sponsored blog post

Abari Game Bar is proud to announce they have received a generous sponsorship from CoinTaker for this event. This will allow the top 4 finishers to compete for a minimum combined prize pool of $500. CoinTaker is a family owned and operated business located in Sunbury, Pennsylviania who offer sales and support for the world’s best pinball manufacturers, including Stern, Chicago Gaming, and American Pinball Machines. They also sell accessories which include Superbands, Art work, Toppers, Shooter Rods, LEDs, and much more!

Louis Marx is back with the third interview in the IFPA Tournament Director Stories series. This time he meets with Greg Poverelli out of New York City.

To read the interview, click HERE.

The Burn in Ashburn and eastern Loudoun County Virginia posted an article about the resurgence of competitive pinball in the area. Click HERE to read the article.

The IFPA is pleased to announce that starting in 2020, we will be implementing changes to the IFPA Women’s World Championship as well as introducing state/provincial women’s championships. In order to focus on developing these initiatives, the IFPA will not be moving forward with our previously announced women’s dollar fee at this time. Based on our recent survey of women in pinball, it’s clear that there’s support for a dollar fee and that women highly favor a distribution that keeps prize payouts within each state/province/region with only some going into the Women’s World Championship prize pool. Based on these findings, the IFPA plans to focus on building out these events at the local level first before proceeding with any sanctioning fees.

The 2021 IFPA Women’s World Championship (based on qualifying through December 31, 2020) will feature an expanded qualifying field: the top 16 ranked women based on open event performance and the top 16 ranked women based on women’s event performance. For seeding purposes, players qualifying based on open events will be the odd-numbered seeds (1, 3, 5, etc.), while players qualifying based on women’s events will be the even-numbered seeds (2, 4, 6, etc.). Players who qualify under both systems will be assigned their highest possible seed.

Along with the expanded field, the 2021 IFPA Women’s World Championship will also feature a change in format. Rather than a best-of-7 single elimination bracket, the Women’s World Championship will follow the IFPA World Championship format of 8 sessions of match play with the top half of the field moving to a best-of-7 single elimination bracket. Additional details regarding this format can be found here, with the caveat that the format will be adapted for the 32-player Women’s World Championship.

Separately, the IFPA will be supporting women’s state and provincial championships by providing standardized rankings filters and tournament structure, similar to what is provided for the North American Championship Series. Qualifying will be based on total WPPRs earned in open events or women’s events held in each state or province. For the 16 qualifying spots, 8 will be based on performance in open events and 8 will be based on performance in women’s events. Unlike the North American Championship Series, all events played in 2020 will count toward players’ point totals (rather than a cap of 20 events), and there will be no super state status. Qualifiers from open events will be assigned odd-numbered seeds (1, 3, 5, etc.), while qualifiers from women’s events will be assigned even-numbered seeds (2, 4, 6, etc.).

If you are interested in running a women’s championship in your state or province, please reach out to ifpawomen@gmail.com for additional details. We’d like to extend a hearty thank you to those who have already taken the initiative to set up and run regional women’s championships. The success of any future women’s championship series wouldn’t be possible without that passion and leadership on a local level, and the IFPA looks forward to supporting that work moving forward.

Welcome to Tournament Director 101!

In this series of posts, I will outline some common mistakes I see tournament directors make with results submissions. The goal is to make that process smoother for all involved.

Today I wanted to talk about something simple: terminology. A lot of mistakes in TGP (Tournament Grading Percentage) happen as a result of a miscommunication based on the terminology of a tournament.

So let’s define some of those and start simply with a “round.”

A lot of the time, TDs will use a phrase like this:

“9 rounds of qualifying”

The above isn’t super meaningful because a round can be represented by any number of games. As an example, with Pinburgh, each round has 4 games in it, whereas the IFPA WC has rounds of 3 games each. So when referencing a round of an individual event, I need to know exactly how many games are played each round. Otherwise, I have to assume it was only 1 game, head to head. Also, whether those games were played head to head or in groups of 3 or 4 is important toward TGP.

Here’s an expanded version of that earlier statement:

“9 rounds of qualifying, 1 game each round in groups of 4”

Simply adding that information makes the tournament format perfectly clear with what each round included. That saves time for all involved because it removes the need for any follow-up clarification.

Hopefully this was a helpful explanation! Thanks for reading.
#TD101

The Seattle Times posted an article on Seattle’s pinball scene. Click HERE to read the article.

The final events of the 2019-20 SPC season happened this past weekend. Those results are now in so pending any minor value changes for other past tournaments here are your final SPC qualifying standings for the 2019-20 season! Click HERE!

We’ll be following up with details of the Stern Pro Circuit Finals once those are finalized. Congrats to all the qualifiers!

CBS affiliate KOIN6 in Portland, OR aired a piece on Oregon’s #1 ranked pinball player Ken Martin. Click HERE to watch the video.

Here are the April and May 2019 IFPA winners for Player of the Month and Biggest Movers:

Player of the Month:
September 2019 –> Karl DeAngelo (183.86 WPPR’s)
October 2019 –> Julio Vicario Soriano (362.25 WPPR’s)

Biggest Movers:
September 2019 –> Richie Rampershad (+12,305 spots), Rob Presley (+10,159 spots) and Jennifer Johnson (+7,016 spots)
October 2019 –> Anthony Cirillo (+31,570 spots), Daniel Fell (+13,915 spots) and Alex Bishop (+13,451 spots)

These players have now all qualified for the Stern Rewards Program for 2019. Congrats to everyone!

Since the release of WPPR v5.5 for the 2019 season, the IFPA has continued investigating ways to make the World Pinball Player Rankings more accurate for how we rank players across the globe.

These latest changes will be incorporated into WPPR v5.6 which will be implemented starting January 1, 2020.

Please note that for all 2019 IFPA related activities (qualifying for 2019-20 NACS, 2019-20 ECS, IFPA17, etc), version 5.5 will be used for that qualification process.

Below is an overview of changes for the updated 2020 formula:

• 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.

Any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us at ifpapinball@gmail.com. Please check back when we announce that WPPR v5.6 has been implemented for 2020 as the details may always change prior to launch.