MEL Magazine published an article after following PAPA20 World Champion Escher Lefkoff around Pinburgh 2017. Click HERE to read the article.

The IFPA is proud to announce that registration for the 15th Annual IFPA World Pinball Championship is now open! For more details check out the registration page HERE!

The initial invite list is open for the top 100 players in the World Pinball Player Rankings as of 1/1/2018. Based on the interest of the top 100, we may extend the invite list additional spots so please monitor the registration page at your leisure. Should you be interested, please send payment to the IFPA as your way of committing to attending the tournament. Should you not be interested, it is equally important that we know, so please send an email to the IFPA stating you will not be available to participate.

Should you have any questions about our qualifying process or to find out more information about the tournament, please contact the IFPA at [email protected].

Two of the 64 spots will also be available for the highest ranked finisher not already in the IFPA field. One is reserved for the 2017-18 IFPA US National Pinball Championship and one is reserved for the 2017-18 IFPA European Pinball Championship.

blog post courtesy of Mike Burgess

The IFPA is proud to announce that registration for the 2018 IFPA Women’s World Pinball Championship is now open! For more details on the Women’s Championship click HERE!

The initial invite list is open for the top 32 women in the World Pinball Player Rankings as of 1/1/2018 (to fill 16 spots), as well as the top 16 women in the Women’s World Pinball Player Rankings (to fill 8 Wild Card spots). Based on the interest of the top 32/top 16, we may extend the invite list additional spots so please monitor the registration page at your leisure. Should you be interested, please send payment to the IFPA as your way of committing to attending the tournament. Should you not be interested, it is equally important that we know, so please send an email to the IFPA stating you will not be available to participate.

A reminder that through fundraising and sponsorship efforts, the prize pool for the Women’s World Championship this year is over $3600!

Should you have any questions about our qualifying process or to find out more information about the tournament, please contact the IFPA at [email protected].

Qualifying for the 5th annual IFPA State Championship Series is now complete, and it’s now time for us to find our qualifiers for the 43 different IFPA State Championship finals (plus Wash DC). These finals will all be held simultaneously on January 20th, 2018, with 704 finalists competing for not only a State Championship title, but also a spot in the 5th annual IFPA US National Championship.

View the final qualifying standings HERE.

IFPA State Representatives should be sending out emails to the top 100 from each state shortly, although most have already done so with our short registration period. Important to note that if the IFPA does not have your email address on file, we have no way of being able to contact you. If you feel you should have received an invitation to one of the IFPA State Championships and did not, contact the IFPA immediately at [email protected], or Click HERE to edit your profile.

Registration for all 43 states closes on Sunday, January 7th at 8pm CST. 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 Championships. Players that qualify for more than one IFPA State Championship will have to make their choice during this open period of registration. This will mean that many states will go far past the top 16 players in order to fill all 16 spots.

Any questions about the SCS, or anything IFPA related, please contact us at [email protected]

As State Representatives alert us to who is attending, we will be updating the registration page HERE.

For our Canadian friends, the PCS registration page is available HERE.

The IFPA is excited to announce the launch of the IFPA Tournament Manager for tournament and league organizers.

The IFPA Tournament Manager will be a one-stop-shop for everything an IFPA organizer needs. Once you create an account (done HERE), you’ll be able to submit to the IFPA calendar, submit results, check the current status of those submissions, follow your NACS balance (for North American organizers) and even have some stats available about the tournaments and leagues you have organized.

For any tournament/league organizers that have outstanding results, you will have to create an IFPA Tournament Manager account to submit those results. The ‘old way’ of submitting through the website has been retired.

Starting today, the IFPA will require tournament directors to have accounts with the IFPA website in order to submit calendar entries and tournament results.  If you haven’t created an account yet, go here to create one.  Once logged in, you can access the Tournament Manager by the link on your profile page or from the top toolbar.

Some other changes:

• Tournaments and Leagues are both submitted by the same Calendar Submission Process
• The results upload process performs better error handling and reporting
• Submissions of Calendar Entries and Tournament Results are a bit more simple (no more email confirmations!)
• View your NACS usage
• Ability to Delete Tournament Submissions for unheld and future (cancelled) tournaments
• Status of Submissions to the IFPA

If you encounter any problems with the new processes, please let us know ASAP.  Thanks!

The IFPA is pleased to announce that our Player of the Year for 2017 is Trent Augenstein from Delaware, OH. Trent racked up an incredible 1425.50 WPPR points during 2017. Trent currently sits as the #6 ranked player in the world having moved himself up 6 spots from starting the year ranked #12.

Trent was the IFPA Player of the Month in March and November of 2017 having won 30 of the 96 tournaments he played in during 2017, while finishing in the top 4 in 56% of them.

Trent’s highlights during 2017 included 1st place finishes at the Louisville Arcade Expo, 24 Hour Final Battle at The Sanctum, Ohio Pinball Show, OBX Fall Pinball Bash, Cactus Jacks Silverball Showdown, Bat City Open and Main Street Mayhem II. Trent also earned his 2nd career top 4 Major Championship finish having placed 4th at the PAPA20 World Pinball Championships A-division.

The IFPA wishes to congratulate Trent on all of his success throughout 2017. To celebrate Trent is playing in 7 different tournaments simultaneously RIGHT NOW.

The IFPA is proud to announce that Zach Sharpe has finished at #1 on the World Pinball Player Rankings, thus earning IFPA’s top honor as the 2017 “World’s Greatest Pinball Player”. No single tournament victory will ever secure this title for a given year. Only consistent play at the highest level over the course of multiple years leads to players reaching the pinnacle of the World Pinball Player Rankings. This is the 2nd time that Zach has been crowned the World’s Greatest Pinball Player out of the 12 times we have awarded it, the last time being in 2013.

Zach’s greatest achievement of 2017 was winning the PAPA Circuit Final and well as finishing in the top 3 in all PAPA Classics Divisions at PAPA20, winning one of them. Channeling his older brother, Zach had a slew of 2nd place finishes in 2017 including the IFPA Pin-Masters, IFPA US National Pinball Championship, PAPA20 Classics II and the Pinball Expo Flip-Out Tournament.

Overall, Zach won 12% of the 26 events he played in, while placing in the top 4 at 42% of his 2017 events, a truly remarkable achievement. Congratulations to Zach, and best of luck to everyone on the upcoming 2018 season in the race for #1. Zach will get officially receive his WGPP trophy at the IFPA15 World Pinball Championship in Toronto in June (after he builds it himself next month).

The Stern Pro Circuit (SPC), presented by the Replay Foundation and IFPA is a series of 20 high-level pinball tournaments held throughout each season, starting with the 2018 season. We will be tracking the WPPR performance by players in these events, with the top 40 qualifiers being invited to the Stern Pro Circuit Final held in Chicago, IL.

The 20 events to be included on the inaugural Stern Pro Circuit can be found HERE. As these events submit their details to the IFPA calendar we will update the schedule page with those links.