I love the sentiment of growing past small-time tournament locations, but this is 100% true. Even if you took the entire competitive pinball scene, added in all significant others, and then doubled it, it would still be a drop in the bucket compared to e-Sports competitions like CS:GO or Overwatch.
That’s not meant to discourage anything, just to point out that we have a LONG way to go to get to that point. Which (to bring this back around) is why I think the correct sponsorships in these early formative years are very important.
You can bet on esports at mybookie and now you can with pinball. From that perspective this “long way to go” has already occurred. mybookie could be a catalyst to increase sponsorship and funnel money into pinball events.
These are all fantastic goals, if perhaps a long way off for the reasons @haugstrup mentions. I just don’t see the current status as a “rut” nor do I find any event I’ve been to “depressing.” I love that people are working to expand interest and aiming to make it easier for the people who put so much of themselves into organizing events for little recognition and even littler pay to find a little more of both. But I sure appreciate that I can play pinball more often than I could for a bit, and that I can do so with more — and slowly more varied — people.
If I may ask for a bit of clarification: Pinburgh links to this rule: “Final authority for any ruling, including rulings that contradict or vacate anything written in this document or in other
IFPA/PAPA materials, rests with PAPA/IFPA Management.”
I won’t bet on the event but putting in something like: “Final authority for any ruling, including rulings that contradict or vacate anything written in this document or in other
IFPA/PAPA materials, rests with PAPA/IFPA Management as long as they are not in the tournament.” Since this gives carte blance for quite a few players to give them selves a win. Since IFPA want’s betting in the sport this needs to be in place.
A bit of an edit: “Final authority for any ruling, including rulings that contradict or vacate anything written in this document or in other
IFPA/PAPA materials, rests with PAPA/IFPA Management as long as they are not in the tournament or have any wager in the result of any matches.”
That doesn’t matter since IPFA staff can overrule anything posted in any rules.If a lowly TD volunteer says an IFPA staff member is DQed they can say “No I am not.”
They have in the rules giving players in the tournament a carte blanche to do whatever they want. These same players are the directors of the organization that links to the betting sites.I understand the desire to get betting companies involved since they have advertisement budgets that are insane. But you can’t do that and be on all sides of the table.
This is completely not true. Josh has no authority in the final decisions made in Pinburgh, nor would he try to make one. The most he could do is not endorse them on his website, which again he would not do on the context of your speculation. If Doug makes a final ruling, you won’t see Adam, Josh or Zach “overruling” it. Actually, that likely wouldn’t happen in real time at any event no matter how casual. Director has final say including using their own interpretation of a ruling not defined or in agreement with IFPA/PAPA ruleset; discretion is allowed. If it was being abused/exploited or a TD was not doing a good job, you’d report it to the IFPA and they would maybe delete the event, not allow the director to run events anymore etc. They would almost certainly not retroactively change a ruling. I’ll let them input here, but you misread what that segment meant.
And that’s what every punter is going to see when they go to bet on IFPA events.Instead of growing the sport it’s going to look like a place that I just saw. A place that ripe for exploitation. A place where the rules say that some people can ignore all the verbiage from the rules and say “Iam right.” I don’t like betting but if you want betting the rules need to be alot clearer.
Imagine Superbowl LIII with “Final authority for any ruling, including rulings that contradict or vacate anything written in this document or in other
NFL materials, rests with RAMS/PATRIOT” Management."
This is actually a sign of a well written set of rules. In the event that a situation arises where the rules are internally inconsistent, or cannot be followed, there is a rule in place that allows for resolution, instead of invalidating the entire document and leaving no resolution.
I do agree. Hence why I added the part about “unless you are an active player or have a bet placed.” Which does not exist. Add that and it is a perfect rule because of pinballs randomness and iffyness for the TDs.
And since we want betting in the sport do keep in mind the effects.
Quoting from memory if my team in Aussie Rules makes a change to the team after three days before the match they are fined 20K AUD. This is so the integrity of the betting market and all participants are looked after.
And in the vein of this: how many top 100 players are on the wait list and can get it? And thereby invalidating any odds that IFPA have shared as news items?
The procedure is way, way more complicated than this. First, with regards to Pinburgh, any TD can call for a second opinion and is HIGHLY encouraged to call for backup if a player is being belligerent and is doing something worthy of a card or ejection. Plus, let’s say Josh tries to NOT LIKE THIS one of my rulings. First, I’d call Doug over to back me up. If he continued to cite law at us, one of two things would happen. In the Pinburgh case, if he wouldn’t back down there would be a Red Card PLUS an ejection from the venue. IFPA has no say on how the Replay Foundation runs their marquee show and this ruling would be non negotiable.
In the case where we have a small TD or things really want to drag out, you dropped the portion of the rule
This isn’t just an IFPA call, but also a PAPA Management call. PAPA Management is better than I’ll ever be; they take no involvement in events they run OR the Stern Pro Circuit from a playing standpoint. Therefore, a time would have to be arranged where Zach, Adam, Mark, Elizabeth, Doug, etc can sit down and deliberate why the ruling against Josh was so blatantly wrong that it should be overturned. From the casual observer end, one call would turn into a huge public pinball affair that we would be vehemently discussing and complaining about (because pinball drama makes the world go partially 'round). The combined effort would end up being a deathblow (or at least a major blow) to the IFPA as a governing body.
Not only that, but if the call was made with a betting line in mind, MyBookie and all major books have multiple rules about investigating and combating collusion and fraud all over their regulations page. They would be happy to clamp down on a fraudulent bettor and take their money.
If a theoretical Josh would want to sell out everything he knows and loves for a splash at money, he would have to go through multiple layers of pitfalls from a pinball standpoint to get that to work. If he wanted to try that at Pinburgh to not end up 2nd, he’d most likely aggravate a whole lot more people as well.
Boring isn’t it? And if I was in charge of a betting company and someone had a software bug in their back pocket (and I invested a lot of money sponsoring the event and I had a lot to loose from bets on the finals) I would write that into the rules. Because “exploiting” game mechanics that the field doesn’t know about invalidates the odds. Because there is no longer an even playing field.
Don’t know how to quote: hence why I further up said for the future having these rules are madness. Josh is not the eternal president of IFPA. If we treat that position as such we are doomed to fail because someone with less integrity may come after him. We cannot read “President of IFPA” as “Josh Sharpe” in the rules. Because we all have a long term view of this.
