Some interesting stats from MAGfest PAPA circuit event that just concluded:
- 159 total players attended, an increase of 25% over the 120 players from last year
- 16 players were returning players that have only played at MAGfest before
- 53 players had never played in a pinball tournament before (some of these may be returning players but didn’t play enough games in previous MAGfest tournament to be included in the IFPA results)
- 90 players have played in tournaments other than MAGfest and came from all over the country for all that MAGfest had to offer, including as far as Washington State
- 34 hours of qualifying were conducted between Thursday at 6pm to Saturday at 4pm
- 5167 games were played in that time with an average of 151.9 games / hour, or 15.2 times / game / hour
Of the magfest attendees that were players, 34 didn’t play 4 games and won’t be submitted in the IFPA results resulting in exactly 125 to be submitted. Many of those players played between 1 and 10 games total; therefore, over 34 hours of qualifying the MAGfest attendees that participated didn’t have a big impact on queues or delays in playing games for the other competitors. But this format gave them a chance to play some games and test their skills against good and great players from around the country.
Slight change to finals, we used game banks (5 total banks) with 3 games each. Top seeds in each match got to choose the bank, rather than individual games during the match. Sped up play as no group ever waited on another group’s choice of game. No player could choose the same group twice, adding a little strategy as well. Each group had one SS and one DMD, third game was either SS or DMD.
Here are some pics:
Setup done before lights go out
Don’t mess with the TDs
Winner Robert Destasio
Top 4: Christopher Smith (3rd), Robert Destasio (1st), Levi Nayman (2nd), Greg Poverelli (4th)
Qualifying (best 7 out of 10 games)
Fan shape lineup of games, giving a little more room for players to flip without interference, each game was also slightly angled outward combined with offset of a few inches. Games were on rubber footies. Due to no wall behind the games, we were able to push them back out of the play area for maintenance which occurred with Whitewater for a major repair on the ramp causing stuck balls. Wish I had a pic of that moment to demonstrate how nice it was to work on a game over time without interfering with players on the adjacent games.
