Okay cool! Was worried there for a second.
Still sad and confused, but that’s only because I grew up with the ol’ style (and paid my dues! I’m looking at you, PAPA 14!)
Rats! I didn’t see this before making this. Will be more difficult to remove so I’ll just leave it as-is.
I’ve re-run the PAPA 19 A Qualifying so that the Best 5 Games count for each player.
TOP 24:
1 448 Andy Rosa
2 425 Jason Werdrick
3 421 Mats Runsten
4 409 Cayle George
5 406 Josh Henderson
6 401 Tim Hansen
7 392 Dave Stewart
8 385 Andrew Rosa
9 384 Michael Trepp
10 382 Josh Sharpe
11 380 Adam Lefkoff
12 379 Greg DeFeo
13 373 Kevin Birrell
14 371 Raymond Davidson
15 356 Andrei Massenkoff
16 351 Adam Becker
17 349 Daniele Acciari
18 349 Escher Lefkoff
19 346 Olli-Mikko Ojamies
20 346 Paul Jongma
21 345 Greg Galanter
22 344 Johnny Modica
23 337 Adam McKinnie
24 334 Marcus Hugosson
OUT:
Keith Elwin
Zach Sharpe
Robert Gagno (Champion)
Bowen Kerins
Jim Belsito
Markus Stix
Johan Genberg
Jon Repogle
Robert Sutter
IN:
Andrew Rosa
Michael Trepp
Adam Lefkoff
Greg DeFeo
Escher Lefkoff
Olli-Mikko Ojamies
Paul Jongma
Greg Galanter
Johnny Modica
Full Spreadsheet: Can Be Found Here
Link to existing results: PAPA 19 Qualifying Results
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[in-teg-ri-tee]
the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished
unimpaired, or perfect condition
referring to the format, not the staff 
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I’m not a fan of the “100-90-85” part when only a small portion of the games will count. It places too much emphasis on getting 1sts and 2nds vs. good scores in general. 100-95-92-90 or one of the other versions would be better [see prior thread.] Especially in Classics with only 4 of 16 counting.
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You didn’t grow up with the old style. The old style was to add up the scores on 8 machines you played back to back, then watch a bunch of people qualify because they played Junkyard better than you 
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I do think it’s interesting that no other tournament uses the PAPA 7-19 qualifying system. And what that suggests: this format is not fun to compete in. If it were fun, other events would use the system. (CA Extreme used this system for 2-3 years, and based on the same sort of not-fun feedback, switched to best-game qualifying.)
Now you could definitely argue that shouldn’t matter, because it’s the World Championship, it doesn’t need to be fun. But I can imagine the player feedback from those who spent a lot of $$ to get there, a lot of money to compete, and ultimately decided they didn’t even have a good time. This is a decision that will improve a lot of players’ happiness at PAPA, at the expense of relatively few.
It will be interesting to see what happens in qualifying; I don’t expect major changes to the final field of 24 in A. The buzz of PAPA Sunday will still be the same.
I don’t think Tim’s spreadsheet is very useful for tracking what may happen at PAPA 20, both because PAPA qualifying encourages players to void runs with only 1 or 2 very strong games and no supporting games, and because a best-game tracker automatically favors players who submitted higher numbers of qualifying runs.
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Partially agree. My goal was not to track or predict what would happen at PAPA 20 but to visualize how next year’s PAPA scoring would work out and highlight how strategies will need to change.
I think the rank column is useless as a direct comparison to last year. I didn’t know a better way to order the results though. I highlighted the top 24 players and named the players who moved IN or OUT because I thought it would make what you said very obvious.
Both Keith and yourself only needed to play 1 ticket. Andy Rosa played 8 tickets total. 2 of those tickets would have placed him in the top 24. With only his “best 5 games” scored, cobbled together from several “kept” tickets, his scores dominate.
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At least a handful of Super Leagues use a PAPA-7-9-style-card-based qualifying system. I don’t really think it’s “fun” for a tournament and it’s one of the reasons I haven’t been to PAPA* but I think it’s a great format for Super Leagues where you can stop by a location and put together a card or two without any lines.
* More importantly I can only go to Pittsburgh once per year and ReplayFX/Pinburgh is too insane not to attend.
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Wow, this is really disappointing.
PAPA is, or was supposed to be the epitome of competitive pinball, the format made it that It tested the metal of every player and the roller coaster of every entry is what makes the format awesome!
“Awesome, got two good games!, Dammit fucked up 3 and 4, time to try again”
“YES! 3 good games! DAMMIT fucking 4 and 5!!”
That constant ride of up and down, highs and lows, that is what is amazing about the format, and having to play against such great players at the same time.
Pump and Dumb (and no that’s not a typo) is just boring, just hammer your way through each game, no risk, just keep playing till you hammer in that good score. For most of the players in the top 24 it’s not a question of if, it’s just a question of when are you going to break through.
I’d much rather see the prize pool shrink then the format change if it is a monetary issue that is driving the change.
I don’t have the history as some do with PAPA, I only started on PAPA8 right after the flood and since then haven’t missed one. It was a must attend on my list, so it wasn’t even a question if I was going to attend PAPA20, and now it is
If PAPA is just another pump and dumb, then it’s exactly that, just another pump n dumb. I’ll run one locally for less money, with local people and get pretty much the same experience.
PAPA format is an experience in an of itself, and it’s called PAPA format for a reason…
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PAPA 16 A qualfiiers:
8 Players have 5 games earning >0 points.
8 Players have 4 games earning >0 points.
(incl top 24)
8 Players have 5 games earning >0 points.
14 Players have 4 games earning >0 points.
2 Players have 3 games earning >0 points.
I don’t really know what a “good” game is at PAPA and if there’s really a solid definition of it. I’ll use this simple one. A good game is any game that earns a player more than 0 points on his/her ticket after the conclusion of the qualifying period.
The number of “good” games required to qualify for PAPA finals is decreasing (for a variety of reasons.)
Could also say: fewer games played during PAPA qualifying can be considered “good” games.
Basically my point is that this isn’t the best defense of the PAPA 7-19 format and that to keep the (changing) idea of X good games the format would not be able to grow to accommodate more players as easily.
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Completely shocked, and terribly disappointed. Makes missing the last PAPA event worse 
I thought most of the feedback from the 15-16 PAPA Circuit events was that players didn’t want the unlimited, best game format?
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Good is a relative term, I know I’ve done say 2 top 20 games for games 1 and 2 and then fucked up games 3 and 4 and know my ticket is over.
I was using “good games” more figuratively, than literally.
Since we went to taking 24 qualifiers you could get away with multiple zeroes on a ticket and still get into finals. The reward for consistency with PAPA style tickets has been lessened.
If we choose to take more qualifiers, it would go down even more.
I am also in the camp of “I can only really afford 1 trip to Pittsburgh per year”. I think many players (including myself) have been choosing Pinburgh over Papa. We had already made the decision to do Papa in 2017 and although this does take away from the unique style and format that Papa has always been, it’s certainly not a deal breaker for us. We’ll see you guys in April!
The strategy definitely changes now. Instead of trying to have 5 "decent’ games, or, once you’ve got two or three “good” ones on a ticket, finishing with at least some non-zero games, it becomes “go for broke” almost every game. Didn’t make it to SoS on Tron? Void entry. Kobayashi and Jericho or Bust, etc. Likely will affect people’s game choices.
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Both of these Florida tourneys used the PAPA qualifying system, but of course would not even register as a PAPA qualifying format on any IFPA players’ radar unless you lived in Florida.
https://www.ifpapinball.com/tournaments/view.php?t=6959
https://www.ifpapinball.com/tournaments/view.php?t=14870
Brian Dominy and I also gave a local seminar a while back explaining the differences between the Herb and PAPA qualifying formats. Most people were only accustomed to unlimited pay to play for your best score format and the seminar and these PAPA style tourneys really opened a lot of players’ eyes to the uniqueness of the PAPA format.
Although I have not actually been to PAPA, I understand and respect the concept, intricacies and strategies of the format, or the “integrity” as Keith called it. I feel PAPAs qualifying and finals system represents one of the toughest challenges in competitive pinball, which made me very proud to win two local events using that setup. On my bucket list was to make it up to Pittsburgh to try it for real one day.
So while I might not have an official vote in the matter since I have not been there, I am disappointed to hear that the PAPA setup is changing. I am less inclined to try and make it to that tourney now.
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will the scoring still be 100/90/85…? Seems like a lot of 100pts to go around with a 12 game bank?
As far as grinding the a machine over and over, with PAPA’s line, it isn’t too likely
My main hope was, whatever the format is, PLEASE let’s get online queuing from @kdeangelo I want to queue AND enjoy some of the facility games
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Doug, you got to quantify that, yeah you can take a couple zeros, but you better have 2 top 5 scores and a top 10 if you want to make it and again on the same card. Thats still no small feat, you can’t take two 0’a, two mid level 40 - 50 range scores and a top 10 and make the cut.
It’s all about consistency, and that’s all 100% gone once you go pump n dump.
I like the suggestion I’m sering on Facebook, go pump n dump for B - D, leave A PAPA style.
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Still planning on using the PAPA scoring. Working on a que solution!
Same thing I posted on Replogle’s Facebook thread: Bummer. I’ll miss the PAPA ticket format. It was one of the best assessments of how a player would fare in finals play, which favored consistency over catching fire infrequently. Admittedly, this was somewhat mitigated in recent years due to larger # of competitors and 24 qualifiers.
Adding to that: if you had a ticket with only one really good score and 4 crap scores, that ticket was appropriately, not going to get you qualified.
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