Have you looked at this?
https://www.ifpapinball.com/tgpguide/

If yes, play around with this:
http://tgp.slapsave.com/

Keep in mind that the IFPA has consistently tweaked their formula so it's hard to have a relatively high TGP in a relatively short event. It's still possible and reasonable to try to efficiently raise your TGP, of course.

Best way to earn points is have a large tournament with lots of rounds of play against highly ranked participants. If your tourney is small, or includes a lot of first timers, IFPA points will be low. 4 player group rounds increase TGP as well. It’s all on the website.

Triple strike tournament with the most people possible.

Sounds like you are getting the right advice. Beat a lot of high ranked people playing a lot of rounds of pinball.

So go play a PAPA circuit event and win. That should knock you up a few places.

You need 26 games to get The Total Games Played to 100%
https://www.ifpapinball.com/tgpguide/

Pingolf is different
https://www.ifpapinball.com/pingolf/

Run on 10 games. All players play one time on all 10 games and write down scores.
PLay in two packs to make qualifying quicker.

Will take 2-3 hrs to play all twn games. set them up tough and they will play faster but less fun. Turn off EBs.

Top 4 players play a playoff. 4 player games on seven total machines. 4,3,2,1 point scoring on each machine. IF you make players hold position and play multiple games at a time (players 1 starts on game 1, ball 1 and the goes right to game 2 ball 1, etc) then playoff can take one hour

This will get ypu an event worth 96%

With 20 players that means approx ten points to first place person.

I have not found a more effecienct way to boost value in current rule system. It is also a very fun format to play in

Hilton's efficiency analysis is ON POINT. I would do exactly that.

also, tie breakers are based on finishing position of last game played.

cant waste time with a stupid tie breaker game

Matchplay qualifying in 4 player groups for 6 rounds, one game each round. 7,5,3,1 scoring.

Have the top half make finals. Do rounds of 3-4 games in the finals where the top two from each 4 some advance until there’s a final 4. Then one last round to decide the winner.

too much time wasted on down time and reorganizing players.

If you are looking for efficiency that wont be very efficient.

Tie breaker game for first place or last game played?

For 20-25 players I find it very efficient. 6 hour tournament. Just another option for him to consider.

Imo your example sacrifices too much fun for more efficiency.

We settle tie breakers using the last game in the series. I.e. If two players in playoffs are tied after 7th game, then that game settles the tie for the series.

Yeah, different formats are fun. Unfortunately few are willing to commit to 6 plus hours of pinball and day, esp a work day.

I have found the 3hr event is the most that the majority will tolerate.
SInce I am over the IFPA point thing with the new fees, I am looking forward to running some more event styles that are focused more on fun and less on the points.

Hilton can you clarify your format?

"All players play one time on all 10 games and write down scores. Play in two packs to make qualifying quicker."
So this can be done individually or in groups of two players? Are you then totaling everyone's scores somehow and placing everyone that way?

"Top 4 players play a playoff. 4 player games on seven total machines. 4,3,2,1 point scoring on each machine."
So only 4 players advance to finals? All four players play all seven games together and then you total up their scores for final places?

use the Scott D pinball tournament software. You can have people play individually, in 2s, 3s, or 4s. I like 2 packs as it keeps people honest and is also efficient (more than 2 players and people wander off to drink, screw around, etc...)
Using the software each persons score is entered for each game and they get ranking points based on that game. For example with 20 players, the best score on TAF gets 20 points, 2nd best is 19, etc...

Add up all ranking poniots to determine qualifying position.

IFPA requires at minimum 10% and max of 50% go from a seeding to playoff in order to get value from the seeding round. With 20 people just take the top 4 into top bracket of playoff.

Top 4 are going to play across 7 games directly against each other. This doubles the value for IFPA purposes as they like direct play with 4 player groups. On each game, win first and get 4 points, second is 3 points, etc... Total up the points across all seven games and crown your champ for the night.

We also have sperate playoff brackets for everyone below 4th but they cant do any better than 5th since they did not seed into top 4 pack.

This is actually a really fun format. It is effecient but I have found it caters to multiple types of people. Casuals just want to play all the games and socialize. They rarely make top 4 so dont have the intense playoff format.
Competitive players want the IFPA points so this helps to maximize that.
Almost everyone only wants to play at max 3hrs on a weekday night. Even with 24 players on 4 games to use, this can all be done in under 3 hours (often slightly more)

I first thought this format sounded lame. But it could actually be some fun, now that I think about it more.
I have a strict "no double gaming" rule, and try to encourage others to also.
having the 4 finalists play 4 player games on multiple machines would be hard for me to accept.
But...., It might turn out OK, I'm often worried about tourney games running long, and they often don't to my surprise.
My fear is one guy is crushing it, and everyone stacks up behind.
Or one machine is playing long, so it all backs up there.
But waiting is waiting, and it would all go faster as a whole, in theory.
Other concern as a player is switching from game to game, ball 2 over here, now ball 1 over there. Just doesn't seem like it would allow me to concentrate on each game quite as much, or as well.
I may be warming up to the idea of trying it though, come run one in CO!

after the first 2 months or running that sort of playoff format, the players get used to it.

Actually one thing that really speeds stuff up is just removing the choice of order between games. I make the players select order for ALL 7 games at once.

You want to go 4th, then you are 4th on all 7 games in playoffs. that alone really helps people move things along.

i personally really like the effect of playing all 7 games at once. (Reality is we usually play 4 games and then 3 games). I have found that players actually get better. A big part of improving in competitive pinball is the ability to adjust on the fly. When you play ball 1 on TAF, then ball 1 on NBA, then Ball 1 on an EM, then Ball 1 on a classic game... things make you adjust very quickly.

There were some complaints the first few months from a select few but now there are some that really like the format.

I will say that you get the occasional person that complains or stalls and I just nudge them along with a warning to not stall. The peer pressure from the other 3 people that dont want to be there for a 3 hr playoff is usually enough.

Give it a try one night. Your IFPA hungry players may really enjoy the rapid pace and ability to grab some more WPPR points with less time commitment.

Who inputs the scores from qualifying? How are scores tracked? Written down first then entered later?

Premade out paper scoring sheets. TD and now a days, a few helpers, pitch in and enter scores into cpu.
I verify all scores before playoffs start. If players help out and enter scores when waiting then that part goes really fast.

I did a similar format for the first year or so of running events in Cincy. I ultimately stopped because of this part and because the locals didn’t care for the format anymore. I would go back to it now and again if the process was easier.

Everyone here knows how to use matchplay now and we are always just a few clicks away from starting the next round.

One event that I’ve been doing is have a timed matchplay.

Do matchplay for 2-3 hours then at the end do finals like yours (well maybe 4 games instead of 7). Decent points that route too.

Yeah, i am done running competitive pinball events with the fee structure imposed starting in 2018, so i don't really need to worry about this anymore really

Looking forward to doing some fun stuff ocassionally and no longer being bound by IFPA rules. They have already made the TDing such a time suck that i won't miss it. Add on the whole collection of money and paypal to them was the final straw.

Gonna run some mor eeam based events next year also. If player base drops off due to the lack of IFPA points then ill just quit running events all together.

You should try the Critical Hits cards that Karl Deangelo made. Could be really fun for a group of 20 or so.

If you know where I can get a set, please pass it along!

Have u tried it yet. I heard it is hella fun.

I have not but I have bought the packs from him for the Strikes and MatchPlay format.
You can get the Match Play from Karl here:
http://www.neverdrains.com/criticalhit/

I’ve done the strikes critical hit for 12 people. I basically made my own rules up for passing out the cards and how you acquired more.

It was tons of fun and probably half the people were non pinheads. They loved it.

nice.

How many people will 1 deck support?

Plenty for 12 people. I think there are around 60 cards in one deck.

If over 20 people it’s been suggested to me to used two decks. You could adjust the distribution rules to make one deck work for 20 plus I would think though.

I think the decks are 52 cads each

As a competitive player, I am not a fan of playing multiple games concurrently and I would personally choose to not play in such events. It's not even so much the fact that you have might to play ball 1 on a slow EM and then your next ball is ball 1 on IM so you are all over the board speed wise. For me I want to watch and see what my opponent is doing or not doing so I can adjust accordingly. I want to know if he started that MB and did nothing, has lock 3 lit or isn't even close to MB. When you are playing good players, what they have setup and where they are at in the game is just as important or even more important than their actual score. When I am forced to be on another game playing you can't do that.

Can these decks be used as part of an IFPA event?

Seems to me like they would be allowed as skill can still overcome and luck imparted by the cards. Thinking it would be fun to try out a deck sooner rather than later and I have a few more IFPA events on the books in the coming 2 months.

I am sure we have lost a few players form playing in these events due to the format, but to be honest they are very few and many have come around to the idea. I think they value the idea of not spending 4 hours on a qualifying round and still being able to grab some additional IFPA points.

I suggest giving it a try sometime before just denouncing it. Like all formats, there are some pros and some cons. For a weekday evening event it is pretty fun and exciting pace to play in.

I can say the flip side is that we lost more players that said the night was taking too long when running other formats. We also lost players when points were nuc'd in favor of a shorter/less point value. I guess the short of it is that you cant please everybody, so running a variety can be a way to try new things.

Yeah. There’s a set of ifpa approved cards. Use those only and you’re good.

is that a subset from the deck currently available? (I just bought form the above link yesterday)

Yes. You will just take out the unapproved cards.

All cards currently released are approved for IFPA-sanctioned tournaments as chuckwurt says. There will be a future expansion pack that is not IFPA approved, and those will be clearly marked as such to eliminate any confusion.

nice! Will the strikes version be available again?

Also, do I need a D20 for this?

Going forward I'm using the Match Play deck as the base deck and will be releasing expansions for it. One of those should be a re-release of the 3-strike specific cards.

No d20 needed. I'll have a guide to running Match Play up soon-ish.

awesome and lookinh forward to getitng my deck. If it arrives by Thursday then I may use it in our monthly meetup!

Wait do you mean a deck of cards or a pinball machine?

Thought I’d spark this back up.
We are trying to maximize our WPPR points.our hurdles are…

Primary location has only 5 pins
Avg player count has been about 16
Location wants us to play between lunch and dinner giving us about 6 hours total for qualifying and finals.

Andy advice?

Also, 1 specific question broke into several parts:
Ifpa WPPR scoring rules state “ For any given machine used in a tournament, a maximum of 3 meaningful games per machine is allowed per ‘state/round’ of an event. For qualifying purposes this means the maximum number of games counted towards TGP would be 3. For finals purposes it means that a best-of-3 match is the maximum length for that match if only one machine is available.”

This confuses me a bit. Qualifying seems obvious, 3 games per each of 5 machines means we cannot get more than 15 meaningful games regardless of our qualifying method correct? Or could I possibly multiply these by 1.5 or 2 by gaveling 3-4 person games instead of head to head?
For finals it makes it sound like each machine can have three games per round (such as a beat of 3 match) which can have a greater number of meaningful games, or is it intended to be the same as qualifying?

Here's the answer to your question. Hold a flipper frenzy for 2 hours with head to head matches.

Example here:
https://www.ifpapinball.com/tournaments/view.php?t=47036

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I would have to disagree with this format based on the data the OP provided. They only have 5 machines, which means they can only use 4 at one time because if you use all 5 you are going to have a bunch of back to back games on the same machine. If you also use all 5, it leaves no room for error if a game goes down. Secondly, they have on average 16 players which means there will be 6-8 people in queue which is way to many for a 16 person event.

Having only 5 machines is the big roadblock. However I would recommend doing a timed match play event for 5-6 hours and whoever is in first when times up is the winner. Use these settings in Matchplay.Events:

Format: Group Match Play
Seeding: Random
General Pairing: Random or Balanced
Scoring: IFPA or PAPA, your choice
Arena draws: Balanced
Duration: No set duration
Matches each round: One match/ Best of X
Tiebreaker: Automatic

Ha! Yikes! 92.2 points?!

Clearly an input error. The value before TGP adjustment was 9.22. So at 100% it would remain 9.22

now i understand why you guys (USA) are so much to be at the top of the ranking (take this as a joke of course) ...

seeing the table, the inputs, the only few "ranked" players here, its just impossible to collect 92 pts out of this !

edit : indeed : table scoring has now been corrected... https://www.ifpapinball.com/tournaments/view.php?t=47036#