Midwest Pinball Championship returns to Midwest Gaming Classic with Rules Changes
blog post courtesy of Dan Loosen
The Midwest Gaming Classic, coming up April 11th and 12th in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, recently announced their pinball tournament line up, and it’s a pretty big change from what has traditionally been hosted! Gone are the pay-per-entry format, replaced with an ‘anyone with a ticket can play’ entry. Prizes are mostly eliminated. The change is both to appease a little-used state law which classifies all tournaments in which competitors pay in and can potentially win prizes are lotteries, and also to try to spread the joy of pinball tournaments to as many people as possible.
“Our event is about introducing new aspects of gaming to as many people as possible.” Stated Dan Loosen of the show. “We wanted to create a system that could do that in a fun way for as many people as possible, without them needing to spend a ton of time participating.”
The Midwest Pinball Championship has had some modifications to make it run faster and smoother. Qualifying is only on Saturday, and competitors only receive six entries per person to play across three different titles, and every entry counts! That night, the qualifiers with the highest positions will be informed about when to return to compete the next day.
“By eliminating prizes, we found it difficult to be able to justify running different divisions, but we still wanted a time-efficient finals system for all qualifiers. We created a final head-to-head knock out ladder system that does just that.” Loosen explains.
The finals are scheduled to begin at 10:15am, although top qualifiers will get a bye all the way until 1pm, allowing all competitors to maximize their time seeing what else the show offers.
“We expect it’s going to be a great time,” Loosen says, “And we hope the players do too!”
If you are interested in participating in the Midwest Pinball Championship, the other five pinball tournaments at the event or finding out what the Midwest Gaming Classic holds, check them out at http://www.
3 machines at Wisconsin’s biggest pinball tournament? Lame.
For players interested in lots of WPPR points:
There are now Daily Championships worth WPPR points on Friday, Saturday and Sunday too.
In addition to Clock Chaos on Friday for people who buy VIG tickets, there’s now a Pingolf tournament on Friday night. That’s worth WPPR points too.
All four of those events are new for this year, and worth WPPR points.
There’s also non-IFPA tourneys on Saturday (Women’s Championship) and Sunday (Junior Championship, Split Flipper Championship).
For those that prefer more games but fewer people in a competition, there is always Mad Rollin Pinball in August. They are expecting 24 games for competition this year.
Split Flipper!
The tournaments were very well run. It was nice to have an even playing field with everyone having the same amount of qualifying attempts. No buying your way into the playoffs with deep pockets. No pirzes was a bummer, but it’s more understandable when the tournament is free.