fun bank except that Harlem hosed me good :S
Itâs been hosing the rest of us for the past 12 months
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Great day of qualifying yesterday! Tune in at 11AM Pacific today for the first round of playoffs.
Every round will be in groups of 4 on a bank with 3 machines from 3 different eras. 7/5/3/1 scoring, and the the top two from each group advance.
Thanks to the AV Crew for streaming and to officials, techs, and score keepers for keeping things running smoothly.
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Stream will be at www.twitch.tv/sfpins and weâll be following the top seeded group, to the extent our wireless camera range allows.
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Congratulations to Colin Urban for taking it down! He was playing great all day, and pulled out those clutch Meteor games when he needed to!
Thanks to the San Franscisco crew for putting on a great tournament! The games were tough but fair (six million dollar manâs tilt not withstanding) and it was fun to play all those different machines against so many people.
My only criticism is the playoff for 5th-8th that occurred for all four players. It essentially took all your games in that round, and threw them out the window if you didnât move on to the finals. I donât think any tournament should ever TAKE AWAY something once someone has earned it, and in this case, unless you were 8th, you could potentially lose spots because of this strange rule.
Might I suggest next year simply only playing off people who have the same amount of points? So if 5th-8th have 13,13,11,9 points respectively, only the 13s would play off for 5th and 6th.
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Agreed that itâs a weird rule. Itâs on the website and we did do this last year.
Semifinals will be 2 groups of 4 players. Same scoring as before on 3 games. The top 2 from each group move on to the finals. The bottom two from each group will play 1 machine for 5-8th place.
We can discuss for next year how this is handled as I think we can do better. Thanks for coming out this year and defending your title. Iâm glad we get such good players coming out to this and hope to see you all next year.
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I had a blast at the tourney, strong field, really good vibe, excellent choice of games and the majority in great playing shape. I would suggest maybe having a dinner break, the tournament is suppose to end around 6:00. So you could do a lunch break at round 4 and a break at round 8. It also allows a player to have a mental break and prepare themselves for the stretch run. I would also suggest starting 30 minutes earlier that way you can do intros, rules and other announcements in that time to keep the tourney on time. Love to have a more seating areas but the space is tight and know it is tough.
Overall this is one of the better run tournaments I have been to and will absolutely be back. Thanks to all the volunteers and technicians that make a large scale tournament like a this happen.
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First of all, thank you to all participants who came out to SF this year. I really appreciate your support for our tournament.
Secondly, I love the constructive criticism. There may be changes next year thanks to the people who make their voices heard. I wanted to address what has come up so far, to explain if I can, why a certain rule was in effect.
I donât see it as taking away points as much as once the round is over, those points are gone. Nobody could, for example, take any of the points they had earned on Saturday with them to Sunday.
Itâs common practice to play out matches for certain positions. In the Olympics, for example, there is usually a bronze match. If you did really well in the semifinal, but still lost, it doesnât matter more than if you had done poorly in the semis. Now, where one draws the line of which matches to play out or not, that is a philosophical matter. I chose to draw the line at a 5-8th place match mostly for practical reasons.
I really didnât expect it to run as long as it did this year, so I apologize for messing up peopleâs dinner plans. Last year ran faster, and I think the games were set up harder as the main reason for this. We had a couple of restarts of games (Whatâs up GOT??) that also didnât work in our favor. I donât want it to run later than 7 PM, so one option would be to have maybe 10 rounds instead of 12. Another option is, as you say, to have a dinner break, but then itâll run pretty late.
Itâs definitely a suggestion that will be discussed further.
Yup. The only way of increasing the seating to player ratio would be to have fewer players Iâm afraid.
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You can play out the bronze match for people that are ACTUALLY tied, like I said, people who both have 13 points. It doesnât make sense to play out any of the other positions since they already had been decided.
Sure it makes sense. The tournament explicitly described this to occur.
If you have two different pools of players you donât have a direct comparison between the two pools. Combining the losers of the semi pools to determine 5-8 is a great way to determine what the 5-8 ranking should be since the competitors were separate before then.
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I think all the people that get eliminated in the semis can be considered tied for 5th depending on how you do things.
I typically like to have every finals position played out if possible. So like mentioned before, doesnât matter what you got in the semis for points, you start over in the 5-8 match and those points alone decide your final position.
I personally donât think that points you earned before should matter as the 5-8 players didnât play against the same people on the same games.
I know it was described to occur, that doesnât mean I agree with it or think it is the best way to go about it. Hence why Iâm suggesting they change it for next year.
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Thanks to all the people that put together the stream. This was an event that I really wanted to make this year, but couldnât swing it. Enjoyed the stream and commentary and had it on for most of qualifying and some of the finals.
One thing Iâd love to know is how the streamers were able to get the matchplay info on the screen for the current group and their current point totals. That was an awesome touch. Maybe @haugstrup is the man to ask?
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Geneâs pictures (mostly from Saturday) are up on http://sfpins.org/city-champ/ if you are interested. Thanks Gene as always for providing us with your awesome photos!
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I also think this is kind of an unusual way to decide 5th-8th in group playoffs. A playerâs performance in a 3 game semifinal should have a more significant impact on their final standing than getting them into a one game playoff. Someone who earns 13 points then loses a tiebreaker shouldnât finish below a player who finishes last on all games then pulls off a win in the one game playoff.
Just from a psychological point of view, if I played a decent (but not good enough) semi round of 3 then lost a tiebreaker to advance, Iâd have very low interest in focusing on a one game playoff at that point.
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What if points earned during semis was used to determine finishing order for 5-8 with ties being broken by qualifying order? That would reward good play in semis and during qualifying. No playoff game needed.
Once I know I canât win, my motivation to play any more is gone.
I looked away from the broadcast briefly when that happened. It looked like it reset, then booted back up with the correct score for each player showing. Is that what happened? With all th WPC game you guys have and that old building, if the only reset all weekend was on GOT, that ainât bad.
I totally missed this part. I agree this is weird. If playing out for 5-8 I wouldâve had another full 3 game round for those people to decide 5-8. I say either break the ties via previous results or have them play a full round. Depending on the WPPR fallout having them play out the 5-8 could be pretty significant. At least for low level players like me it usually does.
Agreed. Iâd definitely rather not have to play more games once Iâm eliminated, but it would make more sense to play a three game round than a one game playoff.
I like it especially if Iâm out of town. Meet more people and hangout a bit more playing competitive pinball. At the main street mayhem I was in the 5-8 group and we played dollar games for all them too. It was a blast.
