Stern Pinball is looking for some feedback from the IFPA player community on their latest designs.

If you have a chance, please check out the survey here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DZF3H6K

Please rank the previous 6 Stern releases, 1 being the best, 6 being the worst.

IFPA Vice President Zach Sharpe was recently featured in an issue of Chicago's RedEye as one of the "Hottest Geek Guys of Winter". Click HERE to read the entire article.

We're looking to round up some volunteers to help us with hosting the Stern AC/DC Launch Party tournament.

If you live in or near the following cities, and would be interested in helping out the IFPA and Stern, please drop the IFPA an email at [email protected].

Duties would include game setup at the site, along with running the tournament portion of the party.

Looks like it's going to be 10 cities in total, including:

– CHICAGO (Gameworks, 2/24)
– PITTSBURGH (Ace's Break a Way, 2/19)
– PORTLAND (Good Foot, 2/15)
– CLEVELAND (Kidforce Collectables, 2/18)

– DALLAS (Nicklelrama, 2/24)
– BIRGMINGHAM (BumperNets, 2/17)
– SEATTLE (Dorky's Bar Arcade, 2/17)
– DENVER (Chipper's Lane College Center, 2/18)
– TORONTO (Wacky Wings, 2/16)
– HALIFAX (Westin, 2/25)
 

If anyone is interested in helping us continue to raise some funds, we've put together the IFPA World Pinball Tour t-short, showing the list of events for 2011.

Number of unique tournaments went up from 52 in 2006, to 74 in 2007, to 102 in 2008, to 182 in 2009, to 228 in 2010, to 343 in 2011!

Number of players has now also passed 12,000 from 33 different countries!

$3 from each t-shirt sale goes into the IFPA funds, so help us raise some funds and get a t-shirt or two.

Click HERE to visit our online store.

The IFPA is proud to announce that registration for the 9th Annual IFPA World Pinball Championship is now open! For more details check it out HERE!

The initial invite list is open for the top 150 players in the World Pinball Player Rankings as of 1/1/2012. Based on the interest of the top 150, we may extend the invite list additional spots so please monitor

the registration page at your leisure. Should you be interested, please send payment to the IFPA as your way of committing to attending the tournament. Should you not be interested, it is equally important that we know, so please send an email to the IFPA stating you will not be available to participate.

Should you have any questions about our qualifying process or to find out more information about the tournament, please contact the IFPA at [email protected].

One of the 64 spots will also be available at the 2012 NW Pinball Show tournament, to be held the weekend before IFPA9.

IFPA9 is sponsored by Stern Pinball, Jersey Jack Pinball, Betson, Raw Thrills, Planetary Pinball Supply, Pinball Life, Farsight Studios, Zen Studios, Marco Specialties, Pinball Center, Play Meter Magazine and Gameworks.

New for 2012, the IFPA is proud to announce the implementation of the IFPA Ratings System for all players. Currently the IFPA Ratings System uses an unmodified version of the Glicko rating system. Rather than focusing on head-to-head play we are using tournament finishing results as the data for the calculation. For a given player in a tournament, any player finished 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. RD is limited to a range of 30 to 350 for a given player. A player's RD increases daily, with it taking about 3 years to drop out of the ratings altogether (similar to the period used for the IFPA's World Pinball Player Rankings).

Right now this rating is unofficial, and will be for all of 2012, however we have plans in the future to hopefully include the IFPA Ratings System as part of the World Pinball Player Rankings formula to help determine tournament strength. Unlike the formula for the World PInball Player Rankings which will not change during the year, the IFPA may choose to adjust the formula for the IFPA Ratings System at anytime during the year as it serves no official function at the moment.

Any feedback, questions or comments about the IFPA Ratings System is appreciated. We're excited to explore the possibilities of making the world's official player rankings system even better in the future!

Back in early November the IFPA reported on the race for #2 in the World Pinball Player Rankings for 2011 between [player]Jorian Engelbrektsson[/player] and [player]Cayle George[/player]. As the year now comes to a close, it's looking like Jorian will finish slightly ahead of Cayle in the world rankings.

What we didn't see coming was Switzerland native [player]Robert Sutter[/player] exploding in the final 6 weeks of the season to overtake the #2 position! Robert participated in three tournaments within Switzerland since November finishing in 1st place twice and 2nd place once.

In addition to finishing #2 in the World Pinball Player

Rankings, the IFPA is proud to announce that Robert is the 2011 IFPA Player of the Year! This award is based solely on WPPR points earned during 2011, rather than the 3 year rolling period that the World Pinball Player Rankings are based on.

Congratulations to Robert for his spectacular 2011 season!

The last Brooklyn Championship of the year crowned 2 new champions: [player]Alberto Santana[/player] won the tourney and [player]Penni Epstein[/player] became the new Brooklyn Champion while retained the title of Brooklyn Woman Champion. The free tourney played in Williamsburgh at 4^th Down was a double elimination format

with 17 players and 2 very evil machines: World Cup Soccer and Avatar.

[player]Alberto Santana[/player] made it to the final losing only 1 game vs [player]Francesco La Rocca[/player] (organizer ) and got in the final beating a great surprising performance of [player]Seth Zuckerman[/player] who finish 2^nd, [player]Penni Epstein[/player] finish 3^rd and [player]Steven Bowden[/player] end up 4^th. Must be mention that this was the Brooklyn Championship with most woman : beside Penni ,also [player]Dahlia Rowan[/player], [player]Rita Ratner[/player] and [player]Debra Rymer[/player]. Everyone received something and top 4 got trophies. Thanks to all participants .

After 8 weeks of plays in 2 machines (World Cup Soccer and Avatar) in Williamsburgh at 4^th down sports and bar, 4 players made it to the final: [player]Steven Bowden[/player], [player]Frank Romero[/player], [player]Alberto Santana[/player] and [player]Francesco La Rocca[/player] organizer of the league.

The  format used  during the season was that you had to play 2 times each machine and then get the best score  where high score of week would have get 25 points, 2^nd place 20 pts, 3^rd 15 then 14 etc. For the final both machines where played 4 times! Last games were played on Avatar and everyone still had chance to win but [player]Steven Bowden[/player] defended his lead by finish 2^nd with a total of 84 points for the night (out of possibly 100 ) and so was crowned as winner of the league.

Thanks to his great score on last game Frank was able to finish 2^nd ending with 73 points, while Alberto beated Francesco by 1 point (70 points vs 69 ). [player]Eddie Cramer[/player] finish 5^th and [player]Steve Marsh[/player] 6^th! The top 4 players got plaques and PAPA 15 entries. Great going all!