and what is an State or Province in the EU? or other Countrys?
and then need to deal with issues like
Taiwan (Chain says it’s part of chain and the IPFA is forced to follow that)
Hong Kong can be it’s own County (Chain says it’s part of chain and the IPFA is forced to follow that)
and other issues when State and Province are pushed to the level of exemption spots.
Now maybe just make exemption spots be min 2 and MAX based of some kind of % of players / events per area.
You make a list and we’ll give 2 spots to every group on your list. Let’s go!!!
ok take the smallest (number of players / events) EU County that get’s 2 sports now and then each bigger places can be cut so that each area in can be evened out (as long there are easy dividing lines) Like say metro areas + with an non metro areas in filling as well.
If that is to much work then say at X4 number then add 1 spot
at X6 number then add 2 spots
at X8 number then add 3 spots
at X10 number then add 4 spots
at X20 number then add 5 sports
same thing with US State and Province.
But if some EU places do get cutup then each CUTUP area has it’s own.
Slovenia get 2 spots (54 players / 8 events), so that’s a 6.75 ratio.
Please send a full list of how that breaks out into the various CUTUP’s and we’ll discuss this on our side.
don’t live in the EU so really can’t say that much on ways to split (us / can like) some of them up them like US states.
At least big ones like (pop size with long runs from pop centers to pop centers)
UK (not in the EU any more)
RUSSIA (after the war is over)
India
australia
new zealand maybe?
mexco
japan
south korea maybe?
chain
Cutting up some US states is an other thing (if just on number of players / events base)
The whole thing with “states” and “countries” getting per-entity spots IN ANYTHING (not just pinball) is the unevenness of population and or participation. It’s not “fair” to people in the most populous areas, but fairness isn’t the point, the point is to get people from as wide a variety of areas as possible interested in participating / competing in whatever it is. Miss Wyoming wanna-be’s have a much better chance of getting to the Miss America pageant than those in California or Texas. Olympic teams have the same thing, although there large countries do have more athletes overall, only some sports are “one team per country.” There’s no good fix to it, and some would say it doesn’t need fixing.
Wanna clean the mess up? Just get rid of all geopolitical boundaries. How many centuries has that flopped?
Anyone know if there has been an official announcement about EPC dates yet? I assume that info might be packaged along with IFPA18 invites, but just wanted to check.
I haven’t seen an official announcement, but it will be the weekend prior to IFPA18.
Some Fulda Farming™ will be done during the week in between as well.
Indeed, from what Tobi has said the EPC (Up to 7 tourney’s) is the weekend before, Olympics in between (Up to 11 tournies) in Fulda. And then the big one at Freddy’s about an hour away in Echzell. EPCIFPA is the new IFPAPA, get those major exemption hall passes in nice and early people, it’s looking likely it will be my only pass of 2023, but I’ll take it! When are the invites going out @pinwizj??? Not that I’m excited to send you my money or anything! Also for those who don’t make the cut for the WC, Tobi is planning on running a mini WC over that weekend that follows exactly the same format as the WC with a pinball machine as top prize!
It’s on the list after I get through this mountain of NACS stuff 
I’ve been in touch with Josh. Some of you may have noticed that the number of “country spots” for IFPA18 has been changing all day. Josh confirmed that he’s only adding spots to that list after consulting with the country directors to confirm who gets the spots, since it’s no longer automatically the two highest ranked players in each country (see discussion above). He will continue to update the list as he receives feedback. Furthermore, not all countries will be using both of their 2 potential spots, so there will likely be fewer than all 42 potential country spots taken. “If you plan to go, Pay.”
Josh would you mind clarifying something. If Daniele had played one ICS event in 2022, would he have qualified for one of the country spots? It says about finals, but each championship series run there finals in different ways? It’s not the top 2 finishers in the country championship series that get a spot at the WC is it?
From my understanding is this correct, the highest ranked IFPA players in each country, plus if that country has it’s own championship series they need to qualify for the finals in that series if they want a country exemption spot at IFPA worlds?
Each country sets forth their qualifying requirements for their Championship Series. For Italy the top 16 players qualify for the ICS Final.
Daniele would have had to finish in one of those top 16 places in the ICS standings to be eligible to claim one of the Country Exemption spots at a discount.
Because he did not qualify, he’s forced to qualify for the IFPA WC via an at-large bid at the more expensive rate.
That Country Exemption spot then moves to the next highest ranked player Italy, cross-checked against the ICS Standings, etc.
The highest two ranked players in Italy that ALSO qualified for the ICS Final are the two players eligible to claim those Country Exemption spots.
This is a first; no non-US tournaments to date:
30 Keith Elwin United States 42nd Attending
But does he have a passport? 
“Active Keith” didn’t travel internationally.
“Retired Keith” does
