I really like the idea of not using modern games in tournaments. Modern pinball competition is more about having insider-information on games/rulesets and tricks and less about true pinball play skills.

Good luck with the show Clay! I wish I was closer so I could visit, but I hope to soon!

No, it's not "just insider knowlege" but people who have access to modern machines are at a significant advantage over those who aren't. A good player can typically step up to any EM game and be good competition, but the more modern games have such in-depth rulesets that it's not always obvious what to do, and this favors people who have more time and resources to learn the nuances of the game's scoring system as opposed to honing their raw pinball/flipper control skills.

In our area, most of our players are not high-end competitors... and they favor classic and EM games because the rulesets are simplier and competition is more straightforward. On modern games, if you know certain tricks and ways to stack things you can have an exponentially higher score and your competitors in some cases, may not have any idea why. That level of competition doesn't work in every area. Some people just want to have fun and don't have time to know the intricate details of today's modern games super deep rulesets.

I don't necessarily expect you to understand with your "PAPA" avatar logo - representing the upper echelon of pinball competitions -- you guys are probably really bored with shallow rulesets, but in areas where I'm at, where I'm trying to get a fledging competitive pinball scene going... a few players who are capable of destroying most everybody else on modern games deflates the scene. Our people have more fun playing SS and EM. The competitions are closer. Each and every time we host modern tournaments, it's more often the same X people who finish. There's a greater chance for more people to win tourneys on older games. If the same people win every time, then nobody wants to come out and compete (excepting the super-high-end competitive environment which is it's own thing).

That being said.. I am hopeful that more modern games are coming out with better score balancing. I really like the way WOZ is going.. it almost plays like an old-style game because the scoring is pretty balanced. But a lot of DMD games aren't like that - they have tricks and ways to grab big points that you have to know too to win in competition if the other player knows 'em.

Actually, at the Texas Pinball Festival one year, the WOZs that JJP brought were exclusively for the tournament. It's been that way pretty consistently at the shows in Texas.. the new games show up in the tournament area and if you want to play them you have to pay to enter the tournament.

Pinball competition is an odd thing... In other "sports" there's some kind of equalization.. like with basketball or tennis, you can acquire the gamepieces and easily play with them and get good. You can go to a community basketball or tennis court - it's not just rich people who can afford them. But with pinball, you have to have access to a machine that has typically been pay-to-play. This ends up favoring those who have access to the most pinball machines, and not surprisingly, those who are highest-ranked and do the best in competition are those with the best access to the equipment: operators, owners of large collections and people who work in the industry. I don't really see that changing. High end pinball competition is always going to favor those who have special access.

I think no matter what tournament, someone will always find some complaint. I've been to some TPFs that were better than others.

Right now I'm probably ranked in the top 500 worldwide, and I'm kinda losing my enthusiasm for competition. I've run a bunch of tournaments and tried dozens of different approaches. I don't think there is any one "right way" to do this - there will always be biases; there will always be things people could raise issue with affecting the fairness of the playing field.

Unfortunately, I don't really see competitive pinball being a truly global sport that will ever have a base of "even-ness" like other sports. Not unless the games become ubiquitous and easily-accessible to everybody, and I don't really see that happening - it's still a retro thing. And as such, it still ultimately favors certain "privileged" people who have access to games. I think one way to counter this to *some* degree is to do more competition on older, simpler games that nullify the advantage some people have with superior access to inventories of games. But ultimately, competitive pinball will probably always be like this, and part of the process to be a high-end player will involve a lot of studying and knowledge of the tons of different games and rulesets out there. It kinda reminds me of Magic: The Gathering.. a great fun competitive game, but with the company putting out so many expansions, modern competition is more about spending a ton of time understanding every new game mechanic, than it is diving into the deeper essence of the game's basic strategy. Some of us are drawn to pinball for the simplicity, and not the complexity.

One of those categories is "having access to equipment." Here in New Orleans, I know nobody in the metro area who has any late-model Sterns other than one person who has ACDC. That's it. If I want to play a Metallica, or a Star Trek, Mustang, Tron, Avengers, Xmen or any recent game, I don't know where to go.. maybe Texas... There are no new games on location in our entire 500,000+ population metro area. Zero.

The bay area is a smorgasbord compared to what we have..

I just wish you all were closer! I'm sure it's going to be an amazing event. I hope to attend one soon.

You guys need to loosen up your panties.. seriously. I wasn't criticizing PAPA. I was just pointing out that not every region in the area can sustain "PAPA-style" competition (in fact, you all turned us down here in New Orleans because we weren't "big enough" for you... we could only host 50+ people at our tournaments and that was beneath the PAPA circuit). And not everybody who wants to play competitive pinball takes it as seriously as you do Bowen.

The fact is, there is a need for more "friendly" competition around the country (especially in areas such as ours where there is no thriving pinball scene and we have to create it from the ground up), involving types of tournaments and games that give EVERY DAY PEOPLE a realistic chance to feel like they can win and do well in a tournament. The people that may eventually end up at large PAPA-style events could be the guys (and girls) who have fun in low-pressure, local tournaments that involve more-basic playing of pinball. This is the point I'm making. As Clay pointed out... it's not a dig at high-level events and a condemnation of deep-ruleset pinball machines in tournaments. It's a question of whether or not just any type of pinball machine or tournament format works in such a way as to introduce NEW PEOPLE TO THE SPORT.

Let me illustrate what I mean with a specific real-world example that happened to us...

We were invited to bring some games to a local sci-fi convention and host a tournament. We brought a Dr. Who and a "Hotdoggin" (which we re-named "space-Hotdoggin'" in jest to make it jive with the sci-fi theme). We were hoping to introduce new people to pinball. The event was IFPA sanctioned, and as such attracted more serious competitors too. And the newbies who wanted to play Dr. Who in the tournament had no chance against the seasoned competitors who knew the ruleset and tricks to score big points. However, the early Bally solid-state game, ended up being an equalizer and one young guy who showed up to play did really well in the tournament, and has come back to compete more. The others who had their asses handed to them probably never played another game since. Had we used all modern games, none of the newbies would have had a chance.

That's the way to do it. But also, I believe there are some games that are more-approachable for less-experienced players. The fact is, modern games are a lot more complicated. To score well on modern games requires more practice and inside knowledge of the game and ruleset -- so if you're looking to attract new people to the hobby, having more simple games is, IMO, better.

It's funny.. I watch those PAPA tournament videos on modern games, and maybe the producers don't realize, but unless you know the ruleset, it's hard to appreciate what the player is doing. The balls move so fast they often outpace the video frame-rate and you basically rely on a commentator to explain to you that the player did something good. Older machines, it's more fun to watch too... you can see there's one drop target left and everybody knows that's what needs to be hit, etc

Of course, many people who have unfettered access to the latest-and-greatest games will undoubtedly disagree. If I was speaking just for myself, I'd admit it's a lot more fun to have tournaments on modern games - but I am also in the position of trying to draw new people to the sport and create events that appeal to everybody, not just experienced, competitive players, and if the same 3 guys win every tournament (even if it's "division A" and the newbies win consolation "division C"), I feel I could do better and have failed in my objective of bringing new people into the hobby and making them feel like they have a chance of competing. Different divisions help. We're also going to introduce random team competition in our events too... but I still feel the most important thing I can do is try to pick types of games that give the largest array of people the greatest chance to progress based on the quintessential elements of pinball that I hold dear, which are raw flipper/ball-control skills with a twist of luck.

Well said Lloyd. The producers of these events have to be able to sustain themselves. Everybody has different business models. If your business is repairing games and you have an amazing personal collection and lots of resources, your business model may be different from another collector, or an operator who needs to use a different means to generate money to cover time and expenses. It's not necessarily "better" as much as it's "different."