That is a GREAT idea!

Maybe we can try something like that out for our upcoming event. Maybe 21 entires max in a 7 game bank?

That would allow people to arrive early and get some extra play if they choose to but also prevent excessive score upping and allow some to arrive a little later and still get games in on the entire bank.

thinking out loud > Could always start off with 14 entries max and then up it if you get fewer people arriving than planned/anticipated and people have blown through all entires with still time left during qualifying.

Agreed and I love that idea too.

Be careful with adding more entries after the tournament started. Nothing irks people more than the rules changing halfway through the game especially if you are qualified after the 14 entries then get knocked out when the entries is upped later on.

for sure! would need to have it all laid out in advance.

I would write something into the rules that says 'by X time, if over 25% of the field has played all 14 entires then the entry limit will be automatically expanded to a new cap of 21 max entries."

I am not sure of what the exact times/threshold would work, but the idea would be to keep it fun and not stagnat the event in the case where only 20 people show up (when expecting 40) and they all come early and have played all 14 entires by 2pm, but the event is scheduled to run till 5pm.

We have had the flip side where really good players will show up pretty late in the day for a PaD style event and then be aggravated to not get through all games more than once (or not even once). We need a better way to find a balance where these players are incentivized to come a bit earlier.

Any time you limit your entries, you're also limiting your prize pool. The bigger the payouts and the further down you pay, the more players you'll attract. (all other things being equal)

The number of games in the qualifying bank, the games selected to use and the setup on the games is extremely important in a Herb tourney. Rather than 7 games and only 21 entries, why not have a 10 or 12 bank of qulifying games setup hard and unlimited entries? Best 5 game scores make up your score (100-95-90-89, etc). Software is out there to easily do this.

Adding more divisions isn't practical. PAPA is the exception, not the rule. Tournament directors don't want to keep track of 3 or 4 different tourneys at the same time. For years, the best execution of a Herb style tourney has been CAX IMO. The casual division is run differently than the A division and every year they get a huge turnout with big payouts for both divisions. I don't recall all the rules for casual division, but one rule isn't you can't be in novice if you've ever won money in a tournament. That cuts out all the A players quick. And novice player CAN qualify for A division if they play well enough. EVERYONE GETS POINTS. That part is huge. All the games are setup tough there. You won't find a Spidey with closed outlanes and the middle post in place. If you use long playing games not setup properly, you will get lines. Use enough games properly setup and lines will stay short.

The NW tourney and INDISC use similar formats. These three tournments have among the biggest turnouts and payouts every year. If you're considering have a Herb style tourney, study these three tourneys to see how it's done right.

I think 8 tickets for Wauna is perfect. I got there when it opened last year and played 7 tickets (for 5 games) and qualified first. I also got my two attempts in on the side tourney and a couple attempts at the one ball LOTR and took about an hour break for lunch and by that time qualifying was over and playoffs were about to start. It's not like I was waiting around much at all. It's just a busy tournament and I doubt many people that got there early were able to get in even 10 tickets on the main tourney.-and if they did they likely missed out on the two side tournaments as the waiting times were long throughout the day. I think you'll still have to get there fairly early to get all 8 tickets in.

For the tourney on the 21st I would limit to 14 attempts as the max. I have a feeling 40-50 people will be showing up and I think that even if you show up at the beginning you would likely be hard pressed to get all 14 attempts in. Especially since some of the games play long and I'm guessing you are leaving settings/tilts where they are at vs. making them tougher for the tournament.

Good feedback Mike. You are more optimistic than I. I was thinking 40 people at most, but more likely 30? So hard to get a good estimate.

14 attempt limit is probably a good way to go. We will learn and adjust for the next one.

I do plan to set up games more difficult. Tournament settings/no EBs and tougher to keep it flowing. No major changes but definately need to turn down ball saves and tighten a few tilts that are set pretty open for normal route play.

For CAX, how do you have a novice division and keep A players out while still getting IFPA credit?

Everyone plays in the same group for qualifying on Friday and Saturday. Then, for finals on Sunday, the top 16 out of the entire qualifying field advance to open playoffs. Everyone else's rank after qualifying is listed as their rank for IFPA results.

Then, the next 6 highest qualifying players who are eligible for casual division (don't have a ranking X high, have never won a full WPPR event, some other rules I can't remember) advance to the casual division finals on Sunday, which has cash prizes and award plaques but no IFPA value. They also draw at random two other players from the list of eligible players, who also get to participate in the finals. The top seed in casual division finals last year finished 28th overall in qualifying.

This.
I have never seen a serious sport during which you can pay to make an additional attempt during qualifying round...
Stop for a minute and think about it: a golfman paying more to make another 18-hole during a competition? Pay for each attempt at pole vaulting??

To increase the pot, find sponsors. Don't ask the average players to fund the best players. Or play Poker instead.

Very cool. Do you happen to remember what the IFPA rank was for the novice cutoff?

Yeah, it's great. Less experienced players have something achievable to shoot for while also getting an opportunity to compete with the big kids. I want to say 500 for the cutoff, but I'm not 100% on that.

Easier said than done . . . but we'll keep trying

Sometimes you get more players by not charging for a tournament. Apart from the Charity events i didn't charge for any tournaments last year and i think it increased turnout, especially for the novice to intermediate players. That way if it's unlimited entry in qualifying everyone has the same chance and the only metric is how much time your willing to put in. I will run some tournaments this year where i'll have an entry fee as i think a mix is probably best. We had a local beer distributer sponser an event and there was some nice swag there.

I still qualify for the D division at PAPA WC (but likely can't go) so I think I'm safe for the novice division at CAX. Trying to make more shows this year.

I seem to remember that Bowen has said the following rule is the only rule, but I also kinda remember a points cutoff. Anyway...

"The Casual Player Division is reserved for player who have never previously won a cash prize in a pinball tournament, including past CAX events."

http://www.caextreme.org/tourney

The casual players have been having a blast at CAX the last few years. I typically help one or two folks thru the details each year. Their enthusiasm amongst all the regulars is a lot of fun. For the record, my advice also includes telling folks when to stop playing entries. The scoring is simple to understand and see, so they generally catch on pretty quick. Once you've competed seriously in casual division there for a year, you're a grizzled veteran (even though you may still qualify for novice the next year).

Forgot to mention above that the big Herb tourneys just about always have two or more banks of qualifying games. Modern, classics and sometimes solid state. Modern should have the most games and classics will often count the best 4 games rather than best 5 in modern. More than one bank = more games = less lines. Games often blur the lines. Taxi or another system 11 might be in the modern bank, or FH may end up in the classic lineup. Doesn't matter. Stay close and no one will care.

Herb events are not scaring off newbies.

In every sport/competition there is going to be a top level that will cost significant money. For the elite players in pinball, the tournament is the CHEAP part. Airfare, hotel and meals can easily be 4x more. The two times I went to Pinburgh the entire trip cost about $1100. Tournament entry was only $125 - 150.

The bottom line is a Herb that draws good competition and runs multiple days is $150-200 commitment for most players. There's a ton of other formats out there. In 2012 I ran tournaments every two weeks at $5 entry + coin drop: single/double-elim, pin golf, match play, and others. That "recruited" a ton of new players, some who have gone on to get serious and play in the Herb events at INDISC and CAX, and others who are just content to play in the local events. Every player, new or experienced, should play at the level they can afford and compete in, but there's no reason to begrudge the pricier events.

All the Herb talk made me think of that Pinball Fantasy tournament 2006 where "Herb style" was born.

Results are still up!

http://www.fabfan.com/show/

(I believe that Bowen was running CAX using this format prior to 2006, but "Bowen style" just doesn't have as nice of a ring to it)

I run the local league and a bi-weekly. The league is cheap and once a month, but is mostly regulars from the monthlies at the 30-pin place. The bi-weekly events are $5 single elim (to keep it ~2 hours) and was intended to pick up new players from another location that has 4 machines. So far (4 events) one new player who was there for the first one and then not seen since. I have flyers up, but it's pretty much the same 3-6 players. Going to make bigger/bolder signs soon and have started posting on the location's FB page in the hopes that somebody new sees it.

Is it just me, or is that page auto-refreshing for anyone else? I think the results are set. Lots of household names in that list.

Why is it called "Herb style" again?

Herb Silvers ran that tournament at Pinball Fantasy which was the first 'pump and dump' that many of us played in (where you could keep your high score on individual games).

There weren't a ton of players, but at the end of the weekend the prize pool was HUGE (much bigger compared to the other tournaments on the 'tour' back in 2006). So many of us took that format back home with us, and it spread across the events we started running.

When we were approached by Gameworks back in December 2008 to run the first "Tournament of Champions" event, we used this format.

Herb ran it as top 10 scores only getting points, which has been modified most often to fit with the PAPA style scoring system of 100-90-85-84-etc. The problem with Herb's "Herb" was that there were a ton of players tied with ZERO points, and that's no fun

The prize pool is simply governed by the size of entry fee, so if one wants a larger prize pool, charge more for the entry whether it is a per game or a flat entry fee. I've actually run through numbers on a 3 day tourney, and it comes down to this limiting factor: there is a max # of plays that can be put on the games over a 2 day qualifier... in other words no matter how many participants you have a $X entry per game results in a max possible pot of $X * Y games * Z hours. In my experience the games are usually busy open to close as it is.

Let's take an example... we had a PAPA tournament with 2 day qualifiers that logged 1500 plays on 7 games with 81 participants and a collected pot of $5500. That's 75 plays per hour for the 20 hours of qualifying or 10.7 minutes per game. The bank was busy most of the time, so lets consider this a ballpark max # of plays. A flat entry fee of $68 per participant would result in this same $5500 pot. $68 is less than most top competitors put into such a tournament. A more salient point is if you divide the 1500 plays between the 81 participants you wind up with a max average of 18.5 plays per person, total.

That 18.5 number is the most telling point.. less than 1 game per hour. This implies people probably can't and don't play for the entire 20 hours, and when they do they are doing the amusement park thing--standing in lines for much longer than they are playing games. One obvious solution is to add more games, which was done the next year. This shortens lines, adds more entries, increases the pot. But you start to see from these numbers that it is completely possible to charge an reasonable flat entry fee of $75 per person, or limit total number of plays to 20 or 25 and still maintain the same prize pool. This assertion that pay-per-qualifier is "fair to all entrants" and "necessary for a large prize pool" falls apart fairly quickly with real numbers.

Ah, thanks IFPA.

Here in the bay area there are a few free places to advertise:

SF Bay Guardian
Eastbay Express
Oakland Tribune (free for online event postings)
SF Chronicle (free for online event postings)
SF Fun Cheep

I also started a wordpress site (free, unless you want to use your own domain name, in which case it's about $20 per year).

Another effective way to advertise is using meetup.com, your local patch site, or put small posters on the backglass at the popular venues.

Travel time is as long as it takes to walk 2 steps.

Hmm, Florida tournaments are not like that. Any wait is in a game specific line, so when one player acknowledges he is done at a machine, the next player takes the two steps to the game to start. In other words, it bypasses all the inefficiencies you are used to.

Louisville was not like that. Wait in game specific line with chairs. When the other guy is done you take 3 steps and you are at the game. The only wait which is very short is waiting for a scorekeeper to get your score entered. I did hear that Chicago was much worse.

Karl Deangelo of So Cal wrote some amazing software that addresses this. It uses tablets. The next player is automatically shown on the tablet as well as an overhead projector display. Entries are all managed electronically so once you queue up a player the entry is debited from their total. Scores instantly go into the system - no handling paper entries with chicken-scratch hand-writing. Extremely efficient and easy for both score-keepers and players alike.

As examples, when I helped score-keeping at CAX and INDISC, I was easily able to cover about nine games, which was about half the total. Same tournament in the previous years, I could cover 4 - 5 games, plus you need someone full-time at the computer entering scores from the score sheets. Since volunteers are paid in entries, the more volunteers needed the more it affects the prize pool.

The problem with allowing multiple plays per turn is a 5 player line just turned into possibly a 10-player line. That means players are more likely to wander off and need to be tracked down, or just balk and go do something else. You also open up the possibility of players camping at machines late in qualifying to prevent their opponents from getting a shot.

The only time multiple plays are allowed for a single player is when no one else is in line for that game. Then, by all means, play as many games in a row as you like (have paid entries for). If you have multiple banks, plenty of games and lots of qualifying hours, it's pretty common to see this.

is this software available for purchase anywhere?

Shoot, the wait at TPF is from people not paying attention or knowing what a freaking line is. You have people standing around all at the front and when it's next person up there is a discussion of whom's next. Not blaming the tournament directors as they are busy enough but serious (players) is it really that hard to:
- be ready to play when you are next in line? Yeah, that means to put your phone away and be ready to end your conversation with a friend when the game is ready....
- stay in the line that you are intending to play in. There are big signs on the chairs telling you what each line is for.
- limit your silly pregame routine to a couple of seconds. This reminds me of golf to where the 30 handicap person needs to line up their put 10 times and take a hundred practice strokes just to not even come close
- and my biggest pet peeve. If you are playing your last ball and you get frustrated. Please don't rage tilt a game or shake it while you walk off to "show" your frustration. That person in line now is waiting a couple mins to play to let the tilt settle down.
- can't believe this even has to make a list but for crying out loud, TAKE A SHOWER, nobody wants to smell your filth.
- in conclusion. Don't be an ass and be courteous to those around you.

I beg for tournament directors to not allow multiple plays on a game with others waiting. Can you imagine how long you will be sitting on your butt waiting to play a game if there are 10 people in front of you and each of them got to play 3 games? You could be sitting there hours. Not exactly my idea of fun.

I would be interested in this software as well as i want to start running bigger tournaments in my area and have seen this in action, it is quite good...

Tablets are very good if all works properly. There is still a lot of room for improvement to make things more reliable. Both software and hardware crashes can kill a lot of time.

A lot of time can be wasted or saved depending on how attentive the score keepers are during the event as well as if enough score keepers are available. This can be huge and I don't think this is discussed enough!

If queues are not setup properly, then it will also cause a line slowdown. Example being Expo. Game specific queues are always better than one long queue, but the layout at Expo may not allow differently. There is not a lot of room in the hallway used there.

Most of these scorekeepers are volunteers or are getting very little in return for their time, so make sure to be very nice to them. I appreciate what they do and it appears to me that it is usually a thankless occupation.

Many people new to tournaments may not understand the line queues, especially the single line queues. They can appear very overwhelming to even the tournament veterans when thinking about how much time they want to spend in line trying to qualify for an event.

Damn, lost to Eden!
I think that was his and Cayle's first show, or second.
Long time ago....

I do like the software that allows for immediate input of a score and automatically updates the standings. My first experience with it was at Free Play Florida 2014 and thought it was just fantastic. It allowed for strategic planning of what to do next as opposed to guesstimating what the effects would be.

I hope that system becomes widely available.

I remember meeting Eden that weekend. Very new to the scene, very excited to be there, and very excited to let everyone know how great of a player he was.

And then he went to PAPA a couple of months later . . .

http://legacy.papa.org/papa9/live/A.html

(keep scrolling down those standings)

not just for tournaments, but some who attend pin shows could use to be reminded of this...

I don't know. I just saw Karl at the State champs, too. I should have asked him but he was in the finals and I didn't want to bother him.

Another option for online scoring software is www.pinballtourneys.com You can use this system for free. Robert Harris and his team have done an excellent job with this site.

So if you have internet access, consider using this software.

It is the tournament software for Texas Pinball Festival, Houston Arcade & Pinball Expo and any event that I run.

Marcus

I believe the trick is to ask nicely. Beware that it requires you to run a local server on a computer so setting it up is not just pushing a button. Like Johnny I've used it to help scorekeep at INDISC and CAX and it's so easy for everyone involved.

I went to the website and dont see anything about using it or how to use it? Am I just not seeing it?

What are the the takeaways from this thread?

1. You can't buy your way into first place, but it could help in the qualifiers
2. pay-per-game qualifiers doesn't result in a higher pot
3. Some tournaments do better than others to minimize wait times, which results in increased participation

From the website, "Do you have an upcoming pinball tournament? Use the Contact Us page with details and we can get back to you on adding you to our schedule."

It's very simple to use.

The admin login gives you access to set up screen.

Admin Page

From this screen, you can create a tournament, add players, add machines, correct scores.

The staff login gives you access to the score keeping screen.

Score Page

These screens are designed with tablets and smartphones in mind.

It really is easy to use.

Marcus

I do not see any of what you are showing when I go to the website????

I am very confused?

I assume I need to contact them with details and then they add my event?
Then I get an admin password for player and score entry?

Is there a chance of getting it to process queues like Karl's software? The way Karl's software works is it keeps track of virtual "lines" for each machine and lists the names of people queued for a machine on the screen. Once you finish your game, you tell the scorekeeper what game you want to get in "line" for next.

Saves a lot of space and kills the worst part of the tournament, the DMV-like lines

Yes. Exactly as you said.

Here are the summarized steps.

1. Contact Them via their website. Provide them Date & Name of Event.
2. They contact you with an event link, admin login info & scorekeeper login info.
3. Use the admin password for tournament settings, management and configuration.
4. Use the scorekeeper password for adding players and scores.

Marcus