Fear and Trembling Charity Pinball Tournament

Name: Fear and Trembling Charity Pinball Tournament
Start: 2025-10-21T16:00:00-04:00
Location: The Avenue Cafe

Schedule

Tue, 21 Oct, 2025 at 04:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

The Avenue Cafe | Lansing, MI

Our annual charity pingolf tournament, known as Fear and Trembling (not, as popularly believed, “Fear and Loathing”) after the classic work by 19th century existentialist Søren Kierkegaard, will be held on October 21st at The Avenue Cafe in Lansing, Michigan. This tournament supports our regular charity, the Capital Area Humane Society.
In this format, you are scored golf style, according to how quickly you are able to achieve a goal. That goal might be something like “start any multiball” or “destroy two saucers.” If you complete it in one ball, that’s a hole in one. If you don’t complete it in three balls, your score is 4. The unique twist that as far as I know is only used in this specific tournament, is that you have to choose between two possible objectives, and are committed to that objective even if you accidentally achieve the other one. Hence, we make our dreadful choices with fear and trembling, knowing regret may be around the corner.
This will be a 9-hole course and the best (i.e. lowest) four scorers will go on to a three-game final round with pingolf match play scoring. You can start on the course anytime after 4 pm when The Avenue opens, with 7 pm being the cutoff for starting on the course. If you decide to start your card over, you are allowed to, for an additional buy-in cost, but you have to surrender your current card (no further play will be allowed on it). You will be allowed to keep your best score if you play more than one card.
The cost for your first card is $10, and additional cards are $5. The first $1 from each player is the IFPA sanctioning fee, and the rest goes to the designated charity, the Capital Area Humane Society. An additional $2 donation will be made by the tournament director on behalf of anyone who wears Halloween-themed outfits or a costume to this tournament!