What was the disaster, and how can it be prevented in the future? Make this topic useful to those that aren't in on the joke.

Ran out of toilet paper?

sounds like the disaster was that it wasnt over until 5 in the morning

I assume the disaster is that things were still going on at 5am for a tournament???

I was in bed at 5am last night. I totally would have rather been playing pinball!

They foolishly extended the qualifying rounds from 5:00 P.M. To 9: P.M.
Then it took forever to get the spreadsheets entered in the database. When the tourneys finally started around 11:00 we were in for a long night with the double elimination format and only running one tourney at a time.
It was crazy but fun as I won first place C division modern tourney and my son won third place A division modern tourney.

why did they extend qualifying to 9pm?

What were some of the titles that were in the tourney?

Modern was Wizard of Oz and AC/DC Premium. Another tourney used Avengers LE. The kids tourney was Avengers Pro. The EM tourney used King of Diamonds Fireball and a few others. Also Superman was used for one as well. There were more but my memory is not that great.

I've seen this happen at multiple tournaments and it's annoying.

It's happened at multiple Stern launch parties. Qualifying is supposed to end at 5 but it's extended to 6 or 7 because folks couldn't make it til then.

I've also seen it happen at MGC during the Clock Chaos Tourney. There is supposed to only a limited number of slots and they are sold out but I've seen entries added right before start (friends of said show? idk). The finals for that tourney never starts on time (midnight). And there's a reason it's called chaos because that's what it seems like how it's run.

IMHO there's not much that can be done when money is involved and there is not a third party running it. Unfortunately I've learned just not to enter, not worth my time and patience.

That's total BS. Not sure why you created a new user though. You have every right to bitch.

Nice work. Glad someone had a good time.

Tournaments often run late. That's just part of the deal. They list the times when qualifying starts and ends, and when the playoffs start, but you won't get a finishing time. Different shows and different tournament directors are better than others. If you're not a night person, do your homework beforehand so that you know what to expect. If you expect a tournament to run late, you won't get annoyed when it happens.

5am is ridiculous though. If a tournament isn't close to finishing by midnight, I'm going to want to stop and start over the next day. The players shouldn't have allowed this to happen.

People want to make competitive pinball a spectator sport and gain some mainstream recognition, and tournament formats are a huge hurdle. Who is sticking around (that is not in the tournament) to watch a final at 5 AM?

I love hard cutoff times for qualifying. For example, if you are not playing a game at the cutoff time your tickets you haven't played are voided. Lots of folks try to get in at the last minute or hold onto numerous tickets just in case they need them.

It is OK to end qualifying at a reasonable time so the finals can be viewed by some people not in the tournament, and maybe they try their hand in the tournament next time.

- A unfinished and untested game (woz)
- A great game that CAN play long (acdc)
- A horrible tournament game (avengers)

Thank goodness there wasn't a few CSIs.

This is why we changed Louisville finals to be on Sunday this year, because we played until 5:30am last year.

There are many contributing problems:

-Extended qualifying - A tournament director that allows someone to show up with 5 minutes to go in qualifying with 10+ qualifying tickets and allows them to play them all -- should never run a tournament again.
-Long playing games - Before finals, tournaments need to "fix" the long playing games. We didn't do this at Louisville this year and it effected us in classics (Starlight, the never ending game!) and in main division (Pirates). Luckily, we budgeted alot of extra time and it didn't hurt us like the previous tournament director did the year before, but we'll correct it for next year.
-Waiting for players - We all know when we start, if you are not there we plunge your ball.

There is no need for tournaments to run late, we just need to use some common sense and stick to well defined rules and it usually works out.

5:00 AM!! Jeez that's insane.

Where's the results?

I take full responsibility for this disaster though I don't like the phrase. I was in charge of them. No other show organizer is responsible for tourneys at TPF so if you want to flame someone flame me

Here is how it went down from my point of view.

1) a truck carrying multiple tourney games broke down and did not arrive until Friday after qualifying was to start. We were in a scramble to get games on the floor and ready to go so people could start qualifying

2) yes we used Woz for a tourney game. I did not learn till after qualifying was well under way that is had a programming issue that allowed player two to steal player one features. This will be fixed in a code update of course. We wanted to have the latest game and such is life.

3) our avengers all needed factory fixes to prevent ball hangs. Even with these installed we still had serious issues with ball traps which again slowed everything down. This game had super long ball times for top players. B and c division were not as bad but A players were cracking 100mil pretty regularly.

4) one of our classic games developed an electrical fault in the switch matrix that allowed players to play a little more aggressively which led to long games ie the tilt stopped working.

5 another classic game went down in the early morning hours and had to be taken out of the tournament which led to us having to use the sole game working which was a restored superman. It developed a heat issue and had to be turned off to allow it to cool down which led to long ball times. It also developed a nasty ball hang on the right inlane that led to constant ball traps. This also slowed everything down

6 the hotel did not supply power to all the areas needed in the tourney area well into Friday. In some spots we never got it at all and this led to massive problems getting data entry running.

7 the last time I looked at the spreadsheet there was over 250 individual players not counting women and children who were scored on a different sheet. We were very pleased to see so many people play but the onslaught of scoring it produced while trying to deal with all the technical issues may it a daunting task.

Those items above we're totally out of our control. However, I accept fully responsibility for them.

Now on the the items totally in my control.....

The decision to extend qualifying to allow people to get a score in due to all the technical issues seemed like a fair solution at the time. I have leanrned my lesson on that one. This was a mistake and should not have been done.

Next we come to the playoffs. I was highly in favor of modifying the finals format in order to quicken the pace of finals. After talking with many players the feeling was that since the double elimation bracket and rules had been posted that to change them that late in the process would not be fair. I did slightly alter the em finals but the others we played off as advertised on the site.

This led to a 600am finish and I was right there to see it through. I saw a lot of things last night. Top players who even under all that stress and fatigue continue to amaze by putting up crazy crazy scores. I also saw many behave with utmost sportsmanship. I appreciated that. I also saw a few folks with a little frustration and temper which is understandable.

I don't like people being hateful to volunteers who give up their time to help run the tournaments. I appreciate these people so much. In fact this year we doubled the number of helpers but it was still not enough to keep with data entry.

We usually run on time at TPF in the tourney area. People who regularly attend know that.

I myself am running on 1 hour of sleep in the last two days. So I hope this reply makes sense.

I have already expressed my deepest apologies for the delays to the folks who wound up playing into the wee hours of the night and I do so here is well. As I said I take responsibily for the time table. I regret it worked out that way and steps will be taken to keep if from taking place again.

Anyone who was there and played who wants to send me a message on how to change things up please feel free to do so. We really do take input from players to try to grow and improve the tourneys.

Ken In Texas
Www.pinballrebel.com

Ken,

Sh!t happens. I was not there, but as a fellow helper and organizer of events in my area I will say a huge thanks for what you did to put this on! I can not even imagine the stress of that many qualifiers. WOW!

I am sure many improvements will be made from what you learned this year.

Who cares. People went to play pinball and played 'till 5AM.

Surprise! That's what you do at a pinball event.

Sounds like a blast! Wish I could have been there!

Disaster is being polite that was the worst tournament I've played in sorry. It was later than 5am people. I know a top ranked world player that finished his game at 6:45 and was expected to be back at 9am for Texas state tournament. I know several that flat out walked out after spending plenty. That's another thing take in for this tournament was unreal and the payouts were very low.

I just won some in last weeks Papa circuit in Louisville and I can tell you they paid people way Down in points with a smaller amount of take in.

Just wait till more the players get rested from last night and getting back home you'll hear plenty about how horrible this was... I had scores that I took a picture of on my phone that by end of qualifying they were not in the system anymore. Score keeper was writing VB tied to excel on the fly to organize players. There has to be something already in place for this.

I do want to mention the show and venue were great couldn't ask for a better setup but never being able to know where you stand and never got to see most my points till it was too late left me feeling a little robbed. I should have stopped when their first excuse was not being able to power up the projector to post scores Friday...

We actually ran multiples at once.

Payouts were published way ahead of time. I'm not going to get into an argument about it. For those of you who had fun thank you. For those that did not I understand. It wasn't a cake walk for me either

Hilarious.

What were the payouts / costs to enter at tpf? 250 people should generate a healthy pool.

I was under the impression that Marcus was the tournament director?

Not all 250 people entered all events. To make matters more interesting all pre paid guest of the show get a tourney ticked in their packet. This was done to ensure people who just wanted to play Woz got to do so...though we still recorded their scores. That is on the list to change for next time. A free play non scored card instead.

Ken

The bottleneck on this was you had to wait for players who qualified in multiple tournaments to finish their bracket in one before they could play in the other.

No, Marcus was running the software and has been helping with the tourneys the last several years. But ultimately I'm responsible.

Ken

Money isn't a 1/16 of it to me. I'd flown there to win a stern t-shirt and been happy feeling I was competing in something. Not some mystery experiment of writing an app to organize scoring

Many had lost scores over a period that were verified from there own score keeping

I had fun seeing old friends and new but the event was so great but I know a few thats left with a black eye on it from this tournament

Mark payouts were posted somewhere ill dig them up. Exhausted just got in

We need faster software, data entry. I have been told there is an iPad connected solution. If you know who is doing that shoot me a PM as we are keenly interested.

Ken

Payouts posted on the TPF site.

I hear you. Not stoking a fire, just curious is all. We gave two free tickets to everyone through the door at louisville as well. Paid out about $10,900 after all was said and done, which was 100% payout. Louisville guys generously donated the plaques, so that expense was on their side of things. If I'm sticking my nose where it doesn't belong, feel free to tell me so.

Best of luck.

Ken - I think having a few more volunteers helping with tasks other than scorekeepers will help in the future. Also, there are some great resources out there now that can be used to help out with the scorekeeping that will help avoid the delay in entering scores, provide score integrity where players actively verify their scores as entered, and real time score updates that players can view online. I'll IM you directly later this week with some info and ideas and would be more than happy to assist in these areas in the future.

Running tournaments is not easy as unexpected things always happen. Lessons learned for next time. Thanks for all your efforts. The tourney was still fun regardless of the problems. Now time for some sleep.

No you're not Mark. I forgot about the 2 free entries as well in Loiusville. It should have been stopped at a certain time and started again in the morning or went to single elimination.

I take that back they should have stopped qualifying when it was posted and played each one out as stated everywhere around the tournament area and online.

I wish I would have entered the tournament and got to hang around till 5am. Us blue wrist band people had to leave at 1am and we were ready for more pinball. Seriously awesome show! Great hotel too. I hope y'all have it at the same place next year.

No you are not. We sell machines at a discount to have new games to use in the tourney. This year there were a lot of them. This plus trophies adds up. Last year we actually paid out more than we listed on the site.

Btw who ever started this thread looks like they created a new ID just to do so. Not sure why? I'm not hiding. I can take constructive feedback.

Ken

I for the life of me understand why WOZ was picked as a tournament game. Even if the code was magically 100% done, why chance using it until it's been proven? It's the same mentality as buying a brand new car that is of new design.

Honestly -- I just don't get it.

3) our Avengers all needed factory fixes to prevent ball hangs. Even with these installed we still had serious issues with ball traps which again slowed everything down. This game had super long ball times for top players. B and c division were not as bad but A players were cracking 100mil pretty regularly.

Same goes for Avengers. It's already been used in a few tournaments and the game's reception has been overwhelming negative all around.

For the full tourney (Texas State Championship):

Prizes
Division A (1-16)

1st Place
Trophy + $750 cash

2nd Place
Trophy + $200 cash

3rd Place
Trophy + $150 cash

Division B (17-32)

1st Place
Trophy + $200 cash

2nd Place
Trophy + $100 cash

3rd Place
Trophy + $50 cash

Cost to enter: at least 9 tournament tickets ($5 each, total minimum $45) as each individual title had separate qualifying. (This is not adequately understood by most of the people working registration and selling tickets, nor on the signage, you had to ask specifically the tournament volunteers how it worked.)

Qualifying was unlimited "pump and dump" even though the payouts were flat rate, not based on number of entries?

There were also separate tourney finals based on type of game (EM, Modern, etc). Your qualifying on a title counted for both the main tournament and the sub-tournaments. 2 of the sub tournaments were 3 games each (Classic and EM, minimum entry $15), 1 was 2 (Modern, minimum entry $10), 1 was a single game (Avengers) (Texas Shootout, minimum entry $5)

All sub tournies had this payout structure:

A Division (top 8 qualifiers): $150/$75/$50 + trophies
B Division (next 8): $75/$50/$25 + trophies
C Division (next 8): trophies only

Thank you for being kind and constructive. I really appreciate it. We have grown in the tourney area by leaps and bounds.

We almost always use the newest game. This time it burned us. Yep.

Ken

Top qualifier was also paid in each em, classic, shoot out, and modern.

Blue wrist band people in the tournament werent exactly playing pinball till 5 am, more a lot of sitting around waiting for their bracket to start until finally playing at 4 am or so.

Forgot about that $75 each on those.

My question is this: shouldn't the payouts have been variable based on the number of entries as opposed to fixed, isn't that the point of running the "open qualify" "pump and dump" system? Because it seems like with fixed payouts, and the number of people playing, it would have been better (and more fair to those with limited budgets) to do a single entry qualify system?

TPF tourneys actually must help support other show costs. Venue, etc. that hasn't always been popular with everyone. That topic has been beat to death in other venues that cater more to players. No venue, no hall, no tourneys. We have to balance that. Payouts are posted. They will either be that amount or higher (no guarantee of higher though). Some top players will not travel to TPF because the payout isn't worth it to them. I understand that. We try to balance having fun tourneys with new and casual players (draw, World Series, parent child, etc) that do not feed into state championship and don't award wppr points with those that do. Most of our players just want to have fun and win a trophy for the wall. That is what we did before wppr, or ifpa, or the like and we keep those because we want the local folks to have fun too. We try to have the other side of that coin for those who live and die by wppr points but the two groups are very very different. If we want to grow pinball as a hobby and sport we have to get those folks involved.

I'd like to provide some feedback. Hopefully constructive

I think you are the person I spoke to today (my name is Brad). I came in this morning trying to figure out if I qualified for the shootout (avengers only) as I left at about 1am the night before after being told by a volunteer that would be pushed to the AM. I came in when the show started and found out pretty quickly that the playoffs were done before the scheduled open time. This is back-ground to help you remember me as I want to provide my feedback without hiding.

Pro's:
- I learned a lot about tournament play.
- I had a blast "thinking" I may have qualified for something
- Was cool to see some of the top ranked players (Bob and Trent)
- Got to play WOZ
- Learned I need to document my own scores as well

Con's:
- You need some way of real time (or close to it) showing where people stack rank. No sense in me dumping more and more money trying to qualify when I stand absolutely no chance (my skill level). After spending my first $20 on modern and realizing my 60 million on AC/DC and 14K on WOZ was not even in the ballpark (those were good games for me) I would have stopped. I also feel players should be able to see where they rank at all times to help validate scores.
- I don't know what happened with the scores but there should be no way that my highest score doesn't get accounted for when I paid to play. For example (as we spoke about), ya'll had my Avengers score as 5 million when I shot at least 14 million twice.
- Don't ignore volunteers request. Someone posted on Pinside months ago asking for volunteers. I sent a message to them and never heard back. I'm assuming it's because they were offering a free weekend pass to do it and I already bought one. Don't know but figured I wasn't needed as I never heard back after messaging them twice. I was willing to offer a couple of hours to help the TPF as well as to learn.
- Stick to the schedule. If you can't, that is OK but you should be required to post any changes immediately. Again, I paid to participate I shouldn't have to find out things by hear say from others. For example - qualify was pushed from 5:30 to 9pm. At 5:30pm their should have been a sign stating this. Another example, if I would have qualified for the shoot out I would have lost my chance since I didn't show up before the scheduled opening of the festival. I was their till at least 1am (the time it was supposed to close).
- The machines were all set with the outlanes in the middle. It's a tournament, shouldn't they be removed or moved to wide open? Or at least have the rubbers removed off the post? That would help with the time problem. On a side note it was awesome seeing Trent pull over 350 million on AC/DC but I'd rather see 100 million and things be on time.
- Are their supposed to be non-players standing next to people that are playing telling them what to shoot? I saw this a couple of times and even saw one person play a ball for another person. I don't know their name but can describe what they look like. They were one of the persons that qualified for Modern. I'm not sharing his description as I'm not here to throw someone under the bus. As I'm sure most know him and I don't need more enemies on this site. This happened on WOZ.

I absolutely loved TPF and thank those that put this on. Being honest I felt ripped off by the tournament and will probably not participate again. I spent $50 (yeah yeah I know, not that much in comparison to most) but the facts that my scores were not kept correctly, times were pushed and not communicated so I wouldn't have been there anyways if I did qualify, etc really made me a spitting distance from asking for a refund. I didn't want to be "that guy" so took the $50 as a learning experience. When you are taking peoples money though, you have to be much more organized or over communicate what is happening. People bash Stern for not giving updates and, not to be rude, what happened this weekend was just a bad

Again, I'm just trying to give my feedback. I had a blast at the festival so I don't want to be seen as a complainer but since feedback was asked for I thought I'd take this time to speak my opinion.

My assumption was that the bulk of the money received from the tournament entries was funneled into paying for the event - venue rental, salaries for the workers, insurance, etc. I'd love to know how right I am - I can't imagine funding everything that needs funding on admission prices alone.

That said, I'd love to see admission numbers, too. The crowd seemed healthy all weekend and I didn't have anywhere near the crowding issues I had last year. Really appreciate the venue change.

Thanks for all you and the rest of you guys do, Ken. I can't even imagine how much work it actually is or how tired you are. I know how tired I am after dealing with our few machines and dropping Lloyd off at DFW. :/

Thanks for answering my first question - that's what I get for slow typing on the iPad.

Imho entry should be single qualify. As I told a friend when you throw enough sh.. On the wall something is gonna stick. Everyone had good games and bad and should be on a level playing field, not because you are a doctor or a lawyer or won the lottery and can afford to re-qualify 10 times on each game.

EMs were Fireball, Atlantis, and King od Diamonds BTW. Very forgiving tilts on them IMO made
Playing those three specific games a lot of fun.

Personally I committed to NOT making a large swath of reentries, especially after playing acdc and sucking, after playing WoZ with its near incomprehensible scoring, and Avengers, which I am sorry to say has a crapton of mechanical issues thatwere far beyond the scope of organizers to fix. Critical design flaws abound. Grats to the a players that fell asleep at the wheel on that one. Personally I am sick and tired of Gomez's "shoot this four times to start a mode" designs and this is more of te same in that vein.

At any rate, I ended up in C division, LAST SEED, on em's and ended up.....first
I had an EPIC game on Atlantis and rolled it, tilting ony last ball. Not even sure what the final score was other than it was over the 800k rollover mark.

image.jpg

Was anybody sleeping on the floor waiting their turn, because that's exactly where I would be.