Fultondale, AL
Quoted from funtimewithdave:If its not on the calendar for 30 days, its not for IFPA points.
(Topic ID: 115009)
The 'official' launch parties get a pass because like Chris said I don't even get 30 days notice from them.
Any other unofficial launch parties have to follow the 30 day advanced notice rule.
Quoted from ifpapinball:like Chris said I don't even get 30 days notice from them.
Any other unofficial launch parties have to follow the 30 day advanced notice rule.
Thanks for the clarify. Now to find one closer.....
Hey all, Tom V here, Indiana state rep. I am planning for locations for next year and wanted to get some ideas from other state reps while info is still fresh in their mind from this year:
1. How many machines did you use?
2. Just curious if anyone held the event at a private location where the host wasn't in the championship. If so, just curious what incentive the host had to host? (out of the goodness of their heart, maybe?)
3. Did anybody have a location where several participants brought machines? For example, maybe each seed starting with high seed gets the option to bring 1 machine, then go down the seeding list until the desired number of machines is reached. That way everyone has a chance to bring a machine with high seeds getting priority.
1) We had 9 machines in use. Depending on the number or techs on hand and whether people don't mind the tournament going long, you could run a satisfying SCS Final event with 6 or 7 machines. But 8 or 9 or more would seem to be ideal -- not just for variety, but also to be able to keep things going quickly and smooth if a game goes down. Especially, of course, in the first round when 8 games happen at once.
2) Our event was at a private clubhouse (shout out to www.pinballcoop.com here), but all three hosts played in the event.
3) I like this idea a lot. Not sure if it would be feasible here or if anyone would take me up on the offer, but it can't hurt to put it out there. I compensated for my built-in advantage this year by bringing in a bunch of new games at the last minute and not giving myself much time to learn them because I was too busy making sure the room had carpet, insurance, working games, etc. 
Quoted from tsveng:Hey all, Tom V here, Indiana state rep. I am planning for locations for next year and wanted to get some ideas from other state reps while info is still fresh in their mind from this year:
1. How many machines did you use?
2. Just curious if anyone held the event at a private location where the host wasn't in the championship. If so, just curious what incentive the host had to host? (out of the goodness of their heart, maybe?)
3. Did anybody have a location where several participants brought machines? For example, maybe each seed starting with high seed gets the option to bring 1 machine, then go down the seeding list until the desired number of machines is reached. That way everyone has a chance to bring a machine with high seeds getting priority.
We played at a public location where all of the games are also for sale. We had ten games lined up but they sold the Lost World two days before the SCS! So we just went with 9 and it worked out great. 6 Sterns, 1 Early SS, 1 EM, 1 DE.
Quoted from LOTR_breath:We played at a public location where all of the games are also for sale. We had ten games lined up but they sold the Lost World two days before the SCS! So we just went with 9 and it worked out great. 6 Sterns, 1 Early SS, 1 EM, 1 DE.
Were the games set aside for the tournament, or were you sharing space with the public?
We had ours at flippers in outer banks which is a haul for plenty who qualified in N.C. But there is not a better place to have this event at and the owner of flippers is awesome to work with. We had 13 in line up but had to take out demo man but a great thing to have in place is a arsenal of 40 plus pins to choose from for tournament. We had a situation where Metallica le was acting up so we swapped out for his other metallica le in back pinball room. We will probably keep this location because it is such a great place to publicly play and we had a few people play the pins while we were still in tournament mode but it did not distract the players. If someone did pick a game while a non tournament player was playing I would have given them tokens to play again while we are in the scs tournament.
image.jpgIn Ohio we played at a private residence this year. Brian Shepherd was the host and he chose not to participate, as he felt he'd have an unfair advantage on his own machines. He put in a lot of work to get his games and home prepared for the event and it was a top notch experience. 18 games playing beautifully, set up great for competition.
Quoted from stevevt:Were the games set aside for the tournament, or were you sharing space with the public?
Quoted from tsveng:Hey all, Tom V here, Indiana state rep. I am planning for locations for next year and wanted to get some ideas from other state reps while info is still fresh in their mind from this year:
1. How many machines did you use?
2. Just curious if anyone held the event at a private location where the host wasn't in the championship. If so, just curious what incentive the host had to host? (out of the goodness of their heart, maybe?)
3. Did anybody have a location where several participants brought machines? For example, maybe each seed starting with high seed gets the option to bring 1 machine, then go down the seeding list until the desired number of machines is reached. That way everyone has a chance to bring a machine with high seeds getting priority.
The state rep doesn't pinside, so eh...
1. 23 games available - WOZ and NGG were not used due to possible scoring issues.
2. Was held at the Pyramid Scheme which is normally open to the public but was opened early for the tourney.
3. The MI rep specifically prefers locations be used where players can practice ahead of time - don't want any talk of unfair advantages. Even then, I'll fully admit I only got 2nd because of an extremely favorable bracket, and home-bar-advantage.
Quoted from funtimewithdave:If its not on the calendar for 30 days, its not for IFPA points.
Personally, the only launch parties I have been a part of have been high score battles. Now those tournaments are worth much less of what they used to be, if they are kept at just a high score battle. Unless you add more "meaningful games" and even a couple of other machines, it will still not be worth a lot. Then again, "a lot" of points to one player is only "a little" points to another player.
Example here from January 12th
http://www.ifpapinball.com/view_tournament.php?t=8209#results
The 12% TGP would mean either 3 meaningful games, or 2 meaningful games with a 4 hour unlimited qualifying component to get up to 12%
In the case of launch parties they have made exceptions to the 30 day rule in the past. Not sure if that's still the case, but most of the ones I ran had about a 2-week notice.
Quoted from GravitaR:It should be corrected by PAPA time.
Okay? What's that got to do with anything? I was curious if it might have been something that was run into elsewhere.
Link to neat video from scs in nc
https://vimeo.com/119986189#share
We used all available machines at Cactus Jack's minus a few used in a side-tournament and a couple others with issues. Around 40 in all.
We're excited to announce the initial game list for both the IFPA Pin-Masters and 2014-15 US National Pinball Championship.
Nationals will be played on Thursday March 26th, with the IFPA Pin-Masters starting the following day. A reminder that registration for the IFPA Pin-Masters closes March 1st.
Here is the tentative game list. Please note that this list is subject to change, and that at maximum, only 9 games will be used for the IFPA Pin-Masters.
Bank-a-Ball (Gottlieb – 1965)
Cross Town (Gottlieb – 1966)
Old Chicago (Bally – 1976)
Evel Knievel (Bally – 1977)
Rock Star (Gottlieb – 1978)
Firepower (Williams – 1980)
Royal Flush Deluxe (Gottlieb – 1983)
Elvira and the Party Monsters (Bally – 1989)
Indianapolis 500 (Bally – 1995)
Medieval Madness (Williams – 1997)
Tron LE (Stern – 2011)
Quoted from appeac:Rumor of a rumor says there's some exploit, not many know details.
And apparently, those who do, won't publically tell the rest of us, so if we're not extremely vigilant and know the ungodly complex rules of WOZ inside and out, as well as all of our tournament directors, I don't see how WOZ could feasibly be used in any tournament at this point until there is a code update...how the hell am I supposed to know if someone is cheating/exploiting if I have no idea what's causing the huge score jump?
Quoted from Frax:And apparently, those who do, won't publically tell the rest of us, so if we're not extremely vigilant and know the ungodly complex rules of WOZ inside and out, as well as all of our tournament directors, I don't see how WOZ could feasibly be used in any tournament at this point until there is a code update...how the hell am I supposed to know if someone is cheating/exploiting if I have no idea what's causing the huge score jump?
I think you would probably be OK using it in tourney. I think there are only a couple of people that know of it. Unless it is a Major tourney that has a lot of traveling players, I don't think it's an issue. Whatever it is, it is being closely guarded for now.
Quoted from ifpapinball:We're excited to announce the initial game list for both the IFPA Pin-Masters and 2014-15 US National Pinball Championship.
Looks like a fun mix!
For Nationals, what is the policy on waiting for games? I didn't see mention of it in the official rules.
Quoted from sleethering:For Nationals, what is the policy on waiting for games? I didn't see mention of it in the official rules.
Our policy is always 'wait as long as you want'.
We've seen too many issues of players going to the bathroom on purpose when they see that the only available choices are games they don't want to play. We've also seen people intentionally slow playing on the current game, just waiting and watching for the next game they want to play to open up.
We've also seen the reverse where you know someone wants to pick the game you are playing, so you can just stay up there trapping up and intentionally taking your time to make sure that other player has to choose something maybe they don't want to play.
Ultimately that kind of rule instantly favors the faster playing machines because they are naturally bound to be the games that are open for play the most often.
We have no interest in any of those shenanigans, so players can wait to play anything they want.
I like that policy. Especially for a destination event where time isn't of the essence as much as say, Expo on Sunday.
Quoted from sleethering:I like that policy. Especially for a destination event where time isn't of the essence as much as say, Expo on Sunday.
Being someone that has taken one of those unexpected potty breaks when the only game open out of a bank of 9 games is the game you just played . . . that leaves the next game choice entirely to chance for whichever games opens up next.
NO THANKS
Quoted from DNO:I think you would probably be OK using it in tourney. I think there are only a couple of people that know of it. Unless it is a Major tourney that has a lot of traveling players, I don't think it's an issue. Whatever it is, it is being closely guarded for now.
I wanted to know to address the possible use of WOZ in the TPF tournaments.
Also, WOZ may be at Cactus Jack's in the rotation for their PAPA circuit event.
I'm not generally too faithful on relying on these companies to fix things in a timely manner.
Quoted from Frax:I wanted to know to address the possible use of WOZ in the TPF tournaments.
Also, WOZ may be at Cactus Jack's in the rotation for their PAPA circuit event.
I'm not generally too faithful on relying on these companies to fix things in a timely manner.
I think you can count on Keefer to update it -- and JJP to allow the release of the update.
Quoted from fusion301:Do we know any potential first round match-ups or a list of those attending.
Last I checked, Josh said he still had a bunch of "maybes" and probably wouldn't have a definitive list until much closer to the event.
Quoted from Snailman:I think you can count on Keefer to update it -- and JJP to allow the release of the update.
Okay, I don't doubt that, but timing is the question. These tournaments are being planned now. On the off chance the update is NOT available before said events, don't you think it would benefit everyone to know if it's a "Jackbot valid playfield" exploit (i.e. very minor), a "Prime Directive 3" exploit (impactful imbalance, but pretty hard to pull off successfully), or a "Police Force" (Complete multiplayer clusterf...)?
Unless it's just EXTREMELY difficult to pull off (moreso than PD3..), I don't see any reason why it should not be outed short of people in the know wanting to use it to their advantage. If supposedly this code update to resolve it is going to be out in under 2 weeks to accomodate PAPA, that's a pretty bloody short time to exploit it. The fact that nobody will say what the hell it is tells me that there is very little faith in relying on the update to hit before the busy event season of march/april. And given the history of pinball companies and code....why would anyone? It's not a personal attack on Keith or the programmers, it's a simple matter of fact that the priorities they are given by their management are not necessarily in alignment with ours.
3 weeks later
Nationals this Thursday! Matches are scheduled to start at 11am PST
Tentative bracket (still some potential for changes) - http://challonge.com/ifpanationals
Live coverage will be streaming on Twitch - www.twitch.tv/iepinball
Quoted from sleethering:He's not on the current list of attendees, so that might hurt his odds...
Preston Moncla, the TX State Champion, will be there.
I'll contact Josh and let him know.
Marcus
Quoted from Xerico:Preston Moncla, the TX State Champion, will be there.
I'll contact Josh and let him know.
Marcus
Yeah, I was about to say..I was pretty sure the Moncla-n was all gung-ho for him to go! 
Live coverage underway until it's over...
Reply
Wanna join the discussion? Please sign in to reply to this topic.
Hey there! Welcome to Pinside!
Donate to PinsideGreat to see you're enjoying Pinside! Did you know Pinside is able to run without any 3rd-party banners or ads, thanks to the support from our visitors? Please consider a donation to Pinside and get anext to your username to show for it! Or better yet, subscribe to Pinside+!
