He left voluntarily, in protest of 2018 changes.

The $1 was too much. Did you know it was "only" 1 dollar?

gained a lot of my respect in doing so!

For the record, his objection is that the $1 fee applies to charity tournaments as well.

The IFPA argument is that if having the IFPA endorsement will attract you more players, and as such earn more money for the charity, then it's worth it to pay it as an operating cost of the tournament. If IFPA endorsement WON'T attract more players -- then don't use the endorsement and have your charity tournament as is. No Fee.

It's 2017, so everyone is required to protest something.

Not sure whether I should agree with you or protest....

Man ! What a nice location you created there, whish i was closer
Great Yopp!

I thought it was because a 13 year old bet him.

He left soon after the decision was announced IIRC, so it happened soon after April 1st, 2017.

I may have asked this before, but could you share the set up you are using for this?

Would love to get a list of parts, things you have learned, set up instructions, etc...

I am pretty non-tech when it comes to this sort of thing but woudl love to set at least a few up at one of our locations.

are those security cameras? looks like a plexi glass box above the machine.

I thought of doing something like that at a location, but The thought of the machines getting pushed and the camera view getting moved over and over kinda halted that idea. Guess I never thought of making it part of the machine, like tying into the back to leg bolts or something.

Another proud operator of SF2 pinball!

thanks!

really looking forward to your list of equipment and setup details!

Appreciate you taking the time to put it together

What’s the big deal about a $1? What’s the actual rule, per game? Per entry? Per tournament?

The big deal is Wisconsin appearently

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/are-you-in-favor-of-the-ifpa-changes-for-2018-poll

Yeah. It caused such an outrage that they decided to make a whole new ranking and sanctioning body and system in Wisconsin.

And then they didn’t bother cause turns out it’s hard.

Looks like you're still in the IFPA system though?

yup, no fee through 2017

I will take all the free tracking I can get, lol.

I will be running my last sanctioned event on Dec 31st 2017, unless the IFPA waives all fees for charity tournaments.

In case you did not realize, Bowen was a top 10 player. By suppressing himself it sends a nice point and a big middle finger to the IFPA when they all know that Bowen has thrown off the whole system for everyone below the top 10. it was a nice way to make his point and then peace out.

Everyone will see how successful/ or not implementing a fee will be after next year. Josh said this is an experiment, if it doesn't work it will be changed. It might make the tournament director's job a bit more of a logistical nightmare, but only time will tell.

Yeah, everybody is really pissed that they rose up 1 in the rankings!

If only ten more top guys would suppress I’d be top 25!

I bought 12 of those identical looking cams when I installed a security system on one job, they were analog 700tvl. pretty cheap, like 30 bucks maybe.
guessing they probably sell those in 1080 or higher now though.

anywoo thanks for the idea.

Bowen “suppressed” himself from Pinside too IIRC

Weird

Josh has also said that he doesn't care if the overall number of people registered with ifpa falls. So there is no way to measure the success of this "expirement".

I've pegged my personal benchmark for IFPA "success" at 12,600 active players for 2018. I would be really happy if we hit that number.

what defines an 'active' player?
how many active players in 2017, 2016, 2015?

There is a very easy way to define success. Do Josh and his top ranked friend make more money off the masses? Yes, then it's a success.

What was the bet?

That is a 100% yes. There will be more money filtering from the masses to the National prize pool. That is really the whole point of the change and it appears lots of states will be donating lots of money to that pool.

The money to run these types of organizations has to come from somewhere....it’s not like ESPN, Coke and Pepsi are lining up to throw millions of $$ at pinball leagues.

But he is not even using the money to run the organization, servers, IFPA board . . .

Correct me if I am wrong, but the money goes back to the prize pools for the State Championships.

In case you missed it, none of the funds being funneled in are for administration fees. They are to build the prize pool in an attempt to get on a bigger national stage (which would then possible bring in sponsorship money and payoffs in the longer term)

75% to states top players
25% to nationals event

In many states that equates to a $30-50 buyin for the top player (assuming they play in that many events) that will take home a couple thousand dollar prize pool (for winning SCS)

People get too caught up in what goes where, who is getting what. In the end, it should boil down to this:

Does the IFPA provide a value to your league or event? If so, participate in the new system, and if it doesn't, then don't.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. The IFPA is delivering great value to you. You would be hit hard if you suddenly dropped the sanctioning.

If anything, if there is a drop in participation by some events because they don't want to pay the dollar, the ones that still offer it will in turn see a bump in their participation as people look for more WPPRs elsewhere.

you have to keep in mind that many players and TDs put a lot of effort into helping build the IFPA and then they changed the goal posts for their own benefit.
That is what it really boils down to for the people I have spoken to that are against this change. To negate the effort they have put in and boil it down to something less is iggnorant at best. That and the charging of $1 to the base of the pyramid just to funnel it up to the top 1% does not work for many TDs or players.

I suggest thinking about the reality of how the IFPA has grown to the level it currently has and that is largely on the shoulders and efforts of the TDs over the past few years.

Nothing like being part of a team effort just to have the people at the top of the organization change the rules and take advantage of your past efforts with no thanks and for planned self gain.

The scene will evolve over time and a few months in is not enough data for him to tell the net gain or loss. You also need to factor in his effort and time. Adding 10 people means an additional $50 in coin drop. Factor in split, upkeep, time, taxes, fees, etc and you may have brought in an additional $20. Guess what... you now owe the IFPA $20 for the 20 people that played in your event.

I predict in WI the # of sanctioned events drop by ~50% for next year. The 2 largest events (5 total competitions) wont be IFPA anymore. 1 of the 3 regions has said they wont be IFPA. I am sure some events will pop up that are new, but then again WI is unique I suppose since people dont charge a player fee already and we are also saturated with events per capita.

So people are really upset about a $1 increase that goes 100% back to the state and national winners? Is it $1 per player per tourney?

If that's all it is people need to spend a little more time focusing on real problems in the world. Who really freaking cares, it's $1. If you can't afford that you couldn't afford to get to the tourney to begin with. Don't tell me its the principle of the matter either. I'm sick of everyone and their principles on everything.

Its the principle of the matter

Yes would love to see the setups for this as well, cameras and screens look great.

Just queuing this up for when 2019 rolls around...

I don’t think so.

All I can say is Bowen is a fantastic guy and looked after me and my wife at pinburgh this year and I’ve learned a huge amount from his tutorials both at pinburgh and online - he does a lot for Pinball.

I have three problems with the $1 implementation.

1. I spend time organizing, promoting and running the tournaments. The IFPA is going to waste my time submitting the $1 after each tournament. Now I have to give them my credit card each time, subtract that from the prize fund and pay myself back. You might say that only takes 10 minutes, but that's time I could be doing something else, like putting up a Facebook post, or updating the event listing on our league website.

2. They won't give a pass to charity tournaments. Nothing like digging your hand into the pocket of people trying to raise money to support a local charity.

3. Although the $1 cash grab is "supposed" to grow the sport of pinball, I'm just not understanding how that's going to happen. The money is going into the pockets of the top players. The theory is that larger prize pools will generate more interest from sponsors, which leads to bigger prize pools (for their pockets) and the ultimate growth of pinball.

My issue is that I've never hear of anyone saying "Wow, the top prize for the Master's Golf Tournament is $1.9 million. I'm going to go join a golf league."

If they would have said, we'll be using the $1 to promote local tournaments in your area. Or the $1 will be used for targeted Facebook advertising. That would be something I could get behind. Telling me that I need to collect, submit and account for $1 / person / event so they can stuff it in their pockets, isn't doing it for me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying their shouldn't be some type of compensation for their time and effort. But then again, I pay back 100% of the take for all of my events and they have sponsors.

Oh wow, really. I'm sick of your fuckin posts.

Honestly, I wish Josh would have instituted a $5 fee a year to be an IFPA registered player, then funneled the funds to the National and State/Provincial pools, no one would have been the wiser and I wouldn’t have to read people complaining about giving up a dollar for each tournment they play and then by god that money only goes to the top 16 players in the state or the 40 or so state qualifiers. What an elitist system. Gimme a break... No one is making money on this deal if anything it help pay for a little bit of the expense to go and have a National Championship to try to increase pinball participation and awareness. Some people are just so short sighted.

Put me on ignore then and you don't have to see them.

I get your complaints as someone that is running the events. If it takes 10 minutes that is too long. They need to make it much easier then that for the people doing all of the hard work.

I suggested this back when this started. He shot it down because he said it would be too much work for him and he wanted the TDs to deal with it.

That really pissed me off.

Everyone that wants points goes to the IFPA website and pays $5. When I submit the results, it matches up the payment status of the player. If they paid they get points, if they don't, the system ignores their scores and moves on to the next player.

Then all I need to do is direct the players to the IFPA website and viola' it's done. I can spend my time growing my league and not their bottom line.

yup, would have been simple, had a better percpetion, and the majority of active players would ahve happily paid it. If he was smart he would have kept half the money and put it towards administrative fees and developed the site to provide bonus add-ons for membership (extra $5 gets you some cool profile features; extra $10 gets you a commerative coin; extra $20 bucks gets you and IFPA shirt)

Could have been so much easier and also done so much better.

Putitng the extra hassle, time suck, and work on the TDs was a shitty attitude.