Do you know the guy that got last place? Hope he had fun.

I'm not sure what the answer is. Could you make state/provincial finals an open event instead of restricting it to who can make the most events throughout the year? I honestly don't know.

There is no perfect answer to the problem… so seems like the best approach is closer to where it is now: show up to tournaments with more/better players to prove yourself.

Sucks for people that live in areas with fewer local WPPRtunities… but their choices are really to travel or build bigger local scenes.

I think it is important to note that the SCS/NACS/etc. is part of the whole IFPA ecosystem, so separating it from how they calculate everything doesn’t make much sense.

That’s not to say anybody couldn’t hold some massive open event that they call “We All Know Who Wins This Event Is The Real Champ” tournament.

I ran leagues and tournaments for several years at a few locations. Talk about a thankless job, sheesh! Coincidentally, when I quit drinking was about the same time I couldn’t stomach the thought of herding pinball playing cats any longer.

I think thats the dad who brings his super young son to play, so I'm sure he had a pretty good time. That kid is going to be a straight killer some day.

Edit- wait...is that you??

Nope. I might sound like a sour grapes bottom of the tourney guy but I’m usually in the top of the groups here in my town. But I don’t drink or smoke and I hate inefficiency.

You have to play at least some to compete. Just how it works. Some have more opportunity than others, that’s why efficiency percentage has factored into rank for the top 250.

If the person can’t make the other events throughout the year, are they even showing up to provincials? Again, just find a way to play some, and you’ll get in if good enough.

A lot of states get their state finals lineups from one big event each year.

There are also plenty of massive open events for said people to go to. Even if it’s once a year. Win one of those and you rank is transformed over night. If they really want to prove they are better than the rest, I think making one trip a year isn’t too much to ask.

If you can, finding a local league or something to play in that is not involved in the IFPA stuff, it can be a lot more fun. Just local play and tournaments that are more isolated and not about some kind of sport. I would love to see more local venues try to be more open to non IFPA stuff to try and attract more players as from my experience with trying to bring friends into it who love pinball, the whole environment was a turn off in many cases. Hosting local leagues, amateur tournaments, just for fun event days and so on. Get people interested and playing and maybe then they would transition into more competitive scene eventually rather than being scared off?

Nothing like a first timer showing up and getting matched up with someone like Eric Stone and they stand there for half hour waiting a turn to go as he blows up a game, only to then drain within a few seconds.

Instead of hosting farms and such, lets try to expand the hobby and help ease people into this.

I totally agree with this. I bet your local spot would be happy to let you run these types of events there.

Yup, it is what it is.

I'm just repeating what I've heard from the players around these parts. My personal tournament days are behind me. Any activity that takes longer than a leisurely round of 27 holes of golf followed by a nice dinner and some good company, and I'm out.

Absolutely. I stopped TD'ing/hosting tournaments after doing it for over a decade. Surprisingly, my patience for people who abuse machines and constantly complain about everything went away when I stopped drinking.

I now help to run a social league (coming up on Season 14) that has 2 seasons a year, meets bi-weekly for 2 hours for 7 meets and has a final tournament at the end. It's steadily grown to max out at 36 participants. It's a silly goose league, really about hanging out, having fun, and everyone gets a prize at the end. We are actually contemplating removing WPPR's to avoid some of the toxicity/THIS IS SERIOUS BUSINESS that goes along with it as it really bothers a lot of the participants who are just there to relax and have some fun playing pinball.

All depends on the crowd in my experience. You’re probably bound to find people showing up to non-IFPA stuff that are champs of the world in their own minds and are hard to stand as well.

Our IFPA weekly is pretty much a steady group of regulars that just enjoy our weekly pinball hangout. Don’t get me wrong, we all want to win it… but none of us are gonna leave there with poopy pants if we play poorly either.

95% of tournaments take way less time than that.

I enjoy pinball tournaments but I'm terrible playing against people. There were some high profile players in my last tournament. When qualifying on a card I blew up a few of the machines. As soon as I played a human on those exact machines, I sucked. I really sucked! It's like I forgot how to play pinball. I guess I am much better at playing with myself. LOL

With that said, my buddies said let's try to get into Pinburgh. They convinced me we would have a great time. Yup, I'm the only one who got into the tournament. I'll give day one a try and if I suck, I'm just going to forfeit and go drink beer! Great beer in Pittsburgh!

Totally feel you bro. I've been the same way before. Like I'm really good at this game, why doesn't that show in this matchup lol.

Yep it seems like if I'm having really good games while I'm practicing then thats a pretty good indicator that I'm going to shit the bed as soon as the tournament starts

The Woman's NACS and Women's World's that was held at Wizard's World in Fort Wayne Indiana in March, sent out a questionnaire type e-mail that you could respond if you wanted, It was pretty much a player profile, so that if you were on stream during the competition the folks that were commentating had some info about the player that they could talk a little about us if we got on stream...I thought that was a good idea, cause as you mentioned normally the commentators don't have any idea who the players that are on stream are so there's alot of air space to fill and not much to fill it with.

Phoebe

We use these at Pincinnati. They were received very well. We should definitely do more.

...what?

think you might be looking on the wrong site for that kind of content, my man

Regarding tournament commentary, I'm probably among those who "explains a lot" while commentating. While some of the feedback here suggests doing less of that, the direct feedback I get (often from people watching the stream on-site) is generally "thanks for explaining it." I also still get frequent questions wherever I go about how to play games, especially the older Classic ones, indicating that semi-tutorials are still useful to many people. I've found that no one style of commentary is ideal for all viewers, but I'll keep your comments in mind in the future and try to balance things more.

As for "more about the players," much of the time the commentators do not know much about the players unless those competing are "high profile" players or are from the same area as the people commentating. Very few events ask for any kind of player bios to help on the streams, and even if they do, not all players provide one. I've also found that a lot of viewers aren't particularly interest in player details unless the player is high profile or the viewer lives near that player. The most common exception is that women viewers are more interested in women's events' players. One possible solution to the "player info gap" is for someone to create a master catalog of players' bios, which could be updated regularly as appropriate, and somehow make that easily and rapidly accessible to streamers. It might be necessary to curate and validate such a database. What type of information about a player would you want to see? I can think of many possibilities which would not all appeal to the same people. Where they live. Where they play. League, if any. Most notable results (not necessarily wins, could be intense matches). How long they've been playing. Occupation? Favorite machine(s). Non-pinball interests. Whatever, you then need to determine which players are willing_ to provide which information even if there's a place and way to access it.

I'm open to suggestions. Since I commentate a lot, I'd like to please as many viewers as possible as much of the time as possible. It's not easy. I try to emulate commentators I respect from other sports; I'm partial to bowling (and golf), so I try to be a bit like Randy Petersen doing PBA events or some of the PGA folks. I try to figure out how the player will or should approach the game given the conditions; see how well they execute; note when they may want to or do change strategies; mention previous results against their present opponents if known; applaud good shots; note good and bad breaks; mention what they still need to get to win based on the present scores. And then there's trying to balance all of this with your fellow commentators, who may be more or less knowledgeable than you about any of the above. (I talk less when I know my fellow hosts are also up to speed on things.)

Sorry if this post is too long for some of you, but I just wanted to give you my perspective from the chair as it were. We aim to please. We'll keep trying to improve.

Who is this guy in the OP? Never heard of Tim Sexton.

Talented player and facial hair enthusiast.

Talented player complaining about tournaments.

And no, I'm not watching the video.

I always think it would be cool if he went by Tim Sexman.

So if you have a talent at something you aren’t allowed to complain about it?

Interesting take.

If you just don’t give a shit that makes sense, most people around here either don’t care about tournament players or openly resent them.

Well, didn't watch the video, but thought this was an anti-tournament thread, so funny how a talented player would complain. I'm assuming this guy is winning, but maybe not.

Who's Elliot Eismin?

He isn’t complaining because he’s losing (he finished 4th at Indisc 2024, which for the vast majority of tournament players would be their greatest career achievement) he’s complaining because he doesn’t like the direction tournaments are going.

Howard Cosell was the best in the business but he quit calling pro boxing because he didn’t like the direction it was going in. Publicly. So kinda like that?

I mean it’s a short video relatively, but it would probably only interest people who play in a lot of tournaments. If somebody made a video about what they don’t like about the Pinside 100 I certainly wouldn’t watch it, as I don’t care.

You convinced me to watch it. Damn it.

Ha

In my opinion the first half is really fun for all and the second half will really only appeal to wppr fanatics

Dude just comes off like a Class A whiner. I don't live this high end tourney life though, so who knows. I didn't get the whopper thing.

Edit: And facial hair, LOL. Dude just has has stache, come back when he has a full beard.

Are the Williams sister going to make the next video about tennis.

I watched this video, but didn't comment on it at the time in this thread. I think there are some valid points, particularly for some specific tournaments in some parts of the country. I don't think these are the types of tournaments being run in Texas (though, for better or worse, I only have one tournament outside of the ones I've tried to run as a recent point of reference at the moment).

WPPR rankings should correlate to level of pinball skill and should not be something you can "farm". The system is biased a bit in favor of those who can play more than 20 tournaments per year, and biased against those who play fewer than that. And this is regardless of the reason; it's the same bias for someone who lives too far away from the nearest major city/cities and lacks the resources to either relocate or commute to tournaments, as someone who has been banned from playing in events run by the dominant local organization for whatever reason.

Something that's just as bad as these "WPPR farming" types of events are the ones where a local organization is trying to exert an effective monopoly on tournaments and leagues by controlling the primary means of advertising and negotiating exclusive agreements with venues when there aren't enough tournament-ready venues to be doing this. It's frustrating to try to run tournaments under the banner of an organization that's supposed to be an alternative when every attempt I've made to attract players has failed.

The tournaments I have been able to play in (TPF Wizards and, this year, the two NTX Pinball events at TPF) were a good experience for me. I just have what I feel is a disproportionately low number of WPPRs to show for having played in them.

Watching live, he just called it a sport.

I guess Beer Pong could be a sport too.

He just said sacrificing health. I thought people did this for fun. Come on dude.

The problem with a rating system that can fluctuate up and down is that people are discouraged from playing to protect their rating. Once you have whatever you need to qualify for whatever, you avoid entering more events to not risk losing it.

Magic the Gathering had this problem and realized that years ago. Pros and wannabes would stop entering more tournaments once they had a certain rating that they needed for whatever, or even drop mid-tournament. They changed to an all-positive points system to avoid that, and that's pretty much necessary. Farming points isn't the greatest system, but it's a lesser downside than the alternative of inducing players not to play for fear of hurting their ranking.

(I say this with no personal interest, I don't play tournaments or for WPPRs at all.)

I found something even more annoying than Youtube reaction videos. Pinside reaction posts.

Who is Tim Sexton? Almost like asking Who is Keith Elwin or Who is John Borg....

Imagine getting drunk on a Friday night, watching a video on a subject you have zero interest in, and then live posting 8 separate one line complaints about it.

Dude should make a video about he hates tournament opinion videos !

(I’d watch it)

I know right, why do any of it then?

Gave me a little bit of entertainment lauging as I watched the bitching.

Or you have something like chess (USCF) had where master level players would play any old garbage for an opening and say "I can play whatever I want, I'm at my floor". I wouldn't want anything that has the effect of inducing players not to play, but there has to be something that's fair to the players who either don't have the resources to play in a major city's tournament scene, or are prohibited from doing so by that city's de facto monopoly pinball league/TDs.

I mean, I'd just pack it up and move near Austin, San Antonio, or the DFW area if that was a feasible option, but it's not for me right now.

Yup, ^^^^ This When SCS first started, I spoke with Josh about the fact that in our area there wasn't many opportunities for local folks to play and have a chance to qualify for SCS...Josh said so hold some tournaments at your house...so we did/do, we held our 9th annual Summer tourney (in our home) in June, and we had 86 people show up to play. Our past tourneys players average somewhere in the 40's, so it threw us for a loop, but we adjusted on the fly and got it done. Winner got 61.10 WPPRs.

Phoebe