The IFPA is proud to announce that registration for the 7th Annual IFPA World Pinball Championship is now open! For more details check it out here: http://www.pinballrankings.com/ifpa7.phpThe initial invite list is for the top 150 players as of 1/1/2010. Based on the interest of the top 150, 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 ifpapinball@gmail.com.

The IFPA is proud to announce that registration for the 7th Annual IFPA World Pinball Championship is now open! For more details check it out here: http://www.pinballrankings.com/ifpa7.php

The initial invite list is for the top 150 players as of 1/1/2010. Based on the interest of the top 150, 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 ifpapinball@gmail.com.

The IFPA is proud to announce that Jorian Engelbrektsson of Sweden has finished at #1 on the World Pinball Player Rankings, thus earning IFPA’s top honor as the 2009 “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.

During 2009, Jorian posted 2^nd place finishes at both World Pinball Championships (IFPA 6 and PAPA 12 respectively). He also won the Stockholm Open, Boras Pinball Open, Lidkoping Pinball Masters and Bacchi Orden Open. Overall, Jorian won 50% of the events he played in, while placing in the top 4 at 77% of his 2009 events, a truly remarkable achievement.

Jorian will be given his award at the IFPA 7 World Pinball Championship, scheduled for May 21-23, 2010 in Cokato, Minnesota.

Congratulations to Jorian, and best of luck to everyone on the upcoming 2010 season.

The IFPA is proud to announce that Jorian Engelbrektsson of Sweden has finished at #1 on the World Pinball Player Rankings, thus earning IFPA’s top honor as the 2009 “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.

During 2009, Jorian posted 2^nd place finishes at both World Pinball Championships (IFPA 6 and PAPA 12 respectively). He also won the Stockholm Open, Boras Pinball Open, Lidkoping Pinball Masters and Bacchi Orden Open. Overall, Jorian won 50% of the events he played in, while placing in the top 4 at 77% of his 2009 events, a truly remarkable achievement.

Jorian will be given his award at the IFPA 7 World Pinball Championship, scheduled for May 21-23, 2010 in Cokato, Minnesota.

Congratulations to Jorian, and best of luck to everyone on the upcoming 2010 season.

The inaugural season of the Downingtown Pinball League completed with an end-of-season tournament on December 1, 2009 and the playoffs on December 9, 2009 at the Pinball Gallery in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. A total of 17 players competed in the league across two divisions. Jerry Rubinow won the end-of-season tournament by cruising through the competition without losing a single game. In the playoffs, Steve Mowrey the #1 seed from Division A at the end of the regular season, was true to form and won the championship. The sleeper was Bill Paterno, the #5 seed from Division B at the end of the regular season, who saved his best pinball for when it counted and won the playoffs as the champion of Division B.

Saturday Dec 5th the second Pinferno tournament was held in New York. 24 players from New York and New Jersey area battled all day on four machines: Creature from the Black Lagoon, High Speed II: the Getaway, Star Wars and The Who’s Tommy Pinball Wizard. The top 16 seeds made it to the final bracket to determine the champion.

After few surprises, the first semifinal saw the seed #1 Sean Grant easily defeat seed #13 Adan Cane. In the second semifinal seed #3 Steven Bowden won to seed #7 Jon Ehrlich 3-1 to face Sean in the final. Sean went quickly up 2-0 and was one shot away on ball 3 (Videomode was lit) on Getaway to take home the title. It didn’t happen and Steven tied 2-2, getting to the final game #5 on Tommy. The game was really close and well played by both players. On ball 3 Steven ended up 60 millions away from the win.

Congratulations Sean and hope to see everybody at the next Pinferno in February. Finally a fun and well represented tournament in New York!!

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.