This is starting to sound like RGP, if we are discussing the semantics behind "professional" and "world".

Build a bigger place, get more people from across the "world" to show up, and then you can make that claim as well.

A professional competitor, in any sport or contest, is usually denoted by the fact that you can make money doing it. "Making a living" off of it, has nothing to do with being professional. It just states you are the best of the best.

If I'm the 3rd string quarterback for an NFL team for my entire career, I probably made the league minimum. If my career was only 5 years, you'd still call me a professional football player even though I doubt I'd be making a living off it after my career was over.

Last I checked it's only called PAPA HQ, and yes it's only one location. Not sure why you need more than one location to call some place a headquarters, but secondly tournaments all over the world award free PAPA tournament entries to those that win smaller tournaments. Hence, we all come to PAPA HQ to determine the champion. I guess the other argument is the IFPA decides this?

So strictly speaking, the world champion needs to hold both belts? I'll buy that.

PAPA really promotes pinball. When I tell people I'm going to the World Pinball Championships, they actually seem somewhat interested. I just spent my day before 4 days at PAPA at an incredible party, and it was an experience. I went last year, and to Pinburgh and as a player, it's incredible.

If it's not the World Championship, it sure does get people to show up, because it was great to see so many people in one house playing. I think the turnout was much higher than last year. It's so much fun.

There were 479 players registered to compete at PAPA 14.
4176 entries were recorded, 1188 of which were voided.
767,811,442,668 points were scored during qualifying.

This link will have the scores/games/rankings for all the tournaments. You can see player scores, games scores, what was played. There were 3 classics tourneys that qualified and ended the same day. Thursday - Saturday. The A, B, and C divisions qualify for 3 days until Sunday. The top 16 in each division get in. Plus there are Juniors/Seniors tournaments, and mini tourneys on other machines.

http://www.papa.org/papa14/live/