Updated details on the inaugural IFPA Women’s Championship is available here:
http://www.ifpapinball.com/championship-series/womens
We’re going with a $50 entry fee for each of the 16 participants.
If anything doesn’t make sense on that page let me know. We haven’t posted that publicly yet (although it is publicly available to find while digging around our site).
This sentence has ‘world’ written three times. It’s just a bit of an awkward sentence. Of course 16 of the world’s greatest female players would be from all over the world:
“Featuring 16 of the world’s greatest female players from all over the world, the IFPA Women’s World Pinball Championship is the most prestigious women’s tournament in competitive pinball.”
Just curious, why a Thursday?
Also, while I’m not nay-saying this tournament idea, I’d like to see if there’s any sort of other incentive for the remaining 13 players who don’t win money. For example, the SCS and IFPA finals and all those biggies, the players who don’t place still get points. In the case of women, they’re out the flight, hotel, and entry fee, same as the runners up at the aforementioned tourneys, but they do get points. Any way IFPA could organize a tourney discount or sponsorship with the Pinball Hall of Fame for some consolation prizes?
I don’t know for sure, but I imagine it’s in order to line it up right before the IFPA Pinmasters. The US National Championship will be on the same day. I guess if you qualify for both you have to pick.
Zach and I are out there starting Tuesday for work, and with Pin-Masters happening Friday- Sunday, that leaves Thursday as the only day to really knock this out. It’s the same exact schedule as Nationals last year, we’re simply adding in the 8 Women’s matches at the start of the day.
The other incentive for the 13 remaining players is to have hopefully signed up for Pin-Masters, so the Women’s Championship is simply the appetizer for the weekend. Outside of that . . . it’s Vegas? 
(For 2017 replacing that sentence with “Outside of that . . . it’s Dallas” just doesn’t have the same ring to it)
Aha. I didn’t realize Pin-Masters was the same week. This makes more sense. On the surface I thought this was a stand alone event. Probably because I never make it to Nationals or Pin-Masters.
Thanks for the clarification.
Josh are you all actively looking for any other sponsors to support the women’s tourney whether it’s $$ or prizes or media? I’d be happy to help or refer folks to you if so (not that I have anything in mind just now, but I can think of a few options)
Zach will handle gathering media like he always does … Sponsors on the other hand we’re all ears if you have any ideas.
I would love for the ladies to get to play for more than $800, especially with outside money included.
I’m happy to provide Babes in Pinland shirts for 5th - 8th or something like that. And I’ll see if there is any interest in having a ‘fundraiser’ tournament at my women’s night for some money to sweeten the pot.
@echa Maybe some Belles & Chimes stuff too?
To clarify, this means that the women’s championship will end prior to nationals matches beginning, correct? So a competitor could participate in both if they qualified for Nats?
This means that we’re running them at the same time. All matches start at 11am for both tournaments.
Last year we had 31 participants for Nationals, so that meant 15 matches starting on the 9 machines available. Early on it’s really just a clusterfuck of people waiting for games (which we’re okay with). Since it’s single elimination the field gets reduced by half every couple of hours, so we get things into a workable state mid-afternoon.
Assuming a similar player count for Nationals, we’ll be talking about 47 players (23 matches for 9 machines). For any player that qualifies for both Nationals and Women’s, they will be able to play in both. The matches will just be played as they are able to be played. It will already be a mega-cluster . . . but we have the entire day and night to finish it all up so we’re not worried.
We can’t afford to waste the time having 4 Women’s matches going in the second round, while NOT starting Nationals and having all those other machines available. That would blow up our schedule.
Perfect explanation, thank yoooooou!
Will there be more than 9 machines in the lineup this time? I can’t recall if that limitation was based on finding suitable games, having less space than promised or the number of cameras available. Maybe it was a combination of all three?
It was definitely a combination
The plan was to get 12 games prepared for Nationals, and then use Nationals to help weed out the ‘worst 3’ before Pin-Masters. If you remember the area behind the scorers table down to the popcorn machine we were supposed to get that entire space this past year.
Hoping that Tim puts it on the schedule and then remembers to not book any other parties that weekend. That ended up cutting our space in half, so 12 games turned into 9, and the idea of having some room in between the games turned into “Please don’t hit the player next to you”
Assuming we actually get 12 games going that should help things a bit, although we will definitely not have one game per match available for this, so it will be at a slow pace for the first couple of rounds.
Having the whole wall down to the popcorn machine would definitely help alleviate some of the “cattle” feeling during peak wait times over there. And 12 games would give some more significance to having choice of machine, especially late in a match.
I wrote an article about this for the next issue of Skill Shot which comes out a week from tomorrow. If covers the basics of this announcement, as well as some basic statistics about women in pinball overall, with more of a focus on our local scene. If you’re not a subscriber, or in the Seattle area, look for it on our website soon (skill-shot.com). It’s issue #40 and is being released just a few weeks after our 8 year anniversary.