But if you know it’s coming, why risk that negative story? You’re clearly trying to grow and legitimize this as much as possible… seems like an important part of that is having a clear separation of officials and competitors.
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The order of players is determined with the top seed playing 1st, next highest seed playing 2nd, third highest seed playing 3rd, lowest seed playing in 4th position.
I agree that this seems odd. If you’re just coming into the bracket, you’re blocked from picking a game if it was the last one picked, AND you have to go first? If you’re a higher seed, shouldn’t you have more autonomy to at least put yourself in the position that you feel will give you the best chance of winning?
According to this link, 1853 people participated in at least one Circuit event: https://www.ifpapinball.com/rankings/custom_view.php?id=212&t=50&p=38
With only 20 making finals as opposed to 40, would you expect the number of 2019 participants to fall as less people would be inclined to try? And does it matter to the IFPA/SPC/PAPA Team if that number falls? Or does the cross-section of tournaments (TPF, Pinburgh, etc) have enough of their own panache that being on the Circuit is just a nice side benefit and not the main appeal.
Knocking down the number of entrants to 20 from 40 seems harsh to me, but I’m not Top 20 nor I am really vying to be in the Top 100.
Removal of any kind of qualifying or knock-out phase of the Championship changes the dynamics of what earning points on the individual Circuit Events mean. With the new structure what seed you place has much greater weight because if you qualify as the top seed you are guaranteed at least 4th place money. Does the community consider that a good or bad thing?
Will you see more people who are on the tail (qualifying 15th or below) drop out from accepting the invitation to Finals because they know right away that they’ll have to get through 15+ games in a row to have a shot?
Bowling is the only other sport that I’m aware of that has a Ladder format baked into their finals. Any event that has a series of qualifying games, a series of match play games, and when the dust settles they have their Top 5. The Top 5 move onto the “TV Finals”, where it’s the ladder format and is usually the only action shown on television.
Bowling has the end-of-season PBA Tournament of Champions, which invites a bunch of winners/top qualifiers, but they’ll run what is essentially a full event which consists of more qualifying, match play, and then a final step-ladder. To me it seems strange to run 20 global events where a player seeking top honors has played hundreds and hundreds of games in various different formats to then attend a separate event where you could literally play three house balls on a fast-playing Cheetah and be out. If we’re going through all that effort to get the Top 20 (or 40) players together in a single location, wouldn’t it be awesome to do something that lets those players clash against each other over a multi-day event?
Is the goal to reduce the overall time that the Finals takes? Is the goal to get it done within a day?
Is the goal to determine the best-of-the-best among those that qualified? A pre-locked-in ladder doesn’t seem like it would, but perhaps that is just my view on it.
Will this format be fun for the players?
Again, thinking about how bowling tournaments are structured, if you have a limited set of people in the Finals (and multiple days), you could do something that tested the skills along common formats:
- Initial points provided based on Qualifying Seed
- Everyone plays a limited best-game format. One chance per game. Points awarded based on finishing position.
- Some kind of head-to-head format (Tiered group match play, head-to-head round robin, etc). Points awarded based on finishing position.
- 10-Hour Flip Frenzy exclusively on old Stern Electronics games (just kidding about this one).
- Big Television-Focused Finals Step-Ladder with the best X remaining players, with seeding going either to initial qualifying or your performance within the Finals. This is analogous to what gets shown on television for bowling events.
Certainly difficult to achieve in one day, but it gets back to the question of what success looks like to the organizers.
1 Like
First post on this site, but figured I would chime in as someone who is fairly new to competitive pinball (4 years or so) but have been going to a decent amount of circuit events and have enjoyed my time playing against the best in the world. The recent progress with the Papa Circuit/Stern Pro Circuit has been amazing to see. I understand why the recent changes were made, but top 20 is going to be very difficult for a lot of people as it is very hard to make more than 5 or 6 events in a year. Even if I did qualify, I don’t think I would get that much excitement out of knowing I could travel to Chicago to play one game of competitive pinball and be knocked out. Even if the minimum was $1,000 per player. I would rather actually play a longer tourney against the top ranked players for that specific circuit year. With that said, here are my two suggestions to continue to improve the Stern Pro Circuit.
- Implement a system similar to how the PGA does with the Fedex Cup. Players accumulate points over the course of the 20 event circuit. For 16 of the events, players earn X amount of points depending on place of finish similar to how the PAPA Circuit was set up two years ago. For the four majors (Pinburgh, Pin-Masters, INDISC, and Chicago Expo), increased points are awarded for place of finish. The top 60 players are invited to the Circuit playoff weekend in Chicago, which would include three separate tourneys (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). The first tourney would include everyone in the top 60 and would cut the field down to 30 players. Playoff tourney results would have even more point allocation than the 20 tournaments leading up to it. This would give players in the 30-60 range the opportunity to move up into the top 30, but also players seeded 1-10 a pretty safe if not 100% chance of making the top 30 and improving his or her seeding headed into day 2. The second tourney would be on Saturday and would include the top 30 players in the standings (accumulated points from 20 circuit events and one playoff event). This tourney would also award more points than the 20 circuit events leading up to playoffs. The top 15 after playoff tourney two (accumulated points from 20 circuit events and 2 playoff events) would then be put in the ladder format, which would occur on Sunday and be streamed and broadcasted to the masses.
I believe this kind of format caters to a lot of people.
- More people are invited to the circuit final
- More people feel like they might be able to qualify for the circuit final which could increase attendance at circuit events
- Players don’t have to feel obligated to go to more circuit events than what was originally budgeted in a year, but could still qualify in the 21-60 range.
- The top 60 players in the circuit for that year are all competing against each other in the same location, something that isn’t done very often.
- Players are more inclined to attend knowing they will have opportunity to play in at least one tournament and potentially three against the best players in the world.
- Up and coming players are more encouraged to continue to work hard to get in the Top 60. Top 20 might seem much more unattainable. Pinball is a sport with a huge learning curve that could draw people away.
- The exciting ladder format is still in play the final day.
- The highest seeds during the 20 event circuit can have a bad day 1 and still have the opportunity to advance to day 2 and day 3. Instead of playing four games and getting knocked out.
- The lower seeds would have the opportunity to play well and move up in the standings and make the top 30 or even the top 15.
- The battle for the top seeds would be great to see and well rewarding with the top seed being guaranteed top 4 in the Circuit Final.
- Lots of IFPA world ranking points
Here is the link to the PGA website which breaks out the point distribution. Obviously, would need to cater to pinball, but the theory is the same.
- Try having the circuit events in major cities with major airports close to the event. This would help increase attendance as big cities are fun to visit outside of pinball and are typically cheaper and easier to fly into. Cities like New York, Atlanta, Denver, Detroit, and Kansas City come to mind as locations currently without a circuit event. I know this could be a big hurdle in terms of finding games, big enough locations, and TD’s willing to host such a prestigious event.
Just my two cents. Either way I’ll continue to work hard and see if I can make the top 20 this year.
Dominic
7 Likes
Don’t tease me.
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I’ll take this to the next logical conclusion and say there really isn’t a benefit, when viewed through the lens of a trickle down pinball economy. Which is really what’s on the table.
If we are actually saying we are going to focus all of our efforts on maximizing the Circuit Final as a means to generate: sponsorship dollars; viewership; et al, then don’t you think it’s time we have some standards by which the 20-event circuits must live up to? Outside the current WPPR-centric metric? I don’t see much standardization outside of ruleset.
I think standardization/tangible metrics has to be big part of inclusion into the SPC in the first place, not just sustained WPPR value over X amount of time. If we are going to cut people out of Circuit Finals qualifying (still don’t understand the problem that’s trying to be solved with this) then the events that feed into that final event need to be held to a much higher bar. It can’t just be a series of 20 disparate events, that then carry so much weight at the end. I think that’s ultimately a disservice to the players, as well as a disservice to those tuning in on The Ocho for the big finale.
On a final note, the optics around the timing of this announcement: after two circuits events have been completed; a day before a limited participant tournament that sold out months ago; and a week before the next circuit event. Those optics are bad. That is in fact 20% of this years circuit events. A great many of those 1900+ circuit participants are affected by this change, and it’s far from unreasonable to assume that a good portion of them may have planned differently had it been known.
5 Likes
Probably won’t be a popular opinion but I’d like to see game choice get taken out of the equation. Purely as a spectator of the stream, watching the same 3 long playing games get chosen got tedious and it would have been more fun to watch a variety of games from all eras present different challenges to these “top players”. Besides, simpler rules are much easier to digest for a television audience. Maybe save Guardians/Deadpool/Iron Maiden for the later rounds. Just my 2 cents.
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That answer is simple . . . I want to play.
My plan with respect to Stern/IFPA/PAPA affiliation exclusions isn’t to legitimize this as much as possible proactively. My plan is to take the feedback from outside sponsors, production companies and media outlets and use that to determine our rules for exclusion.
The feedback I’ve gotten so far from the external organizations working with us is that it’s not a problem. We will continue to evaluate as we hopefully take on more sponsorship partners and the amount of media attention continues to grow.
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Can you expand on some examples of things you would you like to see from the 20 events to hold these events to a higher bar?
Which of the current 20 events do you feel aren’t up to these standards? If those events were to be removed, which events would you replace them with and why?
I wish I could feign outrage here. But of the 1900 people participating, I am guessing at most 100 (and that seems like a super conservative guess) would change their actions. I wasn’t going to not go to INDISC because I didn’t feel I can make circuit. The reverse, people who would have gone to INDISC or TPF had they known this change, seems small.
My biggest concern is that they decide to cancel showing pinball on TV because it isn’t dramatic enough. Perhaps the slightly seedy nature of having Roger Goodell play quarterback in the Super Bowl will make for a compelling television narrative. Maybe a full on rage tilt, red card, meltdown makes it on Sports Center highlights. No one under 65 actually thinks pinball is shady or degenerate these days and frankly it was way more popular when people had that perception. I think pinball being portrayed in a bad light is a far less of a risk to the actual health of the game than it not being shown on television at all outside of feel good, fluff pieces on local news that all start with some variation on “Pinball Wizards gathered today at…”
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A couple of points from this.
The UKCS started only a few years ago as a straight ladder system with the top 4 then playing a 4 player final across 6-7 games.
It suffered terribly from the fact that qualify in 17th-20th place, lose your first game you’re out - that’s it.
It also meant that if you qualified as no. 1 seed you only had to not finish last in a single game to make the final, which was heavily weighted to get more WPPR pts.
It then changed to a double ladder elimination, to guarantee players at least 2 games, it got a few more people not attending, but not many more.
Both of these formats are seen as not particularly good judges of who played best on the day, with too much weighting being given to seeding, and quite boring to play in. Players just trying not finish last is hardly the best way to showcase pinball? (the $ bounty for winning a game is severely outweighed by the increase in prize money)
My thoughts on trying to make a format which is easily understood by both players and viewers, fits into a weekend, slow or boring games can easily be edited without you losing track of what’s going on.
Assuming that this isn’t being broadcast live.
Day 1
Round 1
Best score qualifying for all 40 qualifiers(or whatever no. you deem) over 10 games - single attempt each. Pts awarded as per ranking of scores on table.
A further set of pts is given as per qualifying seed no. i.e. #1 seed 100pts, #2 seed 90pts, #3 seed 85, etc. etc.
This provides the rankings for day 2.
Scores are not published publicly until after final rounds so no advantage is gained from the time/order you play the games in.
It means the broadcaster can edit/choose from 400 games played to pick up on the great games, those players who just sneak into/ miss the cut based on a particularly good/bad game, how the eventual winner played in qualifying.
Day 2 - Option 1
No matter how many originally qualified, top 16 then play best of 3 head to head based on seedings from qualifying.
Same format for quarter finals and semis.
Final best of 5
Everyone understands a format like this.
Day 2 - Option 2
Top 20 play the ladder format as suggested, based on qualifying ranks.
It gives the benefit of rankings being decided over that weekend, and the opportunity to show how the player qualified from the day before to be on the bottom/or top rung of the ladder. It also gives the chance to say Player 1 picked X game because he scored Y pts in qualifying … or have graphics at the start of each game detailing what they scored in qualifying.
I don’t think the events on the SPC will see an impact one way or the other (being on the SPC or not, or any changes we make to things). A majority of these events are selling out all their spots as quickly as they can announce them.
I will be interested to see how it impacts the travel and attendance of the “elite” players, assuming they will be focused on trying to make the cut. For players like me, my schedule is what it is. I’ll go the same 3-4 events I go to every year. Will this change player behavior of others or not is something I’ll be following along closely.
Last year the top 20 qualifiers averaged attending 6.6 SPC events for the season. Qualifiers 21-40 averaged attending 5 SPC events for the season. We’ll see how those averages are impacted this qualifying season.
The good news is that this format isn’t without precedent. During the original top 20 ladder format I know Adam Lefkoff mentioned he attended every time he was invited. I also attended every time I was invited, including a back and forth trip after Circuit Finals and then back for PAPA.
I think a goal of making sure there’s a variety of events offered in the Chicagoland area will be something I’ll be focusing on for that weekend (outside of just the Heads-Up Championship that will continue).
Thanks for the replies.
So you’re telling me that the dream of a 10-Hour Stern Electronics Flip Frenzy is still alive? Great!
4 Likes
There are some good suggestions in this thread. I want to point out, though, that while there are multiple suggestions to increase the tournament to multiple days, this is the Finals. People spend all year qualifying. Adding additional qualifying when you’re already at the Final would be redundant.
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I couldn’t feel more strongly about this as I head to the stadium for March Madness games today.
These teams spend 5 months playing 30+ Games and BOOM it’s a one and done tournament.
My favorite time of year as a spectator … the intensity starts right at tip.
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Prioritizing the spectators over the competitors seems like a great way to convince the competitors not to attend your event!
Can’t wait to find out. We’ll see how many of the top 20 qualifiers pass on the final. Then we’ll have a solid data point on if/how we want to make changes in the future.
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I just heard Iowa complaining that March Madness should be a best of 7 match. They took a bus 10 hours to get here and might be heading home in the next 90 minutes …
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Does that mean the games will be setup for 90 minute average game time?
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Sure. I will throw out the disclaimer that there’s likely going to be a lot of 
over this stuff, a lot of the “but!” “we can’t do this!”. I’ll also throw out that I haven’t been to every circuit event, but I’ve followed them all for years and I think about this way too much. For me it comes down to attempting to limit the amount of variables. This list isn’t in any sort of order of importance, just a way to organize thoughts as opposed to a long run on paragraph.
- Games. I think games lists for Circuit Events should have to be submitted to the governing body for approval. I feel a lot of organizers like to get cute with game selection (TPF comes to mind, among others) under the banner of “a wide range of skills”. I am not advocating for a list of 30 pre-approved games, but rather IFPA taking a fresh, nuanced look at proposed games lists and saying “yes” and “no”. I don’t feel like there needs to be a ton of transparency (to the outside world at-large) in this process.
- Game Setup. A list of approved, must have, setup notes, consistent across all events. Are we doing minimal ball save? Are we turning all ball saves off? What about in multiball? Competition install? Tournament mode? Ball 3 mercy Tri-Balls off? On? I think the tendency now is to let these things fall under “local conditions”, but why? These are variables that are controllable. Unlike wind, atmospheric pressure, humidity, etc (golf analogy)
- Tournament Setup. This is a little dicey, but I’d like to see steps towards at least standardizing some of this stuff. Things like 50% of available games in bank count for Herb (or whatever that % is determined to be). Distance between games and waiting/queue areas. Space between games.
- Streaming/Coverage. A requirement for a stream of at least finals. A requirement to use Never Drains, with virtual queuing (I’m looking at you OBX) For the most part, I think this already happens. But I do think it’s worth explicitly requiring it.
- Format. There is a valid argument for “variety” in format, to keep players interested and spice things up a bit. However, I’m not sure that’s a great way to standardize the field, and really don’t see it being necessary for Circuit status. IFPA-sanctioned events at-large? Absolutely. Matchplay? Sure. Herb? Sure. Ticket? Sure. Limited entry qualifying on a bank of games that’s played all year by local players? That’s getting into cute territory. A 24-hour tournament? It’s great and awesome, but probably shouldn’t be a Circuit Event, and because of it’s unique and exciting nature, doesn’t need that attachment to draw attendees.
- Branding/Marketing. I’d like to see the IFPA/Stern/PAPA step up and make the branding and information cohesive across all of the Circuit Events. Right now, if I want to say, look up the event details for Brisbane Masters, I have to click through a link, which takes me to facebook, then another link which takes me to a message board that looks like it was made in 1997. Disclaimer: not a knock on any specific event. I just don’t think it should be their problem to solve about disseminating pertinent information to people looking for it. Right now, it’s hard. It’s fractured. To bring it back to a golf analogy (since we all seem to like those) the way PGA does it is perfect. A splash-like tour page with all of the events and super immediate information, and then links to standardized tournament pages.
- IFPA/PAPA/Stern official required to attend. I think there needs to be someone present from the governing body, at every Circuit Event, as a resource and oversight, not as a player involved. Maybe you could fudge this in the beginning and allow them to play, but I think that really does start to get into negative optics around mixing participation with oversight.
With respect to “who should be removed and what should they be replaced with”, that’s frankly outside my scope and not the intent of this post. Create some standards and make some incentive$ for tournaments to be on the Circuit in the first place, and I don’t think you’ll have an issue filling those spots. If you build it, they will come - either existing tournaments will make these concessions to be included, or new one’s will pop up to replace.
2 Likes