ABC22/FOX44 in Vermont was LIVE at Tilt Classic Arcade and Ale House, home of the 2014-15 Vermont State Championship all morning. Players featured include [player]Steve Daniels[/player](#1 seed), [player]Nick Pizzuti[/player](#4 seed), [player]Jake Blend[/player](#11 seed), [player]Todd Baumeister[/player](#3 seed), [player]Thom Corrado[/player](#8 seed), [player]Joshua Nickerson[/player](#9 seed) and [player]Kaila Fong[/player](#10 seed).

Click HERE to watch all the videos.

The IFPA is excited to announce that the following players have become eligible for the Flippin' With the Greats Grand Final this upcoming March in Las Vegas in conjunction with the IFPA Pin-Masters, to play for a BRAND NEW pinball machine:

AFC North – Cryss Stephens
AFC East – James Swain Jr.
AFC West – Wes Upchurch
NFC North – Robert Gagno
NFC East – Brian Davis
NFC West – Marcus Trevino

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.

blog post courtesy of Francesco La Rocca

FLR: who is he?
Francesco La Rocca, a guy from Italy that moved to the USA in 1996!

At that time NYC had one of the saddest years regarding pinball: The Famous Arcade on Broadway closed and pinball (for the most part) disappeared. Francesco, who had moved to Brooklyn, went around but couldn't find a game that he loved since he was a kid!

After many many years in 2010 while playing Backgammon on the internet he met Joe Oesterling, a guy in New Jersey that also in his profile said he was playing pinball! So Francesco approached him and he told Francesco about a league going on in Dunellen, NJ and one in NYC. So immediately he went to search and after he found the person in charge of the league in NYC (Bob Sovatsky) he joined the league where he met lot of people that still now play together with him and a little while after that he played the 1st tournament at the show in Allentown, PA where at that point one of Francesco's favorite machines was released: Iron Man. After that Francesco realized that someone needs to make pinball more visible and thanks mostly to the "Don" of pinball in NYC, the famous Pinaholics Allen Cihak that had pinball machines in bar and pizza places, started to organize tournaments and his own league in Brooklyn together with Joe Said! Between 2011 and 2013 Francesco started to travel all over the USA to play in tournaments hitting over 70 events and 20 different states, including one tournament in his house on his favorite machine World Cup Soccer that he owned for a while along with Avatar (thanks to Joe Said that he had to move and so wanted someone to "take care" of them)! On the same year Kris Medina in NYC had the brilliant idea to combine people together to form teams on a Monday night and play pinball together: Pinball NYC brought pinball everywhere in the city and still now is one the the most important thing in the city to gather people to play pinball in different bars and locations in 3 boroughs and FLR has never missed a season and has won multiple times with his team.

Then at end of 2013 something big happened in NYC. A few of the people that Francesco had in his tournaments decide to put together their money, skills, knowledge and everything to bring back pinball to the city and no one could imagine that the owner of THAT Arcade on Broadway would be one of them: Steve Epstein founder of the IFPA. He and Steve Zahler, co-owner and a top player in the world, Allen Cihak provider of the pinball machines, Alberto Santana who used to work in that Broadway Arcade and Eddie Cramer, master technician and restaurateur, with his wife Dahlia, master of themed parties, and Francesco himself put their lives in that place that is also now the IFPA HQ in the world: Modern Pinball NYC, a place with over 30 pinball machines where you pay one price to play all of them with no coins or tokens required!

IFPA: The objective of the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA) is to elevate the awareness and visibility of pinball across the globe and generate media coverage and corporate backing to bring the sport of competitive pinball back into the spotlight.

Who could do that?

In 2014 Francesco went to his limits and beyond to become "Master of Tournaments" if such a title existed!

Last year Francesco played in 110 tournaments (using all possible formats!) and in those he met 1700 players; he directed 60 of those tournaments in NY, NJ and MD and on his own tournaments 200 different players were present and 65 of them were introduced for the 1st time to an official tournament. At least half of those players had their best tournament in terms of WPPR points during one of his tournaments.

Francesco was able to bring competitive pinball in over 30 new places in NY or NJ.

His life, his weekends, his food, his drink they all revolve around one simple word: PINBALL

2015 started with a big goal for Francesco: making the Modern Pinball Super League the Best in The World!

Francesco, with the help of the people working there at Modern Pinball and with Koi Morris, Steven Bowden, Frank Romero, Joe Said, Ken Rossi, John Ehlrich owner of Reciprocal Skateboards and Jackbar, and the huge Pinball NYC community, is very confident he will succeed.
Happy Pin 2015

Few Statement of few of those people :

Steve Zahler Co-Owner of Modern Pinball NYC
One of the first tournaments I ever attended was run by Francesco at the now defunct Satellite Lounge in Williamsburg Brooklyn (now "Jackbar"; a fantastic bar and great place to play pinball). Francesco is a truly dedicated pinballer and his love for the game is evident from participating in countless tournaments around the country to running the majority of pinball competitions in the tri-state area. He has introduced pinball to numerous individuals and has engaged them through his contagious enthusiasm. It is this reason I approached him to join us at Modern Pinball NYC. Thank you for all you have done and continue to do to in the name of resurrecting this fun activity and beloved American pastime."

Steve Epstein Co-Owner of Modern Pinball NYC
Starting Modernpinballnyc is an important undertaking  trying to bring pinball to a new player, young people of all ages, whom may by the time they reach maturity may never see pinballl in all its glory. The team including our general managers Francesco and Alberto and techs Eddie and Pat are key to this endeavor. I want to thank them for their dedication and passion that will make modern a huge success. 

Debra Rymer NYC Pinball Player
Thanks Francesco for doing all you do to promote pinball and run tournaments. I think people may not say enough how much this is appreciated

The IFPA is proud to announce that registration for the 12th 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 1/1/2015. 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 at both the 2014-15 IFPA US National Pinball Championship and the 2014-15 IFPA European Pinball Championship.

The IFPA12 World Pinball Championship is sponsored by Stern Pinball, Jersey Jack Pinball, Raw Thrills, Farsight Studios, Betson Enterprises, Marco Specialties, Planetary Pinball Supply, Bay Area Amusements, Tilt Amusements, Play Meter Magazine, GameWorks, Zen Studios, Pinball Center, Specialty Coin, Happ Controls, Color DMD, Game Exchange of Colorado, the Amusement and Music Operators Association, the American Amusement Manufacturers Association and the Professional and Amateur Pinball Association.

With the 2014 pinball season coming to an end, the World Pinball Player Rankings continues to show no signs of slowing down within the competitive pinball community. We wanted to take a quick look back at the growth we've seen during 2014.

We're proud to say that the total number of players the IFPA is now ranking at the end of 2014 is 29,369. This represents a 34% growth from the end of 2013 where we had 21,882 players. In addition, the number of players that played in an IFPA endorsed tournament during 2014 was 13,353, up 36% from the number of players that were active during 2013.

We’ve also seen incredible growth in the number of tournaments popping up all over the world. Total number of events for 2014 was 2454, up 53% from last year.

The IFPA wishes to thank everyone in the competitive pinball community for continuing to support everything we do to spread the world about our incredible sport to the masses.

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 [email protected], 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 [email protected]

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 [email protected], 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.