(Topic ID: 43776)

Texas Pinball Festival tournament disaster and how to prevent it in the future

By concernedplayer

11 years ago


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    There are 198 posts in this topic. You are on page 2 of 4.
    #51 11 years ago

    Actually they were laying down on chairs.

    #52 11 years ago

    Actually they were laying down on chairs.

    Quoted from 85vett: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.

    We actually have a system to display scores. But with all the issues we had we simply could not get caught up with what had come in while trying to deal with all the tech issues. We will have a different system next year for data entry.

    #53 11 years ago
    Quoted from pinballrebel:

    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.

    I wasn't aware of that, I thought that was all covered by the admissions fees to attend the show.

    #54 11 years ago

    I thought the worst part of the show was when I walked into a terrible fart cloud. Seriously, whoever farted right before the "best in show" winners were announced, you should be put in prison.

    #55 11 years ago
    Quoted from joestro78:

    I thought the worst part of the show was when I walked into a terrible fart cloud. Seriously, whoever farted right before the "best in show" winners were announced, you should be put in prison.

    Who were the winners? Sorry to hear about the fart cloud.

    #56 11 years ago
    Quoted from pinballrebel:

    Actually they were laying down on chairs.
    We actually have a system to display scores. But with all the issues we had we simply could not get caught up with what had come in while trying to deal with all the tech issues. We will have a different system next year for data entry.

    Prior years rankings were pretty much up to date on the projection screen. WHy did thius year move backwards? Heck, the Expo, PAPA and Pinball at the Zoo tournaments have real time software showing rankings

    .

    #57 11 years ago
    Quoted from pinballrebel:

    TPF tourneys actually must help support other show costs.

    Admission fees should support the show cost. Tournament entry fees should not be used to offset the cost of running an event, besides things directly tournament related. Just my opinion, though.

    #58 11 years ago
    Quoted from pinballrebel:

    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.

    The choice of games used and the setup of those games is very much under the control of the tournament director. So I would say that problems 2 thru 5 above were under your control. Saying you don't control those things won't inspire confidence in future competitors.

    Sounds like you need to recruit an experienced tournament director and/or a setup guy. If you increase your payouts, you'll increase your chances of recruiting good help. Plenty of great players out there who will help out for free, as long as you're not taking too much of the entry money.

    #59 11 years ago
    Quoted from ninjadoug:

    Admission fees should support the show cost. Tournament entry fees should not be used to offset the cost of running an event, besides things directly tournament related. Just my opinion, though.

    Yes, I agree that things directly tournament related should be covered by the tournament, but I also believe there is a big double-standard along these lines. For example, are the seminars also tasked with paying for themselves? Many shows foot the hotel bills and pay the appearance fees for speakers, but are you required to pay an extra $5 or whatever for each seminar you want to attend?

    On the flipside, I wish top players would make themselves more of a draw to shows by doing seminars or coaching, however, I don't entirely blame them for not doing so. Herb formats are relentless and you can expect to spend the majority of the show grinding entries. Even top players typically have to grind because your seed is so important in the finals with byes and double byes.

    At PPE this past year, entry was capped at three plays of each machine. The most a player could spend was $40. Several competitors remarked they decided to participate because it wasn't a pump and dump, and several pump and dump veterans remarked it was nice to actually have time to enjoy the show. I didn't expect such a format would go over well with players but there were a lot more compliments than complaints.

    -1
    #60 11 years ago
    Quoted from jonnyo:

    Yes, I agree that things directly tournament related should be covered by the tournament, but I also believe there is a big double-standard along these lines. For example, are the seminars also tasked with paying for themselves? Many shows foot the hotel bills and pay the appearance fees for speakers, but are you required to pay an extra $5 or whatever for each seminar you want to attend?...

    At PPE this past year, entry was capped at three plays of each machine. The most a player could spend was $40. Several competitors remarked they decided to participate because it wasn't a pump and dump, and several pump and dump veterans remarked it was nice to actually have time to enjoy the show. I didn't expect such a format would go over well with players but there were a lot more compliments than complaints.

    What percent of the entry fees were paid out at PPE last year?

    I didn't attend specifically because too much was taken off the top in past years. IMO, competition should be celebrated at a pinball show. Not profited from. Competition is the heart of the hobby.

    #61 11 years ago
    Quoted from pinballrebel:

    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

    On the surface this sounds like it could be a mess. You'll get a lot of people who come over to play Woz and say they have no interest in the tournament, so you let them play their scratch game. Then they come back an hour later and they've changed their mind and want their score to count. Stupid stuff like that.

    I run the tournament at pin a go go and I intentionally keep it to one day (for other reasons as well) because if there are a-list pins in the tourney lineup, they can be played casually on saturday night after the tourney and all day sunday. But if the show organizers told me that in addition to running the tourney I had to deal with a mob of non-competitors so they could get their turn on some game in the middle of a tourney, I'd tell them they were nuts. That's like letting some guy in his civic do a lap at Daytona while the 500 was in progress. It just creates a bottleneck for the players who actually are there to compete. And you can bet on a new game like woz, they'll want as much practice time on it as possible.

    Others are right though - knowing the code is unfinished on woz it should not have been in the tourney. I actually threw x-men out of my own x-men launch party because at the time the code was too buggy (we were promised the updated code but didn't receive it). We ended up using other games instead and made x-men a side tourney.

    #62 11 years ago
    Quoted from phishrace:

    What percent of the entry fees were paid out at PPE last year?
    I didn't attend specifically because too much was taken off the top in past years. IMO, competition should be celebrated at a pinball show. Not profited from. Competition is the heart of the hobby.

    I don't know. The year before (when I ran it) it was 75%. The 25% actually did not even cover the room rental, we later learned, so no one was profiting, just offsetting some of the costs.

    However, for the record I have no problem with anyone making a profit off a pinball tournament, in fact, I wish they would. People don't run the PGA or World Series of Poker out of the kindness of their hearts and if competitive pinball wants to get to the next level, people will need to get paid.

    Likewise, competitors can easily spend 1k on a flight, hotel and entries for a tournament, and they expect a professional job, and yet these events are wholly run by volunteers (who often get treated like crap, btw). The scale of these events and peoples' expectations are steadily diverging from what's possible given it's all volunteer-run.

    #63 11 years ago
    Quoted from phishrace:

    What percent of the entry fees were paid out at PPE last year?
    I didn't attend specifically because too much was taken off the top in past years. IMO, competition should be celebrated at a pinball show. Not profited from. Competition is the heart of the hobby.

    I don't think any of these shows are "profiting", I could be wrong.

    #64 11 years ago
    Quoted from jonnyo:

    I don't know. The year before (when I ran it) it was 75%. The 25% actually did not even cover the room rental, we later learned, so no one was profiting, just offsetting some of the costs.
    However, for the record I have no problem with anyone making a profit off a pinball tournament, in fact, I wish they would. People don't run the PGA or World Series of Poker out of the kindness of their hearts and if competitive pinball wants to get to the next level, people will need to get paid.
    Likewise, competitors can easily spend 1k on a flight, hotel and entries for a tournament, and they expect a professional job, and yet these events are wholly run by volunteers (who often get treated like crap, btw). The scale of these events and peoples' expectations are steadily diverging from what's possible given it's all volunteer-run.

    It's a catch-22. If the tournament profits and offers low payouts, then less people play, especially out of towners, which typically dump more into the tournament.

    This is why I don't mind if the tournament organizers and volunteers also play in a tournament. It's completely unfair to expect high or 100% payouts and not let those people play for the time and energy that they put into running it.

    #65 11 years ago
    Quoted from pinballrebel:

    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.

    What other show costs? (feel free to point to another pinside/rgp thread)

    Note: I have no problem with shows keeping some money, especially if the show and it's organizers setup and run the tournament. I never expect anyone to give up all their time and never see some return. Just curious.

    #66 11 years ago

    Ken,
    Thanks for your post explaining the tourney problems. I knew you guys were probably hit with stuff you didn't expect, and it takes a lot to say where you could have done better and that you learned for next time. That as well as taking suggestions to make it better in 2014. That's being a class act and professional under the circumstances. I had a great time at the event and look forward to next time!

    Rock on
    S

    #67 11 years ago
    Quoted from Zaxxis:

    It's a catch-22. If the tournament profits and offers low payouts, then less people play, especially out of towners, which typically dump more into the tournament.
    This is why I don't mind if the tournament organizers and volunteers also play in a tournament. It's completely unfair to expect high or 100% payouts and not let those people play for the time and energy that they put into running it.

    A big part of the money would have to come from sponsorship, but what a lot of people don't realize (and probably one reason why it hasn't happened yet) is that big sponsorship requires a lot of care and feeding, business-savvy and salesmanship, all of which happens behind the scenes and takes a lot of time and energy. Sponsorship is, in a way, a natural product of a successful PR campaign, and that's also a lot of time and effort - before someone sticks a Marlboro logo on your shirt and a paycheck in your pocket, you have to be someone the public wants to see. I don't see someone pursuing all that without being funded or without knowing that they can reap some of the reward down the road.

    #68 11 years ago
    Quoted from Magic_Mike:

    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!

    Your comments would have a bit of merit had we actually been playing. It was more like sitting in the DMV waiting area for 3 hours wondering what the hell was going on and if they were ever going to call your number. PLUS, it is 5am and you're tired as hell! Sorry, the ignorance in your post just irked me.

    That said, I want to commend Ken for being so honest and forthright here. I know he and the other organizers do this for the love of the hobby and sacrifice greatly for it. However, I do hope this serves as an impetus for better organization in the future. This was my first ever tournament finals experience and it was extremely disappointing. I am it it for the long haul, but anyone who might have been on the fence about tournament play could easily have been soured for a long time by the frustrating, chaotic experience. Scoring integrity seemed to be very suspect and is the most critical aspect to be addressed. I think real time date entry and posting of scores would go a long way towards improving the situation in addition to more calculated machine selection as has been discussed.

    Otherwise, the venue was amazing, as was the number of machines and awesome vendors. Looking forward to 2014!

    Shawn

    #69 11 years ago
    Quoted from pin_wizd:

    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.

    Well, a few things... Sorry if this comes off as nasty, but for things that take a lot of manpower and make basically no money, if you don't like it - Don't play. Easier for us to run it for the people that do.

    It is a TOUGH tournament to get done right. We do sometimes allow people to add in, but how it works is that we tell them that if we are on time, we will add them in. Three years ago, it was our first year and it was a giant mess because we never did anything like it before. We allowed people to add in and if we had it handled better, it would have been no issue. Two years ago, we fixed it and didn't allow add ins. Ran very smoothly. Last year, we had an issue with the receipt printer that we need to use for our entries not allowing entries to be printed. We got the computer from someone with three hours to spare, and spent 100% of that time and then some trying to get it to work. Tournament started late because of this. We did not allow add ins.

    One or two people each year ask me if they can pay at the show, which I allow if I know them. We remove their slots from the show.

    On top of all of this, I have a bunch more show to run. I shouldn't be tied down in CC all night Friday but I have been two of the three years due to the issues. We think we've ironed it out this year, Hilton is taking a major role in it which I greatly appreciate, and we hope it works out. But I don't do this full time, and neither does anyone else.

    If you can't take it having some built in need for understanding, again - don't play. I have had at least 10 people inquire about it since it has sold out, and I would be more than happy to give up any slots of people who don't appreciate it to those who do.

    It's been pointed out to me in the past that the majority of tournament players *do not* thank the refs who officiate for them, and just whine at them instead. No tournament (be it Texas, MGC, or whatever) has everything run flawlessly, but we all try. If that isn't good enough for you, stay at home and let the people who want to have fun and are thankful for the job that the *volunteers* do to run the tournament as best as possible.

    And I'll challenge you with this - don't like how it was run, I've put up requests for additional help now. Volunteer for a few hours Friday and Saturday. Make it better. Or else you have zero right to complain about it later.

    /rant off, and sorry again if that was a little nasty, but yeesh guys - thanks to how we have tournament players act every year, I have the most trouble getting anyone to run our main tournament. It went from something that I had fun running a few years ago to a thorn in my side now, and comments like this make me really question why we bother at all. I know why though - it's for the 63 other people who are happy to get to play.

    #70 11 years ago

    Ken,
    Thanks for all the time and hard work you (and Marcus + other volunteers) put into the tourney. And thank you for sticking around for the long-haul hours of the morning as Trent and I (and others) finished out Classics and almost finished out Shoot-Out. Oh and you were being conservative on end time -- the final contenders actually wrapped up right at 7:00am. I was back in my hotel room (had to walk a long distance across the hotel to my hotel across the street) at 7:15am. Then up again at 8:15 to try to energize myself with a shower before being back to venue at 8:50 for 9am start to State finals. I felt like I was back in college pulling an all-nighter.

    My thoughts to Ken and everybody complaining:
    1)The tournament timing lasting as ridiculously late as it did was indeed a disaster. The whole tourney was not a disaster, and I still had a good time. Thanks again, Ken, to you and the volunteers.

    2) Mistakes were made, and as you've mentioned, you (and all of us) are documenting them so we can and will hopefully learn from them for next year.

    3) Payouts -- TPF payouts for top A finishers are definitely lower than what's paid at other tourneys. Part of that is intentional, as the payouts are spread thin over 10 brackets (4 sub tourneys, 1 main tourney of both A &B. C is not paid). This is nothing new for TPF, as it was the case last year (I've only been twice now). I think it was just magnified because of the frustration of not knowing your standing on making the finals, and then the duration. I personally just enjoy the competitive aspect of the tourney, interacting with other players, and if I get some prize money on top of that, that's a fun perk. But not why I'm there. This will be different for different people.

    Just curious, but I would be interested to know how much of the tourney entry $$ (or at least %) is used to defray other festival costs, and how this compares to other tourneys at large festivals such as TPF (which for those of you that weren't there, the venue and amount of games were ENORMOUS, and I heard a rumor of some ridiculous thousands of $$$ expense that had to be paid in order to get adequate electrical set up to power all of our pins). By my quick math, the total aggregate payout is $3,475, including the top qualifier awards. This does not include any $$ for what gets spent on trophies, of which there are 42 of various sizes.

    Something to consider for the future might be to bump up the festival registration/entry fee to cover the festival costs, and leave a higher % of the tourney $$ put in available as payouts, and adjust the payouts up if/when the tourney entry $$ goes beyond expectations.

    I know nothing about organizing/setting up/paying for/running a tourney, so I cannot complain nor make suggestions from experience. But I think it's cool that you're willing to discuss them in an open forum such as this, and that other organizers are willing to offer constructive tips/thoughts.

    4) Accept more help that's offered on the fly (if it makes sense) when things aren't going as planned. I offered to bring my laptop from my room to use to either halve the time it was taking to do the data entry or be the "display" laptop. But I was turned down, because there wasn't a way to merge another spreadsheet into the master spreadsheet and its VB code. I'm well-versed in Excel, and some in VB, and I'm confident we could have found a way. At a minimum, I could have taken the scores/rankings sheets that were available, turned them into a slideshow, and run it in a continuous loop. As it stood, the display usually was static as one ranking sheet up on the wall for roughly an hour at a time, with data that was over 4 hours' old.

    5) Use the pinball tournament software that's available out there for free to organize the scores, rankings, and displays. I've never used it before, so I'm only mentioning this from what I've heard from others.

    6) Gameplay length was too long at this TPF compared to last year.
    A) Surprisingly, on many games, the tilts were too loose, which is VERY different from last year, and from other years, according to others, as TPF is famous for its tight tilts:
    - Spectrum you've already mentioned, and was difficult to change midstream because I don't think people realized the zero tilt right away (I didn't on my first entry), and then late afternoon on Friday everyone realized it. But by then many had already made monster scores from it, and you're left with either continuing or pissing off all the people that already spent $$ and time putting entries on the zero tilt settings. Thankfully, and appropriately, Spectrum wasn't used in the finals.

    - WOZ: Game shouldn't have been used in the first place with publicly known incomplete code -- not just "Stern shipping date incomplete," but "We can't even ship it yet because it's not complete" level of incompletion. But once you put it in, the game should have been under your control. However, the JJP people wouldn't let you be in control of the keys to open the pin (which should have been another red flag).

    - ACDC: One on the right was acceptably tight, but the one on the left was too loose, and noticably looser than the one on the right. There's a reason that all the ACDC high scores, including my 672M and Donovan's over half billion score were on that machine. Perhaps because of the truck fiasco you didn't get time to adjust that tilts??

    - Avengers: A couple of them had reasonably tight tilts (the one on far left did). The Hulk LE had such a generous tilt that I don't think I ever saw a tilt the entire tourney on that machine -- and we were playing that one a LOT. This machine is where pretty much all the high scores came from. For comparison purposes, Trent and I (at least when I wasn't like a "walker" on Sunday) could routinely put up 40-100M on the Hulk, and when we played the first of our final games of the Shoot Out finals on the left-most machine, both of our scores were sub-10M.

    On a software note, Stern needs to eliminate -- or provide a tourney setting that eliminates -- the LONG ball save any time you play a duel. Or perhaps only give it the first time you play each instance of a duel. Otherwise, you'll end up watching A players play a whole lot of Hawkeye vs Black Widow.

    - The EM's, Superman, and Blackout all had reasonably tight tilts.

    7) Already mentioned, but worth mentioning again -- because of the large # of sub tourneys expected to have finals on Saturday night, the staggered schedule of starting one early in the evening at 5:30pm, then 7pm should be adhered to. That some people didn't have enough time to use up there entries is something that each individual player needs to manage: Look at the length of the lines, and decide how many tickets to buy. If someone didn't show up until late in the day to try to qualify at the last minute, that's also on them, and the rest of us that were there earlier shouldn't be punished by having to stay later.

    The time period given to volunteers to qualify should be done prior to qualification closing, or at least prior to the announced start time of a tourney. As it happened, qualifying closed at 9pm, and I made sure I was in the tourney area at 9pm thinking the finals would start, then volunteers got a whole hour to qualify until 10pm, and data entry / computer mess happened until 11pm.

    9) If forced into a bind, concurrent finals need to be run. Ken, you said that they were, and to a small degree, after the EM's, you started to overlap them a bit. But the better way to do it would be to start the A division finals of one, say EM, while starting the B division finals of another, say Classic, and C division finals of another, perhaps Modern. There will still be overlap between A division players in EM being in B/C division in another, or other iterations, but less so of nearly guaranteed of having A division Shoot Out going at the same time as A division Classic, for example.

    10) As best as you can, start the tournaments at the revised time announced. Sub-tourney finals got pushed from the first being at 5:30pm to 9pm... but didn't start until 11pm. The revised state champ time was 9am, but we didn't get started until 9:30am. It was announced that you were giving contestants until 9:25am to show up. I disagree. If the announced time is 9am, and someone isn't there, their ball gets plunged until they do show.

    And count me in as a volunteer for next year. I'll serve a time slot for score-taking or score entry.
    Thanks again.

    #71 11 years ago

    Ken - will there be a link to the qualifying results? I'm curious to see the scores that were used for the rankings.

    #72 11 years ago
    Quoted from goatdan:

    Well, a few things... Sorry if this comes off as nasty, but for things that take a lot of manpower and make basically no money, if you don't like it - Don't play. Easier for us to run it for the people that do.

    Not nasty but arrogant. Sorry if that comes off as nasty but your comments come off as basically, if you don't like how I do things then don't play. That would be perfectly fine if how you run your tournament is described up front and is run that way without change. In this case the tournament was described one way and run differently than it was described and failed to meet the basics. Most frustrating part was the lack of communication unless you were a known player. For example, I would go and ask how I was stacking up and was told everytime that the numbers were being put into the system and they were behind. I would then look over 10 mins later and see actual competitors sitting at the computer looking at their scores. Why can they do that and you can't tell what my scores were? Also, why do we have time to let players go through their scores but not enough time to enter them? Again, if you are fair across the board then you can have that attitude of take it or leave it but when you treat others differently then you have no platform to stand on when people get upset.

    Before you say I don't understand the time and frustration it takes to put these on hold off. I haven't done a pinball tournament but I have run several car shows and RC Boat Races of which I did for free. I know it can be frustrating to hear negative items when you just gave up a lot of your time but that still doesn't circumvent the fact you have to ensure the same treatment for all. I can assure you those people are just as sensitive as pinball players can be.

    #73 11 years ago

    Saw some post about increasing the rates for admission to cover some of those extra cost and to increase tournament payouts. If you could not break even this year then I would strongly recommend a different location. If you need to raise something raise the buy in tickets for the tournament but please don't increase the general admission rates. One of the goals of these shows it to bring pinball to the general public and by getting much more expensive you are not helping that occur. This year it would have cost $120 for a family of 4 to come for Saturday. While that's not unaffordable by most it's also getting close to the point that I think starts to detract the general public from coming in.

    #74 11 years ago

    I have organized pinball expo for 28 years and ohio show for 9. The simple solution is to have people that are REAL familiar with tournaments run them all.. They know all the issues. They will do a good job. Although i personally have problems with people that run tournaments being in them TRENT, and the Sharp BROS run good tournaments PERIOD. Also the PAPA guys. I am sure there are othere out there with expierence as well. I gave up trying to run EXPO tournamants years ago... mike pacak

    #75 11 years ago

    Personally, I think it's cool when a tournament runs till 5am.

    It reminds me of the glory days of pinball; when a tournament would run till the sun came up a the arcade.

    The cops would stop by and make sure everything was alright because they did not know why the lights were on at 7am.

    #76 11 years ago
    Quoted from vid1900:

    Personally, I think it's cool when a tournament runs till 5am.
    It reminds me of the glory days of pinball; when a tournament would run till the sun came up a the arcade.
    The cops would stop by and make sure everything was alright because they did not know why the lights were on at 7am.

    It wouldn't have been so bad if the bigger and more important finals didn't start at 9am the "following" day.

    #77 11 years ago
    Quoted from Snailman:

    It wouldn't have been so bad if the bigger and more important finals didn't start at 9am the "following" day.

    LOL

    Probably would be easier to stay up than try to compete on 3 hours sleep.

    #78 11 years ago

    Playing till 5am is all fine and well if you weren't dumping money into a tournament since Friday night till closing and starting again 8am on Saturday and then expect people to be sane till 6am and then expect them back at 9am Sunday. You should allow someone that is experienced at this to run it next time period!

    Preferably IFPA or PAPA! I can't wait to see qualifying scores because I bet they were real accurate

    #79 11 years ago
    Quoted from 85vett:

    Not nasty but arrogant. Sorry if that comes off as nasty but your comments come off as basically, if you don't like how I do things then don't play. That would be perfectly fine if how you run your tournament is described up front and is run that way without change. In this case the tournament was described one way and run differently than it was described and failed to meet the basics. Most frustrating part was the lack of communication unless you were a known player. For example, I would go and ask how I was stacking up and was told everytime that the numbers were being put into the system and they were behind.

    Dude, wrong tournament. I was replying directly to the MGC Clock Chaos tournament rules that were being complained about.

    I can't speak to whatever did or didn't happen at Texas, but I know all of your complaints above we handle as best as possible. The poster who I was replying to said that we couldn't keep our schedule - he's right. We had issues. We communicated that issue to *everyone* last year, and *everyone* who moved on was invited back to play.

    In this case, we are supposed to have our final round start at midnight. We were behind. Everyone who was in the top 13 was given options that were fair for everyone. We stuck around and made it work as best we could. Would you have rather we said, "Oops, sorry! We had an issue we couldn't overcome at the start, so all those people waiting to finish are just out of luck!"?

    Quoted from 85vett:

    I know it can be frustrating to hear negative items when you just gave up a lot of your time but that still doesn't circumvent the fact you have to ensure the same treatment for all. I can assure you those people are just as sensitive as pinball players can be.

    Again, I was replying directly to a MGC quote, and I haven't put time into that until this weekend, so it's not my thing, but I will tell you that I don't think that anything devious was going on. From my experiences, the "regulars" who are ranked and whatnot are the best at asking questions.

    I don't know about Texas, but I can't imagine it is different - if you ask us a question, we're going to try to answer it as best as possible.

    My point, and if you take it as arrogant and decide not to play in Clock Chaos I am okay with that, is that if you expect everything to work 100% perfectly in pinball, you probably shouldn't be playing in a tournament. There can always be some issues, and as long as everyone tries to be as fair as possible to everyone, I think that it should be understood that these issues need to be worked with. If the fact that Clock Chaos finished at about 1am last year instead of 12:30 like we had planned and that totally bugs you, I cannot and will not promise that it will end perfectly at 12:30 this year either, but I can assure you we'll do our best to make it happen.

    #80 11 years ago
    Quoted from Sc1f1:

    You should allow someone that is experienced at this to run it next time period!

    Where are these people who just take and run tournaments? I've been offering to pass the MGC Tournament off to volunteers now for two or three years, and no one has stepped up to take it over.

    If there is a bunch of people waiting in the wings that can run these professionally and free to the venue, I'm sure that I and multiple other show organizers would be ready to take them up on the offer.

    #81 11 years ago

    I think the only problem with the tournament was the score entry. Not being able to see where you were ranked throughout Friday and Saturday qualifying made a lot of the participants angry, including myself and pushed the tournament start back past 10p. Its also the main reason that everyone started to complain about the other less important issues that went wrong. I think if the tournament ran smoothly the whole weekend no one would be talking about where all the entry money went, why woz was used, why avengers took some people so long. I had a good time on Saturday. On Sunday I had two hours of sleep, woke up late and barely made it in time for tournament start, lost my first game of 3 apparently and decided I'd rather go back to sleep than keep playing like crap, so I did. Overall the show was a huge success and I had a lot of fun!

    #82 11 years ago
    Quoted from goatdan:

    Where are these people who just take and run tournaments? I've been offering to pass the MGC Tournament off to volunteers now for two or three years, and no one has stepped up to take it over.
    If there is a bunch of people waiting in the wings that can run these professionally and free to the venue, I'm sure that I and multiple other show organizers would be ready to take them up on the offer.

    I don't know Dan. I mean, when I ran the tournament at PPE I spent about 100 hours preparing/planning for the event. I also used up three vacation days. The three days of the tournament were about 14 hours each, mostly on my feet.

    I am shocked SHOCKED that no one wants that job. I think you're not looking hard enough. I get dozens of emails every day from hot babes asking if they can volunteer and maybe shower with me. And I say "okay, but no kissing on the lips unless your wppr rank is better than 500."

    #83 11 years ago
    Quoted from goatdan:

    If there is a bunch of people waiting in the wings that can run these professionally and free to the venue.

    The director over the TPF tournament made money period and most likely paid his score keeper so I wouldn't say their pockets weren't lined

    What is wrong with giving someone that is a professional a little money to make sure tournament events goes off without a hitch and doesn't leave the festival with a black eye? I wouldn't mind a part of my prize going to a professional tournament director knowing that scores were correctly entered and I was able to see where I stand all day during qualifying.

    Power trip is what I saw this weekend with people trying to help with data entry and it was refused several times.

    There is a reason this event doesn't attract many world players

    #84 11 years ago

    goatdan - Fair enough. I took your comments as to be related to what happened this weekend which was way different than what you described at MGC clock chaos. Agreed that nothing will be perfect and if running 30 mins past is all that went wrong in yours then their is nothing to complain about there. That falls under the sh*t happens rule. It was the items I posted on the first page that I thought you were overlooking and once you see more than a couple of those issues it goes past my previous stated, "sh*t happens" rule. Sounds like we were talking about 2 separate tournaments.

    #85 11 years ago
    Quoted from Sc1f1:

    What is wrong with giving someone that is a professional a little money to make sure tournament events goes off without a hitch and doesn't leave the festival with a black eye? I wouldn't mind a part of my prize going to a professional tournament director knowing that scores were correctly entered and I was able to see where I stand all day during qualifying.

    Nothing. But again, who is out there that wants to do it?

    I'm relatively lucky. One of my best friends, Jim, who runs our tournaments offered to step up and take it over this year. I worked with him a bit, but we've been sourcing games, updating the web site, and all that stuff to transfer it over to him. I'm certain when all is said and done, unless if he is walking away with thousands of dollars (which he won't be), he would've been paid more working minimum wage at McDonald's for a few extra days here and there. I've still spent at least 40 hours on it myself.

    From a show organizational standpoint, it does not make any sense for me to pay for the space, pay to set up the electrical grid, bring in the machines, and then also pay someone to run the tournament. We try to make our tournament break even as best as possible, and we generally run the prize pools to be worth the same amount that it was the previous year in entries.

    And again, except for the hot chicks that jonnyo found, I haven't heard of many shows having "professionals" ready to step up. If you're out there, send me your demands, or heck - offer to help this year.

    Quoted from 85vett:

    Sounds like we were talking about 2 separate tournaments.

    We were, and I agree with your point about the rule. I totally get complaining about a tournament that has issues, and we listen to and try to improve our tournaments that have issues every year - even Clock Chaos, which we had about four issues, two of which were due to us running over and two were the reasons why we eid (long story short, printer issue and then CSI was playing forever because it was thrown in the line up last minute and had extra balls on, and then we asked people in the top 13 to play their final games early if they were willing to, which because there was still two or three people playing CSI made it so that you didn't exactly know where you stood... but we didn't force it...)

    We tried to address all of this way up front this year and we think that we have it more than handled. We're going to do our best to make it happen. And that's all that I'm saying - I think that everyone that runs tournaments does, and the best way to vote is with your pocketbook. If you are playing in a tournament that you didn't like for whatever the year before and there is no assurances of it being fixed, then don't.

    If you're disappointed because of issues that people really couldn't control, then you just shouldn't play in pinball tournaments. Balls get stuck, mechs break, etc... that's part of the fun!

    #86 11 years ago

    Thank you for all you did Ken.

    Not always an easy job.

    LTG : )

    #87 11 years ago
    Quoted from Snailman:

    Use the pinball tournament software that's available out there for free to organize the scores, rankings, and displays. I've never used it before, so I'm only mentioning this from what I've heard from others.

    On a software note, Stern needs to eliminate -- or provide a tourney setting that eliminates -- the LONG ball save any time you play a duel. Or perhaps only give it the first time you play each instance of a duel. Otherwise, you'll end up watching A players play a whole lot of Hawkeye vs Black Widow.

    The software continues to advance, and hopefully by next TPF it will be standardized and in great, usable condition. No one should have to reinvent the wheel, because when it breaks down...

    Stern has that software option currently in Avengers, the default ball save is 45 seconds. That can be turned down or even off. We'll be using Avengers at Pinburgh in a few weeks with those ball savers turned way, way down. Were you using the version with the fixed Nick Fury award, or the older software with heavy bonus multipliers?

    #88 11 years ago

    My thanks as well Ken.
    As long as this tourney is used as a learning experience next year should be awesome.
    My son and I had a blast and would do it all over again.

    #89 11 years ago
    Quoted from jonnyo:

    I don't know Dan. I mean, when I ran the tournament at PPE I spent about 100 hours preparing/planning for the event. I also used up three vacation days. The three days of the tournament were about 14 hours each, mostly on my feet.

    I am shocked SHOCKED that no one wants that job.

    No one wanted the PPE job because they were taking too much of the tournament money. If you gouge the players, you shouldn't expect them to help you for free. Most all shows require the player to purchase a weekend pass. That (and rented booths) is where shows should make the majority of their money. Not off the tournament.

    CAX has a great all volunteer crew every year. If a show takes 10% or less of the tournament (prize) money, guys will step up and run it. For free. Does the MGC take 10% or less? Including things like trophies, copy fees, etc?

    #90 11 years ago
    Quoted from phishrace:

    Does the MGC take 10% or less? Including things like trophies, copy fees, etc?

    Without going in to great detail, yes. The most we've ever made on the tournaments is about $100, and we've lost far more than that in some years. Until recently, the general ticket sales were subsidizing the tournament.

    With few exceptions, no matter how much asking I have done, no one offers to step up and help. Here was my exact quote when I was asking players for help: "If we can get a few people signed up that want to do Saturday night or Sunday morning, we will open those times up too! If we do, we intend on raising payouts somewhat too."

    Raising somewhat because we have no idea what play would look like later. This request, directly to players, received zero responses about helping out.

    #91 11 years ago
    Quoted from bkerins:

    The software continues to advance, and hopefully by next TPF it will be standardized and in great, usable condition. No one should have to reinvent the wheel, because when it breaks down...
    Stern has that software option currently in Avengers, the default ball save is 45 seconds. That can be turned down or even off. We'll be using Avengers at Pinburgh in a few weeks with those ball savers turned way, way down. Were you using the version with the fixed Nick Fury award, or the older software with heavy bonus multipliers?

    Bowen,

    I would love more information about any available tournament software. Or from anyone else for that matter. Thanks

    #92 11 years ago
    Quoted from phishrace:

    No one wanted the PPE job because they were taking too much of the tournament money. If you gouge the players, you shouldn't expect them to help you for free. Most all shows require the player to purchase a weekend pass. That (and rented booths) is where shows should make the majority of their money. Not off the tournament.
    CAX has a great all volunteer crew every year. If a show takes 10% or less of the tournament (prize) money, guys will step up and run it. For free. Does the MGC take 10% or less? Including things like trophies, copy fees, etc?

    PPE definitely had a rep when I took the job, but it doesn't change what Dan said: very few people who have the background/experience needed are willing to do the massive amount of work to pull off a good tournament. If you do a good job, you get paid in 'thanks'. If things go off the rails, you get this thread.

    #93 11 years ago
    Quoted from goatdan:

    With few exceptions, no matter how much asking I have done, no one offers to step up and help. Here was my exact quote when I was asking players for help: "If we can get a few people signed up that want to do Saturday night or Sunday morning, we will open those times up too! If we do, we intend on raising payouts somewhat too."

    Raising somewhat because we have no idea what play would look like later. This request, directly to players, received zero responses about helping out.

    'Intend' and 'somewhat' aren't going to motivate anyone. I'm not sure what you have going on there as I've never attended, but the thought of the tournament losing money baffles me. Tournament participation is soaring everywhere else. You can easily see this by looking at the IFPA website. Maybe you should try contacting IFPA directly.

    #94 11 years ago
    Quoted from alveolus:

    Bowen,
    I would love more information about any available tournament software. Or from anyone else for that matter. Thanks

    There is another thread with some tournament software. I haven't tested it live yet. I might use it for a small event I have planned in April.

    http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pinball-arcade-tournament-manager-application-v154

    For single or double elim up to 32 players, I use this:

    http://download.cnet.com/ALJ-Tournament-Maker/3000-2121_4-10620462.html

    Works great but make sure to save occasionally.

    If you have an iPad you can try brackelope. http://brackelope.com/ The upshot with it is players can check their standings live on their phones/pads.

    Adam Lefkoff has some slick software that I have used many times and is perfect for Herb format qualifiers. The configuration is a little more complicated and I'm not sure if he intends it for public distro. Bowen probably knows more about its current dev status.

    If you do a standard PAPA final format (3 games with 4-2-1-0 scoring) there is no software that I know of. We always do it pen and paper, which works out fine because it's not a lot of work.

    #95 11 years ago
    Quoted from phishrace:

    'Intend' and 'somewhat' aren't going to motivate anyone. I'm not sure what you have going on there as I've never attended, but the thought of the tournament losing money baffles me. Tournament participation is soaring everywhere else. You can easily see this by looking at the IFPA website. Maybe you should try contacting IFPA directly.

    Funny, the IFPA "restarted" at our show in 2006. I talk with Josh regularly.

    It has lost money because we have made very large guarantees on it that haven't always been met. One year, our software screwed up and gave all of the mini-tournaments about 140% of the entry pot. Our fault, but still a cost. We haven't counted anything with it - trophies or whatever either. Our qualifying window also isn't huge. We're a two day show, it's a total of 12 hours of qualifying time. We sort of hit a limit at how much we can give out.

    Tournament participation has soared at our show, so we've raised payouts until this year where we stayed basically the same as last year since we have basically hit the limit on how much we can get people through to play reasonably.

    I had planned on dumping the tournament this year because we have had some players treat our officials like garbage to the point our regular volunteers don't want to do it, and because it takes up a ton of my time. I offered it to various supposed pros, and we had no one take me up on it. Our official Jim saved it by telling me he didn't want it to go away, and he's taking it on himself. For no pay.

    It's great if you see players all the time who are willing to step up and totally run tournaments (game selection, tweaking, set up, running qualifying, etc) that offer 100% payouts at no cost to the events themselves. I would love to meet them. I'm sure Jim would be okay with 100% turning the reigns of the tournament over to someone like this too, since he's doing it now - and he's not a tournament player.

    Quoted from jonnyo:

    PPE definitely had a rep when I took the job, but it doesn't change what Dan said: very few people who have the background/experience needed are willing to do the massive amount of work to pull off a good tournament. If you do a good job, you get paid in 'thanks'. If things go off the rails, you get this thread.

    Even when we have had a good year, a lot of our tournament officials receive abuse from players throughout the tournament. I've had this conversation before, but in a nutshell, if you are playing in a tournament...

    The official didn't cause you to drain.

    The game plays the same for everyone.

    I understand it is frustrating to not score what you had intended to, but don't yell at the official about how poorly the machine is set up. We've had a significant number of people who refuse to do pinball tournaments because of this treatment. And, sadly, every year when all is said and done, well more than half of the players don't thank the officials. As someone told me a couple years ago, they come to the show and expect a good tournament that pays out 100% run by pros, and there is no need to thank those running it. They are there to do a job.

    #96 11 years ago
    Quoted from bkerins:

    The software continues to advance, and hopefully by next TPF it will be standardized and in great, usable condition. No one should have to reinvent the wheel, because when it breaks down...
    Stern has that software option currently in Avengers, the default ball save is 45 seconds. That can be turned down or even off. We'll be using Avengers at Pinburgh in a few weeks with those ball savers turned way, way down. Were you using the version with the fixed Nick Fury award, or the older software with heavy bonus multipliers?

    The Avengers software that was being used left extra ball enabled even when set to OFF.

    #97 11 years ago
    Quoted from goatdan:

    As someone told me a couple years ago, they come to the show and expect a good tournament that pays out 100% run by pros, and there is no need to thank those running it. They are there to do a job.

    It is sad but true that a few have told me a very similar thing.

    I still get the reward of the others that do say thanks and genuinely have a good time.

    I know I am a glutton for punishment, but I have stepped up for Clock Chaos for no pay. I also know there will be some great people that are appreciative and that is why I do it. To see the genuine smiles on a select few faces make it all worth while at the end of the day

    #98 11 years ago

    learned my lesson long ago about this show.. after I qualified on CSI and got put on a backwards flipper Einstein game in the finals... weird.

    #99 11 years ago
    Quoted from bkerins:

    Stern has that software option currently in Avengers, the default ball save is 45 seconds. That can be turned down or even off. We'll be using Avengers at Pinburgh in a few weeks with those ball savers turned way, way down. Were you using the version with the fixed Nick Fury award, or the older software with heavy bonus multipliers?

    Glad to hear that Pinburgh will have the duel ball saver turned down.
    No, we were not using version that had a fixed point value Nick Fury award (when it's not set to add ball during mb). It had the heavy bonus X. Big scores were all about the bonus.

    #100 11 years ago
    Quoted from DarthXaos:

    The Avengers software that was being used left extra ball enabled even when set to OFF.

    But at least the EB was only awarding points. No issue with that for tourney play IMHO. Same with the Special.

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