If you have an unplayable extra ball on Metallica, then you are already not playing by the full IFPAPA rules (which is ok, except under certain very specific circumstances). Which means a TD could potentially apply a ‘house rule’ here to let everyone do whatever the TD desires.
The IFPAPA rule set is designed to provide a standard set of rules that a majority of pinball tournaments can follow. It is set up so that players know what to expect when they show up at any tournament, to try and standardise the experience. IMO, if a rule doesn’t fit your event, house rules can take precedence as long as all players are aware of the exceptions.
Pinburgh, game 3 of a group. Player 4 on ball 3 is way out of it on a game, but really close to 3rd place. The player thinks that if they can choose position on game 4 they have a really good chance to win it. They decide to tilt their ball 3 with the ball in the shooter lane to ensure that they finish last and get that order selection.
Or maybe they just tilted out on their entire last game to ensure they would finish at a specific number of wins to end up near the top of a division and not the bottom of one.
In this situation, could the player verbally concede in order to finish last in that game without violating any rules? The only rule I see about concession is
“If a player verbally concedes for any reason, the concession will only be considered valid if it is witnessed by a scorekeeper, tournament director, or all members of a group.”
I’m trying to picture this actual scenario happening and it just seems really far fetched. I can’t imagine giving up a Pinburgh point just to have some perceived advantage of choosing first or second on the next game. Was this an actual occurrence? If so I’m curious what the next game was where first choice of turn order was that significant over second choice of turn order.
I also can’t imagine a situation where this would come into play. Granted, I can imagine someone tanking to get out of qualifying in Pinburgh A division, but simply plunging the ball and not playing should be enough to lose. The only way tilting before your ball would really help you would be if someone else in your group had the same strategy and the two were both actively trying to lose and the only way to ensure you had fewer points was to intentionally tilt before you scored any points.
And is this really more egregious than plunging and walking away from a ball? Hell, I’d be pretty disgusted to watch someone tank on a ball intentionally, but I’d actually rather them tilt before they plunged so that we didn’t have to stand around and watch the ball bounce around and then wait for the ball save to kick out the next one.
A better solution to that is to allow people who want to to preselect their division at Pinburgh. If somebody really doesn’t want to be placed in A, I’d rather not have them sandbag round 5 to the benefit of whomever else happens to be in their group. Let them play in B if they’re not restricted. Most people will want to play up as high as they can, so I don’t see letting a few opt out as a big problem.
There are lots of reasons not to do that, but a primary one is information: if this were available, players wouldn’t find out about it quickly enough to act upon this, and would attempt to ask for this assignment after the tournament has begun.
Lesser reasons include the issues of the standings (dealing with players who forced B who suddenly have a 5-game lead going into Day 2), issues of divisional assignment (now a lesser B player is pushed into A to fill that spot), and issues of division size (if no players replace forced-Bs, then A Div is too small).
The real solution is to only put high-dollar cash prizes in A Division, but nobody wants that.
Isn’t there already an umbrella sportsmanship rule that could cover this? If you see someone clearly tilt because they are trying to get last place, they should get penalized under the “getting last place on purpose / not trying their best / collusion” rule, NOT the intentional tilt rule, which I still think can just get removed.
Suddenly I’m reminded of that really old post somewhere about “If your format rewards people for doing anything other than playing their best, your format is the problem”…
The verbal concession rules is in there for players who will say ‘you got it already’ and get people to stop playing. If the bonus counts up and they don’t have it, then the other player still loses because they verbally conceded.
The rule is not in there as a way to avoid playing.
