Didn’t see an announcement regarding changes in the IFPAPA rules, nor did I find a change log—maybe I missed it, but for anyone else wondering what’s new, it’s this paragraph:
Any points scored by the Tournament Official in the process of freeing stuck balls will not be counted. These points should be subtracted from the final score of the player. It is recommended that Tournament Officials record the scores of all players prior to opening the machine to free the stuck ball.
reposts from discord about questions on how to work this rule
Points not counted seems good but has issues / pushes more work on to TD’s / tech to work it out
Now why does one sentence say WILL and other say should? They kind of contradict with each other.
I also think it should at least have an line like the one all ready in the rules
if the machine’s soft ware supports adding balls to a game already in progress
To say that if the if the machine’s soft ware supports coin door ball saver / coin door disable tilt this shall be used
and have as it’s own line
to say that if the if the machine’s soft ware supports test menu mid game (with out ending game) this shall be used to free the ball and do any needed testing.
Not really an rule but more of note saying you can use this if the game lets’ you.
What about the outline drain rule for some stuck balls (not really stuck per the rules) the rules say to manually trigger the outlane switch / kickback they should get the points for that
What about bonus points
Big points that you lose and may be hard to relight
What about progress added?
Points that the ball should of earned?
Points from the time when the TD says to the player let the game try to do an ball search
Muilt ball or other mode starts both in should of happened and should not not happened with the ball path
And what about the case of an stuck ball scoring some points on it’s own but still stuck what points count and what points don’t count?
Cases where on an older game with no coin door ball saver and an TO says shoot hear do you get the points for that?
Does this cover mid game tech work for points?
Muilt ball with one ball stuck what about points with that?
Does this need an line saying follow other rules covering voiding game / score do to significant advantage?
I’m not going to reply to any of those—if it’s not in the rules, the answer is either TD discretion or make your own rules.
@pinwizj, I would like to suggest, though, that for future changes, both a change log and an archive of past versions are provided on the IFPA website (and wherever else the IFPAPA rules are officially hosted).
Sure, you can edit your rules as you like, and everybody else can edit their own rules as they like, but fact of the matter is that the IFPAPA rules are a de facto standard that lots of people reference as their base ruleset, so why not make it a bit easier for TDs to keep up to date and make informed decisions on what they want to use.
Talking on Discord about it is not the same, those things should be communicated through the same channels that are being used to publish the document itself.
Change log is available here: