So...the "tournament" at Hop C this weekend has gotten some attention from people. I don't know who, but the bar owners keep telling me that people have a "lot of questions" about how it is going to work. That said, I've researched some info around pinball tournaments and settled on using this system called Match Play which looks to offer some nice features.
That said, I need some help from anyone in the local pin community who knows how to run these things. I'm looking at a "Best Game" format which requires for me to set each of the four machines as an "arena". Before even opening registration, I need to define how many plays each player gets on each "arena" which is where I'm getting stuck. If I assume the "tournament" runs for like two hours, I would imagine I could only support a few plays on each machine.
My math looks like this: Average 3 ball game = 5 minutes. ~12 single player games per hour per machine. Obviously I'll run into timing issues if someone is up on one machine and still playing another. Based on my logic, if I wanted to allow people 2 attempts per game in roughly 2 hours, I could only support 12 players?
I would imagine we won't have a ton of people, but I need to know if these numbers seem sound. Is two plays per game logical? The games will be on free play most of the night, I just need to put some parameters around the tournament so that it is fair and fun.
Also, can I play in my own tournament? I've never played in a tournament before .
Any help would be appreciated!