The Toronto Pinball League end of season Playoffs were held on Dec 6th 2009 in Georgetown, Ontario. A total of 23 players played across 2 divisions. In the A division after a long hard fought battle all the way through the losers brackets and then defeating John Flitton the required two times in best of 3 match in the finals, Andrew Aiken took the prize of Toronto Pinball League Champion. Second place was John Flitton and third place went to Maurice Pelletier.

With 100 players participating in the 12th Annual Shorty’s Pinball Tournament, Cayle George defied the odds and once again survived the field, without losing a match, hence becoming the first EVER player to win for a 3rd time, AND all in a row on top of that!!!

The final match was played on this year’s prize machine, Barracora, and needing to be beaten twice by his opponent, he needed only about 100,000 points to put the match away on game one, when a quick drain of his last ball saw him come up shy of the 1.2 million points put up by his opponent. This forced a 2nd and final game, where the winner would take the title and the game home with them! It was then that the longest game of Shorty’s Annual Tournament finals history unfolded, as Cayle put up a score of 9.6 MILLION, coming JUST shy of rolling the game while under the threat of a mercy rule being imposed to concede the match in his favor, also for the 1st time ever in the finals!! The runner up this year was Brandon ‘Slam Tilt’ Smith, 3rd place was Andy Pettersson, and 4th place was Jeff Gagnon.

Over 125 players from Canada and the US met in Toronto, Ontario for the 2009 Canadian Pinball Championship, in hopes of being one of the top 32 players over the weekend which would qualify for the finals matches. The top 8 players received double byes, while the 9th through 16th seeded players each received a single bye.

As the match play went on, it would be the #6 seed, Cayle George of Seattle WA, who would face the #12 a seed, Sean O’Neil of Toronto, Ontario. In what was a truly epic battle on Stern’s Batman, Sean and Cayle were both putting up scores of 200 million – 300 million PER GAME in a best of 5 contest, but it was Sean that was getting the edge each time, with a 100 million Bat Signal shot in each of the first 3 games played!

Cayle was able to fight back on game 3 to prevent Sean from sweeping the final match, but it was on Game #4 that Sean beat Cayle’s best efforts for the 3rd time to take the 2009 Canadian Championship Title, as well as $1000 and the New in Box NBA Pinball Machine! 3rd place this year went to Paul Madison, and 4th place went to current Pinball Expo Champ, Andy Rosa. The Canadian Pinball Champion is STILL a Canadian… at least for one more year!

October, 24th in Neu-Ulm, Germany: Pinballcenter.eu hosted the first tournament at the new Pinballcenter.eu location. 43 Players competed on 38 different pinball machines. The tournament software was provided by Robert von Keller: The PinLounge-System.

Mixed groups of three players each played the preliminary round. The final battle was at Banzai Run: 3 balls, no extra balls. Peter Scheldt ended up on first place, Stefan Karlhuber on second, Martin Pfeifer on third and Michael Muench on fourth place.

Well over 100 players participated in this year’s Tournaments at the 25th anniversary of Pinball Expo in Chicago, and Andy Rosa pummelled his way through each machine on his way to victory as this year’s Division A Champion! A solid 3-hit combo on Elvis saved his last ball and secured the match along with the $2000 prize!!! 2nd place went to Arizona’s Greg Davis, 3rd was Kansas City’s Don Brownback, and 4th place was local Jason Werdrick. This year’s Classics Champion is Bob Matthews from California. Derek Fugate took 2nd place, while Joshua Henderson finished in 3rd.

As the 2009 season winds down, we’re full steam ahead in preparing for IFPA 7. The IFPA World Pinball Championship comes back to the US next year, to be held May 21-23, 2010 outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Click here to find an initial list of possible game selections for the tournament! A reminder if you are interested in participating, please submit a player profile to the IFPA. We will begin sending out invitations for those that have qualified in the middle of January, and if we have no way of contacting you, we will unfortunately have to skip your spot in the World Pinball Player Rankings.

The IFPA and GameWorks teamed up once again to host the 3rd event at the Chicago location. 57 players competed for 16 qualifying spots on Family Guy, Sopranos, 24 and NBA. The finals came down to Josh Sharpe and Zach Sharpe, which went all 3 games to decide the winner. Zach took the first game on NBA, while Josh came back on Soprano’s to even the score. The third game was on Family Guy, where Josh took a 34 million to 15 million lead before Zach started his last ball. Following a very good Stewie Multiball, and a huge double-danger save to continue the ball, Zach drained and when his bonus came up 700,000 points short, Josh escaped with the victory. Keith Johnson took 3rd place, while Trent Augenstein took 4th place. Zach and Trent are the only two players to place in the top 4 at all 4 GameWorks tournaments (including the one at the Columbus location). Full results are available here.

As the 2009 season winds down, we couldn’t help but notice how close the race for the IFPA’s “World Greatest Pinball Player” title is between current #1 Jorian Engelbrektsson and 3-time WPPR King Keith Elwin. With Keith missing this year’s IFPA World Pinball Championship, his opportunity to 4-peat may have been lost. How close is it?? The IFPA takes a closer look!

Jorian’s current 50 point lead is deceiving in that it doesn’t take into account the points each player will be losing before the end of year (based on our 100/75/50/0 decay as tournaments age). The IFPA did a quick analysis, and based on our calculations using today’s rankings, if Jorian and Keith sat out the rest of the season, Jorian would finish at 671.92 besting Keith who would finish at 665.11. This margin of 6.81 points would be the closest in the short history of the IFPA’s World Pinball Player Rankings.

However, this does not include Keith’s recent performance at this year’s PPE (1st place in the Modern Division, 1st place in the 80’s division, and 2nd place in the 90’s division). This will surely make up that 6.81 point deficit, which puts the pressure back on Jorian to perform in his final events of the season.

Fortunately for Jorian, he still has both the Stockholm Open and the Swedish Championships on his calendar. A top 4 finish at the Stockholm Open, or a top 8 finish at the Swedish Championships could give Jorian the points he needs to overtake Keith before the calendar turns to 2010.

How many points will that stellar PPE performance get Keith? How will Jorian react to the pressure of playing from behind? Is Keith’s season over, or is a visit to Shorty’s Annual Pinball Tournament (Seattle) in his future?

Best of luck to both Keith and Jorian for the 2009 title! We couldn’t be more excited to see how things play out!

The IFPA is proud to announce it will be teaming up with GameWorks once again for the 3rd Chicago Pinball Tournament of Champions the weekend of October 9th through October 11th at the Schaumburg location (Streets of Woodfield). Over $1300 in Cash and prizes! Participants will receive a free pass to Pinball Expo the following weekend! This is one of the over 100 tournaments throughout 2009 where players can earn world rankings points and a chance to compete in the IFPA 7 World Pinball Championship to be held in 2010 outside Minneapolis. Email the IFPA at ifpapinball@gmail.com for more details. Check out details here.

During the IFPA Pin-Masters weekend in Las Vegas, the IFPA took the chance to honor Keith Elwin finishing at the top of the World Pinball Player Rankings with his 3rd consecutive “World’s Greatest Pinball Player” award. As many players know at this point, no single tournament victory will ever secure this title for a given year. Consistent play at the highest level over the course of multiple years lead to players reaching the pinnacle of the World Pinball Player Rankings. During 2008, Keith posted a 3rd place finish and a 1st place finish at the World Pinball Championships (IFPA 5 and PAPA 11 respectively). He also won the Northwest Pinball Show in Seattle, Two out of the 3 divisions at California Extreme, the AMOA Pinball Championship, and the Celebrity Pinball Tournament & Arcade Show during 2008. Overall, Keith won 55% of the events he competed in during 2008, while placing in the top 4 at 77% of his 2008 events, a truly remarkable achievement. Please join the IFPA in wishing Keith a big congratulations on this achievement.