As the landscape of competitive pinball has broadened, the IFPA is constantly investigating ways to make the World Pinball Player Rankings more accurate for how we rank players across the globe. This latest change to the formula is quite extensive, with a complete overhaul as to how the value of a tournament is calculated. These changes will be implemented starting January 1, 2015.

Below is an overview of changes for the new 2015 formula:

The point value for every tournament and/or league season — whether previously called Main, Side, League, Launch, Charity, Annual, Periodic, or otherwise — will be graded separately as a single, distinct event and count as one line item for a player's World Ranking resume.

The base point value for every event will no longer have a guaranteed 25-point minimum, and instead be based on the merit of the event's # of participants in addition to the quality of the event's format.

Events eligible for determining a player's World Ranking will be increased from the best 15 active events to the best 20 active events. Events eligible for State, European, or country Championship series ranking will remain unlimited during the affected calendar year.

Events that are three to four years old will be worth 25% of their original value instead of 0%.

There will be no limitations to how many events any particular location or organizer can hold, but there will be a minimum number of players required for any tournament that is listed as 'private' on the IFPA calendar in order to be endorsed by the IFPA for WPPR points.

The changes will NOT be retroactive: the original WPPR point values for events prior to 2015, and the combination of Main/Side tourneys and Periodic tourneys into single line items for World Ranking consideration will remain unchanged.

The Tournament Value Adjustment (TVA) mechanism will remain unchanged.

For full detailed information on the 2015 formula, visit:

http://www.ifpapinball.com/ranking-info-2015

I did change it to league event.

Event being a 'submitted result' which can consist of an entire season worth of meetings, or individual meetings. It'll be up to the league to determine how they want to submit their results.

If the question is do we believe there should be more value given to tournaments that draw more players . . . the answer is yes.

If a tournament has 4 players, it shouldn't award the same base value as a tournament with 70 players. That's the stance we're taking with the 2015 system.

With no longer combining periodic events and sharing those base value points, I actually think we've done more to promote competitive play for smaller communities. While no individual event run will be huge points, the ability for those monthly or weekly events to each count separately will add up to a ton of WPPR points for those organizers that are willing to put in the work to host something that consistently. This is especially important in the US for SCS qualifying.

So yes . . . we're sure this is how we want to promote competitive play.

The extra percentage wouldn't do much.

For example our Chicago Project Pinball tournament would have been worth:

20 players = 10 WPPR points
TVA = 6.18 WPPR points
TGP = 40% (straight up double elimination tournament)

Total value for 1st place = 6.47 WPPR points (compared with the 2014 system where the winner got 31.18 points).

Even giving the charity tournament a 25% premium, and you're talking 8.09 WPPR points for the winner. Ultimately the tournament value will be decided by the format and the players that show up.

We have no interest in artificially creating a minimum base value just for the charity fundraisers, as that would go against the foundation of this new system which is 100% objective in terms of how the value is calculated.

If someone wants to write it up I would be more than happy to link to it

On the fly decisions are actually something we're not going to look at in a positive way. There will be increased scrutiny on submissions to the IFPA calendar to make sure full details of the format are available ahead of time. Based on that information we will be able to project an estimated TGP value, so players can know what to expect when they show up.

The result submission process will then be used to verify the format that was run, and any material changes compared to what was submitted can lead to us not endorsing the tournament.

While I can appreciate you trying to make a tournament more valuable by playing more games if things went quicker than anticipated, there may have been players that chose to not attend based on the projected TGP value of the format submitted.

The opposite situation is far worse, if an organizer submits a tournament with a projected TGP value, and then due to time issues or 'whatever', decides to run a tournament with far fewer games played resulting in a much lower TGP value compared to what was advertised.

Absolutely! The ratings calculation is the main component in our Tournament Value Adjustment (TVA) calculation. That part of the formula is not changing at all.

It will be interesting to see how this works out. I think the biggest variable between the formats is the number of games available.

If you only have 4 machines available, then PAPA style will probably be faster than Head-to-Head where you can't start all the matches at the same time. You then run into the waiting game for head-to-head matchups, where PAPA style game selection is done in a way which keeps the tournament moving at a faster pace.

I budget 2 hours per PAPA round (assuming 3 games). For double elimination best-of-3 I will typically see an 8 player tournament take roughly the same amount of time (6 hours total). Again it depends on how many machines are available, and what the rules are on waiting for machine choice.

When in doubt, just email me.

I've probably calculated out 200+ example tournaments for organizers looking at how different choices impact their value. It's realllllly easy for me to do quickly, and it will also help you understand how the formula works seeing me explain how that value comes together based on the decisions you are making.

We have no interest in gauging the perceived effort of a player to attempt to qualify. Although PEP (Perceived Effort Percentage) does have a nice ring to it!

We only care if someone actually competed at all. If this means that more shows will give out free tickets into the tournament in the hopes of getting a bunch of people to try ONE ENTRY, then bully for that tournament, and perhaps that could hook a few new players to continuing to try more.

The only thing we won't look highly on is someone artificially adding players who weren't in attendance or didn't actually compete at all as a way to inflate the base value of the event.

Every tournament created now has the chance at earning 'full value', so that limitation of the charity event being the only way Pinballz could run a second 'full value' tournament is no longer something they have to worry about.

The thing people are going to have to get used to is keeping this "25 WPPRs" in perspective. Previously every tournament got this at a minimum, and now a tournament with 25 base WPPR's represents a tournament with 50 players, and 100% TGP.

It's going to be tough for any tournament worth less than 25 points to not feel ripped off, but we'll fight through it. To keep things in perspective, the average player count of the 2000 events played over the last year was 20 players, which really makes an 'average' tournament base value worth 10. If you're clocking in at anything more than 10 points for your event, you are 'better than average'.

We have thoroughly enjoyed being able to use the WPPR system to help motivate people to raise money for various charities (over $60,000 in 2014 - with 3 more fundraisers left to go), but let me make it crystal clear:

The primary function of the WPPR system is to rank pinball players as accurately as possible. The ability for WPPR points to help increase the fundraising capabilities of these various campaigns is definitely secondary, and in no way will we make any arbitrary inflation decisions that would compromise the integrity of our primary function.

If this new system results in the failure to raise any money for charity next year, we'll be able to see that. If this results in the number of tournaments and players competing to decrease, we'll see that too.

Here's the 2014 (so far) numbers to beat for next year:

9841 total players competing (already being 2013's total of 9833)
1542 total events (2013's total was 1604)

Every year both of these numbers have increased, so time will tell if we unlocked pandora's box to stopping this growth with the new system.

Yeah that's a popular question we've gotten this year (I've asked myself that same question lol).

The second most popular question we get is whether our primary function is WPPR Socialism, and letting any crappy tournament out there with a half dozen players get 25 points like all the others.

I feel like we're addressing both of these issues with WPPR v5.0 in a way that will lead to a more accurate rankings system.

We also know full well that there is a large group of players that love we are addressing these issues, and a large group of players that hates we are addressing these issues.

We're attacking it from both ends!

A 6 player tournament with the best format ever created (100% TGP) would yield a base value of 3 WPPR points.

A 500 player tournament with the worst format ever created (play one game - so 4% TGP) would yield a base value of 1.28 WPPR points.

That's my feeling as well. Once people adjust to the new normal of 10-15 points for a tournament being 'pretty good' by comparison to other events, I think the motivation to run events at those point values will become more meaningful.

It's really easy to see 10 points today, and just say F-This, that's a 60% decrease compared to last year. That thought process should fade over time as more and more results get submitted under the new system (hopefully).

I may have to make a new WPPR t-shirt to help start getting players and organizers to understand that.

Funny enough we were 'THIS CLOSE' in 2010 to changing the minimum base value from 25 to 10 just as one of our arbitrary changes for that year.

The 30 day rule actually exists for 'private' tournaments as well.

Our IFPA Calendar submission process is all online now through our website, and organizers will notice if they try to submit a date that is less than 30 days away, it won't let you select that date to submit.

It's already built into the results submission module on our site:

http://www.ifpapinball.com/tournaments/upload/

Below the area where organizers submit the actual results (player names and finishing positions), there's a Comments box that is open. Organizers will have to use that area to explain in as much detail as possible the format of the event, and we'll be able to assign the TGP value when we approve those results.

There's a similar 'information' box in the Calendar Submission module, and we expect organizers to have that information together BEFORE they submit to the calendar. We get a ton of "Format TBD", which is fine for now, but won't fly for any events we see listed for 2015.

By the time the results submission comes around, it should be more of a confirmation of the format that was submitted to the calendar, so we'll be prepped on figuring out what the TGP value is relatively quickly and easily.

GREAT idea!

I've been equally skeptical of how the charity campaigns will go next year, knowing full well the number of people there for the WPPR's far outnumbered the people that were there for charitable purposes.

This kind of idea would allow us to give some added benefits to these campaigns without messing with the integrity of the new formula . . . I dig it.

We do look at it from the perspective of being able to win the tournament, so those games would count towards the TGP calculation in your example.

The best example of this is Pinburgh, where 20 games are played and then the field is divided up into divisions. No players are actually 'eliminated' from the tournament, but only 25% of the field is now actually still eligible to win the tournament, so those 20 games are added to the TGP total.

What we're trying to avoid is something where you have 32 players that show up, and the organizer says "Okay everyone, let's each play these 5 games, 5 times each. That will get our TGP to 100% and we'll use those results to then start the 32 player elimination bracket." That would be an example of 'seeding' and those 25 games would not be counted in the TGP calculation.

For the SCS it will reset, so all players will start from 0 on 1/1/15.

For the World Ranking it will not. The WPPR points used for your world ranking will continue to decay over time like it does now, lowering the value of all the events that were given under the old rules.

There are some things about the new system that are actually advantageous to the old system, and this mostly has to do with periodic events (weekly/monthly). Before we would simply divide up those 25 base points over however many tournaments were held, so for monthlies it was an automatic 25/12, for weeklies it was an automatic 25/52.

Now that monthlies and weeklies no longer exist, each of those tournaments actually have the opportunity to be worth far more under the new system. It won't be a surprise to me if some of these weekly tournaments that were previously worth 0.5 WPPR points now find themselves worth 10-12 WPPR points each and every week.

Locally to you, CP Pinball comes to mind. In the past all of the events they ran had to share the 25 base points . . . and now Chuck is free to run 100 tournaments next year if he so chooses, and each of them can grade out to whatever value it earns. No longer will they be penalized by having to divide out points between multiple events.

There is no longer the distinction of a 'side tournament' (another term we're going to have to make a t-shirt to help remove from the lingo)

Events are welcome to run multiple tournaments at their event . . . whether that be 2, 3, 4, 7, 10 it's up the them. Each one of them will be graded individually and separately using the same new formula.

Most events that previously maximized their base value would run a Main + Side tournament, which would now be looked at as simply running TWO individual tournaments.

Hilton what you laid out is something I expect to see happen often. You are exactly right that lumping multiple months in together now allows you leverage all of those games played into increasing the TGP value. I wouldn't be shocked if we see weeklies turn into monthlies including a 'monthly final', or monthlies turning into quarterlies including a 'quarterly final' the way you laid out your Option 2.

20 players = 10 base points [0.5 points per player]
4 qualifying games + 2 playoff games = 24% TGP [4% per meaningful game played]
Net Base Value = 2.4 WPPR points [10 base points * 24%]

You got this calculation exactly right . . .

30 people = 15 base points [0.5 points per player]
16 games to victory = 64% TGP [4% per meaningful game played]
Net Base Value = 9.6 WPPR points [15 base points * 64%]

For us, you would simply have to email me an updated paragraph to put in our details, explaining how June and July will be combined into a double-month, and then I can update those calendar entries for June and July with those details.

Do the same on your website, and we'll be good to go for reporting it that way.

What you couldn't do is decide after the June event is done that all the players voted and wanted to combine it July. That decision would have to be made in advance.

This is exactly right, and another thing I think we'll see more of.

If you are giving players 10 opportunities on a game, and only counting their best score, you are only utilizing 1 data point for TGP purposes . . . yet you're spending all that time and effort throwing 90% of that good data away.

Counting all 10 scores would require the same amount of effort from the organizer, but would increase the TGP from 4% to 40%.

You are exactly right with the Fraser Valley Flipout that if the top two scores were used for qualifying instead of just their best, that would have been 20 meaningful games added to the TGP value, plus the finals games would have taken them over the top to grade out at 100%.

By only taking the best score, the tournament would have only graded out to 76% (10 qualifying games played + 9 for finals).

Finding ways to utilize more data is where I think we'll see people try to maximize their TGP without needing to spend any additional effort with the organization part of the event.

Many leagues run seasons that cross over years. We base things off of the results submission date. If that happens to include play from the previous calendar year, we're not concerned about that.

We obviously think it should, however we don't feel there will be a material impact on the standings because of it. This will only be neutered more, with WPPR v5.0 and the SCS being only 16 players. The winner stands to earn far fewer points this upcoming year compared to last year.

Other sports definitely include 'prior year play' in determining who is eligible to participate in the tournament. I look at the Masters in Golf, where any player that has previously won the Masters gets an invite. Other Major Champions of the last 5 years (rolling period) also get an invite, current Amateur Champions of the previous year get an invite, the top 50 ranked players (which is based on a rolling period of results), and a bunch more ways for players to get in that don't include play from the current calendar year.

I don't believe we'll see anyone earn one of the 16 SCS spots in a given state strictly due to their performance at the State Championship from the this year. If that actually ends up happening, and it's on my list to go through and check to see if it does happen, we'll reconsider it for the future.

With an already confusing enough formula, having a different TGP calculation based on various different levels of competitors wasn't something I personally wanted to implement.

The fact that we are leaving the power of the TGP in the organizers hands makes us okay with this decision. Every single tournament will have the chance to grade out at 100%, if that organizer is willing to put in the time and effort to play enough games of pinball to make that happen.

If motivating groups of players to avoid a 'penalty' as you call it, by telling them to PLAY MORE PINBALL, that's something I can definitely live with.

Correct!

Correct again!

To me this is a perfect way of playing within the rules of the system. Utilizing all of those points of data in helping to determine the champion will yield a more skillful result compared to utilizing 1/5th of that data. That's what TGP is all about. The more pieces of data used to determine who's the best, the more meaningful the result.

40 hour tournament anyone is totally right.

It's very easy for people to SAY that they will just play enough games to grade out to 100%, and another thing to actually DO that.

I can't see too many players showing up month after month to Gameworks if I suddenly tell them we're going to be there from 7pm - 5am to make sure we get all of our games in.

This was a big factor in the WPPR v5.0 change, and really unleashing that limitation of people getting to run ONE annual event at a location per year.

I know in Portland because of our current rules, they had to play at locations that were in really rough shape with respect to the condition of the games because they used up all the 'good' locations already. You end up not being able to help the 'good operators' more by running more events there, and end up almost enabling the bad operators to not maintain their games because the players will be showing up anyway.

With the openness of the new system, I'm hoping we'll see operators up their game to motivate the players to choose their location when planning an event. I know the Portland player base is already having discussions on where they plan on holding their weekly tournaments next year, and focusing on the best places to play in town.

I'm hoping there will be a balance here, because besides TGP there is also the player count which is equally important.

If you don't create an event that is fun, I don't care how high your TGP is, players won't keep showing up to the tournament and your value will be nuked anyway.

This is highly dependent on the player base, but I can't imagine trying to milk out a 100% TGP event every single week with the player base in Chicago. We just don't have enough people that have enough free time to commit to playing that much pinball that often. Having a 4 player event worth 100% TGP is still only 2 points. Having a 30 player event worth 50% TGP is worth nearly 4X that.

Instead we'll work on maybe turning monthlies into quarterlies, or finding other ways to maximize TGP while making sure players stay interested in competing.

The more attempts given, the more attempts you give players to execute their skill.

If I had to put Keith Elwin up against Player X, and they both got 3 attempts to put up a great score, or both got 15 attempts to put up a great score, I would think that Keith would win either way . . . but would have a better chance to win given more opportunities to execute his skill over Player X.

The fact that there is the 'luck' factor with respect to ONLY taking the top score, is exactly why either of these scenarios would only count as ONE GAME for TGP purposes.

A better comparison would be:

Keith plays 15 games - Total the score of those 15 games
Player X plays 15 games - Total the score of those 15 games

Who's more likely to finish with the higher score?

To us that's now utilize 15 points of data, which increase the TGP to 60% (up from 4% only counting the high score).

With only 4 players having earned more than 3 WPPR points from last year's Wisconsin SCS, you're really only talking about 3-4 guys that have any sort of real advantage as a 'legacy' player. Those players were Jason Werdrick, Chris Basler, Mike Sievert and Ken Kulig.

If we remove the SCS results, here's what the standings would look like right now:

Jason Werdrick - would drop from 5th to 10th
Chris Basler - would drop from 9th to 23rd! (gotta keep an eye on this)
Mike Sievert - would drop from 4th to 7th
Ken Kulig - would drop from 6th to 7th

Even yourself would only drop from 8th to 10th.

We can argue how important seeding is for the actual State Championship, but judging by the various different seeds of who advanced to Nationals, I would say the most skilled players still performed the best regardless of their actual seed entering the State Championship.

I'll have to ping Basler and see if he has any intention of traveling up to Wisconsin again in February. He could be the ONE GUY that makes us remove including SCS results going forward for future years.

As an organizer I've done plenty of self WPPR exploitation analysis, and the first thing that popped into my head was the "HERB^X" format.

Figure out how many tournament games you have to play with, and make X equal whatever it needs to equal in order to grade out to 100% TGP.

With everyone playing games dozens of times in most pump-n-dumps, it allows you to simply use more data without adding any effort to the organization of the tournament.

Whether you end up with a sum of your best 5 scores, or allow your best 5 individual scores to count (such that you earn 100,99,98,97 and 96 points on a particular machine), I can see both ways happening in 2015.

Technically our written rules state that every IFPA endorsed tournament held within state lines during 2014 are counted in the 2014 standings, full stop . . . and that does include the previous year's final.

We'll be following where players like Basler and Werdrick end up, as well as what happens in the other states.

I'll say that if we only see that it's seeding that is being jumbled, but that all 16 players would have been the same either way, we probably wouldn't make the change.

The max is 64+ players for 32 points.
TVA max is 75 points.
TGP max is 100%

So for a non-Major, the max is 107 WPPR points for the winner of any single event that can be created.

This is to prevent small groups of players from running an event every night out of their house, and racking up points to increase their SCS standing.

We give organizers an option for 'private' events:

1) List your address publicly so anyone can show up, and then you aren't held to the 16 player minimum
2) Don't list your address publicly, and you are held to a 16 player minimum for endorsement

Just within my family I can hold a nightly tournament with 8 people no problem, and rack up 4 WPPR points a night in the privacy of my own basement. 365 times a year, and I can get 1460 WPPR points towards my Illinois SCS.

This kind of exploitation we're looking to avoid, and putting in the player minimum will help limit the chances of it happening. As the number of players increase, the harder it is to get that many people to show up consistently night after night.

It's definitely going to be an interesting balancing act.

Taking the extreme of making someone play a game 15 times, that could lead to a majority of the players competing to say F-THIS (for both financial and time burdens), and suddenly to get your tournament to grade out to 100% TGP, you've just reduced your field of competitors from 90 to 30.

A 30 player field with 100% TGP is 15 points.

A 90 player field with a 76% TGP is 24.32 points.

Ultimately the players are going to drive the bus here. Organizers may be quick to just make some simple changes (on paper) to make the tournament more valuable, but without the support of all those players to continue choosing to participate, it's not going to matter.

It comes down to the actual calendar submission entry:

http://www.ifpapinball.com/calendar/submit.php

Every tournament is required to put in a full address, but you can click the box that says "This Location is Private".

By clicking that, we flag the event that it's only endorsed if the 16 player minimum is met.

The registration process of having people contact you to get the actual address of the event is mandatory even for 'Private' events.

You can't have an event where players aren't allowed to find out where to play by contacting the organizer. That kind of event wouldn't be endorsed regardless of the number of players that show up.

Your example would be exactly what we consider a 'Private' event, because the full address wouldn't be listed publicly on the site, but players would be able to contact you to get that information.

Remember that the prize pool has no impact on the WPPR value of the tournament.

You could run a pump-and-dump without the dump, and simply let people play as many entries as they want for free, or charge $1 a game instead of 3 for $10, and it's all the same to us with respect to WPPR points.

Whether it is the prize pool itself rather than the WPPR's available that is the draw for the players to show up and compete is a whole other argument.

Assuming "top X" cuts the field by at least 50% for the playoffs, then this would grade out at 100% no problem. You would have your 20+ games for 80%, plus unlimited qualifying opportunties for 20+ hours for the other 20%.

If your playoffs include more than half the field, then you would only be able to the data from the playoffs with respect to the TGP calculation.

Sounds fun to me!

I think making players play with at least one other person might be something you would want to look into, just to avoid potential cheating . . . but I probably wouldn't worry about that until you get a sense that it might be.

That's correct! (and one of the biggest reasons why we didn't expand past 20 events for the launch of WPPR v5.0)

Yup yup . . . we analyzed the change in positions for the top 50, and surprisingly there's not much movement at all besides a few guys that weren't as deep with having some decent results in reserve outside of their top 15.

Keith gains 187 and will remain in 1st.
Jorian gains 162.91 and will drop down to 3rd.
Zach gain 190.03 and will move from 3rd to 2nd.
Daniele gains 183.32 and will stay in 4th.

Busted AGAIN!

For a while the changes we made were to benefit me reaching #1, but we've now put all of our resources towards the much better (and better looking) Sharpe brother.

Wow, forgot about that! The ramifications of how this impacts Trent #2, 3 and 4 is INSANE!

Reminds me of Timecop . . .

Same matter can't occupy the same space

The issue is your space and time limitation. With that comes the difficulty in creating more value through player count and a high TGP.

Having a tournament with 24 players that runs for 6 hours is very similar in size and scope of many of the monthly tournaments here in the US, so it will now grade out in the exact same way.

People that are interested will find ways to make the new system work for them, but it will require effort.

It's possible to include the value of all the BFC tournaments together as part of a league, and simply submit the results at the end of the year. This would allow your TGP to add up over time, and you could include all the players that participated in any of the tournaments.

I am personally evaluating something like that for our Gameworks tournaments, and submitting results quarterly or semi-annually instead of monthly to increase the value of each submission.

I would consider that match 3 games played for TGP. Very interesting format for sure . . . sounds like fun. There would be some strategy in putting up a 'decent' game, but not making it too difficult on yourself if you had to beat your score on the next game.

The other format with similar non-playing situations is Texas Hold Em formats where you are betting ball to ball. Regardless of players folding or not, those games played count towards the TGP value.

For those pinball deserts, unfortunately it's a sacrifice we have to make in order to have a rankings system that will be far more accurate.

As long as you have ONE MACHINE available, you have the ability to create a 100% TGP tournament.

As long as there are 64 players that live in the surrounding area you have the opportunity to convince them to play pinball and create a tournament with 32 base points.

How that happens is in the hands of the organizers.

This is by far the one thing that most people seem to not notice.

Comparing a tournaments value in 2014 to the same tournament in 2015 isn't nearly as important of an exercise as comparing the tournament in 2015 to the other tournaments in the area in 2015.

Like I had mentioned previously, MOST events will no longer be scoring 25-30 points as was the norm for the past 8 years. The average player count that we've seen for events is 20 players, which equates to a maximum base value of 10 WPPR points for a 100% TGP event.

10 is the new 25!

Or have the top 2 advance in A to play one best-of-25 match, and have the other 38 players advance to the B finals

This would severely limit the sale of "10 is the new 25" t-shirts!

Seriously, the bigger issue is how we treat what we previously considered 'periodic events'. Previously these weekly tournaments were worth 0.5 WPPR points per week, and counted for 1 event on a player's resume.

Now these weekly tournaments are simply 'tournaments' and have the ability to be worth anything. They will also fill up a player's resume quickly week after week. If we artificially inflate all tournaments, this will hugely impact the weekly/monthly events the most.

Many of these tournaments will hand out 10 points a week, and to inflate them to 25 points a week you start really impacting the world rankings with results that I would consider far less impressive compared to those 'good' events that were 25 points last year.

Those players in the 100-10000 range that play mostly small, local, weekly/monthly stuff already stand the most to gain under this new system. They will be filling up their resume quickly with events worth far more than they were previously worth.

If you submit monthly, and there's an ability for new players to join each and every month because there's no carryover, then I would put it on the calendar. At that point IMO it's not really a 'league' the way I personally look at them, but rather a monthly tournament.

For us, not putting league dates on the IFPA calendar was because most leagues have a season made up of multiple meetings where there is a requirement to be a member at the start of the season. Having one of the meetings on the IFPA calendar would only confuse non-members into thinking they could show up and play, when really they couldn't.

If the 100 best players in the world show up to Billy Bob's Tournament and that same exact group of players show up to the PAPA World Championships, assuming the formats were identical, the prestige of what PAPA is, as one of the sports Major Championships makes it a 'more important' event with respect to the world rankings (IMO of course).

We this a lot with the Pre-IFPA, Pre-Pinburgh and Pre-PAPA tournaments. There is a level of prestige with the Major Championships that we feel should provide additional value compared to the Pre-events leading up to the Major (all other things being equal).

We see this in the Official World Golf Rankings as well:

The 4 Majors, Masters Tournament, U.S. Open Championship, The Open Championship and US PGA Championship are rated separately and are awarded 100 1st place points. All players who complete all 4 rounds of a Major Championship are awarded Ranking Points to reflect the higher quality of the events.

You don't need 25 games for the winner to be determined among 20 players. You only need ONE GAME for that to be determined. The question is the quality value of that determination.

Clearly as DNO said, the biggest losers in the new system are those that ran small player count, simple format tournaments (often with an associated Side Tournament), and saw 37.5 points for that no matter what the effort.

It's up to the organizer how many games they wish to play, and they are in complete control over the value of their tournament. They can choose to make the quality of their events better, focus on ways to try and get more players to participate, or simply stop running their events altogether if the new WPPR scoring upsets them that much.

For those that run into time/space/player limitations, unfortunately that's a problem that organizers will have to find a way to overcome under the new system.

Yes that would be 12%. With 8 players the net base value would be 0.48 WPPRs.

If you have to join something ahead of time and it requires mandatory attendance to multiple events, we would consider that a league.

If results are being submitted based on the activity from that evening, and anyone can show up at the it leisure week to week or month to month, then we consider those tournaments.

Your example sounds like a typical weekly or monthly tournament which would have to be on the calendar ahead of time to be endorsed.

Everything Marcus says is 100% correct

That all looks correct to me . . . and there is no difference with respect to TGP based on how many players worth of scores you are comparing for the game played (whether that be 1 other player, 3 other players, or comparing one score to all other participants in the tournament).

There's no difference between calling something a league or tournament.

The data gets graded the same way.

This kind of format is no problem.

The "timed game" that isn't acceptable is:

"We set up Attack From Mars, and everyone got 5 minutes of unlimited play to score as many points as they could."

At that point capping the time available reduces the amount that player skill actually impacts the result.

We're getting closer. Test site has everything pre-2015 implemented (I think). Working hard to make sure everything is working properly, and then we'll try to throw the 2015 results and see what happens.

I can tell you that you're 339th under the old system, and 347th under the new system.

We won't recommend the usage of those games, and personally you'll never see a tournament I run use those kind of machines, but we would still endorse those events.

Number of meaningful games apply regardless of whether there is Unlimited Qualifying OR Limited Qualifying.

The only difference is that the time component is added to the mix if there are unlimited opportunities to keep trying.

So the difference between simply playing every game three times (TGP = 12%), and play those three games as many times as you want for 4 hours, but only your best 3 games count would be TGP of 16%. The idea being giving the additional chances for players to play more attempts and show off their skill makes the event more valuable then limiting those chances to display their skill.

The only potential issue we may run into, is something like this:

"Players will have 2 hours of unlimited qualifying, and the best score on each of the 50 qualifying machines will be includes in the standings."

At some point there's sort of a natural law to how many games you can possibly expect players to get through in the time allotted. If we see people trying to exploit the system by 'counting 25 games played' but due to the short qualifying period that wasn't even possible, we'll step in and deal with those situations.

It's by far the most popular question I get:

"How do I make my tournament more valuable, but still keeping my tournament to only 2 hours long?"

At some point you just can't. The whole idea of the new system is to reward increased value to the organizers that are putting in the time to run longer events where more games can be played, thus leading to a more 'quality' result.

Everything Frax has said is 100% correct . . . except this

We ended up keeping things at the 100/75/50 decay over 3 years.

Can't wait to see how WPPR v6.0 will impact all the people that don't care about WPPR's

Yup

(and funny enough it's a change where it's actually not possible for anyone to gain points, points will only be lost by everyone due to this change. We've actually found a way to piss off EVERYONE all at once)

I can't help but keep checking to see if my Magic Girl is shipping yet

The impact WPPR v5 results will have on a player's resume will depend on the player.

My brother for example already has 8 of his top 20 events from 2015 (40%), which is ahead of a typical pace of 'new year results' replacing 'old year results' under the old system.

I could dig and pull random examples at all ranks showing how the previous years decay is already impacting their ability to have their 2015 events actively counting on their resume . . . but that's way too much time and effort to spend while waiting for my Predator refund to kick in.

This is absolutely by design. To be among the pinnacle of the elite, best in the world, blah blah blah, you HAVE to play in the biggest tournaments the world has to offer against the best competition.

Just to put TPF in comparison to the sport's two World Championships . . .

TPF had 3 top 50 players participate, and 6 top 100 players participate.

IFPA12 had 26 top 50 players participate, and 50 top 100 players participate.

PAPA18 had 33 top 50 players participate (holy shit that's crazy I almost didn't believe it), and 47 top 100 players participate.

It's 'night and day' competition when you compare these larger regional events to what the IFPA considers the Majors, and the WPPR system definitely makes sure to put an emphasis on that in our formula.

Damnit Chris! I thought we found a Magical (no pun intended) way to somehow move everyone in the rankings DOWN. It turns out those stupid laws of math still hold true that anytime a player moves down, it means there's some other players moving up. That means there are people that are going to like this change . . . BACK TO FORMULA!

Todd gets it!

The only thing I'll disagree with is that the 'top players' could be ANYONE (if you earn it). We're not specifically working to protect "Today's" top players . . . besides you know . . . protecting myself . . . and my brother . . . and anyone else in the top 50 that is currently sending me cash to keep their rank up.

A more true statement can't be made.

Even I went a little crazy in 2007 when the WPPR shit was new to everyone, and quickly snapped back into the way I was playing competitive pinball between 1993-2006 . . . just to have some fun and hang out with my friends . . . and of course the trophies!

LOL . . . we're currently negotiating the licensing of the rights to purchase the use of a WPPR spot, but not ownership of the WPPR spot. The good news is my dad is the best licensing guy in the business, so please send your deposit money with confidence.

Only whining about losing points is allowed.

(So tempting to just hit post and ignore your question but I won't)

It's an 'all or nothing' thing for the base value. After spending over 2 months trying to get the sliding scale to work it just wasn't in the cards right now. My guess is our logic is using the player count as the metric, and we were able to easily add the logic of first defining whether a player was marked as "Rated" or "Not Rated", as that was just one additional yes/no flag to be checked. Getting into the 1-4 events meant more than simply flagging a player in a yes/no decision, and it also messed up the fact that the logic is just 'counting players' and not assigning the value in the process. The value is assigned after the player count.

Trent has actually played in more events in the last 12 months then I have personally played in the last 12 years . . . and I can't believe that isn't a joke.

If you listen really closely, you can hear Trent playing in a tournament RIGHT NOW . . . somewhere

The way our SCS filters work, there's only a few possibilities for us to choose from:

Option 1 --> Don't include the results in any state
Option 2 --> Include the results in all states where they is some sort of activity
Option 3 --> Arbitrarily come up with reasons to pick and choose which states deserve the SCS points for a given league, and which states don't

Option 1 is easiest, but then it sucks for everyone

Option 2 is a pain in the ass for me personally to deal with since those states then have to be manually updated throughout the year for the SCS events to be included for those states

Option 3 is the hardest decision to get right, because the reasons to pick and choose why/why not something gets included here but not there is just HARD. Do you let the League President just decide? Does that present an issue with the League President arbitrarily picking the state that they plan on trying to qualify for in the SCS? Do we go with whichever state had the most 'activity' for that league during the year? Well that sucks because some states especially on the East coast heavily rely on the results from these leagues as an integral part of their SCS standings.

I guess we could simply not endorse any leagues that stretch state borders, and leave it to those leagues to break up into separate divisions . . . but I don't want to blow that something up that's actually working for these groups in reality.

The ultimate deciding factor is that any given player can only play in ONE SCS FINAL, so you can award points for that player across all 50 states and 49 of those states will end up being worthless with respect to the final standings of that state (once that player is skipped in the standings).

So short answer . . .we have no plan

Even I'm not exactly sure about the Eff% formula, but here's my understanding:

The WPPR points earned / The WPPR points available for 1st place = EFF%

So for example, your results from Cactus Jack's:

http://www.ifpapinball.com/view_tournament.php?t=9303#results

1st place got 40.23 points and you got 6.57 points for 13th place. This was an EFF% of 16.3%.

Now whether it's just your active results counted, or all results over the past 3 years, or all results for the history of time, or whether it's calculated this way at all . . . I'm not really sure

That feeling is definitely the one thing I'm most worried about. The most important metric that I personally follow is the number of players that are actively competing in IFPA endorsed events year over year. If we get into a situation where the number of players actively playing starts a downward spiral, we're sunk!

Luckily we keep track of those stats, and I check them every month . . .

2015 --> 8714 players (through June 8th)
2014 --> 13347 players
2013 --> 9820 players
2012 --> 7648 players
2011 --> 6179 players

Sorry about that Jon . . . totally missed your previous post.

Per our rules:

"The TGP only considers games of 3 or more balls in the game count, with the exception of the Pin-Golf format where players can possibly hit their target score in fewer than 3 balls. 1 ball games or any timed games will not be included in the TGP calculation."

It's possible for you to used a timed format as part of your event, and have impact on the final standings, however they simply won't be included in the final game count for TGP purposes.

I'm sure there is a way to query this from one of our tables (I'm extremely confident I used the correct computer database lingo there) . . . but I have no idea how to do that

That's interesting . . .

I'd toss this over to the IFPA Directors to vote on. I could see them going either way on it.

The idea about "punishing players for excessive cradling" makes it sound like cradling isn't an integral skill in playing pinball, which I believe it is, so there's a delicate balance here when you push something into not really being "pinball".

If you actually wanted to try and do something like this though, let me know and I really will post it to the Directors to discuss.

I get it, and have played in some of the old Gauntlet style events that Bowen has run, and they are TONS OF FUN!

At some point though I take it to the golf analogy. On the PGA Tour they run many styles of tournaments, stroke play, match play, skins games, best ball, etc . . . but I've yet to see Speed Golf as one of the formats. The day they start to sprinkle in Speed Golf events on the tour, maybe we'll consider it for pinball

I remember the first time Shepherd taught me how to query something, and I had to call him and told him I messed something up on the "My S-Q-L" (I announced each letter) page.

He just busted out laughing telling me it was pronounced "Sequel", and that I'm now an even bigger dork.

It would . . . NOT under the current rules.

Haul-ass factor eliminates the format from being endorsed by the IFPA.

http://www.isfpapinball.com for the International Speed Flipper Pinball Association is available! Jump on it!

Shepherd to the rescue with his S-Q-L Sequel skillz:

image(1).png

It's on the list

I have no idea what the means lol

If you add the numbers from 5 events plus all the numbers to the right of it for each year, you'll get that total of players competing in 5+ events per year.

Nothing to talk about at this point, or else everyone will beat the horse to death before it's even born

That's definitely a question for Shepherd

Pro or premium (walker bombs make a HUGE difference)?

Focus on trying to stack a mode and either MB (obviously if you can drag in Blood Bath to all of it you're doing fine at that point).

I'll typically try to get the multiball to 1 shot away and then try to start the mode first - mostly because it's easier to start the mode you want without balls flying all around the playfield.

I'm a big Tunnel guy because you can rack up points all around the playfield. Just don't shoot the tunnel shot after you shoot other shit or you'll end the mode prematurely. If you can get your 2X playfield going, you're talking about over 10 million a shot around the playfield. Add in the inlane multiplier and you have the potential just blow things up if you're able to execute well.

Second favorite mode is probably Barn, followed by CDC . . . with Arena being okkkk, and Riot currently being a "fuck, I didn't want to start that". I'm sure the Riot scoring will be adjusted at some future point to account for the difficulty of that shot.

With the way Lyman has worked in the Multi-kill scoring (5% of your mode points that you've earned throughout the game), there's additional opportunities to just keep cashing in around the playfield. If eventually becomes a loaded craps table if you're starting additional modes, scoring well, keeping your 2X playfield going, etc.

It'll be fun to break it down with Nate tomorrow night. Game is a blast. My only wish with the Walker Bombs being added was that there was a way to just put an LE lockdown bar on a PRO and it would 'recognize it', because the strategy behind using those effectively takes the game to even another level.

Yup . . . it becomes "X+1" sets of drops to light your next mode, so IMO it's best to try and make your Prison progress BEFORE you start your first mode. Nothing worse then needing to complete 2 sets of drops to light your second mode when you're getting close to stacking a mode with a Multiball, BUT you're far more likely to bring in Blood Bath at that point assuming you were clearing your drop target banks efficiently. By the time you're lighting mode #2, you'll be through 3 sets of drop target banks, which should have Blood Bath ready to go on the next set (assuming you cleared through the Food, Supplies and First Aid efficiently). Huge risk/reward opportunities are around every turn.

So you're supposed to be able to enter the top 0.3% of ranked pinball players (top 100 out of 33,000) overnight?

How quickly should a rankings system allow someone to move up from 'not playing' to the top 0.3% best in the world at anything (not just pinball)?

There seems to be this "top 100" thing where everyone feels like it should be easily attainable for someone to casual make their way to that level. Unfortunately you can't have more than 100 players in the top 100, so at some point the 100th ranked player is REALLLLLLLY GOOD (like even right now). Even looking at players in that 90-100 range, you're talking about people that have dozens of tournament victories on their resume.

IMO the WPPR system does a great job allowing someone to move up the rankings EXTREMELY FAST just by getting out and playing. One of my favorite people to track is our lovely C2C pinball host Mr. Nate Shivers. His competitive pinball "career" really started in January 2014. Here's his progress up the charts:

Jan 2014 --> ranked 12,816th (finished 65th/70th at INDISC Main and Classics)
May 2014 --> ranked 4723rd (finished 51st at Midwest Gaming Classic)
July 2014 --> ranked 4036th (finished 25th at Southern Fried)
Nov 2014 --> ranked 3945th (finished 90th at Pinball Expo)
Apr 2015 --> ranked 1943rd (went crazy at Texas Pinball Festival including a 14th place finish in Vintage)

Nate's at about 18 months into his journey, and went from an unranked player to someone that's ranked in the top 6% of players in the world. Not bad at all for someone that still feels like he's getting better as a player. I guess the question to ask is should Nate be in the top 100 based on his performances? What kind of player SHOULD be in the top 100? etc . . .

That's the fear we live with . . . let's look at the facts and see where our "attitude" has taken us to this point:

2015 --> 1455 players average playing at least 1 tournament a month
2014 --> 1364 players average playing at least 1 tournament a month
2013 --> 843 players average playing at least 1 tournament a month
2012 --> 546 players average playing at least 1 tournament a month
2011 --> 406 players average playing at least 1 tournament a month
2010 --> 310 players average playing at least 1 tournament a month
2009 --> 203 players average playing at least 1 tournament a month
2008 --> 119 players average playing at least 1 tournament a month
2007 --> 71 players average playing at least 1 tournament a month

I'd add additional commentary to those facts/figures, but damn that's shockingly impressive. I'm just going to let those numbers speak for themselves on the health and growth of competitive pinball.

If only we could find a way to have all of the 1455 players out there playing consistently all ranked in the top 100

That's probably why this stat exists

Keith Elwin --> 8
Josh Sharpe --> 0

(number of Major Championships won)

We do the best we can to not make changes during a season, but unfortunately sometimes it happens and believe me it's for 'greater good' of the accuracy of the system when we do it (even if a large group of people think that's not the case).

Just to again keep things in perspective, I pulled up your profile to analyze what the change did you personally. Unfortunately you did take a bigger hit compared to most, so your frustration is not lost on me at all.

Currently you're ranked 2570th with 16.80 WPPR points.

The change cost you 3.51 WPPR points, which would have had you at a rank of 2292nd.

At the State level, you currently sit in 7th place. If these changes didn't go in, you would currently be in . . . 6th place.

If that 10% drop in your world ranking, and 1 spot change in the Georgia SCS is a big enough issue that you no longer follow the system AND stop playing competitive pinball in general that's a big problem for me. If you stop following the system but still play in your Atlanta league and some of the other local events, I'd be far less disappointed in simply losing you as an 'interested WPPR person'.

We're not asking you to have any sort of faith in the system. We're not even asking you to care about the points. We just want you playing competitive pinball for any reason that gets you playing. For some the WPPR's help, for others it doesn't matter.

I'm not going to try and convince people that the changes we make go through EXTENSIVE testing, because we know it rocks the boat each and every time we do it. People feel like we wake up and I call Brian Shepherd and we have the following conversation:

Me - "It's a beautiful Wednesday morning . . . what do you think about hmmmm, I don't know, let's take away 10% of the points from tournaments that didn't use a game my dad designed, because we all know those games are the BEST."

Brian - "Yeah, I can do that . . . I'll have it up later today."

Let me just brace you well in advance. We WILL have changes to the system for 2016. We HOPE to not have any more changes made in the 2015 season (confident we won't but you never know the exploits that people dig up). Some changes will totally irritate you more, and some changes may benefit the tournaments you play in.

I get it David for sure . . . it fucking sucks.

The good news is holy crap do you guys have a ton of stuff going on in the Atlanta area. Between the H2H league, the NGPL and Southern Fried coming up, I could think of worse places in the world for you to be with respect to access to tournaments near you.

You'll have to shoot me a PM and let me know where you end up at the end of 2015, because I'll definitely take the under on getting back to 2300 in 6 months (especially if you plan on attending Southern Fried).

I know that Greg Dunlap had created a WPPR Nerdery page where you could view your rank and points earned over time . . . but can't seem to find that link (or if it's still active).

While I don't have the time to query everybody, I'm sure there's enough Pinsiders that wouldn't mind seeing your rise up the ranks since you were a young Whysnow pup back in 2012

We archive rankings/ratings at the first of every month, so it's not as detailed as it could be, but here you go!

3/1/2012 1414
4/1/2012 1466
5/1/2012 1504
6/1/2012 1550
7/1/2012 1591
8/1/2012 1621
9/1/2012 1663
10/1/2012 1721
11/1/2012 1730
12/1/2012 1797
1/1/2013 1847
2/1/2013 1857
3/1/2013 2242
4/1/2013 1544
5/1/2013 1590
6/1/2013 1607
7/1/2013 1649
8/1/2013 1671
9/1/2013 1715
10/1/2013 1517
11/1/2013 1408
12/1/2013 1402
1/1/2014 1176
2/1/2014 1194
3/1/2014 1116
4/1/2014 729
5/1/2014 712
6/1/2014 707
7/1/2014 723
8/1/2014 735
9/1/2014 743
10/1/2014 647
11/1/2014 671
12/1/2014 703
1/1/2015 350
2/1/2015 355
3/1/2015 363
4/1/2015 359
5/1/2015 341
6/1/2015 321

Hilton actually did have a solid 'first tournament' finish. He finished 5th at an 'annual - full value' tournaments up in Wisconsin.

Remember that back in 2012 we only had ~9000 players, so him jumping from 9000th to 1414th is like someone today jumping in from 33,000th to 5,185th.

Bug in our script . . . it'll be fixed soon.