Haha! Full disclosure, I played Thursday afternoon before most of the Glove Pros™ threw down.
Just a bit. Not saying this is the case with PATZ but I know at The Sanctum we get people all the time mentioning about a game being way off level or something. 99% of the time they are perfectly level and people just perceive them to be off somehow. Everyone has a different perception it seems. Poll 100 people if a game is level and I bet 33 say yes. 33 say it leans to left and 33 say it leans to the right. The other 1 DGAF;)
If a game is horribly unlevel we most certainly fix it. Usually it’s from people taking it upon themselves to relevel a game they think is off without being able to take the glass off. That never works out! 
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For best game qualifying, I’m not a proponent of adjusting the level AFTER qualifying has begun. The remedy for a big slide save is… move it back to where it was between games. 
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Rubber feet on the front legs FTW
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There definitely were rubber feet on the front of every game. You also underestimate the power of the Andy Rosa slide save
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I don’t like when they level or fix a game after qualifying has started, especially on a limited entry format. I’ve seen games that were made to play better between day one and day two, and I find that extremely unfair to guys who put their qualification entries in on a game that didn’t play as well.
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In a multi-day qualifying event, I’ve always thought it was standard practice to check and re-level games as needed at the start of each day. Obviously machines get moved around a lot during an entire day of qualifying, so it’s just done to keep a game from getting too far out of whack across multiple days. If you’re going to see that as too much of a competitive imbalance, then you also have to consider flippers getting weak late in the day, flipper rubbers getting worn in, scoop kickouts changing, etc. Nothing is ever going to be exactly the same for everybody, so leveling to keep a game playing properly shouldn’t be viewed as a negative.
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I firmly believe that if you notice anything out of the ordinary on a tournament game you should bring it to the TDs attention. They can then decide if it warrants a change or not. Here’s an example. At Louisville several years ago there was a WW that came in right off of location. I noticed a large chunk of the tip of the right flipper rubber was worn off. I showed it to MHS and after my game he just rotated them to a good position. We probably wouldn’t have been treated to the awesome gameplay of WW in the finals if that hadn’t been taken care of.
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Get some better rubber feet 
In tournaments I run, the games are level before the event. If someone complains about the level, I will check it and adjust if necessary. The player won’t get any compensation, but lots of things can cause a game to be un-level during the course of an event and it is a relatively easy fix.
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I competed at PATZ all 3 days and the tournament was run very smoothly- kudos to those involved.
The games were just fine and were level. A few of my friends had games in the tournament and said their machines had around 700 plays on them after 3 days. Of course the game is going to play a bit differently after 3 days of tournament abuse. If there was any major malfunction (I believe Viking had a stuck flipper) the TD’s were there to fix it. A few of the games were taken out of the finals for these issues as well- it’s not like they weren’t aware if something was going on with a game.
edit: except Genie, that game…woof that game needs some work done.
I had never played Flintstones before this event and on my second game I put over a billion so I think it played just fine 
And it’s not like we all don’t know each other (those who competed at PATZ), how about you just talk to the person instead of calling them out online- where’s the productivity in that?
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I played Aerosmith once and put up what would have been the second place qualifying score, but the game wasn’t fun to play unlevel, and I knew I was done in the tourney area, so I voided it instead of wasting the scorekeeper’s time. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Assuming this is directed at me, I actually don’t know the vast majority of people who play in and/or run the PATZ tournament. For example, I have no idea who you are. As I said upthread, my experience is that TDs understandably don’t have a lot of time or patience for qualifying game complaints. Posting here is productive, because it spurred discussion about tourney game condition, leveling, changes to setup mid-qualifying, etc.
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Just bolt the front legs to the floor
Since the Pinburgh Folks are busy getting ready for it and the PAPA Circuit page hasn’t been updated for a while, I thought I’d post another of “Bob’s UNofficial Circuit Standings”. I just posted the top 40 [qualifier cut line] here, but if anyone wants to know about lower positions, just ask, I have the whole table.
A few observations:
- Trent has made every event that did not involve a schedule conflict and pointed in all of those, winning 3
- Eric is the only other multiple event winner to date
- Sunshine is second to Trent in number of events pointed in with 6
- While 45% of the events [9 of 20] have taken place, only 35% of the points to be distributed have been so since there has only been one major so far and majors get just over double the total points of non-majors
- Unless I missed a duplicate somewhere, 251 people have circuit points to date, in part because points now go down to 40th place in all events.
If anyone thinks I messed anything up here or has questions, let me know. Thanks.
Just added columns for WPPRs and WPPR Rank for those watching to see how it would play out using next year’s Stern Pro scheme. Pretty much the same people, just a different order - - note that everyone in the top 40 on Circuit points is also in the top 50 on WPPRs [well, top 51 allowing for Mr. Suppressed].
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Interesting. I thought that majors only had a 50% increase on points.
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Bob was probably referring to total circuit points as opposed to the wppr 1.5 major bonus
Yes, Circuit Points for a non-major are now 727 minimum [it can increase slightly with ties since they round half points, e.g. if it’s a tie for 5th, both get 43 - - half of 45 + 40, rounded up], while for Circuit Majors, it’s 1524 minimum. PAPA had 1527, and the others so far have ranged from 727 to 733.
It’s WPPRs where majors count 150% - - PAPA, Pinburgh, IFPA, EPC.
I was referring to the 50% increase in points for 1st place in Circuit major vs non-major.
Huh. You’re absolutely correct. I hadn’t paid close enough attention before.
That seems skewed and weird that at a “major,” 10th place should earn more than 2x the Circuit points of a non-major 10th. And that 20th place should earn more than 3x the points of a non-major 20th.
Weird.
In my opinion the difficulty of making top 10 in a major is twice the difficulty of making top 10 at a regular Circuit event. Those sorts of benchmarks were used, along with the desire to pay integer / “nice” numbers of points.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes about 150 circuit points to make the cut this year. I’ll also be interested to see the year-over-year attendance figures for the major circuit events vs. the non-major events, i.e. how much of a boost, if any, does being a circuit major give an event?
Sidebar: proposed “Stern-Oh” Burning Pain award for the player who does not make the 2017-2018 circuit final but gets the most circuit event WPPRs of those who are left out, and who would be in under the Stern Pro WPPR-based scheme. Now accepting predictions for who that player will be, limit one guess per person.