blog post courtesy of Stefan Riedler
picture courtesy of Martin Ayub

On the weekend from 18th to 20th September 2015 was the Austrian Pinball Open 2015 held by Flippnic Pinball club (www.flippnic.at) at the Hall of Pinball Fame in Badendorf near Graz.

The Austrian Pinball Sport Association “Union – Flipper Sportverein Austria” (www.flipper-sv.at) supported the event very strong in the preparation and also during the tournament with organization like tournament director and also a live streaming of the final matches on the second day.

The APO was the 10^th Event of the European Championship Series and 86 Participants joined the main tournament. They came from all over Europe like France, Italy, Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland, Bosnia, UK and for sure Austria to meet a lot of pinheads and enjoy a nice weekend.

A warm up party has been held on Friday the 18^th were 35 participants joined and during the side (classic) tournament ~80 participants joined.

The Austrian Public Television visited the tournament on Saturday and a report of the tournament has been shown already on Sunday. You can find it in the Mediathek of the ORF

http://tvthek.orf.at/program/Steiermark-heute/70020/Steiermark-heute/10614743 (it is the report Steirerblicke: Internationales Flipperturnier + Kürbisfest)

Andrew Heighway and RS-Pinball e.U. (www.rs-pinball.com) presented also the Full Throttle for the 1^st time in the German speaking countries.
One of the 2 games has been used for the Final match (best of 3) of the main tournament between Roland Schwarz and Markus Stix. Roland won then the 3^rd game (~ 153m) with a fantastic 2^nd ball against Markus with ~15m. This game was live streamed as well as some others by Richard Pyrker, Markus Schrodt & Robert Glashüttner.

The final games has been even co moderated by Andrew Heighway and so there are a lot of good information about the gameplay and rules included. This video could be found in the archive of twitch.tv at http://www.twitch.tv/pyrker/v/16935460

And last but not least there has been a tombola for everybody who joined the event and bought a ticket. The main price has been a Funhouse pinball machine sponsored by Niegelhell GmbH. And a lot of other prices have been available to from Pinball Magazine, PinSound, RS-Pinball and Flippnic.

Results:

APO 15 Main

1. Roland Schwarz
2. Markus Stix
3. Martin Ayub

APO 15 Side / Classic

1. Stefan Karlhuber
2. Arno Nöbl
3. Andrew Heighway

APO 15 Warm Up Party

1. David Mainwaring
2. Martin Ayub
3. Bálazs Pálfi

The APO 15 and APO 14 has always been held in September, and so keep it in your mind there is also an APO 16 coming probably in September next year 🙂

We’re excited to announce that we are creating the official IFPA Women’s Pinball Championship, to be held in conjunction with the IFPA US National Pinball Championship out in Las Vegas on March 17th, 2016.

The IFPA plans on inviting the top 16 ranked women from around the world to battle it out in a best-of-7 single elimination format to crown the IFPA Women’s Pinball Champion. Similar to the qualifying process used for the IFPA World Pinball Championship we will use the rankings as of January 1, 2016 to determine the qualifiers. Full details of the event including schedule, entry fee, prizes, etc. will be available soon.

The current Women’s Rankings are available HERE.

For those women that do not find themselves on the ranking, please contact the IFPA and we will update your profile.

We’re looking to round up some volunteers to help us with hosting the Stern Game of Thrones Pinball Launch Party tournaments.

The date Stern is targeting is October 16-18th weekend.

If you are interested in helping serve as an IFPA representative for a launch party in your city, please send me an email (ifpapinball at gmail dot com) including the city you live in. We’ll then get that information to Stern to try and find a distributor/operator/location owner in your area to match you up with to get the party set up.

IFPA representative duties would include game setup at the site, along with running the tournament portion of the party.

The IFPA is proud to officially welcome our newest staff member, [player]Crystal Sharpe[/player].

Despite causing insane delays in getting results up in a timely manner, as well as the delay in getting answers sent out to the many emails we have sitting in our inbox, we have hired Crystal to the position of Head Nutritionist of the IFPA. Her responsibilities will include overseeing all meal plans for IFPA staff during our World Championship travels.

Congrats to IFPA Vice President [player]Zach Sharpe[/player] on helping secure her addition to the IFPA team. A video of her accepting the position is available HERE.

Please know we’re doing our best to catch up as quickly as we can, so your patience is greatly appreciated.

blog post courtesy of Bo Mertins

The NO T-shirts allowed edition – in Copenhagen, October 24^th from 10am to 11.59pm

Danish Pinball Open 2015 is your chance to look as sharp as your pinball skills. That’s right – we celebrating the true gentlemen and snappy dressers of the classy sport of pinball.
So for one day only The Pinlab is moving out of the basement, replacing the lukewarm canned beer with cocktails and suiting up. It’s DPO2015: NO T-Shirts allowed edition!

With the cool and casual Mr. Jorian Engelbrektsson as the winner of DPO2014 and the sassy urban Mr. Zach Sharpe as the ruler of DPO2013 it will take a noble pinball gentleman extraordinaire to take home the honour as the victor of DPO2015.

DPO2015 is part of the IFPA European Championship Series and is open to all nationalities but is limited to 64 contestants. The event will take place on October 24th 2015. Ticket are available from September 24th @ Billetto.dk. Last year we sold out in less than 10 hours so be ready.
Link for registration https://billetto.dk/da/events/danish-pinball-open-2015 open at 06.00am 24th September

Pinlab are hosting IFPA14 in 2017. This is you chance to see the venue and play some of the many machines that will play in the World Cup. The standards are very high, and you will play on some of the best machines the sport of pinball can offer.
Questions can be answered on bme@nordicevent.dk – Bo Mertins

Keep your shirts on and hope to see y’all!
The Pinlab gents

The IFPA is excited to announce that the following players are now qualified for the $tern Rewards Program based on their August 2015 IFPA endorsed tournament performance! These players have until August 15th, 2016 to exercise their reward option.

PLAYER OF THE MONTH – [player]Kevin Birrell[/player]
BIGGEST MOVER AWARD – [player]Joe Valentini[/player]
BIGGEST MOVER AWARD – [player]Tatiana Mora[/player]
BIGGEST MOVER AWARD – [player]Roy Barham[/player]

The $tern Rewards Program rewards dedicated players by providing them with the opportunity to use their rewards to purchase new Stern Premium games and other Stern merchandise at special IFPA prices.

Qualifying participants will also be eligible for discounts at the Stern online store which features a wide range of Stern and $tern Rewards Program merchandise exclusive to the IFPA rewards program.

Pinball players around the world can qualify for the program by participating and performing in IFPA-sanctioned pinball events. Top-ranked players, most-improved players, and player-of-the-month earn rewards points in the annual program.

To learn more about the $tern Rewards Program, visit the IFPA website at www.ifpapinball.com/SternRewardsProgram

The IFPA is pleased to announce that the following players saw the biggest jump in their world ranking based on their August 2015 tournament performance.

The biggest movers for August 2015 included [player]Joe Valentini[/player] from Quebec, Canada, who moved up 14,057 spots from the following results:

Joe moved up to a rank of 4916th in the world, and 255th in the New York SCS.

[player]Tatiana Mora[/player] from the Miami, FL moved up 9,794 spots from the following results:

Tatiana moved up to a rank of 4925th in the world, and 56th in the Florida SCS.

[player]Roy Barham[/player] from Springfield, MO moved up 9,401 spots from the following results:

Roy moved up to a rank of 3401st in the world, and 26th in the Missouri SCS.

Congratulations to Joe, Tatiana and Roy, as well as the other players that saw a jump in their ranking from their August tournament performance!

The IFPA is pleased to announce that our Player of the Month for August 2015 is [player]Kevin Birrell[/player] from Seattle, WA. Kevin earned a total of 240.44 WPPR points in August. This included the following results:

Kevin is currently leading in the Washington SCS and also moved himself up from 29th in the world to 18th.

The rest of the top 5 for the month of August included [player]Raymond Davidson[/player] from Mukilteo, WA with 240.02 WPPR points, [player]Keith Elwin[/player] from the Carlsbad, CA with 187.29 WPPR points, [player]Steven Bowden[/player] from Franklin Township, NJ with 155.48 WPPR points, and [player]Zach Sharpe[/player] from Chicago, IL with 144.91 WPPR points.

Congratulations to Kevin and the other top WPPR point earners of the month!

Since the release of WPPR v5.1 back in April 2015, the IFPA has continued investigating ways to make the World Pinball Player Rankings more accurate for how we rank players across the globe. This latest change to the formula is not nearly as extensive as the change to version 5.0 where we completely overhauled how the value of a tournament was calculated.

These latest changes will be incorporated into WPPR v5.2 which will be implemented starting January 1, 2016.

Please note that for all 2015 IFPA related activities (qualifying for 2015-16 SCS, 2015-16 ECS, IFPA13, etc), version 5.1 will be used for that qualification process.

Below is an overview of changes for the updated 2016 formula:

• The IFPA will no longer endorse tournaments that don’t have a DIRECT play component as part of the format. DIRECT play represents multiple players playing against one another on a given game (head-to-head or in a group). Many tournaments use an INDIRECT qualifying system where everyone plays the same game (PAPA style qualifying, Best Game qualifying, Pin-Golf). Those tournaments that use an INDIRECT qualifying system must now run a Finals round that consists of DIRECT play between the finalists to crown the winner. A tournament must advance a minimum of 10% but no more than 50% of those players to the Final. Examples of tournaments no longer eligible for WPPR points would be simple high score tournaments without finals, or Pin-Golf tournaments where you simply play your round/rounds.
• Originally WPPR v5.0 rules used the longest theoretical path to determine the number of meaningful games used for TGP. This made for situations where the tournament was being given credit for a “longest path” that had an extremely low chance of actually happening. We are changing this to ‘expected value’ for # of rounds played for bracket/strike/match play tournaments. We’ve included a detailed breakdown of a few approved qualifying and finals formats, and the number of games that should be counted towards the TGP value here: http://www.ifpapinball.com/tgpguide2016
• RATED players will be the metric that is used to determine the Dynamic distribution part of the WPPR points awarded for an event. For example a tournament with 300 players in which only 50 were rated will base the dynamic distribution of points as if it was a 50 player tournament.
• Match play formats or formats that utilize PAPA style group finals with 4-player groups will be allowed to count each meaningful game played at 2X. For example, a 3-game round with 4-player groups will now count as 6 additional games added to TGP instead of just 3. This is detailed in the TGP Guide under the “PAPA Style Match Play” approved format.
• The IFPA no longer gives additional credit to matches that are longer than 7 games towards the TGP calculation. For example, best-of-9 matches will still only add 7 games to TGP.

For full detailed information on the 2016 formula, click HERE. Any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us at ifpapinball@gmail.com. Please check back when for announce that WPPR v5.2 has been implemented for 2016 as the details may always change prior to launch.

Pinball champion Eden Stamm to start his flipper marathon September 8th

For over 60 years, Guinness World Records have inspired people to feats of endurance, creativity, and strength in the attempt to add their names to the list of world record holders. Donnelly Group is excited to support one of those crazy dreamers as on September 8^th, champion pinballer Eden Stamm will attempt to break the record for the “longest pinball marathon”.

He will begin his playing marathon at 3:00PM on Tuesday, September 8^th at The Lamplighter Public House in Gastown with the task of breaking the current record of 28 hours of consecutive play. He’s allowed to take a five minute break every hour and will be supported and encouraged around the clock as he attempts to break the record which has stood since 2007.

If the marathon goes to plan, Stamm will reach the recording-breaking time at 7:00pm on September 9^th in the midst of The Lamplighter’s New Replay Pinball Tournament, the World’s largest weekly pinball tournament. “We’ve been hosting our own pinball tournaments for some time now and we had the idea of trying to break a pinball world record”, said Damon Holowchak of Donnelly Group. “When Eden agreed to be part of the record attempt we got in touch with Guinness to begin the process of applying to have our record attempt certified”.

Eden Stamm brings a genuine pinball pedigree to the record attempt, having competed at the highest levels for over a decade, including time spent as one of the top 10-ranked players in the world. He remains the reigning BC Champion and a regular winner on the pinball tournament circuit.

“We’re hoping to honour the Guinness Records, which were of course founded by the historic brewery, by setting a record in Vancouver’s most historic pub, and we’re looking forward to welcoming pinball players and fans to be part of this record attempt.”

In order to be certified as a record by Guinness, two witnesses will be required at all times throughout the attempt. Donnelly Group is building a schedule of record witnesses and is inviting those who would like be part of a record attempt, and pinball history, to contact Emma Shaw eshaw@donnellygroup.ca.

For more information about The Lamplighter and Donnelly Group, visit www.donnellygroup.ca.