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.

The Lowell Sun in Lowell, MA covered the International Pinball Wizard Challenge held this past weekend in Pelham, NH. The International Pinball Wizard Challenge 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]Frank Romero[/player] (ranked 63rd in the world), [player]Trent Augenstein[/player] (ranked 6th in the world) and [player]Steven Bowden[/player] (ranked 36th in the world). Click HERE to see the article and watch the video.

The first official tourney of 2012 in NY was held at Rock Fantasy in Middletown NY thanks to the hosts [player]Steve Keeler[/player] and [player]Steve Levine[/player]. It was a big success with 31 players and 95 entries which all went to the pot! The tourney started at noon with the entry fee of $10 which let you play the set

of 5 games: Spider Man from Stern, Terminator 2, Cheetah, Nugent and Captain Fantastic. At 6:30 the qualification stopped and the top 16 made to the finals in a single elimination bracket 2 best out of 3 and all games in the store could have been used which included Rolling Stones from Stern, Seawitch, Medusa, Adams Family, Transformers LE, Gorgar, Kiss, Fireball, Meteor, and Countdown.

Note that the top 15 made plus the High score of one of the game who was seeded 16th! At around 7 pm after a little cake for [player]Frank Romero[/player] for his birthday the finals started . In couple of hours and after few great matches ([player]Steven Bowden[/player] vs [player]Steve Zahler[/player] was incredible!) 4 players made to semifinal: [player]Steven Bowden[/player] vs [player]Alberto Santana[/player] where the 1st won the tie break game by less than a million on Transformers LE and [player]Sanjay Shah[/player] took out [player]Ed Zeltmann[/player] also on tie break. In the end [player]Steven Bowden[/player] took the win on 2 classic Stern games: Cheetah and Nugent. Top 8 got money. It was truly a great time by all and we all hope that the AC/DC launch party will be held in here because this place ROCKS!!