The head-to-head league wasn’t for WPPRs. It was just for cash.
Ahhhh that’s fine.
We actually had a similar idea of our Selfie League location having ‘play nights’ where the location would run a bracket tournament, no WPPR’s at stake, but they would have some modest prize pool they provide. The idea being all those scores played in that tournament would be used for Selfie League qualifying purposes.
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@CFFLegs, I fix all the incorrect TGP results submissions before I approve then 
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This is an important point. Can “Bob” still be displayed in the results, but without getting any wpprs? He still played a tournament, and should have his name in the results. Wpprs is a separate issue to me. If the ifpa decides that his 35 games played does not earn him the right to receive wpprs, so be it. (Although that doesn’t pass the smell test imo.) Thanks again to Josh and Adam for constantly working on improving the formula! (This post was more a question to @pinwizj than a reply to @haugstrup btw.)
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I agree it makes sense.
it wouldn’t make sense to filter people out until the full qualifier is completed (alternative would be to “hide” players until they become meaningful" which would be pretty confusing) and by then it takes 2 minutes to copy/paste into an Excel spreadsheet and filter results manually before sending them to IFPA.
I have just followed up with the people that were “excluded” to tell/remind them of the new v5.3 rules about 50% and that they should play more next time if they want to count! 
This has always been annoying to me because I think for a majority of people who got into competitive pinball over the last 5+ years and definitely for myself the PAPA or Pinburgh experience is one where you can play in C division and have a chance to succeed even if you just got into pinball very recently. I know for PAPA 16 I found out that during a trip to Pittsburgh I had planned with my friends there was some sort of pinball event going on so we trotted down there and were very surprised to find the PAPA facility. I had only played maybe 2 or 3 monthly tournaments prior to that. I was at absolutley no risk of being forced into A division and it probably would have made me quite upset. It’s taken all the time since then for me to now even be in a headspace where I think I have the ability to compete in A division. Last year I barely stumbled over the cut line to make B division and I’ve been playing pretty much every day for a while now, practicing and trying to get better.
The problem also extends to events outside of modern. Once you kind of realize that “oh drat. Now I have to pay $15 instead of $5 to play in a tournament because I don’t qualify for the beginner’s discount” or “Looks like I have to literally quit playing pinball for 2 years if I want to play in PAPA/Pinburgh B/C Division and there’s nothing else I can really do about that” it’s got to be frustrating. I don’t think I’m telling any tall tales when I say that any PAPA tournament is going to be a much better experience than local touranments at arcades that have fewer than 400 working pinball machines. Really glad my chance to flounder away in C division for 3 years wasn’t deprived from me!
Right, I’m not advocating for hiding players who haven’t yet reached 50% of games while a tournament or league is still dynamic and active. I do think that the cut line should accurately reflect the finalists based on the current number of fully vested participants so that someone isn’t under the impression they made A finals only to find out they didn’t because someone forgot to play one game.
Restrictions have their place, and are useful when a players ranking is a reflection of how well they compete in a wide range of events. Restrictions are bad when a players ranking is a reflection of playing the same 12 people every week and having gamed the system for that scenario to result in a higher point total than most anyone else anywhere.
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I completely understand and agree with your statements. But at some point, if you want to “look cool” to people telling them you’re ranked top 100 in the world at pinball*, you kind of have to take the rights and responsibilities that go along with that don’t you?
In theory, one solution is to drop out of WPPR.
* I have NFI how many people actually attempt to “look cool” this way.
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30 at the moment 
And I totally agree with Keefer here. The joy of gaming the system and riding up the ranks is running into the consequences of being so high up the ranks when you do run into restrictions.
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And how many in the top 200? Asking for a friend.
Long post but since people are asking for details I can give my long opinion blended with info:
I think the new rules are great progress and effectively prevent walk ins with no intention of qualifying from counting. Hopefully other large leagues can adjust. As for SL, If we are to have 100 players they will now need to attempt to actually play in the tournament assuming that would imply they now will know superleague even exists is a great change. I can say it shocked me they all played 4 games up from 1-2 in January, whatever motivation FLR used to persuade perhaps that will work for 8. If the qualifying game number merely pushes down to 4 that further hurts the integrity of the format to
Maximize which would be sad. Sadly that is historically what happened. Before forced finals we played 25+ unique games a month. Then we saw pingolf multiball race with 16 games. Down now to 8 games and any less loses Modern money, because Steve , myself and others will only pay $13 once to qualify. No need to come back another week. For those interested: as it is there has never been an entry fee, finals has an optional $10 bounty, all you pay is moderns admission, re-entries are unlimited at $10 a pop and don’t get paid back out. Finals is currently papa style whereas numbers result in unpredictable numbers of byes and rounds. I usually have a bye as second seed sometimes instead round 1 only one player is eliminated from a match play papa group. It goes 13-9-6-4-winner usually or 12-8-4-winner. We often don’t get more then that to show to finals sometimes it’s 16-24 though. Those are the most fun months and happen 3/4 times a year. If the new rules lower total submitted participants or make more people try to make finals, that’s great. As it is I have no clue who these people are I don’t know them, other than evidently I’m 20-0 against them. Francesco is a good friend and a dedicated director and employee. He loves Pinball. Anyone speculating to his intentions, as someone who played in every SL I can say he wants to expand pinball in NYC, make modern revenue but there was never any doubt he is ALWAYS going to maximize and adjust to new rules to make sure Modern has the most points. In some way all directors do this right? When participating in qualifying became relevant I decided sunshine league in 2017 would be 3 weeks and a final where 2 count - which multitasked; allowing people freedom to miss but also making sure all 25-30 get submitted. I expect at modern we will now play 5 games qualifying a month - which is interesting because it will cost modern money. The likely adjustment to which is 2 SL a month instead. If true I suppose the possible tgp nuke may be the only option? My idea of a max locations per card is seemingly too much of a headache in coding. I don’t think anyone could blame consideration for such a TGP nuke. As for the actively participating finalists who always finish their qualifying ticket and come out they seemingly all love to compete, have all become much better players, are loyal customers keeping modern open and passion for pinball in NYC in terms of ifpa strong; for me that’s all great - they care more about states seeding than personal ifpa rank. They pay the penalty of not being able to enjoy PAPA or Pinburgh but they knew what they got themselves into. They all know the inflation is egregious. As a player I hope to see the new rule bring little to no adjustments and a more fair submitted standard across the board in 2017.
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I agree with keefer, too. I just think it’s probably like 5 that really care about the high ranking and the rest are getting boned by having theirs inflated.
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Yes I used to like the old cash league most of us would just drink next door and at the end of the 10 week season the A finals winner got some cash. I think I won $80 a few times it was really much more a social league no wpprs. The catch was all games recorded in league that night HAD to be superleague entries unless that player already had done their entry.
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The interesting crux of the issue at hand . . . the only way of f*cking people like Greg who are capitalizing on “beating” all these people, is the removal of all these people from impacting the results in any way. Greg’s 3rd place finish at Super League looks much different with 20 players participating instead of 100.
It’s easy for everyone to throw people like Ben Moses, Joe Shanley, Paul Fiterson, etc. under the bus as not being important, or assuming they don’t care about competitive pinball.
It gets harder when you replace those names with people that you know (as seen in some other leagues that are dealing with this). The only way to stop all the people at the top from getting tons of points, is weeding out the players that truly didn’t “compete” against those players in the first place.
When you suddenly realize someone like Ben Moses really wants whatever participation WPPR’s he can get, doesn’t particularly care that he’s not giving Greg legit competition, and doesn’t want to be “sacrificed” in order to make sure Greg’s WPPR take is right sized . . . it’s a really tough battle.
Our answer for this is letting Ben know he now has to at least give the PERCEPTION he’s “legit competition” by competing at the same level of participation as Greg.
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LOL that’s information reserved for IFPA staff
I don’t think boned is the right word.
No one is forcing them to play super league, it’s a product of their participation, don’t participate and the problem goes away.
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Adam I actually decided as I dont want my ranking inflating and getting more unrealistic, I am going to stop playing after the next finals. Trust me that doesn’t solve any problems I’m doing that for my own reasons. Even if 2-3 people followed suit how does that fix anything?
This is the other problem with rank inflation that people generally don’t discuss. I haven’t been playing regularly in modern for a while because I don’t want to be restricted at Pinburgh. I would I love the chance to compete more often against top players and SL is good for that except that it limits me at big events.
@pinwizj Won’t you please think of the children and make all the bad things go away?!?
http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/a6/a646c45633cfab95a2aaf727480883aba7de652148fb3601db61853a62d3b3da.jpg
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