Building the Oasis: Tour Guides and a Four-Machine Location
Originally published in The Monthly Multiball, February 2026.
When I set out to create Pinball Passport with some of my family and friends, I knew that putting Miami on the pinball map wasn’t going to happen overnight. For a long time, Miami has been a pinball desert. Now, after months of development and growth, we’re moving from testing the waters to actively building the oasis many of us believe Miami can be.
February is an important month for us. First of all, Duffy’s Tavern becomes a four machine pinball location. This marks an important milestone towards possibly becoming a Stern Army location. Duffy’s has committed to monthly tournaments, with the intent of moving toward an official weekly league. We’re working through the details now, and once it’s locked in, we’ll make it official. As always, if you come out and play at Duffy’s, take a photo, post it on your socials, and tag both Pinball Passport (@pinballpassport) and Stern (@sternpinball). Let them know we’re here, and that Duffy’s is welcoming the pinball community.
“This is about lowering friction and welcoming more people into the pinball community.”
Starting Wednesday, February 11, we’re launching a new weekly initiative called the Get On The Leaderboard Series. Every Wednesday from February 11 through April 29, all four pinball machines at Duffy’s will run daily leaderboards. The objective is simple. Put a score on the board. Each game has ten leaderboard positions, for a total of forty available entries per day. Players may appear on the leaderboard up to four times total, once per game. At the end of each month, four names will be selected at random from the leaderboard entries to receive prizes and free credits.
On those same Wednesdays, we’ll also run a daily trivia tournament, with weekly prizes awarded to the top three finishers. Come out for a good meal, some drinks, music on the jukebox, trivia, and a full night of pinball. The goal is simple. Give people a reason to come back week after week.
We’re also introducing the Pinball Passport Tour Guide Series. Each Wednesday, a designated tour guide will be on site to help players get familiar with the games, understand rulesets, cover pinball fundamentals, assist with Stern Insider Connected enrollment, and hand out free plays and AMI app credits. This is about lowering friction and welcoming more people into the pinball community. These nights reflect what Pinball Passport is built around. Pinball is the anchor, with music, trivia, and interactive entertainment integrated into the experiences we are creating.
If you’re interested in serving as a tour guide, or if you have ideas on how we can improve the experience, reach out.
February will also mark Miami Dade County’s first IFPA sanctioned pinball tournament of 2026. Sanctioned events matter, they create consistency, give players something to measure themselves against, and help connect participating venues back into the broader competitive pinball scene.
Pinball Passport will also be on the road this month at Pinball at the Beach, similar to our visits to IAAPA and Free Play Florida. We’ll be sharing play by play updates as we spend time with some of the best operators, designers, and builders in the industry. Stay tuned to our socials as we bring some of that experience back home. If you read last month’s newsletter, you already know I’m a George Gomez fan. I’m hoping to finally meet him there and let him know what we’re building down here in Miami.
May your shots be dialed in and your flippers strong,
Jose
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