The Fairfax City Patch has an article and video promoting the upcoming 9th annual Fairfax Pinball Open which starts this Friday, February 24th. The Fairfax Pinball Open is one of the nearly 350 annual IFPA endorsed tournaments where players can earn World Pinball Player Rankings points, and qualify for the IFPA World Pinball Championship. Featured in the video is Rob Wintler-Cox, currently ranked 397th in the world. Click HERE to see the article/video. Click HERE for more information on the Fairfax Pinball Open.

February 19^th, 2012 – The event was held at Ace’s Breakaway and Play, an arcade at the middle of the city on Smithfield street. In addition to the two AC/DC machines available for play there, Ace’s also features five other pinball machines among its games every day. This weekend it was Family Guy, Avatar, Tron, Batman (Stern), and Transformers. Over 60 people attended the launch party.

The tournament on AC/DC was the main feature of the night. There were 30 competitors and over 70 entries placed. After the dust from qualifying ended, four players remained at the top of the standings. Jon Replogle (IFPA ranked at 135^th in the world) had the top qualifying score of 181,516,810. Second in qualifying was Pete Hendricks (148) with a score of 140,711, 840 followed by Cryss Stephens (234) with 89 million and Al Thomka (91) with just over 70 million.

The finals were a one game playoff, winner take all. Al Thomka started off the grouping strong putting up a score of over 50 million on his first ball and really putting the pressure on the rest of the group to perform. In the end Pete Hendricks captured the win with a score of 92,233,320.

Along with the cash for 1^st place, each of the final four also received entries to the PAPA World Championship (www.papa.org).

Special thanks goes out to Stern Pinball, the IFPA, PAPA, Ace’s Breakaway and Play, Betson Distributing, Doug Polka, Nick Jaquay, Pete Hendricks and Al Thomka for their support in running the event.

In the ongoing coverage of the Rose City Showdown out in the Portland, The Oregonian has an article that was released over the weekend. The Rose City Showdown is one of the nearly 350 annual IFPA endorsed tournaments where players can earn World Pinball Player Rankings points, and qualify for the IFPA World Pinball Championship.

Featured in the article is 58th ranked Aaron Nelson, 43rd ranked Adam Lefkoff, 457th ranked Kevin Kerr and the world’s current #1 player Keith Elwin. Additional players mentioned in pictures from the article include 423rd ranked John Fujita and 34th ranked Eden Stamm. Aaron, Adam, Keith and Eden are 4 of the 64 qualifiers for the upcoming World Pinball Championship, June 8th-10th outside of Seattle, WA.

To read the entire article click HERE. To read more about the Rose City Showdown, including full results, click HERE.

KATU in Portland had some coverage of the 4th annual Rose City Showdown, one of the nearly 350 annual IFPA endorsed tournaments where players can earn World Pinball Player Rankings points. Top ranked Portland player, and 58th ranked in the world Aaron Nelson and 43rd ranked Adam Lefkoff are both featured. Aaron and Adam both recently qualified for IFPA9 the upcoming World Pinball Championship held outside Seattle later in June.

Click HERE to see the video. Click HERE for more information on the Rose City Showdown, including full results of the event.

The Washington Post wrote an article on the Free State Pinball Association's John's Place League, one of the nearly 50 IFPA endorsed leagues held around the world. Players mentioned include Paul McGlone, Chris Newsom and Rich Wickersham. There is also an announcement regarding the upcoming Fairfax Pinball Open, one of the nearly 350 IFPA endorsed tournaments where players can earn World Pinball Player Rankings points. To read the entire John's Place League article click HERE. To read the Fairfax Pinball Open announcement, click HERE. For more details on the Free State Pinball Association, click HERE. For more details on the Fairfax Pinball Open, click HERE.

The Charleston City Paper wrote an article on the new Charleston Pinball Federation which will be hosting their first IFPA endorsed event, titled "Pinception", this upcoming Saturday at 2pm at the Recovery Room.

The full article can be found HERE.

More detailed information on the tournament can be found HERE.

The Orange County Register just did an article on the Orange County Pinball League. Featured in the piece are Jim Belsito and Bob Matthews, both of whom will be representing the US at the upcoming IFPA9 World Pinball Championship outside Seattle later this year.

Click HERE to read the article.

Click HERE to find out more about the Orange County Pinball League.

Current World's Greatest Pinball Player, Keith Elwin, and current World Pinball Champion, Cayle George were both featured in Willamette Week out in Portland, Oregon. Both players will be participating in the upcoming Rose City Showdown starting tomorrow.

For the full article click HERE.

For more details on the Rose City Showdown tournament, click HERE.

Also new for 2012, the IFPA will be highlighting the players that saw the biggest jump in their world ranking each month.

The biggest movers for January 2012 included Magnus Johansson from Sweden, who moved up 4941 spots by finishing in 17th place at the Super Classic Pinball Open.

Greg Noack from the US moved up 4807 spots by finishing in 7th place at The Know

Tournament and 10th place at the Club 21 Tournament.

Jesse Gregory from the US moved up 4727 spots by finishing in 7th place at the Back Country Pizza & Tap House tournament along with a 10th place finish at the 1up Monthly Tournament.

Congratulations to Magnus, Greg and Jesse, and to other players that saw a jump in their ranking from their January tournament performance!

New for 2012, the IFPA will be highlighting the player that has earned the most WPPR points for each month of the year. Our first Player of the Month is Trent Augenstein from Delaware, OH. Trent earned 33.69 WPPR points in January, finishing 2nd at both the Stern Launch Party in Pittsburgh, and the Fountain Square Pinball Classic in Indianapolis.

The rest of the top 5 for the month of January included Roy Wils of the Netherlands with 30.16 WPPR points, Derek Fugate of ths US with 29.70 WPPR points, Mats Holmqvist of Sweden with 29.44 WPPR points, and Jason Hatch of the US with 29.22 WPPR points.

Congratulations to Trent and the other top WPPR point earners of the month!