It was. When warmups end at 11am, and your first match starts at 5pm, can you even call that a warmup? 
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Florida folks wouldâve loved Illinois finals where my screaming toddler visited the basement during later rounds.
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Iâm surprised this didnât give Josh the competitive edge to win it all.
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âŚor Zach!
OK, it sounds like you were one of the players. Iâm sorry I do not recognize your handle
I feel bad that you did not have an enjoyable experience.
FWIW, the Ohio tournament also lasted 11 hours, despite my best efforts to make the games punishing~
I donât think we really had any specific bottlenecks though; machine utilization was pretty decent throughout the early rounds. Tough to keep the event from running long when multiple players are capable of putting up billion point games on Maiden despite no ball save and a fucked up center ramp that sends the ball wild half the time 
Outside of a non-functioning Laser Cue tilt bob, I made the Illinois games tough enough to keep even this group to eight-ish hours:
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For sure. My comments and constructive criticism directed at the procedure/allowing it. TD has the prerogative to do what they want within the bounds established by IFPA. But Iâve never been at an event that allowed players to wait to play their games if an adjacent pin was occupied, and it seems overly cautious.
This forum is great for sharing ideas, situations, successes, and opportunities to improve. In this case, the improvement is to try to not have SCS go too long â or at least level-set peopleâs expectations for how long SCS rounds should last.
** IMPORTANT ** As we compare total duration, we must note whether the SCS had 4 rounds or 5 rounds.
For SCS and NACS, my general estimate is 1.5-2 hours/round (most of the time going shorter)⌠largely dependent on ratio of games to players (higher ratio leading to less queuing), and then on era mix of games (more classics = shorter), and last on the difficulty of games â particularly the moderns.
For TX, we began the tourney on-time, and after a few announcements, format review, answering questions, and launching first round groupings, we got started around 20 minutes later. In total, the 5 rounds ran approx 11 hours, which is an hour more than I would have liked. No designated meal breaks â people had to order food from the kitchen and eat on-the-fly, or when they were waiting. Retrospectively, I would have set up Iron Maiden and Congo harder (more punishing slings or tighter tilt), as I believe those were two long-playing pins.
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In Alberta local hero Mike Tzanakos defeated the foreign usurper to take the prize!
Was a great venue and an exciting stream to watch!
Some times at may happen or ask that people wait. Also can be an issue if games are very packed in.
I also considered the FL process of not running all matches in a round at once disrespectful of the playersâ time. If I had driven hours to a SCS, Iâd expect the courtesy of being efficient in time use so that people could return home the same day. If the games themselves or the success of the player prevents that, so be it. But there was plenty of room to having everything running at once with waiting for a specific game the only delay (and thatâs not required, though generally accepted).
FWIW, Iâve been to SCS in 5 other states, and all of those ran matches fully in parallel. None took anywhere near as long as this one, even with long-playing games.
On the positive side, the venue, choice of games and machine setup were just fine (yes, Spidey was too easy, one quibble, no big deal; and kudos for bringing some classics games to add to the locationâs mix). If the timing had been normal, I would have ranked this SCS above some of those others I attended.
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Ask Yancy how to remedy Maiden 
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I still saw multiple 800+ million scores. You guys are too good!
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Can someone who was in Florida explain why only 2 games were being played at a time? If it wasnât waiting for a game or adjacent game then was there a rule that only 2 games could be played at once?
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On my Maiden Pro I set locks and Eddie to hard. Tilt set tight but not razor tight. Lowered all MB save times down to 7-10 seconds. And wax. Game played very tough but was playable and didnât hold up anything.
Here is a problem in rules from IFPA on state championship.
â Once a player verbally announces their game choice, or chooses position, that decision will be locked in and cannot be changed.â
I would say if the TD is notified that they did pick a game to wait on but it is taking a extremely long time to finish that game then they can choose a open game to play without waiting on game they picked.
Also here is a few games to stay away from because of long play. Rescue 911, hobbit , lord of the rings, and Spider-Man
If a rule was made to not have players on either side of them during matches then this needs to be reclassified as the 24 hours of IFPASCS. Since this one day tourney all across the country has been in existence that is the most absurd situation I have heard since first tourney some 5 years ago
Only edit here would be TD approved â not just notified.
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We may be in the minority here but in WA we actually experimented this year with NOT bastardizing games, and just let it ends when it ends. Some small adjustments were made like ball save timers in multiball but physically the games were not modified too much. This was in response to feedback from last year⌠and itâs a public location so making patreons pay for games that destroy them in the week leading up (and weeks after, or all year for some casesâŚ). @DBS can talk about it more, but I think it was kind of a cool thing to do. It really showcased to viewers the level of talent of people competing and we got to see some really epic matches!
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The Florida SCS was not at my house or venue, and I was not the TD. I was simply a player.
However, Florida is my state. Iâve been in every single Florida SCS and I take a lot of pride in what happens with Florida Tournament Pinball in general.
I feel a few things need to be clarified because there is some misinformation floating about and that is how bad rumors begin.
- Number of games running:
There were not only 2 games running at once. It was 4.
Granted, it is not all 8 groups in parallel for the lower 9-24 round and the subsequent top 16 round, but it was not âonly 2 gamesâ.
What was clearly happening was that the group of 4 that began was the highest seed in that round, followed by the groups with the next 3 ordered seeds. All 4 groups played in parallel. As one finished, the next highest group filled the spot.
So there were a maximum of 4 groups running at once in a round.
Nobody was allowed to play ahead into the next round while the current round was running, even if you already knew exactly who the upcoming opponent was. This makes perfect sense I hope.
- Rules about waiting:
The format was explained as it has been every year. Players were told they could wait for specific games.
Players were also told that if there was a group immediately next to the game to be played they could wait. There was nothing in writing and nobody enforcing this idea.
Most games were adjacent head to head, with just enough space to avoid nudging into the adjacent machine. It was not like people said âyou are within 10 feet of my personal space, I am waitingâ. It was possible to get sideways donkey kicked or touched with a slap save.
Despite any potential contact, it just seemed players were waiting out of respect.
I canât recall anyone being told flat out NO you canât play next to someone else playing. The waiting seemed to be agreed on by the parties. This happened every round. I never saw adjacent groups playing. If there were people who were told NO, I didnât witness it.
- Use shorter playing games (?)
Eric Stone can play a lot of games âforeverâ. He is good on almost everything. How do you stop that? There were some other players putting up some decent scores as well.
If anything remotely taken out as an âEric Stone style gameâ is removed or the games become bastardized so that they are âluck boxesâ then we could forgo the SCS, draw a name out of the hat with the 24 players and avoid the trip altogether. 99% of the people there are not going to do what Eric does, or pull off what Nick did on ball one on AC/DC.
- Potential Solution(s)
Since complaining for the sake of complaining is not constructive, (and these topics are not even my complaints) I would propose some solutions:
Solution 1: If space between games is desired, maybe have fewer games turned on and available for SCS choice. Shuffle the locationâs game placement order so that maybe every other one is used for example so that the actual tourney games will be spaced farther apart without having to figure out where to put the other non-used games AND more groups can play in parallel.
That could limit the amount of games from 25 to say 12 or 13. Now everyone can play at once, but have fewer game choices.
Solution 2: Get a hotel for SCS night. Make a weekend of it. Come Saturday, stay over, leave Sunday. I know it is not always practical: family, work, have other plans, money issues etc. but I am just throwing out solutions.
Solution 3: Makes notes of changes youâd like to see, and reach out to the TD in person after the event when there is not all of the stress of the SCS going on.
Solution 4: Reach out on the FTP site and start a conversation among the Florida players, not the global forum.
Hope that helps 
Preregistration links are now available for all three Colorado WPPRtunity tournaments in/around Nationals.
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