If you think that’s a better result, you should not run a Flip Frenzy. It’s not about “not losing,” it’s about winning as much as possible in a limited amount of time. 14 > 12. When you guys are done bastardizing FF it’ll just be a more efficient queueing system for normal boring tourneys.
Guess I’m gonna have to move to Australia where they don’t suck all the fun out of unique formats.
Why not run a traditional one?
You’re obviously free to continue to run yours anyway you’d like. What I’ll continue to do is run mine how my players want. If that happens to be win percentage, then that’s what they’ll get. If it’s not, then they won’t. And as of right now, that’s what I’m being asked for. If you want to call them all stupid and tell them they hate fun, I’m happy to let you do that in my facebook group.
Out of the three ways to determine a victor–net wins, win percentage, or total wins–I think net wins lends itself to the least shenanigans. There’s not much incentive to slow play and there is less incentive to concede matches because the losses really hurt. It’s the happy medium of the two other options.
14-1 and 12-0 are both a good night I can’t really say which is better for determining a winner. If you like the chaos and frenzy side of the format total wins is definitely the way to go.
We decided to have a finals after the 2-3 hours frenzy to try and squash the 14-1 vs 12-0 debate.
When did I call anyone stupid? I find that it’s usually smart people who hate fun anyway.
FINAL FRENZY HYPE!
I have attended/organised a handful of flip frenzy events and really enjoy the format (along with mostly everyone that participates). In the most recent event I used MatchPlay for the first time, and love the way the arena balancing works to effectively choose a least played game when assigning a new match. In situations with more games than groups, or where x number of games ‘play long’ I can see it really helps to balance out any unfairness.
Has any consideration been given to something similar when selecting a player for the next match? On this most recent event for example we found that some players faced a couple of opponents 4 or 5 times, but other opponents zero times. If the opponent that a player is paired with frequently is perceived to be particularly strong (or weak) then there can be a perceived dis/advantage there.
Further, the way the queue is ‘public’, there could be a tactical advantage to slowly walking back to report a result to avoid a strong player!
So one approach to this might be that instead of picking the player from the queue that has been waiting longest - instead we pick a player from the queue that the opponent has played the least amount of times previously (and ties split by choosing the player that has been waiting longest in the queue)
I suppose one consequence of this might be that it roughly also balances out the number of games played… and in doing so players might therefore be less inclined to ‘win quickly’ and so basically slow the competition down? I’m tempted to try and monte-carlo simulate this, but curious if Andreas/anyone has already considered all this.
The player returning to the queue should be reporting the result for this reason.
As long as this topic suddenly bubbled up to the top I will offer a brief summary of the Flip Frenzy experience!
I have been running Flip Frenzy weeknight tournaments for about four months now. So far we are the only ones doing it regularly in Florida. Wish others would try it out because it is fun and keeps both the beginners and the experts busy and on their toes.
Tip for the TDs: Use MatchPlay. Do 2.5 hours of qualifying and a 4-player single-round final containing at least three games. With 20+ players and 15+ games available you should reach 100% TGP with no problem, especially if you maintain the tiniest of queues. (We usually have only one or two players in the queue.) One time we tried an 8-player final, and it took WAY too long for a weeknight. We can usually get everyone out of the building by 10 or 11 so they can get a decent night’s sleep.
I also encourage players not to linger long on a game if they are getting crushed by an opponent. Take your loss quickly and move on, since this is a timed event! And when players feel dejected after a loss this format gets them “back on the horse” quickly and they soon forget that last drubbing.
Flip Frenzy has helped bring in a lot of newbies because it guarantees they will compete for a few hours, they’ll meet a lot of new people, and they will get to play a lot of different games. It is by far the most social of all the formats out there because players are not spending too much time sitting on pins and needles waiting for a dominant player to finish their ball.
We created some new SCS competition players this way, and no one has told me yet they are tired of the format. (At this point, I’m afraid to change it!)
As to players lingering and waiting for someone weak to finish up, I don’t permit that. I make the winner come up and announce the results immediately. When many people assault me at once with results(!) I try to mix up the reporting so they will get different players and games.
Has everyone been happy all the time? No! And MatchPlay once did a weird thing on me that resulted in my having to stop the tournament, make a second one, then put the two results together! But in general it’s been a net positive for the community, and I’m happy to have done it and keep doing it.
Surely this can be seen as open to you picking and choosing who plays who. It should be based purely on the actual time people are reporting their game results.
Both players were returning to the queue after each game, and then a different machine was allocated to the person who was Player 1 (shortly to become Player 2 alongside the person at the front of the queue).
I’ll throw a tip back to you. Our first 2 flip frenzy’s we ran we did the 4 player finals. However, we have since switched to running a 60 minute frenzy final featuring the top 8. It’s so much better, and it guarantees the finals will be over in 60 minutes. With 8 people we had 2 in queue, and we remove longer playing games from the finals. Each player generally get in 7-8 games in 60 minutes.
Everyone just spent 2-3 hours qualifying in “flip frenzy”, why have them play a
completely different format for finals?
To WWJ: I see. It hasn’t been perceived that way, and I never even pay attention to who is in the queue, even if they are just feet away from me! But sometimes people say they “play the same person all the time”, and that’s because all their games are 3 minutes long and they keep losing. Lol. I tell them to do bettr/play longer and then they are sure to catch different people finishing up. There is a rhythm that starts to take hold in this format.
This is intriguing. I choose the different format because it changes the rhythm and forces people to think strategically instead of leaning on the algorithm to pick games and players. I wonder how things would work if Flip Frenzy were the playoff format for a Match Play tournament, etc. Hmmm
It would stink 
No way am I playing match play all day, and then thrust into a frenzy.
Last time I ran a flip frenzy I used the following rules for reporting:
Players must immediately line up together in the results queue (I told people specifically where to line up) once a game has been decided. If there is only one player present, first offense is a warning to the missing player, second offense DQd from the event.
Any player dilly dallying, wandering off or not paying attention, after a game has been decided… first offense warning, second offense DQd from the event. This includes playing out P2B3 in already decided games.
It worked well. Some salty players didn’t really love getting in line after a loss but nobody told me they didn’t think it was a good idea and I didn’t catch anyone trying to game the queue although the players I might expect this from weren’t playing in the event anyway.
As for the perceived imbalance of “schedule,” the more volatility you have in game times, the more it seems like players get mixed up but this is somewhat the nature of flip frenzy. It throws a bit of randomness into an event and I think this lets some players that might otherwise not do as well, feel like they can have some success, and in general, for mostly casual events, I think this is a good thing.
Germany have no experience with this format.
As want to organise in April 2 tournaments with 100%TGP for up to 150 Player in one day from 11am till hopefully before midnight I am thinking to run:
1 Flip Frenzy Modern and Pingolf Classics
Alternative:1 Flip Frenzy Modern and 1 Flip Frenzy Classics
Amount of Machines and Space is no problem in Freddy`s Pinball Paradise
We organised already tournaments with 150 Players there
Tomorrow I will test first time with our league by 32 Players on modern machines.
If I will use 20% for queue tomorrow, will waiting time be similar on 150 player by 20% queue ?
Any experience on Tournaments >150 Player?
Greetings Albert
Wow I wish had experience with 150+ FF haha, I’m pretty sure this will be the biggest FF ever.
Time really depends on the players and machines. Your avg game is what counts towards TGP so it’s not a huge deal if some players play long games, but you want in general people playing short games to get to 25+ avg. I think 10h+ should be good, we’ve hit 16+ using 2.5h and ~40 people so…
As mentioned before, FF qualifying + basically any sort of Finals is also an easy and efficient way to hit 100%.
I would recommend being very organized, and enforcing Jay’s rule about having both players come up to report results.
Also, I’ve been using “Pick Winner” button at the top right in Matchplay and it helps for 30+ people, I would imagine for 100+ people it’s completely necessary because scrolling through all the matches takes forever.
If everyone is tech’d up and your computer has a webcam, you can also try “Scan Winner” with QR code but in my experience there’s some % of people who don’t have their Matchplay QR code handy, or the camera is janky, etc. Pick Winner is much quicker despite what you would think.
