But at the end of the year, if you’re qualified in multiple states and your home state is your highest seed, you must play there.
If you’re qualified for your home state and other states, you can choose your state or the closest state to your home state (if you are ranked higher in that neighboring state). Distance is determined between the location of each state’s championship should you have multiple states where you are ranked higher than your home state.
Home state is what you registers with the IFPA with.
I have in KY both years I’ve played in it. I played in a group of 4 to decide 5-9 on one game the first year. Year 2 I played out one game with the other guy that lost in the semis.
Not sure why there needs to be changes for out of state players. An easy fix for any of the TD’s for SCS, make a rule that states if you are from out of state you have to pay $$$ to compete in that specific state championship. Not sure what Josh would do in that circumstance as I don’t think there are any rules in the SCS that address this.
I’m still unclear on why we’re changing a selection process with what seems to be the purpose of keeping people playing in their home state. This is an issue with 6% of the players.
Some portion of those 6% of players are playing out of state because they only qualified in one state that wasn’t their home state. Yes some portion of that 6% is taking advantage of the opportunity they earned through their play to make a choice.
The logistics of registering nearly 800 players and slotting them into the SCS/PCS that they choose is already challenging. This is based on a “Pick anything you want” system.
Complicating this with restrictions makes this harder, and you run into situations where you don’t know what the cutline is until after registration is over.
Similar to what Corey mentioned, you also put negative motivation into play. If I want to play in Pennsylvania because there’s a HUGE State Championship pot, versus wanting to play my home state of Illinois with a shitty State Championship pot, the only way I can do that is to make sure I don’t qualify for Illinois. So then I’m left intentionally not playing Pinball Expo next week for fear of earning too many WPPR’s that I would end up above the cutline in Illinois. Something that plays out in this fashion is just asinine.
Why don’t we wait and see what happens. You might be right, everyone might come to Pennsylvania from out of town, but they might not. Money isn’t the only thing that matters here. People might not be able to get away an extra weekend for a one day tourney. I don’t think we should make changes before we know the impact.
Right now Pennsylvanians hold half the top 16 spots, but with no more major tournies this year, we might bring that number higher. PA has PAPA and its 3 classics, Pinburgh and Intergalactic, and PPO. Almost every year top out of state players qualify in PA, but would they actually come here to play in our State Championship? Who knows. Lets just wait and see.
Through 18 votes, I’m finding it interesting that the biggest motivation for state jumpers currently is to find an easier path to Nationals. It seems like people (so far) feel that the $1 fee will nuke that motivation for those state jumpers.
Those in Kentucky should be excited because this will lead to people chasing after larger SCS pots compared to what Kentucky will be offering
I am slightly worried that the most popular answer is that people don’t care . . . which is always my greatest fear!
More players will choose outside of their home state due to a potential larger state prize pool
25%
More players will choose outside of their home state due to a potential easier path to the Nationals prize pool
5%
Percentage of players that choose outside of their home state will not change from where it is today
15%
I have no idea but am curious as to how it will play out
25%
I was torn between the first two options, because I think both might happen.
I would imagine that in PA, you’re going to have both happening. Out-of-Staters who qualified through a big event are going to be tempted to come here for big money (no whammies), while an in-state PA person might go cross-border to a neighboring state like DE, NJ, or WV with a smaller pool but an easier shot at Finals (if that’s what they’re chasing).
Another item in the consideration of cross-state players would be which states (of the 6%) is this currently happening in? My hypothesis is that this is happening more in the Northeastern states where it’s a lot easier during the year to go across state lines to not only play in the events during the year but to head to wherever the Finals are. In Southeast PA, it would actually take me longer to go cross-state to Pittsburgh than for me to go to get to wherever the finals are in NJ, MD, DE, CT, MD, and probably VA and sometimes NY (depending on if it’s NYC or Buffalo). If I had the luxury of having multiple states to choose from, I’d put consideration into distance, potential opponents, prize money, how much fun I think I would have, and the interplay of all those things before choosing.
This is my biggest issue with FORCING players to play in their home state if qualified. Your Pittsburgh travel issue is no joke.
If I live in Riverside, CA, the idea of the IFPA forcing someone to travel 7-8 hours to San Francisco to stay in state, when they have the option to travel 3-4 hours to Nevada instead will never make any sense to me at all.
I find the response of “Well, that player can simply choose to not qualify in CA” to get around this rule equally absurd.
Not to mention that for the SF trip, you’d definitely need a hotel room, and they’re way expensive there. For NV, you might not need one and even if you did, they’re cheaper.
Your guess is not matching the guessing from the 28 people that have taken the survey so far. So far ONE person out of 28 voted that more players will be motivated to pick out-of-state based on an easier path to that Nationals pot.
Top 3 States with the largest prize pools would have been PA, WA and NY.
PA → 7 out of the top 16 players right now are from out of state (Zach/myself/KME/Gagno/Raymond/Trent/Cayle)
WA → 1 out of the top 16 are from out of state (Gagno)
NY → 4 out of the top 16 (Bowden from NJ, Zen from “CO” even though he hasn’t lived there in years and we don’t require proof of residency for his profile, Gagno, Becker)
