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.

Stern Pinball is looking for some feedback from the IFPA player community on their latest designs.

If you have a chance, please check out the survey here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DZF3H6K

Please rank the previous 6 Stern releases, 1 being the best, 6 being the worst.

IFPA Vice President Zach Sharpe was recently featured in an issue of Chicago's RedEye as one of the "Hottest Geek Guys of Winter". Click HERE to read the entire article.

Read more …

We're looking to round up some volunteers to help us with hosting the Stern AC/DC Launch Party tournament.

If you live in or near the following cities, and would be interested in helping out the IFPA and Stern, please drop the IFPA an email at ifpapinball@gmail.com.

Duties would include game setup at the site, along with running the tournament portion of the party.

Looks like it's going to be 10 cities in total, including:

- CHICAGO (Gameworks, 2/24)
- PITTSBURGH (Ace's Break a Way, 2/19)
- PORTLAND (Good Foot, 2/15)
- CLEVELAND (Kidforce Collectables, 2/18)

Read more …

If anyone is interested in helping us continue to raise some funds, we've put together the IFPA World Pinball Tour t-short, showing the list of events for 2011.

Number of unique tournaments went up from 52 in 2006, to 74 in 2007, to 102 in 2008, to 182 in 2009, to 228 in 2010, to 343 in 2011!

Number of players has now also passed 12,000 from 33 different countries!

$3 from each t-shirt sale goes into the IFPA funds, so help us raise some funds and get a t-shirt or two.

Click HERE to visit our online store.