Ruling on slam tilt in PAPA19 finals

General
1

I have been watching PAPA19 and there was a slam tilt mid game in finals that was deemed to be a fault of the machine. The player gave the machine a normal nudge and it slam tilted. The director ruled that it was a catastrophic malfunction and set up a new game and allowed the players to finish their remaining balls. The player that gave the nudge was deemed to have tilted his ball according to the commentators and they did not get to replay that ball.

My reading of the catastrophic malfunction rules suggests that this situation is a malfunction for all players and the player who received the slam tilt should have been given that ball again. Is this right?

What if the slam tilt occurred after the ball had passed into an outlane but before the trough, would this change things?

I don’t want to rewrite history and create controversy here, I’m just trying to learn given I’m a tournament official at all of the tournaments I play in here in Adelaide. We had this very same thing occur last week and I followed the PAPA19 example.

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Eliminate slam tilt from the equation.

Tape-over, disconnect or desolder the switches. And treat slam tilt as a malfunction in line with a mid-game reset.

And yes, it may still occur. Easily, half of the slam tilts seen are in fact electrical ghost detections and not even mechanically triggered. Easily.

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It was judged that the player’s action would have resulted in a tilt; either that or it occurred during a drain? I wasn’t watching, sorry.

It was an inadvertent slam caused by a switch matrix short, as @soren mentioned.

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I had this same situation occur in a tournament I was directing (albeit a league event - rather than a world championship!). The difference on this occasion was that I was witness to the event, and the move put on the game causing the slam tilt was enough that - in my opinion - was a legitimate slam tilt even though it wasn’t the usual type of slam (knee in the door or similar). Rather, it was a big left right slap save that moved the machine.

The player was disqualified from that game and registered a zero, and the other three players played a new game without the fourth player.

So I guess what I’m trying to say here Greg, is that it really is situational how you apply these rules. Ultimately if you don’t have the evidence to back up your own read of the situation (such as seeing it yourself) then you’d have to default to the catastrophic malfunction call as others have mentioned.

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I kind of remember it was going SDTM for Jim when it slam tilted hence ruling of the ball being in a “drain” state.

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That makes sense, thx

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It was on a slap save (which he saved), but as I understand it, the slam tilt malfunctioning had nothing to do with the tilt bob itself, so it wouldn’t be fair to rule it a regular tilt and end his ball(game).