The IFPA is proud to announce that [player]Jorian Engelbrektsson[/player] has finished at #1 on the World Pinball Player Rankings, thus earning IFPA's top honor as the 2014 "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 Jorian has been crowned the World's Greatest Pinball Player, having earned it back in 2009 as well. 

While Jorian's greatest achievement of 2014 was being crowned World Pinball Champion at IFPA11 in Denver, it was actually his 6th place finish in the Swedish Championships in November that pushed Jorian ahead of [player]Keith Elwin[/player] for the top spot. It was the closest race for the World’s Greatest Pinball Player title in IFPA history (7.58 WPPR points, besting last year’s tight race of 7.92 WPPR points between Keith and [player]Zach Sharpe[/player]). Besides his win at IFPA11, Jorian earned victories at the Danish Pinball Open, Pinball Expo Flip Out Tournament, Stockholm Open, Pre-IFPA Pinball Tournament at 1Up Lodo, Lyons Pinball Spring Classic and the Pre-Pinburgh Tournament at Doublewide Grill.

Overall, Jorian won 37% of the events he played in, while placing in the top 4 at 56% of his 2014 events, a truly remarkable achievement. Jorian will be given his award at the IFPA12 World Pinball Championship, scheduled for May 22-24, 2015 in Borås, Sweden. Congratulations to Jorian, and best of luck to everyone on the upcoming 2015 season in the race for #1.

blog post courtesy of Joe Said

A new approach to competitive pinball piloted this week in conjunction with Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ), an annual speed-run fundraising event for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. The event, held at the Dulles Hilton in Virginia, has live-streamed video game speed runs 24 hours a day since January 4th and is scheduled to make its final run January 11th at approximately 12 AM. 

Speed-running is part of a competitive gaming evolution that originally credited a player’s “win” with the reward of initials on a game’s scoreboard at the local arcade. With the development of the console, games transitioned from leader-board objectives to game completion and gamers were left with the challenge of identifying a new way to compare their performance on their favorite games and to others in the competitive gaming community.   Speed-running provided the solution. 

The general goal of a speed-run is to complete a game in part or in its entirety with the fastest time possible. Timing a game for fastest completion successfully blends the traditional goal of “best” score with the newer objective of finishing the game making game competitions challenging and measurable amongst competitors.

Pinball Done Quick is a new community for speed-running pinball. Chris Newsom, Joe Said and others are timing AGDQ attendees while they race to various wizard modes and other objectives.

Qualifying for the 2nd annual IFPA State Championship Series is now complete, and it's now time for us to find our qualifiers for the 33 different IFPA State Championship finals. These finals will all be held simultaneously on February 7th, 2015, with 528 finalists competing for not only a State Championship title, but also a spot in the second annual IFPA US National Championship.

The final player count for the 2014-15 SCS reached 6690, up 28% from last year's total of 5235. View the final qualifying standings HERE.

IFPA State Representatives should be sending out emails to the top 50 from each state shortly. 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 ifpapinball@gmail.com, or Click HERE to edit your profile.

Registration for all 33 states closes on Tuesday, January 13th at 7pm 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 ifpapinball@gmail.com

Updated: As State Representatives alert us to who is attending, we will be updating this page.

As we come to an end of another season, this particular season brings us some additional challenges with the changeover to our 2015 WPPR v5.0 system.

Up first is closing the books on 2014, and in order to do that we are asking that any organizer that has open tournament results submit those to us by the end of the weekend. Furthermore, any corrections to player misspellings, incorrect results, improper scoring issues, etc, all need to be addressed by the end of the weekend. Please take some time to review your own personal results to see if anything looks out of place.

Our plan is to lock down 2014 on January 5th, and use the standings at that time for IFPA World Championship qualifying purposes, as well as the other Championship Series purposes (State Championship Series, European Championship Series, etc). Any errors caught after that point in time will NOT impact the 2014 standings, although those changes will be reflected in the 2015 rankings going forward.

Please be patient if you notice 2015 results are not being approved and put into the WPPR system as quickly as you are accustomed to seeing. There is a ton of work involved in migrating the system from the 'old way' to the 'new way'.

Any questions please contact us at ifpapinball@gmail.com, and remember that if your profile doesn't say 'Registered' with a green check mark, that we do NOT have your email address on file. This means we will not be able to contact you for any IFPA World Championship or other Championship Series qualifying issues.

The IFPA is excited to announce that the following players have been now qualified for the $tern Rewards Program based on their October 2014 IFPA endorsed tournament performance! These players have until August 15th, 2015 to exercise their reward option.

BIGGEST MOVER AWARD – [player]Emma Jacobsen[/player]
BIGGEST MOVER AWARD – [player]Matt Peace[/player]
BIGGEST MOVER AWARD – [player]Marcus McKenzie[/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.

In addition to AC/DC Premium, both Star Trek Premium and Metallic Monster Premium have been added to the lineup of eligible games available for purchase under the program. All games purchased through the $tern Rewards Program will include a custom certificate and t-shirt exclusive to the program.

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.

The eligibility requirements for 2014 have been expanded to include players that finish in the top 1000 of the IFPA’s World Pinball Player Rankings at the end of the calendar year.

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 November 2014 tournament performance. 

The biggest movers for November 2014 included [player]Emma Jacobsen[/player] from the US, who moved up 13,221 spots from the following results:

Southwest Michigan Food Pantry Charity Pinball Tournament
Main Tournament – Finished 11th – (1.92)
Classics – Finished 8th – (1.09)
Emma moved up to a rank of 5939th in the world, and 125th in the Michigan SCS.

[player]Matt Peace[/player] from the US moved up 12,656 spots from the following results:
Main Street Amusements Monthly Pinball Tournament
Main Tournament – Finished 7th – (0.06)
Flip Off Hunger – Lafayette
Main Tournament – Finished 12th – (1.50)
Classics – Finished 3rd – (5.94)

Matt moved up to a rank of 2322nd in the world, and 28th in the Indiana SCS.

[player]Marcus McKenzie[/player] from the US moved up 9356 spots from the following results:
G&S Lounge Tournament
Main Tournament – Finished 3rd – (2.66)
Marcus moved up to a rank of 6109th in the world, and 139th in the Texas SCS.

Congratulations to Emma, Matt and Marcus, as well as the other players that saw a jump in their ranking from their November tournament performance!

The IFPA is pleased to announce that our Player of the Month for November 2014 is [player]Trent Augenstein[/player] from Delaware, OH. Trent earned a total of 179.96 WPPR points in November. This included the following results:

Free Play Florida        
Main Tournament – Finished 1st – (49.93)        
Classics – Finished 13th – (3.77)    
    
Flip Off Hunger – Cleveland    
Main Tournament – Finished 3rd – (8.48)        
Side Tournament – Finished 2nd – (6.51)        

Flip Off Hunger – Columbus    
Main Tournament – Finished 1st – (28.10)        
Side Tournament – Finished 5th – (0.70)        

Fountain Square Pinball Classic    
Main Tournament – Finished 2nd – (20.70)        

IFPA POP Fundraiser – Columbus    
Main Tournament – Finished 4th – (7.95)        
Side Tournament – Finished 1st – (14.99)        

Columbus Ohio Pinball Association    
2014-11-08 – Finished 1st – (13.69)        
2014-11-09 – Finished 2nd – (8.97)        

CP Pinball Tournament    
2014-11-02 – Finished 4th – (13.34)        
2014-11-02 – Finished 7th – (2.83)        

Trent is currently leading in the Ohio SCS, and is also qualified in 9 other states including Virginia(2nd), Pennsylvania(4th), Colorado(5th), Georgia(6th), Maryland(8th), Illinois(9th), Florida(14th), Kentucky(15th) and Michicagn(16th).

The rest of the top 5 for the month of November included [player]Frank Romero[/player] from Rockland County, NY with 171.69 WPPR points, [player]Martin Ayub[/player] from the UK with 110.72 WPPR points, [player]Roberto Pedroni[/player] from Italy with 110.72 WPPR points, and [player]Phil Grimaldi[/player] from Houston, TX with 109.40 WPPR points.

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

Brian Benway is the winner of the set of 6 NFL Star Medallions.  This 6 Medallion set features matching serial numbers and 2 color Epoxy Fill corresponding to each players' team colors.

The FWTG Tournament results are rolling in, with the Champions from each tournament qualifying for the Grand Final to be in Las Vegas at the end of March.

Thank you for supporting Coach Ditka's Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund.  Your participation in the IFPA / FWTG League directly benefits Coach's GGAF!

Please make sure to "Like" Gridiron Support and the IFPA on Facebook as well!

A quick reminder that there are TWO components of the Flippin' With the Greats campaign:

1) The LEAGUE – This is fantasy football meets pinball. Sign up and join the team of your choosing. All the WPPR points you have earned in 2014 will go towards helping that team in the standings. We will be raffling off prizes the rest of the year to league members, including NFL memorabilia, pinball memorabilia, spots into the Grand Final, and actual pinball machines. Click HERE for more details.

2) The TOURNAMENT SERIES – This will be the IFPA's December charity fundraiser campaign supporting the Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund. There will be 32 tournaments held in the various NFL cities, along with Coach Ditka Wild Card tournaments available for cities outside of the NFL markets, where players can donate to the cause, and play for a chance to advance to the Grand Final and win other prizes. Click HERE for more details.

The Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund (GGAF) is a non-stock, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization providing financial grants and ‘pro bono’ medical assistance to retired NFL players in dire need. The organization focuses on the humanitarian side of post-football related issues, which include coordination of social services to retired players who are in need due to a variety of reasons including inadequate disability and/or pensions.

Get behind Coach Ditka's Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund and "LIKE" Gridiron Support on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/gridironsupport.org.

The new process for submitting tournament results into the WPPR database can be tricky for IFPA endorsed tournament directors. Big thanks to [player]Greg Dunlap[/player] (ranked 272nd in the world), who has taken the time to film a short tutorial video on how to submit results through the IFPA website. Click HERE to watch the video tutorial.

Submitting to both the IFPA Calendar, and submitting tournament results can be found in the Tournaments section at the top of the IFPA website.