The World Pinball Player Rankings, created by the International Flipper Pinball Association, are updated upon the completion of any IFPA sanctioned tournament. All IFPA sanctioned events from around the world are eligible for World Pinball Player Rankings Points which are awarded according to the tournament’s strength of field, number of participants, format of the tournament, and the players’ finishing position.

At the end of the calendar year, the player with the most WPPR points will be crowned the ‘World’s Greatest Pinball Player’ for that particular year.

The way WPPR points have been calculated and distributed has changed since the creation of the WPPR system in 2006. The latest modification to the formula is being made for the 2024 season, which will be running WPPR version 6.0. Anytime a change is made to the WPPR formula, we generally receive some common questions. Please see our FAQ page for more information, or read the details of the current WPPR system below:

Translations available in:
Table of Contents

– Overview of Changes for 2024 (v6.0)

– Basic Rules

– Defining League vs. Tournament play

– Base Value Calculation

– Tournament Value Adjustment (TVA)

– Tournament Grading Percentage (TGP)

– Event Boosters

– WPPR Point Distribution

– IFPA Rating Calculation

– Efficiency Percentage

– Change log from 2023 (v5.8) 

– Change log from 2022 (v5.7) 

– Change log from 2020 (v5.6) 

– Change log from 2019 (v5.5) 

– Change log from 2018 (v5.4) 

– Change log from 2017 (v5.3)

– Change log from 2016 (v5.2)

– Change log from 2015 (v5.1)

Overview of Changes for 2024 (v6.0)

• 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.
• Updated rules verbiage for removing available games during an event – Most commonly done in an effort to speed an event up, we have seen TD’s increase the usage of Classics machines as an event progresses as Classics machines often finish quicker than Modern machines. The IFPA expects TD’s to maintain consistency throughout the entire event with respect to the types of machines that are available to be played. Any efforts made to alter the game availability list anytime during an event in such a way that it materially changes the mix of machines that was present at the start of the event will no longer earn TGP after the point at which this change is made. For example, having an event that requires players to play Modern and Classics machines, which then materially decreases or eliminates the amount in which Modern (or Classics) machines are used at some point in the event would trigger this rule. Please contact the IFPA if you have any questions regarding how this rule impacts your event.

Basic Rules

In determining the World Pinball Player Rankings, several basic rules were put into place to meet the needs and goals of the IFPA, tournament directors and for the players themselves.

• All IFPA sanctioned tournaments and leagues are eligible for WPPR points, with each player’s top 15 active events counting towards a player’s world ranking. The value of each tournament will be calculated based on a few variables that we will go into detail about below.
• Five tournaments will receive an Event Booster of 200% of the calculated tournament value. We consider these tournaments the “Major Championships” of competitive pinball. These tournaments are: IFPA World Pinball Championship, PAPA World Pinball Championships, Pinburgh Match Play Championships, European Pinball Championships and The Open. IFPA Championship Series and IFPA Certified+ events will receive an Event Booster of 150%. IFPA Certified events will receive an Event Booster of 125%. Details regarding Certification can be found in the “EVENT BOOSTER” section below.
• Every tournament and/or league event submitted will be individually calculated, graded and listed on a player’s resume. For example a monthly tournament will show as 12 individually listed tournaments on a player’s resume. A pinball league that runs 3 seasons per year will be listed as 3 separate listings on a player’s resume for that given year.
• The value of a tournament is calculated from determining a Base Value, a Tournament Value Adjustment (TVA) based on the quality of the players participating, a Tournament Grading Percentage (TGP) based on the quality of the format of the tournament and the application of Event Boosters if any are available. Full details on each of those metrics are available below.
• WPPR points distributed will be factored based on the number of people who competed in the tournament and where a player finishes. For example, a player might get 5 points for finishing 2nd in a 10 player tournament, but get 30 points for finishing 2nd in a 50 player tournament.
• The WPPR System will weigh recent results over historical results. Points earned over the last year are worth 100% of their value.  Events one to two years old are worth 75% of their original value. Events two to three years old are worth 50% of their value. Any event over three years old is reduced to zero value.
• Many events run ‘side tournaments’ that are run in conjunction of the main tournament (Classics tournaments are the most popular example). These will be graded individually like all other tournaments, and will be listed on a player’s resume as a separate event.
• Only open tournaments are included in the WPPR system. However, depending on circumstances, exceptions can be made.
• IFPA will not sanction events with less than 3 players. We also require that a single winner is determined for results to be accepted.
• IFPA will not sanction team events. Only individual events are eligible to be sanctioned.
• All tournaments are required to have a publicly available website/Facebook event or group that has relevant information such as the contact information for the tournament director, and information about the event itself.
• IFPA sanctioned tournament directors will be responsible for communicating the format details of their tournament in the IFPA calendar submission process, and responsible for verifying that format during the results submission process to help ensure an accurate calculation of the TGP.
• Please note that the IFPA/PAPA rules regarding gambling are in effect for all IFPA sanctioned events. This includes IFPA sanctioned events that don’t incorporate the IFPA/PAPA ruleset as part of their tournament rules. Please visit Section III, Paragraph 7 for those details HERE.
• There are no limitations to how many events any particular location or organizer can hold. For any tournaments submitted to the IFPA calendar as ‘private’ (address not listed publicly on our site), the IFPA requires a minimum of 16 players to attend for that tournament to be sanctioned for WPPR points. The IFPA now requires a full address in the calendar submission, and it is understandable for tournament directors to want to host IFPA sanctioned tournaments out of their homes and not have their full address made public. Any private tournament that fails to reach 16 players will not be sanctioned for WPPR points. An organizer is limited to hosting 4 ‘private’ tournaments per year for a given location. This rule does not apply to Women’s-only events.
• For any IFPA sanctioned tournament or league, players can only be included in IFPA final results if they have met at least 50% of all qualifying requirements. Any players that don’t meet this minimum participation requirement should be removed from the results by the tournament director (TD) prior to submitting those results to the IFPA. This rule does not apply for any players ranked in the top 250 going into the event. For example, a Best Game qualifying format where 10 machines are available with the best 7 scores counting towards the player’s qualifying position, any player that plays fewer than 4 machines will be removed from the standings submitted to the IFPA. For Direct Play events with no “finals” the entire tournament will be considered part of the qualifying requirements. Players that advance to the final round despite not meeting this percentage may also be included in the final standings submitted to the IFPA.
• For any IFPA sanctioned league, players must participate in at least 50% of the actual number of sessions of the regular season to be included in the final standings submitted to the IFPA. Please note that if a league holds 8 sessions but only the best 6 sessions count towards the standings of that league, a player must participate in at least 4 sessions to be included in the results submitted into the IFPA.
• Certain formats (Selfie Leagues, TOPS Tournaments, etc) rely on players submitting their own results without the verification of a TD or authorized scorekeeper on site. Any qualifying format that includes “unverified” results where a TD, league official, or authorized scorekeeper is not present to record their score, will not have the qualifying portion included in the TGP calculation. The IFPA will classify these qualifying formats as strictly for seeding purposes, with only the finals format counting towards the TGP calculation. Only players that participate in the Final of these events will be eligible to be included in the results submitted to the IFPA.
• The IFPA is launching the IFPA Tour of sanctioned Pin-Golf events. We are now enforcing stricter rules regarding how organizers can score an IFPA sanctioned Pin-Golf format event, and events must meet this criteria with their course design to award WPPR points as an IFPA sanctioned event. The WPPR points awarded for Pin-Golf events will now include a Pin-Golf Multiplier (PGM) adjustment. This metric is used to grade the difficulty of the course. Full details on the IFPA Tour, rules of course design, and the calculation of the PGM adjustment are available HERE.
• Only Rated players will be included in the player count with respect to base value. A player becomes Rated after participating in 5 events lifetime. These unrated players will still be able to earn WPPR points, and impact the distribution of the points from a tournament, but they simply won’t be counted towards the 1/2 point per player count for the base. This is to limit the impact of organizers trying to sign up random participants, or worse, list fake names of players that did not participate as a way to artificially increase the base value of the tournament.
• We have put a rule in place that you can only play a maximum of 3 meaningful games per machine per ‘state/round’ of an event. Organizers with only one machine are welcome to do multiple rounds or stages where players are eliminated in the process and be able to capture more meaningful games played, but the ‘high score tournament’ or average score, etc. with X number of games counting maxes at 3 per physical machine.
• For any tournaments that have multiple paths of qualifying for the finals, we will take the SHORTEST of those paths when counting meaningful games played for that portion of the tournament. This is to try and stop the confusing formats where organizers offer a way for players to qualify for an event easily, and then have some subgroup of players also battling out for spots by using a longer process, while being able to capture the games played for that subgroup of players. Couple of examples would be taking having 5 machines and allowing the high score of each machine a spot in the finals, while also giving players a chance to advance to the finals based on their play across all 5 machines. This would now count as ONE meaningful game played because of that potential path for players to reach the finals rather than 5.
• For any brackets, we want to promote tournaments using a consistent number of games from round to round. For bracket tournaments we have seen organizers use single game matches throughout, only to then backload the number of games played by having the final match be a best of 25 match. We will use the minimum number of games for any one round of play in determining how many meaningful games played get counted, so if someone wants to run best of 3 matches they should be making that choice for the entire bracket. They will no longer be able to pick certain rounds to expand that match total, or rather they could, but they would still only be credited for 3 games played for that round. We are okay with the winner’s bracket and loser’s bracket being different lengths, as long as it’s consistent across each of them individually.
• For any group play rounds, we want to promote tournaments using a consistent number of games from round to round. We’ve seen organizers play 3 games per round, except for the last round they would intentionally play 11 rounds in order to reach the 25 games played metric. We’ve also seen organizers play 3 games per round, except for the last round where they would only play 1 game in the round. We will use the minimum number of games for any one round of play in determining how many meaningful games played get counted, so if someone wants to run group matchplay at 3 games per round, they should be making that choice for the entire final. They will no longer be able to pick certain rounds to expand that match total, or rather they could, but they would still only be credited for the round with the fewest games played applied to every round of the final.
• The TGP will now include games played that are fewer than 3 balls, including timed formats where players are attempting to reach a score or objective as quickly as possible. Any game where it’s possible for the player to finish on the first ball in play, will be calculated at 33% value for TGP purposes. Any games set to 1-ball play will be worth 33% value. Any games set to 2-ball play will be worth 66% value. No games beyond 3 balls will be worth anything above 100% for TGP purposes. For example, if players have a goal of reaching a certain feature in a game as a way of winning that game or match, the fact that it is POSSIBLE for the player to reach that objective on ball 1 means this will count as 1/3rd of a game played towards TGP. The exception to this rule will be the Pin-Golf format, which will have it’s own set of grading rules (see next bullet points). Any game where a TD creates a “runaway score” or taps a player out to end their game before all 3 balls have been played will be worth 1/3rd TGP, regardless of when that occurs during the game being played.
• The IFPA will no longer sanction tournaments that don’t have a DIRECT play component as part of the format. DIRECT play represents multiple players (up to a max of 4) playing against one another on a given game (head-to-head or in a group). Many tournaments use an INDIRECT qualifying system where everyone plays the same game (PAPA style qualifying, Best Game qualifying, Pin-Golf). Those tournaments that use an INDIRECT qualifying system must now run a Finals round that consists of DIRECT play between the finalists to crown the winner. A tournament using an INDIRECT qualifying system must advance a minimum of 10% but no more than 50% of those players to the Final. Examples of tournaments no longer eligible for WPPR points would be simple high score tournaments without finals, or Pin-Golf tournaments where you simply play your round/rounds.
• Originally WPPR v5.0 rules used the longest theoretical path to determine the number of meaningful games used for TGP. This made for situations where the tournament was being given credit for a “longest path” that had an extremely low chance of actually happening. We are changing this to ‘expected value’ for # of rounds played for bracket/strike/match play tournaments. We’ve included a detailed breakdown of a few approved finals formats, and the number of games that should be counted towards the TGP value here: http://www.ifpapinball.com/tgpguide
• Any tournament that requires pre-registration must be submitted to the IFPA Calendar a minimum of 30 days before the pre-registration date. Tournaments and leagues without pre-registration must be submitted to the IFPA Calendar a minimum of 30 days before the event.
• 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.

Defining League vs. Tournament Play

The IFPA is more clearly defining the differences between what we consider an sanctioned “IFPA Tournament” and an sanctioned “IFPA League”.

The IFPA will be managing two separate registration processes, one for “Tournaments” and one for “Leagues”. The IFPA Calendar will continue to only display “Tournaments”, while our IFPA Leagues page will show a list of all the active IFPA Leagues and the dates of their current season.

Details clarifying these differences are available HERE.

Base Value Calculation

The base value of a tournament is equal to 0.5 WPPR points per Rated player up to a maximum of 32 max base points for any tournament with 64 or more players participating. For example, a tournament with 11 Rated players will have a base value of 5.5 WPPR points. A player becomes an officially Rated player after participating in 5 IFPA sanctioned events.

Tournament Value Adjustment (TVA)

As we mentioned earlier there are two strength indicators that we use to determine the TVA for an event. This includes a TVA based on player RATING, and a TVA based on player RANKING. These values are added to the base value of an event to determine the 1st place WPPR point value for that tournament. The TVA takes into account the best 64 players participating in a tournament for each strength indicator. For the RATING strength indicator, the top 64 RATED players are taken into account. For the RANKING strength indicator, the top 64 RANKED players are taken into account.

• RATING FORMULA

The TVA based on RATING can be worth up to 25 additional WPPR points for a tournament. The formula used to determine the WPPR value that each player adds to the pot is:

(RATING * .000546875) – .703125

We consider a ‘perfect’ player to be rated 2000, so based on the formula that player would add .39 WPPR points to the value of the tournament. 64 players with a rating of 2000 would amount to a 25 WPPR point increase for that tournament. Any player with a rating of 1285.71 or less will have no impact on the strength of the tournament.

• RANKING FORMULA

The TVA based on RANKING can be worth up to 50 additional WPPR points for a tournament. The formula used to determine the WPPR value that each player adds to the pot is:

ln(RANKING) * – .211675054 + 1.459827968

We consider a ‘perfect’ tournament to include the top 64 ranked players in the world participating. Based on the formula the #1 ranked player in the world would add 1.46 WPPR points to the pot, the #2 ranked player in the world would add 1.31 WPPR points to the pot, etc. In total the top 64 ranked players would equal an additional 50 WPPR points in value for the tournament.

Tournament Grading Percentage (TGP)

Every tournament will have the Base Value + TVA multiplied by the TGP to determine the final 1^st place value of the tournament. The TGP will be based on the quality of the format of the event. Both the finals component of a tournament and the qualifying portion of a tournament (if there is one) will be included in the calculation. Tournaments that have unlimited qualifying attempts will be graded slightly different from tournaments that have limited qualifying attempts or no qualifying portion. Please note the Pingolf format now has it’s own unique grading system, available HERE.

Events that do not have a separate Qualifying and Finals format have a maximum TGP value of 100%.

Events that have a separate Qualifying and Finals format now have the ability to grade out to a maximum TGP value of 200%. Please note 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. 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. Previously 25 meaningful games played at 4% each would hit that 100% max. This will now be 50 meaningful games played at 4% each to hit this new 200% max.

Tournaments that run an UNLIMITED Best Game qualifying format with a minimum 20 hours of qualifying time, will have those qualifying games counted at 2X value (8% increase to TGP for each game included in the qualifying standings).

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).

The TGP will now include games played that are fewer than 3 balls, including timed formats where players are attempting to reach a score or objective as quickly as possible. Any game where it’s possible for the player to finish on the first ball in play, will be calculated at 33% value for TGP purposes. Any games set to 1-ball play will be worth 33% value. Any games set to 2-ball play will be worth 66% value. No games beyond 3 balls will be worth anything above 100% for TGP purposes. For example, if players have a goal of reaching a certain feature in a game as a way of winning that game or match, the fact that it is POSSIBLE for the player to reach that objective on ball 1 means this will count as 1/3rd of a game played towards TGP. The exception to this rule will be the Pin-Golf format, which will have it’s own set of grading rules.

Flip Frenzy formats, also referred to as Pinball! Pinball! Pinball! format will now be graded based on the (AVERAGE number of matches played / divided by 2) by all players in the field. One-Ball Flip Frenzy formats will be graded based on the AVERAGE number of matches played/ divided by 3).

Most commonly done in an effort to speed an event up, we have seen TD’s increase the usage of Classics machines as an event progresses as Classics machines often finish quicker than Modern machines. The IFPA expects TD’s to maintain consistency throughout the entire event with respect to the types of machines that are available to be played. Any efforts made to alter the game availability list anytime during an event in such a way that it materially changes the mix of machines that was present at the start of the event will no longer earn TGP after the point at which this change is made. For example, having an event that requires players to play Modern and Classics machines, which then materially decreases or eliminates the amount in which Modern (or Classics) machines are used at some point in the event would trigger this rule. Please contact the IFPA if you have any questions regarding how this rule impacts your event.

TGP for Target Match Play qualifying will be based on the average number of games played for all qualifiers.

See the breakdown below:

• FINALS/PLAYOFFS COMPONENT

The TGP will be based on the expected number of meaningful games that the winner of a tournament will play, with 4% added to the TGP for each meaningful game played. A guide to help determine the meaningful games played metric is available HERE.

Formats that utilize PAPA style group finals with 4-player groups will be allowed to count each meaningful game played at 2X. For example, a 3-game round with 4-player groups will now count as 6 additional games added to TGP instead of just 3. This is detailed in the TGP Guide under the “PAPA Style Match Play” approved format. Formats that utilize 3-player groups will be allowed to count each meaningful game played at 1.5X.

Please note that group play formats that utilize the “Multi-Matchplay” style of play (players play in parallel across multiple machines rather than serially in the 4-player matches) do not receive the 2X bonus for 4-player groups, or 1.5X bonus for 3-player groups.

For single elimination bracket tournaments where the length of matches can vary (single game, best of 3, best of 5, etc), we will use round that has the MINIMUM number of games played as the metric to calculate TGP.

For double elimination bracket tournaments where the length of matches can vary (single game, best of 3, best of 5, etc), we will use round that has the MINIMUM number of games played as the metric to calculate TGP. The WINNERS and LOSERS brackets will be looked at separately, so those lengths may vary from one another. The LOSERS bracket must be consistent throughout, and the WINNERS bracket must be consistent throughout, or the MINIMUM will be used.

For Match Play formats, the round with the least number of games will be used to calculate TGP.

• QUALIFYING COMPONENT

The TGP for events that include a qualifying portion with a set amount of attempts, or limited amount of attempts will add an additional 4% to the total TGP for each meaningful game played. A meaningful game is based on the data used to advance a player through the qualifying process. For example, if a player is limited to 30 attempts on a machine, and the tournament is taking the highest score on a machine to advance to the finals, this would count as 1 meaningful game played (not 30). A guide to help determine the meaningful games played metric is available HERE.

Match play formats that consist of 4-player groups will be allowed to count each meaningful game played at 2X. For example, Pinburgh consists of a 4-game round with 4-player groups. This will now count as 8 additional games added to TGP instead of just 4. This is detailed in the TGP Guide under the “Match Play Qualifying” approved format.

For tournaments that offer UNLIMITED qualifying attempts, TGP will be increased by 1% per hour that open qualifying is available for all competitors. Please note that this time component is only available for tournaments with UNLIMITED qualifying attempts, and is limited to a 20% increase in TGP from this time component.

Tournaments that run an UNLIMITED Best Game qualifying format with a minimum 20 hours of qualifying time, will have those qualifying games counted at 2X value (8% increase to TGP for each game included in the qualifying standings).

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).

The games played in the qualifying portion of the tournament can be added to the TGP calculation only if that qualifying portion reduces the field of participants by 50% or more. For tournaments where fewer than 50% of the field is removed in the qualifying process, the IFPA considers this ‘seeding’ and will not increase the TGP.

For any given machine used in a tournament, a maximum of 3 meaningful games per machine is allowed per ‘state/round’ of an event. For qualifying purposes this means the maximum number of games counted towards TGP would be 3. For finals purposes it means that a best-of-3 match is the maximum length for that match if only one machine is available.

With the added “Event Booster” metric (Majors/Certified/Etc.), please note that the final value of the tournament will be the TGP X Event Value.

Event Boosters

In addition to the TVA and TGP metrics used in determining the overall value of a tournament, the IFPA also has Event Boosters available for tournaments that are either more prestigious in nature or utilize format characteristics that the IFPA feels are of the highest quality.

Please note that the final value of the tournament will be the TGP Value multiplied by the Event Booster Value. The highest possible being a 200% TGP event that is also a Major Championship, which receives an Event Booster of 200%, resulting in 400% as the total value of the event.

Majors –> IFPA World Pinball Championship, PAPA World Pinball Championships, European Pinball Championships, Pinburgh Match Play Championship and THE OPEN will receive an Event Booster value of 200%. Major Championships are not also eligible for the Certification Event Booster.

IFPA Championship Series events –> This classification of event has an Event Booster value of 150%. These events are not also eligible for the Certification Event Booster. This includes the following events:

• Any IFPA Country Championship Series final, Any IFPA State and Provincial Championship final, IFPA North American Pinball Championship, Any IFPA European Championship Series event along with the ECS Final, IFPA Pin-Masters Championship, IFPA Heads-Up Pinball Championship, IFPA Power100 Championship, Stern Pro Circuit Final. Championship Series events that run formats that are Certified will not get any additional boost beyond this 150%.

IFPA Certified+ events –> This classification of event has an Event Booster value of 150%. Certified+ require the following attributes:

1. 128 rated player minimum
2. Limited Best Game/Card Qualifying- minimum 24 attempts with minimum best 12 games being counted,
   minimum 20 hours of qualifying time.
3. Unlimited Best Game/Card Qualifying – minimum 20 hours of qualifying time, minimum 5 games being counted.
4. Match Play Qualifying formats (4-player groups) require minimum of 20 qualifying games.
5. Head to head Qualifying formats require minimum of 40 qualifying games.
6. 24 finalists minimum (up from 16) – Same finals format requirement as 2022
7. No other qualifying formats eligible (Flip Frenzy, Pin-Golf, etc)
8. No player may receive a bye beyond the round of 16 finalists.
9. Maximum length of the tournament is 4 consecutive days.
10. Finals for the top 24 cannot start on the same day that Qualifying starts.
11. Finals portion of the tournament must consist of one of the following approved formats: PAPA style match play rounds (minimum of 3 games per round) or IFPA style head-to-head play (minimum best of 5 matches per round). All game choices during finals must be made by the players.

IFPA Certified events –> This classification of event has an Event Booster value of 125%.

• Certified require all of the attributes from the above Certified+ list except for the 128 player minimum (item “a”).

WPPR Point Distribution

Calculation and distribution of WPPR points for each tournament involves many steps:

• Set an entry ranking for first time players. Currently they are given the same ranking as the 10th percentile ranked person.
• Calculate the Tournament Base Value (per formula above).
• Calculate the TVA based on the RATING strength indicator (per formula above).
• Calculate the TVA based on the RANKING strength indictor (per formula above).
• Calculate the Tournament Grading Percentage (per formula above).
• Using the tournament base value and TVA from the RATING and RANKING strength indicators, multiplied by the TGP, calculate what the WPPR point value is for the tournament winner.
• Two WPPR point distribution values are then calculated for the rest of the field of participants.

One is a linear distribution value based on the number of players in the tournament.

(PlayerCnt + 1 – Finishing Position) * 10/100 * (1st place value  / playerCnt)

The second value is a dynamic distribution value using the top half of the players in the field players of a tournament.

 (power(( 1 – power((( Finishing Position -1) / min(RatedPlayerCnt/2,64)),.7)),3)) * 90 /100 * (1st place value)

These two values are what a player earns for a given tournament.

IFPA Rating Calculation

To help gauge the skill of a player we have incorporated a ratings system that leverages a players’ finishing order to “simulate” head to head play. This Rating is used as part of the TVA for the RATING strength indicator to help determine the value of each tournament.

• Glicko is being used as the foundation of the ratings system.
• To simulate head to head play, we are using the results of tournaments we already track. We know this isn’t true head to head, but that data is not avaliable.
• For a given player in a tournament, any player finishing ahead of them is treated as a loss and everyone they finish ahead of is treated as a win.  Ties are when a player finishes in the same position as other players.
• Until a player has played 5 events, they will have a provisional rating of 1300. Starting with the 6th event, their rating will start to impact the value of events.
• The IFPA Rating will only be adjusted based on the 32 players above and below a players’ finishing position for any given tournament result. For example, a player finishing 5th in a 60 player tournament will have their IFPA Rating impacted based on losing to the players that finished 1st through 4th, and beating the players that finished 6th through 37th.
• Our RD can be between 10 and 200 with a decay rate of about .3 a day.

Efficiency Percentage

The IFPA also calculates an Efficiency Percentage for each player based on the results in their active resume.

• The Efficiency Percentage is calculated based on the total WPPR points earned by a player divided by the total WPPR points available for 1st place at any IFPA sanctioned event.
• All ‘active’ events are included in this calculation. Any events fully decayed (past 3 years old) are not included.
• For example, if a player finishes in 6th place earning 10 WPPR points, and the value for first place was 50 WPPR points, the Efficiency Percentage would be 20% for that event.
• Efficiency Percentage is used in the formula to calculate a player’s WPPR-PRO ranking.

Change log for 2023 (v5.8)

• Updated TGP rules
  • Events that do not have a separate Qualifying and Finals format will continue to have a maximum TGP value of 100%.
  • Events that have a separate Qualifying and Finals format now have the ability to grade out to a maximum TGP value of 200%. Please note 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. Previously 25 meaningful games played at 4% each would hit that 100% max. This will now be 50 meaningful games played at 4% each to hit this new 200% max.
  • Tournaments that run an UNLIMITED Best Game/Card qualifying format with a minimum 20 hours of qualifying time, will have those qualifying games counted at 2X value (8% increase to TGP for each game included in the qualifying standings).
• Event Value increases for various classes of events
  • Majors –> Previously the IFPA World Pinball Championship, PAPA World Pinball Championships, European Pinball Championships, Pinburgh Match Play Championship and THE OPEN had an event weight of 150%. This will be increased to 200% for 2023. Majors that run formats that are Certified will not get any additional boost beyond this 200%.
  • IFPA Championship Series events –> This classification of event will have an event weight of 150% for 2023. This includes the following events:
    – Any IFPA Country Championship Series final, Any IFPA State and Provincial Championship final, IFPA North American Pinball Championship, Any IFPA European Championship Series event along with the ECS Final, IFPA Pin-Masters Championship, IFPA Heads-Up Pinball Championship, IFPA Power100 Championship, Stern Pro Circuit Final. Championship Series events that run formats that are Certified will not get any additional boost beyond this 150%.

• Updated rules for IFPA Certified events
  • Increased event weight for IFPA Certified event weight to 125%. Addition of IFPA Certified+ tournaments with an event weight of 150%. Updated criteria of eligibility:
    a) 128 rated player minimum – This is only needed for IFPA Certified+ events. There is no player minimum for the 125% boost level.
    b) Limited Best Game/Card Qualifying- minimum 24 attempts with minimum best 12 games being counted,
    minimum 20 hours of qualifying time.
    c) Unlimited Best Game/Card Qualifying – minimum 20 hours of qualifying time, minimum 5 games being counted.
    d) Match Play Qualifying formats (4-player groups) require minimum of 20 qualifying games.
    e) Head to head Qualifying formats require minimum of 40 qualifying games.
    f) 24 finalists minimum (up from 16) – Same finals format requirement as 2022
    g) No other qualifying formats eligible (Flip Frenzy, Pin-Golf, etc)
    h) No player may receive a bye beyond the round of 16 finalists.
    i) Maximum length of the tournament is 4 consecutive days.
    j) Finals for the top 24 cannot start on the same day that Qualifying starts.
    k) Finals portion of the tournament must consist of one of the following approved formats: PAPA style match play rounds (minimum of 3 games per round) or IFPA style head-to-head play (minimum best of 5 matches per round). All game choices during finals must be made by the players.
• Group play formats that utilize the “Multi-Matchplay” style of play (players play in parallel across multiple machines rather than serially in the 4-player matches) will no longer receive the 2X bonus for 4-player groups, or 1.5X bonus for 3-player groups.
• Flip Frenzy formats, also referred to as Pinball! Pinball! Pinball! format will now be graded based on the (AVERAGE number of matches played / divided by 2) by all players in the field. One-Ball Flip Frenzy formats will be graded based on the AVERAGE number of matches played/ divided by 3).
• Any tournaments that eliminate any games that were previously available in the event due to time, in an effort to speed things up (this is often done by switching to “all Classics” when a tournament is running long) will no longer earn TGP after the point in time in which games are eliminated. For tournaments that run into this problem often, we recommend you changing the format to a lower amount of games played, or eliminating any long playing games at the start of the tournament. For tournaments that wish to run an “all Classics” final, this rule will not be enforced if no Classics machines were used for the qualifying portion of the event. Anything other than that will be seen as an effort to speed things up. IFPA approval of an “all Classics” final is required before the event, so contact us if this is something you are interested in doing.
• Any tournament that requires pre-registration must be submitted to the IFPA Calendar a minimum of 30 days before the starting pre-registration date.
• Updated TGP rules for Target Match Play qualifying. This will be based on the average number of games played for all qualifiers.
• Updated participation rules for inclusion in IFPA results. Any player ranked in the top 250 at the time of the event (this goes for leagues and tournaments) will be included in the results submitted into IFPA even if they did not meet at least 50% of all qualifying requirements. Any level of participation, including voiding tickets in a Best Game or Card qualifying format will count as participating in the event.
• Any event that materially changes the format played compared to the format that was originally submitted will have a maximum TGP value of 100%. For example, if you submit a 4-strike event into us for sanctioning and end up running a format that has a separate qualifying and finals portion, that event would not be eligible to get more than 100% TGP. Please notify us of these format changes ahead of the event and we can update the submission in our system to avoid this issue.

Change log for 2022 (v5.7)

• Introduction of IFPA Certified tournaments. A tournament needs to meet the following criteria in order to be eligible for certification:
  • Tournament must have 64 or more rated players that participate.
  • The tournament needs to have a dedicated qualifying portion and then take a minimum of 16 players into a separate finals portion.
  • No player may receive a bye beyond the round of 16 finalists.
  • Qualifying portion of the tournament must consist of the following:
    • For events with LIMITED qualifying – a minimum of 12 actual meaningful games played.
    • For events with UNLIMITED qualifying – a minimum of 5 meaningful games played, plus a minimum of 20 hours of qualifying time available.
  • Finals portion of the tournament must consist of one of the following approved formats:
    • PAPA style match play rounds (minimum of 3 games per round).
    • IFPA style head-to-head play (minimum best of 5 matches per round).
  • Maximum length of the tournament is 4 consecutive days.
  • Finals for the top 16 cannot start on the same day that Qualifying starts.

  All IFPA sanctioned tournaments that meet this criteria will be eligible for certification. All IFPA Certified tournaments will receive a 20% boost to the WPPR points awarded. Tournament directors can apply to have their tournament certified by emailing the IFPA after their event has been sanctioned.

• Updated definitions for what qualifies as Tournaments and Leagues that the IFPA will sanction. Those details are available HERE.
  • Multi-day tournaments must end within 7 days of their starting date.
  • Pinball leagues must have a minimum of 6 sessions per season.
  • Adjustments to league attendance and format requirements have also been made.

Change log for 2020 (v5.6)

• Rules regarding formats that rely on players submitting their own results without the verification of a TD or authorized scorekeeper on site (Selfie Leagues, TOPS Tournaments, etc) has been updated. Previously any qualifying format that includes “unverified” results where a TD, league official, or authorized scorekeeper is not present to record their score, has not had the qualifying portion included in the TGP calculation. This new rule extends that to players as well. Only players that participate in the Final of these events will be eligible to be included in the results submitted to the IFPA.

Change log for 2019 (v5.5)

• TGP Guide has been updated for Strikes events. Fair Strikes and Progressive Strikes have been added. Standard strike knockout events have been updated to more accurately reflect the meaningful number of games played. This updated grading will NOT be retroactively calculated for events prior to 1/1/19.
• Flip Frenzy formats, also referred to as Pinball! Pinball! Pinball! format will graded based on the AVERAGE number of matches played by all players in the field. The IFPA recommends using MatchPlay Events software for this format. The software automatically calculates this average for IFPA submission purposes. This updated grading will NOT be retroactively calculated for events prior to 1/1/19.
• Official IFPA Championship Series Finals will now receive a 25% boost to the WPPR points awarded. This includes the IFPA North American Championship, IFPA European Pinball Championship along with the countries that have officially registered IFPA Country Championships. This updated grading will be retroactively calculated.

Change log for 2018 (v5.4)

• We are rolling back the “50%+” participation rule to be just the “50%” rule. Under WPPR v5.3, the participation percentage was be based on the number of participants for any event with greater than 50 players. For example, a tournament with 75 players will only be allowed to submit results where a player participated in at least 75% of the qualifying requirements. Any tournament with 100 players or more can only include players that have participated in 100% of the qualifying requirements. For 2018, no matter the player count, any IFPA-sanctioned tournament or league with a qualifying portion, players can only be included in IFPA final results if they have met at least 50% of all qualifying requirements. Players that advance to the final round despite not meeting this percentage may also be included in the final standings submitted to the IFPA.

Change log for 2017 (v5.3)

• For any IFPA-sanctioned tournament or league with a qualifying portion, players can only be included in IFPA final results if they have met at least 50% of all qualifying requirements. Any players that don’t meet this minimum participation requirement should be removed from the results by the tournament director (TD) prior to submitting those results to the IFPA. For example, a Best Game qualifying format where 10 machines are available with the best 7 scores counting towards the player’s qualifying position, any player that plays fewer than 4 machines will be removed from the standings submitted to the IFPA. For leagues, this means that players must participate in at least 50% of the sessions of the regular season to be included in the final standings submitted to the IFPA. For Direct Play events with no “finals” the entire tournament will be considered part of the qualifying requirements. For events with more than 50 players, this percentage will be based on the number of participants. For example, a tournament with 75 players will only be allowed to submit results where a player participated in at least 75% of the qualifying requirements. Any tournament with 100 players or more can only include players that have participated in 100% of the qualifying requirements. Players that advance to the final round despite not meeting this percentage may also be included in the final standings submitted to the IFPA.
• Certain formats (Selfie Leagues, TOPS Tournaments, etc) rely on players submitting their own results without the verification of a TD or authorized scorekeeper on site. Any qualifying format that includes “unverified” results where a TD, league official, or authorized scorekeeper is not present to record their score, will not have the qualifying portion included in the TGP calculation. The IFPA will classify these qualifying formats as strictly for seeding purposes, with only the finals format counting towards the TGP calculation.
• The TGP will now include games played that are fewer than 3 balls, including timed formats where players are attempting to reach a score or objective as quickly as possible. Any game where it’s possible for the player to finish on the first ball in play, will be calculated at 33% value for TGP purposes. Any games set to 1-ball play will be worth 33% value. Any games set to 2-ball play will be worth 66% value. No games beyond 3 balls will be worth anything above 100% for TGP purposes. For example, if players have a goal of reaching a certain feature in a game as a way of winning that game or match, the fact that it is POSSIBLE for the player to reach that objective on ball 1 means this will count as 1/3rd of a game played towards TGP. The exception to this rule will be the Pin-Golf format, which will have it’s own set of grading rules (see next bullet points).
• The IFPA is launching the IFPA Tour of sanctioned Pin-Golf events. We are now enforcing stricter rules regarding how organizers can score an IFPA sanctioned Pin-Golf format event, and events must meet this criteria with their course design to award WPPR points as an IFPA sanctioned event. The WPPR points awarded for Pin-Golf events will now include a Pin-Golf Multiplier (PGM) adjustment. This metric is used to grade the difficulty of the course. Full details on the IFPA Tour, rules of course design, and the calculation of the PGM adjustment are available HERE.

Change log from 2016 (v5.2)

• The IFPA will no longer sanction tournaments that don’t have a DIRECT play component as part of the format. DIRECT play represents multiple players (up to a max of 4) playing against one another on a given game (head-to-head or in a group). Many tournaments use an INDIRECT qualifying system where everyone plays the same game (PAPA style qualifying, Best Game qualifying, Pin-Golf). Those tournaments that use an INDIRECT qualifying system must now run a Finals round that consists of DIRECT play between the finalists to crown the winner. A tournament must advance a minimum of 10% but no more than 50% of those players to the Final. Examples of tournaments no longer eligible for WPPR points would be simple high score tournaments without finals, or Pin-Golf tournaments where you simply play your round/rounds.
• Originally WPPR v5.0 rules used the longest theoretical path to determine the number of meaningful games used for TGP. This made for situations where the tournament was being given credit for a “longest path” that had an extremely low chance of actually happening. We are changing this to ‘expected value’ for # of rounds played for bracket/strike/match play tournaments. We’ve included a detailed breakdown of a few approved finals formats, and the number of games that should be counted towards the TGP value here: http://www.ifpapinball.com/tgpguide
• RATED players will be the metric that is used to determine the Dynamic distribution part of the WPPR points awarded for an event. For example a tournament with 300 players in which only 50 were rated will base the dynamic distribution of points as if it was a 50 player tournament.
• Match play formats or formats that utilize PAPA style group finals with 4-player groups will be allowed to count each meaningful game played at 2X. For example, a 3-game round with 4-player groups will now count as 6 additional games added to TGP instead of just 3. This is detailed in the TGP Guide under the “PAPA Style Match Play” approved format. Please note that INDIRECT qualifying and finals formats that happen to play their games in groups of 4 will not be included as part of this 2X boost. Formats that utilize 3-player groups will be allowed to count each meaningful game played at 1.5X.
• The IFPA Rating will only be adjusted based on the 32 players above and below a player’s finishing position for any given tournament result. For example, a player finishing 5th in a 60 player tournament will have their IFPA Rating impacted based on losing to the players that finished 1st through 4th, and beating the players that finished 6th through 37th.
• The IFPA no longer gives additional credit to matches that are longer than 7 games towards the TGP calculation. For example, best-of-9 matches will still only add 7 games to TGP.
• The Tournament Value Adjustment (TVA) has been modified. 50 points are now available to be added to the value of a tournament based on WPPR Rank while 25 points are now available to be added to the value of the tournament based on the IFPA Rating of the participants. Under WPPR v5.1 this was reversed.

Change log from 2015 (v5.1)

• Only Rated players will be included in the player count with respect to base value. A player becomes Rated after participating in 5 events lifetime. These unrated players will still be able to earn WPPR points, and impact the distribution of the points from a tournament, but they simply won’t be counted towards the 1/2 point per player count for the base. This is to limit the impact of organizers trying to sign up random participants, or worse, list fake names of players that did not participate as a way to artificially increase the base value of the tournament.
• We have put a rule in place that you can only play a maximum of 3 meaningful games per machine per ‘state/round’ of an event. Organizers with only one machine are welcome to do multiple rounds or stages where players are eliminated in the process and be able to capture more meaningful games played, but the ‘high score tournament’ or average score, etc. with X number of games counting maxes at 3 per physical machine.
• For any tournaments that have multiple paths of qualifying for the finals, we will take the SHORTEST of those paths when counting meaningful games played for that portion of the tournament. This is to try and stop the confusing formats where organizers offer a way for players to qualify for an event easily, and then have some subgroup of players also battling out for spots by using a longer process, while being able to capture the games played for that subgroup of players. Couple of examples would be taking having 5 machines and allowing the high score of each machine a spot in the finals, while also giving players a chance to advance to the finals based on their play across all 5 machines. This would now count as ONE meaningful game played because of that potential path for players to reach the finals rather than 5.
• For any brackets or group play rounds, we want to promote tournaments using a consistent number of games from round to round. For bracket tournaments we have seen organizers use single game matches throughout, only to then backload the number of games played by having the final match be a best of 25 match. Same thing with group play rounds, we’ve seen organizers play 3 games per round, except for the last round they would intentionally play 11 rounds in order to reach the 25 games played metric. We will use the minimum number of games for any one round of play in determining how many meaningful games played get counted, so if someone wants to run best of 3 matches they should be making that choice for the entire bracket. They will no longer be able to pick certain rounds to expand that match total, or rather they could, but they would still only be credited for 3 games played for that round. We are okay with the winner’s bracket and loser’s bracket being different lengths, as long as it’s consistent across each of them individually.

The 2024 IFPA Pin-Masters: World Pin-Golf Championships are scheduled for March 8th-10th, 2024 at District 82 in De Pere, Wisconsin.

Registration will open on Saturday, September 30th at 11:00 AM CST.

Please take this opportunity to solidify your spot in next year’s IFPA Pin-Masters, which is limited to 144 players.

Entry fee is $350 per player. Any refunds will be paid back at 50% of the registration fee. The additional funds will be added to the prize pool.

Please note spots will be RESERVED for any player that qualifies for the IFPA North American Pinball Championship. Do NOT register if you only intend to participate should you qualify for the IFPA North American Pinball Championship.

Full details of the event are available here:
https://www.ifpapinball.com/tournament_pages/pinmasters/

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.

I. Quick Overview

The IFPA Women’s North American Pinball Championship is an annual pinball competition organized by the IFPA. As part of the prize package for each IFPA Women’s State/Province/District Pinball Championship, each IFPA Women’s State/Province/District Pinball Champion will win free entry into the IFPA Women’s North American Pinball Championship. If the IFPA Women’s State/Province/District Pinball Champion is unable to attend the IFPA Women’s North American Pinball Championship, the runner-up will be allowed to participate and serve as the representative. The 2023-24 IFPA Women’s North American Pinball Championship will be held March 22nd, 2024 at Wizard’s World Pinball Arcade in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

All mentions of “State” below also refer to Province and District winners.

II. Competition Details

1. How to qualify

The only way to qualify for the IFPA Women’s North American Pinball Championship is to win an IFPA Women’s State Pinball Championship. If the Women’s State Champion is unable to attend, the runner-up is the only eligible alternate.

2. Fees

The entry fee for the IFPA Women’s North American Pinball Championship will be $20 for the inaugural 2023-24 event. Once the endorsement fees for women’s events go into effect in 2024, entry to this event will be free and a portion of the fees collected through the endorsement of women’s pinball events within the US and Canada will go towards the prize pool for the event.

games
3. Prizes

In addition to the entry fee collected from each competitor, the prize pool will be supplemented by sponsorships and donations. In the event of an overrun beyond expenses, tournament revenue will be retained to finance the next IFPA event. In the event IFPA discontinues its events or is disbanded, any such retained revenue will be donated to charity.

In addition to the prize pool, the winner of the event will receive a trophy and the title of Women’s North American Pinball Champion. Players placing in 2nd – 4th place will receive a plaque. The highest finisher of any United States State/District will earn the title of “US Women’s National Pinball Champion”. The highest finisher of any Canadian Province will earn the title of “Canadian Women’s National Pinball Champion”.

More details regarding the prize pool will be added to this page as they become available.

4. Schedule

9am-10am –> Practice Session
10am-10pm –> Matches will be played continuously until the tournament is finished

III. Format of Matches

1. Seeding of finalists

Once all participants are finalized, the players will be seeded based on their WPPR rank at the end of the calendar year.

2. Machines Chosen

3 sets of 8 machines will be available for the championship. One set will be designated “OLD”, one set “MID”, and one set “NEW”.


Game list:
OLD
Cheetah
Embryon
Flash Gordon
Flight 2000
Harlem Globetrotters
Pinball
Seawitch
Wild Fyre
Wizard

MID
Congo
F-14 Tomcat
Fish Tales
Kiss (LE)
Medieval Madness
Monster Bash
Pin-Bot
Red and Ted’s Road Show
Shrek

NEW
Aerosmith (LE)
Beatles
Jurassic Park (30th Anniversary)
Rush (Pro)
Star Wars (Comic Book Art Pro)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Pro)
The Mandalorian (Pro)
The Walking Dead (Premium)
Tron

3. Head-to-Head Single Elimination Format

Players will be placed in a single elimination bracket once the seedings have been completed. Depending on the number of players, there will be byes for the top seeded players through the first round.

With 32 players or fewer, a standard seeded 32 player bracket will be used. Click HERE for an example bracket.

With more than 32 players, a standard seeded 64 player bracket will be used. Click HERE for an example bracket.

Each match will be a race to 4 wins (unless a match is tied 3-3 after 6 games where a sudden death tiebreaker will be played – see below). At the start of the match each player will choose an ‘OLD’, ’MID’ and ’NEW’ machine. The lower seeded player will choose the first machine, followed by the higher seeded player choosing the second machine. This picking order will continue until all 6 games have been chosen. A machine may not be picked more than once in the same match. Once a player verbally makes any choice regarding machine or position, they are locked into that decision.

The higher seed will first choose whether they want to start on one of their own choices, or one of the lower seed’s choices. Position will be based on who originally selected the machine before the match started. The player that did not have the machine as a part of their three choices will have choice of position on that particular machine. The match will alternate between machines chosen by each player, until all 6 games are completed. Should a player reach 4 wins before all 6 games are completed, no further games should be played.

Should the match be tied after these 6 games, the match will move to ‘Sudden Death’. This will be a single game where any of the remaining machines are available to be chosen. The higher seeded player will have choice of machine or position for this ‘Sudden Death’ game.

Each player will have the opportunity for 30 seconds of practice time before starting every game of every match. This is to ensure that both players have a chance to get familiar with the machine.

The winner of the match advances to the next round, while the loser is eliminated.

The 3rd/4th place Consolation Final will be played as a best-of-three instead of a best-of-seven like all other rounds, using the same rules.

4. Winners

Winners will receive cash prizes as cash or check during an awards ceremony shortly following the conclusion of all final rounds. Winners need not be present to receive prizes; prizes will be supplied via postal mail if necessary. All taxes are the sole responsibility of winners. Certain tax forms may need to be completed, as directed by tournament officials. All decisions by tournament officials regarding winners and prizes are final.

First Place will also receive the title “Women’s North American Pinball Champion”. This title remains in effect until the next annual IFPA Women’s North American Championship Series, or will expire after two years if the IFPA Women’s North American Championship Series is discontinued.

      5.Rulings and Malfunctions

All rulings and malfunctions will be based on the rules for the IFPA World Pinball Championship. Those are available HERE, starting at Paragraph V. Please ignore any sections above this as that relates to the format of the World Championship.

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.

sponsored blog post

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/

WPPR v6.0 is 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.

WPPR v6.0 will analyze to what extent the results making up that player’s current world ranking are representative of that player’s skill level when compared to all the events that player has played in over the past 3 years. This analysis will be done by looking at one of the other IFPA player metrics we’ve been tracking for many years, and that’s the Efficiency Percentage (EFF%) metric. This metric will now be an important part of calculating this new “WPPR PRO” ranking.

We will be incorporating a player’s Efficiency Percentage (EFF%) to help define what we’re calling the “WPPRtunity” metric. This is an estimate of the total amount of WPPR’s available that a player played in to generate their top 20 card in determining that player’s world ranking. EFF% = WPPR’s earned/ WPPR’s available for all active events on your resume (not just the events on your top 20 card). This will be used to adjust a player’s WPPR point total into this new WPPR PRO point total.

We will also be incorporating a player’s Strength of Schedule (SOS) to help us analyze a player’s EFF% metric. For players that play in tougher events, the chances of maintaining a higher EFF% metric is harder compared to players that play against easier competition. SOS will be calculated by taking the [Total Active Matches against Top 250 Players / Total Active Matches Against All Players]. For example, Keith Elwin has played 807 matches against the current top 250. He’s played 2372 active matches against everyone. His SOS metric would be 807/2372 = 34.02%.
For players with an SOS metric that is greater than 25%, we will adjusting that player’s EFF% in the following manner: ADJ EFF% = EFF% * (SOS/25%). For example, Keith Elwin has an EFF% of 60.38%, and an SOS of 34.02%. So he would qualify for an EFF% adjustment –> 60.38% * (34.02%/25%) = 82.17%.
*Please note that for the Women’s WPPR PRO rankings, we will be using the Top 100 Players with a SOS metric of greater than 40%.

To try and help explain things easier, I’ll be comparing two players in these examples, Josh Sharpe (ranked 21st as of this writing) and Keith Elwin (ranked 22nd as of this writing). Some people may say that Keith Elwin is a more skilled player than Josh Sharpe, and that Josh is only ranked higher than Keith because of the massive number of additional opportunities that Josh has had to compete and rack up WPPR points compared to Keith. This analysis of WPPR v6.0 should prove once and for all who is objectively a better player between Josh and Keith.

For those not familiar with how EFF% is calculated, let’s break that down for both players.
Josh Sharpe –> Total Active WPPR’s Earned (1568.17) / Total Active WPPR’s Available (4936.01) = 31.77%
Keith Elwin –> Total Active WPPR’s Earned (1264.02) / Total Active WPPR’s Available (2093.44) = 60.38%
For example, if both Josh and Keith attended the same event worth 100 WPPR points to the winner, on average Josh would earn 31.77 WPPR’s from that event while Keith would earn 60.38 WPPR’s.

We’ll be using these stats for both Josh and Keith to show the WPPR v6.0 calculation process below which will determine the WPPR PRO ranking.

STEP 1 → Calculating the “WPPRtunity” metric
This is calculated by taking the total WPPR’s on a player’s card and dividing it by a player’s EFF%.
Josh Sharpe –> 1180.07 / 31.77% = 3714.42
Keith Elwin –> 1149.60 / 60.38% = 1903.94
What this is estimating is that I would have to play in over 3700 WPPR’s worth of events to rack up my 1180.07 total.
This estimate says that Keith would have to play in roughly 1900 WPPR’s worth of events to rack up his 1149.60 total.
Based on this comparison, I would have to play twice as much as Keith in order to get a similar number of WPPR points on my card. This is a data point that supports the claim that Keith Elwin is more skilled at playing competitive pinball than Josh Sharpe and a system that ranks Keith higher would be more accurate.

STEP 2 → Defining what is a reasonable level of “WPPRtunity”
We will be calculating this WPPRtunity metric for every player in the top 250, finding an average across those players. This average WPPRtunity value will be used to help calculate an adjustment to a player’s WPPR point total, creating a WPPR PRO list for the top 250 players after this v6.0 adjustment is made.
For the purposes of this example, we’re going to use 1500.00 as this average WPPRtunity value.
Anyone that has a WPPRtunity value 1500.00 or below would keep all of their existing WPPR points in their resume at full value.
Anyone that has a WPPRtunity value higher than 1500.00 will have a certain percentage of the WPPR points in their resume awarded at the value of the EFF% rather than at full value.

STEP 3 → Calculate the percentage of a player’s WPPR point total that will be adjusted to create their WPPR PRO point total
This is calculated by taking the Player’s Excess WPPRtunity Amount over Average / Players WPPRtunity Value
Josh Sharpe –> (3714.42-1500)/3714.42 = 59.62%
Keith Elwin –> (1903.94-1500)/1903.94 = 21.22%
59.62% of the WPPR’s on my resume would be subject to this adjustment, with that adjustment being based on my EFF%.

STEP 4 → Calculate the WPPR PRO point total by applying this adjustment
This is calculated by taking the Player’s WPPR point total * the percentage of those WPPR’s to be adjusted * 1-EFF%
Josh Sharpe –> 1180.07 * 59.62% * 68.23% = Adjustment of 480.04 WPPR’s –> WPPR PRO total of 700.03 WPPR PRO Points
Keith Elwin –> 1149.60 * 21.22% * 39.62% = Adjustment of 96.65 WPPR’s –> WPPR PRO total of 1052.95 WPPR PRO Points

Josh Sharpe –> WPPR RANK = 21st, WPPR PRO RANK = 32nd (down 11 spots)
Keith Elwin –> WPPR RANK = 22nd, WPPR PRO RANK = 11th (up 11 spots)

While this is just one example, a more general way to explain this is to take Player A that believes they are a mediocre level player that tends to feel like they get lucky every once in a while.

They’ll play 10 events, have a great showing in one of them due to some version of ‘everything fell into place for them’ at that event (some combination of skill/luck/etc).

Now take that same player and have them play in 200 events.

The old system ranks this person based only on the 20 events where ‘everything fell into place for them’.

The new system looks at that person and asks the question, what amount of play did this player play in to earn that wonderful top 20 card?

For a player that gets some version of “lucky” 10% of the time they play, the adjustment can be quite impactful. For a player that is more consistent across their entire active body of work, the adjustment can be little to nothing.

There is a sample worksheet showing this WPPR v6.0 calculation HERE.

For those looking to increase their WPPR PRO rank, this can be done by increasing the WPPR’s on your top 20 card as well as increasing your EFF%.

A reminder that only the top 250 players in the world are included in the WPPR PRO rankings. As of this current simulation 128 players will see their WPPR PRO ranking increase compared to their WPPR ranking, while 114 players will see their WPPR PRO ranking decrease compared to their WPPR ranking. 66 of the 250 players will see no adjustment made based on the WPPR v6.0 calculation based on their WPPRtunity level being below average.

Official Rules

IFPA19 is the World Pinball Championship event operated by the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA). This document specifies the official operating rules and regulations of the event.

The event coordinators for IFPA19 are Josh Sharpe, Zach Sharpe, Brian Woodard and Adam Becker. Event coordinators organize volunteers, designate scorekeepers, handle malfunctions and rulings, delegate responsibilities and authority, and otherwise work to ensure the smooth operation of the tournament. Event coordinators and designated officials are not excluded from tournament play but will be recused from any situation that directly affects their actual or potential standing as a player.

I. Quick Overview

IFPA tournament rules are quite lengthy and detailed. They reflect the experience of many years of tournament and league play, under many different systems. Many of the rules are based on rules used by the Professional and Amateur Pinball Association (PAPA). The underlying ideas are simple, however.

The tournament consists of 8 sessions of qualifying rounds. During each session, players play against each other in three 4-player games. Players earn points based on their finishing positions, with the top 32 players advancing to the final rounds.

In the final rounds, qualifying players play against each other in head-to-head single elimination matches until a winner is determined.

II. Competition Details

1. How to qualify

Unlike most tournaments where the qualification process takes place over a couple of days, qualifying for the IFPA World Championship takes place all year. Utilizing its World Pinball Player Rankings, the IFPA will use the January 1st, 2024 rankings to determine the qualifiers for IFPA19. The tournament field will consist of 80 players in total.

There will be two Country Exemption spots for each eligible country, with the rest of the field being made up of the most highly ranked players from the WPPR list, until we have filled 77 of the 80 spots. For players that cannot attend, spots will be filled by going down the rankings list.

We require that a country has 50 or more players currently ranked within their country to be eligible to award these 2 Country Exemption spots for the IFPA World Pinball Championship. Please note that for the Country Exemption spots, a player must be residing in their registered country for at least a year in order to be eligible.

Country Exemption Spot #1 –> This will be reserved for the top ranked player from each eligible country as of 1/1/2024. Should the top ranked player not be able to attend, that country exemption will move down the country ranking list until it is filled. For countries that organize an IFPA Country Championship Series, players that have qualified for that final will be given priority for a Country Exemption spot over those that have not qualified. For Unites States/Canada, players that have qualified for the finals of a State or Province will be given priority for this spot.

Country Exemption Spot #2 –> This will be reserved for the highest finisher in the Country Championship Series Final that isn’t already qualified through the Country Exemption Spot #1 or the At-Large field process. Any player that received an invitation to register for IFPA19 and declined that invitation will still be eligible for this Country Exemption spot. For any country that does not organize a Country Championship Series Final, the IFPA will maintain Country Championship Series standings based on total WPPR points earned from all sanctioned events within that country for the calendar year. Those standings will be used in lieu of the Country Championship Series Final standings for purposes of this Country Exemption spot. For United States/Canada, the highest ranked player as of 1/1/24 from the group of SCS and PCS winners will earn this spot.

Additionally, 3 of the 80 spots will be made available, one reserved for the 2023-24 IFPA North American Pinball Championship, one reserved for the 2023-24 IFPA European Pinball Championship, and one for the 2024 IFPA Women’s World Pinball Championship. These satellite spots will be open for any player ranked in the World Pinball Player Rankings as of the end of 2023, but did not qualify for IFPA19 through the automatic bid process. Any player that received an invitation to register for IFPA19 and declined that invitation will still be eligible for these satellite spots. Contact the IFPA for these details.

2. Fees

Entry fee is $400 per player for at-large spots, which is payable through the IFPA website at the time of registration.
Fee breakdown:
– $50 hosting fee
– $20 in processing fees (Stripe fees + IFPA sanctioning + trophy costs)
– $330 towards prize money

Entry fee is $250 per player for Country Exemption spots, which is payable through the IFPA website at the time of registration.
Fee breakdown:
– $50 hosting fee
– $20 in processing fees (Stripe fees + IFPA sanctioning + trophy costs)
– $180 towards prize money

Cancellations are refunded 50% of their registration fee.

3. Prizes

The tournament features a guaranteed package of cash prizes. Additional tournament expenses on top of what was listed above are recouped through sponsorship dollars. In the event of an overrun beyond expenses, tournament revenue will be retained to finance the next IFPA event. In the event IFPA discontinues its events or is disbanded, any such retained revenue will be donated to charity.

The estimated prize package is as follows. The below table is based on 40 Country Exemption spots, 37 At-Large spots, 3 Satellite spots and 5% of the Global Sanctioning Fees:

The winner of IFPA19 will also receive the title “World Pinball Champion”.

III. Qualifying Sessions

1. Original groupings for Session #1

Once all participants are finalized, the 80 players will be ranked by their World Pinball Player Rankings standing as of 1/1/23. The field will be divided into 20 groups of 4 players.

Initial groups for Session #1 will be as follows:

2. Playing a session

Each group will be assigned 3 games at random (1 ‘OLD’, 1 ’MID’ and 1 ‘NEW’).

Groups will play from OLD to MID to NEW except when there is a conflict of multiple groups being put on the same machine. Should this occur, every effort will be made to shift lower groups first to a different game order, however, to best ensure that players do not replay games more than absolutely necessary any group has the chance of not playing in the order of OLD to MID to NEW. The scoresheets will show the proper order of how the games should be played from top to bottom.

Each player will have the opportunity for 30 seconds of practice time before starting every game of every session.

Choice of position for game 1 will go to the highest seeded player within that group based on the standings entering that session, second choice will go to the 2nd highest seeded player, third choice will go to the 3rd highest seeded player and the lowest seeded player will have the remaining choice. Please note that players do not need to announce their desired position choice until after a game has been selected if they prefer.

In subsequent games, the player finishing in 4th place will have choice of position for Game 2. The player finishing in 3rd place will have 2nd choice of position. The player finishing in 2nd place will have 3rd choice of position. The player finishing in 1st place will have the remaining position.

3. Scoring

The rank of the player’s result on each machine awards the following amount of points. These points are cumulative over all 8 sessions when the finalists are determined.

In the unlikely event of two or more scores on a machine being tied, an average point value of the tied positions will be awarded for each tied score. For example, a tie for 2nd place would earn each player 4 points.

In the unlikely event that someone drops out of the tournament during the qualifying sessions, and a 3 person group is formed, scoring for that group will be 7 points for first place, 4 points for second place and 1 point for third place. 3 person groups will be formed based on where the missing players would have been grouped. Should 4 players drop out, we will instead form 19 groups of 4 rather than 16 groups of 4 and 4 groups of 3.

Tournament officials will endeavor to provide up-to-date scores and rankings at all times, using a projected screen. The up-to-date scores and rankings will also be available on the http://www.ifpapinball.com/ Web site following each session.

4. Regrouping for Session #2 through Session #8

After Session #1 players will be ranked according to their first session scores. For session #2 through session #8 the groupings will be done according to the most up to date standings entering that particular session.

Session 2: same as round 1
Session 3: 1-20-21-40, 2-19-22-39, etc, also 41-60-61-80, 42-59-62-79, etc.
Session 4: same as round 3
Session 5: 1-10-11-20, 2-9-12-19, etc, also 21-30-31-40, 22-29-32-39, etc.
Session 6: 1-8-9-16, 2-7-10-15, etc, also 17-24-25-32, 18-23-26-31, etc.
Session 7: 1-4-5-8, 2-3-6-7, 9-12-13-16, 10-11-14-15, etc.
Session 8: 1-2-3-4, 5-6-7-8, etc.

Full breakdown of groupings can be found HERE.

In the case of players that are tied in total points after a given session, those players will be randomly placed in the different tied positions available.

IV. Final Rounds

1. Advancing to Finals

When all 8 sessions of the qualifying round have been completed, a final calculation of standings will be tabulated. Those scores will be ranked, and the top 32 players will advance to the final rounds.

In the event a qualifying player is not available, he or she will be skipped in the ranking as if he or she had not qualified. Upon discovering that a player is not present, tournament officials will make a specific announcement for that player, allowing at least ten minutes but no more than twenty minutes, for that player to appear. Substitutions or late arrivals are not allowed.

In the event that two or more players are tied on either the qualifying bubble, a potential bye or for top seed, such that not all of the tied players can advance to the final rounds or receive the bye, a tiebreaking procedure will be utilized. A single game will be played on a machine randomly selected by tournament officials from the qualifying bank of games. Tournament officials will draw one ‘OLD’, one ’MID’ and one ’NEW’ machine at random.

The players tied on the qualifying/bye bubble will be asked to vote by secret ballot for which game they would like to play. The game with the most votes will be the game used for the tie-breaker game. If two or three machines receive the same number of votes, the players will vote again from the machines that are tied from the original voting. If after the second round of voting there is still a tie, the following procedure will be used:

For a tie of 2-players, the game that received zero votes will be the tiebreaker game played.
For a tie of 3 or more players, the game will be chosen at random from those three by tournament officials.

The tied players will play, in randomly determined order, in a multi-player game on the selected machine, and will subsequently be ranked in the order of their scores on that game. If more players are tied than the selected machine will support in a single game, multiple games will be played to accommodate all tied players, in randomly determined order, and the resulting scores will be compared as if they had occurred in a single game on the same machine. This tie-breaking procedure is used to determine which players advance to the finals, and which players are eliminated. However, this one-game playoff will not affect the seeding of the tied players that do advance. The tied players that do advance will be ranked according to the methods of players not on the qualifying bubble (see next paragraph).

In the event that two or more players are tied but are not on the qualifying/bye bubble, a simpler tiebreaking procedure will be used in order to save time. Tournament officials will examine the Session sheets to determine the head-to-head results for the players involved in the tie. A winning percentage will be calculated for each player involved in the tie, and the player with the highest winning percentage will be given the highest rank entering the final rounds. Should there be a tie in winning percentages between any of the players involved in the tiebreaker, original rankings used at the start of the tournament (1/1/19 World Pinball Player Ranking) will be used to rank the players in order from highest to lowest. Should a player not have a record against any of the other players involved in the tie, that player will be ranked amongst those tied based on their initial ranking entering the tournament. The remaining players will be ranked based on the initial tie breaking procedure of head-to-head record.

2. Machines Chosen

The machines used for final rounds in each division will be the same machines used during the qualifying sessions.

The most updated list of these games are available here:
http://www.ifpapinball.com/ifpa19/games

3. Head-to-Head Single Elimination Format

Players will be placed in a single elimination bracket based on the final seedings after Session #8 and all tiebreakers are completed. Players seeded 1 through 8 will receive 2 byes, while players seeded 9 through 16 will receive 1 bye.

First round pairings are as follows:

17 vs. 32, 18 vs. 31, 19 vs. 30, 20 vs. 29,
21 vs. 28, 22 vs. 27, 23 vs. 26, 24 vs. 25

Second round pairings are as follows:

9 vs. 24/25 winner, 10 vs. 23/26 winner, 11 vs. 22/27 winner,
12 vs. 21/28 winner, 13 vs. 20/29, 14 vs. 19/30 winner,
15 vs. 18/31 winner, 16 vs. 17/32 winner

Third round pairings are as follows:

1 vs. 16/17/32, 2 vs. 15/18/31, 3 vs. 14/19/30,
4 vs. 13/20/29, 5 vs. 12/21/28, 6 vs. 11/22/27,
7 vs. 10/23/26, 8 vs. 9/24/25

Each match will be a race to 4 wins (unless a match is tied 3-3 after 6 games where a sudden death tiebreaker will be played – see below). At the start of the match each player will choose an ‘OLD’, ’MID’ and ’NEW’ machine. The lower seeded player will choose the first machine, followed by the higher seeded player choosing the second machine. This picking order will continue until all 6 games have been chosen. A machine may not be picked more than once in the same match. Once a player verbally makes any choice regarding machine or position, they are locked into that decision.

The higher seed will first choose whether they want to start on one of their own choices, or one of the lower seed’s choices. Position will be based on who originally selected the machine before the match started. The player that did not have the machine as a part of their three choices will have choice of position on that particular machine. The match will alternate between machines chosen by each player, until all 6 games are completed. Should a player reach 4 wins before all 6 games are completed, no further games should be played. If the higher seeded player chooses to start on one of their machine choices, they will choose game number 1, 3 and 5 in the match (from their 3 picks). The lower seeded player would then be choosing game number 2, 4 and 6 in the match (from their 3 picks).

Each player will have the opportunity for 30 seconds of practice time before starting every game of every match. This is to ensure that players that did not happen to play the chosen machine during the Session portion of the tournament has a chance to get familiar with the machine.

Should the match be tied after these 6 games, the match will move to ‘Sudden Death’. This will be a best-of-3 match where any of the remaining machines are available to be chosen. This means that all 3 games of ‘Sudden Death’ can be played on the same era of games. The higher seeded player will have choice of machine or position for the 1st game, with the loser of each subsequent game having choice of machine or order.

The winner of the match advances to the next round, while the loser is eliminated.

Consolation matches will be run differently from a normal finals head-to-head match. The 5th through 8th place match will be run similar to a qualifying session, while the 3rd/4th place Consolation Final will instantly be moved to ‘Sudden Death’ and will be a best of 3 match.

4. Winners

First Place will receive the title “World Pinball Champion”. This title remains in effect until the next annual IFPA tournament, or will expire after two years if IFPA tournaments are discontinued.

*The remaining rules of the tournament follow the PAPA/IFPA unified ruleset – available HERE*

CTV News in Winnipeg Canada published a piece on IFPA18 participant Jack Tadman. Click HERE to watch the piece.

Louis Marx’s interview with Tournament Director:
Lewis Bevans

Well, I am supposed to be doing these interviews for the IFPA a few times a year. Truth be told, since the last one that I published, I had a couple of mild strokes and then COVID hit the world … Well, it’s been a while, but it’s time to start writing again . . .

I am not tech savvy and people keep asking, “why don’t you do a podcast?” … Honestly, I don’t know how, so I choose to do this the old fashioned way.

Thus, I can do these over Zoom and such, but it turns out that a friend was “in the neighborhood”, so I have the unique pleasure of welcoming Lewis Bevans to my home here in Rowlett, Texas.

KEY:
LM = Louis Marx
LB = Lewis Bevans

LM: Welcome to Texas! What brings you to town?
LB: I work for a glass manufacturer about two hours northwest of Dallas. I try to give myself an evening or more to visit a tournament, go to a barcade, or in this case, do an interview for the IFPA.

LM: How often does work bring you to Texas
LB: Normally, it’s about twice a year, so maybe three times a year back at about 2018 or so I was traveling more often. But nowadays I tried to make it at least twice a year or so to check in with the plant and see how they’re doing around 2018.

LM: Let’s start with biographical info:
Where are you from originally?
LB: I was from Shepton Pennsylvania – close to Hazelton and about 45 minutes away from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.

LM: …and where is home today?
LB: Just outside of Pittsburgh. Lived in Pittsburgh for 7 years and moved out of the city to Sharpsburg in 2021.

LM: Do you have any machines at home? If yes, how long have you been a collector?
LB: Currently in the basement, Batman 66 and the Shadow, then, at the Pittsburgh Pinball Dojo I have my Ghostbusters. Two more games, Firepower and Elektra that are currently, but will come when I finish the basement. I also have two project machines, a Star Trek TNG and Delta Queen. Bought my first machine in 2017 with my PAPA C Division winnings – that was the Delta Queen.

LM: When did you get into the life as a Tournament Official?
LB: A little bit after that 2017 event, I talked to Doug (Polka) and he was always looking for help running tournaments. I was also helping with the Wednesday weeklies at Kickback Pinball Café. In 2018, I was given the “callup”- Doug was looking for more Tournament Directors for Pinburgh and I was a candidate – I don’t even think I thought twice about it, I just said YES.

LM: When was your first LARGE event as a Tournament Director or Official? How did it come about for you?
LB: First large one was Pinburgh. I had helped out with Southern Fried that same year – so it wasn’t my first foray into a circuit event, but it was definitely my largest. PAPA ran a well oiled machine – even though we put in a whole lot of work, it didn’t feel like it. The diversity of rulings and unique situations.

LM: What was the first year for your events and/or leagues? How did it go?
LB: My first independent event was 2019’s Pinburgh PRE TOURNAMENT at Helicon Brewing.  I was the sole TD for a 81-person knockout tournament and it ran pretty smooth. It helped that I had a lot of players that knew what was going on. It was still managing a lot of players with 40+ machines and getting everyone to bed at a reasonable hour.

LM: Let’s talk about Pinburgh… What was your role in the esteemed group of tournament officials?
LB: So a lot of the officials were on the same level. Anyone is authorized to make the rulings and we could call for backups for second opinions. I was also the go to guy for one off rule questions on the obscure solid states. After, we would break off into our divisions and both years, I was responsible for the E division. You have any interesting mix when you are choosing for the E division. You have a lot more creative freedom because you have access to games that other divisions wouldn’t want for playtime or other reasons. Solar Fire is my favorite example because, with E division everything was smooth – Doug picked up on it and brought it to ClePin Classics – needless to say, I played Eric Stone in the Finals of that and there’s pictures of me laying down, not so patiently waiting. I think one of the balls took 40 minutes.

LM: What’s the largest single challenge your faced at Pinburgh?
LB:  The rulings themselves were fine, but when we’re setting up finals banks, you’re given an area and can swap out games. The biggest challenge and hassle is, after moving thing around, you have make sure everything works after the moves, is re-leveled, and adjusted. One year I was up until 1 or 2 AM just getting the machines ready.

LM: I don’t know about the northeast, but down here, we were all taken by surprise when they announced that they were liquidating. When did you know about their difficulties?
LB: I knew with the 2020 events not happening that there was going to be some potential issues, but nobody really expected it to be to that extent.

LM: A followup since youre more familiar with them – do know if they every thought about something like a GOFUNDME to keep from liquidating?
LB: I think it was too extensive of a need for a Go Fund Me page.

LM: Other than the obvious, because we all miss Pinburgh, are there any regrets?
LB: I do fondly miss having the full Pinburgh experience. For months leading up to the event, we’d be hosting twice a month events to put the games through their paces. Pinburgh never would have run as smoothly if we didn’t put in hundreds of hours of play testing.

LM: Are there any unique memories that you want to share?
LB: There was, at one point during ReplayFX 2019, Red Bull was giving away free drinks. Heaven forbid I got my hands on one. I’m usually an energetic person. Having me on an energy drink was essentially putting me on overclock, running to every light. I was way more energetic than any Tournament Director after ten hours should be. And it got to the point where one of the techs was going to yellow card me.

LM: How different is it to run larger versus smaller tournaments for you? What stands out?
LB: So, running a larger tournament tends to mean you have help. When I run smaller tournaments, im usually running them by myself or have one person deputized to help. For larger events, we usually have a larger team to help with decisions, 2^nd opinions, or manage when multiple things are happening at the same time. Just as when I am working with smaller events I get more time to sit back and take in what’s going on around me or even watch a game or two. Gives you time appreciate the work that went into creating the event.

LM: Moving to some more biographical info, what’s your oldest or first pinball memory?
LB: I have to give two of them because I am not sure which one came first. First was a friend of mine had restored a Bally Star Trek. So I got to play that in their basement when I went over there. The second is one of the local arcades had a rescue 911 that I liked to play a lot. I think I was about 7 or 8 at the time.

LM: What brought you back to pinball as an adult?
LB: I moved to Pittsburgh in 2015 and to bring it back to Kickback – I saw a pinball café that seemed interesting – so I decided to go in and start playing some. I was really interested in Theater of Magic at the time. I wanted to get high scores and win free plays – I branched out to other machines and met everything and went from there. Ive met so many people and travel for pinball now – I am sol glad that one day I just randomly decided to go in and play some pinball.

LM: Were you playing competitive pinball before becoming an Official or Director?
LB: Yes – my first unofficial tournament was on linked NBA Fastbreaks at Kickback – That’s when I started being a competitive pinball player. It took me about two years from that point to start helping to run events or be interested in Directing.

LM: When did you get into competitive pinball?
LB: That in 2015

LM: When you started running your own events, were there already other events and/or leagues running in your city? In your region?
LB:  So, up until 2021, there was really only one major league, the Pittsburgh Pinball League. Other events and tournaments would essentially be in that ecosystem. Since then , there have been a few new leagues that have come around, especially during Pittsburgh’s summer break. Two of the ones that come to mind are the Superflip Pinball League, which I am a TD for, and then the Iron City Pinball League.

LM: What prompted you to start your events and/or leagues?
LB: wanting more pinball to happen. Not that Pittsburgh didn’t have a vibrant pinball community, but I saw space for more and wanted to make it happen.

LM: Directing Pinball Tournaments can be a thankless job. Any regrets or second thoughts?
LB: No – I don’t regret, even if I don’t play in my tournaments and they becoming successful, I don’t regret stepping back and making sure that they are the best tournaments we can run. That’s anything from a 44 player target match play for my wife’s birthday to being a part of the majesty that’s Pinburgh.

LM: What’s the craziest ruling you’ve had to make as a director?
LB: During one of the Pinburghs, there was a Williams Indiana Jones, where we had a stuck ball on the apron.  It was something where it was truly wedged into the apron so hard that you couldn’t remove the glass from the game. What we ended up doing is wiggle the glass down far enough to get a magnet wand in there. Then we worked the glass down slowly and carefully while holding the ball with the magnet, working hard to keep it from draining since it was at the center of the apron. Took two of us to do it, but we were able to get the ball out of the game and get it on the flipper for the player. My words are not doing it justice – it was a truly magical stuck ball.

LM: What about other truly memorable moments that you want to share?
LB: As a player, from the other side of the flipper, playing and winner the PAPA C division was a truly magical experience. I was somewhat new and trying to see where I was skill-wise. It was such a rush to finally win something in such a tough city to do so. Even if IFPA rankings don’t say it now, its very hard to play in a city where you have DJ, Cryss, Aleksander, Jared, and a few other. That experience is a large part of what motivate me to want to create similar experiences for others.

LM: How often do you deal with participants getting belligerent? Have you ever had to remove or disqualify any players?
LB: It does happen occasionally. Pittsburgh is usually pretty well behaved but eventually we run into a player or two that don’t agree with a decision or takes issue with a process. I had to remove a player once. I was channeling some of the more hot headed nature that I have. I do regret how I behaved when I did that but I do feel like I made the right decision.
LM: I can completely relate – I had one of my regulars go off the deep end a couple of years ago to the point that he was refusing to leave, even after the threat of calling the police was levied. Very unusual behavior for this person.
LB: We try to keep it pretty civil in Pittsburgh.

LM: How do you attract new players? Do you have any marketing secrets to share?

LB: For me, my marketing secrets are mostly just building a good reputation as both a member of the pinball community and a tournament director. When somebody comes to a tournament that I am running,  they can be assured that they are going to be treated with respect as well as going to be in a tournament that will run smoothly. That 44 player match play I mentioned was kind of a Hallmark because we had 23 women. Its unusual to see that kind of a turnout, even if its for a birthday for one of their members.

LM: How many participants do you have at normal events now?

LB: For one off events it could be anywhere from 30 to 50. For the 1^st season of the Superflip Pinball League, just finished in Mid-May, we had 36 players.

LM: How many participants did you have at your first solo event?
LB: Probably be a Wednesday weekly and that would around 20 people.

LM: What is your preferred or favorite tournament format to run? Why?
LB: I’ve been really interested and recently have run a few tournaments with the Amazing Race Tournament Format for the finals. Its a unique format that, once you understand how it works, its not hard to setup and run and it keeps the players flowing so there’s not a lot of downtime.

LM: Is there a specific format you don’t like to run? Why?
LB: I will never play in a flip frenzy that I am running so I can actually make sure that tournament runs smoothly. That’s the only one that really has that larger asterisk for me.

LM: Do you play in your own tournaments? If yes, how much harder is it to focus on tournament play when you’re running an event, versus simply playing in one?
LB: So, for a lot of tournaments I run, I step back, to make sure tits running smoothly for the players. If I have other tournament directors that I can deputize to give rulings, then I am more likely to play.

LM: What haven’t I asked that you feel the IFPA world might want to know?
LB: With Doug and some of the folks around Pittsburgh, we really lost a lot from the pandemic. I cant say anything because Im not even sure if were going to get things together, but we are looking to bring back some events in Pittsburgh.