Tagging @pinwizj for the questions, but I’m posting publicly since I think others may be interested in the answers. I have a few questions regarding suppression of WPPRs/IFPA/whatever you call it.
When a suppressed player plays in a WPPR tournament, I think that player slots into points awarded as if they weren’t suppressed, but what happens there is unclear to me. Are they just assigned to the player but not used in any calculations, or are they wiped forever? If the former, then if the player chooses to un-suppress, do all those points snap back into existence?
Can a suppressed player still participate in the State Championship Series, based on their state performance as if they weren’t suppressed?
Can a player choose to not receive any awarded WPPR points for a given tournament? In effect this would be tournament-specific suppression. Assuming that #2 is a no, the idea would be to still be able to compete and enjoy tournaments but limit awarded WPPRs to only state-based events for the SCS.
The only thing suppressing does is not display the player publicly on the site. Everything on the back end still exists, the points they’ve earned from past performances, their impact on the value of a tournament through their Rating and Ranking, etc. If that player chooses to jump back into the rankings, it will include any results that occurred while they were suppressed.
Nope. Suppressed players aren’t allowed any IFPA benefits that we provide the player base. This includes IFPA World Championship qualifying, SCS qualifying, Stern Rewards program eligibility, etc.
Nope. We base results for WPPR off of the actual results of the event. If a player wanted to opt out of tournament results at will, players could simply choose to do that anytime they performed poorly. By choosing to participate in the tournament, that player is accepting that those results will include their performance at the event.
So if a suppressed player is not listed publicly, does that mean that tournament officials using WPPR rankings for their tournaments don’t know the ranking of the suppressed player? Or is that data made available, just not published?
Also, that’s a very good point re: selectively dumping poor results. I hadn’t thought about that angle, and it makes sense that you wouldn’t allow that.
Really where I’m going with this is that it seems like everything these days offers WPPRs, so if you don’t like/don’t want WPPRs, your choices seem rather limited. You either suppress, or you don’t play.
Nobody knows the rankings/ratings of the suppressed players. I’m sure there’s a table somewhere in the backend of that database where Shepherd can pull that stuff up, but we work off the ‘display’ table with respect to what’s published, or those guys are pulled out of any ranking list prior to it being published.
If you don’t like/don’t want WPPRs then suppressing yourself is the easiest thing to do that should have absolutely no negative impact on that player. They would get to enjoy all the things about competitive play that they are looking for, with none of the WPPR side effects that they aren’t interested in. Slam dunk!
I suppose the only possible problem would be tournaments (like PAPA, wink wink) that use WPPR rankings to determine division restrictions. That’s not an IFPA problem though, and these tournaments can easily just make a rule like “all IFPA suppressed players must compete in the highest division” and they’d be within their rights to do that, though I would hope they don’t.
I don’t know about PAPA but most times when I’ve seen tournament rules with divisions there is a section saying something to the effect of “the tournament director can place anyone in any division at will”. I suspect that language is in there to handle Johnny Modica trying to play in a B division
I can answer the “How” which is to email ifpapinball@gmail.com and request to be removed from the rankings.
The “Why” varies drastically situation to situation. Some of the more popular reasons:
I don’t want my name on the internet
The rankings are bullshit with respect to accuracy (typically the player feels they should be ranked higher then they are)
The rankings put too much pressure on the player that it negatively impacts the enjoyment of the event
My favorite was someone requesting to be removed after they were busted for taking a sick day. Their boss found that they had competed in a tournament on the Friday that they were “sick” via checking out the results on our website, and the employee/player got in trouble.
Have people actually said the pressure comment?
I thought that was just something you put on the website to try to be funny.
But come to think of it, I have had a certain peace while playing during the last few months.
However now that I am not showing up to the league and the tournament that I qualified for, my invisible efficiency % and my invisible rating are gonna drop like an anchor.
I don’t know about PAPA but usually tournaments with those kind of restrictions have language in the rules that allows the TD to move players into a higher division at their discretion.
Or, if you know the suppressed player’s IFPA number, you can look at what would be their profile and add up their points to see where they would be ranked.
I guess there are ways to get this info, but not having it available is a key “feature” of suppression.
I agree that the rules already have some guidance on how they could handle it. I guess I’m just wondering if it’s already come up at PAPA or another big event, and how much of a detailed plan is in place for dealing with this situation. @mhs?
If it were to come up at any of my events, I would always force the player into the highest available division. This would be mostly just to cover my own butt; if the player were to win a lower division, I guarantee 100% that I would never hear the end of it even if the player was totally reasonably eligible for the lower division. By opting out of IFPA, a player is opting out of a database of their tournament result history and consequently loses all privileges that come with having their history easily accessible for TDs. Obviously there is a chance that someone realistically doesn’t want their name on an online database. To combat this problem they can remain in the system with a fake name (which I know some players already do).
For fun (!), now imagine you’re the Pinburgh director and the player in question has been playing for 1 year and would be ranked 2500 in the world if not for being suppressed. This player finished day 1 around 500th. Does this player get bumped into the bottom of A division on Day 2?
