The IFPA is proud to announce the 2017 IFPA Heads-Up Pinball Championship! A new twist on competitive pinball, players will be battling head-to-head simultaneously on two different machines of the same title attempting to complete challenges the fastest.

The winner of the tournament will receive a brand new Stern Aerosmith Pro Pinball Machine.

Registration for the 2017 IFPA Heads-Up Pinball Championship is now OPEN! For details on the IFPA Heads-Up Pinball Championship, check out the Overview page HERE. To register, click HERE!

The 2017 IFPA Heads-Up Pinball Championship is scheduled for October 27-28th, 2017 at the Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas. The IFPA Heads-Up Pinball Championship is being held in conjunction with the 10th annual Big Buck Hunter World Championship.

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.

Lehigh Valley Live posted an article on the Penn Skate Arcade Monthly tournament out in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Click HERE to read the article.

blog post courtesy of Adam Ruben

For some, pinball is just a game from the past. For humor writer Adam Ruben, it’s a lifelong obsession that all started with a rousing game at Funland amusement park in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware when he was a kid. As Adam grew older, he began playing competitively, joining pinball leagues, competing for more than a decade and rising as high as the 80^th-ranked player in the world. Then he had kids. Now in 9938^th place, Ruben tries to re-enter the boisterous and wacky world of competitive pinball.

Pinball Wizards: Jackpots, Drains, and the Cult of the Silver Ball (Chicago Review Press, November 2017) by Adam Ruben tells the dynamic story about America’s quintessential arcade game. By visiting pinball museums, gaming conventions, pinball machine designers and even pinball factories, Adam attempts to discover what makes the world’s best players so good. The book also explores the history of the game, as well as its invention, defeat and recent resurgence in American culture today. He presents the four faces on pinball’s Mount Rushmore, if there were one, and includes a chapter on Fiorello La Guardia, the New York City mayor who was obsessed with cracking down on any activity he deemed evil and smashed pinball machines with a sledgehammer because the game offended him.

This hilarious guide to the cult of the silver ball also traces how the game has changed throughout the years, and how even though the game has gone in and out of style, its presence remains constant. Pinball didn’t just stick around — it grows and continues to evolve with the times, reflecting the zeitgeist of every era it passes through. Pinball Wizards is a fun romp through the flashing lights and swirling ramps of a unique hobby packed with wacky characters. It is the perfect book for anyone interested in the quirky subculture that has survived to enjoy yet another renaissance.

NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt ran a piece on the resurgence of pinball. Check out the video HERE.

Back in April, we announced the addition of IFPA Challenge Matches starting in the 2018 season which would have an impact on the calculation of the IFPA Rating for each player.

Since then we’ve been hard at work finding the best way to implement these matches into our system, and we’re excited to announce a collaboration with MatchPlay.Events to pull this off.

Rather than submitting these IFPA Challenge Matches through the IFPA calendar process, we will be directing players to submit those matches through the MatchPlay.Events website HERE. As long as your IFPA player ID is accurate on that site, we will be able to pull that data over to the IFPA website and link it to your account.

Beyond the IFPA Challenge Matches, MatchPlay.Events is launching Match Play Ratings. Similar to the IFPA Ratings system, this uses the Glicko algorithm based on direct play matches (not simulated matches based on end results that the IFPA Ratings system uses). One of our future initiatives is to pull that Match Play Rating as an officially endorsed metric on the IFPA side and integrate it into our system. MatchPlay.Events is also working on integrating results from other tournament apps (PAPA Scoring Software, PAPA League Manager and Drains Tournament Manager) to flow through their Match Play Ratings system, which will then flow through for us to use on the IFPA side of things.

To help kick this off we encourage both organizers and players to help improve these ratings by auditing the events included in the MatchPlay.Events database. There are currently test and non-pinball tournaments included in Match Play that need to be flagged for removal in the Match Play Ratings calculation.

More information can be found at: https://matchplay.events/live/ratings/info

blog post courtesy of Jazmyn Hanks

You might not have heard, but Competitive Pinball is a thing!  Governed by the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA), sanctioned events are held throughout North Carolina where participants earn both State Points and World Pinball Player Ranking (WPPR) Points. Currently, there are  217 participants competing in events held throughout North Carolina and over 14,000 who’ve competed worldwide.

Women make up only 10.3% of the IFPA participants and that is why we are excited to announce the inaugural Charlotte league of Belles and Chimes. On Thursday, October 5^th, 2017 at Abari Game Bar located at 1721 N Davidson St, Charlotte, NC 28206, women of all skill levels are invited to join the first North Carolina chapter of Belles & Chimes at 6:30pm.  The Charlotte chapter will be honoring the mission of Bells & Chimes, founded in Oakland, CA, by bringing together women who enjoy playing pinball in a fun, supportive and social environment. The chapter also hopes to introduce more players to the Women’s World Championship.

Jazmyn Hanks will lead the Charlotte chapter of of Belles & Chimes. Jazmyn, ranked in the Top 50 of North Carolina pinball players, has been a competitive player since March 2017. “I stumbled upon Abari for the first time in February and I was instantly amazed at their selection of pinball machines. I’ve been to arcades as an adult but it was my first time being at an arcade with pinball machines.

“I was so nervous at my first tournament, considering everyone was so much more experienced than I was. If that didn’t intimidate me enough, I realized I was the ONLY woman present for the tournament. Everyone was so kind to me, giving quick tips to improve my game as a new comer and welcomed me into the tribe; even though we were in the middle of a tournament. I’m elated that Zach, the owner of Abari, agreed to host the women’s league!”

Women may join Belles & Chimes Charlotte at no cost and be a founding member in its inaugural year.  Tournaments will be held Bi-Weekly in 2017 with a league finals on December 7th.

ABOUT BELLES & CHIMES CHARLOTTE: The purpose of Belles & Chimes Charlotte is to bring together women who enjoy playing pinball in a fun, supportive and social environment.  www.abarigamebar.com/pinball

While the World Pinball Player Rankings (WPPR) have been the driving force that we have used to rank players all around the world since 2006, we have experimented with other metrics over the years to help highlight who the greatest pinball players are in the world. The IFPA Ratings system and Efficiency Percentage have been two of those additional metrics, both available on our main ranking page HERE.

We’re excited to add a new metric to the IFPA family, and we’re calling it the “POWER 100”. Understanding that every metric has it’s own pros and cons when trying to rank players accurately, the POWER 100 metric focuses specifically on data from just the top 250 players ranked through the WPPR system.

The POWER 100 measures the winning percentage of those top 250 ranked players against only the other top 250 ranked players over the last 3 years of active results. The “Best of the Best” end up making it on the POWER 100 list.

Check out the POWER 100 anytime HERE.

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

Player of the Month:
July 2017 –> Colin MacAlpine (163.67 WPPR’s)
August 2017 –> Robert Gagno (212.09 WPPR’s)

Biggest Movers:
July 2017 –> Landon Hooton (+12,099 spots), Kike Cazorla (+11,269 spots) and Robert Fortin (+9732 spots)
August 2017 –> Evan Benshetler (+16,078 spots), Jacob Vaughn (+14,838 spots) and Tore Flatebø (+14,014 spots)

These players have now all qualified for the Stern Rewards Program for 2017. Congrats to everyone!

The IFPA is waiving our 30 day rule for any tournaments in September 2017 dedicated to raising funds for Hurricane Harvey relief. Please include Hurricane Harvey in the tournament title of your submission, and use 2018 as the year to submit. We will then grant the exception when reviewing the submission and role the year back to 2017 on our side.

Click HERE to register your event.

The IFPA and Stern are excited to announce that the deadline of August 15th, 2017 for any 2016 reward earned has been extended through the end of the calendar year.

The current games available under the rewards program (subject to change) include:
WRESTLEMANIA PRO, GAME OF THRONES PREMIUM, GHOSTBUSTERS PRO, GHOSTBUSTERS PREMIUM, AEROSMITH PRO, AEROSMITH PREMIUM, SPIDERMAN VAULT, BATMAN ’66 PREMIUM

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