Each day for 21 days, leading up to the 2016 Batcave Masters major pinball tournament to be held May 13th-15th, we will take a look at one of the players competing for top honours in this prestigious event. Who will be the next player spotlight out of the 60 players competing? Find out tomorrow!
18 of 21 - Matthew Venables
Matt (left) prefers to be behind the camera. Photo by Australian Pinball League.
Region: Redfern NSW
Australian Rank: 16th
Years Competing: 3
Best Result: 2nd place - System 11 World Championships (74 players)
Average Finishing Position: 11th
2015 Batcave Masters Placing: 12th
Monkey on his Back: Richard Rhodes, Sydney NSW (9 wins against, 27 losses, 2 draws)
Notes: Matt’s scores are like a rash across the inner Sydney region, where you’d be hard pressed finding a grand champ score which isn’t claimed by the initials MJV. From his local down the road - The Lord Raglan Hotel - to any number of locations in Newtown including the Courthouse Hotel, good luck getting on the score boards of these well stocked pinball locations. Quite an amazing skill set considering he hadn’t touched a pinball machine in his life until around four years ago. So the scores are out of reach for the ordinary human being, but Matt has yet to manage capitalising that into a major tournament win, which surely couldn’t be too far away one would think. Though perhaps him being affectionately known as the Australian Josh Sharpe (his tendency to exclaim profanities whilst playing) is his greatest curse - as we know Josh is yet to take a major title himself in the USA. The originator of the ‘Hello Sailor’ move, Matt's not just an animated and highly skilled player, he’s also a professional photographer, and the Founder and Director of 107 Projects, which the website best describes as ‘A post-industrial, multidisciplinary creative space located in the cultural melting pot of Redfern cultivated by a team of artists, musicians, poets and passionate creatives to become a vanguard for public engagement and social enrichment through the arts’. So a keen creative and artist without doubt, which can be seen in his creative endeavours in the pinball community, such as photography for this site, podcasting, video work, and any number of creative aspects that he can get his hands into. A true patron of the arts and the silver ball.