I saw someone almost tour the mansion in A division when I was watching on Twitch. Missed the last shot.

I watched the Final TAF game and none of them toured it. Casey walked off as 4th player. People did make statements about sandbagging but I can see why they want to. Why place 80th in A division when you can place in the top 8 in C? Listen to Coast to Coast Pinball Podcast and Nate has a great solution. If you have entered 20+ tourneys, you cannot play in C. C is for beginners. If people want to sandbag, thats on them and wouldn't affect me when/if I would compete.

I would tell the sandbaggers:
"Do you want to play in the sandbox, or do you want to goto the beach?"
- Dantebean

Josh Sharpe. Not only did he miss the last shot to start Tour (on ball 2), he also flubbed ball 3 with it waiting for him.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/YWTB8rXetLc?autoplay=1&rel=0
Papa walk thru

I followed the C division as I had a friend playing. I think they need to push a lot of the "c" players into B division or stop defining it as being "designed for players who are still new to competitive pinball. Players with below average league or tournament experience, or anyone who does not fit within the official descriptions of Division A or Division B caliber players, should compete here."

There were a ton of guys with 20-40+ tournaments under their belt. How is that new to anything? I know that A B are restricted to the top 400 but anyone "new to competitive pinball" should be warned that they are playing with mostly seasoned, albeit not the best, players in C. I'll stick to Pinburgh where people's actual skill level seats them opposed to where they feel comfortable playing.

*raises hand*

Not the WHOLE thing, but a good chunk of it.

If C is for new players, someone who has played in it before should not be able to play it again.
200 players in B would seem more appropriate.
I think a D division would be a bit much, not to mention the strain on scorekeeping resources.
Or just add the "everyone gets a ribbon" division.
Jr's and Sr's is to find the BEST young and older players, restricting them seems out of line.
Wish I could have made it this year, but I'll be there next March, and Replay FX!
Big congrats to Cayle!

If you talk to Mark and the other guys who set up games for PAPA, they'll tell you that they change the games as little as possible. The idea is that Joe Nobody can come in after only playing the games at Crazy Bob's and feel like he has a shot, because he's familiar with the games. Very few games on default settings have short ball times for even moderately skilled players. So they have to do something to avoid backups. In the old days, it was simple. You installed Extra Hard in the installs menu, tightened the tilt bob and jacked up the back legs.

Now, they do it a little differently. Software setting are rarely changed except to even out mystery awards and turn off EB's (points awarded instead). This makes the game more familiar. If I hit Sparky 7 times, multiball will be ready. Not some ridiculously impossible number of hits. Instead, mostly physical changes are done to the game. Out lane posts are moved out/removed, pitch is increased, skinny posts are made fat and flipper rubbers are changed. Even before urethane rubber were invented, different colored conventional rubbers were used to change gameplay. Unlike super bands, every color of conventional rubbers has different duromoter numbers.

When I heard that only C division would get super bands, I thought that was perfect. It's mostly casual players that like them. Those are the folks that are most likely to play in C division. Again, familiarity. No one has listed the games that had them here, but I bet we could figure out why each game got them. Mark and the guys change things for specific reasons. They don't just throw darts at a dart board to pick which game gets what. They're some of the best setup guys on the planet. If you second guess them, there's not many higher authorities to turn to.

Only one of the top 4 finishers in C has more than 12 tourneys on his resume. So most all those guys you saw in C with 20+ events really suck as players. You can't get mad at them for being bad players, can you? d

Two of the top 4 finishers have only 3 tourneys on their resume. The guy who has more than 12 is ranked slightly above 400, so this year was likely his last year to be eligible for C, no matter where he finished. Can you blame him for taking his last shot at C?

I didn't see any familiar names in C. That's my unscientific test to see if anybody is sandbagging.

I've thought about it long and hard and my opinion really is that if PAPA allows you to play in a certain division, you should not feel bad about playing in it. At the end of the day, all divisions other than A are going to use some arbitrary criteria to draw a line in the sand and consequently the top finishers in each division are the best players who managed to fall under those criteria. Maybe they are underranked, and some people think that they are sandbagging. Who cares? Any restricted division is going to have that situation going on no matter what the restrictions are based on the fact that the pool of players is drawn from certain criteria that are not directly correlated to ability to perform at PAPA or whatever the tournament in question is.

Remove/reduce prize pool seems to be easiest/least artificial solution for correcting incentives applicable to the C div.

Exactly.

Not correct.

Two of the final four had more than 20 tourneys... One had 21, one had 39... and these are only IFPA qualifying tourneys. One other had 19, including PAPA events as far back as 2006.

I also kinda think that top 400 rule should be pulled way out... Top 1000 or so need to be in B or A. How many of the top 1000 actually get to PAPA. Less than half I am sure.

I certainly don't begrudge anyone for playing in a tournament they are allowed to by the rules... However, if the C Division is really "designed for players who are still new to competitive pinball. Players with below average league or tournament experience" (from PAPA), then the rules should not allow someone with a fair amount (maybe 20, maybe 10??) IFPA results to be playing in that Division.

I like the idea of taking the money out of the C Division. Give away trophies, etc... Start the money at B. B would become a very, very serious tournament to place in and win. It's kinda wishy washy with C having some really good players.

I can tell you having played 1 day in C, then moving to B for a day... The difference from the better players in C to the average players in B was not that big. However, the difference from the lower level players in C to the upper level players in C was HUGE. Easily fixed, and I would guess PAPA already knows a lot of this.

I also got the vibe that some of the really good players in C are not "sandbagging" on purpose, or in their mind... but generally they seemed either young... or just not sure of themselves in a place like PAPA, and sort of figured they belonged in the lowest Division. What you don't know is often scarier than it really is.

To sum it up... I would never complain about a great player being in C... I would however have a problem if that great player had a lot of experience in pinball tournaments... That is what B should be for. I am sure there are some GREAT players who absolutely crumble, shake and let their nerves get the best of them in their FIRST few pinball tournaments.... That is what C should be for...

Top 4 finishers:

http://papa.org/live/playerIndex.php?bracketId=10&set=Finals

1. Jack Benson, 12 events, currently ranked 649

http://www.ifpapinball.com/player.php?p=19570#active

2. Alex Harmon, 39 events, *currently ranked 426*

http://www.ifpapinball.com/player.php?p=21137#stats

3. JP McCarthy, 3 events, currently ranked 1497

http://www.ifpapinball.com/player.php?p=6011

4. Dave Snyder, 3 events, currently ranked 9266

http://www.ifpapinball.com/player.php?p=19094

http://www.ifpapinball.com/player.php?p=19570#stats

http://www.ifpapinball.com/player.php?p=6011#stats

Gotta click on the stats tab.

We can all admit 39 tourney events is a bit much for a "beginner".

Lots of launch parties (one or two games tops), fund raisers and side tourneys. Both guys have been competing for less than two years. Hardly grizzled veterans.

None of the top 4 finishers in C competed at PAPA last year. I don't think it's fair to not give players at least one shot at C. Many of the top current players started in C.

I always encourage new competitors to take advantage of their amateur status. He went a little far, but it was likely his last shot at C either way.

Again, sorry for bring up the topic. Hope to meet you gents at Expo.

Word on that. It's a whole different beast when you see 50+ people that you're directly in competition with versus the same 5 friends. Probably the number one reason I did extremely badly at TPF 2013 and gave up before I really gave myself a fair chance.... I was nervous as CRAP with all of those people.. couldn't focus at all and just TILT TILT TILT TILT as I got more frustrated with myself.

In my view A should be top 200/250, B 200/250 - 1000 as anyone with a ranking of 1000 or higher has played enough tourneys to no longer be a novice per the PAPA description.

Back to topic at hand. I had a great time at PAPA and the PAPA After-Dark Party on Sunday night. Met a few more great pinball people and helped a couple new comers qualify for their first PAPA finals.

I grand championed ACDC twice along with Mustang (Which I really hate playing BTW), but just couldn't put any other good scores on the same ticket during "B" qualifying. The games in Seniors had my number thus stopped putting in tickets rather quickly to my dismay. Was really hoping to do well in my 1st try at Seniors but the machines won. I did however qualify 3rd in Classics II which was my 1st time ever qualifying at PAPA Classics. I even had the #1 spot for about 1.5 hours. Mark one off the pinball bucket list.

Will be back in 2015 for PAPA 18. Hope to see you all there.

Hear, hear! Back to the topic of how great PAPA is. Had a blast.

Thank you, Mark, Doug, and all the MANY MANY volunteers who make PAPA such a wonderful place to play, compete, hang out, and have fun.

Indeed, PAPA was great this year!

Two questions: why no pins set to free play for this kids this year? And why do some games have the match feature on and some have the match feature disabled?

maybe just focus on playing better?

We had two charity areas set up this year, one was where the kids bank was but we did have a POTC on free play near the change machine.

Sometimes when we pull games out of tournaments the settings stay the same so around the building you will see games where match is not on or it awards points for an EB from time to time.

SIDE TOURNAMENT FOR PAPA 18!!!

Anything on a monitor! One game on each of the A bank games on a monitor top ticket wins!

I was walking by the A bank and I saw Mark playing Quicksilver while watching a monitor in A bank. So after A finals and after the lights were down inside PAPA, I got a chance to play Alien Star while looking at the monitor. Everyone in my group was laughing and cheering every made shot and nudge, it was awesome! I need a monitor setup at home now...

This was my first PAPA and I had a great time, I will be going to every one from now on. I played in C division and managed to qualify, it was a great experience.

I have a friend that did this and it is very cool. He used bifold door track to make a track for his camera to travel on. During league he can slide it from whatever game people seem to be blowing up.

Yea its great to be able to watch other people play pinball on a monitor buuuuuut its even better when you watch yourself while you are playing a game! There's a weird half second delay from what you see on the screen and whats actually happening. Everything you do has to be impossibly early from what you see on the screen. If you hit the flipper button when you normally would on the screen image, you've already drained. Its really hard and disorienting but a lot of fun.

Does anyone know how many people competed in the seniors division this year? I posted a question to PAPA about the rationale for selecting age 50 as the cutoff age for "seniors" which seems quite young to me in this day. I mean this ain't the PGA for heaven sakes! The age cutoff for juniors certainly makes sense, but I am not seeing the rationale for age 50 as a seniors division cutoff. Perhaps the concern is that there would be too few entrees if the age were pushed up to say 60. Just curious.

http://papa.org/live/playerIndex.php?disp=division&sel=Seniors

I put up 1.1m while using the monitor, which was better than the 3 regular games I played on it

This was my first PAPA and I brought my 7 year old son with me. We had a great time and it's something he will remember for the rest of his life (mine too). Everyone there was super friendly. We'll be back for PAPA18 and I'll be volunteering now that I have a better idea of how it all works. Thanks for everything you guys do! see you in the spring.

P.S. Please give BK2K some shop love over the off season.

IMG_4272.JPG
IMG_4289.JPG

I thought I was decent at pinball until I showed up at PAPA on Friday.

The C Division games seriously kicked my butt. They were brutally bouncy and fast. The rubber was removed from most inlane/outlane divider posts making saves much harder (often impossible). The TAF had a massive tapered rubber post between the ramp and the vault which made both shots more difficult. Jackbot had fat yellow posts on the visor locks. Tilts were super tight (except for F14 which people was ridiculously loose for some reason). Ball save timers were reduced and in some cases completely disabled (BDK).

In general, I thought the machines were set up too difficult for the lowest division.. but I guess it's necessary seeing as some C div players were able to put of scores on TAF that exceeded most of the A div scores on the same machine.

I did like that they rotated the games up for the finals. I really enjoyed watching the A div play the same TAF that I sucked on the day before.

I definitely need to practice a lot more on bouncy/cruel machines before I try another PAPA!

My thoughts.

1) Super bands. LOVE them. I honestly feel like I get a better flow when they are on the games.

2) "Oh, one other suggestion before I forget: If modifications to game settings or bizarre physical bastardizations are performed, it would be nice if they were listed on a note on the machine. Players weren't told ahead of time about the disabled magnet on TAF or the odd WOZ settings."

I can't say this enough "EXPECT PAPA to bastardize the games" This is the world championships. I always walk up to the games and look and see what they've done (post removal, rubber removal, eb's turned off, etc). I learned that quickly when I started in 2008. To quote "these games are not set up like the ones in your basement"

3) sandbagging. I've heard this OVER and OVER again. I totally agree with the guy from Coast to Coast. And I've expressed it to Mark and Doug many times over the years. There are and continue to be sandbaggers in C. Logic? "I've never won the money in C, so I won't move up to B" I played in C for four years. NEVER qualified. But I voluntarily moved up to B last year. I'm not even ranked in the top 1000. My thoughts are that I play in league and I play in tournaments, so I'm not a novice and don't truly belong in C. I'm just not as talented as some of the other players. The games really are not set up much differently between B and C. And anyone who moved up this year can tell you that. They end up setting them up that way because they know there are sandbaggers in C. So, it hurts the novices that come in to play. 299 players that could have played in B if you go by the IFPA ruling. And if you look, I'm betting there were a lot of players outside of that 399 number that played in B. And there were players outside of the 100 number that played in A. I can name at least 3 off the top of my head.

PAPA is about challenging yourself. I'd far rather finish 85th in B, than 98th in C.

As always, thanks to the PAPA crew, the volunteers and the numerous people it takes to run the tournament. Looking forward to PAPA 18 and Replayfx!

Stern just posted a pic of the C winner, Jack Benson, who I didn't realize was a new Stern programmer (worked on Mustang). Really cool to have at least three programmers in the house for PAPA (Keith, Lyman, Jack).

I wasn't able to attend PAPA this year, but i'm really glad they decided to listen to some of the suggestions from last year and implement IFPA restrictions to the different divisions. Not only does it greatly reduce "sandbagging" but it also takes a lot of the guesswork out for participants of PAPA and levels out the talent/experience levels across divisions. At least for people in "C" this year they didn't have to worry about competing against people ranked in the top 200 or higher like we did last year. There's a pretty big experience gap between 200 and 400 in the IFPA standings.

If anything I would like to see a "D" division created for novices and beginning tournament players ranked outside the top 1200 or so. As it stands right now there was around 170 competing in C this year vs. only around 90 in either A or B. If you created a D division and made the IFPA cutoff at a point that would draw about 70-80 players away from C that would balance things out really well between the different divisions. You wouldn't have to make "D" a full 10 game bank but maybe do something with 6 games along the lines of the Seniors or Juniors tournament. I'd even argue that you could do away with Seniors and Juniors and replace them with "D". I've been whooped on enough by both "Junior" and "Senior" players to know that age doesn't mean a whole lot when it comes to pinball talent/experience. I have a 9 month old son now and when he's old enough to start competing I'd feel better if he was competing against players ranked outside the top 1200 in "D" rather than the Josh H. and Escher's that have dominated the Juniors division the past few years.

Drawing lines between divisions is hard. I think the format of Pinburgh is the most genius way to address a lot of the concerns with the PAPA format. It's a different animal entirely, but it's definitely the tournament for me!

My son played in Juniors, As I said, our first time at a tournament. Juniors and Seniors are basically the same other than the ages. Folks playing in A,B and C Divisions can play in seniors as long as they meet the age requirement and juniors is the same way.

At first, I was a little disappointed that this wizard Escher (who placed 30th in A division) was allowed to play in juniors. My son played juniors all day Friday and Saturday (we got there too late for Thursday). He would do an entry, then he would go out on the floor and practice the games, then try again, rinse repeat. He played so much that I used all my entry money for C to buy him more entries in juniors. On Friday he was on the bubble and ended up finishing just outside the top 8, There were more entries on Saturday so he was a bit farther down but he still tried hard to get one of those plaques, that's all he wanted (other than more tokens). I was thinking man, these ranked kids shouldn't be in this division.

The more I thought about it, the more I was glad that there was no restriction other than age.

My kid got to play pinball against the best youth players in the world, He knew he wasn't going to beat Escher or Logan or any of the other great PinKids but he got to see how he stacked up against them. It gave him something to strive for, to practice for and that was worth more than any plaque he could of got if those kids were restricted.

Also, he got to meet Escher, it was a huge thrill for him, he was speechless and in awe from all of our times watching him on PAPA.tv. I got to talk to him a bit while I was at the Project Pinball booth and the kid is a class act and a great spokesperson for pinball.

Juniors is fine the way it is. We both can't wait for next year!

EDIT: I reread the quote and you were talking about a D division and not Juniors but I felt the way you did about my newbie kid playing against the semi-pros in Juniors. sorry if my reply wasn't the correct response to your post.

Jesus H. Christ, Papa 25 will have a 60 page rulebook by the time you guys are through with it.

History of tournaments played are not a valid measurement for defining C division.
If I have played in the last 10 PAPAs and NEVER qualified for C, why should I be forced to move up?
Furthermore, the competition and caliber of play in B is miles ahead of C.
If you think that there is only a small gap between C and B you are sorely mistaken.

It's called the World Championships for a reason.
Anyone complaining about the field / sandbagging needs to do only one thing:

PLAY BETTER

I think appeac is trying to say things are fine the way they are

I know someone who never qualified in B, but chose to move up to A when he couldn't qualify. The second year he was in A? He qualified. He finished 10th overall that year. And the disparity between B and A is HUGE.

It's fairly common in modern politics, not your fault for falling into the trap of treating the symptoms, not the problem. It's a simple economic exercise, what incentives are there for a player to choose a certain division?

A - WPPRS, money, trophy
B - Money, trophy
C - Money, trophy

It's easy to see what differentiates B and C division - nothing. Remove the money incentive from C division, and only people who know they have no chance at money in the other divisions will play in it.

It's a bit more difficult to predict the A and B split without top-down limitations. The value that a person places on WPPR's varies on how many they already have. I'm inclined to believe that anyone that the restriction already applies to also has a good enough chance at the higher payout in A that they would self-select it.

It's a much easier solution than adding more divisions, meaning more machines out of the free play area, and more volunteers needed for score keeping and maintenance.

Eh, I'm just one to never blame a person for making a rational decision, even if other people don't like it. I always blame the game over the player.

I think the rules are pretty much perfect for the divisions right now. If you play poorly in a bunch of tournaments then you won't be ranked in the IFPA top 400 and can play in C as long as you want. I think the only thing PAPA is currently lacking is a division catering towards beginners/novice players. It really doesn't matter for my personal sake as I'll be playing "B" for any future PAPA event. I'm just thinking of ways for PAPA to expand competitive pinball to more players.

As far as the gap between B and C i don't really think it is miles apart. I think the top 10 qualifiers in "C" would have a good shot at beating the bottom 10 qualifiers in "B". Plus C has double the number of participants.

I think the gap IS miles apart between the qualifiers of "A" vs. "B". With that being said I think the bottom half of the "A" field would have difficulties against the top "B" and "C" players.