What do you folks think of this article using the phrase “Professional Pinball Players” ?
dubious.
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PAPA is both “professional” and “amateur” but does not clarify how the two are distinguished. Since not even KME makes his living primarily on winnings, there are no professionals from a legal perspective.
I would distinguish it at getting a 1099 for pinball income 
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Good to know I can now refer to myself as a professional :).
ESPN8 ‘The Ocho’ will become a real thing Tuesday (8-8). No pinball on the schedule, but there will be ultimate trampoline dodge ball, a disc golf championship and something called the championship of bags.
We need to get pinball on the Ocho next year.
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All programs except for 1 have previously aired on ESPN channels, so this is just a day-long rebroadcast event of stuff that made it on ESPN1-7 previously. Maybe if they spin this off into its own network we’ll have a chance. 
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On a related note, pinball will be on the schedule at the State Games of America this weekend in Grand Rapids.
COMPETITORS COMPETE IN MORE TRADITIONAL SPORTS LIKE TRACK AND FIELD, ROWING, SOCCER, SWIMMING, TENNIS, FIGURE SKATING, SKATEBOARDING AND BMX, AS WELL AS MORE UNIQUE SPORTS INCLUDING PINBALL, YOGA, DARTS AND BEACH WRESTLING.
Would be cool to get a report from a local on what they’re doing with pinball. No idea how competive yoga works. Trampoline dodge ball sounds like more fun.
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I’m running this tournament. We have a 5 game HERB style tournament with many divisions. Pro, Novice, Women, Seniors and 3 youth divisions. All receiving medals. We also have a separate classics tournament.
We started today at about noon eastern time. I’m not sure what to expect turnout wise. So far we’ve had mainly people who haven’t really played before which has been awesome! I expect this trend to continue throughout the weekend. Hopefully we can expose many new people to pinball who in turn can go home and spread the word about this game we all love.
Here are the current standings http://neverdrains.com/babyfood2017/playerIndex.php?disp=division&sel=Main&skl=Pro (leftover URL from a tournament a few weekends ago).
It will be interesting to see what becomes of this, but so far so good.
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Nice. We have a league member who used to be in the national puzzle team. It’s easy to lure people away from other sports because pinball is a lot more fun than those other sports.
Getting mostly noobs has to be fun. Best of luck with the rest of the weekend.
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I think the novice and kids tournaments you do are great in getting new people hooked.
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