Anytime a tournament is tied to a show i think its a bad idea to give “free” tournament entries to “everyone” who attends the show. It creates more work and takes time registering / explaining the process, clogs up queues, doesn’t add to the pot etc.
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@ZenTron Allentown Pinfest as a show seems to serve very different audiences than other enthusiast shows like TPF. Pinfest has no talks/panels, and though it has several vendors, the primary focus of the show is a Freeplay area that also serves and a buy/sell marketplace (one of the largest of its kind).
The tournament must work then in conjunction with the show to supply a value to the show , where Pinfest could be selling to more vendors or supplying more freeplay space, the tournament serves as another incentive to get new people or just regular pinball enthusiasts in the door.
However, if you are looking at the tournament as a separate entity, your points are quite true and would likely serve the tournament well. In increasing the pot and improving the flow. That is not, however, the only thing the directors must consider.
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I’m sure the SPC likes all those $5 player fees though!
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The Stern Pro Circuit Tournament should be treated as a separate entity.
I estimate the total prize payout for Pinfest was over $5,000 cash, and while I don’t know the exact payout at Buffalo 2018, it was nowhere near $20,000. [Update: total prize payout was $6,200.]
If you’re talking about the individual payouts to 1st/2nd overall (etc), I don’t think it is fair to malign an event for their choices of who gets how much as a percentage of prizes. There were 60+ cash payouts at Pinfest, and it was clear in advance how those percentages would be allocated.
Hi Everyone,
I know that there has been a lot of chatter about relative costs of the event, so we are disclosing those here so as to be transparent.
Non-Monetary Prizes - $2,111
Event Supplies and Materials - $1,798
IFPA ($1 per person per event) + Circuit Fees ($5 per person in Main) - $1,407
Machine Costs for Borrowed Machines - $600
Venue Costs - $800
Total - $6,715.52
Splitting those out to the two events:
Gauntlet Costs - $821
Gauntlet Income - $1,620
Gauntlet Cash Prize Pool - $799
Main Event Costs - $5,895
Main Event Income - $11,110
Main Event Cash Prize Pool - $5,215
In addition to the cash prize pool, winners of different divisions were provided non-monetary prizes that were paid for by the event (Trophies, T-Shirts, Cows, etc.) and prizes provided by our sponsors (i.e. Gift Certificates, Translites, etc.) ~30% of the costs were invested into non-monetary prizes for the event that were distributed out to winners across the various divisions as prizes.
~20% of the cost of the event goes to fees towards the Circuit and the IFPA.
The rest is broken down into the costs that are needed to run the event. As much as we would love everyone to give everything to us for free (machines, parts for repairs, cost of the venue), we know that there are real-world costs associated with making an event like this take place.
Overall, send us feedback to pinfesttournament@gmail.com on what you would like to see improved if we choose to hold this event next year. More money for fewer people? Weight the top finishers more heavily? Less non-monetary prizes? Should we remove any and all cash prizes from the event? Should we donate any proceeds to charity and remove the cash component?
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Almost $4000 were spent on materials, shirts and trophies? I’m not sure I can fathom that. I appreciate what you guys do, but I also counted more than $12,000 in entrances, stopping after player 120 or so. How many volunteers got free plays and how many? Some of these costs listed seem hard to understand for me. I think polling the players would be wise. I’ve never heard of an event spending $4000 of the entry fees on shirts, trophies and supplies. Better of using that money to pay PAPA to bring games if anything.
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Did you ignore the first 4 entries for each player?
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Some that brought games got free entries, and there was about 250-300 hours of volunteer hours available for players to sign up for to help between Thursday/Saturday. On top of that there were volunteers that were given entries for other various support of the event either before/during/after, so hundred of free entries were rewarded to volunteers. A count of used entries won’t be an accurate count of income.
Oops - I was way off . Glad I wasn’t the accountant.
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No I only counted entrances after 4 per player. After 120 players it was avg expense of $100 per player beyond the 4. Then I didn’t put effort into 120-220 assuming most were only using free and that those who did pay (I checked many did) would account for score keepers. Since I only about a dozen volunteers maybe 2 dozen I didn’t expect over $900 were free entry? I can count closer but I did check every player 1-120 and saw an avg player used many entries. I’m not even too concerned about money, but if the trophies cost $10 each and shirts $20 each, it doesn’t come close to what’s been listed here and those are higher speculation costs. I care much more about game issues and organization concerns. I’ll post about those later. Hoping the constructive criticism is taken well and utilized. Since the turnout dictates they will stay on the circuit game set up is crucial to improve on. I didn’t think twice about money until I got home and heard the winner of one of the most expensive and popular tourneys got $340. I had no plan to count entrances as money isn’t why I play pinball. We need restructuring and less trophies etc if this how much it costs to run IMO.
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I’ve attempted to do a similar quick count, and here’s what I’m seeing:
~ 1250 Entries, if you subtract the four free entries per person
Looking at the actual money in the cash pool ($11,110) as disclosed above, this feels correct given the number of people who we gave credit to that brought games and offered volunteer time in exchange for Tournament credits.
If you happened to be going in order by Player Number, the people who showed up on Friday are more likely to have played more games/played more entries than those on Saturday given the limited time of qualifying.
Neither have I. But I also haven’t heard of an event that was approaching it in the style that we were: lots of non-cash mementos that are a branded representation that people can take home having accomplished something interesting (Top 25% at a Stern Event, winning a sub-division, etc.). Maybe the general populous doesn’t want that going forward? Maybe Stern Pro-Circuit Players are income-seeking so we should be removing any non-cash prizes? Perhaps we remove cash from the equation entirely and run it as a charity event where any proceeds above cost are given to a charity?
I know you’ve been on Facebook as well discussing your thoughts, so get them all wrapped up and drop me an e-mail (pinfesttournament@gmail.com).
That offer goes to anyone. My understanding is the Pro Circuit conducts a survey, but I am also very interested to hear from people directly who had both a good and bad experience so we know what worked and what didn’t. We’ll decide how we’re going to approach next year if we choose to do this event again.
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I’m curious if there are readily available stats on how many players actually paid for a $10 entry, versus just playing their four “free” ones and calling it a day. Just randomly clicking around, it looks like most people who qualified did, while most near the bottom did not. (Exceptions exist, of course.)
I’m having trouble articulating my feeling on this, but I sort of feel like this plays into claims of more players and shorter queue times. It feels like a lot of the players were just cashing in their free play without any serious interest in the tournament, but I also wasn’t there so I can’t say for sure what the vibe was. If I’m right, then queues would naturally be lower as these players burn their freebies and then leave.
I’m guessing the reason for structuring entries this way was to get more raw numbers of people participating, and allow them to arrive at an overall cost-per-entry number that they were comfortable with (e.g. - I only want to spend $20, that gets me 6 games, so really that’s less than $4/game!) Pretty clever and essentially an increasingly-punishing entry fee but with a cap that doesn’t allow deep pockets to just buy the event.
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Super quick analysis on that:
Compare that to 2018 (24 Game Limit):
Seems like a 1/3 of the field played 4 (or less), and then you had a slow build up to 19 with a jump at 20. Less people “maxed out” then in years past.
Numbers of people qualifying by Division by Number of Games played:
| Games Played | A | C | D | DNQ | Grand Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | 12 | 3 | 3 | 13 | 27 |
| 19 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 8 | |
| 18 | 2 | 3 | 5 | ||
| 17 | 1 | 3 | 4 | ||
| 16 | 2 | 2 | 4 | ||
| 15 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 7 | |
| 14 | 2 | 6 | 8 | ||
| 13 | 2 | 3 | 5 | ||
| 12 | 1 | 7 | 8 | ||
| 11 | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||
| 10 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 7 | |
| 9 | 3 | 3 | |||
| 8 | 2 | 1 | 8 | 11 | |
| 7 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 9 | |
| 6 | 18 | 18 | |||
| 5 | 11 | 11 | |||
| 4 | 64 | 64 | |||
| 3 | 10 | 10 | |||
| 2 | 4 | 4 | |||
| 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Grand Total | 32 | 8 | 8 | 173 | 221 |
Granted, I don’t have the same access to look at the correlation of plays-to-finals from other events (especially unlimited qualifying events), but I would suspect there’s a positive correlation between number of plays and whether you make playoffs. If you’re REALLY good, you still only need a handful of plays. If you’re a mediocre player like myself, then you need lots of opportunities and deep pockets to try to make finals, but we capped the number of tries a person could have in order to keep queues down as much we can given that we have about 50% of the qualifying time that other events may have.
That was essentially the gist.
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Just to clarify I don’t think Corey or Jay did anything wrong in terms of money. Just in future spend less on non monetary prizes, and pay less spots so that winners get more of the buy in. I think y’all are smart and honest directors who were burdened with not enough help and time to prepare the games for tourney play. The main crux of my issue is them being made default too difficult for limited entry. Sorry if I came off a certain way. I’m never trying to be a jerk.
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I’ll admit that Eight Ball and Bank Shot we’re playing too difficult. I’ll remove the power ball in future events 
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Eight Ball was acceptably brutal (yet otherwise forgiving) and Bank Shot was…well, it was a WOW Gottlieb. Those seemed to be fine usages!
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That’s usually the case in setups like this. Thanks for the data though, very interesting!
A different topic but still relevant - I’d like to hear from players and tournament organizers on how they felt the games were set up. Anecdotally (I wasn’t there) I have heard that BKSOR and Stars were occasionally tilting on regular flipping and a lot of the games were exceptionally tight, to the point where normal pinball moves like nudging was risking a tilt. I am passionate about games being set up fairly and about not removing the bumping/nudging skill vector from pinball, so this is something that interests me. I know it’s been a complaint leveled against the setup in years past as well. How were they playing?
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BK, not BKSoR. I executed a 3-4" slide on SoR and got double dangered. The Stern games had standard tilts; Getaway (no dangers, tight-but-fair) and TNA (Spooky long tilts) were odd but fair.
Was an organizer. Setup Deadpool. Removed left and right outlane posts, settings to Hard (except Battle to Medium), no Extra Balls. Tilt was looser by comparison to other games, so it played fast and hard, but fair given the goal of short ball times and fast play. By having Battle lit at the start of the game, it left points on the playfield without feeling like a chore.