Congrats buddy, way to pull it off. I know exactly what it is like to run a top level tournament and Pinball Expo and you and your team deserve a ton of credit for all the work you did to make it happen. The hours of prework to secure donor machines, sponsorships, streaming gear, website, location, hotels and event insurance. Then the processing of all of the individual registrations and managing the entries into DTM. Then securing volunteers and technicians to help run the event all weekend. There is so much the organizing team has to do to put on one of these events and my hats off to you for making another successful pinball event. Hope to see you there next year!!!

So, what are the dates for 2019 and when are entries likely to open?

Looks like the tourney was held in a hallway to me. How could spectators present even watch?

Most of the spectators came on Sunday for the finals at which point more space was made by removing numerous machines from the floor. For finals the main viewing area had 40 seats available with a 50” TV broadcasting the stream and a mixture of people providing live commentary to the guests that was different from the live stream commentary. As for qualifying, there wasn’t a ton of extra space nor was there a ton of spectators. Very few from what I saw. And the event had over 100 chairs lining the walls of the room. Easy to grab a seat and spectate.

Kman's latest podcast he makes somewhat of an apology and he admits that he threw a drink at Tim and was thrown out of the event.

Levi, what was the take home for the winners? was it a set amount or based off the pump and dump?
[edit found on the website the %'s for payouts based on ticket sales] How much did 1st take home?

congrats on what sounds like a very successful event!

Thanks! I’m not really the Tournament Director, I was involved in show production, providing games, press, Emceeing, and other details. But I believe our prize package was determined on percentage of tickets after our (considerable) expenses.
The top prize in A was $1,500 - served up by virtue of awesome (of course, as Everything was awesome) giant check. I believe this and our other cash payouts puts us in the top percentile of other large pinball tournaments - better than any tournaments I’ve ever been to that weren’t held in Pittsburgh.

Our A and B finalists received fantastic plaques and trophies along with some of the best prizes I’ve seen donated by sponsors - including gift certificates from the NYC community’s important small local businesses like modern pinball, world famous rock fantasy, and Jackbar, and the big boys really stepped it up too - with SIX gorgeous signed playfields from Jersey Jack (these things just kept showing up in the mail!!!) and a $500 Game Of Thrones topper from Stern - incredibly won by 4th place finisher Steven Bowden who happens to have a tournament-won NIB GOTLE he has sitting in a box at home, waiting for an excuse to come out and play!
Pinstadium also sent us a great top of the line UV kit for a prize, and a big shout out to brickhouse Projects for their work on our awesome (of course) teaser trailer that kicked this thing off 6 months ago, and pingraffix who came through at the last minute with our awesome (of course) banners and signs, as well as their cool light up cabinet mods that were featured on the AFM On stream for much of the show, and of course Pinaholic for providing games that were featured in key matches the entire Championship Sunday.

We also had the first ever Jjp POTC featured in a tournament, as a B finals contest game, to go with the Hobbit they brought for women’s and Dialed In LE for Main.

Proud moment having my dad and Jersey Jack help me with my cuff links like it was prom night.

Last but not least thanks to G Fuel, who donated product to every single contestant and spectator. I love the stuff , and it got me back in the game on Saturday night after 3 days of no sleep - powering me to 4th place finish in Classics in the only tournament I had time to play in.

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Awesome stuff!

Looks like if you plan to do it next year it will make the top WPPR cut offs for a circuit event as well!

They appear to have a restrictive and iron-clad policy on that, as it seems that we won’t be eligible for circuit until I’m well into my 50s. I wish they’d reconsider as this is clearly and obviously a circuit-quality event.

It’s not about whoppers as there are no requirements about that - it’s rather an arbitrary time period before an event can be considered.

Very cool trophies!

Hey Levi/all
I want to apogolize to Levi and the staff for what I posted earlier...the little inccident that happened at the end had nothing to do with PinGraffix and was taken the wrong way. I hope to still be a sponsor again next year. You and Tim and the rest of the guys put on a very exciting show and the energy was high. The energy was pumping... you guys worked real hard..and it showed.

Hope you guys can forgive me.
-Joe

Looks like I missed a great time but will try to make it next year. We were hosting a college graduation party for my son.

I'm not a tournament player, and pretty likely I never will be, but it looks like a solid event with a lot of folks enjoying the hobby....as they should be. Nice work.

Thanks for explaining that better than I could!

We tried to do something different than has been done in the past, and give people who don’t attend these, ever, something to enjoy. The live commentary, intros, and music were part of that, and I’m veey proud of our contestants - not a single person complained about distractions or the noise. I think this is an important thing that all major tournaments need to work on - having a dark, bland room with MAYBE a tv screen set up with a lag and no attempts to provide commentary or entertainment value beyond hardcore pinball tournament types just doesn’t cut it if you want to invite people to watch.

We’d love a larger screen, a better PA, and more
Seating but this year this was the best we could reasonably bite off.

And, between the old
Chicago machine raffle and ticket sales we raised over $1300 for project pinball, a great charity we were proud to support.

The more new ideas, the better, and I hope people take some of the stuff we did and run with it, as well as introduce their own innovations.

Solid event and well worth anyone's time.

Thanks to all that put this on and helped.

Nice to see a lot of top players supporting this first-time (in a long time ) event in NYC .

Levi is the most entertaining pinball announcer ever (this includes the future)

Well done!

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I'm curious about how the "live spectator" presentation was handled. Were the folks in a separate room? If not how did the spectator commentary, which presumably needed to be amplified, not bleed into the players' earshot?

Love the idea of intros, personally I think for the finals players should be able to pick "walk-up music" like they have in baseball. Is that what the music was?

From what I saw via stream, and based on prior comments (scroll up in this thread): Yes. Players could hear the live commentary. So Levi and other who were on the "room" mic only announced in-game action as it happened or what just took place -- no "room" mic commentary on "they're only 2 shots away from qualifying a mode to stack in with this multiball." It seemed high-energy, with some humor thrown in, but respected the sport by not offering anything that could be construed as a tip or coaching to the player on the machine. Well done!

EDIT: Sorry about mentioning scrolling up... I think I was confusing with separate comments on this aspect on Tilt forums NYCPC thread. My apologies.

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Got it. I'm all in favor of steps like these, otherwise in-person tourney spectating can be kind of dull/frustrating/anti-climactic.

Next step, get the Ocho to televise this sucker. Hell BBC America is showing darts.

Last weekend, ESPN featured a cornhole competition. All due respect to those guys, but after seeing that, there is no reason why NYCPC can't be televised in the future! Congrats Levi and the Never Beef team on their great event!

The commentating that was being done live had several elements associated with it. The announcers were doing the normal stuff of calling out the shots, announcing had much jackpots were hit for, etc. they also hyped up the crowd and hyped up the players WHILE they were playing. For instance on one of the finals games of Sorcerer Jon was playing and was way behind Bowen on his last ball. He had no ear plugs in that I could see not did he have headphones on. While he was hitting the left ramp multiple times the crowd and the announcers got more animated and lively and louder. Yelling Boom at times and telling the crowd to give a big round of applause of hitting the ramp or making a killer save. Several times during this particular game Jon trapped up and acknowledged the crowd cheering him on. I would say most if not all of the players enjoyed it. Some like Bowen, wore headphones so not sure how much he heard from the crowd or the live announcer.

On a side note, I just started TD’ing about 7 months ago, and this is exactly what I need to see and hear. I’m all about flair and wow and for all of my future events we are going to do live announcing along with hyping up the players. It can only be good for the sport. This isn’t golf.

I played a super casual pin golf tournament this weekend with a very nice competitor and good player who had to have people around him be quiet, couldn't play if he could see someone's legs in his peripheral vision, and was just generally picky about having the right conditions to play. Which was fine, he wasn't a jerk about it at all, and we were happy to step back or whatever. But I'm personally of the mind that no, it's not golf (it's pin golf!) and I'd rather see a hype crowd and people playing despite it.

Sounds like the event was a huge success, drama is boring, I'm all about people playing the damn game. Congrats to Levi and everyone else, getting a sponsor like G-Fuel is only good for the hobby imho. Takes money to make events happen, and sponsors are a big help.

oh wild. I thought with the change over it was the top wppr events that got the nod for circuit status. that is a super lame requirement... doesnt make any sense at all... def not going to help build the sport with arbitrary rules like that...

As far as I know it is NOT arbitrary. It is a 3 year average of the WPPR points awarded to first place. So an event has to be active for at least 3 years before it can make it on the circuit.

how many WPPRs does it have to award to make the cut?

That sounds ... pretty arbitrary

All I want is for the women's finals to get back up to Youtube so I can keep watching

The circuit consists of 20 events every year. 15 move on and 5 are removed. I'm not sure the exact WPPR's it takes. I know there was a google doc floating around at one point. I believe it was in the 40's this last year. I believe the cut will be in that general area again depending on what European events say yes or no.

Aurich, I get what you're saying and in your mind it may be an arbitrary number but I consider it an amount of years that accurately reflects an events readiness to be on a professional circuit. There are always outliers to this (NYCPC could be one) but overall its the right choice for the good of the circuit to put a policy like this into place.

event was great, the never beef guys did a top job. I flew in from London and will be back next year for sure...

BOOOOOOOM!

I don't see it honestly. You pick events that are good based on if they're good or not. An arbitrary "you must do this for 3 years" policy just discourages people from going all out to make new big events. If a bunch of veteran TO's get together to create a new cool event why put them in some time out jail for 3 years?

I'll be honest, I really don't care if competitive pinball takes off or not. It's not why I'm interested in the hobby personally. But I play in and follow the competitive fighting game scene, which is much more advanced than the state of competitive pinball, with much larger player pools, more money and sponsors, higher streaming counts, just bigger all around. They don't have any weird rules like that, I don't see why it's necessary.

This!!! I want to see and hear how things played out from the broadcasters' perspectives!

It was fun enough to want to watch it again...and again...and again...

The entire NYCPC was a stellar event and I want to see it all from the top!

It's available here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rD7Q4U84_k-YFYYJvfNI2ZFJfJ_5SkwkJVoF2XVSbXo/edit?usp=sharing

Bottom 5 out of the top 20 list will drop out for the 2019 season . . . Top 5 from the bottom list will be invited to join the SPC for the 2019 season.

From a viewer's perspective, you ladies put on a fantastic final.

It's necessary because there's too many "good events" out there already to choose from.

To put NYCPC on the Circuit . . . you have to kick an event off the list, so we have a completely objective measurement as to how we determine "how good" an event is.

As far as discouraging organizers from going all out to make new big events, I would hope that nobody looks to the Stern Pro Circuit as their primary motivating factor to start such an event. I've been organizing new big events for over 20 years, and my motivation has always been to simply provide players with a kick-ass experience and grow the reputation of the event from there. 3 years is hardly a blip on the radar if a group of organizers plans on running their event for 10, 15, 20+ years.

You need to fix your permissions

This is a correct and fair assessment. I attend many big tournaments whether they are Circuits or not and I helped throw a tournament that wasn't hurt by it's lack of circuit status. As far as I can tell being part of the Stern Circuit doesn't bring you much of anything, besides (duh!) Stern circuit points.

I understand Magfest has or will lose it's circuit status? Doesn't matter to me, I'll be there.

It's just YOU that can't see that...

Fixed . . . maybe . . . maybe not

Not fixed but if you click on want permission it would send a message to the right person.

Thank you! The level of play was INCREDIBLE. I can't wait to see everyone's skills put on display!!!!! The entire field was so talented - it was great!

Bowen confirmed on twitter that there was an issue with the stream and will eventually be back online!

Thanks for all the great pics, comments, and feedback gang. Keep it coming.

Levi saw the blue tape in a picture , is that a shout out to your Carolina peeps

Curious on why YEGPIN - Edmonton Pinball and Arcade Expo doesn’t show up on there at all?

Here are pictures of spectators.

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(I have been CRACKING UP about this for about ten minutes straight - that made my morning.)

We may have missed the chance for one of the highest-stake split flipper tournaments out there! Who knew the tournament director would object to someone driving the bus straight off the highway, through a cornfield, and onto some nearby train tracks to try and outrun the coming freight train? Silly tournament directors and their ability to keep tournaments going smoothly, logically, and efficiently!

I'm very excited to read about this. I have a big history in event promotion, and elevating the event by making it exciting for the audience is key. Glad to see someone cracked this nut for pinball. I look forward to seeing what comes of it.

I wasn't there, but congrats to all involved for raising the bar.

We will steal any and all good ideas we happen to pick up in our travels. Whether that is the case here I’m not really sure!