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ok, just checking. thanks

I don't want this topic to get off track as I think the changes for the IFPA are great, but I just wanted to comment on this one thing.

I really Think the format at Fraser Valley was not one I would want to play in and it's the number 1 reason I didn't even consider attending it.

I get why people don't like pump and dump, but 3 tries on a single game is not a good measure of skill. Over time, skill will always win over pocket book, the longer there is to qualify, the better measure of the skill of the people who make the top block since it weeds out the inherit random nature that is pinball and is more about a players skill.

Perfect example, Keith Elwin is regarded as one of the best players on the planet. On any given game do you think you have a better chance of beating him in a Best 1 out of 1, best 2 out of 3, best 4 of 7, or best 7 of 12?

The random nature of pinball anyone can beat anyone in a single game, hell you might even get lucky twice in a best two out of 3, but give a skilled player a chance to really let his skill shine through in a best of 7 or even best of 12, and that skill will shine through every time.

Hence why I'm not a fan of the Fraser valley format, especially for the distance required to travel, it's a fine format for locals, but for anyone that has to travel a significant distance it's not worth the time and expense.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with fixed entries when there is real value for the price, Pinburgh is the perfect example of that, I'm just not a fan of 3 games and done across 10 individual games. You screw up on 2 or 3 games and your weekend is over before it started.

Adam Becker

**Edit**

Thinking about it more I would like the format better if it was 30 tries total across 10 games rather than 3 tries on each of 10 games.

I pretty much completely disagree. What other sport do you get unlimited chances to make a score? Imagine if golfers got to take as many mulligans as they wanted? Yep, the best player would pretty much always win. Why take all variability and chance out of the tournament? That is what pinball is all about. Its not like archery or target shooting. Randomness is an inherent part of the game. The point is to see who is the best player that day at that tournament. Having only three games per machine to me is a true test of skill and coming through in the clutch under pressure. Being able to play the game 50 times is simply stupid. Having 10 different machines is also a true test of skill on a variety of platforms. Hopefully a nice mix of EMs, SS and DMD. To me this is not only a true test of skill, but it allows for someone who happens to be hot that weekend and playing clutch to get to the top. You see it all the time in golf.

There isn't a single tournament that is truly unlimited you are still workin within time constraints.

Also golf isn't pinball, the inherent randomnes built into pinball especially in older games is no where near as apparent in golf, and before you even bring up the weather variable, since everything in golf is under the player's control its up to them to compensate. In pinball if the machine decides to shove the ball down the middle randomly off a pop bumper hit there is nothing a player can do to change that from happening.

But should stuff like SCS count for next years points? And do you have to count all games played just to get in?

seems very odd that playoffs count for next year over all rankings.

What other sports do that?

It will, although it is going to get even more wacky (no prizes other than certificates and probably WPPR points, woot!). Other changes are in store, I think some people will like it, and others will hate it, but in a nutshell, Wisconsin can't write laws, and I'm someone that follows them, no matter how stupid they are.

I have been doing a lot of talking lately, and should call Josh again. From what we have seen, the WPPR points on our tournaments will be drastically reduced this year with essentially no hope for us to increase them without a format change that I'm unwilling to do (we don't have space, extra machines, or time to try to increase our points to a higher level). It disincentivizes me because the way to increase our tournament value would be to try to limit the field (not happening) or pull games to increase the machines (thus taking them away from the floor, limiting our capacity there, also not happening). We focused on the wrong thing for the rankings, which is increasing the size of the overall player pool, rankings be damned, for years - although those of you that know me think that for our overall show, that's the right move.

Having said that, I think that this will be good for those tournaments that want to focus on the tournament playing that goes on at them. It will increase the value of tournaments that have the resources and time to put toward something like this. This definitely gives an individual who is running their own tournament a template to follow to try to make their tournament the best and most competitive possible, and I think that's great. I think as an overall thing, the average pinball tournament's quality (for people playing) will go up because of it. Ultimately, that's a good thing.

We can still be the gateway, other tournaments can now be better at standing alone.

Welllllllllllllll I hear what you're saying from a true direct standpoint, but I don't think you can overestimate the influence those broadcasts have had on Poker's popularity explosion (especially starting with the Moneymaker coverage - it seemed to really blow up after that year). People seeing that and thinking they can do it, etc. certainly added a LOT of money to the ecosystem.

Agree. That was my point of my previous post, and why I made an attempt to encourage organisers to make finals systems for more people after a qualification stage. Where space and games available allows for this. Give them something to play for.

The UK Pinball Party was 130+ players - 6+1 games qualification - and 24+16 players to move on. That is quite a cut in my oppinion.

Tournament Grading Percentage (TGP) should be adjusted depending on the number of players.

You probably not need the same number of meaningful games to have a good tourney involving 16 players or 160 players. The need for 25 meaningful games to score 100% of the value of a 16 player-tourney is overkill and not realistic. I guess that with 12 games you would already get an accurate hierarchy based on skill.

So in the end, this grading system will have a double negative impact on points for "small" (say 16-30 players) tourneys. No only will you score less points, but TGP will act as a further penalty with a low multiplier (<<1).

Not a good way to promote pinball in pinball deserts. We will never get good players visiting us with the prospect of scoring 3 points...

Thanks for the updated WPPR System - I think it is well thought, but still it is open for "creativity".

How about this setup...
Highscore Tournament with 7 machines. Each machine can be played three times - all results count. That means the TGP would be 7 *3*4% = 84%?

Or same Tournament 4 DMDs, 3 early Solid States... DMDs can be play two times, eSSs can be played 5 times - all results count.
That means the TGP would be (4 *2 + 3*5 )* 4% = 23*4% = 92%?

So a lot of tournaments will come up counting not only the best score, but also the second best, the third best, etc. - in the described setup with 7 machines the TGP for highest score only would only be 28%

Creative and well thought or exploitation and unfair?
Actually if it fits with rules, there is no discussion... ???

What I am seeing it that instead of pump and dump with best score, the new changes will lead to addative scores so events can strive towards 100% TGP.

5 games only best score = 20% TGP

5 games play each 5 times and all scores from a game are added together = 100% TGP
More realistic will be things like 5 games play each 3 times and additive scores, plus playoffs with longest route to victory being an additional 10 games. 25 games total = 100% TGP I actually think this is both a fun and good possible format for max tounery points along with festering out the best people.

Let me tell ya'll how much fun it's going to be to get 25 people to submit three scores on Spiderman each, at a location I have no control over how tough the game is set up.

40 hour tournament, anyone? Just my three games alone would likely take over 2 hours.

More likely, I will just make people play 6 games of stern Star Trek. =P

Not much of a tournament if you can't shut off extra balls, tighten the tilt and open up the outlanes. To me you should live with the greatly reduced IFPA points or make it a tournament for fun only and screw the points.

I did get permission to mess with tilts and settings last tourney we ran, only to find out half the tilt bobs were completely missing. I had a few on hand from my games...next time I know that I need to pull them ALL from my games and take them with me.

The other location we use, they have basically given us carte blanche, but it's in a movie theatre, so they're usually set up harder than the other place (mostly redemption kiddie stuff..) and there's no VERY long ball time games like Spiderman, BDK, or Elvis there. Apparently with the removal of restrictions I could just use the movie theatre all the time, but I prefer to split the money between the two. Both the movie theatre op and the location owner for the other place are awesome guys, and our local arcade selection would be non-existant without those guys!

Yes, i am fearful of many events becoming less fun while people try to maximize event %.

Hopefully organizers will be creative but remember that F U N is the m,ost importnat thing.

Haha. I can imagine some of our local guys dancing with the machine and having 2 hour balls!

My tournament experience has been in private settings or at shows, so I have never had to deal with this kind of problem. Must be nice to have actual locations with multiple pins though.

Yeah, but see, with the new rules, private settings are unusable in my area, because local collectors are not going to put their address online for everyone to know, especially after the BBB thing going down, and our local group is too weak for me to have ANY kind of guarantee to who will show up to meet any kind of "minumim players to count" rules.

As it was, I think there was a grand total of three tournaments at private collector's locations this year, when you remove league nights that my league has run. Most of our local collectors are like me, have 2-3 games, not really enough to host a large tourney. Two of the guys that ran stuff this year do the same thing every year: They have one tourney or party a year, that's it, and that's perfectly fine. Totally understand the desire to not have your personal space trampled by 15-30 people every other week!

We've been lucky to have a few guys open up their stuff for other tournaments, and league nights, and I'm really grateful for that, but at least for league night, we're lucky if we get more than 5 participants.

Except in current pump and dump qualifying, only your best score counts. So... If you're trying to qualify against Keith, are your chances better if you play 3 times or as many times as your pockets are deep? Who's the better player, the one who played 3 times and put up a great score or the person who played 15 times and had a "lucky" game to score more than the first player?

Keep in mind that earning a spot soley on the previous years SCS is only a small part of what should be factored in.

Did they earn a spot that they would not have without the SCS. If so then the system is favoring legacy players over new players since thos ethat just started competing mid way through even 2013 missed the real shot at playing in the 2013 SCS and hence those possible points in their 2014 calculation.

SCS will also surely impact final qualifying position which does have an impact on the overall competion.

I personally would like to see the SCS not award points for the future years SCS calculations and I am a person that benefitted from it this year since I played in WI 2013 SCS.

Regarding Frazier Valley - at first I was worried about the "if I blow it on 2 games, it's impossible to qualify" factor. The thing is . . . I DID completely blow it on 2 of the games and still made it in. Many of the 16 qualifiers had at least one ZERO out of their 8 games.

If I understand it correctly, if next year they take the "sum of 3 attempts" on each machine the WPPR total will be a whole lot higher? I wonder if limited buy in HERB's will start taking that approach?

If anyone is curious here's the qualifying breakdown - http://fvfo.wapinball.net/main2014.htm

Yes, I totally agree that these changes completely give us a lot more impetus to support location play. That's why I haven't been too hard on the fact that home tournaments are basically dead to me with this change. I love that I can give these guys more support, and in return, they have more reason to keep the games to a higher standard of operation, and continue having them.

I just need to find some way to convince people to show up, which is way harder than grading out a tournament when 90% of the local playerbase doesn't care about IFPA at all.

Unless Werdrick travels to the remainder of the bigger WI events for this year that "to 10th" could get much closer to a "to 17th" over time.

That is very pertinent from my POV.

Even a slide from 5th to 10th makes a difference in my POV and the calibur of player you need to play through to win is important, esp with the SCS format. Playing a best of 7 and winning in 4 is very different than all your matches going to the full 7.

My general feeling is that SCS is ranking for events within the calander year and I would prefer to keep it solely impacted by thing that happen within the actual year (i.e. not a previous years qualifying to play an event in the future year).

understood and just sharing my view.

Side question, is there a max that an event can bank out at?

I think I missed that?

I can only encourage you to work closer with the owner of the location that's not setup for tournament play. It's in his best interest to pull in more people and I at least have anecdotal evidence that location owners are reasonable people. Explain to the guy that you can bring in X number of people every X weeks, but that it will only work if the machine settings are modified a bit.

We had a local bar with 5 games. No tilt bobs, super dirty machines, 5 ball play etc. Totally unusable for tournament play. The regular players at the bar kept talking to the owner who could then lean on the operator. Now there are tilt bobs, newer games etc. because to a bar owner 16 extra customers for 3 hours on a Tuesday night actually matters. Now the other bar around the corner have kicked their operator to the curb in favor of an op that actually maintains the machines. Market forces actually work here. But you have to make a good business case for the location owner (step one: Figure out his slowest night and promise to schedule tournaments then)

The prize money was pretty good for the event and worth even coming from Ontario if you made top 4 in the event. Ultimately there were three machines which I could have done much better on, but I still ended up in the top 16. That is what I really liked, you only got three cracks at each machine, if you hit a solid score on your first try, then you could go for more riskier strategies with your two other tries to better your score. If you did badly on your first two then it was a pressure cooker to get a descent score. I really enjoyed the format and would easily travel another 11 hours to do it again.

I don't think you can use FVF as an example for prize money. There's no way the prize pool was funded solely from entries. $10,800 awarded just for "A" cash prizes, not to mention trophy costs. At the maximum $50 entry fee (which I'm sure most people didn't pay) you'd have a prize pool of $8,500 with the 170 players from the list. What was the early registration fee, $35?

Hmm. I missed that part in the rules. Thanks for pointing it out. Not sure why the address has to be posted? When I did my big event at the house this year it was openly advertised in the local Florida Pinball Forum, but address was only available via email to those with confirmed RSVP. Posting someone's home address on the IFPA site seems useless. I could understand posting a business address which is basically free advertising. I suppose even posting the host names makes it easy enough to figure out the address.

I do one event a year at my house and fortunately it easily makes 16 people (32 limit). I will definitely list it as private to avoid needlessly advertising that I have pinball machines. Any time you bring a bunch of people into your home there are concerns for security. Fortunately the Florida pinball community is pretty tight and I know everyone pretty well. Some of my local friends help out as event staff and keep an eye on things. Even still I lock off portions of the house and only allow people into the common areas, patio and the two guest bathrooms. The alarm control panels, Rhodesian Ridgeback and surveillance cameras are also pretty obvious signs that this is not a soft target to say the least.

Suffice to say, it's really not viable for me to go in there, spend 2-3 hours tweaking pins, run a 10 hour tournament, then spend another 2-3 hours putting things back the way they were. Some things just will not change. First and foremost it's his business, if he wants the pins set up that way, that's between him and his tech. There's a bunch of reasons that there's no point in me posting as to why this is impossible, but I've worked as closely as I can without deliberately interrupting his core business, which I'm not willing to do.

But that also means you must play that same game 15 times! (I know, it's just an example)

One of my biggest peeves with the unlimited HERB/Best-Game system is the potential for long lines. It's the reason I had for championing more games in the bank and requiring fewer games than available to be played. CAX was a nightmare this year with 10-12 people per queue/30-60+ minute waits for games. Adding in "HERB^x" would've been an absolute disaster, even if it was limited qualifying.

We were debating what to do for INDISC 2015, considering we're probably the first large tournament to fall under the new formula. Bob brought up this idea of taking the best two scores from each game which I disagreed with. As if lines didn't get long enough, we'd now be requiring people to continue playing to acquire two <b>good</b> scores per game and pour even more money into the pot. Yes, most are already replaying games but only because they haven't reached the score they want yet. Add in that second (or third) requirement and I think it's a recipe for trouble.

For INDISC, seems like we might make some adjustments to the finals although still undetermined at this point. Could be 4 games per round with PAPA scoring, could be double elimination, could be 3 strikes, or we could say screw it all and keep our existing structure for 76% (my current vote).

"1) List your address publicly so anyone can show up, and then you aren't held to the 16 player minimum"

Just to be clear, we can run a public event at our private home but have a requirement for pregistration and then address is provided, correct?

I don't care to put my address out oon the web but am OK if someone registers to play and provides me their name/contact info for my records first then send them the address.

that is still a public event, correct?

The problem is, what are good settings for tournaments are not necessarily good settings for making the game fun for little kids so they will plunk in their nickels again.

So while tournament players want Spiderman to have lightning flippers, a tight tilt, open outlanes, and no center post, that's not going to be fun for the majority of players who are playing at the location when there is no tournament.

It is a great example of a well organized event with sponsorship to add to the prize pool, but yes you are correct, it is hard for many events to attract this type of sponsorship as payouts were not entirely paid out through entries.

The one lucky game is probably not enough to beat Keith's second entry. This deep pockets unlimited qualifying argument for unskilled players really doesn't pan out in the long run. Remember, they have unlimited qualifying attempts too. I'm not saying that it doesn't help to have unlimited qualifying attempts but, if you don't have the skills its just not happening. I totally agree with Adam.

The agruement may not hold true for the top tier players but it does hold true for mid-range qualifiers, the more entries you have the better chance you got to get into qualifying for the finals. You may get killed once you get there but it definally gives you an advantage if you are able to dump and pump. I went to Chicago Expo last year one guy I talked to said he ended up spending over $250 on qualifying, was not a top tiered player but he wanted to have the opportuntiy to make that top 24 and move onto the playoffs and he did it. Was out in the first round but he was successful in that strategy. I have no issue with this but I do prefer tourneys that are set up in a way where it is more merit based instead of deep pocket based.