Neo what are your thoughts?

I really don't mind the $1 fee. I really don't want to be in charge of doing a ranking system in WI. I really don't want to piss off people playing in WI either.

Josh, how many tournaments did I play in last year? I can't imagine it's over 25.
Tom

28

Maybe I just see it as a turnoff to monthly that may move to reporting less and may lose overall players.

What about the IFPA? rules with leagues with players that only only do 1-2 events of 12 that they don't count? Do they still have to pay in? Do they get no rank?

I can see monthly going league like but payout each night but only reporting 1-2 times a year are going to end up with players who only do less then half of the events.

What!?

I'd prefer to not post those numbers, only because it's a falsehood.

Assuming all of these weeklies will continue reporting as weeklies just isn't going to be 2018 reality. There will be a 'right sizing' of reporting of which we haven't seen the impact.

Besides Paypal, I'll be able to take checks. I know that some TD's plan on pre-loading me with some sum of money, and then will work off that balance at their events. When they get close to having that all funded they will reload with me and we'll go from there.

Don't worry about the fees though . . . it's looking like ultimately that will come out of my pocket personally. I need to discuss with our tax accountant whether we have to payout 100% of these deposits taken in at the gross level or at the net level.

I agree, so why is a 3 strike tournament with 10 top 100 players worth less than a selfie league with 45 rank amateurs that are monkey flipping?

I haven't run a tournament in like 3 years. I'm not planning on running them again, despite the fact that I feel like I had really good feedback from participants that were happy with how things went and turnout of CASUAL players, which is extremely unusual in Dallas, when I did run a few events. I'm not willing to jump through all the hoops that TDs have to do these days. I'm not going to sit around and calculate TGP and manipulate formats just to hit a target point goal. I'll leave that to Marcus, Ken, the Austin and Houston guys.. not my thing.

Nevermind the fact that many of us have said we'd be willing to pay a set, FLAT, annual fee.

This is like the ONE thing you have said that I totally agree with. I wouldn't have gotten to go if Colin had not passed, and I'm really ultimately grateful for that, as I don't expect the chance to get to go again, even if I keep trying to play competitively. I don't even feel like I earned the right, despite beating people that previously have scared the hell out of me competition-wise (Garret (Won TPF this year, beat me in finals on an A bank side tourney 2 years ago right after state on Sopranos. That was a ton of fun. ), Jon, Bob Matthews, went 3-4 with Colin..) but the chips fell my way and I didn't get to captialize on it. But I do still get to say that I was able to go at least once, which is not something many will get the chance to do. Allowing like the top 2 from just places like TX, CA, IL, or CO would be a massive unbalancing change because there's SO MANY great players in highly competitive states, it's scary man.

If someone played 1-2 events out of 12, they don't exist in our system, they don't have to be accounted for in our endorsement fee.

Plunge the ball and use your flippers.

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Right seizing will lead to more of that but will that lead to more paper work / questions for TD at reporting time and what about the end of the year rush where if you get a old of old monthlys that move to 1-2 times a year that all report in big rushes at the end of the year.

it is valuable information to see. I assume in a best case scenario, this would have all gone over smooth with 100% change over and continual growth of the player base and events.

Only seems right to just publish the info and let people see what would have been that reality in 2016.

Sounds like most if not all weekly/monthly leagues will probably report annually now. Is there a large difference in point distribution in reporting monthly vs yearly? We pull about 55 people once a month.

Thanks for addressing those points.

Has any discussion happened around the idea of capping the amount each State would put towards the Nationals pot and then anything above that cap going back to their SCS payouts?

Except that the rule changes will change what "would have been", because people won't be having so many tourneys that are just to get points for them and their buddies, so numbers WILL change.
So why worry about comparing apples and oranges?
What happened last year (and this year) won't happen next year, you and many others have already said that, and I think it's a good thing for the system.

December has already about twice as many tournaments as any other month.

If I'm approving a monthly 12 times per year, that's 12 times the work for us of doing it once per year.

Either way they are submitting in December . . . currently that often includes just December results, in the future in might include a full year's worth of results.

Same amount of workload for IFPA staff.

That was never our best case scenario when putting together our 'business plan' for this implementation.

We knew there would absolutely be an attrition rate, both in tournaments simply not going the IFPA route going forward as well as events changing up how they would report.

I don't think it changes anyone's opinions if the 2016 numbers show endorsement fees collected of $10,000 or $100,000 or $1,000,000 . . . those hating this change will still hate this change

I'm interested if the WPPRs acquired will be different if we compare our current monthlyish reporting schedule to an annual schedule. Could be a drawback if the monthly reporting (and fee) ends up giving an advantage. If that's the case then dropping the WPPR endorsement might make sense for most players but we'll end up in the situation that Frax describes where those players willing and able to spend the time & money to play in more endorsed events are the only ones able to qualify for SCS.

Some interesting calculations in the coming months for sure.

Depends on the TGP of your events. Since TGP can't go over 100%, you do end up losing value for any 'games played' beyond the 100% mark because you don't get to keep counting those games.

55 events once a month has a base value of 27.5. If your TGP every month is 10%, then you're awarding 2.75 points per month. You could literally submit once every 10 months and be in the exact same place WPPR wise.

If your TGP every month is 50%, then you're awarding 13.75 points per month. After the second month you'll be maxed at 100% TGP, and 27.5 is the most points you can award. From that point on you won't gain any more value waiting to submit in 3, 4, 6, 10, 12 months.

The best bang for your WPPR buck is to submit as often as your TGP grades out to 100%. This will minimize the amount of fees you will have to pay, while maximizing your WPPR-age.

That was discussed. This has gone through a bunch of modifications. Originally it was 33% State, 33% National, 33% Worlds. When we found out we couldn't do this internationally the Worlds part went away and we went 2/3rd's State, 1/3rd's National.

We moved eventually to where we are now, 75% State, 25% National, which percentage wise keeps more at the state level than our previous system the last 4 years (31% went to the Nationals pot under the current system).

Capping the amount doesn't work to build to help build the National pot. We could end up with a State Championship that wins more than the National Champion, and we want things to move up in 'prestige' between those titles and feel that boosting the Nationals pot helps convey that message.

I'm more than happy to help organizers adjust their reporting to be as efficient as possible under our 2018 rules.

I haven't decided yet if our 32% TGP monthly will report every 3 months . . . with our location sponsoring the $1 fee we can simply continue forward and they are happy to have us coming in once a month to eat/drink/be merry.

Yeaaaah! Now you're talking!

Denied!!

rd

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I am not sure what I think of this change. While I agree the states and national tournaments could use a large prize, and the qualification system for them needs some improvement, I am not sure I agree with this implementation.

Right now IFPA is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Originally they were trying to accomplish two goals which never we are able to be accomplished in sync. The first goal is to "rank" players based on their skill. The second goal was to increase turn outs to local tournaments. It became clear early on that in order to get a high IFPA ranking, you would need to participate in lots of tournaments in order to get the most points.

As time went on the formula was tweaked over and over again to try to keep it as a "ranking" system, but ultimately with the way it works, being at the right tournaments with the right amount of luck will rank you higher in the results.

Now we have what I refer to as "IFPA experts" to use the P.C. term. These individuals are trying to maximize the value of the points they receive in their local areas as much as possible. Creating so called "super-leagues" and others which very much are hurting the IFPA system.

What can IFPA do to resolve this? I kinda like the idea of separating the two goals. One being a "ranking system" and one being a "professional tournament circuit".

I feel the state to national tournaments need more direction. I think state qualifying tournaments should be sanctioned by the IFPA and run a particular tournament format. I feel these tournaments should have a fee that is passed along to the IFPA based on the number of qualification spots they are submitting. These qualification spots should be divided among the state sanctioned tournaments a that are running that year. Also as long as their is a tournament in the players state, they should have to qualify in that state or closest neighboring state.

These are some of my thoughts. I think penalizing tournaments and leagues with this $1 fee just to submit to the ranking system is not the way to go. I do however thinking having state sanctioned tournaments pay per qualifying spot (a higher fee, maybe $10/20 per spot) to send a player to the state tournament is not a bad way to approach things.

Is IFPA a 501(c)3? If it is, technically you would still be 100% of the money to charity.

Josh

Is there a way for the IFPA to collect the money directly from a player rather than the operator?

OTOH, one could simply describe a charity event as 100% of the "entry fee" goes to charity, and there is an optional WPPR fee for any entrants who wish to have WPPR representation from the event.

There is a crazy amount of flexibility with how IFPA lets TD's decide to enact the $1 fee, from an annual charge all the way to an event charge, or not at all. In the end, it's IFPAs sandbox, and one doesn't have to play in it either.

We're not . . . we're a really shitty attempt-at-profit LLC

Operator/Player/Tournament Director/Tooth Fairy/Santa Claus . . . as long as the payment is processed through our website for the event being submitted, it'll be fine on our end.

This is a shame. Just because there is drama and added complexity regarding WPPRs, there is no reason you need to be dragged down by this. Pick a format that your participants are happy with, and run that same format every time. You only need to know how to calculate TGP for one type of event, and there are lookups online now.

If you or your participants care about WPPRs, then you'll end up spending a little extra time balancing TGP and format. If they don't care about WPPRs, then just pick whatever is easiest and most fun and just don't concern yourself with WPPRs.

I had a TD tell me he was stopped doing tournaments, and the main complaint was because of how annoying it was that he had to figure out which position to report when people tied. The system displays an error message and literally tells you what number to fill in. It adds about 20 seconds to make multiple corrections. I guess everyone has a different straw that breaks the camel's back.

Ah yeah, that confused the hell out of me the first time I had a tie, but it was easy to figure out. Things like that are minor.

I'm *going* to run a league or some other casual meetup out of my place again, but not until I can get a streaming capability in place for it. It's not just the complexities of TGP and all that crap that's solely the reason I haven't been running things, but it is a chunk of it. The other big part is simply that I know that I don't want to cannabalize our existing leagues, which have been GREAT this year. Turnout has been consistent, which is awesome.

I've hesitated to post my thoughts, mainly because this has become somewhat of a dumpster fire and people a lot more experienced than me are commenting.

As someone mentioned, the whole tournament thing is confusing as hell. Not necessarily this change in particular, but the whole system. There are all these different formats, and some of them seem set up just to drain money from people to generate prize pools. I don't really want to study the math to calculate points and how all that works. I just want to play pinball and enjoy some healthy competition from time to time.

It's great that IFPA have aspirations to become another ELEAGUE style entity and I hope you guys succeed.

I like the band pantera. But keep on the whopper discussion. I do think this is important.

Domination...

Or perhaps better yet, shattered.

Try listening to either of those bad boys whilst qualifying.

Azmo,
Seems like you should at least have Panthera pinball machine (Gottlieb, 1980) on your wishlist. Wtf?

Ok, back to IFPA fees.

That is exactly what i do!

Josh, on a little bit of a tangent but no need to create a new thread since you are active in this one:

Has it ever been considered to add any TGP value to the SCS? Like how the majors rate at 150%.

If it is meant to be the culmination of a year of competition and limited to the top 16 in the State but since its only 16 people under the current rules it rates at 88%. The winner in Colorado got 12.03 points and we had 3 top 100 players in our state. Not that 12 is not a decent amount but then it obviously goes down significantly from there. I managed to wrangle in .3 for 13th lol (as Steve Ritchie would say, PLAY BETTER!) Looking at some other states some of them are pretty low considering that its suppose to be a high profile event.

It seems that if the SCS and Nationals are trying to be lifted up in 'prestige' then maybe they should get a bump to at least 100% TGP. Just a thought.

I think it is spelt Pre$tige.

The multiplier won't matter. At 150% you go from .3 to .45. Winner goes from 12 to 18.

The limited number of players kills the value of the tournament.

I agree that the points seems too small for the magnitude of the event, but most of me thinks there shouldn't be any points awarded at all (for SCS or Nationals), since the IFPA explicitly states that prohibiting players based on skill would make it ineligible for WPPR endorsement. https://www.ifpapinball.com/faq/

and the SCS should not have kick in for next years funds. Also Nationals should not kick in to the local state SCS or National fund for next year.

It's kinda poetic that the man who saved pinball would go on to father the man who killed pinball. Some real Kylo Ren shit.

POTW

I don't really care about the low end finishers cause they didn't do well enough for more points, I think 18 for the winner is a very nice increase from 12 tho.

Yeah I understand that the limited number is what kills it that's why I was curious if it has ever been discussed to evaluate how SCS is graded out. Doesn't sound like it's a consideration tho

I know it says that, but that should be changed. Of all of our tournaments, that's the one people take the most seriously. It should be worth a lot of WPPRs.

Was this a joke [I hope]? When we meet on Monday we will give 50 people a PayPal address or regular address to send a $1 check or money order. I'm sure this will encourage first time users to join. So much easier than saying "Write your name and email address on a sheet and throw a buck in the jar". And Josh has nothing better to do than cashing an tracking.

I prefer it to be worth no WPPRs. Since in order to even qualify for the SCS played in 2018 you have to be playing in 2017, I would prefer it not to put any new to 2018 player at a disadvantage right out of the gate at the beginning of the new season.

It basically sets you up for a snowball effect in some cases.

Take ND for example (an extreme example but you get the point), where the ONLY event so far this year is the 2016 seasons SCS (played in Feb of 2017).

Will WI SCS be worth WIPPRs?

Yeah people take the tournament seriously, but they already won more points than everyone else to get there. Then they get to play in a tournament with only the top point earners, and get more free points. ("Free points" because others are locked out of competing for them).

And as whysnow mentions, since it happens in the following calendar year, it gives all of the best players from the previous year a nice head start on the rest of the field.

Reasonable points.

Agree to disagree. imho, all competition should contribute to rankings. If the top 2 chess players are invited to a private heads up match, the results are very relevant to their relative skill and rank. It doesn't matter if not everyone was invited.

P.s. Not to wander further off-topic, but I think PAPA B, C and D divisions should be worth WPPRs for the same logic.