Frankly I think having the cut-off that low will act as a disincentive for some players. It is for me.

I'm in the top 2000, but my average finish is 37th. Given the caliber of players in the NYC area, I know my chances of qualifying for the playoffs of A division are pretty slim. Knowing that I don't have a chance to compete in the B division leaves me wondering if it's worth taking time off work to travel when there are lots of other events I could use that vacation time for.

Maybe I'm in the minority (I'm a solid PAPA C-Division player who travels to play in tournaments I have no chance of winning), but if there are others who share my mentality, revenue for the prize pool will actually go down rather than up.

I don't know what an appropriate cutoff would be. I would be happy with 1500.

But to come up with something less self-servingly arbitrary, looking at the 2017 New York State Championship IFPA rankings (https://www.ifpapinball.com/rankings/custom_view.php?id=99), no one in the top 50 is lower than 1255 overall. The average rank of those from 51-100 is 1474.64 today. Maybe 1500 is actually pretty reasonable!

There needs to be some sort of cutoff because otherwise you have a similar problem: players like me get demoralized because B division will just be A division playoffs part 2.

The trick is figuring out what's fair and/or meets your goals. Who do you think the B division should be for? Define that then come up with some sort of metric. You're never going to make everyone happy, but as long as you can defend your choice, hopefully you'll cut down on the complaints.

Sorry if I came off as being overly critical! I was just trying to give a perspective to consider.

Throwing in my 37th average finish was probably a mistake because it includes a bunch of small local tournaments as well as large events like PAPA and Pinburgh, so doesn't really give an accurate picture. Do I aspire to qualify in A division? Absolutely. But experience shows that I'm much more likely to eke out qualifying for B division playoffs, if anything. Especially if the event is going to draw top players from across the country. Based on that, I personally find a cutoff of 2000 to be a disincentive to travel.