Did Daniele try to refuse his major malfunction? If so, why was that not granted?
If not … I encourage folks to read the rules about having two major malfunctions in the same game. They are very specific and they were followed.
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Mine never had that issue. I replaced all the Mist optos. Drac may be more susceptible to hardware errors (disguised as software errors), but my experience has shown me that the software is fine.
As old as the game is and as often as it’s been used at Papa, wouldn’t they have DQ’ed the game by now and added notes to the website? Forget my opinion. Josh and Papa both endorse Drac for high level competition. Forget the bad reputation too. The game is just more susceptible to errors caused by hardware. Replace the Mist optos and trough switches and the game is rock solid. It’s also extremely fun.
From personal experience, I’m pretty certain it’s buggy. I owned a mint-condition BSD from 1999 til a couple years ago, and it would play fine 99% of the time, but seemed that every couple hundred games it would lose track of the balls and go stupid. Never, ever found a switch problem and the game never threw an error. Perhaps this is similar to Nine Ball, where the software is fine “in theory” but falls apart on the slightest mis-input… maybe something such as a ball kicking past one of the four trough switches without triggering it or such…
I agree that the process was followed under the assumption that the major malfunction was something fixable. This is not consistent with my experience of how the rule is enforced across any event. At pinburgh, if this was to happen in the qualifying rounds, I am pretty sure we would be sent to the backup bank. I have never experienced waiting in that situation. In pump and dump, I have experienced waiting for them to repair the machine. So I think the rules are being enforced more situationally than written.
Pinburgh has an explicit rule overriding the PAPA/IFPA rule. See page 13 of https://papa.org/competitions/competition-rules/pinburgh-rules
At Pinburgh, this would have sent the game to the backup bank, unless a player called for their malfunction to be refused.
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@gammagoat cheers, you nailed it.
I have been poking around on this one today. At first I rejected blocking the Mist sense beam as the reason, because it showed not to be a problem. That is, when blocking it before draining balls. However, it can trip the logic on a specific seqence of events.
The hazard is as follows.
During Mist MB, either solo or stacked, when draining down to one ball-in-play. And after all balls in the trough have settled on their trough switch, and before the feed a ball to the Mist pocket procedure has started, there is a small window where blocking the Mist beam will trip the game to go to end-of-ball.
From my investigation, the “switch closure” of the beam do not have to be of any substantial duration. So shooting a ball pass it might do the trick. But it will have to be done with the right timing within the sequence of events.
Having balls in the Castle lock trough does not change how this works.
There is an additional hazard on the game regarding the Trough 4 switch. Which can kill the current ball-in-play at any time. But only when closed for a couple of seconds. If bad switch, dent trough or bug-in-the-matrix, yes. Otherwise I lean towards the Mist beam theory.
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wasn’t PAPA latest attempts at BSD, with the updated tourney ROM, pulled out at the end of the qualifiers last time it showed up there?
it goes town to TD preference since it is not critical issues. Same with T2 in my opinion, seen in many tournament without issue but since @pinwizj suffered the bug once it is unlikely to make any IFPA 
Very much a tangent, apologies - but have you ever written a blog/forum/guide about how you start decompiling and analysing ROMs? I’d be very interesting in reading about it 
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I stopped using T2 after one of the Pinbrawl’s I organized in the early 00’s … 255 hits to multiball. That was enough for me as a TD.
Getaway was IFPA7 in Minnesota.
Usually it’s a bug that bites me as a TD that puts me in a situation where it makes the tournament less enjoyable for one or more of our participants. If I can minimize the chance of that happening I’ll take it.
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Does this mean for example, if I’m crushing a machine and it malfunctions on me in a way that would normally banish it to the void, I can refuse compensation and keep the game alive? That’s very useful information if so, and I confess I can’t find anything in the Pinburgh rules about this. (Not doubting that’s the way it works, I just can’t find the stanza about it.)
Normal IFPA/PAPA rules.
Under certain specific conditions, a major malfunction may be declined by the player. This must be approved by the tournament official, and must not result in a situation which provides an unfair advantage to the player.
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Yes, I too am interested in understanding the wizardry of Soren!
Exactly this. This seems like precisely the right situation for Daniele to decline the major malfunction. Second-hand I have heard he tried to do this, but perhaps he didn’t? I just don’t have full info on this.
Would you really decline the malfunction in this situation? Sure you lose your bonus (I think this was 150M when he drained, so you’re giving up 300M in guaranteed points from the remaining two balls) but you’re getting three balls to do again what you just did, back at square one difficulty. I’m just not sure I really see it as such a clearcut benefit.
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Once the machine auto-launched Johannes’ ball 1, it’s a full on bug-fest that has affected both players. Would Daniele have been able to decline the major malfunction only for himself at that point?
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It would have been 620M in guaranteed points (assuming no tilt). 162M bats and 158M rats.
Ah I must have missed some of that as the bonus scrolled by. I don’t know though, even still I feel like its not a complete no-brainer necessarily.
I posted this to pinside is response to someone claiming Daniele lost 1.2bil:
I went ahead and did all the math. There is also the advantage that Daniele gained getting to his triple stack from his first Mist MB on game 2 (at 5 shots instead of 15). Johannes only had one chance to triple stack at the Mist MB 5 shot level. Daniele also got to play his first Rats and Bats again on the new game.
Daniele Acciari:
Ball 1 from original game = 2,161,897,220 (this included his Bats and Rats bonus)
Bats Bonus from Ball 2 that was lost = 162,209,380 (this assumes Daniele does not tilt or tilt warning while draining to lose this bonus)
Rats Bonus from Ball 2 that was lost = 158,250,000 (this assumes Daniele does not tilt or tilt warning while draining to lose this bonus)
Bats Bonus from Ball 3 that was lost = 162,209,380 (this assumes Daniele does not tilt or tilt warning while draining to lose this bonus)
Rats Bonus from Ball 3 that was lost = 158,250,000 (this assumes Daniele does not tilt or tilt warning while draining to lose this bonus)
Score from full game 2 = 836,379,750
TOTAL SCORE with the disadvantage of lost Bats/Rats from game 1, plus the advantage of Mist/Bats/Rats from game 2 = 3,639,195,730
Johannes Ostermeier:
TOTAL SCORE = 3,474,742,020 (this included Johannes conceding his game after hitting that final Castle Jackpot)
Weighing the advantages Daniele gained from the second game minus the disadvantages Daniele lost from the first game against Johannes conceding his game while in a position to continue hammering out 300mil Castle Jackpots and 30mil shots everywhere . . . I’m completely confident in saying that the better player won that particular game.
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With major malfunctions to both players at the point of intervention the option to decline major malfunctions was not approved by TD staff (allowable per the rules).
Our goal at that point was to make sure that Dracula was functioning properly. I’ve seen ball count problems before on mine that always seem to be fixed when power cycling the game. They don’t always seem to be fixed when the current game is still in progress.
For us to deem that Dracula as a worthy machine of crowning a champion that testing had to be done before allowing play to continue.
For anyone that would have handled it differently, great. I felt completely confident with how we handled it and I didn’t even have to claim this paragraph in the rules to feel good about it:
“Final authority for any ruling, including rulings that contradict or vacate anything written in this document or in other IFPA materials, rests with the President of the International Flipper Pinball Association, Josh Sharpe.”
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I completely agree with this reading of the rules. If Johannes’ ball was still in the shooter, then I can see offering Daniele the opportunity to decline. However once his ball autolaunched then it is no longer just Daniele’s malfunction, it is Johannes’ as well. There’s no clean way for Daniele to decline anymore at that point.
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