moves for the big Sunday tournament was Vanessa Nuetzmann of Seattle. Her favorite game is "Family Guy" because of "Stewie's Mini-Pinball": a tiny pinball machine within a pinball machine that is the only one of its kind she knows of.

Nuetzmann definitely has her eye on the Georgetown tournament. She was first introduced to pinball in 2003 when she dated a fellow who came to Shorty's all the time.

The game became an obsession: "Then I got better than he did — so that was the end of that."

The romance, that is.

Since then she avoids competing with boyfriends.

Nuetzmann, wearing a flower in her hair and dressed with Bohemian-waif panache, appears about as "mellow" as any Seattle pinballer could be. Indeed, she's almost languid in her stance as she makes "Family Guy" buzz and chime.

But appearances are deceiving. She's well aware of the players in Portland.

"My goal," she says, "is to go down there and beat them on their own machines."

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com