blog post courtesy of Mike Burgess

Friday May 31, Saturday June 1

Go out and play in one of the Stern Pinball Official Black Knight: Sword of Rage Launch Parties! Over 50 locations to choose from! Click here to see the complete list: http://www.ifpapinball.com/calendar/

Launch parties are hosted in conjunction with the IFPA – International Flipper Pinball Association and the Stern Army. Official launch parties can only be held at established Stern Army locations! For more information on joining the Stern Army please e-mail [email protected].

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

Player of the Month:
Franck Bona (167.18 WPPR’s)

Biggest Movers:
Dimitri Demers (+12,806 spots), Jason Cody (+9,998 spots) and Edmund Nash (+9,624 spots)

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

sponsored blog post

Spring Fling Auction at Captain’s Auction Warehouse
Arcade Game & Pinball Machine Auction
A two day Event!

Click on link to view catalog & register
https://captainsauctionwarehouse.com/

Stern Pinball, Wade Wilson and the International Flipper Pinball Association are teaming up to sponsor a Stern Army High-Score Tournament on Deadpool Pro, Premium and LE pinball machines.

The tournament is open to players beginning on April 15, 2019 and end on July 31, 2019.

Players can enter by participating in any IFPA-sanctioned Stern Army events that include Deadpool in the tournament:

• Authorized IFPA Stern Army members will organize sanctioned tournament events at the approved Stern Army location.
• The IFPA will establish the tournament settings for the Deadpool Pro, Premium and LE games used in sanctioned tournament events. These settings will be 3 ball play on Factory settings or “harder”.
• Authorized IFPA members will submit high scores from each sanctioned tournament event to the IFPA.
• Authorized IFPA members will email photos of their high scores to [email protected]. All photos must include a picture of the player’s face, their score on the LCD. Please also include the name, city and country of the location of the event.
• Only scores recorded during the actual Stern Army sanctioned event are eligible for this tournament. Practice games or games played at Stern Army locations outside of the sanctioned tournament itself will not be eligible.
• Players have 72 hours after the IFPA sanctioned event takes place to submit their high score photo into the IFPA.
• The player with the highest score will be “Deadpool” until another player tops the score. Other places will be 2) Lil’ Deadpool, 3) Wolverine, 4) Colossus and 5) Dazzler, and other Deadpool characters.
• The player with the highest score as of midnight Chicago-time on July 31, 2019, will claim the “BOOM” title, playfield, translite and more!
• The top nine runner-ups will receive Deadpool related prizes (signed translites and other suprises)

We’ll be keeping a live leaderboard along with any information on upcoming events HERE.

This Week in Pinball published a piece by Dennis Kriesel with a review on the impact of the endorsement fee started in 2018. Click HERE to read the article.

Apparently winning NIB games at a rapid pace just isn’t enough for World #1 Raymond Davidson. Finishing #1 in 2018 qualified Raymond for the Stern Rewards Program. The rewards program allows qualifiers to purchase a brand new Stern pinball machine at a special IFPA price. Raymond redeemed his reward for a Batman 66 Premium.

So far in 2019, Raymond has participated in 10 IFPA sanctioned events and remains on top of the World Pinball Player Rankings (with a 186.22 WPPR point lead over World #2).

Congratulations to Raymond, and remember if you’re interested in qualifying for the Stern Rewards Program, check out the rules here.

Raymond has also started the Do or Die Pinball Podcast. Click HERE to listen.

blog post courtesy of James Todd

Typically after submitting my tournament results to the IFPA I was always curious about how many WPPRs the event was going to bring in. On the night of a tournament, or waiting those few days to a week before the results were approved, I’d do a few quick calculations based on the number of Rated players to get a ballpark number of how many points the tournament might be worth.

More recently I had a bit of spare time, and realised using the API for Matchplay and the IFPA could be used to calculate an estimate of a tournaments WPPR points at the time of a tournament! So I present to you the WPPR Estimator!

http://chunkout.com/wppr/WhatWPPRs.php 51

Note that this will get you a pretty close estimate, but won’t be 100% accurate. It won’t take into account results for players that are pending approval, and all players IFPA ids need to be entered into Matchplay for it to count correctly.

Chuck Webster out of Wakefield, MA finished 2018 being ranked 402nd in the world. This qualified him for the Stern Rewards Program for finishing the year ranked in the top 1000. The rewards program allows qualifiers to purchase a brand new Stern pinball machine at a special IFPA price. Chuck redeemed his reward for a Batman 66 Premium.

So far in 2019, Chuck has participated in 3 IFPA sanctioned events and remains in the top 1000 ranked players in the world (ranked 487th currently).

Congratulations to Chuck, and remember if you’re interested in qualifying for the Stern Rewards Program, check out the rules here.

blog post courtesy of IFPA Italia

Fabrizio Amiconi (http://www.ifpapinball.com/player.php?p=23511), the champion of sports pinball that taught players not to put fun aside, died.

Mourning in the world of Italian sports pinball, which mourns the death of Fabrizio Amiconi. The Roman player, born in 1965, died after a long illness, which kept him away from competitions, but only up to a point. Yes, because he never really stopped playing, finding the strength to leave the house every time to go play pinball and participate in some competitions. Even when it was very difficult, if not even considered impossible. Like one year ago, when he surprised everyone by signing up for the “pinball at Waterfalls” tournament at the Marmore Waterfall, in the province of Terni, at a time when it seemed impossible even to see him outside his house. But no. Not for him. That, in addition to participating in the competition, he even won it, despite fightin with the leading champions, such as the four-time World Champion, Daniele Acciari. A performance that is remembered in history, and now more than ever it is set to remain an indelible memory for all the Italian players who have known and challenged it.

Approaching the official sports pinball competitions only in 2014, from that moment he started travelling around Italy to compete, sometimes even crossing national borders, proving to be a high level player and a real athlete. Able to put everyone in a good mood and bring fun in any competition. Another reason why his death upset the whole community, leaving a void impossible to be filled.