For results and stream:
Interesting H2H round-robin match-play finals format. Although that’s pretty brutal only taking top 25% of each 8-player group. Looks like you had to go 6-1 to guarantee advancing, and going 5-2 was often a tiebreaker, and in some cases, 4-3 let you sneak into a 5-way tiebreak.
I’d be interested to hear from those that played in it on what they thought of the format.
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I can’t find a link for the results of the first qualifier round… only the second round (round of 64 players, 8 groups of 8).
Do you still have this?
looks like it’s gone from the website, they replaced day one qualifying data with day 2… I can’t find it anywhere online?
An intriguing alternative, time permitting, would be to take the top 3 from each group, 24 total, and give the winner of each group a bye.
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I enjoyed the tournament. Each player got to play a minimum of 27 credits across main and classics, so there was a lot of guaranteed play, particularly considering that 255 people played. There was also a good range of machines in main and classics and they generally held up well.
I liked that the first round of playoffs was also round robin. There was some concern that players would just give up if they couldn’t advance, but, at least in the group of eight the difference of a third place in the group could be closer to a 17th place in the tournament versus approaching 64th for last in the group. At least in my group, it felt like everyone played their best in both round-robin rounds.
I advanced with a 5-2, but I had actually advanced at 4-3 as well since both the other players with four wins, I had beaten H2H.
The schedule held up on Sunday as well. I think both finals were over by 6pm.
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Congrats on a great tourney for you! 4th place at EPC is outstanding.
I think round robin H2H (or group play) qualifying is far, far superior to solo game qualifying (whether unlimited, limited best-game, or Ticket). The usual issues that get in the way of seeing more of them are not enough tourney-ready pins vs # of competitors, and space.
My concern was only advancing 25% of a given finals round field. That’s really brutal compared to the usual 50% of finals round players advancing each round.
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It was a great tournament, very well organised with pretty much all the best players in Europe in attendance.
The format was pretty brutal. The second round as far as I’m aware there were no tie break games, positions were all sorted by number of wins amongst those players who were tied. For example we had a 5 way tie for second place in our group (group G) on 4 wins. In our group, a few of us had 2 wins against those others who were tied but one player had 3 wins, so he advanced. It was a pretty brutal way to go out, but ultimately I should have played better. Personally I would have preferred an actual play off in that position (especially when the reward is so big, a place in the last 16) rather than going to count back. I think most players would agree, you just want a chance to play and control your fate.
Overall though, an amazing effort and superbly run event that I really enjoyed
Thanks! I woke up on Sunday morning after four hours of sleep and saw that Jorian and Cayle were in my group of eight and settled in to try for third in the group when we started at 9am.
There’s a balance there between playing seven H2H matches in a group of eight and having enough people go through. Perhaps three advances with a bye would have been better, but would have affected the schedule. I assume this decision was made for similar reasons to the lack of tie breakers.
Technically though, the round robin H2H is a great system in terms of machines since machines can be adjusted, replaced, or removed at any time if they break down, play too easy, etc.
I’m not a fan of 2 sessions of round robin style qualifying. I would have preferred head to head elim after the first day.
Classics playoff went much to late, and started late, on saturday. I can usually handle the lack of sleep, but not this time.
Grats to Albert!
It was tough for sure. With that amount of players (256) though, the RR format is a pretty good idea imo.
I like the idea Bob!
I agree with the effort, but I have to disagree that it was superbly run. The games played really well, so that was great. I have a few gripes, mainly with changing rules and lack of communication.
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The website was pretty sparse as far as formats were concerned. Just up until the epc started, the finals format was not listed on their official site. (The organizer mentioned to me when I asked that the finals format was listed under the IFPA submission.
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On the Friday when it all started, I discovered that my group (M) of 16 had changed. Daniele Acciari had been added, which was an unexpected change since I had earned the top seed via the ifpa ranking. I asked the organizer who said that Daniele would not land in Sweden until lunch time (our group was scheduled to play at 5 PM, and his original group (B) was scheduled to start at 9 AM), so they had moved him to our group. I find this very hard to accept, especially given the reason why he was moved. It must be the player’s responsibility to arrive in time. We all knew when the tournament started.
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The games we were supposed to play in each group were listed on the website ahead of time. Great! But don’t change them without giving notice since players were preparing for a certain set of games and found themselves at completely different set!
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There was a 2 hr delay on Friday evening for some reason. No reason was ever given and if there is one thing the organizer could improve on, it would be to much more pro active communicating with the players. The reason for the delay and when we are starting instead, is information that should have been given immediately. Many of us had traveled far to compete, and we felt treated in a disrespectful manner.
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It was clearly stated on the website that in classics, there would be 8 players moving on from each group of 32. This suddenly changed without any notice to be the top 64 out of everyone. Again, information was lacking, especially for such a late change. (We found out on Friday evening.)
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The scoring system was cumbersome compared to say Never Drains or MatchPlay. Instead of taking 10 seconds to record who won or lost a match, it often took in excess of 3 minutes to just report the result. I think it’s great to experiment with new ways of keeping score, but I would prefer it if all the kinks were worked out before using it in such a major tournament.
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It’s a huge undertaking to organize a tournament of this size, so I want to underline that I am thankful that someone stepped up to do it. Please don’t take my critique as personal, but as honest feedback in order to improve things.
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I agree. Particularly because there were only 2 of 8 taken to advance from each group.
But hey, at least the tie wasn’t broken by who qualified better in the prior qualifying round, right @jdelz? 
Man, I still feel the burn
Whoa that definitely feel unfair to other participants, especially those on the same rand. I wonder if they would have done the same for any players or if that that was “VIP treatment” 
The intermediate finals round was fine, the way I see it. But top qualifiers should’ve been granted some advancement. A bye to the bracket directly for instance.
It is the organisers priviledge to change groups up to the start. But, it must be kept evenly distributed according to seeding. I also had changes to my group. So I think there was more players asking for a later timeslot (which is fair). Ideally this sort of things should have been sorted the day before at the latest.
That came to bite me so hard. First game for me was a surprise JM with the hand disabled. But, games break down. Right. I guess the way is to have a game short list including one or two backup games.
A puzzle to me. The qualification games had seemingly completed in time. Why not just print the bracket and ask people to go ahead.
Man. That system pre-dates all other pinball scoring systems to the best of my knowledge. Even Brackalope. I think it originates around Patrik Bodin / Stockholm Open.
The problem was the number of scorekeepers.
Surely a huge undertaking. So props to the organisers and voulenteers.
Savage.
Agreed. Of course crap happens, and flexibility is nice. But swapping players between groups should have been a #1 seed for a #1 seed, #2 for a #2, etc. Or at most, swapping at most one seed “tier” away (so a #1 for a #2 is allowed, but not a #1 for a #3-x). As a TD, I would not want to have to manage doing all that swapping. Geesh. It’s bad enough trying to make it through a list of Alternate players when a registered player cancels.
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Hmm well i understand the situation, but you should book a flight early enough so that you reach the start of the tournament. On the other hand, if you are the best, play as tve best. If you play well enough, you advance.