Pinburgh conundrum

[chuckwurt]

@enronhubbard

Boosting the payoff for A would be the worst possible move that could be made. There’s already a $11K difference between A and B finishers. You really think increasing that to a $13K difference is going to do anything? All that would do is give non-A players less motivation to enter. (Right now, even if you aren’t the best guy you have a halfway good shot at getting your entry money back. That’s a good thing!) Pinburgh is an expensive tournament to enter for a casual player, and if there’s no chance at breaking even then why enter at all? I can play for years in local tournaments for the grand it costs to do Pinburgh by the time you factor in everything. Eliminating the reward makes the risk unacceptably high.

I am officially 100% for putting more money into A qualifiers and winners and taking from the lower divisions.

[blueberryjohnson]

If you see this happening, whip out your cell phone and record a few seconds of video. Show it to a td and you don’t have to confront anyone.

[drdudelol]

I think you’d have to be careful in implementing this. This was my first Pinburgh, and I came one good game/two points shy of A division on Thursday. If I’d somehow been restricted to a rookie division due to a lack of IFPA/past Pinburgh experience, I would have been pretty disappointed.

[diehardpinball]

I give you kudos for being honest and expressing your opinion and you are right it is very hard to determine who is sandbagging or not. I certainly don’t agree with your actions but understand why this is being done. I disagree, eliminating some of the prize money in B-D would help in these cases, decreasing the size of the A division may help as well, maybe lowering to top 125 (wins being the tiebreaker to get into A, I know more admin ), then making all other divisions 225 or even making a E division. I dunno all the answers, but right now there is too much incentive for people pull the sandbag card. What will end up happening is that the organizers will get pissed and will change this format to something else which would be a real shame.

[Wizcat]

@enronhubbard

Pinburgh is an expensive tournament to enter for a casual player, and if there’s no chance at breaking even then why enter at all?

I have played in Pinburgh twice now (and the international flights and week long hotel stays are considerably more expensive than the event), so I can’t speak for everyone, but personally I play Pinburgh because it is FUN

I can’t imagine how depressing it would be to be playing pinball and only thinking about trying to win my entry fee back

There are very few events like this, where a rank outsider has a realistic chance of playing against superstar players. In my Pinburgh time I’ve been fortunate to be paired with a few people in this hobby that previously I’ve only ever seen play via the internet. Scraping a few points from these encounters has given me an enormous amount of personal pride, and that alone is worth more to me than winning back my entry fee.

I don’t have a good answer for stopping people from deliberately throwing games. These people aren’t in the competition for the same reason the other 90% of us are. To have fun and socialise with other people that share this great hobby.

[G_Money]

“enronhubbard joined 1 hour ago”

Obviously your intent here is to make these statements, hide behind anonymity, and watch the fireworks. All I will ask you, if you are still on the fake account, is why bother playing Pinburgh?

I don’t treat my entry as an investment, I treat it as payment for the privilege to play in the best tournament in the world. I have no intentions on getting it back. Yeah, it’s expensive, but I am willing to spend it for the opportunity to compete with everyone and have a great time.

[matthfx]

I agree with you 100%. As of round 3 on day one, I was on the path to A or B and I would have been ecstatic to play in either, even if it meant getting my butt kicked. I ended up tanking (definitely not on purpose ) on round 4 and 5 so it didn’t matter, but all the same, I came to play, learn, and socialize.

[chesh]

There were at least 8 players with no IFPA profile whatsoever this year. So yes, there are still newbies, and there are lots of people whose only tournament all year is Pinburgh.

[ClevelandPinball]

@enronhubbard

I made the move that was the best for me

This sums it up for me pretty well. There are people that take the effects of their actions on other people into consideration, and there are people who will do whatever they can get away with for their own personal gain.

Stinks that the latter philosophy gets to benefit from the former, and almost never vice versa. I hate to think that by playing my best, I could be helping someone who is deliberately failing. Not to mention possibly screwing over someone who should have qualified based on their actual performance, but misses the cut by a point because some people will cheat in every possible way you let them.

It’s probably impossible to construct a format that eliminates the problem completely, but I think it’s a good idea to keep hunting for the fairest way to suppress it.

[chesh]

@enronhubbard

Unless I’m having my best day of pinball ever and Elwin is simultaneously having his worst day of pinball ever, there’s zero chance I’m going to beat him. It’s just not going to happen. And even if it did happen, the chances of Elwin, the Sharpes, Cayle, Henderson and everybody else who you always see at the top of the A division also simultaneously having the worst sustained play of their lives is so small as to be nonexistent. They would all have to take a dive for me to have a shot in A.

So, by your reasoning, you’ll never have a shot in A because there are better players, and rather than try to become a better player, you’d rather be a cheater who deliberately plays below his level so that he can win money. That about it?

Why on earth would you bother to attend at all?

[jrb]

This person may not be as anonymous as they think they are.

Could be interesting for the folks with access to the appropriate data to correlate IPs and UserAgent strings between access logs on Tilt Forums, and say, pinburgh.com. Particularly user profiles on pinburgh, since I know I’ve visited my own a number of times, both while at the event, and after returning home.

[unsmith]

I was thinking along those lines too. And if the described actions are accurate, someone in those group(s) that witnessed the “errors” might also be a reader here and can identify the person.

Or it could also just be an elaborate troll.

[gdd]

The person has at least been smart enough to not make any of that easy. That’s about all I’ll say.

[JimiWolf]

So now we know that money is the motivator for sandbagging. Just as I and others believed all along. Take the money out of anything but A, and the problem would disappear. Keep trophies for the lower divisions. My two cents.

[Funtorium]

JimiWolf
11m

So now we know that money is the motivator for sandbagging. 

Well yeah. For one anonymous player who may or may not be telling us a story. No sure that’s a great place to start altering policy.

We need some kind of sandbagger poll. Since I know like 5 of these guys including one of the one-armed bandits maybe I can do some research for you all!

[shimoda]

Just to be clear, I wasn’t saying their wouldn’t be ‘newbies’, just that it wouldn’t comprise any sizable portion of the tournament. Also, not having an IFPA profile isn’t an indication you are a rookie, just that you haven’t participated in IFPA sanctioned events (which might be a few more players in 2018 for a variety of reasons - or may not). Plenty of people I know want to play in league and maybe have one or two IFPA events under their name but really just like to play locally. Some are quite good and I think would do well at Pinburgh. Not being in IFPA doesn’t mean inexperienced.

[Knoler]

What would be the end goal of sleuthing out the person that decided to share their thoughts and motivations? I don’t agree with their actions, but it will stifle any kind of honest discussion pretty quickly if everyone is busy getting out torches and pitchforks.

Outside of A division, no Pinburgh division is really playing for big money; the issue here is that the format, money aside, incentivizes people near the bottom of any division on day one to try and drop down, simply because it increases your chances of getting to play on Saturday.

If you realistically have no shot at A finals, and don’t care about WPPRs, and want to maximize your chances of playing on Saturday in an exciting playoff format, then people will sandbag; it’s a natural reaction to the structure of the event, IMO.

[flynnibus]

@Knoler

Outside of A division, no Pinburgh division is really playing for big money

Dunno about you… but a $200+/$300+ or $1000+ payout is pretty significant to me.

[appeac]

Exactly this. The emotional arguments and witch hunting completely ignore the obvious incentives for sandbagging into a lower division. If I weren’t in the hunt for WPPR’s, I’d have definitely considered dropping a point from tie-breaking into A to playing top-B on Friday.

Can every bottom-A player really say they don’t feel at least a little stung watching the player finishing 600th get their trip paid for?

[Knoler]

In terms of how much it costs to get to the event, and cover food and lodging, I don’t think a couple hundred bucks is a big deal, but your perspective is just as valid as mine!

I guess a better way to phrase my point would be that the motivating force to sandbag is surely not only financial; I’d argue that increasing the odds of making Saturday playoffs is a significant motivating force to try and drop the few games that result in dropping down a level.

It’s not what I would do, because I like to do my absolute best (which isn’t very good, ha!), but it’s totally clear to me why someone would choose to do it. It’ll keep happening, IMO, unless the format is tweaked to disincentivize it.