Here are the June 2023 IFPA winners for Player of the Month and Biggest Movers:

Player of the Month:
Johannes Ostermeier from Munich, Germany (379.40 WPPR’s – MAIN)
Jane Verwys from Chicago, IL (62.71 WPPR’s – WOMEN’S)

Biggest Movers:
Mike Perry from New Orleans, LA (+25,951 spots)
George Bennett from Bishop’s Stortford, England (+23,138 spots)
Silvio Alciato from Buenos Aires, Argentina (+19,791 spots)

These players have now all qualified for the Stern Rewards Program for 2023. Congrats to everyone!

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Do you think your team has what it takes to be World Champions? Countries from around the globe are sending their best to decide who’s best in the Annual Pinball Expo World Cup Tournament! Represent your country with pride and take on the top competition in the world!

NOTICE: Last year was our first year doing this, but we didn’t realize how many professional players would enter. For this year, we wish to make it more accessible for the non-rank players so that more people have the opportunity to compete with a chance to win.

Eligible participants must be ranked below the top 1,000 IFPA players. Don’t know your ranking? Click here to check.

REGISTER YOUR TEAM HERE

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Are you ready for the ultimate pinball experience on the go? Zen Studios is happy to announce that Pinball FX pops into the playfield on Nintendo Switch TODAY! Pinball FX is free-to-play with additional in-app purchases, offering three free pinball tables and an extensive library of pinball tables available for purchase to enhance your pinball collection.

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Pinball FX is launching day one with 24 amazing premium pinball tables, 21 of them never before released on Nintendo Switch including fan-favorites such as Star Wars™ Pinball: The Mandalorian ™, Williams Pinball: The Addams Family™, DreamWorks Trolls Pinball and more. The launch also touts, not one, but three pinball tables available for free to download: Williams Pinball: Fish Tales™, and Zen originals Sorcerer’s Lair, and Wild West Rampage.

Keep up with the latest updates, weekly challenges and grand tournaments by visiting www.PinballFX.com and following the team on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

With the European Pinball Championships, IFPA Pinball Olympics and IFPA18 World Pinball Championship all being held across an 11-day period out in Germany, we saw a new player move into the top spot of the World Pinball Player Rankings. Congrats to Jason Zahler!

For historical purposes, the IFPA snapshots the rankings as of the 1st of each month in our database, with Jason becoming the 17th player in the history of competitive pinball to be sitting at the top of the World Pinball Player Rankings at the start of a month.

Going into the Germany weekend the #1 spot was definitely up for grabs between Jason and Escher Lefkoff. Escher posted 4 results to his resume during his time in Germany, with a victory at the European Pinball Championship, a 4th place finish in the Classics Division of the EPC, a 2nd place finish at the IFPA Olympics 2023 Pingolf and a 12th place finish at the IFPA18 World Pinball Championship. This netted Escher 661.69 WPPR’s which was the 3rd most of all players in the world over this 11-day span. It just so happened that Jason was one of the two players to actually do better than that during this period.

Jason posted 3 results to his resume during the trip to Germany, with a 2nd place finish at the European Pinball Championship, 2nd place finish at the IFPA Olympics 23 Group Matchplay and 3rd place finish at the IFPA18 World Pinball Championship. This netted Jason 791.41 WPPR’s which pushed him ahead of Escher by 23.27 WPPR points.

Taking a quick trip into our historical records, the first month on record with a #1 ranked pinball player was June 1993. Rick Stetta had earned 2.12 WPPR points from his Pinathon victory, along with 2.12 WPPR points from his IFPA3 World Championship victory, putting him at 4.24 WPPR points earned. Rick Stetta finished 19 of the following 21 months in the top spot before Paul Madison began a #1 run that lasted for 36 straight months. In March 1998, that #1 position was overtaken by one Keith Elwin thanks to a victory at the PAPA6 World Pinball Championships.

Below is the complete archived list of players who have been ranked #1 in the world, along with the number of months they finished in that top spot:

Keith Elwin – 126 months
Jorian Engelbrektsson – 59 months
Raymond Davidson – 49 months
Paul Madison – 36 months
Rick Stetta – 19 months
Bowen Kerins – 13 months
John Miller – 12 months
Mats Runsten – 11 months
Escher Lefkoff – 11 months
Zach Sharpe – 9 months
Jörgen Holm – 8 months
Cayle George – 3 months
Neil Shatz – 2 months
Lyman Sheats – 1 month
Johannes Ostermeier – 1 month
Peter Andersen – 1 month
Jason Zahler – 1 month

Stuff in New Zealand published a piece of New Zealand No.1 Danielle Peck. Click HERE to watch the piece.

Since the release of WPPR v5.8 for the 2023 season, the IFPA has continued investigating ways to make the World Pinball Player Rankings more accurate for how we rank players across the globe.

Accuracy has been a topic of hot debate ever since the first World Pinball Player Rankings were posted back in February 2006, with many complaints about the fairness of trying to compare players from around the globe where the access and opportunity to compete in IFPA sanctioned events vary so greatly.

WPPR v6.0 is primarily focused on trying to answer a systemic problem regarding the advantages of access and privilege that certain players have at their disposal, giving themselves more opportunities to compete in IFPA sanctioned events and earn WPPR points towards their ranking at a level that is above and beyond their peers. There’s privilege when it comes to players that live close to more opportunities, and privilege when it comes to players that can afford to travel and create those opportunities for themselves. Ultimately this leads to situations where the accuracy of players we’re attempting to rank is flawed due to the inconsistent level of opportunities some may have over others.

These latest changes will be incorporated into WPPR v6.0 which will be implemented starting January 1, 2024.

• Creation of the “WPPR PRO” rankings
  • This ranking will analyze to what extent the results making up that player’s ranking are a representative sample of all the active results over the past 3 years on that player’s profile. To the extent that it is representative, your relative rank will go up. To the extent that it is not representative, your relative rank will go down. More details on the “WPPR PRO” formula can be found HERE.
  • The “WPPR PRO” rankings will list the top 250 players ranked in the ‘Main’ system after this v6.0 adjustment is made, and the top 100 players ranked in ‘Women’s’ system after this v6.0 adjustment is made.
  • The “WPPR PRO” rankings will be the metric that is officially used for IFPA World Pinball Championship qualifying and seeding, along with who we crown as the “World’s Greatest Pinball Player” for finishing in the #1 spot.
• Reduction in the number of events that count towards a player’s world ranking.
  • Reduced from 20 events down to 15 events.
  • IFPA North American Championship Series will remain at 20 events counting in those standings.
• Dynamic portion of the WPPR Point Distribution formula will be changing. The dynamic distribution will stretch to anyone that finishes in the top half of the field regardless of the number of players at the event (previously this was capped at the top 64 players for any events with more than 128 participants).
• The IFPA will be implementing a $1 sanctioning fee for Women’s events in North America starting in 2024.
• Update to eligibility requirements for events to grade out to >100%
  • Previously the finals format must include an elimination format that includes a minimum of 10% of the participants to be eligible. This elimination format must include a round where a maximum of 4 players remain. We are adding the requirement that any meaningful tiebreakers to either receive a bye, advance to finals or advance through rounds within finals cannot be done through an automatic tiebreaking process. These tiebreakers must be played out.
• Any players currently playing their turn in another match at the same location cannot be penalized as absent for the other concurrent events. This only applies to concurrent events that both have direct play formats.
• Tournaments that run an UNLIMITED Card qualifying format with a minimum 20 hours of qualifying time, will have those qualifying games counted at 4X value (16% increase to TGP for each game included in the qualifying standings). Unlimited Best Game qualifying format with a minimum 20 hours of qualifying time will continue to have those qualifying games counted at 2X value.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us at ifpapinball@gmail.com with any questions. Check back when we announce that WPPR v6.0 has been implemented for 2024 as details are subject to change prior to launch.

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The eagerly awaited tournament “Pinball at Waterfalls – Torneo Flipper Marmore”, Memorial Dino Merluzzi, which this year takes on an even more important role as it represents the sixth stage of the ICS 2023 – Italian Championship Series of the seven in total during the season, but represents also the Italian leg valid for the 2023 ECS European Championship Series.

In the wonderful location of the Italian Pinball Museum “Dino Merluzzi” (https://www.museoflipper.it/en/) and near to the Marmore Waterfalls!

The tournament will take place throughout the weekend of 2-3 September, according to the schedule shown below, with two separate tournaments taking place: a “Main tournament” and a “Side tournament“. In addition to a series of collateral mini-competitions that will be organized inside the Museum.

TGP: 125%

here the official rules:

https://www.ifpapinball.com/tournaments/view.php?t=63859# (MAIN)

https://www.ifpapinball.com/tournaments/view.php?t=63858#calendar (SIDE)

More info about tournament:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/3102524110052715?ref=newsfeed

Web: https://www.museoflipper.it/en/pinball-at-waterfalls-valid-for-ics-ecs/

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