It, under the new rules, effectively funnels money from local tournaments to Josh and his elite level friends who play in the nationals. Otherwise, not too much to offer.

Lots of competitive players like to play in tournaments that are for WPPRs (setup in the IFPA), it feeds the states rankings too. Lots of people love to try and qualify for those events too.

It’s fun to compete and see how high you can get your ranking compared to your friends.

Being a member of the IFPA also gets you discounts on NIB games if your rank is at a certain level.

The IFPA will take $1 per player per event. and it's unfair as your small event for small points pays the same $1 per player that big events with big points do. Now if your league goes to reporting one time a year then that it's only $1 per player with the points being a lot bigger for that $1 (But all other rules apply so you can't list the guy who only showed up 5 out the 12 days and you need to have an playoff system at the end of the league year as well)

The IFPA rules took some of fun out of pin golf as well.

No point in rehashing this here when you can spend all day reading about it, and more importantly find out the in-depth summary of what Wisconsin is up to:

The three main takaways:

1. It's only a dollar
2. No it isn't.
3. It wasn't an April Fool's joke

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/ifpa-charging-fees-for-tournaments-in-2018

people want them points

yup,

75% funnel to increase the prize pool for the state championship (if your state is like most then the same 4-8 people will take home most of that money)
25% funnels from each state directly to the national tournament. There a top 50 person in the world typically wins and most of them are buddies with the people running the IFPA.

Unfortunately, no. It goes to cover increased prize pools for the upper echelon.

Our league is up to 27 players and none of them joined because of the IFPA website. It's had zero impact on membership. All of our growth has been from us promoting ourselves. We had some lengthy discussions when the IFPA instituted their shakedown, but in the end, decided to "pay our tribute to the Mafia Don".

A good bit of the members enjoy bragging about having more points than their friends. That's the only reason we decided to pay the fee.

The WPPR points your league earns are based on games played (26 max), number of players (1/2 point each), and high ranking players add a little.

I don't think you get the 1/2 point per player until the player has been in five events.

I use Weebly for our website and IFPA has never mentioned putting the winner's name on there.

If you want to promote your IFPA WPPR points, play five daily tournaments and then switch to yearly reporting. Your IFPA ranking will only change once a year but you'll pay the dollar only once a year.

The IFPA is a sanctioning body, not a marketing arm for your league. It's similar to how bowling leagues have sanctioning by either the World Bowling Congress or the US Bowling Congress, etc. They are there to make sure your competitive format is consistent with how others do it, so when you say "I bowled a 300!" it has meaning and definition agreed upon by others.

The IFPA provides approved tournament formats and rules/ruling guidelines to make the competitive experience more consistent. They also provide WPPRs, which is one way of measuring performance against other people you don't necessarily have a chance to directly play. I find these to be great tools, and great fun; moving up the IFPA rankings is important to me and I've made it a hobby the last 18 months to play more and improve.

What a shitty way to mislead people about the IFPA.
Seems how 75% of the 1$ stays in the State that events are played in, going to the 16 top players in that state.
But I guess all those 16 Ohio players are Josh's elite buddies tooo?

The IFPA endorsement is something that can or can't be a benefit to an event.
Players enjoy points and competing, and always want a way to evaluate how they are doing, it provides that.
If your plyers don't care, then don't bother with it.

They are not really there to do your Promotion work, or automatically boost your event, not sure where one gets that idea.
The reason events are graded on caliber of players is because that's how it should fairly be done. Pretty sure it is modeled after the PGA structures that rank Golfers. It really makes no sense to give people free points just for playing each other if nobody is any good, and isn't fair to players that compete in tougher events.

Anyway, let's get the same gripers here again rehashing their tired complaints, as Levi noted.
Nobody had a bad word to say about IFPA before, when Josh and company were doing all this for free.
But take a dollar, and then return it to the players, oh my!!

Well, someone could always start a "Local Flipper Pinball Association" geared towards smaller, local leagues and tournaments that wouldn't necessarily count towards the IFPA or state/national tournaments.

I don't compete anywhere near enough to bother with the IFPA--to me, it seems "too big", and I know I'll never be going to state/national events. I can count the number of tournaments I've participated in in the past 5 years on the fingers of my hands. Partly because I'm in a pinball dead zone, and partially that I'm not too interested in competitive play.

On the downside, a separate organization would probably fracture the competition scene and result in not being ranked on IFPA (not that everyone cares about national rankings in the first place, especially when you're #54212 or such). On the upside, local events could get some of the support/guidance/marketing that they aren't getting from the IFPA, and have players ranked according to similar sized local leagues/tournaments, rather than on the state/national level with big players.

Yeah, they could.

But turns out “creating a Pinball sanctioning body is hard.”

Again, the original ifpa thread goes over this ad naseum. Numerous threats/promises were made about starting local sanctioning and in the end everyone was simply too lazy.

Easier to whine about $1 I guess.

I did. The Universal Player Yearly Organized United Ranking System. Got a website and everything.

Inactive right now. I'm not currently running any events.

When I was running events. It was designed to reward active participants. I kept track of the top 42. You got a point for entering the event, and a point for winning. Then on days like the New Year's Day pinball tournament. I had a separate tournament for 12 to 15 of the top point holders.

That way I could reward players who came to my events regularly. And encourage those that didn't come often, to maybe get in more.

LTG : )

Getting IFPA points, which allows you to enter the IFPA State Championships and higher.

Never said it would be easy

If I had the time and more interest in competitions, maybe--but I have plenty of other things to occupy my time without adding the headache of running a body like that.

upyours.info? lol...clever acronym

I roll my eyes when people put stock in IFPA. What I hear "Show me your ranking. My ranking is bigger than yours..."

The only real benefit is the rankings and points. Some people really care a lot about the points while others don't.

I've been playing in leagues and tournaments since 2012 and most have been IFPA sanctioned. I'm not point crazy but it is nice to have it. I just like having a reason to play pinball, hanging out with friends, and i enjoy competitive play since it really changes strategy.

Good luck growing the league and if I'm in Kent I'll stop by and drop in some quarters.

I'm not the biggest fan of the dollar thing but hell DI or the newest stern cost me a buck a game and I like competitive pinball.

The two easy options:
1. Combine a whole year of leagues or whatever ( as mentioned above). Makes your even worth something and it costs less. We used to have a weekly three strikes for mostly casual players, now we've just combined it into a quarterly 'league'. No one cares about a dime from their weekly entry fee, and it's worth enough points to 'matter'. Annoying that we had to do that, and that you can 'game' the system that way, but work with what you've got...
2. Ask your existing players if they think ifpa is worth it. If they don't, don't bother. Keep your ears open when you meet players in the area who don't come to your league, see if it being worth points might change their minds, then see if you care enough

Arguing about the $1 or whatever is fine but we're not going to get anywhere we didn't get when it was announced.

Yeah our league was already well established when the fee was added. We just discussed it as a group. No one cared about it so we kept it in the IFPA. So far from what I’ve seen in my area, everyone is totally fine with the new rules/fees. If anything, it’s made some of them MORE driven to qualify for states.

Google “Pinball League” the top result will be https://www.ifpapinball.com/leagues/ . Thats worth $1 per player per season for us.

This is only true if your players also participate in other IFPA-sanctioned events. Thanks to the Modern pinball credit card league shennanigans a couple years back where people didn't know they were playing in a league, you still need to play in 5 events and have a valid rating before you start contributing points to events you participate in. Your league could run all year and have the event still worth 0 points if the participants didn't have any other IFPA events under their belt.

If your players are worried about this, IFPA now allows "challenge match" 1v1 submissions that impact rating but not ranking. (https://www.ifpapinball.com/ifpa-partnering-with-matchplay-events-for-ifpa-challenge-matches-and-more/) If everyone submits their own few challenge matches to indicate they are serious about competing, then they'll contribute points to events that they play in.

When people are brand-new to pinball and figure a league must be a thing but don't know where to find one, the IFPA website is a good way for them to find out about official events in the area. We've had a number of people find our league and events that way.

I don't think everyone's going to go the IFPA route moving forward, but it's been on the whole good for our events. Do whatever makes your players happy.

FWIW, IFPA also has a "good TD" system that relaxes the submission requirements a little over time once you've shown you can organize and report correctly.

Adam/Josh usually intervene and comment on how they'd like things to be done with your first few submissions (event listings are always a must, but the pictures not as much, always submit TGP explanation, etc) but if you get new players to your events and have players return over time the bar gets lowered a little bit.

I've been toying with the idea of starting a league and figured offering IFPA points would be a draw, but from this thread it sounds like more of a drag than anything - all the bookkeeping, money collecting and forwarding, etc. to what benefit?

I'm personally not interested in the points, I'd only do it if it put more fingers at flippers.

Pictures? What sort of pictures? I’m in the middle of running a league now and wasn’t told I had to take pictures. Is that a new requirement? Thanks in advance.

I think pics are for Stern Army stuff, not related to submitting actual results.

Ask Hanley how well attend his non-sanctioned tournaments are.

In the GTA no IFPA means lower attendance for sure.

In 7 years of running IFPA events I dont know of a single time that anyone has shown up due to that.

OP was originally assuming there was a potential promotional benefit from being IFPA. The only benefit is IF your players are interested in the points or people hunt it out because they are interested in the IFPA points. This is entirely the case in some areas or will become the case after people play and get in to the point aspect.

Fair warning that the people that attracts may turn off some of your current more casual players.

I actually like that IFPA provides the option for opt-in. You currently have the ability to only report and pay the $1 for each player that opts to do so. If your player base does not care about points then they dont have to pay or be reported; or if only 1 person shows up that is concerned about them you can just have them pay the buck and only report them (granted they will win every time in the eyes of the ifpa)

The OP mentioned that someone (probably Adam) asked him to post a picture of the winner to the fb group where they listed the event when the results were submitted. Probably a good idea but not a requirement afaik. On second look, it might've just been the winner announced and not necessarily a picture.

If you are starting a new league, it may help to attract players, so don't rule it out. It depends on your location and how active tournaments are, so ask around your local pinball friends to figure that part out.

I run the Atlanta Head-2-Head league, and the IFPA 'bookkeeping' is far from a drag. It took me all of 10 minutes to load my 2018 events. We use Matchplay to run the tournaments and I just upload the output file to submit results.

It takes way more time and effort to manage membership, scheduling locations, and actually running the events themselves. The IFPA filing is less than 5% of the total effort.

In Atlanta, points are definitely a draw, and has helped grow the competition scene here. AH2H has almost doubled in size in the last 12 months, and we have long waiting and substitution lists too.

I didn't do that

His results are waiting for him to pay the $1 fee, I was looking for information about his league on the website he provided so I could verify the TGP, I couldn't find anything. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and moved the results through our system awaiting his payment. Then I sent him an email letting him know that if he wants to submit his league again I'm going to require more information on the actual league, this being his provided URL:

https://www.facebook.com/MadCapBrewCo/

I found lots of information on Corn-hole tournaments and chill cook-offs but nothing about his league.

Joining The Stern Army might be helpful. Stern sent some very nice prizes we use to help promote our league. Your events have to be IFPA sanctioned to be in the Stern Army.

I've been running a league in ABQ, NM for the last several years and we did the IFPA points one year and no one in our league seemed to care. The majority of our players are casual so they dont even know what the IFPA is. I've thought about doing a state championship but again no one seems to care about IFPA so I'm not sure if its worth it. I'm also concerned we will have players from neighboring states come in and take advantage of the fewer players here.

That’s not a bad thing necissarily. More people in your tourney, perhaps some better players for everyone else to learn from. Meeting new people is always fun, especially if they are engaged enough in the hobby to drive so far for a weekly league.

What are the requirements for a league to join the Stern army? Also, assuming there is a requirement to have a certain number of Stern games, does Stern consider classic Stern machines like Catacomb and Quicksilver as Sterns?

Stern army is only for locations.

If you want prizes for your league. Just email them. They are extremely generous when it comes to that stuff. Our league gets prizes every year.

In Toronto in particular the IFPA points are a draw. I know people drive a long way for my Pinball for Change and Bluffs events because over time I’ve established them as a fairly high WPPR point value.

Having players attend 5 events before they count means it may take a few seasons before your point value starts to increase, but if you stay the course your regulars all start to count and in my opinion it’s worth it.

I had work tonight but I have to get out there ASAP if TNA is there. Been waiting too long to play one

There's so many IFPA tournaments and leagues in our area now that being IFPA isn't a draw like it use to be. Players who care about IFPA points won't typically make the drive out to new and smaller locations now because there's gonna be an IFPA tournament in their back yard the next night anyways.

I'd say you're very safe to just hold off on doing any IFPA stuff until your community grows and starts to really improve their play and wants to start tracking their progress and performance.

There has been a lot of discussion on this topic already but.......

The IFPA has done a great job creating a sanctioning body. As part of that they have created the SCS (State Championship Series) in each state and a national championship. They have worked very hard for years taking NO MONEY for administration fees. In that time competitive pinball has exploded. There are 10's of thousands more players than there were just a few years ago.

Take the amount of work you do in your own league and then times it by 1000. That is the level of work they have put in for NO MONEY. The $1/person/event IFPA fee accomplishes two things. It gives weight (in the form of money) to both the State and National Tournaments. Now hopefully the winner of each State tournament can actually afford to travel to the National tournament. It also reduces the number of players/tournaments that need to be processed. I rarely see this mentioned but I imagine they were getting swamped with the growing popularity of pinball. Josh and crew have always been super responsive to emails and very helpful when we started to put together a competitive pinball scene in our State a few years back. If that was repeated 50 or 100 times more I have no idea how they were keeping up.

It is also going to help prevent a problem that was starting to emerge. Certain areas were starting to "game" the system. Selfie Leagues, and other zero entry fee leagues/tournaments were being used to distribute lots of points in a semi-questionable way. I'm not making any accusations or judgements, but it was definitely happening and was making the IFPA ranking system less accurate than it could be. The $1 creates just enough of a barrier for entry that it eliminates many of these issues.

The IFPA and its administrators will still receive NO MONEY for the huge amount of time, effort, and money they put into running the IFPA. If your own league sees no benefit from player rankings, a State Championship, or a National Championship then don't register your tournament/league. Personally the players in my State love the IFPA, love the SCS, and love the idea of winning their way to Nationals. And yes, realistically, the best players have a better chance in both the State and National Tournament. But this is pinball and anyone can win on any given day.

In Australia, it usually means having his local IFPA Lordship show up (cue the obligatory fanfare) to march in and take over what is supposed to be primarily a casual social event.

So yeah, no benefit at all from a local Australian perspective.

Better to have non sanctioned meets instead spread by word of mouth/client sales and keep the bureaucratic big noters out of it completely. There's quite a few of us down here that have been using this organisational method for years with great success in expanding the local pinball scene without the pissing contests and ego stroking that seem to go hand in hand with ranked events.

Works well and as an added bonus not a single Donkey Kong logo shirt to be seen which wouldn't happen if Not So Fair Dinkum Pinocchio was involved in any way.

You're right it was shitty, I left out the money is funneled to Josh and his elite friends at the state *and* national level. That's really semantics though since to make nationals they need to win $$$$$$ at state. You may find it crazy but the tip players do tend to know who each other are.
As for the other point, they still aren't being paid. There would be less of a complaint from most people if they just charged a registration fee and used that to pay for the administration rather than trying to take in as much as possible and redistributing it to their friends.

We've tried to fight against this by sticking to our only ONE representative per state at Nationals. Many of the elite players that are often battling eachother for a given state believe some of the "tougher" states should earn more invitations to Nationals. The most exciting part of running Nationals for me is getting to meet all of these first-time State Champions that have traveled out to represent their state.

Some stats from this most recent year (out of 46 competitors):
- 14 of those players were ranked outside of the top 1000 (30%)
- 24 of those players were ranked outside of the top 250 (52%)
- 15 of those players were ranked in the top 100 (33%)
- 3 of those players were ranked in the top 25 (7%)

See previous threads with respect to how the player registration fee wouldn't have been a successful path for us. The current number of players that register their account at NO CHARGE is 10.5%. That number would only decrease if we incorporated paying a fee into that process.

The complaints have actually settled down quite a bit once people realized we were proceeding with our plans.

I for one have been a bit surprised at the lack of shrinkage so far. Here's some additional year-over-year stats for Jan/Feb 2017 compared to Jan/Feb 2018:

Total attendance - 14,460 last year vs. 13,425 this year (-7%)
Total number of events - 636 last year vs. 611 this year (-4%)

We'll continue to monitor how things go . . .

some other interesting stats (out of 46 competitors):
-Top 16 finishers average rank > 77
-17-32 finishers average rank > 528
-32-46 finishers average rank > 1380

Average rank of top 8 finishers (where the real money pay outs happen) > 32

# of top 8 that are friends of the IFPA >?

Of course a registration fee to cover the expenses of the organization wouldn't have accomplished what you wanted to do, because what you wanted to do was have the masses give money to the elite. It's working, it's your ball do as you please, but I'm not going to pretend I like it.