I am very excited to announce the creation of PHILA Pinball. This is a regionally-based event with qualifying across eight different locations in the Greater Philadelphia and a Match-Play Finals taking place in a single location on November 4, 2017.

http://www.philapinball.com

Key Highlights:
Each of the eight locations has three machines for qualifying.
Play the machines as many times as you want, and take a picture with you and your best score.
Submit your scores, and we’ll add you to the scoreboard.
Your best eight machines across all your submissions count towards your total.
Top 32 play in the A-Division Finals, and everyone else is invited to play in the B-Division side tournament.

Dates:
September 22 to November 1 - Qualifying
November 4 - Finals at PinCrossing in Linfield, PA

We are hoping that this event gets people playing pinball in and around Philadelphia. We have lots of places with a growing number of machines and an increasing competition scene.

Organizing a multi-location event is something new for the Philly area, so please let me know if you have any questions or feedback!

PHILAQualifyingGames (resized).PNG

Word on the street is that they're supposed to be going in today. If anyone visits this weekend and they're not in yet, let me know and we'll update the status of those machines on the the "available games" list. My understanding is that there will be five total, but not sure of the other two games.

Current Standings and Game Leaders as of Sept 25 (Day 4 of 40 of Qualifying).

We've got some local events coming up which would be a good opportunity to get some scores logged!

Penn Skate - Sept 26 - Monthly Tournament - https://www.facebook.com/PennSkateArcade/
PinCrossing - Sept 27 - Wednesday League - http://www.pincrossing.com/
Pinball Gallery - Oct 3 - Monthly Tournament - http://www.pinballgallery.net/
Philly Pinball Club - Oct 5 - Bi-Weekly Meet-up - http://phillypinball.club/

Standings: http://www.neverdrains.com/phila

PHILAStandings - 2017-09-25 (resized).PNG

We wanted to announce that we have made the decision to extend the qualifying period through the month of November. The Fall Finals will now be taking place on Saturday, December 2 and will still be hosted at PinCrossing. We wanted to give everyone ample time to hit up as many of our awesome local places as possible!
I also wanted to thank the 15 people that have registered in just the first week. Thanks for your support of local Philadelphia pinball!

Here's your leaderboard right now: https://www.neverdrains.com/phila/playerIndex.php

More information at http://www.philapinball.com

We're up to 22 players after just a few weeks! Thanks to everyone who participated thus far. Since we have a large volume of machines, I've created a few supporting pages with data from the NeverDrains site to create a "Top 5 High Scores" on each machine consolidated into a single page, in addition to showing a "Player Matrix" which shows each players and machine in a grid to highlight what position they are in.

The goal of this is to give people a simple way to compare themselves to others in the standings, to highlight locations they haven't played yet, and to help them see at-a-glace where they might improve their scores.

http://www.philapinball.com/scoreboard

Please also feel free to join the Facebook group, where you can see people posting scores across the eight locations!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/PHILAPinball/

PHILAMatrix (resized).PNG

A very nice local news write-up about the Monthly Tournaments in Allentown, PA and a shout-out to PHILA Pinball.

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2017/10/pinball_tournament.html

I think that my goal behind this project is to get people going to a variety of places in and around Philadelphia. Jon's alerted me to another place or two in Philadelphia that should be adding machines soon, and Reimer pointed me to another place in the Downingtown (at least, I think it was Downingtown). We'll have to think about limits, i.e. "how far is too far", how do we structure the qualifying, how many more places do we add, etc.

I can speak with Bill on Tuesday night at the Monthly to see if he knows them and can give an introduction.

Hey Matt. I just re-read my original reply to you, and my words to you read as very dismissive. Just wanted to share that dismissiveness wasn't my intention!

When I say "in and around Philadelphia", I actually would include Reading in that and would welcome including additional locations, especially places that have more than five machines. There will probably be a breaking point that we'll have to decide on "how far is too far", but if a location is willing to support the league and be inviting to competitive players, then I am all about including them. I also want to make sure it's structured so that if you don't want to travel terribly far from your home base, you can still compete and still qualify for Finals.

All this time I've been using "Philadelphia" as an anchoring point, but it's really driven by the current and hopefully prospective future players who are willing to take their time and travel to the various locations. If that means we include a few locations that are further afield (both east and west of the city), then so be it. It also shouldn't stop us from doing one-off events at cool locations. I did an analysis and so far there were about 100 events in Pittsburgh this year, and only about 30-ish in the Philadelphia area.

Casey and I have started conversations about what places to include next time around, so if anyone has further suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks! We're trying here. My perspective is that there's demand for it, and we're seeing more places pop up with machines, especially over the past two years. I've also met a number of good people both in the city and in the suburbs who seem to enjoy competitive pinball, so we'll continue to build out the community and competitions as much as we can. If anyone has any advice for what's worked and hasn't in their locations, I'm very open to hearing it.

Since they have five machines, I think it's worth considering. How do the machines play there?

Hello Everyone! We are happy to announce the launch of the Winter 2018 Season of PHILA Pinball.

We're sending a brief note this evening to share some of the basics, with a larger write-up and more announcements coming later this week..

--Format
* Qualifying will take place January 2 to March 22
* Finals will take place at Pinball Gallery in Malvern, PA on Saturday, March 24
* There are currently nine locations, and we may be announcing a few more locations later this week
* There will be three qualifying games at each location
* Your best 8 games will count towards your score
* Top 32 will make A-Division Finals

--Entry Fee & Registration
* Entry Fee is still $10; scores can still be submitted but will not be approved until we receive your entry fee
* We are using MatchPlay.events for score tracking
* You can post scores (with pictures) directly to MatchPlay.events. These scores will be viewed and approved by a Tournament Director.
* You can self-register at https://matchplay.events/live/phila2018winter.
* Click on the "register for this league" link. If you don't have an account, register on MatchPlay.events
* If you would rather post scores to the Facebook group or to our email address, we will accept scores that way but will be posting those scores less frequently than those submitted directly to MatchPlay.events

--Here are the list of machines for the event:
Barcade - Champion Pub
Barcade - Junk Yard
Barcade - The Addams Family
Confetti Arcade - Gorgar
Confetti Arcade - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Confetti Arcade - Whirlwind
North Bowl - PBR Can Crusher
North Bowl - Star Trek
North Bowl - Star Wars
Penn Skate - Bone Busters Inc
Penn Skate - Last Action Hero
Penn Skate - Pirates of the Caribbean
Pinball Gallery - Fish Tales
Pinball Gallery - Laser War
Pinball Gallery - Paragon
PinCrossing - KISS (Bally)
PinCrossing - KISS (Stern)
PinCrossing - Monster Bash
South Bowl - Iron Man
South Bowl - Mustang
South Bowl - The Rolling Stones
University Pinball - Aerosmith
University Pinball - Ghostbusters
University Pinball - The Walking Dead
Village Arcade - Doodle Bug
Village Arcade - Old Chicago
Village Arcade - Wizard

We realize that there are some repeats from last season because of a limited number of machines at each location, plus our desire to avoid using the same machine twice in the same season. If you encounter issues, please be sure to communicate with the group via Facebook or drop us an e-mail so we can work with the venues to get issues resolved. Also be sure to remember our "'house rule" of taking a photo with any broken machines to receive 10 game points.

--Sponsors
We want to thank our awesome sponsors for the Winter 2018 Season!

* Confetti Arcade - https://www.facebook.com/Confetti-Arcade-Berkshire-Mall-254850791295395/
* North Bowl - http://www.northbowlphilly.com/
* Penn Skate - http://pennskate.com/
* Pinball Gallery - http://www.pinballgallery.net/
* PinCrossing - http://www.pincrossing.com
* Rage Tilt Pinball - https://www.ragetiltpinball.com/
* South Bowl - http://southbowlphilly.com/
* University Pinball - http://universityfamilyfuncenter.com/
* Village Arcade - https://www.facebook.com/Village-Arcade-159016544490511/

--Quick Links:
* Main Site - http://www.philapinball.com
* MatchPlay.events Standings - https://matchplay.events/live/phila2018winter
* Rules - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ixrWoA2ubjKFYkIGtu1CCYnA_Yz28BVj0dRyOGxqgAc/edit
* Registration Status - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XsUdaeus2IJZZTDbAp85VM-yZx3rknNMobqg0hWndE8/edit#gid=1817040417

We hope you're excited for the next season! Please drop a line if you have any questions or comments.

Best,
Corey & Casey
Tournament Directors

I just wanted to send an update that we're in the middle of the Winter 2018 Season of the PHILA Pinball regional league and to spread the word that qualifying is still open.

We have 33 machines at 11 different locations, and you can play and post scores any time these locations are open. It's Best Game qualifying, and your best 8 games count. Top 32 will qualify for A Division Finals, and everyone else is welcome to play in the B Division Side Tournament.

Here's a (slightly over the top) promotional video for the PHILA Pinball League Winter 2018 Season.

Entry fee is only $10, and you can visit our website at:
http://www.philapinball.com -> Main Site
http://www.facebook.com/PHILAPinball -> Facebook Group

Serious answer:
Now that we're clear of PinFest we're starting to turn our focus back to PHILA. Give us a few more weeks to line up venues, games, and sponsors.

In other tournament news, everyone should come on out to Allentown on Tuesday for the Penn Skate Monthly:
https://www.facebook.com/events/234972413922854/

Spaceballs answer:

soon (resized).png

Drop me a note at [email protected] with the location of where you play in Burlington County. We explored a few South Jersey places but couldn't make it work for the last iteration. Would love to include Jersey (my home state, after all) if we have a good place that has moderate to decent upkeep on the machines.