The Four Horsemen – The race for No. 1 and title of World’s Greatest Pinball Player for 2016 heats up!
With the 2016 season nearly half done, we couldn’t help but notice how close the race for the IFPA’s “World’s Greatest Pinball Player” title is. Many years it was simply Keith Elwin sitting alone “Tiger Woods style” at the top spot (often enough that the trophy is still named the “Keith Trophy” on all of our internal IFPA documentation).
We’ve seen a few two-player races develop over the past 10 years that we’ve crowned the “World’s Greatest Pinball Player” title, including a 7.92 WPPR point squeaker in 2013 with Zach Sharpe finishing just ahead of Keith. This was then bested in 2014 when Jorian Engelbrektsson finished ahead of Keith by 7.58 WPPR points (the tightest race we’ve had so far).
While we have gotten used to some entertaining races in the past, this year brings us something we haven’t seen before . . . a FOUR player race for #1! These Four Horseman include 6-time WGPP Keith Elwin, 3-time WGPP Jorian Engelbrektsson (current EPC champ), 1-time WGPP Zach Sharpe (current Pinburgh champ) and Daniele Acciari (current IFPA champ) who has not yet finished a year in the #1 spot.
While the last few weeks have seen some shifting of the #1 spot (Zach, Jorian and Daniele all have tasted #1 during that time), the real test will come after all of the 2013-2015 events on everyone’s resume decay out by the end of the year. After a win at the Lyons Spring Classic last week, Zach currently sits on top, holding a 40 point lead over Jorian, a 42 point lead over Daniele and a 48 point lead over Keith.
Some big point drops are coming as tournaments pass the 1/2/3 year mark with respect to age. We took a look at some of the bigger movements we’ll be seeing on the calendar coming up soon:
August 2016 features the 1-year mark for Pinburgh 2015 results. Nobody is hit harder than Zach, who will lose 34.58 WPPR points from his victory. However, Jorian and Keith will also be hit by this decay, losing 17.44 and 27.02 WPPR points respectively. Having missed Pinburgh 2015, Daniele’s WPPR point total is not impacted at all.
Zach’s consistent ability to NOT win PAPA will also hurt him coming up in August. He will lose 17.99 WPPR points from his 3rd place finish at PAPA17 when that tournament passes the 2-year mark. Keith’s PAPA 18 victory has already gotten the 1-year decay hit with PAPA moving from August to March starting in 2015.
Moving to October, and the 2015 European Pinball Championship will pass the 1-year decay mark. Both Jorian (1st place) and Daniele (5th place) will lose 29.84 and 19.81 points respectively. In addition Daniele finished in 2nd place in the Classics tournament at EPC 2015, which will cost him another 11.22 points.
For Jorian, after defiling the Star Trek machine at the 2014 Pinball Expo Flip Out tournament (in some alternate universe he is STILL playing), those results pass the 2 year decay mark. This will cost Jorian 16.89 WPPR points.
Doing all the math, here is where these four stand, accounting for all point reductions that are due between now and the end of the calendar year:
Zach Sharpe –> 937.37 WPPR points
Daniele Acciari –> 896.03 WPPR points
Keith Elwin –> 878.48 WPPR points
Jorian Engelbrektsson –> 832.67 WPPR points
With the season not even half over, there is of course plenty of tournaments left to shake things up. This includes TWO Major Championships (Pinburgh 2016 and EPC 2016). It’s likely that both Daniele and Jorian will compete in both, while Zach and Keith only have Pinburgh left on their ‘Major’ calendars. Beyond the Majors, each player has their own backyard events worthy of top resume stuffers. We’re excited to see how this race shapes up and will be sure to update this race, especially after we get through Pinburgh 2016 at the end of July.
Best of luck to Zach, Jorian, Daniele and Keith. They have no doubt separated themselves from the pack over the last few years as the greatest players in the world.
Why do points get deducted at the 1 and 2 year marks?
Stan – Per our rules, the WPPR System will weigh recent results over historical results. Points earned over the last year are worth 100% of their value. Events one to two years old are worth 75% of their original value. Events two to three years old are worth 50% of their value. Any event over three years old is reduced to zero value.
@Stan Pinball rankings are designed to be similar to those for Golf and Tennis. It’s how you’ve performed _lately_, not forever. As such, results that are more than a year old are reduced in “currentness value,” if you want to call it that, by 25%, and again after 2 years down to half their original value. Results more than 3 years old are not counted at this time.
FWIW, Golf has changed their scheme to scale events continuously now rather than with 1-year and 2-year break points. At this time, there is no need to add this level of sophistication here.
The rankings are intended to reflect recent performance, not lifetime results; the less recent a result, the less it should count. The system is loosely patterned on those in Golf and Tennis, which also reduce the value of events as they become older. Here, values are reduced 25% once they’re more than a year old, 50% after two years, and then are removed from the current ranking calculation completely once they’re more than three years old.
Many people have noticed how the rankings have sudden shifts when a major event becomes more than 1 or 2 years old and values suddenly decay. Golf changed to weekly value erosion rather than have “cliffs” at the 1-year and 2-year points like they originally did. Something similar could be used here, if you can manufacture free time for Brian [riiiiiight, or just hire a summer intern programmer to help him with your budget, oh, right, nevermind], e.g. once a result is more than 4 weeks old, it decreases smoothly by 0.5% per week. Just a thought.
I don’t think anything within the current year should ever be valued less than 100%. With us doing calendar year cutoffs for everything, this would consistent make “Spring” events less valuable compared to “Fall” events . . . and that’s not fair for PAPA which is always in the Spring in determining who was the World’s Greatest Pinball Player for that YEAR.
ifpapinball Good point, since we have that asymmetry. Might still work after year 1, e.g. start the decay at week 53.
ifpapinball Given the selected POTY format that uses more than just the current calendar year [unlike Golf, which does multiyear ranking but single year POTY], it does kind of need to avoid seasonality, in which case a smooth decay won’t do what you want regardless of the amount of lag. One thing I do on my own is keep a separate “projected e.o.y. WPPR total” for projecting IFPA qualifying and such. It could be added to the player profile or master display somewhere; it’s just a minor change in the WPPR calculation formula using the e.o.y. hard date rather than today’s date for the second value.