- 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.

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.

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.

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.

There are many players that usually step up and help with tournaments, but I do know in years past you didn't want players to help and play in the same tournament -- the exception was clock chaos.

I know that in 2010 and 2011 I asked if you wanted help and you said you didn't like the idea of those playing also helping -- which is fine by me. I know the Sharpes helped some in 2011, but it was not that much compared to others they've been at.

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.

Seriously? How many tournaments and shows do you attend each year?

Adam's software works great, but can be a little challenging to setup at first, but he provides a nice detailed PDF on how to configure everything.

We used it at Louisville with zero issues.

Yup, Karl's software worked great as well.

If you enjoy punishing people

I think a Pi would have enough juice for the score entries and administrative tasks and maybe handle a display for live results, but I wouldn't expose it to players to view results on their own devices.

It would be great to have a all-in-one tournament software package, but what many do not realize is that it's a ton of work, with oh so little payback. I've written my own little software for IFPA, PAPA, and/or Herb formats over the years and dropped it after realizing that it was just too much effort to do the right way.

I agree about score entry, but queuing is just as important if not more because not all methods scale well. I've lose track of the number of tournaments where games are empty and people are ready to play, but just waiting to be "placed" on the game. While you say they are easy ways, you would be surprised on how inefficient many are!

If you are staffed well, score entry lag is not that bad. PAPA, Seattle, Louisville and SPF a great job using paper and the lag isn't bad at all. At Expo, once we got caught up Friday night, everything was good. We had technical issues and I was flying in friday morning (due to work) so things were delayed out of the gate. Not to mention we had to renter 1k scores because some other folks didn't follow our instructions.

One of the things that tournament directors need to understand is that game play time efficiency is a very critical to a successful tournament. If there are games that are open and nobody is playing, that is revenue loss, but more importantly, it frustrates players that WANT to play on those games.

I suggest for queuing, just hand out a single card from a deck of cards to each player. They can use that as a physical placeholder for a game and it prevents them from waiting at the same time on many games. For entries, I would just use poker chips or some unique identifier that I could sell and people would use as an entry. The electronic ideas Troz has for entry and que are great, but seem to really complicate things from my perspective when the main objective is really to streamline the score entry process.

Honestly, that isn't KISS As a player, I have cards, poker chips or other things I need to keep track of.

With this said, for a Herb-style tournament, using at ticket system plus a "row of chairs" in front of the games (a line for each game) is the by far the best method to stage players on games. It's straight forward and doesn't require any fancy technology. It allows maximum game time efficiency because it allows the scorekeeper or other helper to get people on games faster. Write down score, get next players ticket, rinse repeat. This keeps it very simple and everyone knows where they stand in their wait time and they get to sit down while waiting and be social with others.

This format works great in the twilight hours of the tournament as you have more people trying to get last minute qualifying. It also REDUCES score keeping because by this point most players know the scores they are shooting and the scorekeepers are mainly just getting people on the games and taking tickets with occasional score taking.

The drawback is you need space and obviously chairs

While I loved Karl's software at DRAINS, I do question how well it would scale to something like Seattle or SPF last year, were all the games had 6 to 10 people waiting.

Karl's software at DRAINS did this (except the estimated wait times) and it was pretty cool.

Estimated wait times are tricky and in the cases I've seen it attempted, it's failed. Not only are you tracking game time, which is one Bowen/Elwin/Cayle game away from greatly skewing your averages, but the time in between one player and another starting is can greatly be different.

Now -- something like this could work in specific formats, maybe in a head to head match play, but not in a HERB style tournament.

You must have gone to some really crappy pinball tournaments to believe this because it's so far from the truth its sad.

I have found that most casual competitive players do not want to sit by themself in line for X hours during qualifying. It really is not that difficult. I like your chair idea as an organizer, but find it very boring as a player.

Well it's boring if you sit there and hide in your shell and not speak to those around you.