Magnolia, DE
All,
2018 is winding down and I wanted to take a moment to recap our awesome year and to make everyone aware of our big plans for 2019!
I’ll start with our outlook on 2019 and what First State Flippers has in the works for Delaware pinball!
* - A Fall/Winter Pinball Show in the Wilmington area. Could be December 2019 or January 2020!
* - At least one more Critical Hit tournament. Last one was a huge success!
* - A 24 hour Battle is coming to Delaware!
* - Another “Tour Championship” circuit with at least 6 events in the circuit
* - A Spring pinball tournament held at the World Famous Starboard restaurant in Dewey Beach, DE. (Location does NOT have pins, everything will be transported to the location from local collectors) http://thestarboard.com
Now for a full recap of what 2018 looked like for Delaware Pinball and First State Flippers! Just an FYI, competitive pinball did NOT exist in Delaware 13 months ago, nor do we have any locations to host tournaments. All tournaments are held at 3 different private residences. In 2017 I became a TD for Delaware with zero experience in tournaments. We had our first event on 9/23/17 and a second event on 12/16/17 and this lead to Delaware joining the IFPA NACS and crowning our first ever State Champion, Rob DeStasio (who lives in NJ!)
* - Hosted a circuit championship that consisted of (6) group match play tournaments with a 7th event being the actual year end tour championship(happening on 12/1)
* - We had a total of 268 players play in our 6 main events. That’s an average of 45 players per event!
* - Of the 6 events, we had 23 new players play in their first ever IFPA event!
* - We do 7 rounds of qualifying with a 30 minute break before finals.
* - All events start exactly at 1pm, no delays ever
* - All events are fully completed by 8:30pm(bearing unforeseen circumstances)
* - Our format consists of the Top 8 going to the A Division for a modified PAPA Finals, Places 9-16 going to the B Division for a modified PAPA Finals, and the ENTIRE rest of the field going to C Division finals which is a 2-strike format.
* - This format guarantees every player a minimum of 9 games!
* - This format also guarantees every player advances to a “finals” and every player has a chance to win money and a trophy!
* - Payouts and trophies go to 1st through 5th in “A”, 1st and 2nd in “B”, and 1st and 2nd in “C”
* - First place in “A” averaged $375!
* - First place in “B” averaged $140!
* - First place in “C” averaged $60!
* - Each event takes $4 from the $35 entry fee to put towards our year end circuit Tour Championship final. We have over $1600 to give out for the circuit final with 1st place taking home an estimated $800!
* - We also sell 50/50 tickets at every event. 50% goes to the winner, the remaining 50% is put in a holding account and it will be given to the winner of the Delaware State Championship (NACS). We have raised almost $500 for the winner to help offset airfare, lodging, etc! Our drawings have averaged $160 for each event!
* - Lastly, the feedback from the Mid-Atlantic players and TD’s has been awesome and humbling. I have had 4 different TD’s reach out to me asking me to come run their tournaments, two of them I committed to and ran, and the other 2 are still in the planning stages.
I’ve had tremendous help and support from the pinball community while launching the First State Flippers. I’m going to throw out a few names who have really helped me the most and I greatly appreciate everything they have done:
Corey Hulse
Kevin Stone
Josh Sharpe
Mike Veith
Joe Fox
WOMP Marianne Pangia
That’s all for now! Looking forward to 2019 and and the opportunity to help grow competitive pinball even more!!!
-Chad Hastings
First State Flippers
https://www.facebook.com/1ststateflippers/
