You’re doing it wrong.

Never organized one but played in a few. Here is the jist of the format with a few tweaks I've seen implemented.

1. List of all player's names on a board with a win column and loss column.

2. All players randomly paired up on random machines with 1 person standing in what will become a 'player line'.

3. As the first game ends, the loser stays at the game, the winner goes to the board and marks a hash by his name in the win column and a hash by the loser's name in the loss column. The winner goes to the end of the 'player line'.

4. The first person in the player line then plays the loser waiting by the machine.

5. As games progress, the loser stays at the game and the first person in the player line goes to that game.

6. This keeps going for a predetermined amount of time like 2 or 3 hours.

7. At the end of the time, the winner is based on best percentage of wins vs losses.

Now the differences I've seen are that a loser can get stuck playing the same game over and over again. So after losing 3 times in a row on the same game, the winner stays at the game and the loser goes and marks the win and loss and stands at the end of the player's line.

Another variation I've seen is that the loser can either decide to play the same machine again or has the choice to play any other available game. This way they can go to a game they think they'll have a better chance of winning and not get stuck on the same game 3 times in a row.

It's a basic rotation of losers staying at the game and winners getting in a line. The person at the front of the 'player line' goes and plays the available person standing at a game. The player line usually moves pretty quickly; so there really isn't a lot of time standing around. The few I've played in no more than 2-3 minutes waiting. Compare this to strikes tournaments or group matchplay tournaments where you have to wait for everyone to finish a round.

The queue should be a percentage of total players, not just 1. The more players you have, the bigger the queue should be.

An alternate rule to "loser stays" is that player 2 leaves, regardless of win/lose. Player 1 is player 2 for game two, new player is player 1. That way, you never get stuck on a game for more than 2 games in a row.

The "show standings" option controls whether or not the matchplay page will live update players standings during the tournament.

Duration is self explanitory. Flip Frenzy is a timed tournament. Pick how long you're going to run. Seems like 2-3 hours is common.

Virtual Queuing would have matchplay managing the player que for you, if you don't use it, you'd manage that yourself. A common way to manage the queue is to have a row of chairs. Player leaves, everybody slides over. New player comes in at the end.

Initial Que size is how many people to have waiting in the que to start the tournament. You want to have a buffer of a few people so you have a bit of a break in the queue, to grab a drink, or hit the bathroom, or whatever. But you don't want there to be so many people in the queue that you're sitting in the queue for long periods of time. Not sure where the sweet spot is.

The "most wins/fewest losses" thing is an option to try to prevent people from losing on purpose quickly in a game gone wrong just to try to get back into a new game sooner. FF is a fragile format that kinds of depends on the players being good sports about it. For example, players could collude to only "play" 1 ball and plunge/drain the others to get their game over faster - rather than playing a full normal game. The 'fewest losses' attempts to put a clamp on that, but overall you still have to hope people play honorably and don't "game" the format.

Just playing around with running one as a "test" tournament and match play uses the rotating p1/p2/leave option.

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This an example of the 'big screen' view showing the player standings (optional) queue shown in the middle, active games on the left.

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I think they’re fun to play in. Maybe more social than serious competition - I didn’t think Pinburgh is gonna change formats any time soon.

Ideal way to kick off a tournament weekend so everyone gets to meet everyone else.

I’ve only run a test on the new Matchplay software but it looks pretty sweet. I know Andreas and the Aussies worked pretty hard to get it right.

rd

I have not. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

I mean, listened to a lot of podcast discussions about it and read a lot of forum discussion because I'm very intrigued by the format, but haven't tried it yet. Definitely more casual and less serious. Real serious players would have much longer games, which is good that it's a win, but bad that it's a bunch of time. It sounds great in that you get a lot more play time and a lot less waiting.

That’s the issue with them.

A perfect example - in the Frenzy I ran last month at the SHPC, I played Naiomi Goodwin (Top aussie woman player) on Firepower.

I’d been watching others play it and average scores were like 30k to 60k I guess. Whole games is over in a few minutes.

Naiomi gets 450k and I get 600k+. Took ages.

In the same time that game took, a nearby Nine Ball machine was played 3 times.

And funnily enough - I got 4th, 3 wins behind Danni who won. I played 4 less games.

The format is vastly improved now though. It used to be that losses had no impact, so people were just smashing out as many games as they could, and even playing 1 ball games to end the game quicker.

The new format subtracts losses from wins so it’s much fairer IMO.

Strategy comes into it - for example, I had a good first 2 balls on ACDC, had about 50m, the other guy had <10m - I let my second ball drain and basically said, there you go champ, do your best ... I could have kept playing for ages. As it was he got <20m and we were able to move on a lot quicker than if I’d kept playing.

rd

Shameless plug! There's a Flip Frenzy tomorrow night (Tuesday 12/4) at Level 257 in Schaumburg, IL at 7 pm.

Wish I could get there - but it's too far for a weeknight for me. [sad trombone]

This seems to be a really great Format.
Would like to use it for "Freddys Pinnball Paradise spring open" in Germany on second day
Did you run it already with 150 Player? (Machines should not be a Problem as there are more than 180 Pinball machines)
What would be minimum playing time to be sure to get 100% TGP (Half of Pinballs will be DMD and half classics)
Finals Best 16 (Best of 3 Game)
Then Best 8 (Best of 3)
Finals 4 Player on 3 Machines (Scoring each 4-2-1-0)
Thanks in Advance
Albert