Continuing coverage of the upcoming IFPA10 World Pinball Championship keeps us to New York, where [player]Steve Zahler[/player] (ranked 30th in the world) made an appearance on FOX5 NY's Good Day New York. Check out the video HERE.

Continuing coverage of the upcoming IFPA10 World Pinball Championship takes us to New York, where the NY Post checked in with [player]Steve Zahler[/player] (ranked 30th in the world) will be heading off to Germany to represent the US. In addition, Steve was recently added to the Team USA roster for the Epstein Cup to battle Team Europe in the inaugural event. Check out the article HERE.

The IFPA is excited to announce that the following players have been now qualified for the $tern Rewards Program based on their January 2013 IFPA endorsed tournament performance! These players have until August 15th, 2014 to exercise their reward option.

PLAYER OF THE MONTH – [player]Steve Zahler[/player]
Steve earned 89.36 WPPR points in January, including a 2nd and 1st place finish in the Main and Classic tournaments at the Maryland Pinball Championship. In addition, Steve won the Middletown NY Pinball Open, and finished in 12th place at Pinferno.

BIGGEST MOVER AWARD – [player]Greg Matherly[/player]
Greg moved up 1487 spots by earning .66 WPPR points from his 56th place finish at the Pinferno tournament in New York. This moved Greg up to the 5341st ranked player in the world.

BIGGEST MOVER AWARD – [player]Jake Peterson[/player]
Jake moved up 793 spots from his 31st place finish at the Maryland Pinball Championship, along with a 26th place finish in the Classics Division. In total, Jake earned 2.21 WPPR points, which has moved him up to a rank of 2701st in the world.

BIGGEST MOVER AWARD – [player]Keith Brown[/player]
Keith moved up 665 spots from his victory at the Lost Ark Monthly Pinball Tournament. This netted Keith 6.26 WPPR points and boosted him into now being the 1571st ranked player in the world.

Detailed rules for the $tern Rewards Program, including an updated list of qualifiers, and updated list of rewards available can be found HERE.

The first official tourney of 2012 in NY was held at Rock Fantasy in Middletown NY thanks to the hosts [player]Steve Keeler[/player] and [player]Steve Levine[/player]. It was a big success with 31 players and 95 entries which all went to the pot! The tourney started at noon with the entry fee of $10 which let you play the set

of 5 games: Spider Man from Stern, Terminator 2, Cheetah, Nugent and Captain Fantastic. At 6:30 the qualification stopped and the top 16 made to the finals in a single elimination bracket 2 best out of 3 and all games in the store could have been used which included Rolling Stones from Stern, Seawitch, Medusa, Adams Family, Transformers LE, Gorgar, Kiss, Fireball, Meteor, and Countdown.

Note that the top 15 made plus the High score of one of the game who was seeded 16th! At around 7 pm after a little cake for [player]Frank Romero[/player] for his birthday the finals started . In couple of hours and after few great matches ([player]Steven Bowden[/player] vs [player]Steve Zahler[/player] was incredible!) 4 players made to semifinal: [player]Steven Bowden[/player] vs [player]Alberto Santana[/player] where the 1st won the tie break game by less than a million on Transformers LE and [player]Sanjay Shah[/player] took out [player]Ed Zeltmann[/player] also on tie break. In the end [player]Steven Bowden[/player] took the win on 2 classic Stern games: Cheetah and Nugent. Top 8 got money. It was truly a great time by all and we all hope that the AC/DC launch party will be held in here because this place ROCKS!!