Interesting date to choose to announce this 
Oh boy.
Looks like I’m going to owe $500+/year now. This is starting to feel like work.
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This will probably be as big of a success as the IFPA Circuit was last year 
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With all the discussion about this in advance, i really can’t tell if this is a brilliant long con or not. Note to self, announce controversial changes on April 1, allows testing of the water and a free out.
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Now it’s gonna be extra hard to get people to show up to my tournaments. Even the free one is no longer free. Ugh. How does more money give the state and national championship more prestige?
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I for one welcome this change Now people can’t float their way to the top of WA state rankings by playing 3+ weeklies a week since I imagine only one of those might even possibly be willing to pay $1 per player.
Also, congrats on the meta “the April Fools joke is that this post was an April Fools joke” thing.
This is actually a good idea. Not to support a priaepool, but to sustain the IFPA. With the # of tournies every year growing and the # of players growing, at some point we might have to pay for this. The USCF (US Chess Federation) charges to rate events at a rate of $5 per batch. A batch = an event - no matter the size. I would think that sounds perfect.
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If there’s going to be taxation, will states get representation and voting rights in future decisions the IFPA makes?
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Excited to see the prize pool expand dramatically for the NCS and SCS, ready to actually secure a top 16 in PA because let’s be honest, an SCS with a few thousand as a top prize may be a bit more attractive to the nearby pinball greats. 
Will this nix the $20 entry fee into states?
No questions will be answered today because this is too much fun
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I had heard that it would.
If this gets more people interested in the SCS, it’ll just be the players who are already really good but might not play in local tourneys consistently.
I still think it’s a good idea. I’d almost rather it be a percentage, rather than a flat fee. $1 is 20% of the prizepool for $5 events…but for something like Pinburgh, it’s basically irrelevant.
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The PA State championships just became HUGE!
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This is totally bogus. It should be $1 for each point you earn. Paid by the player.
You want to be number one? Take out a loan.
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BMU services will be available to help people figure out the tradeoffs between bigger state payoffs vs. better chances at making the Nationals.
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12:01am in Chicago and this s*it still be real
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I was talking about this with a friend and he mentioned this isn’t very different than how dirtbike competetions work. Outside of the free entry events, taking a dollar away per person to guarantee higher winnings isn’t really such a terrible idea. I can see this making weekly events really consider being weekly as a result of cost.
I understand the drive to increase the prestige and winnings of the SCS, but this increases the challenges strengthening competitive pinball faced in smaller cities like those we face in Eugene, Oregon. To be considered legitimate and be a part of the IFPA’s mission (elevate awareness, generate media coverage), we now must divert funds toward an annual 16-person tournament for the top Portlanders and elite out-of-staters that no one from Eugene can realistically hope to qualify for.
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There’s definitely exploits to be had, like everything we’ve ever tried to do.
If I ran a weekly and it wasn’t something that graded out to 100% TGP I would definitely migrate to a multi session league.
Take 4 weeklies of activity, grades out higher, submit results once so you pay less.
It cuts the endorsement fee down to $.25 per week for a given month instead of $1 per week.
Charity events are NOT exempt from this (and they have all known this for a while). They have the choice to play for WPPRs or not, and if they feel awarding WPPRs can lead to higher participation which can lead to more donations, that’s on them to figure out.
The $20 per player charge for SCS Finals is still up in the air. Not knowing how this will play out we’re likely to keep it for the 2018 season so we can “GUARANTEE” a bigger prize pool in every State.
Looking forward to the attrition rate. Approving 3500 calendar submissions and results submissions last year wasn’t fun … wait, I didn’t actually do any of them (thanks @PressStart)
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Would this apply to non-US/Canada? If so, there might be some local complications. Here in Norway we don’t run national championships every year, for example, so if such a fee was collected it could end up accumulating for multiple years.
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