Matthew Casey from The Spinoff wrote about his venture into the world of competitive pinball. Check out the article HERE.

Please allow me to fact check Matthew on this as he is now the 189th best pinballed in New Zealand.

The 2025 IFPA Pin-Masters: World Pin-Golf Championships are scheduled for March 7th-9th, 2025 at the Rochester Pinball Collective in Rochester, New York.

Registration will open on Sunday, October 6th at 11:00 AM CST.

Please take this opportunity to solidify your spot in next year’s IFPA Pin-Masters, which is limited to 144 players.

Entry fee is $250 per player. Any refunds will be paid back at 50% of the registration fee. The additional funds will be added to the prize pool.

Please note spots will be RESERVED for any player that qualifies for the IFPA North American Pinball Championship. Do NOT register if you only intend to participate should you qualify for the IFPA North American Pinball Championship.

Full details of the event are available here:
https://www.ifpapinball.com/tournament_pages/pinmasters/

Should you have any questions about our qualifying process or to find out more information about the tournament, please contact the IFPA at ifpapinball@gmail.com.

The IFPA is excited to announce that Stern has added John Wick Pro and Premium to the rewards program!

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

sponsored blog post

Get ready to rumble! Winter Slam 2024 is coming to Port City Pinball in New Hampshire! Starting on November 21st, the best pinball players will gather to play across four tournaments on Classics and Moderns to take home cash and the coveted Super Famicon cartridge trophy! Do you have what it takes?!?

Limited spots available in the tournament, click here to see all the details and sign up today: https://portcitypin.com/calendar/winter-slam-2024/

Winter Slam 2024 is sponsored by Scorbit – the connected pinball platform.
Download Scorbit for iOS or Android to keep track of your scores, challenge friends and more.
Connect your pinball machine with the Scorbitron, now back in stock and available for purchase! Learn more at https://scorbit.io

In the history of competitive pinball, very few (35 in fact) have had the chance to call themselves a Major Champion. Like professional golf or tennis, the opportunity to join this elite club only happens a handful of times every year. Poland hosted the EPC this year, with plenty of under 30 players looking to put an end to the “People over the age of 30 winning Majors” streak at 1. The final 4 featured two finalists looking to add their name to this list (Jakub Tkacz and Viggo Löwgren) and two finalists looking to add to their already established legacies (Escher Lefkoff and Arvid Flygare).

Escher Lefkoff made it back-to-back EPC wins with a 3-2 victory over Arvid Flygare to capture his 4th Major Championship, becoming only the 6th player in competitive pinball history to do so.

With his 2nd place finish, Arvid Flygare earned his third top 4 finish in Major Championships. 3rd place went to Viggo Löwgren who earned his second top 4 finish in Major Championships. 4th place went to Jakub Tkacz who represented his home country by earning his first top 4 finish in Major Championships.

To view the most current list of Major Championship stats, click HERE.

Here are the August 2024 IFPA winners for Player of the Month and Biggest Movers:

Player of the Month:
Escher Lefkoff from soon to be Australia (695.76 WPPR’s – MAIN)
MK Walker from Seattle, WA (69.44 WPPR’s – WOMEN’S)

Biggest Movers:
Jared Nichols from Joplin, MO (+39,852 spots)
Ku Paik from La Palma, CA (+32,366 spots)
Retro Ralph from Phoenix, AZ (+23,399 spots)

These players have now all qualified for the Stern Rewards Program for 2024. Congrats to everyone!

The IFPA and Stern Army organized the Deadpool Global Leaderboard for August 2024!

We’re happy to announce the winners from this contest! Please email ifpapinball@gmail.com for details on how to redeem your prize.

Since the release of WPPR v6.0 for the 2024 season, the IFPA has continued investigating ways to make the World Pinball Player Rankings more accurate for how we rank players across the globe.

These latest changes will be incorporated into WPPR v6.1 which will be implemented starting January 1, 2025.

• Update to eligibility requirements for events to grade out to >100%
  • WPPR v6.0 rules added the requirement that any meaningful tiebreakers to either receive a bye, advance to finals or advance through rounds within finals cannot be done through an automatic tiebreaking process. These tiebreakers must be played out.
  • WPPR v6.1 will update this rule that the tiebreaker to be played out must be a full game (rather than just a single ball or timed game).

Please don’t hesitate to contact us at ifpapinball@gmail.com with any questions. Check back when we announce that WPPR v6.1 has been implemented for 2025 as details are subject to change prior to launch.

Please note this change is NOT due to IFPA President Josh Sharpe losing a 1-ball tiebreaker to get into finals at Pinburgh 2024 on F-14 Tomcat. This change was proposed by the other IFPA Directors.

In the history of competitive pinball, very few (35 in fact) have had the chance to call themselves a Major Champion. Like professional golf or tennis, the opportunity to join this elite club only happens a handful of times every year. After a 7 year hiatus, the return of PAPA brought together one finalist looking to add their name to this list (Neil Graf) and three finalists looking to add to their already established legacies (Escher Lefkoff, Zach McCarthy and Raymond Davidson).

After qualifying as the #10 seed, Raymond Davidson won two out of the three games during the final round (Bally Kiss and World Cup Soccer) to capture his 3rd Major Championship, becoming only the 8th player in competitive pinball history to do so.

Representing all players over the age of 30, Raymond became the second player over the age of 30 to win a Major Championship since the return of action after the pandemic (Eric Stone was the other player doing so at IFPA17).

With his 2nd place finish, Escher Lefkoff earned his seventh top 4 finish in Major Championships. 3rd place went to Zach McCarthy who earned his fourth top 4 finish in Major Championships. 4th place went to Neil Graf who earned his first top 4 finish in Major Championships.

To view the most current list of Major Championship stats, click HERE.

The two-day with pinball competition hosted by the Pinball Museum “Dino Merluzzi” in Marmore ended once again with great success: a double tournament sponsored by Ifpa took place, with the support of the Umbria Region, the Municipality of Terni and the Chamber of Commerce of Umbria.

Giuseppe Violante won the most important prize at the end of the two-day sports pinball tournament in Marmore, in Terni – where the 2024 edition of the “Pinball at Waterfalls/Torneo flipper Marmore – Dino Merluzzi Memorial” tournament just ended. Carmelo Vitale from Lazio won the “Side tournament”, which took place on Sunday with an even larger number of players.

Therefore, it was a double competition that, like the Museum that hosted it, was entirely dedicated in memory of the collector of vintage games from Terni, who represented a point of reference for the sector at an international level. The competition, valid for the international ranking of the World Pinball Player Rankings (Wppr), had already stopped in Marmore in the past (in 2013, 2014, 2018 and 2023), thanks to the cooperation with Ifpa. But for the second time it developed inside the Italian Pinball Museum (www.museoflipper.it/en), which appeared for the first time in Terni last February, creating a one-of-a-kind location in Italy.

In this way, in addition to the (high-level) sports competition, that attracted some of the strongest pinball players in Italy and Europe to Marmore, the result was also a highly prestigious event, which also captured the attention of many visitors, tourists and simple curious. From a sporting point of view, as mentioned, Giuseppe Violante won: number three in Italy and among the strongest players in Europe and not only in our country, who left behind him other top-level players, such as Vitale himself (who then won the next tournament), who finished in second place, and Renato Agresti, who had already won the title in the 2024 edition of the tournament. All this after defeating some of the other big favorites for the title: such as Gabriele Tedeschi, who instead only finished in third place, and Lorenzo Gagliardi, who did not go beyond the qualifications.

While in the Side Tournament, which took place on Sunday, involving also some players who approached the pinball competition for the first time, Gabriele Tedeschi (second place) and Renato Agresti (third place), finished behind Vitale.

But Violante’s success is worth double, considering that the competition, in addition to being valid for the World Pinball Player Rankings (Wppr), was also the sixth of the seven stages scheduled for the current year of the Ics national circuit (Italian Shampionship Series).

But above all, fun won in Marmore once again: with an event of great aggregation and socialization that was able to involve the entire local citizenry, as well as attracting many curious people and visitors from outside, thanks also to the driving force of the Museum, with many people who simply wanted to take advantage of the competition to visit the building and see the players dealing with an official challenge.