Our apologies for falling a bit behind on these announcements. We're going to do a quick catch up and then plan on staying current going forward.

The IFPA is pleased to announce our Player of the Month for December 2014 through April 2015.

December 2014 –> [player]Trent Augenstein[/player] (168.33 WPPR points)
January 2015 –> [player]Zach Sharpe[/player] (79.34 WPPR points)
February 2015 –> [player]Robert Sutter[/player] (98.39 WPPR points)
March 2015 –> [player]Zach Sharpe[/player] (294.61 WPPR points)
April 2015 –> [player]Kevin Birrell[/player] (142.68 WPPR points)

Congratulations to Trent, Zach, Robert and Kevin, along with the other top WPPR point earners over these months!

Video footage from the 2015 IFPA Pin-Masters is now available:

Round 1 coverage, click HERE
Round 2 coverage, click HERE
Final Round coverage, click HERE
 

Video footage from the 2014-15 IFPA US National Pinball Championship is now available HERE.

Congrats again to Robert Gagno, our US National Pinball Champion . . . from Canada.

World’s Leading Maker of Arcade-Quality Pinball Machines and Project Pinball Charity Group Team Up To Share the Love of Pinball with Advocate Children’s Hospital Patients

OAK LAWN, IL – April 21, 2015 – Today, Stern Pinball, Inc., the world's oldest and largest producer of arcade-quality pinball machines, announced its plans to team up with Project Pinball Charity Group to dedicate a brand new Stern Iron Man pinball machine at Advocate Children’s Hospital in Oak Lawn, IL. The dedication will take place on Tuesday, April 28, 2015 in honor of Zach Dacy, a Chicagoan youth who beat cancer after a long battle.

"There are thousands of children undergoing intensive medical treatment in children's hospitals across the country,” said Daniel Spolar, founder and Senior Director of Project Pinball. “We want to help ease their pain and speed their recovery by giving them a reason to get out of bed, to socialize, and to have to fun by playing an iconic American pastime… pinball!"

Stern Pinball has joined Project Pinball, a charity dedicated to providing recreational relief to patients and their families, as well as the physicians and nurses who care for them, for the Advocate Children’s Hospital pinball machine dedication. The Project Pinball Iron Man pinball machine is signed by Stern Pinball employees including Iron Man game designer, John Borg, and will be placed in the hospital for patients to enjoy.

“We are thankful to be teaming up with Project Pinball and Advocate Children’s Hospital to share our love for pinball with patients such as Zach who have faced these challenges,” said Gary Stern, Chairman and CEO of Stern Pinball. “Our goal is to provide patients with a fun, entertaining getaway and put a smile on their faces.”

The Dacy family and supporters will be joined by Project Pinball’s Daniel Spolar, Founder and Senior Director, and Tess Brennan, Development Coordinator. Stern Pinball staff will also be present for the April 28th hospital dedication, including Gary Stern, Chairman and CEO; Jody Dankberg, Director of Marketing and Licensing; and John Borg, Iron Man game designer.

“We’re incredibly grateful to both Project Pinball and Stern Pinball for donating this machine to our hospital,” said Lisa Boland, Child Life Manager of Advocate Children’s Hospital. “This will be an entertaining diversion for our pediatric patients and help them concentrate on something other than tests, treatments and procedures.”

For additional details regarding Advocate Children’s Hospital Oak Lawn, please contact Julie Nakis, Public Affairs and Marketing Coordinator at julie.nakis@advocatehealth.com.

About Stern Pinball, Inc. 
Stern Pinball, Inc., headquartered just outside Chicago, Illinois, is the oldest and largest producer of arcade-quality pinball games in the world. Stern’s highly talented creative and technical teams design, engineer and manufacture a full line of popular pinball games, merchandise and accessories. Recent Stern titles include WWE Wrestlemania, The Walking Dead, Mustang, Star Trek, Metallica, The Avengers, X-Men, AC/DC, Tron, Transformers, Avatar, Iron Man, Batman, Spiderman and many more! All of Stern’s pinball games are crafted by hand and assembled by Stern’s expert team. A broad range of players enjoy Stern’s games from professional pinball players that compete in high-stakes international competitions around the globe to novice players who are discovering the allure of the silver ball for the first time. To join the fun and learn more, please visit www.sternpinball.com.

About Project Pinball Charity Group. Inc.
Project Pinball Charity Group. Inc. is dedicated to providing recreational relief to its small patients and their families, as well as the physicians and nurses who care for them. A pinball machine is a powerful instrument that offers therapeutic benefits that fit perfectly within the dynamics of a hospital environment. It helps keep patients active and mobile while also providing amusement. Project Pinball continues to see how helpful a pinball machine can be in a hospital setting. Headquartered in Bonita Springs, Florida, Project Pinball Charity, a nonprofit 501(c)3, has been placing and maintaining pinball machines nationwide into Children’s Hospitals since 2011. To learn more about Project Pinball Charity, visitprojectpinball.org or email projectpinballcharity@gmail.com.

CBC News in Montreal released a piece on Adam Kiesler’s fight to legalize pinball in his city in an attempt to bring location pinball. Click HERE to watch the video.

The Columbusonian magazine featured an illustration on Clancey's Amazing Pinball Race tournament organizer Evan Bingham.

The Columbusonian website can be found HERE. Details on Clancey's Amazing Pinball Race can be found HERE.

blog post courtesy of Dan Loosen

The Midwest Gaming Classic, coming up April 11^th and 12^th in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, recently announced their pinball tournament line up, and it’s a pretty big change from what has traditionally been hosted!  Gone are the pay-per-entry format, replaced with an ‘anyone with a ticket can play’ entry.  Prizes are mostly eliminated.  The change is both to appease a little-used state law which classifies all tournaments in which competitors pay in and can potentially win prizes are lotteries, and also to try to spread the joy of pinball tournaments to as many people as possible.

“Our event is about introducing new aspects of gaming to as many people as possible.” Stated Dan Loosen of the show. “We wanted to create a system that could do that in a fun way for as many people as possible, without them needing to spend a ton of time participating.”

The Midwest Pinball Championship has had some modifications to make it run faster and smoother. Qualifying is only on Saturday, and competitors only receive six entries per person to play across three different titles, and every entry counts!  That night, the qualifiers with the highest positions will be informed about when to return to compete the next day.

“By eliminating prizes, we found it difficult to be able to justify running different divisions, but we still wanted a time-efficient finals system for all qualifiers.  We created a final head-to-head knock out ladder system that does just that.”  Loosen explains.

The finals are scheduled to begin at 10:15am, although top qualifiers will get a bye all the way until 1pm, allowing all competitors to maximize their time seeing what else the show offers.

“We expect it’s going to be a great time,” Loosen says, “And we hope the players do too!”

If you are interested in participating in the Midwest Pinball Championship, the other five pinball tournaments at the event or finding out what the Midwest Gaming Classic holds, check them out at http://www.midwestgamingclassic.com

Vermont's NPR Radio interviewed the first IFPA Vermont State Pinball Champion, [player]Steve Daniels[/player] before he headed out to Nationals in Las Vegas. Check out the segment HERE.

blog post courest of Project Pinball

Project Pinball Charity to dedicate Stern Pinball Machine to patients in Advocate Children’s Hospital

March 29, 2015 – Oak Lawn, IL

Project Pinball Charity will be dedicating a brand new Stern Iron Man Pinball Machine at Advocate Children’s Hospital in Oak Lawn, IL, on Tuesday, April 28, 2015. This special machine will be dedicated in honor of Zach Dacy, a Chicago area youth who has beat cancer after spending a great length of time in hospitals.

"We faced challenges as a family during Zach's many stays in the hospital." said Joe Dacy, Zach's father. "One of those challenges was getting him out of bed away from the video games, his tablet, and the confinement of his hospital room. With the help of Project Pinball, we know the Iron Man pinball machine will bring more children out of their beds and onto their feet to gather with their parents. We hope it brings smiles. We hope it brings laughs. We hope it brings…hope!"

Zach’s love for pinball aided in his own recovery by providing him with a diversion from medical tests, procedures, and medications. The Iron Man pinball machine to be placed at Advocate Children’s Hospital has been signed on the inside by the employees of Stern Pinball, as an example of their support of Project Pinball, and as a reminder to the patients that they are thought of by everyone who assisted in making this special machine.

Lisa Boland, Child Life Manager for Advocate Children's Hospital, also appreciates the value of this effort. "We are incredibly grateful to Project Pinball for bringing a pinball machine to our pediatric patients. This will be an entertaining activity for them while they are undergoing treatment in the hospital."

About Project Pinball Charity Group. Inc.

Project Pinball Charity Group. Inc. is dedicated to providing recreational relief to our small patients and their families, as well as the physicians and nurses who care for them. A pinball machine is a powerful instrument that offers therapeutic benefits that fit perfectly within the dynamics of a hospital environment. It helps keep patients active and mobile while also providing amusement. We continue to see how helpful a pinball machine can be in a hospital setting.

Headquartered in Bonita Springs, Florida, Project Pinball Charity, a nonprofit 501(c)3, has been placing and maintaining pinball machines nationwide into Children’s Hospitals since 2011.
“We bring joy to children’s lives through active play," says Daniel Spolar, the charity’s founder and Senior Director, "allowing the smallest patients the opportunity to focus on something other than hospital life.”

To learn more about Project Pinball Charity, visit our website at projectpinball.org or email us at projectpinballcharity@gmail.com

Contact: Tess Brennan 239-246-9488 tess.projectpinball@gmail.com

WPPR v5.1 changes are now available on the rankings info page. The Rated players change is not in yet, but should go live in the next couple of weeks.

Here's a list of the adjustments we're implementing:

1) Only Rated players will be included in the player count with respect to base value. A player becomes Rated after participating in 5 events lifetime. These unrated players will still be able to earn WPPR points, and impact the distribution of the points from a tournament, but they simply won't be counted towards the 1/2 point per player count for the base. This is to limit the impact of organizers trying to sign up random participants, or worse, list fake names of players that did not participate as a way to artificially increase the base value of the tournament.

2) We have put a rule in place that you can only play a maximum of 3 meaningful games per machine per 'state/round' of an event. Organizers with only one machine are welcome to do multiple rounds or stages where players are eliminated in the process and be able to capture more meaningful games played, but the 'high score tournament' or average score, etc. with X number of games counting maxes at 3 per physical machine.

3) For any tournaments that have multiple paths of qualifying for the finals, we will take the SHORTEST of those paths when counting meaningful games played for that portion of the tournament. This is to try and stop the confusing formats where organizers offer a way for players to qualify for an event easily, and then have some subgroup of players also battling out for spots by using a longer process, while being able to capture the games played for that subgroup of players. Couple of examples would be taking having 5 machines and allowing the high score of each machine a spot in the finals, while also giving players a chance to advance to the finals based on their play across all 5 machines. This would now count as ONE meaningful game played because of that potential path for players to reach the finals rather than 5.

4) For any brackets or group play rounds, we want to promote tournaments using a consistent number of games from round to round. For bracket tournaments we have seen organizers use single game matches throughout, only to then backload the number of games played by having the final match be a best of 25 match. Same thing with group play rounds, we've seen organizers play 3 games per round, except for the last round they would intentionally play 11 rounds in order to reach the 25 games played metric. We will use the minimum number of games for any one round of play in determining how many meaningful games played get counted, so if someone wants to run best of 3 matches they should be making that choice for the entire bracket. They will no longer be able to pick certain rounds to expand that match total, or rather they could, but they would still only be credited for 3 games played for that round. We are okay with the winner's bracket and loser's bracket being different lengths, as long as it's consistent across each of them individually. 

Any questions or comments, please contact the IFPA at ifpapinball@gmail.com