Ditto for me. Except I managed to play my worst round all year this week and I'm away on vacation and will miss the next league night, so I'm guessing I'm screwed for playoffs.

Oh well... this way I can look forward to playing you guys in the consolation tournament.

lol. My Mom will be so proud when she sees my "Division C Participant" ribbon!

Oh, and btw big congratulations to pingod on finally finishing 2nd after so many early exits in previous tourneys...

Tony, it's a work in progress but a bunch of us are putting machines together at a new location for a series of drop-in events over the summer.

http://www.ifpapinball.com/tournaments/view.php?t=14128

The 1st public event will probably be June 8th, but someone will post it here once we know for sure.

Dan's maintaining my game.

Thanks Dan!

Yeah, I did a factory reset when I set it up on Saturday so all my glorious high scores are gone. Though I'm probably still #2 by the sound of it. I heard Clark mis-entered his initials trying to work the special buttons on the front of the cabinet reserved for entering your initials...

My all-time high score on Class of 1812 is 109,749,830. But the score display wraps after 99,999,999 so it can be hard to tell.

It is good to be King!

I hear Doug is okay too...

I'm sure he'd enjoy a bit of variety from winning all the time!

The actual FSPA rules that we are using does cover the pre-play issue effectively, it's just that we've been perhaps too lienent in their enforcement this season as we are trying to make it more convenient for new players and such to ramp up and stay involved.

I do think that we will need to adopt them strictly in the future, the sooner the better AFAIC.

-------------
9. Preplays
Preplays allow a player to submit scores in advance for a planned or unplanned absence or tardiness for a league meet. Each player may use a maximum of twelve (12) preplay scores per season.

...At least one other player must participate in a preplay. Before starting each preplay game, the preplayer must announce that the game is a preplay for a specific date, or an undated preplay. For each preplay set, all working games at the league location should be played (since the specific games that will be played by the absent player's group are not known in advance). Preplays are subject to all normal rules of league play (e.g. extra ball restrictions). All preplay scores for the absent player are recorded by the other player and are reported by them to the SLO as soon as possible. It is recommended that the person submitting preplay scores retain a copy of them.
Prior to game selection at each league meet, all submitted preplay scores will be made public. After machines are chosen, preplay scores are recorded on the score sheet.
------------

So couple of key points from that:

Max of 12 preplay scores can be used in a season, so that would mean 3 complete weekly events in one season.

Preplays need to be witnessed by another participant, so you are not playing a single-player game at all but at least a 2-player game. Cheating would require collusion between the two players. Really, there is only so much you can do if someone is that motivated to cheat. This is the one we've been perhaps too lax on, though I know a bunch of people have done it the correct way anyway (with at least 2 players).

As far as the machines themselves playing differently across time, this is also a valid concern but it is difficult to account for realistically. I think the best we can do is enforce the 12 preplay score limit so that any potential advantages provided via the freeplay system are limited by how often you can use it.

I agree, I think this must be a sw bug.

12 pts is higher than 9 pts, even using my old math.

Will take this offline, I have no idea what, if anything, can be done about it now that we've already played meet 6.

Okay, sorry guys, I was wrong. What you are seeing here is the effect that the "Effective Points" have on the groupings (but not the overall rankings). From the http://www.fspazone.org/rules/current-fspa.html rules...

"5.2 Effective Points

To prevent players from being misgrouped due to game forfeits, any player who forfeits games of a match will receive two (2) effective points for each game forfeited. Players with valid scores for a game will receive effective points equal to their actual league point count for that game. Effective points are used solely for determining grouping."

So what you are seeing is that any forfeited game awards 2 Effective Points, which is used when determining your play group movements, but not your overall rankings or division placements, etc. The idea, I believe, is to try to keep players playing against players of their own skill level as best as possible, and not "reward" them by moving them down to a potentially easier play group for the next meet because they forfeited. So even though a person may be awarded 2 Effective Points per missed game and move up a play grouping and you move down even though you beat them in actual points, consider it a reward for you and a punishment for them, since you will play in what should be an easier match next meet and they will play in a harder one, all the while your actual ranking is tracked only using the real points.

I know this is confusing, and I don't see anywhere where the sw shows the Effective Points, which is not transparent. I was a little put out by this myself last season until it was explained to me. Hopefully it makes more sense now.?

I think so. I can't really speak for the original justification for some of these rules, we only really have the rule guide's own explanations to go on.

So, my understanding is:

- Effective Points are used to determine player groupings for meets.
- Standings depend on total league points earned (effective points are not included in this).
- Average ladder rank is used to assign players to divisions.

This is not true. He may move up to play in a harder group next meet, but the effective pts don't count in the standings, so he's not getting closer to the playoffs.

Well, I didn't invent it and cannot defend it in any great detail. It seems like it's maybe a bit more complicated than it needs to be IMHO, but it basically get's the job done. If you look at the overall rankings vs. the Avg. Outscored %'s for each person they seem to be on the mark.

Thanks Joe! I really appreciate you responding to help clarify.

We have not been strictly following all of the rules as prescribed this season as we made a conscious decision to try to keep things a bit more manageable and casual as we are a young league (only our second year), and have grown from approx. 30 members to 50 this year.

With so many new players we wanted to make sure that folks were able to come up to speed gradually on the rules, etc. So we took certain steps like allowing players to submit makeup games after a meet that they missed for the first part of the season, then more recently changed that to enforce the pre-play rules more strictly.

We have also been using a pre-draw system for the games to be played by each group, instead of having the players pick the games themselves, to try to keep delays down with 50 players and 8 machines to play on.

Certainly this more relaxed approach has its disadvantages as shown by some of the frustrations being expressed in this thread, but I think it has been successful in keeping things accessible and mostly, and most importantly, fun for the majority.

Having said that, I do think that a more strict enforcement of the rules as stated is probably worth implementing for next season. If necessary we could even consider adding a Novice league in the future to help ramp up new players while keeping things on the straight and narrow for the regulars. These are ideas that we will have to explore and discuss with the group.

There were during the summer but not anymore. There are 8 beautiful working games at the Atlantic Trap & Gill on Heritage Dr. and McLeod Trail SW.

Free play nights are every other Wednesday. The next one is this coming Wednesday, January 18th.

Come on out and bring some friends!

Awesome Joe! I'm sure we'll take you up on that offer.

Would love to read the director's commentary as well I think that would be very interesting. Doesn't need to be anything fancy just some point form notes on background for the various rules.

Yep! Come on down for 6pm+, $10 gets you pinball all night.

Don’t thank me yet... wait until TNA takes a few rounds out of you!

At least TNA let's you earn back tilt warnings via the Mystery shot.

Sheesh Tony wins one (for a change) and out comes the trash-talkin' eh??

You should come down to the tournament night on Wed. Tony, we'll separate the "playa's" from the players... lol.

I donno. I think Tony might have peaked already judging by last night's games...

Plus, he doesn't rage tilt enough!

Nice!

...or did Scott leave the glass off again?

Ohhh, I get it. That's your home game. Looks like the GI is out.

In fact, I’m planning to move from near the bottom of B div to the near the very top tonight! It’s going to be spectacular!

...the pinball wasn't spectacular (on my end), but at least the cake was delicious.

There's always next year! Oh wait - it IS next year.

Here's a pic of the sweet lineup at Century Casino so far.

IMG_6920 (resized).JPG

4 more games coming this week for 16 in total.

These games are all shiny and clean and play incredibly well. Also, unlike some other popular venues in town, we value the ability to experience the games as fully as possible so the game's sound volumes are loud and clear, without loud distracting background music to drown them out.

No shots intended Chance.

Maybe you should take a deep breath and read what I actually said. It's no secret that the barcades consider loud music a feature, not a bug. The only drama here is being created by you.

But thanks for the posting advice AND the heart-felt congratulations on the new venue ("celebrating the diverse amount...")... ...

See you at league sometime, and where's my bloody IJ idol?!