First, just because I have a differing opinion does not mean that I have not absorbed all of the feedback. I am capable of listening to an opinion, evaluating it myself, and then deciding if I wish to adopt it. If I adopt it, then I could possibly anger someone else who opposed it. If I don't adopt it, then I anger the person who supported it. It's a catch-22. So the best approach is to move forward with the one that I find the most agreeable.

Second, the logic behind 2 days of separate qualifying is to appease the following groups:

1. Players on Friday who get mad that they have to play on Saturday to protect their scores.
2. Players on Saturday who feel it is unfair that the must compete against scores from Friday.
3. Players that get mad that they must sacrifice some of their show experience by "babying" their scores.
4. Players that get upset that today's game scores are higher on average than the day before.
5. Players that get upset that yesterday's game scores are higher on average than today.
6. Players that want their top 10 score on Friday to mean something.
7. Players that want their top 10 score on Saturday to mean something.
8. Players that get mad that the tournament is not maximizing its potential.
9. Players that get mad that a game that was working well on Friday is now not working as well on Saturday.

It's nearly impossible to please everyone. During a competitive situation, players can become incredibly sensitive to situations that would normally not affect them. But if I make each day compete against scores from that day, then the playing field was as level as can be expected. and there are some added benefits as far as the actual event is concerned.

From my point of view, as a tournament director, having two different days of qualifying simplifies things.

1. It gives me flexibility to replace a game that is not performing as desired or is simply not fit for competitive play in its current state.
2. It provides me the opportunity to fix a game so that it does not unfairly affect other players. If a game's tilt was too loose on Friday, then I can adjust the tilt for Saturday. But if the qualification is not broken up into separate sessions, then the loose tilt must remain for the entire duration of qualification.
3. It allows a player to budget their show time as they see fit.
4. It shortens the playoff rounds in situations where the event is seeking a full 100% grade because the significant games attributed to qualification rounds have doubled.
5. It can actually save players money. A player does not have to play on any particular day to have a shot at making the playoffs.
6. It protects me in the event a game lasts one full day, but does not last very long on the second day. If the qualifying was one continuous qualification, then players on the first day have a tremendous advantage over the players who only played on the second day. IFPA rules dictate that the scores from the first day would remain and the game qualifications would be over since the game was in service for more than 50% of the qualification time.
7. It allows qualification machines to be worth double the number of significant games. At 4% per game, that is pretty substantial in my opinion.
8. It is the simplest form of qualification. Finish in the top X on one of two days, and you make the playoffs. I personally do not see how that is not a simple format.

As for the wild cards, I can do one of two things.

The first thing is not allow any wild cards. If you do not qualify on Friday or Saturday, you just do not make the playoffs. That's the simplest method for determining a playoff. There are no calculations that span multiple days. You either qualified on Friday or you qualified on Saturday. While simple, it also eliminates players that were contenders, but just could not pull off a day to get into the top 16.

The second thing I can do is allow wild cards. This adds a little "Cinderella" vibe to the playoffs. But there has to be a way to fairly assign the wild card spots. Both groups failed to qualify by placing in the top 16 on either day. And in my opinion, players that dedicated two days to qualifying deserve the shot at the playoffs more than a player that only dedicated one day.

I prefer to include wild cards, but I can also see the merits of just having a set limit and moving forward with that limit.

I can discuss the pros & cons of the 2 day qualification for days. The point is that I believe that the two day qualification benefits more players and situations than a single qualification period that spans 2 days. It doubles the number of significant games and it uses the same amount of time. And outside of a pure head-to-head event, HERB is going to be the most desired by players as it allows a player to recover from one or two bad games.

I am listening to all constructive criticism. I'm balancing the different opinions. And I am absorbing them all. But it is highly unlikely that I will make every single opinionated player happy. I will have to dismiss some ideas that were absorbed, but found to be lacking. All I can do is continue to try and create events that will be fun and rewarding to the large majority of the participants.

I really don't have much more to say on this thread. The proof of improvement will come after future events. TPF 2015 is in the past. More events are in the future. Players will judge the event. If attendance continues to grow, then I am moving in the proper direction. If events start and end on time, then I am improving. If events are fair for everyone involved, then I am improving.

And if some do not like my approach, that's ok. We can simply agree to disagree and move on and enjoy some pinball.

Marcus

A lot of good points for the two day qualifying. Never really thought about game conditions, I always seem to get my plays in before they go down.

Whatever happened with the alerts?

Screenshot_2015-04-02-00-01-57.png

A great idea lost in the chaos.

We should have used it but it fell out of our radar as we struggled to get the scores entered properly

We will use it better in the future.

Marcus

Sounds good. I thought it was a great idea when you first presented it

you could simply have the top X from Friday form a bracket and the top X from Saturday form a bracket with the winners of the Friday bracket and the Saturday bracket facing each other in the finals. or top two from each bracket form a 4-player final.
a player could simply not be in both Friday and Saturday brackets, so a player who was #8 on Friday may choose to play again on Saturday and better their seed. if their placement was, say, #4 on Saturday, their seat as the 8th seed on Friday would be removed, everyone below that seed would move up and the Friday 17th seed (if top 16 were in the Friday bracket) could move up to the 16th seed. this would allow the Cinderella player to not have to play both days, if they choose, or they may choose to play again on Saturday anyway to control their own destiny, but still have the 17th seed from Friday in their backpocket.
players who qualify only for Friday could be at a disadvantage if you pull/adjust a machine they qualified well on on Friday, so they still have an incentive to play on Saturday.

I like this! Much better idea then adding Friday & Saturday points together.

Excellent idea Brian. I'm going to steal it!

Marcus

This is one of the reasons I got rid of the game. The big toy (lower playfield) is too easy/boring AND the gorilla parts are unobtanium.

Interesting idea. Given the choice between the two (how TPF2015 was done and this), I'm having a tough time deciding which is better.

But for IFPA meaningful games consideration, I believe that this alternate proposal would mean you'd only get 6 meaningful games for a bank of 6 pins vs the TPF15 format where you got 12 meaningful games from a bank of 6 pins.

Yes, indeed. That was my 1.2M score on Viking. Great pin. Nice 7Volution displays, too!
Also, kudos to you for coming over mid-show and trying to fix the player one display 100,000 digit.

Marcus, a couple of other suggestions:

A) Tourney finals available pin selection: The finals for Tourney Bank A should only be played on pins that were in Tourney Bank A (from either day of qualifying), barring some multiple catastrophic malfunctions (or pins being disassembled) that require pulling in a different pin for finals consideration. From day 1 qualifying, Doctor Who should have been available for Shoot Out finals, and TFTC should have been available for Tilt finals. Since some players may not have been competing in the other tourney banks, it's unfair to force them to play/choose pins that they didn't know they'd have to be familiar with.

I certainly took advantage of how you ran it on both the Retro and the Wizard, the former by choice (Viking -- from Wizard bank, but certainly a "Retro" era pin) and the latter due to pin attrition from people having already packed up their pins (using AMH and Paragon for Wizard finals, with those two pins from the Shoot Out and Retro bank, respectively).

B) Finals bracket: if you're going to continue with the finals format with numerous byes, I suggest drawing up the Finals on paper (or on computer) using a traditional bracket layout with byes --- where best "entering" seed is in that round's top half of bracket, and 2nd best "entering" seed is in bottom half, and each pairing then has a contiguous line that feeds the next round. This is in lieu of how you drew them up that listed each round's "entering" seeds in numerical order with a reference back to prior rounds matches. It would make the bracket easier to follow, and easier for the finals coordinator to populate each subsequent round.

Even better yet is to have a format that will fit an online free tool like Challonge, where it builds your next round for you, and people can follow along from their phones.

I see this over and over in the tournaments people are upset about.... organizers trying to do TOO MUCH and make the whole thing overly complicated.

If you have trouble getting one tournament running smooth - why are we looking at 4-6 more concurrently?

Stop trying to be 'creative' in all the different ways you can qualify, add scores, do mental gymnastics, etc.

If you describe it to an experienced player and they go 'huh?' - you're probably doing it wrong
If you describe it to a volunteer, and if they can't repeat it to someone else - you are REALLY doing it wrong

Someone should be able to understand the objectives, and how you are measured in just a few sentences and a very quick conversation. If not, you are doing it wrong.

People try to monkey around with things way too much - K.I.S.S. and you will do far better.

I like this idea as well, the only issues I see are the aforementioned "significant games" as well as the possibility that people hold off playing until the last minute just so they can assess the group of 16 that they could be playing against. I guess it's all strategy at the end of the day, but I could see that being a thing that causes issues towards the end of the day.

As someone that has been playing competitively for over 10 years, I am pretty sure none of these are major concerns with people that play in tournaments. Sure, some might be irritating (ie, a game that isn't playing as well as the day before), but they are not problems truly calling out to be resolved.

Great! Did you get one of my t-shirts for rolling past 1M? Send my a pm with your address so I can send it if you didn't get one.

Man, this is a nail biter.. old TPF tournaments hit their yearly decay cycle...I dropped to 118th, now I need 29.46 points to make the top 100, which is my only real remaining goal as far as IFPA is concerned for me. Placed 2nd in one tournament and "not high enough to matter" in any of the others. Argh.

Games always change over time. PAPA doesn't change the games over 3 days....
Most circuit events are on the same games over 2 days of qualifying and then a 3rd day for finals.
Things change and people have to adapt. You shouldn't baby people saying this game isn't playing the same as yesterday... boohoo. Suck it up buttercup and play better

Tron completely changed from day to day at Pinmasters. It sucked but we learn and adapt

So we're likely going to be changing the way we handle issues like this, mostly because of the complexity it adds to the tournament solely for the purposes of a WPPR grab.

For tournaments where there are multiple paths to qualify, we're likely to look at the shortest path of all the alternatives.

This would mean that if it's possible to qualify for finals based on one day's worth of play, then only those 6 games would count, even if you have the ability to qualify through both days of play (12 games played).

TPF is by far and away not the only tournament using these alternate paths to increase the number of games played. We've seen tournaments where anyone that got a 1st place score on a game automatically make finals, while additional players make it through the 'standard' qualifying process. This rule would make it where if an organizer really wants to advance those players getting a single 1st place score to the finals, it would result in ONE meaningful game played for qualifying, regardless of what the 'standard' qualifying process is.

Hopefully this would lead to the removal of these alternative methods of advancement through a tournament, keep the qualifying process more simple and easy to understand, and give all players an equivalent path of data being used towards the advancement to finals.

Marcus, thanks for explaining your logic. I disagree with having separate and unequal qualifying events, but I respect that it's your decision to make.

While I certainly appreciate Noah's experience and opinion, why ask someone who was 1,200 miles away in Las Vegas during TPF? There were at least four current state champions and several former state champions present at TPF15, I'd be more interested in their thoughts.

I think he just meant that Noah lost to a Texas player. Just a small joke as Noah is awesome. I was very happy to meet him in Vegas.

Nobody is saying the players are laughingstocks, just the general opinion most national players have of the tournaments and how they are run is pretty negative from what I hear.

Interesting. Not sure how you're going to handle this effectively. In PAPA18 A division, the shortest "path" to qualify would have been to focus on two pins, playing 2-pin tickets, and get 1st's on both of them. So does that mean that PAPA18 A Div qualification meaningful games played is only two? (plus % added for qualifying time)

The difference here is that there's only one way to qualify at PAPA, through their 5-entry ticket process. There's no what we would call "Alternative paths" to qualifying easier.

For the TPF situation, there were absolutely 3 different paths to qualifying for finals.

Path 1 - Finish top 5 in a 6 game run on Friday (regardless of how many of the 6 games you actually played)

Path 2 - Finish top 5 in a 6 game run on Saturday (regardless of how many of the 6 games you actually played)

Path 3 - Finish in the top 30 at-large out of your 12 game run across both days (regardless of how many of the games you actually played)

This kind of analysis is only for tournaments with MULTIPLE paths of qualification. Most tournaments do not have to deal with this at all. In TPF's case we would look at all possible paths of qualification, and take the shortest one, which would be 6 meaningful games played for that part of the tournament.

The ultimate hope is that more tournaments switch to an equitable qualifying process for ALL players, and not creating these alternative ways of advancing through the qualifying process in an attempt to add more meaningful games played to the mix. It makes for a much more confusing event with the sole purposes of inflating WPPR's earned.

That is exactly what I was saying.

Coast 2 Coast just put out a really nice discussion of both PAPA and the TPF from a tournament organization standpoint. There are a lot of good ideas there about examining the target audience and thinking about how we're trying to further pinball as a whole. Good stuff!

http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/episode-152-all-the-wpprtunities-or-lets-go-sharpeshooting_44049

The lower PF parts are pretty much available now. Some from vendors here in U.S and some from Germany. The most critical wearing part, the square drive shaft assembly, is available from Kerry Stair at Mantis Amusements. It is welded stainless steel, much stronger than the original part.