The Register Guard in Eugene, OR published an article about the 2013 Northwest Oh-Pin tournament, which was recently held on January 19th. The Northwest Oh-Pin tournament is one of the nearly 450 annual IFPA endorsed tournaments where players can earn World Pinball Player Rankings points, and qualify for the IFPA World Pinball Championship. Featured in the article is [player]Dylan Kennedy[/player] (ranked 5705th in the world), [player]W. Clark Davis[/player] (ranked 512th in the world) and [player]Hayden Harker[/player] (ranked 625th in the world). Click HERE to see the article. Click HERE for pictures from the tournament. Click HERE for results from the tournament.

The IFPA is excited to announce that the following players have been now qualified for the $tern Rewards Program based on their December 2012 IFPA endorsed tournament performance! These players have until August 15th, 2013 to exercise their reward option.

TOP 250 RANKED PLAYERS
Any eligible players that finished in the top 250 for the end of the year World Pinball Player Rankings.

BIGGEST MOVER AWARD – [player]Usama Farage[/player]
Usama moved up 5928 spots from his 7th and 9th place finishes in the Nutcracker Duel Main and Classics Tournament respectively. Usama also finished in 19th place in the latest season of the BAPA Pinball League. In total, Usama earned 9.20 WPPR points during December, which moved him up to a rank of 1728th in the world.

BIGGEST MOVER AWARD – [player]Gene X Hwang[/player]
Gene moved up 2345 spots from his 25th place finish at the City Champ tournament. This netted Gene 1.19 WPPR points during December, which has moved him up to a rank of 4211th in the world.

Detailed rules for the $tern Rewards Program, including an updated list of qualifiers, and updated list of rewards available can be found HERE.

The IFPA is pleased to announce that our Player of the Month for December 2012 is [player]Beat Kuhn[/player] from Switzerland. Beat earned 124.34 WPPR points in December, winning both the Main and Classics tournaments at Pins and Pints and Pinballz Metal Tournaments. In addition, Beat also won the Offene Frankenmeisterschaft tournament along with a 2nd place finish at the Pinballroom Tournament open division.

The rest of the top 5 for the month of November included [player]Robert Gagno[/player] from Canada with 93.62 WPPR points, [player]Eden Stamm[/player] from Canada with 81.88 WPPR points, [player]Richard Rhodes[/player] from Australia with 75.00 WPPR points, and [player]John Kremmer[/player] of Canada with 72.66 WPPR points.

Congratulations to Beat and the other top WPPR point earners of the month!

The IFPA is pleased to announce that our Player of the Year for 2012 is [player]Trent Augenstein[/player]. Trent racked up an incredible 760.58 WPPR points during 2012 moving him from 11th to 6th in the world during the year.

Trent was the IFPA Player of the Month in January, April and May of 2012 having won 23% of the tournaments he played in during 2012, and finished in the top 4 in 60% of the tournaments he played in. Trent's highlights during 2012 included a 2nd place finish at Pinburgh 2012, along with victories at this year's Pinball at the Zoo, Pinbowl Tournament and Pinnesota National Championship.

Trent will be given his award at the IFPA10 World Pinball Championship, scheduled for May 31-June 2, 2013 in Germany. The IFPA wishes to congralute Trent on all of his success throughout 2012.

TribLive in Pittsburgh has an article promoting the upcoming 3rd annual Pittsburgh Pinball Open which starts this Friday, June 22nd. The Pittsburgh Pinball Open is one of the nearly 350 annual IFPA endorsed tournaments where players can earn World Pinball Player Rankings points, and qualify for the IFPA World Pinball Championship. Featured in the article is [player]Doug Polka[/player] (ranked 714th in the world), [player]Al Thomka[/player] (ranked 122nd in the world) and [player]Virginia Hendricks[/player] (ranked 2178th in the world). Click HERE to see the article. Click HERE for more information on the Pittsburgh Pinball Open.

February 19^th, 2012 – The event was held at Ace’s Breakaway and Play, an arcade at the middle of the city on Smithfield street. In addition to the two AC/DC machines available for play there, Ace’s also features five other pinball machines among its games every day. This weekend it was Family Guy, Avatar, Tron, Batman (Stern), and Transformers. Over 60 people attended the launch party.

The tournament on AC/DC was the main feature of the night. There were 30 competitors and over 70 entries placed. After the dust from qualifying ended, four players remained at the top of the standings. [player]Jon Replogle[/player] (IFPA ranked at 135^th in the world) had the top qualifying score of 181,516,810. Second in qualifying was [player]Pete Hendricks[/player] (148) with a score of 140,711, 840 followed by [player]Cryss Stephens[/player] (234) with 89 million and [player]Al Thomka[/player] (91) with just over 70 million.

The finals were a one game playoff, winner take all. [player]Al Thomka[/player] started off the grouping strong putting up a score of over 50 million on his first ball and really putting the pressure on the rest of the group to perform. In the end [player]Pete Hendricks[/player] captured the win with a score of 92,233,320.

Along with the cash for 1^st place, each of the final four also received entries to the PAPA World Championship (www.papa.org).

Special thanks goes out to Stern Pinball, the IFPA, PAPA, Ace’s Breakaway and Play, Betson Distributing, [player]Doug Polka[/player], [player]Nick Jaquay[/player], [player]Pete Hendricks[/player] and [player]Al Thomka[/player] for their support in running the event.