If 50% of my players opt out of the IFPA endorsement fee, how does that impact the overall TGP? I’d imagine that the people who did come to earn WPPRs will now be earning piddly points.
If half the players opt-out and the WPPR-chasers really want those WPPRs, why not just ask the WPPR-chasers to all pay $2 WPPR tax instead of $1 to cover the casual players that don’t care about the rankings?
I was not aware i can start charging for trophies… I spend $100-200 on trophies and don’t charge a dime to the tournament players.
1 Like
After reading the comments, i am ok with this, hopefully it won’t cause TD(s) to raise prices. Technically it comes out of the “Winning” pot, as long as we don’t raise the price or charge an “Entrance” fee to the tournament and keep it the same, it won’t be a skin off my back… I honestly pay $10 every month to play in a local tournament i always loose at 
I do feel that there should be also be an entry fee into state and national championships.
When i competed in a district level contest in my youth, i had taken 1st place, however, in order for me to compete at the “State” level, i had to pay another entry fee, I was unable to do so, and forfeited my spot.
First pinball . . . now tennis . . . the world is ending . . .
1 Like
I have followed this closely and have come to the conclusion that it’s not a big deal.
If you as a TD want to run a tournament that’s WPPR eligible, keep a dollar per player back as an administrative fee. This isn’t a new thing (admin fees) and while it doesn’t happen all the time now, there are definitely quite a few events that are not 100% payout - trophies, etc.
Despite what bloviating cheese-heads think, location sponsorship of that fee is realistic if you already have a relationship with the owner. You just have to value relationships and know how to talk to people.
I do think there are valid concerns over the bookkeeping side and the transfer of money, but there is a lot of time to solve that.
2 Likes
For those interested, yes we will take these funds to pay our administrative costs.
I will then write a check to sponsor the State and National prize pools out of my own pocket.
Better? 
1 Like
See, we don’t even need all the time!
I’ve been following this thread and topic with interest and figuring some practical examples in my head, and I have some concerns. Consider the following:
Right now, NYC basically has a stranglehold on the New York State SCS. If you are not within a decent distance of downtown NYC, you probably aren’t making States. This isn’t a function of the changes, just kinda how reality is right now (Buffalo people, I’m sorry if I’m wrong about this). Other upstate persons basically have no chance. So with this change, upstate players at local tournaments have even less of an incentive to fund the pot since they won’t be realizing a chance to grab at it.
This will cause less players to want to pay the fee to get WPPRs in the first place, reducing tournament values for upstate tournaments - some players won’t want to fund SCS, some players may not care about WPPRs at all. This disadvantages players in those areas who want to earn good WPPRs by reducing the number of potential points they can earn. For those that are trying to grow their ranking, it’ll be much harder.
My worry in all this is in the individual opt-in part of the process. If it were at the tournament level, then you can simply announce “this will be a WPPR tournament” and anyone entering is required to pay the fee (or acknowledge it’s coming out of a prize pool) or they don’t play. With it being opt-in, tournaments now have partial value and there would be incentive to max out the number of paying players in potentially undesirable ways:
-
The TD could simply cover the fee for everyone without their consent. This causes a problem if a given player does not want to be included in the results but now is because someone else forced them in.
-
Since results aren’t submitted until after the tournament is over, the winning player could cover any missing player funds out of his/her own pocket to maximize the WPPR value of the tournament they just won. That would be a terrible paying-for-WPPRs situation.
There’s also the issue of declining to participate after having played the tournament (to not have a bad result on your ledger) or only paying the fee if you finish well, both of which are undesirable situations. All of this puts the onus on the TD to collect/manage the fee in a rather strict way and not cave to individual player pressures. We all know that a lot of tournaments are run very lax and mostly for fun and this individual opt-in system is just rife with ways to manipulate it.
3 Likes
Not so fast!
After the Super League NUKE, I created a custom ranking of where the 2016 SCS would have looked for NYC. The Slam Tilt Podcast guys talked out it on their show.
Here’s the results:
1 Greg Poverelli New York, NY 98 323.00 45
2 Steven Bowden Franklin Township, NJ 9 303.51 25
3 Levi Nayman New York, NY 42 171.71 19
4 Nick Zendejas Northglenn, CO 60 157.00 18
5 Bruce Nightingale Rochester, NY 318 143.11 36
6 Eric Russell CNY North Syracuse, NY 265 130.71 39
7 Tim Sexton Poughkeepsie, NY 49 130.15 27
8 Alberto Santana New York, NY 47 121.23 18
9 Mike Pantino Brooklyn, NY 396 105.88 30
10 Francesco La Rocca 158 99.99 28
11 Lee Hendelman New York, NY 392 99.51 21
12 Howard Levine Mountain Dale, NY 260 91.54 20
13 Sean Grant New York, NY 81 89.57 8
14 Trent Augenstein Delaware, OH 12 81.25 3
15 Christopher CJ Smith Brooklyn, NY 485 80.38 29
16 John Flitton Mount Albert, ON 110 72.70 4
I don’t know about you, but I see a decent share of those spots going to NOT NYC players.
2 Likes
That’s fair, but that wasn’t really the thrust of my concern. I’m more concerned with how the opt-in system can be abused/manipulated and how it will potentially reduce the number of WPPRs coming in from non-hub locations in each state.
I wouldn’t stand for this a TD. First off, I’ll always be taking the fees off the top of the prize pool for the winners or have it sponsored by the location. Second, if I ever did do a player opt-in, there’s NO WAY I wouldn’t make players decide ahead of time.
PAPA20 . . . just purchase your entry AFTER it’s completed . . . you know, if you think it was good enough to keep
1 Like
Sure, sure . . . it’s just when I see a ‘statement of fact’ as plain and simple like that, which ISN’T RIGHT . . . I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t say something 
1 Like
My fault for poor editing. It was a setup to the argument, not the argument itself. No worries.
You would be a good TD then. Can you say that all TDs will act with this level of integrity?
History has shown that where there’s a potential abuse of the WPPR system, it’s taken advantage of. I see value in exercising these edge cases ahead of time. I still say that the potential for abuse is high.
Here’s another example. I know a player who is currently suppressed in the WPPR system. This player is very good, the kind of player you would want in your tournaments to increase its strength. If I were the manipulating kind, I might be tempted to pay the dollar to start including this player and bump up my tournament’s WPPR value. That doesn’t seem right to me, but when the tournament is submitted, you will have absolutely no idea that this took place.
I could be wrong, but wouldn’t suppression at the IFPA level supersede the results from a TD? It’s my understanding that TD’s still submit the results for suppressed players, but is only suppressed when it hits IFPA.
?
Welcome to the world we’ve lived in for the past 11 years.
TD’s can and will include completely fabricated players in their results. They will lie to us about their format to make it grade out higher.
The secret sauce to making this work are THE PLAYERS. If I go to an event, and there is an opt-in choice to be made, and I decide for myself I’m sitting this one out “for WPPR’s” . . . should I look on the results page and see that I’m listed in the standings I would be quick to email the IFPA to point out what happened.
Next step, I would email the TD and ask what happened, did this player not opt-in explicitly. If the TD says, “Well they did . . .but you know, I ended up winning so I wanted their value” . . .
My response is “Sorry TD, here’s your $1 back, go f*ck yourself” (said much nicer)
We rely on our player base to police these situations. It’s worked for 11 years and I can’t see it not working going forward. Whistle blowers make the world go round.
3 Likes
Very true. I hope for everyone’s sake this ends up being a positive change, but we won’t know until it takes effect of course. Thanks for listening.
Josh, on some level, you must agree that letting players opt in or out when they show up at the tournament creates a bit of a clusterf@#k. Things that can happen (some of which are already mentioned):
TD does not explicitly give this option ahead of time, player finds out later and demands to be removed because they were not informed. TD refunds dollar and writes in to change results (removing points already earned by other players), or pays the dollar, forcing the would be opt-out player into the results against their will.
Opt out players take the top three spots. 4th place now “wins” the tournament, as far as WPPRS are concerned. Have fun explaining that to everyone at your next event.
Players show up expecting the normal 30 players, but 20 of them opt out. Enjoy 1/3 of the WPPRs you were expecting.
TD normally takes money from winner, opt out player takes 2nd (and prize money as well). Now the opt out player has won the same amount they would have won even if they had opted in. (I realize the accounting doesn’t change, but the perception of where the money is coming from becomes cloudy in the eyes of the players).
Announcing the tournament results via email or Facebook. TDs can enjoy either: re-explaining the split every single time and posting two different sets of results/photos, or gloss it over by just omitting the opt outs and then trying going around in circles in the comments when the actual winner (who opted out) starts bragging that they won.
Player tries to opt out and TD says they don’t allow it (which is what I plan to do). Player says that the rules of the tournament did not explicitly state that there would be no opt-outs. TD says either “I put that on Facebook”, or “I’m not required to publish it”. Player says they didn’t know, but has now traveled to this tournament. Now what?
As far as WPPRs are concerned, players who opt out are not included in the tournament results. This means that a person can pay $1, be included for WPPRs, and win the tournament without direct competition against any other player who is included in the tournament results. This won’t happen all the time, but could easily happen if 20 of 30 opt out. 9 of the $1 players beat up on each other and get eliminated. The 10th coasts to a victory against the 20 opt outs. No direct play occurred between her and the other 9 fighting for WPPRs. In my opinion, this very clearly violates the existing “direct play” component required for WPPRs.
I like the change, and have no problem with the $1 fee. Very curious to see how it turns out. But, I feel very strongly that allowing a mixture of opt-ins and opt-outs in the same tournament is asking for trouble.
What is the benefit of this over requiring an event to choose to be one or the other? I think splitting the tournaments up-front into WPPRs, and no-WPPRs would be straightforward, and healthier…especially for encouraging newer players.
10 Likes
I’m not worried about the direct play component between ‘pro’ players and ‘not-pro’ players (I guess that’s what we’ll call them).
All your hypothetical examples would play out in some form of getting me involved if anyone had issues about it, and I would make a ruling on how it should be handled. Maybe I throw the whole the tournament out, ban the TD from running any IFPA endorsed tournaments again, and move on
In Pinburgh 2010 and 2011 Bowen ran an official “sidepot” that was player opt-in. With all those players he was able to easy handle those logistics of dealing with who was ‘in’ and who wasn’t ‘in’.
I wouldn’t recommend the opt-in for all TD’s, but if you’re an honest TD doing things the right way, we want to give that flexibility for you to continue to offer as many options to your players as possible.
Now if this is something I have to worry about with YOU as the TD . . . let me know 
If we end up moving forward with the “PRO” and “AMATEUR” events, this opt-in/opt-out player option would go away. Events would be submitted with a “PRO” badge next to it (endorsement fee to be paid), or an “AMATEUR” badge next to it (no endorsement fee required).
1 Like