League I'm in you can buy a raffle ticket every time you're there that will go to giving away a pin or cash drawing at the final date.

That doesn't really help with the scoring though. Maybe raffle off a high score? lol

In all seriousness, have you tried asking folks directly why they might not feel like coming (aside from scheduling conflicts and whatnot)

In PPL we changed the scoring of each game to 5-3-2-1 from the way it was before (4-2-1-0) to give incentive for people to show up. That way even if someone has a bad week and takes last place on all three games, they will still get a weekly score of a 3, which is better than a zero if you didn't show up.

This isn't a perfect solution but it seems to be better than the previous way.

Where to begin?!

Beer
Grub
Beer
T Shirts
Beer
Hot chicks
Beer
Gold star sticker
Beer

Ah sorry, I was going at the wrong angle there.

Skipped on purpose. What kind of pussy is that? Seems like penalties need to be stiffened.
Maybe part of league should be one team game per session ( one flipper / person).
So eight men on a four player game on a nice hard em game.
Ask the local bowling league captains not showing up is highly frownd upon.

Very cool to see pinball leagues being more common!

Leagues just seem like a big time commitment. In my biz, I can't guarantee attendance. Sounds like a good time, though.

I would kind of think that goes against the whole idea of getting together with a bunch of people to have fun playing pinball. You want to be inclusive, not exclusive.

I like the way ballers works here in WI. Come when you can, every month is independent. Everybody antes in to a pot, top 3 get paid.

Really liking that Gold Star sticker incentive.

Allow x amount of pre-makeup scoresheets so if you physically miss a match or two, they play against your scores. Handicap by using a % of the pre-makeup score if you feel there's an advantage.

Free handy's in the bathroom?

Thanks man, I am glad you like it. It really is just a chill, fun way to hangout and play some pinball each month. If you guys don't know what he is referring to, here is a link to the league- http://wisconsinpinball.com/viewforum.php?f=19

To the OP, is your season monthly for 12 months? If so, that is a grind for sure. A lot of people play for IFPA points, and a lot more don't. If your league members just enjoy playing each month, maybe the incentive is side action of some sort? One of the things I stole from another league (which I really like) is a side game, with one shot at a high score. People throw a little money in the kiddie, and at the end of the night, winner takes all on it....

my league has homemade cookies.
it is played in a format that is very user friendly but obviously not very ifpa friendly (low points).
at the beginning of each night, the four lowest ranked players pick the machines.

and i think you already know how i feel about dropped scores, pre plays, bonus points, handicaps and all that jazz. my league has nine people and it is split pretty much in half in terms of casual players, and competitive players, and they all know that they are they are there to have fun with each other and do their best, not become grand champ of the city, kinda takes a load off everyones shoulders. that combined with a short run time of one month, and a low flat entry fee.

--edited out my worthless post---

Ryan, I assume you are talking about a location league?

In that case, it is different from most leagues.

At our locations we have found that nobody wants to be roped in for a set number or times of attendance as real life often gets in the way. Instead of a league we run a monthly. We meet once per month, ALL are welcome, no entry fee, and the bar gives away a pitcher or free drinks. We also give away madisonpinball swag on occassion.

We average a consistent 20-24 people each month. The main motivation seems to be to want to play pinball and hang out. Some like IFPA points so we have that as an incentive for those that do. Starting this year I plan to host an end of year event at my house which is based on attandence or points or ? at all the monthlies. Basically an added perk for those that play in themonthlies on a regular basis.

Silly question... have you put it out to the league participants for their input? Personally, looking at how short the league is (8 weeks/8 sessions if I am reading this right), I would just punish those that don't participate.

How big is the league?

My apologies for being glib.

Our league has 20 members and is grouped into 5 groups of 4. We group by player averages so groups consist of your direct competition as far as current league standings. Scoring per night is done based on how well a player scores against everyone else as well as their group. If you have the high score for the night you receive 20 points, 2nd highest 19 and so on. These points do not change if you have 20 people show up or 10.

We also give bonus points for high score for the night as well as winning your specific group.

The incentive is simply in a player's desire to not give points away. This really puts the onus on the player to show up and removes the director from enforcing a penalty or bonus for showing up.

Sorry again for my first post.

The league I play in meets once a month (first Sunday). I can commit to that, it's something I look forward to and plan around. My family knows that I have a commitment once a month for instance.

I couldn't handle that weekly. Just too much real life to be able to consistently not miss something once a week.

Maybe you could have a once a month meeting that goes towards a season that's the "important" league meeting, that people could really plan around, and then the other 3 weeks could be one-off meetings, where there's a winner per session, and it's more informal.

Then you could play as often as you could make it, but really just try and commit to the monthly session, and not feel terrible if you have to miss some of the others.

We have an end of season tournament that counts towards your overall score. We use regular season finishing spots to seed. If a player does not attend 4 regular season nights they are not eligible to play in the end of season tournament. The value of the tournament is not as great as a regular season night but can certainly determine an overall finishing position.

We have monetary awards for top 3 in regular season, the final tournament and overall season winners.

Overall standings consist of 4 rounds of regular league play plus your tournament finish.

I can send you a couple of our league rules if interested. richmondpinball@gmail......

just read your previous post. Our leagues sound very similar.

I guess force flow

But I read it as a league and team/sole competition.

Not just showing up at chuck's bar for drinks and pinball.

Kind of like open bowling and league bowling. Both are fine but there is a big difference.

As far as being a big commitment yes i am sure it is. My brother and a couple close friends talked me into a Wednesday night bowling league for a couple years. Not really digging the grind at times but that is all part of the commitment of League.

Mini tournaments and get togethers are more to my liking personally but that is the gateway drug to the big leagues!

Seeing as how you are in CO, how about a free pinner to the monthly winner?

Here we normally do anywhere from a 8-12 week league which meets once a week. Players can drop their two lowest weeks, so if you miss and get a 0, you can drop that week and still be fine. Cost is $5 a week and you pay whether or not you are there for that week, which is a little incentive to still go. We do groups of 4 that are set by weekly average for the first half of the league and then total points for the second. We do that because lower ranked players can get into the top group depending on how many nights they have missed and how well they did when they were there and they don't want to be in the top group normally.

We do 4-3-2-1 scoring with a bonus .5 points whenever you get in the top 4 scores on each of the 5 games.

It's worked pretty well here. You get similar skill sets playing against each other and you can still miss a week or two and still be in it for league champ which is great for people with crazy hour jobs or families.

MCPL does Tuesday nights for 10 weeks plus a finals. You can pre-play as long as your scores are initialed by another league player. We allow pre-play's for a maximum of 3 weeks. If you miss a night and don't have a pre-play sheet, it's a forfeit. Forfeit 3 nights and you are out until the next season.

Most of our players(27 last league) see the importance of doing the pre-play sheets because you just never know what life will throw your way. We do sometimes get the player who thinks "Oh, I'll never miss a week", then they miss a week or two and find themselves near the bottom of their division.

When I first started the league about 6 years ago, we did try allowing everyone to drop their worst night. That really didn't work out too good. Sometimes there were some weird swings in the results at week 10 and some players(including myself) didn't feel it was fair.

We use FSPA scoring so a perfect night is 20 pts(rarely happens). So let's say your worst night was a 3. You think "Great, I get to drop a 3!" But let's say your worst night was a 9. You think "Crap, I'm losing 9 points!" Plus we would sometimes get the intentional no show on week 10 so they would get to drop a Zero.

Pay money out on points!
more weeks=more points=more $$$$
However, I tried that in the Denver league, and the amount I was able to pay out still made it kind of moot.
We have tried to tweak this at Lyons over the years, and the current setup really is about as good as we could come up with.
Also, the WPPR rankings are unaffected by dropped weeks, those results are just unadjusted averages. (assuming min. weeks were attended)
When the players get to drop their lowest, that really only affects the seeding for the finals, not the results. (you still have to play and win)
I look at the drops as more of a slight seeding reward, as opposed to a penalty for those missing weeks.
But if someone has played well enough to be able to miss and get the bracket setup the way they want, then whatever. was it Tim? lol

can players do a pre-play, and then still show up to play?
Players could abuse that setup.

We do league average for misses. First miss you get 100% of your average and then it drops by 20% each time you miss. We meet monthly during the year. Averages change monthly so you still have to attend to keep your average up if you have missed a few.

We do 12 months, first Saturday of the month. Weekly leagues would be awesome, but that would be tough. Maybe if somebody else ran it. :p

Last year we did points based on attendance (9 players, points were 9,8,7,...) but that was ended because it was pretty unbalanced. This year, we use IFPA linear scoring over 8 or 9 machines. I take the total points and divide by the number of machines to get the average. The average is what is used (added up) through the year to rank players. You get to drop 1 low score, including a single zero if you have any. It was a little more work on my part for the spreadsheet I use to track the standings, but the information is much easier to understand compared to last year.

I've been trying to figure out a way to bump the numbers up a little as well. I like the idea of a random drawing for a league t-shirt (that I still have to get to) but I don't have the budget for that. I only charge $10 a year to cover trophies, so maybe a $5 or $10 shirt if you are the random draw that month instead of a $20 shirt would work.

Yes. Our pre-plays are not dated, so they can be used at any time a player can't make it. Our location has about 30 pins, so what we do is this. If you have to use a pre-play, then 4 scores get crossed off your sheet for that night. Then, you only have to re-play those 4 again and not do another entire sheet.

I just got done with my first league and although I had a lot of fun, there were some aspects I didn't care for much. The pinball, beer and people were awesome, but the scoring annoyed me.

We did a 7-5-3-1 system that allowed for you to drop your lowest 2 nights out of only 8. That seems like a lot if you ask me?

Each night we were grouped according to total points. After the 8th "regular" night, we had our finals which was a single game used to determine the winner of the league. The entire 8 weeks was basically used to flight the league for the final night. Is that normal?

A friend of mine was in 4th place until the last night when he was overtaken and dropped into the 5th spot. That put him in the B flight. He had a bad game and ended up in 7th place. The entire league he clawed his way to the top only to be beat down because of one bad game.

Doesn't there seem to be something inherently wrong with that scenario?

I'm also not sure I'm a fan of the $15 fee at the beginning of the league for the IFPA thing. I really don't care about points and think they'll be detrimental to me in the end. I might be good compared to the 12 people I play with, but when they use those points to rank me nationally, it's going to be a blood bath.

It's not that I'm worried about the $15, but I would rather them spend that on beer or food for the last night.

I can't think of a better incentive scheme than Lyons uses.

10 week league (not all consecutive), with the ability to drop 2 lowest scores gives an incentive to be there there each week, but if you miss a week or two then you're just dropping those weeks, and incur no real penalty for a miss or two. The reward for better attendance? Better seeding at the finals. Miss more than 2 weeks and you loose seeding, and possibily a spot in the finals. I spent all season looking forward dropping one or two particularly bad weeks, then when I was forced to miss a week, I was disappointed but at the same time was glad that I didn't incur a penalty when life got in the way.

I'll always bring up my experience in pool leagues because I still think competitive pinball rules are in their relative infancy. Weekly pool leagues do very well drawing players of all levels because of its team concept which requires a handicap system. Grouping players by week based on average score in pinball leagues partially accomplishes this, but when you don't have team play, you lack peer pressure to attend and contribute, you lack camaraderie, and you lack coaching from teammates. Pinball leagues need high attendance for this to work, but it is another possible format to consider.

The problemwithteam play is the ringers will always try to put together the dream team, and then rookies don't stand a chance. But random teams would not please a lot either. Pool overcomes this with handicaps, but I'm not a fan of that in pinball, I think. (haven't been in a situation that uses it, however)

I think you're right and that I misunderstood where the $15 went. I think that's where the food came from the last night. It was our first league, so I wasn't sure if it was something the owner of the bar threw in as an incentive or if the $15 paid for it.

It might have been a combination of both.

So there is your problem. If you could miss 3 nights and not be penalized then you have to allow everyone to drop their three lowest scores. Everyone has to have the same amount of "weekly" scores to be fair.

If you do it this way there is no advantage to not showing up to an event. Even if it is your worst event it will be dropped and not count.

If you are going to allow 3 misses and not drop scores then the players have to think strategically what is best. You should never reward someone for not showing up. If i understand correctly that is exactly what you are doing.

We have a weekly Wednesday night tournament (last night was #194) in a randomly drawn head to head double elimination bracket. $5. entry, payout top 2. May to October is considered the league season. Points awarded based on weekly finish: 1st 10 points, 2nd 7 points, 3rd 5 points, 4th 4 points, 5th 3 points, 7th 2 points, 9th 1 points, 13+ zero points. During league, weekly entry is $6. with the extra dollar going toward the payouts at the end of the league.

Final league standings are based on your twenty best weekly scores. If someone plays every week, they can drop their five lowest scores. Play twenty or less weeks, they all count.

The last week is the league final. Based on the final league standings of those in attendance for the finals, players 1-4, 5-8, 9-12, 13-16, etc play together. You can only finish as high as the group you are in. For example, the player who was 10th in the standings can finish no higher than 9th and no lower than 12th. If you want to win the league you must be in the top 4 of the standings and attend the finals night.

The final placement of those that do not attend finals is based on the league standings and numbered after all those that do participate in finals. For example, the player in second place on the league standings does not attend the finals, 20 others do. Those that attend finish 1 through 20 while the player in 2nd during the season finishes 21st.

That's more just like a group, as opposed to a team.
I like the idea of two 4-player teams pitted against each other, maybe a swiss heads-up for each player (with the group deciding machine), then a split-flipper round, then some golf!
That would make even randomly grouped, seeded, or handicapped sets of people need to work together to try to gain the team the most points in a round.
But if teams are different each week, who cars?