This is kind of how I feel about Niantic, who runs Ingress and Pokemon go. Sure, they had a healthy data set of mined information from Google to start Ingress, but the real meat of locations was all submitted by players. 80+% of portals, and growing, were player submissions which included: GPS location data, a picture, a name, and a description. Ingress flourished on the back of the playerbase, and then all of a sudden Pokemon Go is announced.

Hm....you ever wonder where all those gyms and pokestops came from? Ingress data. 95% of the work of creating Pokemon Go was already done before Pokemon Go was ever a twinkle in someone's eye. No doubt their upcoming Harry Potter game will leverage the exact same data set, which again...is GROWING.... because players are now doing all portal submission reviews for Ingress. Niantic doesn't even handle that anymore..it's been outsourced to unpaid free workers.

Guess how much Ingress I play, due largely to all of this? Not much. I could've hit max level (16...I've been 15 for like...3 years?) a long time ago, but any motivation to play and fuel someone else's profit fire with no compensation whatsoever..that's gone. And that's how I see the fees. In TX, you can almost assure that bigger prize pool is going to one of the following: Colin MacAlpine, Robert Byers, Preston Moncla, Garrett Hays being the most likely candidates. Josh Henderson, obviously, if he ever gets to enough TX tournaments to make state. I'd even give myself a very small off-chance of snagging it. I just don't at all believe in this concept. It's not JUST Wisconsin. Upper middle class white guys *love* the Robin Hood concept being presented here. People that compete because they find competition to be fun, or a challenge, and don't care so much about the money...they're just getting bent over to benefit the top players. Said it before: if IFPA needed to implement a fee to make the system worth the time and effort to maintain, that would've been fine. Wouldn't even care if some of that money was going DIRECTLY into Josh Sharpe's pockets. At least then it wouldn't be subsidizing the purchase of a NIB game by guys that could've afforded to travel to Nationals anyways.

I fail to see the 'benefit' to the other 558 people that participated in TX tournaments so far this year...

It's so frustrating to see scrubs complaining about "the Robin Hood effect."

If you aren't good at pinball, stop playing in sanctioned tournaments. There's PLENTY of them. Start a bar league. Set up charity tournaments. Run your own contests. If you don't want to pay a fee and still want to see how you do against the pros, suppress yourself.

For people who think they are good at pinball, or think they can get better by playing pros, the IFPA offers a valuable service. Raising the stakes is the right direction. For people who think they suck, and are gonna whine about how their money is going to go to people who always beat them, you should probably tap out and not try to compete at this level.

spot on Frax.

I personally wont be running any more IFPA sanctioned events unless they make future changes. That alone takes away 30% of the events in WI from this year. It really is the principle of it for me.

I am also looking forward to running some fun non-sanctioned events which wont have to deal with the constraints of the IFPA system.

LOL. Coming from the same guy that balked at the idea that teh SCS entry fee be $100 bucks per person. Heaven forbin the top 16 just pay the single $100 fee to play in the 'premier' event of the year in each state... too damn funny

Yeah, because you have any right to call me a scrub. Grow the f--k up, Levi.

What are you talking about?

Please get back to work on your new Wisconsin ranking system and refrain from telling hurtful falsehoods!

You have a scrub attitude. You feel that any $1 fee serves ZERO purpose except to put money in the pockets of people who aren't you. You don't believe you have any chance to compete on a high level.

If you really feel that way, you shouldn't be playing in these events or paying your fee.

This is why Josh suggested taking the 'fee' for IFPA out of the winners pockets, leaving whatever entry fee there was originally alone. Then the ones 'paying' for it are the ones who might get it back in the end. The whole 'it's a tax on the lesser players' only occurs if you let it.

I don't think any serious principle is being violated here. If you oppose the charge for charity tournaments, just host these as no-WPPR events. If the WPPRs are not worth $1 per player (too much work, legal concerns, whatever), host only no-WPPR events. If the WPPRs are worth $1 per player, pay the buck. You have multiple reasonable options. It is the IFPA's prerogative to decide what is best for the organization.

I am glad that the events I usually attend in CO will be paying the buck. I support the IFPA, and I think this is a reasonable experiment. Bowen is a great guy, but this is a lame "protest", imho.

........

I'm not going to be paying the fee, as I said when this all blew up before. Go check the thread. I still plan to go to major tournaments because it's FUN, likely doing more volunteering for helping than playing, though. I'm not playing in the TPF tournament, for example. That automatically guarantees I can't make SCS next year. Chasing IFPA points has always been for suckers, and I've been a sucker for 6 years, but I know when to bow out. We have local leagues here now that can survive without IFPA. Hell, half the people or more showing up to weekend league in D/FW don't give a dead baby's dick about what their ranking is or the SCS.

This works for leagues and tournaments that already had a prize pool and entry fees, yes. Totally agree there. Not so much with 'free' leagues and tourmanents, or charity tournaments. I know for a fact that the largest charity tournament that gets run annually in North Texas is basically subsidized out of the pocket of the TD, for a total overall loss financially to him. Because the charity is what matters. Not the e-peen points.

Here we go with the "it's only $1!!!" argument

It's not just a dollar. It's one dollar per player per event. It adds up.

Anyway it's not just the money. It is a logistical nightmare for a lot of TDs. We play in bi weekly events that are $5 entry and it all goes to 1st - 4th place winners. Now we will have to charge $6 instead of $5 which means you have to have a shit load of change for the 30 or so people that want to hand me a $10 bill. Or we take it out of the prize pool and the payouts get complicated when your having to give $X and change. It's going to get weird.

State prizes going from $100-$1000 will never draw in more people that are new to pinball.

People will leave the ifpa, the numbers will fall from what they are in 2017, but there will be more money and Josh will claim this was all a huge success.

Well touche then.

NOT a scrub! And, the $1 fee has helped you realize that you really aren't all into the IFPA nonsense, which is a big plus for you.

This is a legit point, but I don't believe the IFPA has ever made "growing pinball" it's mission - that's more PAPA (the Professional AND AMATEUR Pinball Association). Fewer players on the rolls, but a higher percentage of "serious" players, could be considered a success. For instance, the PGA would grow by leaps and bounds if anybody with a Nine Iron could be a "pro golfer," but it wouldn't necessarily improve the product or the competition, and in fact would damage the credibility of the organization.

I completely get the TD side as it creates more work and doesn't sound to be well implemented to make it easy on them.

I do not get the players aspect at all. If you cannot afford $1 more per tourney then you need to be working a second job instead of playing pinball. It doesn't add up like you say. If you play a tourney every freaking week that's only $52 per year. You can save that easily by removing 1 bought cup of coffee per week or by removing pretty much anything from a very tight budget. If you can afford to live then you can afford this.

As a tournament director in a new city where we are the first monthly tournament, I opted to run a free tournament to generate interest. In this case, I don't have the option to take the fee out of the prize pool. I get what you are saying but it doesn't apply in all scenarios.

Nope.
I used to run marathons. I finished with the 4 hour finishers. That did not diminish the winners who were technically running the same race as me......

Who opened up this can of worms again?

I think it's funny the other active thread today is how much people pay for a game of pinball. Looks like it's just a dollar.

I'm going to try to find an overall sponsor for ~$300 for the year. In exchange, at every event there will be a sign of some sort saying, "Your IFPA fee paid for by..." If I can't find a sponsor, each player will be asked for the money. I run nothing but free events too, for the same reason. Even a $5 entry was too much for the baby seals who were clubbed before they were hooked. In a small/young market, entry fees are a huge turnoff to new players because they see is as money gone with no chance of winning it back.

I think a lot of people miss the point and inject something like "I'm not paying a $1". Or "principles and pinball never existed at all".

Regarding this:

Bowen Kerins now a "Suppressed Player" on IFPA?
--->
I was not shocked to see such a thing happen. Bowen has always kind of done his own thing to try and support pinball. He is also really good at it (the support of the game). I commend him for sticking to his principals and opting out.

I participate in a local league that I helped organize as well as quite a few tournaments (the majority of those are free).

It's fun to compete for money every once in a while but I do enjoy competitive pinball, regardless of what's at stake.

IFPA points are a fun way to compare a bunch of results. It's a history of competitive play that lives and changes.

If a completely free league or tournament can't continue to take advantage of it's resources for free, so be it.

If it takes $1 to keep the payouts lucrative for the state or regional EVENTS THAT COST MONEY, I do not have any problem with paying $1 that is not returned in the prize pool.

However, it just looks bad to ask for $1 from each player if your event is 100% free OR worse, if it's for a charitable organization.

I totally see where people would have issue with these things and respect those choices.

If i run a charity event for $20 an entry and have 30 participants minus the ifpa fee that is $570 for the charity.

Some participants don’t care about the charity and if i ran it without it being ifpa sanctioned and had 20 participants that would be $400 for the charity.

This is where the ifpa adds value.

Josh has repeatedly said that they’ll be keeping a close eye on how these changes unfold and has been as transparent as possible. If these changes affect competitive pinball negatively then changes will be made in 2019.

If this is true, someone will step up and do it. Nature abhors a vacuum.

How does someone "look after" you @ a pinball event?

It wasn't a Russian prison. It was Pinburg.

Was Pinburg free?

Cause IFPA aint free & thats the problem right?

IIRC he (Bowen) was upset much of the convo on Pinside was not family friendly so he announced he would no longer participate here.

Later on he was upset about $1 tourney costs & announced he would no longer participate there.

My memory is terrible so perhaps I'm wrong?

Have you been to a charity dinner? The butcher, baker, produce purveyor, chefs, wait staff, bus boys & dishwashers are getting paid. Charities gladly pay those bills because people want something when they show up to donate. Sometimes you gotta spend money to raise money. People aren't perfectly altruistic. Or maybe I'm wrong and charity tourney attendance won't drop if WPPRs aren't awarded.

Sounds like you understand perfectly.

It's working for Big Buck Hunter, which is more analogous to pinball than golf.

When I've held "charity" tournaments at my place, IFPA points always brought more players. A lot more.

As previously mentioned, the $5 per player fee doesn't get us to numbers that we feel are significant for this initiative.

Currently there's about 2500 players in the US/Canada that have a "registered" IFPA account. Registering your IFPA account is currently free, and makes you eligible to participate in the SCS/PCS/Nationals/Worlds/Rewards Program/etc.

If we assume that we have a 100% success rate for these 2500 players that will now pay for this service, we're talking about $12,500.

This would push $3125 to the Nationals prize pool, and leave $9375 to be split among the 50 States/Provinces (roughly ~$200 each per pool).

Enacting this at the tournament level gives us the opportunity to hit a much higher level to be given back to the State/Province pools. Previously we paid out 3 winners were State. With the new plan we can now pay out 16 players per State (or in some cases 24 players for the "Super States" - field expansion is part of the final rules for the 2018 season).

As for the payment module, we understand it's an extra step for TD's and we have attempted to make the process as seemless as possible. Here's a peek at the payment page as it sits right now:

Untitled (resized).jpg

$5 per account = $12,500 , how does this compare to the $1 per player per event ? $50k ?

I'm getting Facebook hatemail over this.

People sure hate the word "scrub."

Hangin' out the passenger side of his best friend's ride.

..trying to holla at me

Then make it a $20 fee if these are the numbers you need to get to. Much easier for a player to directly register each year, create a automatic backend that show that player as registered and from when they register their points count towards IFPA, all other players are locked down and they cannot receive their IFPA points until they pay to register and once they do register they get all of their historical results thou at 0 points awarded for them if they were not registered at the time.

1Joe Blow 10.3
2 Mike Ya 8.3
3 Debbie Blah 0.0
4. Sam Smith 5.2
Etc...

Not sure why it gets so complicated. The event costs $x (in your case you mention $5). Winners receive funds from the prize pool, less IFPA sactions, plus WPPRs. Those WPPRs help them towards state and nationals. The losers are still out $5, but had a few hours of pinball, and they also get some WPPRs for participating. Didn't cost them anything. Event was still $5.

It's tough to compare because the only numbers to use are based on the current "free" system. Based on 2016 numbers the total funds raised would have been right around $92,000. I haven't run the numbers for 2017, but realize that once we go away from "free" that there will be some shrinkage in the funds generated based on events now running without IFPA sanction, along with TD's optimizing their submissions to be as economical/WPPR friendly as possible.

There is a Google Group for all the IFPA State Representatives. Will was added to the group as the TN Rep.

We prefer not to add "All TD's" to this group, as we rely on the State Reps to then communicate what's going on with their local TD's. So best would be for you to talk with Will to stay in the loop on any higher level IFPA discussions, unless you guys want to split the TN Rep duties (which is perfectly fine as well).

You can absolutely do this option if you want. You are correct that you can't have your cake and eat it too, so you would only submit the results based on those that put money in the fishbowl. The WPPR points calculated would be based strictly on the names from that list.

Seriously? That’s incredibly lame.

Isn't it?

There's people who are banned from Pinside and profess to loathe it yet spend every waking moment studying it and letting posts here continually piss them off. Strange hobby.

How many of those 2500 people would pay $20 . . . and at some point as the season gets into the second half what's the chance of convincing a player to pay their $20 for that current season?

With the current rate of registered accounts, you would then have results that are 91% 'empty' with 0 points assigned to them. The idea of pulling up the Pinburgh results of 800 players and seeing that 728 of those names listed as "0.0" doesn't seem like a positive thing to me with respect to the optics of people checking out results on our site.

We're also 5 weeks from launch and are putting the finishing touches on the current implementation plan. The idea of starting a NEW plan now, scrapping all the work we've already done to get this process started just isn't going to happen (even if the greatest idea ever was pitched RIGHT NOW).

I don't remember this as an option from the previous discussion. Do you get the points for the position in which you finished overall, or after netting out the non-IFPA players.

If it's the latter, then it seems like a problem. I could finish 5th and get 1st place points if I paid my $1.

This has always been an option at the TD level.

A TD is welcome to offer IFPA sanctioning as a player opt-in for their events.

Think of it as a "Sidepot" so to speak. If 40 players show up, and 11 players choose to "opt-in" for IFPA sanctioning, that TD will submit the results of those 11 players from 1st place through 11th place based on where they finished among just that "Sidepot" group of players.

You could absolutely finish 5th in the 40 player tournament, but be the highest finisher of those 11 players that opted-it. You would listed as the 1st place finisher of the event for IFPA submission purposes, but the value of the event played would be that of an "11 player event", not a "40 player event".

But you would notice in most coverage of Events you might hear what people are competing for (prize pool wise). You will also find a correlation between people seeing a big prize pool and then going 'wow, must be a big deal'

If you see a story about 10 guys getting together and playing for who pays for the next round... or see a story about 60 people getting together and competing for 50k in prizes.. people are going to think the latter is far more serious and significant than the former.

I know... makes you wonder who they pay out in their local events... does everyone share the prize pool equally?

It’s a small price to pay...to see how the system works. Would it kill anyone to try it for a year and see what happens? How it impacts TD’s? How it impacts tournament attendance? How it impacts IFPA revenues and tournament payouts? And finally, how it impacts the taste in everyone’s mouth after a year of trying it?

The IFPA (and those Sharpe boys, that Kevin Kulek beat down back in the day!) are smart people that care about pinball. They’ll see how it goes and take reasonable feedback into consideration when deciding how to move forwad. So jeez, principles acknowledged, can’t people see how it goes for a year and then be the judge?

I’ve heard good arguments from both sides, but for a buck a tourney I’d give it a shot for a year. I think the IFPA deserves that. YMMV.

That had me LOL

Then he should have no problem running it as a non-IFPA event.

Its hysterical now how people think IFPA is omnipresent or something now...

Quick not public but soon to be public update. Other rules changes for the 2018 SCS season:

1) Best 20 results within a state will count for each player (similar to the way the World Rankings are calculated).

2) “Super States” expansion of the qualifying field will be in play. Any States that have a minimum of 400 unique players and 100 events held within that state during the calendar year will be eligible for that expanded 24 player final.

I kind of love that this is on the Bowen is suppressed thread

I figured you’d get it, and not be all “WTF?”. LOL too.

The more expensive an OPT-IN system is.. the far less attach rate you are going to get. The $1/event fee scales out horizontal and while people can opt-out, its far more a hassle than blindly opt'ing in with your $1.

In your model... only the people who really felt they had a shot at winning would pay in..

Money and orginization issues aside, which I dont know enough about ..does this mean Bowen wont be doing any more tutorials on new and recent games ?

He is the best at that, explaining game rules in a calm understandable fashion

Bowen's tutorials have nothing to do with the IFPA and in fact he's continued doing them while under the dark cloud of self-suppression.

I remember when HBO Real Sports show did a feature on Robert Gagno and his winning the championship. At the end the host, I believe Bryant Gumbel, asked the segment reporter how much the winner took home and then they both chuckled at the amount.

If you think the dollar is bad, try playing in a racquetball league. The last racquetball tournament I played in it was a $45 entry fee plus a $10 one-day membership in the national racquetball organization if you weren't already a member. The lower divisions got trophies for winning while the prize money went to the top four players in the elite group. Plus you had to hang around and score other matches when you weren't playing.

I don’t get it either. I prefer the phrase “a bunch of stiffs” but “scrubs” is good too

What a fascinating discussion here. I’m learning, but I don’t get all the whining and complaining

People seem to get all butthurt over such small BS

If you don’t like it start your own league