"The top players will still win, people who buy their way in will be eliminated in the finals quickly"

Yeah, but what about the players who were kicked out of the lower half of the division because they didn't want to spend a paycheck?

Any pump and dump format rewards spare cash over skill, there's no way around it. Skill will still come out on top in many cases, but there's no denying people can pay to place better. If you want to have unlimited qualifying, make it a one time fee per day, and then rig the software to give priority to people with less plays.

Can someone clarify this for those of us new to the competitive pinball world? I played at PAPA last year and you paid for a 5 game ticket. I think it was $10 for the C division. My understanding was that they took your best overall ticket and gave you points based on your score for each game when ranked against everyone else that played that game. Weren't you allowed to buy as many tickets as you wanted?

So what would the difference between that format and the new format be? Since you could buy as many 5 game tickets as you want, wasn't it still pump and dump?

Thanks, Hilton I agree with that!

Just as an FYI, because there are a bunch of people who like to raise points like this every year and I feel the need to ensure the correct information is out there...

My background is I used to work in theme park management, and specifically how to safely move people from place to place. I work directly with the fire department every year to ensure that our show is safe and run as best as possible to serve it's mission, which is to share the passion of gaming with whomever wants to join in. There are other shows that are more about being able to walk up to a game and play, such as the one that Clay does (I forget the name of it offhand) where the goal is to sell no more tickets than available machines to play. Our goal has never been to provide that, and quite frankly the financial way our show works it would be a complete disaster for us to try doing that. Clay has that set up.

If this makes anyone decide to support another show over us, I think that is great! There are a ton of different shows for a reason!

But, to be very clear, in the past the Fire Marshall has told me that we (MGC) are the best prepared group for the type of show that we do that they have ever seen. Everything that we do is based on my knowledge of how to safely move large crowds of people from place to place, and that is how things are done, knowledge that I got from helping to safely move 50k+ people through what is ultimately a similar type of recreation event.

Most of this isn't really interesting, but I'm happy to share more... but a PAPA thread probably isn't the place.

...

As for the format difference, I was always very curious about how I would do playing in the PAPA format. I'm not good enough / don't care about "real" competition enough to ever plan a trip to go down there to play myself, but the format was intriguing to me. I have played in pump and dump style tournaments, and I don't love them. Having said that, I figure that after a year or two, the split on if it is a good thing or a bad thing will be about the same as it was now. All formats are interesting, and the one big positive that I do see is that the previous method was much harder to teach to a new player. New players "get" the pump and dump format very easily, and can be walked through the playoff system.

We saw the same change when we moved the main MGC tournament off the PND style and into a limited entry tournament (which, by the way, is both free to enter and the winner gets just a certificate, so we are TOTALLY not competing with PAPA for prize money!) where we had to really explain to people how the limited entry works. Once people get it though, this new tournament method has been preferred by the majority of people who have talked to us about it, because they don't feel like they must throw a bunch of money at qualification, they can do their entries and then go enjoy the rest of the show, and the lines stay short for entries because of the limited nature - in fact, there are times you can walk up and play with no line usually.

Now, that style works for us, but for PAPA, where the main focus is on the tournament and being able to participate in that to win big money, I do see why the PND style may be the best for it. It doesn't personally interest me, but then hey, not many tournaments do, and that's okay too! I hope anyone who is going there the best in it, and that it does ultimately turn out better!

@Spyderturbo007:

Previously you had to do well on 5 games (your entire ticket). A ticket with one great score and four less than average scores would be no good. If your first two games are good, you're under increased pressure to make sure your remaining games are good

Now you can just replay each game individually until you have a good score on each machine.

I've sold at the tent the past two years. I will agree that it is done as well as they can and they do improve. I do feel bad for the guy in charge of the tent though, the last MGC the tent frosted over and started dripping on tables. No way to prepare for that or to stop it. Guy had his hands full with that for sure.

I think you are right Zacaj, but the great players should be happy about this because it should drive up payouts, this format is encouraging the players on the edge to pump money into tickets to get into that last spot to make the finals. More players will feel like the have a shot vs needing to play another 5 game ticket. Chances are pretty good they will get eliminated quickly but who knows you could get a long shot in the final round.

Nah Listening to people call in the radio to ask who should start on a fantasy football team is worse.

As someone who would be in the lowest division, I'm now less interested in participating in the tournament because it seems that it is more likely that it would cost me a small fortune to qualify.

That's my partner Gary. He doesn't post on here and isn't as visible to as many people as I am (I deal with the "sexy" content side, so when people are asking what is going on they talk to me to find out events, not to hear about the new heat company we got last year, which is more Gary's side) but he is just as important to the show as I am.

Having said that, Gary is amazingly good at handling situations like that, and while it definitely did suck - four days before the show it was supposed to be 60 degrees out for the weekend, it was 25!! - he did a great job managing it.

Yeah, the old PAPA way was more about consistency in qualification. Having said that, many playoff systems now try to match up people going deeper and deeper into the field. If you pump and dump, but get squared up against someone who is better than you, you generally get knocked out earlier. I actually think PND used to be a more crazy format when you would get bigger and bigger placement breaks based on your position. Now, with the tournaments that start that way often taking the final 16+ and having them play head-to-head knockout matches, and your placement matters much less. I have heard a few good players say that they could care less where they qualify in that group because there is no real advantage to being in the top X other than game choice, and that isn't a big deal.

Specifically because of that change in how those formats work, I think that the PND style with PAPA may end up working out fine.

Yeah,touch those flipperbuttons with your flu...that's a way to eliminate those top guys

Is your tournament strategy to get everyone else sick?

I say it only half-jokingly.

EDIT: rockstar beat me to it.

Expo is no longer on the PAPA list, what did Mike do now?

Actually, it was surprising how many other people were coughing too. There was a cold snap happening and it bought a few people down.

rd

I read a lot of silly stuff on pinside, but this is a pretty outlandish statement. Shameful, even.

really?

That is my assessment of PAPA. Nothing wrong with that paradigm. Thye are trying to build the sport by coming up with bigger prize pools. The only way to build large prize pools is either with sponsorship (dont think Pinball is quite there yet) or get lessor players with little/no possibility of walking away with cash to help bump up the pot for the greater players to win.

Go look through the last X years of PAPA finalists. I could write out a top 20 for this year and likely get over 50% correct without even doing any data mining. Few people are on the calibur of top 100 players in consistently dominating the sport. If you want to raise money for those people to win... well it does not take a genious how to do it.

IF they were not concerned with building prize pools for the A players then they could easily prove me wrong by keeping all seeding money within a division. i.e. If B division brings in the most seeding money then they get the larger prize pool.

Unfortunately they now filter all the cash upwards. Please explain to me if that is not the case.

According to the PAPA website the top prizes for PAPA 20 divisions are (in thousands) $7, $2, $1, $0.15. Previous years they were $10, $4, $1, $0.5. So they don't appear to be trying to build a bigger prize pool. First place in A does get 3.5 times the second place finisher and the winner of B division. Was that what you meant by "filtering all the cash upwards"?

http://papa.org/competitions/papa-world-championships/
http://papa.org/competitions/papa-world-championships/papa-19-world-championships/
http://papa.org/competitions/papa-world-championships/papa-18-world-championships/
http://papa.org/competitions/papa-world-championships/papa-11-world-championships/

How much money was collected last year?
How much was paid out?

I don't know anything about PAPA, but the reason I don't play in tournaments that have the "pump and dump" style is exactly why Whysnow says.

I know I'm not going to win, there is no need for me to just dump money into other people's pockets. I'd rather just skip the tournament all together.

It also feels like a way for rich people to win more. I literally can't afford to keep buying tickets all day, so either I perform on what I can afford or I watch some guy who can outspend me brute force a win.

If there is a tournament with a flat entry fee, or even "pump and dump" for charity, I'm willing to play in those.

I have a pulse, so if it's that easy to qualify, great! I'm a pretty new player and qualifying in the top 16 of my local folks here can be a challenge for me in a similar format.

I also never said anything about a 'car payment' levels. Given that I play for fun - and tournaments when I can for a different challenge - my tolerance for spending even $100 on entries is pretty low. You're correct, it is cheaper not to show up, not spend the money and not qualify. That's exactly my point. If I thought about making the flight out to a tournament like that just to get shutout of even D just because others spent more money, it would not be something I'd be as interested in doing.

I'm simply adding my perspective as someone new to the hobby. You've been around this a lot longer and I would expect to view things differently.

Yes, exactly what I mean. You can go mine the data to check it further as I dont have the time and have done it before.

The next step is to count the number of total entries for each division X cost of each entry. I did the math a few years back and the money put into lower divisions versus payout is WAY lopsided.

The ratio of paid into division: paid out in division will clearly show how money is filtered upstream.

I have no issue with pump and dump, but it is a kick in the junk when B players, C players, D players dont get IFPA points and are also helping to further seed the prize package for A.

I was just stating that the 5 game ticket doesn't require as much consistency as it used to. Before we increased to 24 qualifiers, you really had a hard time getting in with even 1 zero on your ticket. Now quite a few get in with 2.

As far as the best game format just favouring people with unlimited money, I can guarantee you that you could give me unlimited entries in PAPA A division and I still wouldn't qualify. You still have to be able to put up the scores.

There are plenty of players who spent plenty of money on the old format as well.

Also, all the games at PAPA this year will be on free play, so coin drop has nothing to do with it.

As always, payouts are set at PAPA events. Great players will not see a bigger payout than what is advertised.

This is not the case. In fact the last two years, the lowest division (D) paid out more than it took in.

You also have to keep in mind that each division costs a different amount. So yes, while the payouts for A Division at PAPA 19 were significantly larger than B Divison, an A ticket cost $25 and a B ticket cost $15.

In fact, for both of the past two years, A division players paid more total into the event than B players, who paid more into the event than C, who paid more into the event than D

Just looking at tickets doesn't quite tell the whole story either, because volunteers are frequently lower ranked players who cash in their credit for entries which inflates the total number of (mostly C and classics) entries.

paying to play a game is the same whether it goes into the slots or into a ticket, as far as causing imbalance goes

So can you tell us Doug what did drive this change? What are you hoping to achieve with the different format?

Allow me to quote our director from another forum:

"I've listened to more people crap all over the PAPA format in the last several years than I can count. It was literally one of the lowest rated formats in our surveys. I have e-mails from probably a dozen people in this exact thread who have privately suggested major changes over the years because they weren't happy with the format or how things have been done."

What are the ratios of paid in vs paid out for ALL of the divisions from the past few years?

The ratios are what tell the story. I mined the data from a few years ago and the ratios were clear that the money filtered upstream looking at the ratios. This is not a problem, as I fully understand the reason for any pump and dump is to increase prize pools for top players.

To mark that as the only reason here is leaving out many important details.

I'm certainly not particularly a fan of pump and dump, however as someone who's run the format I know there's more reasons for it than prize pool.

Well, it's not what we are attempting to do. The prize pools are guaranteed before the event.

We've done a lot of balancing the last few years (changing costs of tickets, changing restrictions) in order to balance things out. PAPA 17 and prior that may have been the case, but I don't have direct access to those numbers.

Good to know. Thx for all you do!
I liked the previous format fwiw.
I likely did not like it at first but do now as i have learned more the past few years.

Thx for what u do!

yep, had that happen to me this year (literally moments right after being interviewed for the local news station). fortunately, it only happened the first morning and I managed to get most of my goods moved quickly without too much getting damaged.

sadly, gary had his hands full and never bothered to even stop by and see just how much of my stuff was damaged

I have heard some of the podcasts and streams talk negatively about the PAPA format. It's probably a damned if you, damned if you don't kind of thing.

This puts Hitler videos to shame! LOL

http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.captiongenerator.com%2F187992%2FDimitri-Reacts-to-new-PAPA-format&h=xAQFp0qlzAQFIAWjvulvwgHT-JsY3uiouT4UAu2w7Fa8k-w&enc=AZP4RTNZhaH0FZ_HCKIv5elaxgM5AqfL5-8HVjd7E-Im736FNeqfavo5zyWjYEa0uZnAXkfCRYRCvY8PhPQsS4-45tA7kLNUjdSgTa2R-1AhEPd2YUEYNtkYiuZTp9luBvYo_-po_94fBDXHy84Z4tPoElNI3Qwb6z0cqVpLPv15SQfhkN-st0nOcSBDDVsp_fg

No real preference as I'll probably never go to PAPA. Cost to travel puts me above my threshold on what I'm willing to spend on a pinball tournament.

But, have you looked at the format used at TPF last year? In my opinion that is the best format overall. I wasn't so sure when it was announced but after thinking it over it's kind of a best of both worlds with some good strategy built into it. Their format was a flat fee for the tournament for which you got ___ number of entries. Once those entries were done you were done. The number of entries was enough to play each game twice or you could pick a smaller set of games (think it was top 6 scores) and focus all your plays on those games. It still rewarded the consistent players as you were limited on plays but it also gave those less consistent players the chance to qualify as they could play more games on a couple of games they did poorly on (by just focusing on a handful of games vs the full row).

In the end, if you are not a consistent player pumping in money until you qualify is a bad idea anyway as you wont do anything but put up eggs in the finals. I've learn this the hard way after spending more than I wanted to just to get a good game in to qualify and then placing 3rd or 4th in all the final's games, in multiple tournaments.

All of these tourneys people reference with this format or that format and papa should try this or that bcuz "X" show does it makes no sense. Papa and pinburgh pay out more than any tournament. They also get more players than any other tournament. They set the bar, thet introduce things like giant tvs next to machines showing playfields, live papa tv, and many other tourney inovations. If they modeled after smaller events with way smaller payouts, you realize attendance would drop heavily and few if any foreign players would attend. Big payouts draw the most players. Players cant expect big payouts if players arent paying into the pot. Tell wpt to let players pay 5 bucks to enter and see what happens to the event and the payouts lol. And the deep pockets thing? What the heck is the difference between old format and new. Both fornats you can play as much as you want. Both formats you will have some sort of lines so u cant just play over and over till your pockets are empty. The only difference between old papa format and new format, is when I play 5 games, ibcan choose to play the same game more than once within that 5 game time. It will still take the same amount of time to play, same people in line to wait to play.

Actually, I believe we were the first to do the TV thing at one of our Midwest Gaming Classic tournaments.

PAPA does what any good organization does - they look around and incorporate and improve on what others did. We projected on a projector a couple of the finals games, but it was crazy last minute and didn't work so well for us. The format moved to other places where it works much better. We looked at improving ours, but we don't have 1 / 10th the funding that a place like PAPA does, so we had to drop the idea.

It's completely conceivable that they didn't see the screen thing because of us too. But it isn't like they have a monopoly on all tournament innovations. I still think the biggest of those was the return of the IFPA, which wasn't their thing at all.

Tournament pinball people are proven to be %100 no fun. Dont understand what the fuss is about.
I'm sure they will all find something else to complain aboot.

I'm not sure which tournaments that you've been attending, of the ones where I've helped out (the chicago michigan expos over multiple years), I've had nothing but a good time and have met some wonderful people.

yeah, some of the people might be a little intense, but given that there's money on the line, that's to be expected. I would like to state that your opinion doesn't represent the rest of us from our mitten shaped state

Zero logic in this post in total

- Big TV's don't bring players
- Payouts can easily remain unchanged based off format. Pump and dump, game tickets or limited entries all can have same payout. Just set prices accordingly. In fact, securing a big payout is HARDER with pump and dump as you can't guarantee the total volume of plays. With something like limited entries for a flat fee you know the the pots. Volume of sales drive the pot size. With TPF they sold out, I find it hard to believe PAPA still wouldn't sell out as long as the number of entries was reasonable.
- Smaller events can have more fun formats. Don't you think more fun with high payouts would bring out more players than just high payout and not as much fun?
- Difference between old and new. ticket format requires consistency across a bank of games to put a solid score up on 5 games on the same ticket. Pump and dump requires much less consistency as you can play individual games to pump up the score of that single game.

i was referring to they have vertical large lcds mounted 2 stacked high on mounting apparatus next to each game in the A bank.
also side cameras and other cameras with multiple views and software showing online and a live pro broadcast.
ive seen projectors projecting an image long ago as well. mpe did it the 2nd year of their show showing the entire pf. the screen was like a story tall. lol

papa is also not a show, its just an event. many forget that. at a SHOW that has a pinball tourney within, you will already have many patrons their frequenting the show, so tourneys at shows can be more lenient as far as payouts and other details.

Papa is a tournament only, in order to draw large number of players from all over, you need high payouts. if they let u play only twice and it was free or 10 bucks a person total or any other format that limited the pot growth, the event would cease to exist to anyone outside of the local area because people would not travel that far and stay that long to play for peanuts when you can do that right in your own backyard.

people need to decide. if you want to play for high stakes, players need build the pot.
if you want to play in charity events, or for free leagues or events with no payouts, etc, that is fine to.
that can be done on a local basis, or at shows that have an event within so players are already there anyways so no added travel expenses for the tourney.

Those people only in it for free or to play with their local pals don't travel to papa as it is.
Papas C division pays out more than most MAIN divisions at any given tourney anywhere else.

any current show that has little or no payouts, but still has nice tourney attendance, if you took the show out of the equation and just had the tourneys as they are, the number of players would drop greatly.

Yup, that's what we did from what I have been told first. I see what you do as an innovation on that, but it is because it makes *sense* for a place like PAPA to do that where the goal of the event is to get people to participate in the tournament. Like I said, we did it on a limited basis once or twice, had some decent feedback on it but had no way to comfortably continue the format and no reason to pay enough money to improve it, so we opted to drop it.

For PAPA, where tournament play is their main goal, I would think it is much more likely they could and would want to do those improvements.

No matter what, I find it silly to say that PAPA introduced giant TVs to tournament play when even you state that MPE did it much larger in their second year. I actually think that it was MPE's considerably superior version that made us decide to drop it.

I disagree with this greatly. The MGC has NO payouts, yet we are still hosting tournaments that entertain over 100 people. It would be completely irresponsible for us to host a tournament where we were lenient on "details". Now, if you define details as screens with lots of different angles, sure - that doesn't make sense for us to invest in. Hell, PAPA is the same weekend as us, and Pinburgh used to always be on the same weekend as us beforehand, so a lot of big time players decided to go there anyway. But that doesn't mean that I would find it acceptable to have a bad experience just because "it's part of your ticket already."

And, from knowing other show organizers, they feel the same.

I guess I don't get your point - of course. If you take the payout part out of PAPA, are you arguing attendance would be just as strong?

The thing that is the difference between PAPA and a show, as you say, is that if the MGC had to drop the tournament (like we thought we were going to be forced to do a few years ago), we weren't worried that the show would end. Take the tournament out of PAPA, and PAPA wouldn't exist.

So what does this all mean? I have no idea. I am certain that PAPA examined all parts of their tournament and decided to make this change only after a lot of thought. And I'm sure their tournament will be just as good if not better than it was in the past. Like I also said, I am interested in it slightly less now than I was, but it isn't like I was making plans to attend any time soon anyway (doesn't help being on MGC weekend!), so I'm not their target crowd anyway.

So, interesting thing that we learned from the MGC and our "fun with the state of WI" tournament stuff... For us, what brings out the most players is diverse, yet sensible formats where everyone feels that they can play in a test of their own skill. We had to drop payouts altogether to keep the tournaments, so we worked to create fun tournament styles that could work without people paying in each time - limiting entries, limiting time while limiting overall points possible, etc. What we found is a diverse line up of tournaments, designed to give good entry points in different ways to players of all skills, were very important for people to want to participate.

Again though, I think this sort of thing is really different for each event. PAPA would not draw as many people if they were not doing everything they could to attract the best in the world to travel to play in the tournament. But I also believe they don't have too many people who go there to participate in their first tournament ever... and that's great! They do a great job at what they do!

I am personally interested to see what happens in late April after this is over and has a super exciting end to the PAPA tournament finals

Oh no..RotoDave got sick

Stink eh. Shit happens.

rd

Goat dan im saying just the opposite. What im saying is, your show has many people that go regardless of your tournament. So having a tourney is icing on the cake and you will get people playing in tourney regardless if no payouts. Im also saying papa is just a tourney, not a show. If papa had a free tourney no payouts or very small payouts the attendance would be minimal. Its not a show, so people would not be there for a show and trickle to a tourney bcuz they are already there. Hope I made sense this time. Some people were suggesting to have papa like other rvents that have little pay in etc etc etc. What im stating, is that only works AT A SHOW or local event because people go regardless of tourney format, payouts, prizes, etc. Papa isnt a show, so payouts matter. It has to be on a big scale.

We will have over 400 non-tournament games available and set to free play this year for any attendees. While not a 'show' in the sense that we have vendors and games for sale, our attendance from non-competitive players way outnumbers the total of serious competitive players.

There aren't too many shows where you pay $20 to get in and have access to 400 pins on free play

I'd be there with a $0 prize pool. Martian or bust

Would it be more fun if I complained about Stern NIB prices, J-pop, or ghosting inserts?

Yes!