Question about the Stern Pro Circuit events going forward. Will all Stern Pro Circuit events be restricted to only classic and modern tables by Stern and Data East, as displayed by the circuit finals?
very unlikely, individual events are still free to chose any pinball they want for their event.
I assumed it was just the finals.
I hope someone can enlighten me about pin choice for Stern Pro Circuit Finals.
-For brand awareness it doesnāt make sense to me to use Data East or Sega pins.
-For sales it doesnāt make sense to me to use classic pins. Iād assume they want to use pins that are being manufactured or pins that are NIB (WWE LE).
Iām assuming the use of classic pins is to add more variety of gameplay and excitement to the tournament. Classic pins are often much more exciting to watch than longer drawn-out skillful play on moderns.
As far as Sega and Data East choices, I believe itās because part of Sternās pedigree/history between Stern Electronics (Classics) and Stern Pinball Inc (current company) involved those two companies.
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Yea, its just that neither of those show me elite players playing machines i can purchase from a distributor today.
There is no relationship business-wise from SEI to DE/Sega/Stern.
DE/Sega/Stern are basically a continuous entity.
The way they played Batman 66 makes me want to buy oneā¦ The new code greatly improved that game.
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When @pinwizj finally wins a major, we will go in and retroactively remove the Major designation to ensure that it never happened.
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Canāt wait to see if my banner is slightly smaller than all the other ones 
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Weāll never find out since you winning a major is the first sign of the apocalypse and we will all be dead before your banner can be printed
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Until there is a place to hang your banner the world is safe for now.
Unfortunately now people will be even more confused identifying us with both names in the rafters. #humblebrag
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I took the liberty of entering to individual round results into MP so theyāre stored for posterity (thank you for the scoresheets @chesh!)
Round one: https://matchplay.events/live/2gx61/matches
Round two: https://matchplay.events/live/17nbb/matches
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Iāve got mixed feelings on the PAPA Circuit final production. Itās great that they managed to sell tickets to this and sell out, but it became apparent pretty quickly that it was basically the usual pinball crowd and presentation we see at every tournament, with a side show of decidedly DGAF about pinball people who were just there to get autographs and selfies and crowd around the Impractical Jokers guys to watch them get drunk/flip/eat lunch. I was pretty surprised at the following these dudes have but it simply cannot be denied!
Not sure if it really added anything to the proceedings or broadcast - in practice it resembled pretty much every other pinball thingee Iāve been to + the impractical sideshow. The band was also an afterthought, by the time they went on I think most people were tired and ready to go home - at least I was. Canāt blame the band either as they had to hang around forever before they played but they were getting pretty blotto as well by curtain up.
Still, I applaud the effort and ideas and Iād like to see more of this kind of thing. I think if we are gonna get into charging people 25 bucks to attend a pinball tournament, that money/effort needs to go into jazzing up the production and live presentation itself rather than paying some basic cable celebs to show up and attach their crowd to the event. Iām all for charging people to watch pinball - itās gotta happen if we want to go next level and go beyond the usual ā10 people left in a room when the finals are decided at 11pmā rut we see with see at most tournaments.
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Just wanted to touch on something that was mentioned in the stream this year since I assume this format will be used next year.
I think it was explained on the stream that the qualifying matchplay rounds were not available live via matchplay as they couldnāt do that and then have a ladder format final.
I just ran a tournament that did exactly this. I ran a matchplay qualifying, then closed the tournament. Once closed if you select create playoffs you can set up a ladder with 8 people on up.
Just an FYI.
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Andreas offered to put the ladder format in to Matchplay ahead of the Circuit Final for us, and I tested it and it worked awesomely. It wasnāt possible to run the elimination half of the bracket off Matchplay, though Andreas is working on incorporating it so that we can do both halves of the finals off of Matchplay next year. What youāre describing may be a change heās applied in the intervening weeks.
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I had the luxury of time when I setup those tournaments on MP. I wouldnāt want to set it up that way during a tournament where thereās a lot of stress going on. Itād be very easy to make a mistake in a way thatād require a bunch of work to fix.
The 40 players whittled down to 20 players is a format only used for the circuit final. None of the existing bracket formats in MP will accommodate it and itās not possible to use a regular āgroup match playā tournament because of the way seeding works for the second round.
Short version: The format can be run on MP today, but I wouldnāt want to do it because of the amount of manual labor involved. Weāll see what happens next year 
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