We are two Swiss players who won the swissflippertour.ch and the prize was the trip to Pinburgh. Now my question: As we are about 260 on waiting-list, shall we cancel the flights that we already booked and the accomodation? No idea what to do now.!?
Cant it be that there will be a chance…
There could be more drop outs this year if there aren’t any more discount hotel blocks opened up. It makes for an expensive trip if you are spending >$300 a night for a hotel vs. $180.
3 games per bank next year / 6 rounds per day would get us over 1000 participants and 36 games played in qualifying.
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My brute force (not perfect) look at the wait list shows 3 top 10 players on the waitlist… 14 of the top 100… and 37 out of the waitlist are top 300 IFPA ranked players. My analysis was brute force, dirty, unverified, and didn’t handle special characters… so there could be more.
Top 100 players on the waitlist
75 Jack Tadman
10 Eric Stone
76 Ben Granger
50 Levente Tregova
43 Robert Sutter
51 Alberto Santana
96 Roy Wils
53 Markus Stix
83 Maka Honig
91 Damien Charléty
8 Jorian Engelbrektsson
90 David Mainwaring
62 Derek Fugate
5 Daniele Celestino Acciari
Top 10 players on the waitlist
10 Eric Stone
8 Jorian Engelbrektsson
5 Daniele Celestino Acciari
Was not a deterrent at all for me last year. Got a great hotel just south of the river for less than half the price and was a cheap easy Uber each day.
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I’m #166 on the wait list. I think I’ll start getting mentally prepped for heading down to CAX again this year.
If you’re talking about the Hyatt Place (or near it), you can take the subway for free, since it’s downtown station to downtown station.
I think I was #240 on the waitlist last year. I got in, albeit among the very last crowd of people who got in minutes before the tournament started last year. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself now that I see my #47 spot this year (which I snagged maybe at 12:01 yesterday).
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a Hyatt place, but I’m sure there’s plenty of options. I’ll never stay downtown. Even at the discounted rate it’s still too much imo. The commute was more than easy considering the cost savings.
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I can only see 790 players: https://www.ifpapinball.com/tournaments/view.php?t=18474
Would they have filled up with people waiting at the front desk on place?
IIRC, the tournament did fill to 800 at start, but various people dropped out mid-tournament for whatever reason.
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It’s even cheaper if you know a friend or family member that works for Hyatt =)
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Yes. I went anyway on the hope that people wouldn’t make the trip (and because I’m a writer who has been trying to gather together work on a nonfiction book about pinball, so I could have done research even if I didn’t compete). At a certain pre-announced time they started letting groups of 10 or so people in as it was clear other people hadn’t showed up. But you had to be there early enough to announce your presence and willingness to pay for an entry. It’s a gamble, but enough people cancel their plans for one reason or another over the course of 5 months that it’s not the worst of one.
This is not correct. Throughput is based on how many games are being played at once. With 3 games per bank there are two choices:
- Play 3 groups on 3 games. This means 100% of the games are occupied – and that people will wait for every game as it finishes. This is not a viable solution, or we would already be doing it with 4 groups on 4 games.
- Play 2 groups on 3 games. This means only 2/3 of the games are occupied, compared to the current 3/4. Doing this would lower the total number of players that Pinburgh could accommodate.
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More specifically, single players were entered into the tournament in the order of the original waitlist, after registering at the tournament desk by 9:30 am on Thursday. Only players on the original waitlist were eligible, and not all the players who wanted to compete were able to.
This seems like a good time to remind that the Replay Foundation accepts tax-deductible gifts of pinball machines, and the number of pinball machines the Replay Foundation owns might have an impact on the size of certain pinball tournaments. 
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There were dropouts during the course of the tournament. As Bowen mentioned, they filled up to 800 at the very start of the event. Starting with Round 1, there were some dropouts. I had done an interactive analysis of Points and Divisions last year (https://public.tableau.com/profile/corey.hulse#!/vizhome/Pinburgh2017/ByPositionAllRounds), and according to the data I scraped from the Pinburgh site, here were the players counts as of each round:
Do you think a better system would be
in December invite players who have qualified in divisions A & B to invite them back and then take the remaining tickets and launch those out to the general population?
Pinburgh has to no doubt become the tournament everyone knows of. It’s definitely amazing to see the overall desire for people to travel to this event!
Not a bad idea, but I’d limit it to A qualifiers. Consolation prize for those of us who wind up in “low-A-hell” placement on Friday 
EDIT, for the data miners out there… What has been the lowest A position (Fri AM) to qualify for Sat play? How big a hole has someone climbed out of? Need a target/inspiration if I manage to squeak into A again…
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My thought was these two divisions are the general pinhead who’s likely only there for pinburgh. Kinda along the same lines of you generally will reward a kid who gets A’s and B’s not the kid who gets C’s & D’s