Just curious Lotr, which machines were these?

Doing the N.C. State champ. for the past 2 years has been a lot of fun and at same time pull hair out. One aspect was trying to get in touch with qualified players who have not registered a email with ifpa . This held up the process on who was in and who was out. I want to give every possible way to get in touch with them and when you do get in touch with them to see if they are coming or not.

I did have one this year waiting on another state to see if he got in before he emailed me. The only good thing is I put deadline on email to reply back. We had great luck last year in every body who committed came to event. I hope that is case this year.

We have a new venue this year at Flippers in we can have side tournaments and also a true placement because we will have this year a losers bracket to play for position 9-16 then after second round have another round for 5-8 with plenty of pinball machines to pick from .

Good luck to everybody and see a earlier post would like to see Flippers Pinball Tournament a part of PAPA circuit with aurcade

That is great stuff!

Thanks for running your states event! Seriously!

Why didn't you thank traidwatch for running his state tourny? Seriously!

This is my first year attending the SCS. I'm Really excited to participate and the amount of quality tournaments and leagues Florida has to offer has really grown in the past year. I've seen the field improve dramatically as shown by Floridas representatives at Freeplay as over 50 percent were locals. Last year our state representative made quite a run and this year we seen top finishers at Freeplay and Expo. Let's play some pinball

Did not see his post till now...

THANKS to ALL HOSTS and Officials for running your states SCS. Without you guys, none of this would ever happen!

Kentucky has been invaded and taken over by out of state players. Only two Kentuckians in the field. Trent and Lyman the true favorites. Will an upset occur? Will be interesting and fun time.

Kentucky my fav show...even besides the tournies (which are great). djs spinning and mixing music, lots of classic vids, people dressed up in costumes, its awesome.

Hey Todd
You said out of state players...you forgot yourself!! LOL!! you forget that we have lots of classic games which you and Derek excel at, also don't count out the Ohio people, and the KY folks are pretty good too! Also, we have 4 women in the field...so one of us girls might surprise you all!!
I think it is shaping up to be a great time and an all around awesome competition!!

Phoebe

Guys dont forget about Vermont and West Virginia in 2015. Only 10 and 7 people signed up for SCS in those states. Road trip for points in 2015!

I full know what your collection consists of and the fact I haven't been over to your place recently sealed the deal for me. No way was I missing out on a opportunity to visit you and Larry. Bonus is that I get to mingle with some of my Ohio friends that I seldom see and Jungle Jims is just off my path to your place. A WIN WIN WIN.

BTW...Happy birthday ButterflyGirl

One of the West Virginia people is Maya from WI! Go get em girl!

Changes are afoot in VT for 2015:

* More events!
* Bigger events!
* More bigger events!
* A lot more local players!

It should go without saying that I feel bad that we're going to have 6 first-round byes in our tournament in 3 weeks. I'm not anticipating that we'll be adding anybody at the last minute, but we'll see. I'm hoping to get to the point where we're as competitive as, let's say, other mid-tier states, and people are scratching and clawing for VT points and worried about out-of-state players taking all our precious spots.

I guess VT is a bit far, but I was fully expecting at least the possibility of getting some people who qualified in VT for 2014 via their New England Pinball league participation in another state. It didn't happen. Lots of New England players chose states other than their home state; VT just didn't appear to be in the mix. Understandable, given the driving distance.

If you're in New England, upstate NY, or close by in Canada, please keep an eye on VT events on the IFPA calendar for this year. If things go according to plan, the Vermont Pinball Association should be putting on lots of events. Most or all of these will be taking place in the Burlington area, which is around 3.5 hours from Boston and 1.5 hours from Montreal.

As always, feel free to get in touch with me if you're going to be in or passing through the area.

Gosh. I didn't even know this was a 'thing'. I guess now I know why I was getting texts from players asking which state I was going to play in.

Who you calling "mid-tier"?! Good luck with the SCS. As word spreads it will grow. The competition for points in WI really heated up last year after word spread about the SCS. It's a great thing for pinball and most importantly, lots of fun!

I'm happy to report that Quebec has TWO (yes TWO) female players who made the final cut.

http://challonge.com/pcs_quebec

Congrats to the finalists and organizers from each State and Province.
Hopefully all of our numbers continue to grow for next year.

(insert playful comment about how California should be split into two states for the sake of SCS including a joke that will work for both NorCal and SoCal people on how you just want to turn the car around and go home whenever you hit Bakersfield )

Loser gets Johnny Modica in their town

I'm proud that my daughter Sarah made the cut in Michigan at #12!

http://www.ifpapinball.com/rankings/custom_view.php?id=95

This was her first year playing competitive pinball and I think she did very well. We'll see how she does in the SCS.

That is awesome!

Nice to see that your son is right there with you in Florida! Proud parents to be able to pass this on to our kids...

I suspect that if more kids played pinball, there would be a lot fewer of us adults making it to the SCS.

The "Committed to attend" label in this case is used as a place holder. Those people have said they would like to play in the championship, if they are needed. It looks like with 16 attending, those people will not be going

I have 1 for sure and maybe 2 "committed to attend" who have actually committed to show up. That way if there are any no-shows we can still fill the full field of 16 and not have any 1st round byes. I think that is important.

To be fair, the one competitor listed with a home state of NY in the Florida top 16 list spends quite a bit of time down here. In fact, the record shows he has played in 18/24 eligible Florida events. He was not listed in the top 16 in his home state of NY, so playing in Florida makes perfect sense.

He is part of our Florida pinball family as far as I and many of the Florida players are concerned and I don't consider him an "out-of-stater".

Thanks! This year will be interesting for us since he is the reigning state champ

I'd love to earn a SCS trophy to sit next to his, or maybe even he repeats! Either way would be OK with me

In any event, it's a great time for family pinball!

I think that if a player qualifies in their home state they should play in their home state finals (and not pick another state they've qualified in). Instituting that simple rule would allay the shenanigans.

Real number is 9 who live in MO, 7 in KS. 14 out of the 16 live in the Kansas City metropolitan area, one from Lawrence, KS and one from Columbia, MO. I imagine the total travel time of the sixteen will be among the shortest of all state championship events. The KS event is stongly supported by the locals. The location is about one mile from the MO state line and there are no quality locations to play in KCMO, hopefully that will change soon.

Also, we responded as attendees before we were bumped out of the top 16 respondents.

See what you've done Jon.

Due to where the actual SCS finals are held, this is never something we would enforce.

Great example would be the Kansas/Missouri situation.

There is a group from Kansas City, Missouri, where their home state is 'technically' MO.

That player qualifies for both MO and KS through their play in the "Kansas City area" that will cross state lines all the time.

KS final is 10 minutes from his house.

MO final is over in St. Louis, 4 hours from his house.

To say that player HAS to play Missouri because he lives in Missouri isn't fair at all to that player IMO.

Additionally, we have no interest in verifying player addresses, so if this rule was something we tried to implement, a player could simply email us that their current location is "Kansas City, KS" instead of "Kansas City, MO", and they will have avoided this new rule. We don't require 3 months of gas bills or a driver's license proving their actual residence.

But every player claims a home address. They would just need to stick to that. Seems simple enough.

What about the point about travel? I think that's the bigger issue.

And a player that wanted to play in a particular state would simply "game" the rules by changing their address to match the state they wanted.

Why even bother with a rule that could not be properly enforced?

Personally, I believe that a player who qualifies in multiple states has earned the right to choose since he earned the invitation in those states.

Marcus

I honestly don't see that happening. Too easy to get caught. Why would anyone risk that?
Certainly less "playing the system" abuse than what you currently see... with people picking other states just to avoid having to go up against certain elite players. No need to name names... you know who you are.... Grow a pair!

What would the penalty be? Ejection from the IFPA? As far as I know, that's never happened....

And Northeast PA is closer to NYC (and many other state championships) than Pittsburgh. Weighing the balance between encouraging participation and enforcing rules about declaring a home state , i think there will be more participation the way it is set up now.

As this system grows , there should be room for improvement.

Instead of statehood being the main factor of where you play, since distance of SCS and obviously where you live/play can be a factor, I could see "if you qualify in whatever state you played the most events, then that is where you are forced to play for SCS" as being a fair way.

While eveyone earns the right to currently play wherever they qualify, I see this as a potential big improvement and something that could be a compromise to remove some of the current concerns.

If someone lives in southern WI and plays the majority of their annual events in northern IL and they qualify in IL, then it would seem like a logical criterion that they play in the IL SCS, even though they reside in WI.

In other words, "play SCS where you play your most competitive pinball".

I don't buy the "too far to travel in my own state for SCS" arguement. Many of the top players travel what I think are crazy distances every month to play in big events all over the world. If the WI SCS is 6 hours away in tippy top WI I have no problem making the drive. I am guessing many people have traveled a similar distance during the year to play in previous events???

Maybe in bigger states with multiple population centers of players, like CA? I can see travel being an issue even within a state. However, in most cases this would seem to provide more incentive to make more events and host more competitions, only further growing the sport. Maybe making some sort of agreement that the SCS travels to a new region each year?

I will say that I think if the SCS was the end of the line and nationals was not part of SCS then you would change the incentive for many and people would end up playing where they normally play anyway rather than looking for the easiest road to nationals. I know I personally don't ever like to pay into an event that is largely seeding the pot for yet another event which does require large amounts of travel. I know even if I were to win WI SCS I will not ever spend the time/energy traveling to nationals. I would prefer 100% of my SCS entry fee goes to WI SCS. IF the winner of WI SCS wants to go to nationals, then give them the option of paying to enter nationals rather than seeding a bigger pot from a state that may not send a player based on travel and associated costs.

Now this makes the most sense and easily enforced. Make it Snow!

This is definitely easily enforced . . . I still just don't like the idea of making someone travel to a further away SCS if they have qualified for a closer SCS.

The fact that me personally as a player, if the SCS for Illinois was at Chuck's in St. Louis (just on the east side of Illinois), I would definitely prefer to make the drive to Wisconsin if it was Madison/Milwaukee, or Indiana it is was Lafayette for that particular year.

Since I don't want to drive, and I make the rules, I'm so leaving that open for ME

As for seeding the Nationals pot, the original SCS model actually had the entire $320 going straight to the National pool. The fact that we're taking less than 1/3rd to seed the National pot I think is pretty fair. I'm guessing most players wouldn't attend Nationals if they had to pay to get into the tournament, so we needed another way of motivating players to show up to make it a better competition. Definitely understand those that think it's crap though to 'steal' from the SCS pools to fund this.

I'm still not sure how that would help proximity. Josh's example already goes over this:

Using that example, if someone plays mostly in KC, Missouri, that would force them into Missouri for the SCS, and consequently 8 hours in the car as opposed to 1.

Personally, if I were to qualify in more than one state, proximity would be the primary reason for where I compete. I don't really see an issue with how the current system is setup. I was "on the bubble", and if non-residents that had qualified in front of me decided they wanted to compete in WI, I would have been completely fine with it. I didn't play well enough to be in a better position.

Just wanted to say you had better start playing better/more in WI then, as you did not make the cut this year

Also, yes it is pretty counter "build the local competitive scene with SCS" IMHO to use ANY SCS funds for nationals pot. Especially when going to nationals actually forces extensive and costly travel on most and there is no choice for some people as this is both cost and time prohibitive. This is exactly the same excuse/ reason for making it easy on SCS yet forcing SCS dollars to seed the national pool is poor form. I think there are plenty of other national events to focus the energy on. Let the SCS be what it is and stand/grow on its own merits. If there is not enough interest in SCS winners to travel to a national event then that is telling on its own and shows a underlying motive beyond 'incentivizing' the national event.

How many people or what % of SCS states were represented at last years national?

Unless pinball tournaments grow by several orders of magnitude, you're going to have to travel far for big events. If you're not willing to travel hours for events, then you're at the mercy of where you live and the pinball scene in the immediate area.

If a few hours is too far for SCS, then why go - nationals is going to be too far to travel anyway, right?

Take this with a grain of salt: most of my neighboring states don't even have an SCS.

Solution: let's keep growing pinball.

Agreed and the BEST way to do that is on the local level first!

WPPR 5.0 will likely solve the above mentioned SCS issue on its own in states that hold many events. Won't help those that hold very few events at all though.

You guys in your little states lol El Paso is closer to LA than it is to Texarkana. But then everything is bigger in Texas.

Ken

Paul went for MN. I'm glad he ended up going, that took the decision out of my hands if I was going to go or not since I finished 2nd. If he didn't go, I would have wanted to go, but I seriously doubt I would have been able to all things considered.

Looks like 25 players went.

http://www.ifpapinball.com/view_tournament.php?t=1000&e=&d=2014-05-18#results

Looks like there were 28 states qualified so 3 states were not represented...

http://www.ifpapinball.com/ifpa-state-championship-series/standings