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 [email protected]

Contact: Tess Brennan 239-246-9488 [email protected]

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 [email protected]

Throughout the history of competitive pinball there has been a negative perception towards tournament directors participating in events that they also organize.

While competitive pinball is at a stage where many events wouldn't even exist if organizers weren't allowed to play, there is no doubt a perception that conflicts of interest have the potential to impact the results of the tournament.

The IFPA has gotten a ton of feedback pushing for tournaments where organizers do participate to not be endorsed for World Pinball Player Rankings points. We feel this is completely unrealistic, however we have created a bonus structure that we plan to launch starting on 1/1/2016 to help motivate organizers to find neutral non-participating parties to handle the organization and rulings of the tournament.

All calculations of WPPR points will continue to use the same WPPR v5.0 formula, however, an event organized by someone who does not participate will receive a 25% increase to the total points distributed to all players of the event.

We understand many events are already organized for the 2015 season, which is why we have pushed this back to start for the 2016 season. 

__________________________________________

April 2nd update . . .

This was an April's Fools joke! However, we do have some changes to WPPR v5.0 coming soon that will address some concerns we've seen with exploitation of the current system. Details of WPPR v5.1 will be up soon on our ranking-info page.

We will keep track of live in-round standings as much as possible, but on this post and on the live stream.

Qualifying results for the 2015 IFPA Pin-Masters can be found HERE.

Live streaming is also happening HERE.

MASTERS FINALS:
1 – Robert Gagno*** (41-40-37) = 118
2 – Paul Madison (43-41-36) = 120
3 – Zach Sharpe*** (35-43-43) = 121
4 – Andrei Massenkoff (47-32-47) = 126
5 – Johnny Modica (43-33-50) = 126
6 – Josh Sharpe*** (41-39-48) = 128
7 – Chris Basler*** (39-43-48) = 130
7 – Noah Davis*** (45-46-39) = 130
9 – Karl DeAngelo (42-43-46) = 131
10 – Salem Ayoob (44-40-48) = 132
11 – Jim Belsito (42-51-43) = 136
12 – Derek Fugate (45-48-46) = 139
13 – Fred Richardson (48-43-49) = 140
14 – Tom Neighbors (53-36-53) = 142
15 – Phil Birnbaum (45-48-57) = 150
16 – Jeff Gagnon (44-42-90) = 176

NOVICE FINALS:
Travis Batty +59 (F)
Craig Sengstock +40 (F)
Jeff Rank +55 (F)
Robin Lassonde +64 (F)

Standings have been updated after the second round of play.

Results for the 2015 IFPA Pin-Masters can be found HERE.

Live streaming is also happening HERE.

Top 16 make it to the final round Sunday, along with the next 4 best players ranked 250th or below to play for in the Novice Final. Finals starts at 9:45am.

Here are your 2015 IFPA Pin-Masters finalists:

NOVICE FINALS:
Travis Batty (53-51) = 104 *NOVICE FINALIST*
Craig Sengstock (52-54) = 106 *NOVICE FINALIST*
Jeff Rank (48-58) = 106 *NOVICE FINALIST*
Robin Lassonde (54-52) = 106 *NOVICE FINALIST*

MASTERS FINALS:
Johnny Modica (43-33) = 76
Zach Sharpe*** (35-43) = 78
Andrei Massenkoff (47-32) = 79
Josh Sharpe*** (41-39) = 80
Robert Gagno*** (41-40) = 81
Chris Basler*** (39-43) = 82
Paul Madison (43-41) = 84
Salem Ayoob (44-40) = 84
Karl DeAngelo (42-43) = 85
Jeff Gagnon (44-42) = 86
Tom Neighbors (53-36) = 89
Fred Richardson (48-43) = 91
Noah Davis*** (45-46) = 91
Derek Fugate (45-48) = 93
Jim Belsito (42-51) = 93
Phil Birnbaum (45-48) = 93

Today is the culmination of year 2 of the IFPA's State Championship Series. Between the 37 US States and Canadian Provinces that participated in the SCS/PCS, 31 have made the trip to Las Vegas to earn the title of US National Pinball Champion.

Stay tuned to all the action LIVE thanks to the Inland Empire team who will be broadcasting on Twitch.

Click HERE for the live stream.

While Tiger Woods and his 14 Major Championships continues to hunt down Jack Nicklaus' record 18 Major Championships in the world of golf, [player]Keith Elwin[/player] continues to raise the bar on competitive pinball Major Championship victories that will surely be something that is chased for decades to come.

Keith captured his record 8th Major Championship with a victory at the PAPA 18 World Pinball Championships. Keith also has the record for the most top 4 finishes in Major Championships, expanding that total to 13. Fellow PAPA 18 finalista [player]Bowen Kerins[/player] increased his top 4 finishes in Major Championships to 11, while [player]Raymond Davidson[/player] and [player]Adam Lefkoff[/player] entered the record books with their first top 4 Major Championship finish.

To view the most current list of Major Championship stats, click HERE.