IFPA Op-Ed: #1 Races: World Greatest, Women, Youth, plus Circuit and more
blog post courtesy of Bob Matthews
First, here’s the latest on the Worlds Greatest Pinball Player race. Each of the “Four Horsemen” had a good result within the past few weeks. Jorian won at EPC and Boras. Daniele was 3rd at EPC and 2nd in Belgium. Keith won Expo (Chicago), with Zach 2nd. Expo’s results won’t be uploaded for a while yet, but I’ve estimated them for now. Here’s where things will stand once Expo is reflected in a week or two.
Keith will be in the 1070 point range, with no pending WPPR decay the rest of this year.
Zach will be in the mid 1020’s with just a couple points of decay pending.
Jorian, now at 1019.65, will drop to 972.7 at year-end.
Daniele, now at 1007.99, will drop to 982.7
Keith’s lead is pretty solid considering what the others need to do to catch him. Zach has a shot, but it will be really difficult for either Jorian or Daniele. Zach would need 2 top-level results to catch him; Jorian and Daniele would need 4 each. And by top level, that’s 55+ WPPRS, e.g. winning a circuit-level event like Buffalo (57), Boras (55) or the Dutch Masters (55). Recall that when you earn 55 WPPRs, your ranking total only goes up by 25 if your lowest top-20 result that it replaces is worth 30 points. Of course, if Keith wins anything else of consequence this year, it’s lights out.
Womens Rankings
The Womens Rankings don’t get a lot of attention, but I thought it was time to point something out. As far as I can tell, Helena Walter, currently ranked 82nd (352.67), has been the top-ranked woman pinball player since some time in 2004. With their performances at the Vancouver Flip-Out, both Robin Lassonde at #100 (331.57) and Louise Wagensonner at #117 (316.26), both from California, are now within striking distance of claiming the top spot. Helena’s record over the years speaks for itself (played in 4 IFPAs, won PAPA B, 1st in Swedish Championship Classics, etc.). Both Robin and Louise have made great strides recently; in fact, Robin is #2 in the California SCS as of today. For the first time in a long time, the race is on!
Youth Rankings
Once the domain of the Sharpes, then Joshua Henderson, it’s now a 4-way race for top youth. Escher Lefkoff (now 144th), with his 3rd place finish at Expo [knocking me out 2-1 in the winner’s bracket semifinals; ouch, nice job, Esch!], will leapfrog Colin Urban (now 118th) by a couple of points to #1 youth for the moment. Frederick Asher (138th) and Aleksander Kaczmarczyk (142nd) are only about 30 points behind those two.
PAPA Circuit (through Boras and Pittsburgh Pinball Open)
What will it take to make the Circuit Final next April? Here’s a table of how many points it took to be in the Top 40 after each circuit event for the past two seasons. Note that since only 24 players plus ties can earn circuit points in an event, all eligible players who made the top 24 in the first event are in at that point, and almost all after two events.
| Circuit Point Cutoff by # Events | |||
| # | 2015-2016 | 2016-2017 | Change |
| 1 | 6 | 7 | 1 |
| 2 | 3 | 7 | 4 |
| 3 | 14 | 15 | 1 |
| 4 | 22 | 21 | -1 |
| 5 | 30 | 30 | 0 |
| 6 | 35 | 38 | 3 |
| 7 | 43 | 38 | -5 |
| 8 | 45 | 45 | 0 |
| 9 | 50 | 50 | 0 |
| 10 | 50 | 50 | 0 |
| 11 | 56 | 60 | 4 |
| 12 | 59 | 60 | 1 |
| 13 | 60 | 69 | 9 |
| 14 | 67 | ||
| 15 | 71 | ||
| 16 | 73 | ||
| 17 | 75 | ||
| 18 | 82 | ||
Based on last year and this year to date, I’d project somewhere around 85-95 points to make the cut; with the inevitable no-shows, players down to 75 points may have a chance to play and should keep their calendars open for the Circuit Final date (Wednesday April 5, 2017). If you’ve got 100+ Circuit points, you should be pretty safe.
North America vs. Europe (and elsewhere)
The portion of the top-ranked players that are from the US and Canada has increased in the past 4 years. At the beginning of 2013, 12 of the top 25 and 27 of the top 50 were Europeans. Just over a week ago, only 4 of the top 25 and 16 of the top 50 were European. (Marcus and Julio jumped back in this past week, so it’s now back up to 6 Europeans.) Most of the Europeans who used to be top 25 are now in the 26-50 range, and their former 26-50 level players have dropped further. No, we’re not that much better, but the US is definitely out-eventing Europe when it comes to earning WPPRs. The US has not just more events, it has more players per event, too. That makes all of the non-first-place positions worth more, since the WPPRs scale down slower as the player count rises. Circuit Events and large shows like Northwest, Expo and Florida are behind much of it.
As an example of the impact of more events and more players per event, look at the NYC Modern Pinball SuperLeague. You earn 30 points just for making the top 4, 20 for making the top 20, and you can do that 12 times a year. It really adds up. We have a few players now in the top 100 who have earned almost all of their points without leaving NYC. Let’s take a deeper look.
Modern Pinball (through September 2016 results)
I’ve had several people express interest in how much impact playing in the New York City Modern Pinball Super League has on people’s rankings. What I’ve done here is compute an alternate WPPR total for 11 of the top point earners where each receives only points for theirbest monthly result each calendar year. This is similar to older versions of the WPPR rules. I’ve also shown what portion of their ranking-used WPPRs (i.e. their current 20 top results) are from events in or near NYC (~25 mile radius).
| Impact of Modern Pinball Superleague vs. using only best result each year | |||||
| Player | 10/12 WPPRs | Rank | Alt. WPPRs | Alt. Rank | % NYC area |
| Steven Bowden | 914.41 | 6 | 838.70 | 7 | 33% |
| Sean Grant | 582.85 | 23 | 380.88 | 71 | 67% |
| Francesco LaRocca | 509.36 | 35 | 288.58 | 138 | 83% |
| Greg Poverelli | 496.58 | 36 | 317.77 | 114 | 91% |
| Lee Hendelman | 390.63 | 63 | 91.36 | 710 | 100% |
| Basci Dinc | 372.26 | 73 | 193.71 | 288 | 77% |
| Eric Asher | 337.99 | 94 | 127.69 | 507 | 90% |
| Matthew Carlson | 302.16 | 123 | 95.95 | 686 | 88% |
| Robert Sovatsky | 297.52 | 129 | 124.25 | 521 | 90% |
| Frederick Asher | 287.04 | 139 | 99.20 | 659 | 91% |
| Craig Cash | 267.20 | 157 | 76.29 | 873 | 99% |
Congratulations to everyone mentioned here for your successful play, and keep it up!
