The DMV pinball scene all overlaps. A lot of folks qualify for at least two of DC, MD, & VA. People make decisions for where the play for all different reasons. Some folks don’t like the location in DC even if they live there, some are motivated by the money, some just want to rep their state. I encouraged everyone that qualified for DC & another state to do what makes the most sense to them. Only they can balance all the things they factor.
Also, any idea about people needing to play the NACS in their home state sounds like a total nightmare to police. I don’t get paid enough to try and figure out if someone is really playing in their state.
That’s 25 finalists so far . . . and then the additional 19 finalists will be based on?
Winners of the next largest states. Those that contribute the most to the prize pool send the reps.
pinwizj:
How would people going into the year even know if the State they want to focus on qualifying in would even be eligible for Nationals? That would be a kick in the teeth if the State they happened to compete in finished in 45th place using your metrics.
thats pinball. play better.
I agree with keeping it at the state level. And not city/metro.
The natural end result of this would be that states with major tournaments would just start to schedule more events at / around the major, so that people coming from out of state can have more incentive to travel. We’re actually already seeing this start to happen naturally just with the WPPR incentive, a rule like this would just amp it up.
As, I said, I get it. I totally understand the bigger picture strategy and all of the potential reasons people play elsewhere.
For me it’s an academic discussion, I don’t travel out of state. But if I did, I personally would want another Florida trophy in the cabinet, not a trophy from some other state, unless that’s where I live/spend most of my time.
And if I don’t win, I want the winner to be one of my Florida friends/family.
By the same token, I find it odd when people I expect to play against play elsewhere.
Last example: Hypothetically, if Atticus and I qualified in multiple states, one strategy could be to play in different locations to gives us more chances and potentially face off at nationals. However, that would just look weird to a lot of people, especially in Florida if we did that, but to the strategic planners, they might get it.
To us, if the goal were to face off, we feel it should be done at home state.
(Still trying to catch up to Atticus-Maybe this year! Him being committed to a double major is giving the old man a chance!)
Personally I think that is a good thing, my yearly event has five already, adds more money to the pool, promote competitive pinball more. For example, in my show the more competitive players only play in three of them as they want to concentrate on those but if it creates more incentive for them to play more in my province then I would be all for it. I guess the rationale is if a player plays 25% of events in your state/province then there should not be anymore whining about someone who lives out of state/province playing. They have contributed enough to the pot and have every right to now play in it. Is 25%, 33%, 50% the right number I dunno but there should be a case made if you are limiting events to the best 20 a year, maybe there should be some kind of floor as well.
What if you spend most of your time in a State you don’t live in?
Our Sales Manager at Raw Thrills is definitely a member of that club. He’s making the rounds to our distributors and spending far more time out of state compared to being at home.
I’ll keep up with the comments/likes on your post. Similar to Derek, if there’s a strong level of support from the community on your opinions I will certainly give the proposal a deeper look.
I’ll always look to examples like Chuck Sanderson as a reason to never force a player to play their ‘home state’.
He’s just east of St. Louis across the river, so he’s technically in Illinois.
To add insult to injury he operators CP Pinball on the Illinois side, so ultimately earns most of his WPPR’s in Illinois (he qualified in 14th).
He hasn’t qualified for Missouri SCS, but if he did end up qualifying in both, forcing him to drive north 5+ hours for the IL SCS, versus allowing him to drive 15 minutes to the MO SCS makes absolutely no sense to me. Especially as Lewis mentioned that the travel costs associated with participating often trumps the prize pool that you’re able to win.
It’s an argument for that, or an argument for allowing the player to choose.
I haven’t bothered drawing whatever boundaries represent those metro areas, but I imagine I can find the next “Chuck Sanderson” that falls just on the wrong side of whatever that imaginary line happens to be.
The idea of awarding someone the “Metro Atlantic South Champion” title I also feel would be far less impactful compared to awarding someone the “New Jersey State Champion” title.
$5 added to pot… It is greasy but IMO I don’t think the IFPA can police every situation. This is an exception more than a rule, in many instances I feel this would not be an issue and would resolve the pain point of contacting or getting contacted by multiple state reps for inclusion into their event. If someone has accumulated the point to get into the top 16 and need to run 1-4 one ball events to get them qualified, then so be it they have just contributed another $1-$4 to your state/provincial prize money.
How much of a pain point is this really? Nobody has to contact more than one group of players. For Illinois I pulled ‘one list’ and sent ‘one email’.
I’ll defer to any players that received multiple State Championship invite emails as to how much of a pain it was to respond “Not coming” to that email.
So how about that player just donates $1-$4 to the prize pool, and we can avoid the greasy but legal exploit to ‘checking this box’. If I wanted to play in Pennsylvania SCS because of the giant prize pool, knowing that I only had Intergalactic and Pinburgh under my belt, I would ABSOLUTELY run however many greasy tournaments the IFPA told me I needed to, in order to make myself eligible to cash-in on that sweet PA SCS prize pool. I would also be fine sending the IFPA $3 to make myself eligible as well.
pinwizj:
) should matter.