This is disappointing and probably should be noted on the website somewhere. I booked a hotel and bought tickets for just the Thursday and Friday and wanted to play the free play games listed on the website.

There are over 400 pinball machines listed under the games section of the website and it says they will all be set to free play. A note about the vast majority being unavailable for free play Thursday and Friday would have been nice.

Thanks, that's good to hear.

Great, thanks for confirming.

It was hearing the "vast majority" part that started getting me thinking it might not be the best plan on my part. I am looking to purchase a few more games for my game room and there are plenty on the list I wanted to try out.

I was also only 'mildly' disappointed as well as I am sure my wife and I will find plenty of things to do at ReplayFX and in Pittsburgh.

I was wondering about how this worked and think there should be more transparency about this. Before I go any further, I want to let you know that I have never played in any tournaments before and currently have no stake in this at all.

I believe that the top players should definitely receive an automatic entry in the tournament. I find it crazy that it is possible the defending champ Keith Elwin wouldn't be able to play next year because he didn't refresh his browser quick enough to get tickets.

For example, I think almost everybody would be happy with a system where the top 40 players in the A division automatically qualify to purchase tickets for the following year.

I am assuming players like the Sharpe brothers, Keith Elwin, etc. might fall under the "helping the event" category, but obviously am not privy to this type of information, which I have no problem with. The top players and influential pinball people have done more than I will ever be able to do for the pinball community.

My wife and I had a great time and am thankful for all the work done by the organizers of this event.

I didn't mean to sound as if I have a problem with the way it is run and I didn't really try to promote anything. My personal opinion was, I just thought it would be better for pinball if the greatest players were competing each year and didn't miss out because they couldn't get tickets. After reading some responses, I assume that this hasn't happened in the past and isn't a problem anyways. I assume the organizers know what they are doing and have experience in this area.

The transparency part was just me being curious how it worked, and I thought maybe some other people might be curious as well. I have very little knowledge of how these tournaments work and have no access to any insider information as some others might. I would really like to thank NinjaDoug for providing some insight into the process with his response.

Sorry if I came across the wrong way. It is probably just my analytical mind trying to understand the unknown and obtaining more data on topics I am unfamiliar with.

My wife hates me for this lol. Maybe hate is too strong of a word, but I'm pretty sure I annoy her some times.