I enjoy the show and have gone for the past 5 years. Last year I brought 2 pins on my own from Longview in a chevy truck to Tacoma. For providing my games, using my time and Gasoline to bring them up I was provided with a weekend pass for me and my wife and 6 year old son. Well worth it. I decided to provide a couple of pinballs again this year. Again I drove them up on Thursday and come back on Saturday to enjoy the show. Gas in the truck from Longview is about $150 for 2 trips to Tacoma. The hotel room was $150. So it's not a cheap family fun weekend to begin with. I thought for providing the games I would get me and my wife and son into the show once again. My wife doesn't really care for the show, but wants family time and knows my son and I both enjoy it so she tags along. Anyways when we go to get into the show we were told only myself and son would be allowed in. My wife would have to purchase a weekend pass to get in on Saturday and Sunday. I believe that would be like $30 or $40 or something around there. She kindly declined and said she would just go back to the hotel room. She did come in on Sunday for the $20 fee, but I just thought it was a little ridiculous that she couldn't come into the show after I provided 2 pins, used my gas, and volunteered my free Thursday to make the 4 hour road trip to bring the games up. Probably won't be providing any games next year. The show itself is very well ran and the selection of games is super.
Just my 2 cents worth....
Bozo

This type of tourney thing really is out of hand. That's why at the Ann Arbor pinball show, we advertised 200 games (actually had 210), and *none* were set aside for tourney-only use. Yes we had tournaments, but integrated them into the total mix, so there was no exclusion to non-tourney players. This de-emphasis on tournaments worked out really well for us, and for the majority of the show goers (if not *all* the show goers.)

If you look at the percentage of tourney players to regular attendees, it's like 1% tourney people. To dedicate over 15% of the total pinball game population to this 1% just seems ridiculous to us. Also making the tourneys non-WPR helps a lot too. In our situation, "normal" people won our tournaments. That is, there were no "professional" tourney people present (our payouts were low and no WPR points.) This made the tournaments a lot more approachable to regular people.

Another thing we did was really low tech, but it worked out great. High scores were posted on each machine using simple post-it notes. That way, you just walk up to the machine, and see exactly what score needed to be beat. Or heck just walk up to the machine and play it non-tournament style. Again this worked out really well, made the tourney self-running, didn't dedicate machines to just the "one percent".

Lastly we used EM and early SS games for tournaments. Emphasis on simple rules that are easy to understand (but difficult to master) again really helps bring regular people into the tournament. Using the 1990s and newer games, which are often very deep in rules, doesn't bring regular folk into tourney play.

The current show tournament thing, in our minds, is out of control. it is not helping pinball, which you would think would be the goal. Getting 'regulars' to enter into tournaments is a far better thing. having huge payouts does not promote this goal. all it does is attract professional players, which in no way promotes pinball to the masses. Having very casual, low entry fee (our Ann Arbor show tourney tries were 25 cents and no pre-registration) promotes pinball to the masses.

Again we really think shows should de-emphasis tournament play, make it cheaper and more casual. Use PAPA for the big payout tournament stuff, not shows where regular people are largely the attendees. It seems to make more sense this way, and promote pinball to the general public. Setting aside 15% of your machines for 1% of the total show population is just crazy.

I guess it comes down to this... what is the show trying to accomplish? is it the general promotion of pinball? or is the show just a mask, and it's really a high-end tournament? Not that this is bad, but it's just what you're trying to accomplish. Be clear with stated goals, and it causes less issues in the long run. If people come to a show with 150 games, but 25 of the best machines are set aside for that 1% of tourney players, what message does that convey? And are you Ok with that message? Is the show trying to cater to everyone? if that's the case, it's difficult to make everyone happy. This is why divorcing high end tourney play to venues like PAPA makes good sense. Keep the show a show, appealing to the masses, and promoting the message of pinball love wide and far. The one percent tourney people are already in the pinball corner, catering to them deters the other pinball love given to the masses. It makes no sense to cater to the one percent, if the general promotion of pinball is the goal.

I must admit, as much as we have enjoyed the show the past two years, the tournament only section of pins, especially those that have no duplicate on the floor, is really frustrating. I understand roping them off reasonably before the tournament, and obviously during, but for the whole weekend is pretty lame. We were there Friday this year and it was still roped off with no competition until Saturday.

Actually, there was a "Rookie" tournament on Friday. I made it to the second round & got beat by a little kid who could barely see above the glass......

Sorry! I stand corrected.

Still feel the same way though. That's a lot of games and a lot of space.

My notes about the show,
My first show, we came from Idaho, brought 33 pins, took 9 inside. Sold the rest or were pre sold
Show was good i thought. Was hoping for more parts and things for sale.
Not many pins for sale, nice that hotel was close by.
Way too noisy in there, bad echo
Sold everything we brought inside but i have to say the parking situation blows ass there.
No much effort made to accommodate our monster trucks and trailers, show or hotel
Prob will not be bringing pins back in the show or for sale solely based on the no parking situation
Met some good people and made some contacts for future projects so that was a plus.
Would like to see a swap meet or at least more stuff for sale, event with a 50 acre FLAT parking lot would be good.
The pins i brought in were being played all day and i got some good comments on them. MM, NGG, AFM mostly
Would of liked to try out some of the tournament pins, didn't see they let anyone play them.
Scored a real nice dr dude on the way home.

Almost 200 people played in the tournaments. Are you meaning to imply that 20,000 people attended the show?

Hey Pin-pimp, I'm glad you like the Dr dude! That was the third pin I purchased toward my collection. However, I scored a Centaur that took its place, since I really don't have the room for another pin. After all, Centaur was the first pin I set out to buy as I started collecting. It's great that we both scored! Have fun with the Dude.

I got beat by that very same kid, I hope he continues the hobby

Ha ha. Nice! We like the dr dude! Thanks.

Anyone know what board was running the Gottlieb System 1 Countdown? It had skill shot and hit flash and maybe some other additions. Sorry, not up on my System 1 alternatives and/or custom software.

To whoever brought it, thanks! Had a great time playing it.

Was that the kid wearing the fedora? My son said he saw him put a high score up on one of the Pinballbulbs machines.

Not when I played him in the rookie tourney on Friday. Nice kid, he did not give me crap while he was kicking my ass. His mom was filming it I think.

As KCB pointed out, almost 200 people competed in the tournaments at the show. The tournament bank (11 games) included several older games (off the top of my head I remember Meteor, Andromeda, Frontier, Seawitch, and an EM that was being used at some point). Additionally, the tournament organizer did a great job of making the tournaments accessible to "regular" people. In addition to the main tournament (which on its own drew more than 100 participants), there was a rookie tournament and a ladies' tournament. The rookie tournament was exclusively for unranked players or those whose IFPA ranking was 2000 or lower. That event brought out several new competitors who enjoyed the experience so much they came back for the open tournament the next day. As for the women's tournament, more than 30 women - including several new players who had simply tagged along to the show with friends - decided to compete. Adding in the kids' tournament and the Classics pingolf tournament, I would say a lot was done to not only make those games accessible to to the regular people attending but also to encourage more participation in general.

Additionally, several local tournament hosts donated free entries to their weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and annual tournaments in the area to be used as prizes. I think the tournament director said something like 40% of competitors walked away with some sort of prize whether it was cash, t-shirts, free entries, etc. So not only were several of the competitors new to pinball, they were awarded prizes that will encourage them to keep participating throughout the year.

I can certainly appreciate what you are trying to accomplish in Ann Arbor, but I also wanted to make sure the tournament organizers here were recognized for everything they did to cater to both top players and the average attendee.

Seconded; This was my experience as well. I played in 4 of the tournaments (pingolf, rookie, 2x qualifying attempts) and did okay in each, but not good enough to make the top "whatever" needed to continue. There were the usual super skilled tourney regulars I could recognize, and many new people who seemed to just be getting into the hobby.