Date/Location:
Gameworks Schaumburg
601 North Martingale Road #115  
Schaumburg, IL 60173

Wednesday, October 16th, 2013
Check in 6pm, Start time 6:30pm

Overview:
Players will be thrown into a giant head-to-head bracket randomly via Brackelope and compete one-on-one on a game also chosen at random. This will be a double elimination tournament, with the matches being single game. Choice of position will be determined via coin toss.

Tournament Staff:
Josh and Zach Sharpe are the officials for this event. Alternate officials will be determined before the event, and may include other participants.

Tournament Start Time:
Sign-up will start at 6pm, and the first matches will be drawn at approximately 6:30pm. We need all participants to be signed in before the 6:30pm start time.

Entry Fee:
Cost is $20 to be paid at the event.

Payouts:
1st place – 40% of cash pot, 2nd place – 30% of cash pot, 3rd place – 20% of cash pot, 4th place – 10% of cash pot

Machine Malfunctions:
In case of a malfunction during gameplay, please get someone to alert one of the Tournament Staff and someone will come to assist you as soon as possible.
Remember, Tournament Officials MAY be involved in a match of their own at that moment, so please be patient when waiting for assistance. Also note, any malfunction that occurs while playing a match against a Tournament Official will require an alternate Official to make a ruling (when necessary). Rulings on how to deal with malfunctions will be taken care of as fairly as possible, and all rulings are final. Severe malfunctions may include a game re-start OR moving the players to an alternate machine when necessary. Rules from the IFPA10 World Pinball Championship will be followed.

On the heels of the widely popular IFPA State Championship Series here in the US, the IFPA is proud to announce that we will be adding the first IFPA European Championship Series (ECS) to the mix starting in the 2014 season. The plan is for the ECS to contain 16 different tournaments from 16 different countries around Europe. The IFPA will be tracking the WPPR performance of players by results from these 16 events. At the end of the 2014 calendar year, the top 32 players with the most WPPR points from the ECS will qualify for the final. The IFPA European Championship will be played the Saturday following Super Bowl Sunday, which will be on February 7th, 2015 to coincide with the 2014 State Championship Series playoffs here in the US.

Details will be available shortly, including a full list of the tournaments included in the ECS for 2014. Any questions, please contact the IFPA at [email protected]

After raising nearly $1700 at the IFPA10 World Pinball Championship for Kids Fight Cancer, the IFPA is pleased to announce that the Charity Challenge will now be part of the IFPA State Championship Series as well.

With 28 different IFPA State Pinball Championships slated for February 8th, 2014, that's going to be nearly 450 pariticipants battling it out nationwide. Details of the Charity Challenge format will be available soon.

We are excited to announce that once again both Stern Pinball and Jersey Jack Pinball have agreed to match what we're able to raise for Kids Fight Cancer DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR.

The entry fee into the Charity Challenge will be a minimum donation of $5, which means that every player that participates will be a minimum $15 donation for KFC. We're looking forward to seeing how much money we can raise for this great cause.

For those that have yet to see the announcement

The IFPA is excited to announce an amazing opportunity that we've landed for the world of competitive pinball — players and pinball enthusiasts alike. We have signed a deal with the production company Go4Johnny Entertainment, who has worked on shows such as Survivor (CBS), The Apprentice (NBC), I Survived A Japanese Game Show (ABC), Crowned (CW), Big Medicine (TLC), and Deadliest Catch (Discovery). Together our goal is to get a pinball reality show on TV. For this to happen, WE NEED YOUR HELP!

More details of this opportunity can be viewed HERE. This update is that the production company has set a deadline for video submissions of October 1st, 2013.

Over the past 7 years that the World Pinball Player Rankings have existed, the system has evolved to try and better meet our two most important goals. The first goal is to use the WPPR system as a promotional tool to help motivate players to participate in competitive pinball, get new events created, and get more players interested in the sport. The second goal is to try and rank the world’s greatest pinball players as accurately as possible. Often times we run into issues where these two goals are mutually exclusive.

We typically only make changes to the WPPR system at the start of every calendar year, but in rare circumstances will change things during the year if we feel that the integrity of the WPPR system is in danger of being exploited by tournament directors based on the current rules.

The current change, that will be made immediately, is how Launch Party Tournaments will be handled in the WPPR system. Typically every unique tournament is given a base value of 25 WPPR points to be awarded to the winner. Tournaments that are run multiple times in a year end up sharing those 25 WPPR points across those events.

The Launch Party Tournament was originally created between Stern and the IFPA to be run in Chicago, with at least 3 being run each year coinciding with the launch of Stern’s latest game. The size and scope of this tournament was always on the smaller side, so the plan of making this a local periodic event was something that has worked at the start. Over the years this launch party concept has expanded to multiple cities around the world, and now more recently with the additional Jersey Jack Pinball launch parties as well. We have also seen the start of launch parties being thrown in conjunction with other existing IFPA endorsed events. This again started only in Chicago at Pinball Expo, but has grown to include California Extreme, the Northwest Pinball Show and the PAPA World Pinball Championships.

The result is that there the WPPR values associated with these launch party tournaments now range from 4 WPPR points, to 64 WPPR points, based mainly on factors outside of the promotion of the launch party itself. Because of the impact this has on the integrity of both the world rankings, and the state rankings here in the US, we have decided to adjust the WPPR values of these launch parties based on the original intent of how often they would be run when we created them.

Effectively immediately, every city that has a Launch Party tournament for either Stern Pinball or Jersey Jack Pinball, that base value will only be worth 33%. Any city that continues to run three or more parties per year will not be impacted, including Chicago. Any city that has run less than three launch party tournaments will be impacted by having the WPPR points for those events adjusted appropriately.

We apologize for the inconvenience this will cause for the players impacted as they attempt to qualify for both the IFPA11 World Pinball Championship and the various 2013 State Championships, but feel this is in the best interest for the integrity of the WPPR system.

The Australia Pinball League is interested in finding out the best score out there on Metallica Pinball.

Although comparison of scores is very difficult as a lot of factors would make the game easier or more challenging e.g. the angle of playfield, the game software version and settings, playfield setting and condition, tilt sensitivity etc. it is still interesting and entertaining to see what scores have been achieved. It is more about fun than anything else. It’s always very satisfying to get a good score so why not to share it with others?

Please check out their site HERE, and post your personal best!

The IFPA is excited to announce that the following players have been now qualified for the $tern Rewards Program based on their June 2013 IFPA endorsed tournament performance! These players have until August 15th, 2014 to exercise their reward option.

PLAYER OF THE MONTH – [player]Cayle George[/player]
Cayle earned 102.09 WPPR points in July. This included a vicorty at Super Multi-Brawl, 2nd place finish at the Midsummer Classic Pinball Tournament and 4th place finish in the Classics Division at California Extreme..

BIGGEST MOVER AWARD – [player]Elisabetta Mainwaring[/player]
Elisabetta moved up 7369 spots by earning 2.64 WPPR points from her 3rd place finish at the July meeting of the Surrey Pinball League. This boosted Elisabetta into now being the 4560th ranked player in the world.

BIGGEST MOVER AWARD – [player]Kim Lauver[/player]
Kim moved up 5454 spots from her 30th and 28th place finishes in the Pittsburgh Summer Pinball Championship Main and Classics tournaments respectively. Kim earned .89 WPPR points from this performance, which has moved her up to a rank of 7557th in the world.

BIGGEST MOVER AWARD – [player]Taylor Reese[/player]
Taylor moved up 4092 spots by earning 25 WPPR points from his victory in the Richmond Pinball League.This moved Taylor into now being the 1178th ranked player in the world.

Detailed rules for the $tern Rewards Program, including an updated list of qualifiers, and updated list of rewards available can be found HERE.

The IFPA is pleased to announce that the following players saw the biggest jump in their world ranking based on their July 2013 tournament performance.

The biggest movers for July 2013 included [player]Elisabetta Mainwaring[/player] from Didcot, UK, who moved up 7369 spots by earning 2.64 WPPR points from her 3rd place finish at the July meeting of the Surrey Pinball League. This boosted Elisabetta into now being the 4560th ranked player in the world.

[player]Kim Lauver[/player] from Allison Park, PA moved up 5454 spots from her 30th and 28th place finishes in the Pittsburgh Summer Pinball Championship Main and Classics tournaments respectively. Kim earned .89 WPPR points from this performance, which has moved her up to a rank of 7557th in the world.

[player]Taylor Reese[/player] from Midlothian, VA moved up 4092 spots by earning 25 WPPR points from his victory in the Richmond Pinball League.This moved Taylor into now being the 1178th ranked player in the world.

Congratulations to Elisabetta, Kim and Taylor, as well as the other players that saw a jump in their ranking from their June tournament performance!

The IFPA is pleased to announce that our Player of the Month for July 2013 is former World Pinball Champion [player]Cayle George[/player] from Seattle, WA. Cayle earned 102.09 WPPR points in July. This included a vicorty at Super Multi-Brawl, 2nd place finish at the Midsummer Classic Pinball Tournament and 4th place finish in the Classics Division at California Extreme.

The rest of the top 5 for the month of July included [player]Bob Matthews[/player] from Thousand Oaks, CA with 95.20 WPPR points, [player]Robert Gagno[/player] from Canada with 75.22 WPPR points, [player]Julio Vicario Soriano[/player] from Spain with 73.60 WPPR points, and [player]Steven Bowden[/player] from Somerset, NJ with 72.81 WPPR points.

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

It took 15 months for the IFPA's World Pinball Player Rankings to go from 10,000 to 15,000 players, and we continue to see no signs of slowing down within the competitive pinball community. We're excited to announce that it has only taken us 11 additional months to go from 15,000 to now passing the 20,000 player threshold. With these players coming from 40 different countries, competitive pinball truly is a global sport that continues to grow at a rapid pace.

Even more incredible is the increased amount of what we consider 'active' players that are competing in IFPA endorsed tournaments around the world. 7769 players competed in at least one event in 2012, and we're already at 7197 players that have competed in at least one event in 2013 with over 4 months left on the calendar. The number of players that have competed in at least one IFPA endorsed event in each of the past two years is actually already greater than 2012's numbers (3698 vs. 3338).

We’ve also seen incredible growth in the number of tournaments popping up all over the world. Even compared to just a year ago, we’re uploading an average of 109 tournament results per month during 2013, compared to 81 tournaments per month for 2011, an increase of nearly 35%.

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.