That’s gonna be ‘biggest mover’ material for sure
I’d like to see either more machines or less entries per person if this format is repeated next year. Even 12 machines setup “PAPA Hard” can’t absorb 253 players with 10 entries per person in an efficient manner imo.
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I spoke to Doug and he is tentatively planning to have more machines, but was looking for feedback. I would suggest that adding time is a more important option: open it up to qualifying for the hour leading up to the start of sessions 4 and 9 and either 30 or 45 minutes leading up to sessions 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 and 10 so that people who have finished their rounds early have the option to play a couple of games in between sessions if they choose to. That would take the pressure off Saturday. You could even make it open all day both Thursday and Friday so that people who are there for the festival but are not playing in Pinburgh can play their games while match play is under way. The Intergalactic tournament bank doesn’t need to use Pinburgh bank machines after all.
I would stick with 10 total entries per person.
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Could work, but will also strain the volunteer staff.
Speaking of that, kudos to the scorekeepers for their efficiency and great attitudes. I think, however that 3 rather than 2 is the right number of scorekeepers for 12 games set up as quick playing as these were. Was there ever a point when there were 3 scorekeepers on the bank?
Bob, we would definitely need more volunteers for that, It would also take out another small chunk of games from the free play area (Games from Pinburgh couldn’t be repurposed for Intergalactic if both are going on simultaneously). There were a few showgoers who were disappointed that the game that they were really looking to play was unavailable. Obviously, it is a necessary situation, but we wouldn’t want to make the odds of it happening that much worse if we can help it.
I can not say for sure how many scorekeepers were scheduled. But for a portion near the end of qualifying, there actually were 4 going.
Thanks to Adam McKinnie who grabbed a tablet to help out and to Lewis Bevins for giving up his playing time to scorekeep at the end of the night.
Also thanks to any volunteers that helped that I am not aware of.
true it’s not easy to have a “side tournament” when you had what, 300 people? Adding too many machines would give unbalanced 100 with PAPA scoring 
Truly it felt even worse than PAPA Classic lines maybe because there was more people and longer playing machines?
Keeping Saturday like this and finals Sunday make sense. Maybe not having a break during the main finals? Straight from 9am-2am? If selfless volunteer agree to score keep?
The main feedback for me, which is the same as PAPA is the desperate lack of online queuing system. I wouldn’t mind 20min wait per game if I could go play other games or walk around in the meanwhile. Karl software handle that very well in all other unlimited or limited best game tournament so it should really be used for everyone benefits. It’s easy to go with 0 tolerance policy, if people aren’t there when it’s their turn they get pushed down then dequeued.
Great works this year once again!
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The games were set up the same as they were during Pinburgh. There was no additional brutality added for the IGPC.
First off, thank you to everyone who participated at Pinburgh and the IPC.
The IPC exceeded what we planned on for participation and we are already planning some changes to improve the event for everyone.
Overall it was a tremendous success and we raised a great deal of money for charity.
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any chance you can let us know how much was raised for each charity?
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Re getting volunteers, maybe give a free entry to anyone who keeps score for 2 hours? Out of 300 people, I think you’d find enough at that price.
Re games taken away from free play, much of the time there were a fair number of open machines in the free play zone, so it doesn’t seem to be short of games. I’d also check to see if the number of games allocated to the back-up banks was higher than needed this time; I didn’t see them in use as much as last year, maybe reallocate a few there.
Re open to qualifying during finals, I’d stick with no - - I liked that emphasis on “please go see the finals” 'that led to a larger crowd this year. It looks good for Pinball to have the big crowd for the championship.
Re scorekeeper count, as I’ve said on other threads, 1 per 4 games is the minimum to keep things running smoothly. Two for 12 games is too few. If they go to more than 12 machines, e.g. 15 or 16, then at least 4 scorekeepers at all times.
Yes, zero tolerance queuing would help.
Game set-up was fine from what I saw watching people.
Maybe the price could be nudged up to $15 [please do keep it under $20] to both raise more charity money and further incentivize scorekeeping if it came with free entry. Or do $15 if you don’t keep score at all, $10 if you do for an hour, $5 if 2 hours, free if 3+ hours. Give people the option of a one-hour slot, get more takers.
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I worked the tournament desk during the evening session, so I tried to get my entries in during the afternoon. It took about 30 min per entry, which feels about on par with a PAPA Classics timeframe. There were two scorekeepers during the afternoon session and we could have used three. There were three for most of the evening session.
Tim Kerro grabbed the scorekeeping tablet and helped out for a long while as well. Thanks Tim!
Petey, you deserve thanks, too — I don’t think you were scheduled to scorekeep and you did pretty much the whole session.
thanks to the side tournament organizers/scorekeepers. this was great, especially as a consolation for those who didn’t qualify in their respective Divisions. got most of my entries in early and avoided lines, but i would echo the suggestions for more scorekeepers or taking advantage of the queue system in the NeverDrains software.
another suggestion would be to have the top qualifiers receive a first round bye - though i understand having tiebreakers sorted by initial seeding does offer some incentive/compensation. something to think about!
Once I snap out of the Pinburgh coma, I’ll try and get the numbers up.
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Karl’s software does not yet support queuing for papa style qualifying. I know he’s working on it but not yet available. I’m sure if it was they would of been using it 
I thought they used Karl’s software at southern fried in June using a queing system
It wasnt Papa qualifying it was Herb. Karls supports Herb…
They probally didnt use it becauae they estimated a lot less people would be participating and didnt think it was needed etc
Exactly. Herb not papa style. We do papa style at pintastic a few weeks prior and Karl said it still wasn’t ready. I’m sure by next year it will be
RAINN: $470
Wounded Warriors: $320
Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank: $400
Western PA Humane Society: $690
Replay Foundation: $1,050
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