Had an amazing time at PAPA - my hats off to all who make this happen.

Watching the A finals was especially cool and unique - how often are you in a large crowd watching competitive pinball, cheering every multiball activation, oohing and aahing at every wild save?

I had a couple of thoughts on how to make watching A finals even more awesome and like other big spectator sport events:

1) A big screen dedicated to the match scores, with the current player highlighted; and another big screen dedicated to just the DMD of the current game (so we can all see the game scores). This would really help give the play more context and drama. I realize the DMD was visible on part of one screen on one side of the bank, but you couldn't really make out the scores unless you were right next to it. I also realize we could look up match scores on our phones. But I think making these details more up-front would really add to the spectator experience.

2) Maybe even a PA announcement of each player on their turn (they could pick their walk-up music like in baseball...probably too cheesy? )

3) The audio of the current game piped into speakers and audible to the crowd.

Thoughts on the feasibility/advisability of these?

mhs, is there an email for PAPA I can use? I tried to paste my post on the A Division spectator experience into the contact form but it doesn't nearly fit. Thanks-

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).

Yeah, all of my suggestions pretty much applied to the final, final round of A finals - to be held once all other division play had ended, to allow for PA announcements, crowd-audible game sounds, etc. Plus, then all the players competing in the finals of other divisions could watch the wizards in A.

That describes me pretty much exactly - same experience. I think the need to cater to the absolute beginner is being overstated. C as it is now is challenging enough to give the top finishers a sense of accomplishment while still giving talented newbies a shot to qualify for finals.

I think tweaking the ranking cutoffs and place cutoffs would be preferable to a D division (say, you must play B or higher if you are IFPA 600 or lower/were in the top 8 of C in the last 3 years) if the goal is to even out among A/B/C and get the better players in C to move up.

Yes, there could be someone who walks on in C never having played PAPA or in many other IFPA events and tears it up in a way befitting a B or A player. They would be forced to move up the following year if they did. I don't know how you prevent this unless you're pre-screening new people prior to qualifying (picturing PAPA crew sizing up a stranger).

Here's a deal for the PAPA 17 player to snap up, for the memories...
philadelphia.craigslist.org link