IFPA League and Tournament Definitions - Proposed Rules

Events
1

Hello Everyone, and also tagging in @pinwizj.

I’ve been reading up on IFPA League and Tournament definitions - IFPA League and Tournament definitions as we think locally about League structures for 2022.

I see there are a number of things in red as “Proposed”. Will those be going into affect for the 2022 season?

Some questions I have:

Leagues must have a minimum of 6 sessions per season (of which at least 4 sessions must be counted towards a player’s standing).

What happens if you have mitigating circumstances which force the cancellation of a week? Do you then have to expand the regular season for a week? Weather is always a concern, and we’ve had some recent COVID scares which have forced cancellation of specific weeks.

Leagues of 50 or more members must contain direct-play formats for the regular season and finals (if finals are held).

Best Game Leagues are not allowed if your league is too large? That’s a bummer. The main location we use for League has had to reduce the number of machines on-location because of COVID so we switched to Best Game as way to allow greater throughput. It’s actually increased League engagement for us. What happens if you have a league which is a Best Game League and you end up with more than 50 people? Is the League nullified at that point?

We’re also toying around with the idea of unifying some of our local leagues into a regional league, à la what NEPL and the PPL have. Reading some of the verbiage here:

Any League of 50 or more members that allows sessions to be played concurrently in multiple locations at different times can no longer submit IFPA results as one giant League. This flexible scheduling will still be allowed, however the reporting of these Leagues will be separated into Parent/Sub League submissions.

  • The Parent League will be allowed to keep an overall standings page that can be used for the League Circuit Final qualifications.
  • The Sub Leagues will be reported individually based on either location name or day of the week when matches are scheduled.
  • No player can be reported in the results for more than one Sub League for any given season.

One of the benefits of the multi-location league is the flexibility to allow a person to go to different locations depending on their schedule that week. Does this rule ban cross-location play?

If it is allowed, and if a person attends at multiple locations, how is that meant to be handled within the sub-leagues regarding submission? Is the IFPA going to remove any duplicates? Or does there need to a rule defined in terms of which location an individual’s submission goes against?

  • The Parent League can submit the League Circuit Final based on the players that participate in that League Circuit Final only.

From my observation about these types of Leagues, there is a breakdown into A, B, C, etc. How does that work for Finals submission? Will only A-Division count towards the League Circuit Final submission?

If so, does the 50% max qualifying rule apply in terms of defining definitions? Or, because Sub Leagues are already in it of themselves IFPA submissions, does the 50% max requirement not apply and we’re allowed to do a Finals with any/all participants?

2

Dang, why the continued hate on best game? It is the most enjoyable part of league for me. This will be a difficult choice between turning people away and switching to a format away from one I love.

Edit: Although, we will probably drop below 50 people next year

1 Like
3

Are leagues that started in 2020 going to be allowed to finish out in the 2020 rules?

4

This is exactly my league’s format. I wonder if the 4 sessions counting mean the player must play the 4 sessions. Or can they miss sessions, score a zero and still be counted if they meet the remaining attendance requirements (currently 50% of the meetings that count but I think this rule is also changing)?

5

Yes

Yes, or you add in some form of a direct matchplay component that will count toward the standings.

Nope, the difference is in the reporting, people are feel to play in any location they like but each individual location will have to report separate results

Duplicates? What do you mean? If a person plays at two different locations, it’s not different then essentially playing in two different tournaments. There participation will get reported for both.

That depends on if your Final is for the individual location or the proposed idea of a circuit final. If you do a finals for each individual location then after your A/B/C you submit the final standings based on those results with everyone that was involved in the location event.

If it is for the circuit final, then you would only report the people that participate.

So for sub leagues, yes the 50% still is in effect.

For a circuit final, that is an interesting question that we will have to still talk about internally.

6

Yes

1 Like
7

multi-location leagues there cross state lines court in what ways per state for state points?

League Circuit Final qualifications based on sub leagues court in what ways per state for state points?

There may need to be UP front rules / place setting so an league can’t game it at end of the year to have the Final in the state that helps the some players the most. Maybe even have it that yes we had to move the location right at the end but it’s still graded at location stated at the league start. and to also make it so there can be no home field advantage that picks the IFPA state that players get the finals points in.

Can an league have an play in Tournament to make the League playoffs/finals?

How do league that have sessions in multi states count in each state.

No rules that each session must have the same points as all others??? To stop an kind of separate private tournaments just for their members In there they have 1 mini session just over an state line just to get state points with an non event that members can miss with little to no disadvantage.

The number of events held at a single location must be proportional to the total number of events in the circuit/series

  • At least 2 different organizers or organizations must be involved in the circuit/series.
    How does side Tournaments count in that?
    And does all people running an Tournament / Tournaments at location Count as one? So you can’t have 2 people running events at that same place split it to game the system?

What are developing areas??

Can there be circuit/series finals based on metro area events? An play in Tournament for X spots in an circuit/series finals.
Say the top X get and the next group of X player make an play in Tournament for the last X spots?

8

But the rule says that

  • No player can be reported in the results for more than one Sub League for any given season.
9

I think you have a valid point here: if all the Sub Leagues are treated as their own league for reporting and WPPR purposes, then there’s no need to restrict how many leagues someone can play in.

The Parent League will have to come up with their own rules on how they want to handle ranking points for qualifying toward any Parent Circuit finals separate event/tourney.

10

Not anymore :slight_smile:

I like @PressStart’s idea better.

1 Like
11

What problem is solved by the rule that you need at least 6 sessions and 4 that count toward the player ranking?

A single day event of 12 rounds of 4-player group match play is 96% TGP. An event on 3 consecutive days of 4 rounds each day where the total of the 12 rounds determines standings is 96%. But for some reason playing 4 rounds on 3 consecutive Tuesday evenings and counting the total of 12 games is no longer valid. Why should this format be delegitimatized?

In the Phoenix area we have 3 venues (and soon would have been 4) that run league seasons where IFPA results are submitted every 4 weeks (1 drop week, best 3 of 4 weeks count toward standings), 4 or 5 rounds per night. It’s conceptually very easy to understand for new and experienced players. Every game is meaningful. This format has been a great success and has attracted experienced players and new players and has grown our player base. It has increased the coin drop and business before, after and in between league nights.

Any TD in any area could have run a similar format if they wanted to, so I’m not really sure who would be pushing to change the rules or why. I’m talking about the minimum of 6 sessions rule in particular.

This rule would affect the District 82 league even more which is only 2 evenings each month (7 + 7 rounds). It seems like these rule changes are designed to hurt successful formats for some reason.

Someone help me understand why this rule change is a good thing.

1 Like
12

I think it’s to eliminate the monthly leagues. How can a league only be a month long? 12 league seasons a year? Seems silly to me.

Just have stand alone events each week or fewer league seasons in a year.

Imo. Leagues should only be once or twice a year. Like actual leagues.

6 Likes
13

Seems obvious to me that most of these changes are intended to nerf “wppr farming”

7 Likes
14

District 82 is dropping its Tuesday Night League format of 7 games one Tuesday and 7 more games 2 weeks later. January 2022 League will be our last ‘League Season’. Starting in February we will be doing Tuesday Night Tournaments (I still need a better name) where everything will start and end on each Tuesday night. We will be adding a 2 round 3 game finals to the 7 rounds of group match play. It will be open to anyone who wants to play (our league was open too you just needed to register) as long as we don’t hit our capacity limit which has never happened on a Tuesday.

3 Likes
15

Having played in leagues since the 90’s, they were always primarily a social gathering of the local community of players. Many of these leagues that are still operating today played 70+ meaningful games per season. With tightening these definitions, we focused on leagues being about that longer term commitment of the player to be part of that community.

Leagues were never meant to be the primary way for players to accumulate huge amounts of WPPR points. In fact Leagues were not sanctioned for WPPR’s at all until the 2009 season as part of the v3.0 rules changes.

We had leagues that were 3 weeks long, where members kept their best 2 results, with the sole purpose of being allowed to count every player that participated once in the IFPA standings (inflating the player count of what we would consider true ‘league members’).

Any community of players that is looking to simply maximize WPPR’s has the ability to do that through submitting Tournaments in for sanctioning (like the changes D82 and other leagues are making due to this change). Other league organizers are extending their seasons to fit within these rules, which hopefully serves the purpose of motivating members to be more committed to attending.

I understand the “We’ve been doing something X way for Y years, so this change is really inconvenient” side of this. It’s super inconvenient, especially dropping this at the end of the year, and we’re definitely sorry about how this is getting pushed out . . . but we genuinely feel it’s for the better of the WPPR system overall.

9 Likes
16

How late do you expect these to run?

17

I’m expecting it to run to 11PM if you make the finals and are in it to the end. I’m here 'til Midnight anyway just playing around so the overall time commitment is not different for me as the tournament director. I think it will be better overall too cause now people can travel in for any Tuesday Night Tournament and know that it starts and ends on the same night.

1 Like
18

@pinwizj and @PressStart:

Apologies if I missed it, but when will this be going into effect? We have a league start started in 2021 and will finish out in January 2022. Adam’s reply to Ian seemed to indicate we can finish what we have.

I’m about to register the next few cycles of our local league. Does it have to comply with these new rules if it’s a 2022 league? What about leagues that have already been registered for 2022?

19

Anything that started in 2021 will be fine.

Any leagues scheduled to start in January 2022 will also be fine.

All the monthly leagues that registered their entire year worth of leagues already would have to change February through December.

20

Does this mean the pingolf league I ran, that was 3 qualifying meetings (to get to a matchplay final) over the course of a few months and drop your worst 1 of 3 is out for the future? If so, ouch. That was about the most difficult format to run ever and there’s literally no way I would ever attempt this again if I had to do even more meetings.

1 Like