IFPA Op-Ed: Pinburgh WPPR and Statistics from Bob Matthews

blog post courtesy of Bob Matthews

Pinburgh had a big impact on player rankings, as it always does, including on the 2016 World’s Greatest Pinball Player race.  I’ll take a look at all of this and give you some statistics on Pinburgh that I hope some of you may find interesting and or useful benchmarks in the future.

First, the winners:

Pinburgh 2016 – Top Four by Division

A:  Keith Elwin; Karl DeAngelo; Cryss Stephens; Raymond Davidson

B:  Preston Moncla; Todd MacCulloch; Greg DeFeo; Tim Sexton

C:  David Daluga; Heath Ashley; Tim Zollner; Larry Scott

D:  James Emanuel; Scott D’Agostino; Eugene Gershtein; Eric Priepke

Qualifying Statistics

So, you want to know how many points it took to make the cut for each division each round, or to be in the top 40 within a division?  Here it is.  Note that these include ties; if you want to be in tie-breaker-free, add half a point to each.

Yes, it’s a fine line.  Let’s say you had 26 points after game 1 of round 5.  There are now just three games left to play before the divisional cuts are made.  You could still end up in ANY of the 4 divisions! Get 8 or 9 of the remaining 9 points and you’re in A; 5-7 and you’re in B; 1-4, you’re in C; 0 and you’re in D.

Note that the spread between divisions moved very little between round 2 and round 5.  Adding more rounds, as some have suggested, will not widen the spread much.  Only a change in format, divisional restrictions or scoring will accomplish that.

Player Restriction Stats

There were 42 “A” restricted players; 36 made the divisional cut on points, 6 players were forced up [none by much].

There were 113 “B” restricted players; 89 made the cut on points, 24 players were forced up.

There were 121 “C” restricted players; 109 made the cut on points, 12 players were forced up.

I’ve heard many complaints that the divisional spreads are too narrow.  I’ve also heard comments that some non-A players who look like they might get into A entering round 5 sometimes sandbag a bit that round to drop down into B to avoid getting into what to them is a no-win scenario.  If true, that’s unfair to the rest of the field, since the players they sandbag against get more points than they should in round 5.  One way to address both of these issues is to allow players to be upside-restricted by choice, subject to reasonable constraints.  Right now, players in the top 50 must play in A, those in the top 200 must play in A or B, etc.  Perhaps players could be allowed to play no more than one division above their restriction, e.g. a “C” restricted player could choose to play no higher than B and an unrestricted player could choose to play no higher than C.

Performance in rounds 6-10, especially round 10

Everyone who made the “A” finals went at least 30-30 in rounds 6-10.

Due to the narrowness in initial point spread in the other divisions, everyone in B, C and D who made the playoffs went 32-28 or better in rounds 6-10.

Very few players in any division were “locked in” before round 10.  Here’s how things stood after Round 9 by division – – how many players had enough to make it in already and how many still had a chance, i.e. they were within 12 of the eventual tiebreaker.

A:  6 locked in; 100 others of 175 in the division were within 12 of the tiebreaker score.

B:  4 in; 106 of 163 within 12

C:  3 in; 116 of 170 within 12

D:  2 in; 103 of 157 within 12

Overall, 64% of the players in Pinburgh were still “playoff status undetermined” going into round 10!  [Yes, that’s by design.]

The players who made the biggest round-10 moves to make the playoffs by division were:

A:  Trent Augenstein – 10 points; finished tied for 20^th

B:  Tyler Sutton – 10 points; finished 39^th

C:  Jay Steinberg – 10 points; finished tied for 11^th

D:  Kendall Van Pool – 9 points; finished tied for 20^th

Playoff Stats

The “A” finalists included 23 “A” restricted players, 8 “B” players, 7 “C” players and 2 unrestricted players.

In “B,” 20 finalists were B restricted, 13 C restricted and 7 unrestricted.

In “C,” 14 finalists were C restricted, the other 26 were unrestricted.

There was significant disparity in the strength of the different playoff groups in the A division [it was also present in the other divisions, but not as pronounced].  Group 2 was the most brutal in round 1, with an average rank of 25 [been there, did that]; the other group averages ranged from 94 to 474.  Round 2 had groups 1, 4, 5 and 6 ranging from average ranks of 71 to 141, while group 2 was at 370, and group 3 had no one from the top 100 in it at all, with an average rank of 526.  In Round 3, group 4 was the tough one, averaging rank of 17, while the others ranged from 85 to 164.  By the semifinals, everything was tough.  But it does show that for Pinburgh, more so than for PAPA, what group you get seeded in makes much more difference in your potential fate.

Strength of Field

Pinburgh 2016 came in at 138 WPPRs for first, just a hair behind last year’s figure and 4 points shy of this year’s PAPA-A.  While this year’s Pinburgh had the most players ever, PAPA-A had more high-ranking European players in it, giving PAPA the higher value.  Only 3 of the non-North Americans in the top 50 attended Pinburgh this year; last year, we had 6.  PAPA-A had 13.

Frequent A Qualifiers

Qualifying in A is hard to do; doing it regularly is even harder.  Only three people have qualified in Pinburgh A each of the six years it has been held so far.  I’ll show each with their best finish in parentheses:

Keith Elwin (1^st – 3 times);

Keith “Keefer” Johnson (3^rd);

Jorian Engelbrektsson (5^th).

Adam Becker is next best; he has made it five times (1^st).

Eleven players have made four out of six:  Zach Sharpe (1^st), Karl DeAngelo (2^nd), Cryss Stephens (2^nd), Robert Gagno (3^rd), Andrei Massenkoff (4^th), Sean Grant (4^th), Steven Bowden (5^th), Bob Matthews (5^th), Josh Sharpe (6^th), Andy Rosa (6^th) and Roy Wils (11th).

It’s tough.  Really tough.  Any questions?

Frequent qualifiers in B and C are subject to being pushed up to a higher division if they make the finals, so I have not looked at the stats for those.

World’s Greatest Pinball Player Race 2016

Keith’s win at Pinburgh gives him a lead of just over 60 points on Zach and about 100 points over Jorian and Daniele.  He earned 138 WPPRs for the event, while Zach got about 70, Jorian just under 22 [not enough to make his top 20 results], and Daniele did not participate.  Two other recent events had impactful results:  Keith’s win at California Extreme, worth 58.62, and Jorian’s win at the pre-Pinburgh Pingolf event, worth 61.22.

As Josh previously posted, each of them has significant point decays pending, Jorian’s being the largest.  After crunching the decays, Keith will still lead Zach by 50, Daniele by 135 and Jorian by 160.

The key now is what will everyone do in their remaining events.  Based on past participation, Jorian still has at least three opportunities for big points:  EPC, the Swedish Open, and the Danish Open.  Daniele has EPC, Austria and Hungary.  Zach has Expo and Free Play Florida.  Keith hasn’t played in any high-point events after Pittsburgh the past two years, so unless that changes, his total is locked in.  Keith, Jorian and Daniele have all attended Expo at one time or another, though, so any who do could pick up some points there.

If Jorian, Daniele and Zach each replicate their previous performance at their remaining events, each would come up short of Keith.  Zach has the best shot, if he can win a couple of circuit-level events.  For Jorian and Daniele, even winning EPC would still leave either of them short; they’ll need to do more than just that.  And if either of them fails to make the top 4 at EPC, the task becomes much harder for them:  all three chasers have their low-end [18^th-20^th] results in the 30 point range.  Nabbing a 60 pointer [e.g. winning CalEx, pre-Pinburgh or a typical US or European circuit event] only nets 30 points of progress.  Thus, making up 100 points is hard to do that way; you either need a lot of those or the kind of big score you can only get with a high finish at a major.

Pinburgh Ranking Big Movers

Three other high Pinburgh finishers made nice moves into or up the top 25:  Cryss Stephens and Karl DeAngelo jumped in, and Jason Werdrick moved up 8 spots.

Jumping into [or back into] the top 100 were Levi Nayman, Todd Rafacz, Eden Stamm and Andrew Lee.

Fred Richardson and Jack Tadman made nice moves within the top 250.

Derek Thomson moved up about 200 spots, from the low 400’s to the low 200’s.

Jack Danger rose from 1002^nd to 668^th.

Steve Dunham moved up more than 500 positions, from 1408^th to 887^th.

Just making the A division got you a minimum of 10.22 WPPRs, enough to get you into the top 4,000.  Several players did that.

Congratulations to everyone who did well!