First State Flippers - 2019 Outlook for Delaware Pinball & 2018 recap!

General
1

All,

2018 is winding down and I wanted to take a moment to recap our awesome year and to make everyone aware of our big plans for 2019!

I’ll start with our outlook on 2019 and what First State Flippers has in the works for Delaware pinball!

  • A Fall/Winter Pinball Show in the Wilmington area. Could be December 2019 or January 2020!
  • At least one more Critical Hit tournament. Last one was a huge success!
  • A 24 hour Battle!
  • Another “Tour Championship” circuit with at least 6 events in the circuit
  • A Spring pinball tournament held at the World Famous Starboard restaurant in Dewey Beach, DE. (Location does NOT have pins, everything will be transported to the location from local collectors) http://thestarboard.com

Now for a full recap of what 2018 looked like for Delaware Pinball and First State Flippers! Just an FYI, competitive pinball did NOT exist in Delaware 13 months ago, not do we have any locations to host tournaments. In 2017 I became a TD for Delaware with zero experience in tournaments. We had our first event on 9/23/17 and a second event on 12/16/17 and this lead to Delaware joining the IFPA NACS and crowning our first ever State Champion, Rob DeStasio (who lives in NJ!)

  • Hosted a circuit championship that consisted of (6) group match play tournaments with a 7th event being the actual year end tour championship(happening on 12/1)
  • We had a total of 268 players play in our 6 main events. That’s an average of 45 players per event!
  • Of the 6 events, we had 23 new players play in their first ever IFPA event!
  • We do 7 rounds of qualifying with a 30 minute break before finals.
  • All events start exactly at 1pm, no delays ever
  • All events are fully completed by 8:30pm.
  • Our format consists of the Top 8 going to the A Division for a modified PAPA Finals, Places 9-16 going to the B Division for a modified PAPA Finals, and the ENTIRE rest of the field going to C Division finals which is a 2-strike format.
  • This format guarantees every player a minimum of 9 games!
  • This format also guarantees every player advances to a “finals” and every player has a chance to win money and a trophy!
  • Payouts and trophies go to 1st through 5th in “A”, 1st and 2nd in “B”, and 1st and 2nd in “C”
  • First place in “A” averaged $375!
  • First place in “B” averaged $140!
  • First place in “C” averaged $60!
  • Each event takes $4 from the $35 entry fee to put towards our year end circuit Tour Championship final. We have over $1600 to give out for the circuit final with 1st place taking home an estimated $800!
  • We also sell 50/50 tickets at every event. 50% goes to the winner, the remaining 50% is put in a holding account and it will be given to the winner of the Delaware State Championship (NACS). We have raised almost $500 for the winner to help offset airfare, lodging, etc! Our drawings have averaged $160 for each event!
  • Lastly, the feedback from the Mid-Atlantic players and TD’s has been awesome and humbling. I have had 4 different TD’s reach out to me asking me to come run their tournaments, two of them I committed to and ran, and the other 2 are still in the planning stages.

I’ve had tremendous help and support from the pinball community while launching the First State Flippers. I’m going to throw out a few names who have really helped me the most and I greatly appreciate everything they have done:

Corey Hulse
Kevin Stone
Josh Sharpe
Mike Veith
Joe Fox
WOMP Marianne Pangia

That’s all for now! Looking forward to 2019 and and the opportunity to help grow competitive pinball even more!!!

-Chad Hastings
First State Flippers

6 Likes
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Well done sir. Keep it up. Looking forward to to my first DE event this weekend.

Didn’t know that’s what you were up to with the 50/50. Pretty cool. Definitely adds some extra incentive.

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It’s definitely a nice little bonus. The winner of States will only receive about $100. Tough to get to Vegas and back on $100 :smile: Hopefully this additional $500 will help ease the pain a bit for this years Delaware State Champ!

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4

Great idea on the 50/50 tickets.

5

Excited for a 2019 24-hour battle! It is awesome how far Delaware pinball has come in just over a year and I am grateful that we have such high-quality events in this area. You do not hear it enough, so thank you for all that you are doing @djreddog!

1 Like
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Here’s a crazier idea:

  • 8 Hours at Mike’s
  • < Everyone boards Party Bus >
  • 8 Hours at Chad’s
  • < Everyone boards Party Bus >
  • 8 Hours at Joe’s
3 Likes
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Hmmm. You have really piqued my interest.

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So I’m not exactly sure how the WPPR formula works but I know it takes number of games available and players into consideration. So then couldn’t you argue that there could be a multiple location multiplier?

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I know zero about WPPRS and how they work. Maybe @coreyhulse can chime in.

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No multipliers on wpprs. You get to 100% value by playing 25 “meaningful” games. That could be qualifying plus finals, or 24 straight hours of matchplay, or anything in between. You can run a tournament however you may like and still submit it to IFPA. Some tournaments that are fun to play are not “worth” the 100% value. Sounds like you @djreddog have figured that out already :smiley:
Check out this page if you would like to read more about it
https://www.ifpapinball.com/menu/tgpguide/

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26 games.

Multipliers only apply to circuit majors. They get 150%

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My understanding is that in years past there used to be a location component to the WPPR formula. That has gone to the wayside in favor purely for TGPs.

When doing Match Play, 13 4-Player games is the magic number to hit 100% TGP.

If you were to run a crazy single-day multi-location event, I see a few options:

  • One mega-tournament (e.g. the Sanctum) that goes for 24 hours, all points carry over Round to Round (and location to location). You could do playoffs, but you don’t have to.
  • Three independent events at the three locations. With eight hours at each, you should be able to get to 13 rounds, so each location could be it’s own 100% tournament. Points would reset between each location, and then you could design some kind of non-IFPA final to make the winners of each ‘leg’ face off against each other in the 25th hour, ideally on a single game of Rollergames.
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I say sack races on consecutive sundays until a winner is crowned.