LOL perfection is an illusion 
Perhaps a āDonāt let the great be the enemy of the goodā is the better argument here . . . and itās definitely an issue Iāve thought a ton about with respect to rolling out multiple changes at the same time. Weāll see what we end up doing.
I would love to see this go into effect. Ohio players would be stoked.
Itās really hard to get anyone engaged when you have to explain that the champion representing $state has only played in one tournament during a gaming show, and decided to come back to beat the local players because they have the money to travel, and donāt want to deal with the difficulty of qualifying in their home state.
How much prestige would the Olympics have if 90% of the athletes came from Russia, China, and the USA, and because Michael Phelps decided to have an easier time qualifying in the Hungarian trials, he won gold as the āHungarian Olympic Representativeā
When I brought this up in the e-mail list, I was quickly shot down by the IFPA leadership, because thereās no interest in even considering changing this aspect of the format.
Iād be fine with the 20 best finishes rule, if there was also a rule that said you have to play in the state championship that corresponds to where the bulk of that player played for the year. Thatās a lot easier to justify calling an event a state championship as a qualifier for a national championship than the current system lends itself to.
Your best bet is to get LAX to not submit their event for IFPA sanctioning next year
Iām not interested in motivating players to NOT PLAY, and your rule does exactly that. If I want to play in KY SCS, all I have to do is show up and do well at LAX . . . and then simply make sure I donāt play anywhere else, thereby making KY the state where I played āthe bulkā of my events for the year.
I get your argument, and Iāve always gotten your argument. What you want is a Kentucky Resident championship, and thatās just not what SCS is about. Itās about the events in the state that happen, NOT the players.
In the beginning many states were Kentucky-ish, where āone big annualā event dominated the SCS standings. Over time states have overcome the impact of that āone big annualā event by building their local community up to a level to handle that (Wisconsin comes to mind, Arizona comes to mind).
Somehow because I disagree with the direction YOU would take the SCS . . . Iām somehow not listening. Believe me, Iām listening. I hear you. Iāve always heard you. I simply disagree with your opinion, and would consider your opinion to be the minority opinion on the subject from the feedback Iāve gotten over the years.
And I donāt see how your additions motivate players to play and TDs to organize when the rules are set up so that doing well in the one big tournament is all that needs to be done to have a spot in qualifying. I see that (and the $1 per person per event rule) being a much bigger hindrance to spur participation.
I believe youāre only looking at what is motivating the top 1% of players to play or not play. There are already rules requiring a player have 5 events under their belt before they even contribute points to events, why is it such a horrible jump to require something similar to contribute to standings in the SCS? There are several opportunities for the ābestā players to show off already, why keep stacking the deck in their favor?
And by your own admission, not much changes when this rule is implemented on 2016 data, so why have it if it doesnāt do anything significant?
Because itās a meaningless rule.
If a group of LAX-ONLY players decides to run 5 mini-events on the show floor, as a way of making sure anyone that plays in LAX can make sure their eligible for the KY SCS, then this will happen.
Thereās no limit to how crappy an event can be, so having a 1-ball high score tournament for 1 hour on 5 different games can easily āCheck this boxā, and now youāre left in the same exact situation you are now. Kentucky residents donāt make the SCS, and a bunch of out of towners that just showed up over one weekend do.
Letās also look at the actual data from Kentucky to analyze the people that are missing out on the Kentucky State Championship because of these āout of townersā. This is all based on the 2016 qualifying data:
For all these players āmissing outā . . . at what point is asking them to get more than 5.11 WPPR points during the course of a year a fair one?
Iād be far more understanding of your situation in KY if the cutline wasnāt more than a single 10 player tournament held at āfull valueā where the winner can literally punch their ticket to the KY SCS.
I think you are Drew perhaps sitting out some events and letting other people win might be the best way for you to get what you want 
edit just to be honest, Illinois is very similar to Kentucky. We have āPINBALL EXPOā and we have very little of āeverything elseā. Iāve stopped playing in our monthly tournament to make sure that those WPPRās can go to the players that need those points to make the IL SCS cut line. A 4-point win doesnāt help me much, but it sure helps my dad make the cut. Iāve seen this actually help to limit the impact of āout of townersā being included in the Illinois State Championship. Last year we had 15 residents, and 1 who made it in simply because of Pinball Expo.
So, which one is it?
I get youāre kidding but how is us doing this any better than your scenario where someone runs 5 mini events at LAX?
If your argument against changing the rules is due to exploits, then you have to be aware of a very serious exploit that currently exists that you just mentioned here.
I doubt the KY crew does something like this, but if they did I wouldnāt blame them at this point.
In the meantime, we will significantly increase the number of KY events in 2018, so thatās good either way.
Just add out little 5 event rule and all these little states will be happy and we will still have exploits (just like before)
I get your reason for doing SCS is not to get the best players from that state to respresent that state. But what happens when all these new sponsors and third party broadcasters start to also raise the concern that itās hard to pump up a national event from champions of each state where those champions have nothing to do with that state other than the fact they happened to play in a random event in that state that happened to also be worth these SCS points?
Iām choosing not to play to benefit OTHER PLAYERS.
The idea of choosing not to play to benefit MYSELF is where I find the line crossed.
That last point was addressing you as an IFPA representative that decides the rules.
The rules you set up benefit the top 100 (the POWER100), of which you are a part of. By making these changes, you are benefiting yourself and making it difficult for non-legacy pinball communities to use the allure of the IFPA to grow their scene. Which I think crosses the line as well.
Your community is accounting for 50% of the āsceneā by still taking up 8 of those 16 KY spots. If you remove those 8 players that ādidnāt deserve itā, and continue to go down the KY SCS qualifying list to fill those 8 additional spots, here is that list of registered players who would qualify:
With your āsolutionā, Kentucky doesnāt even have enough registered players in the state playing 5 events to even fill a field of 16 players.
You can toss aside my decisions as kowtowing to the top 100, but the idea of changing our rules to make it so the qualifying for the KY SCS becomes meaningless because EVERYONE MAKES IT THAT WANTS TO isnāt something that interests me at all.
Itās totally fine under current rules to run tournaments at LAX using the show games right?
Just had a thought that we could get a lot more locals into tournaments each day of the show that hate pump and dump.
Abso-f*cking-lutely . . . the world is your oyster out there on the show floor. I would take all the pump and dump haters and do EXACTLY THAT
Okay, Iāll accept that point, but the current system allows this for a lot of players already, as long as they have the resources to travel. Simply wait until you see what states have open spots that you qualify for and declare that way. Suddenly, everyone in the top X makes it that wants to.
A solution to this: have it so that players canāt see where others have declared, and force them to declare a state blindly before a certain date. Yes, this puts more pressure on top players, but why should ANYONE get an automatic entry spot, just because they can travel?
I just canāt go down this road again . . . lol
Players needing to declare by a certain date is IMPOSSIBLE without weird exceptions all over the place.
So players have to declare by say April 1st? What if Iām Eric Stone and I didnāt even start playing until June 15th, and I end up qualifying for 11 different states because I caught the bug in June. Now Eric Stone canāt compete in ANY States? Now the IFPA is supposed to follow up with every player that is new after the April 1st deadline and give them an exception?
If I declare Illinois, and donāt make it, but I do make it in Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, Ohio, Oregon . . . suddenly now Iām completely OUT of the SCS process? I just donāt see how thatās a good thing to make being āgoodā a DISADVANTAGE in this process.
Keeping the declaration process private is also IMPOSSIBLE. I would know, and the State Reps would know (they would be doing the outreach), and both myself and the State Reps are players. Maybe they tell just their friends and find a way to all pick different states privately knowing that someone like Trent already choose āSouth Carolinaā. Too many logistics here for me to not want to shoot myself.
The simplest answer here is the best answer IMO . . . PLAY BETTER.
Iām talking about post year results. As of now, someone can wait to see if a certain player or players are playing in a state before they commit to coming to that stateās SCS. Currently, If a mediocre player goes to every state that has a large tournament, and is willing to travel back to that state early the next year, they can almost guarantee a spot in a stateā¦ somewhere. Itās not because they are better, itās because they have access to more resources (money, time). Why is this not a concern?
Make it so that a player has to decide which SCS they want to compete in, without advance knowledge of who else is confirmed to be competing in that state. Then, once the specified date has passed, youāll see if you were in the top 16 of the state you declared for, or not.
Much like with the $1 fee, you have put out a solution, asked people how they feel about it, vaguely defined what it is intended to āfixā, but whenever any concerns are brought up, your first reaction is a glib dismissal of that concern and a strong indication that you are not going to change the initial idea.
Thatās fine, as youāve said before, IFPA is your organization, and you can do with it as you will. But if you want prestige, you might want to consider how fair your actions look to third parties that arenāt already invested in the idea of competitive pinball, especially if you expect them to contribute to prize pools that are designed to be nearly impossible for them to obtain.
Say someone is qualified 20th in their home state of Indiana, but also 18th in Illinois. They really want to win their own state so they declare Indiana. Once all the declarations are announced they missed Indiana by one spot, but Illinois went deeper and they would have been able to make the cut there. Now they donāt get to play in a SCS? That would feel BAD.
Not sure this player exists: the mediocre player with enough money and free time to play in every circuit event until one of his 42nd place finishes in classics lands him in a SCS event.
Look at the data for Pennsylvania, a state with 3 (nearing 4) circuit events and see who has participated in the SCS finals. Itās typically all Pennsylvanians or West Virginians. If you were good enough to qualify in Pennsylvania as an out-of-stater you were good enough to qualify in another state most likely. Even then, there are enough leagues and tournaments in both Pittsburgh and Greater Philadelphia that players from those areas could qualify.
Michael- I donāt mean to dismiss your comments. As they are the same comments Iāve heard from you for years my responses probably have that kind of reflection in their tone.
I will say this, I value the feedback and I value the feedback Iāve gotten regarding your suggestions.
The posts Iāve seen here and on the State Reps board, along with the private emails Iāve gotten from people giving me feedback on YOUR IDEA has been negative by a huge margin.
Iām not dissing your ideas simple because I disagree. Iām dissing them because of the insane amount of feedback Iāve gotten from others that itās not a good idea.
Tell me how you would move forward with that if you were me?
If anyone loves Michaelās idea around declaring at a certain date and/or his placing limitations on ābig eventsā and the impact they can have on the SCS qualifying process so more local residents can make the cut, Iām literally all ears. This is your time to let me know that you would think this is the best foot forward for the IFPA.
By that same reasoning, what if that person couldnāt play in Fountain Square due to work not giving them the time off, or didnāt register in time for Main St. Mayhem, but they hit up (and run) a bunch of the local events and are a very good player in the league. Why is it fair that someone from Pennsylvania, or Washington who only plays one event in Indiana and gets enough points to be number 19 in Indiana can wait until they are sure that there arenāt as many powerhouse players in Indiana as other states. So they declare IN and 20th qualifier doesnāt get the chance because the 20 events in that personās roster canāt make up for the overwhelming points generator that they couldnāt make. Lets not forget that #19 paid $1 and #20 paid over $20 towards a prize pool.