This past weekend marked another milestone for women’s pinball: the 2nd annual Women’s North American Pinball Championship was held at Port City Pinball in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

The IFPA Women’s Advisory Board and the team at Port City Pinball hosted 54 players from 6 Canadian provinces, 47 US states, and the District of Columbia to crown the titles of Canadian Women’s National Pinball Champion, US Women’s National Pinball Champion, and Women’s North American Pinball Champion. That included 45 first-time competitors in this championship, as well as defending champion Amy Kesting, who won the inaugural event in 2024. 

Congratulations to Gabrielle Mountenay from Quebec, who was crowned the Canadian Women’s National Pinball Champion, winning in a best-of-three final against runner-up Chantelle Mercier from British Columbia.

Congratulations as well to our 2025 Women’s North American Pinball Champion and US Women’s National Pinball Champion, Miriam Nadler from New York. Coming in as the 12th seed, she played amazingly well and prevailed across all 6 rounds in the single-elimination, best-of-7 bracket, including a 4-2 win against Kaylee Campbell in the finals. Along with the championship titles, Miriam won a NIB pinball machine from Stern Pinball.

Joining Miriam and Kaylee in the top 4 were Jane Verwys and Stacey Moritz, who took 3rd and 4th place respectively.

Our thanks to all the competitors for coming out to support the event, as well as our incredible hosts Allison O’Neill, Brian O’Neill, and Brian Yurick of Port City Pinball, streamer extraordinaire Marc Pautenaude of Backhand Pinball, and Gene X Hwang at Orange Photography. (Check out Gene’s photos from the event in this album!) 

Special thanks to Stern Pinball, Marco Specialties, Replay Museum, Coastal Hemp Company – North Carolina, Builds By Bex, Captain Crazy’s Arcade, AtGames, and Chicago Gaming Company for supporting this event with additional prizes, swag, and logistics. 

The New Hampshire Union Leader published a story in their Human Interest section on the IFPA Women’s World Championship held this past weekend at Port City Pinball. Click HERE to read the article.

Back in 2015 we made a change to the WPPR formula that introduced the concept of Tournament Grading Percentage (TGP). Prior to that metric, every tournament format was worth the same amount, whether that was a 1-ball high score contest, or a 20 round group matchplay with finals extravaganza. The idea behind the TGP metric was to use it to help judge the quality of the format used for IFPA sanctioned leagues and tournaments, so higher quality formats could be worth more WPPR points. The more meaningful games played in determining the winner of an event, the higher the quality of that event.

Over the years we’ve seen the competitive player community find ways to maximize TGP as quickly as possible, leading to events getting more WPPR points for their effort. This often leads to choices being made that lessen the quality of the event. These choices have included formats that maximize playtime and minimize downtime (1-ball games, Multi Matchplay, Flip Frenzy, Max Matchplay). These choices have also impacted the setup of machines, both physically and through software adjustments, along with impacting the titles of machines that are included or excluded from tournament play.

Rather than continue this cat and mouse game with organizers trying to answer the decade old question of “Which format gets me the most WPPR’s in the shortest amount of time?” we felt it was finally time to make an update to the TGP calculation that answers this question for good.

With respect to direct play formats, the IFPA will no longer be counting the number of games played in determining TGP. We will instead be switching to a time-based TGP metric for these events, regardless of how many games are actually played. Events will now be worth +1% TGP for every 4 minutes the tournament lasts. To help show how this will work, let’s look at the following event: https://www.ifpapinball.com/tournaments/view.php?t=82159

This was a 4-round group matchplay qualifying event, with a 3-round group matchplay final. Under the current system this event is worth 56% TGP, regardless of how long the tournament lasted.
Under the 2026 rules, this tournament would be graded as follows:
The qualifying rounds lasted 02:28:50, while the final rounds last 01:06:47, for a total tournament time of 03:35:37. These 215 minutes would equate to 53.75% TGP, which we would round up to 54%.

We’re hopeful that this will push organizers to go back to thinking about “FUN” first in their format decisions versus ways to simply optimize TGP, often at the expense of the enjoyment of their players.

April 2nd update . . .

After working through all the feedback we received today regarding this change, we’ve decided to postpone implementing this one for the time being. Happy April 1st everyone!

Carlos Delaserda was last seen driving 1908 mph down I-70, collecting an MPH bonus at 3X worth 5,724,000 points.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2417101080

timestamp: 2:00:54

Players have until the end of this month to catch him for that $100 prize . . .

Today marks the 19 year anniversary since the rebirth of the International Flipper Pinball Association.

On this day in 2006 the AMOA assigned the rights of the then defunct IFPA over to Steve Epstein and Roger Sharpe to see if they could elevate the awareness and visibility of pinball across the globe.

The World Pinball Player Rankings now has over 130,000 players from 49 countries and over 73,000 sanctioned events in the system.

Thanks to everyone for the continued support, but most importantly to the hundreds of volunteers that help the IFPA truly cover the globe in competitive pinball 24/7. We’re looking forward to seeing where we can take things in the years ahead!

NACS/WNACS Weekend is upon us!

Best of luck to the over 1000 competitors spread across the United States and Canada!

Stay up to date on all the brackets, all the streams, all the winners!

CLICK HERE!

Qualifying results for the 2024-25 IFPA North American Championship Series are still coming in, but we wanted to take the opportunity to open up registration in advance to give players more time to respond to their invitations.

49 different IFPA State Championship finals (plus Washington DC) along with 8 different Provinces in Canada. These finals will all be held simultaneously on January 18th, 2025, with 1152 finalists competing for their share of over $150,000 in cash, a State or Provincial title, along with a spot in the IFPA North American Pinball Championship.

The IFPA Women’s North American Championship Series will be held January 19th, 2025, with 888 finalists competing for their share of over $30,000 in cash, a State or Provincial title, along with a spot in the IFPA Women’s North American Pinball Championship.

View the live NACS registration page HERE.

The WNACS registration page is available HERE.

IFPA State/Provincial Representatives should be sending out emails shortly, although most have already done so with our short registration period. It is important to note that if you do not have a registered IFPA player account, you are INELIGIBLE to participate. If you feel you should have received an invitation to one of the IFPA State Championships and did not, contact the IFPA immediately at ifpapinball@gmail.com, or click HERE to register your profile.

Registration closes on January 7th at 8pm CST for both the NACS and WNACS. Any player that has not accepted their invitation by that time will be ineligible to participate.

Remember that no player is allowed to compete in multiple IFPA State/Provincial Championships. Players that qualify for more than one IFPA State/Provincial Championship will have to make their choice during this open period of registration. This will mean that many states/provinces will go far past the top 16 players in order to fill all 16 spots (or 24 players for any Super State/Province).

Any questions about the NACS, or anything IFPA related, please contact us at ifpapinball@gmail.com.

With the 2024 pinball season officially wrapping up tonight, the World Pinball Player Rankings continues to show no signs of slowing down within the competitive pinball community. We wanted to take a quick look back at the growth we saw during 2024.

We’re proud to say that the total number of IFPA sanctioned events for 2024 was 12,603.  This represents a 22% growth from the end of 2023 where we had 10,324 IFPA sanctioned events on the calendar. Total player attendance at those events was 287,696, up 17% from 2022.

In addition, the number of unique players that played in an IFPA sanctioned tournament during 2024 was 38,538, up 17% from the number of players that were active during 2023.

The IFPA wishes to thank everyone in the competitive pinball community for continuing to support everything we do to spread the world about our incredible sport to the masses.

The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, home of the World Video Game Hall of Fame, recently received a donated collection of materials from the family of Steve Epstein (1948-2020), longtime owner of the famed Broadway Arcade in New York City. The materials include his professional papers related to Broadway Arcade, the Professional & Amateur Pinball Association (PAPA), and unreleased arcade games that he worked on through the years.

“Steve Epstein was an icon in the pinball and arcade communities,” says Jeremy K. Saucier, assistant vice president for electronic games and interpretation at The Strong. “The Broadway Arcade became a coin-operated mecca during the 1980s under his second-generation ownership. Following the legalization of pinball in NYC in 1976, Epstein attracted New Yorkers from all backgrounds to his midtown Manhattan location, including Columbia Records executive John Hammond, and musicians Lou Reed, Diana Ross, and Paul Schafer. We’re proud to be able to tell this important story.”

The full release can be read HERE.