I’ve got it in there, coded it when it looked like TPF was going in that direction.
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At TPF there were 12 games and only the best 10 counted towards your qualifying score. They were setup in three banks of four with a bounty for top qualifier in each bank. I didn’t play Campus Queen all weekend and didn’t play two of the other EM’s until Saturday. There were definitely some different strategies involved compared to unlimited qualifying. You are going to play at least 10 different games at some point but, anytime you put up a great game one score it was like getting a bonus entry on another game.
I think some people held on to entries into Saturday in order to spend them where they could gain the most points.
Generally, I don’t think the top tier players have a disadvantage in any format. After TPF, I think limited is a huge disadvantage for average or below average players. I couldn’t imagine what a soul crushing experience limited PAPA A div would be. Unlimited gives the rest of us something to do…
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The big difference is that better players couldn’t go back to a game like star trek or GoT and blow it up after figuring out the shots, bounces and settings. Maybe once, but the pressure to immediately put up a good score was tough. I find it was more along the lines of take fewers risk for a good score rather than more risks for a huge score. It definitely made me think long and hard about strategy.
Holding back 5 entries until Saturday was huge. It helped identify scores that began to degrade and give a chance to improve. Players that busted through 18-20 games on Friday were at a disadvantage.
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This format sounds great. Seems like it provides a new challenge for seasoned vets and also allows for newer players to get all their attempts in without a ton of waiting around. have any of the big tournaments sent out emails to all the participants with a short survey to get people’s thoughts? That may help get some opinions from the novice crowd too.
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I don’t have a problem with the concept of limited entries. However I do want to play, and certainly if I am a traveling far for a major tourney. I usually budget $100 for a typical 3/10 event, so I am “expecting” 30 plays.
On a bank of 5 that’s an average of 6 attempts per game. By that time, if it hasn’t happened, it’s probably not going to. There are those on the bubble who see the prize dangling and it’s…right…there. (Indiana, let it go). On the other side, the already highly qualified players who need not continue playing are often jockeying for a better position, or “chasing the bus” so to speak.
So sometimes there are more people still playing in qualifying than should be for whatever reason. The limited attempts would force both of those groups to be done and leave room for others to play.
Group 1-sorry, it’s just not your day. Get them next time.
Group 2-you are plenty safe, let some other people try.
So what’s a happy medium-maybe 3-4 attempts per game? 15-20 across 5 for example. If it is N games choose X, there could be some adjustment since it is not strictly required to play each game.
It’s a tough call. The trend seems to be people want more players, more games, more WPPR points, shorter lines, an opportunity for pros to showcase skills but also give the underdog a chance, and a sense of value/potential return for spending money to travel and pay entry fees to play competitively. There is no universal tourney format for that combination.
Support the events that meet most of the requirements on your list 
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I prefer match play as well. I admit it, I’m not a good enough player to qualify at a major tournament that is pump and dump. Maybe someday, just not now. The top elite keep trying to pass each other and get the top seed, or in the top 4 if it gives them a bye in the finals. The “B” players are often thinking “stop already, you’re already in” about the A+ players.
The waiting in line is excruciating. I think when it is a tournament at a show, it’s horrible to be wasting the time waiting in line when there are hundreds of games on the show floor to be played. Last year at CAX, I didn’t even play in the tournament. I had a GREAT time!
If it is a stand alone tournament, like NW Pinball Championship that is not part of a show, the pump and dump is fine. That is all you are there to do and you aren’t missing out on anything. And, you can chat with your friends while you wait in line.
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Unlimited Herb with 3 banks (separate tourneys) of at least 5 games each, payouts to all qualifiers, a novice division with payouts to the top 3-4. Who misses out in that scenario?
You sound like a perfect candidate for the novice divsion. When CAX changed the format for novice (top 8-10 scores across all banks counted), it became very easy to qualify for novice playoffs. You pretty much just had to play 8 or 10 games (don’t recall the exact number). People would quit after playing 3 or 4 games and move on, not knowing how the scoring worked. Once you educated someone, it was easy for them to get in the playoffs.
What constitutes a novice varies by tourney. I always encourage anyone who can play in novice to do so. Take avantage of your lower ranking as long as you can. I know I did when I first got started.
Well no format is really 100% fair. Because the line of machine and how they are set up also influences the results without even touching the format. Umlimited herb style (not the complete entry is your specific result, but only the overall highscores count… correct?) is really kind of unfair in terms of spending a lot of money and having a huge advantage.
But the PAPA style entry system seems at least for me very, very fair. I participated last year for the very first time which was an incredible experience. I could combine it with a business trip to Houston so I flight from Germany just for PAPA wasn’t that crazy anymore I spent quite a lot of money for entries in the main and classic tournaments, because… hey… if you are going to take all these efforts to get there - you want to play! Being able to spend much time playing and hoping to get to the finals (was not impossible in classics for me, at least looked like it until the last 30 minutes came up ;-)) was worth the money and efforts.
I also enjoyed the “fight” against myself within a five game entry even though I failed. I will give it another try this year and I look forward meeting again all the great competitors and being inspired how they play. Having just a limited amount of entries would be a show stopper for me… but I know my situation is in this specific scenario not normal.
In Germany the standard tournament format is matchplay swiss style… that’s a pretty fair format, but in Germany we do not have pay outs at all (let’s say for cultural and legal reasons) - so for me PAPA is an unique exprience.
I also recognised that some top players came in last year on Saturday and they had also a hard time qualifying because of long queues, limited time, so also maybe limited choice of machines since the queues were different. It’s obvious that this is kind of unfair, but as said no format can really be 100% fair. Their chance of qualifying in a herb style system maybe would have been bigger, because the pressure of having a pretty good overall entry would not have been so high… don’t know.
Last year we paid out more money than was taken in at pintastic.
I really like the strategy involved with the unlimited qualifier: you have X hours to put up your best possible score on on an entire bank of games. Strategy amounts to deciding which game to focus on relative to your score ranking on each, and the length of the line. Do you keep hacking at a game you are medicore on that has a short line or do you try to get the #1 score and the bonus points that comes with it on a game you are good at?
The problem with this format is this: there is no other skills contest which promotes unequal qualifying attempts among its participants, and the format starts to fall apart particularly in the bigger tournaments, and multi-day qualifiers with pay per attempt because you will end up with a broad disparity on the number of attempts by each participant and the entry fee by each participant. It makes a lot more sense to enforce limits so everyone has the same number of tries, or at least the same amount of time trying so you can compare apples to apples. A great player can throw up top scores with a single attempt on each game, and poor players will struggle with every entry, but a mediocre player with enough attempts will inevitably throw up enough solid games so that when it becomes difficult differentiating luck from skill, format becomes less and less valid.
The format is much more valid with a flat entry fee and a max # of attempts per participant enforced, or in a one-day smaller tournament where everyone is participating in the qualifier for the same number of hours. In other words, nothing short of everything equal for all participants. TPF had to do it this year out of necessity, but ultimately it’s the better way to run a tournament.
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You don’t say who the losers are in this scenario. Is it the poor players who don’t qualify in a large tournament? Should I feel bad for them? You also didn’t mention novice divisions, which most big Herb tourneys have these days.
I get that people don’t like the format, but no one can tell me who’s getting screwed. The addition of the novice division have eliminated virtually all of the complaints that you used to hear about Herb tourneys. Examples please.
People getting screwed:
People that paid more in entries than they wanted to, but got caught up in the chase.
People competing against people that paid more in entries than they did.
People whose opponents are competent, but would’ve missed out in favour of someone less-good if they weren’t allowed to qualify more times to make up for some bad luck.
People whose opponents paid much less than average into the pot because they’re excellent player and only played each game once.
People who don’t like standing in line
i.e., basically everyone.
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You can’t blame the format for spending too much. That’s like asking the casino for your money back because the slot machines were too fun. The other things are pretty much known going in. Are you really gonna feel like you got screwed because KME or Bowen played less entries than you and finished higher than you? And again, you, along with most everyone else in the thread, gave no consideration to novice divisions. They’ve made a huge difference, but are ignored when the format is bashed.
The irony here is that although unlimited Herb gets the most hate, it still gets thru the most players of any format and pays out the most. Any format that limits the amount of players sucks IMO. Pinburgh is about the only exception.
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I appreciate my experiences and opinions probably differ hugely from most people here because it seems nearly everyone here is a hardened tournament player, but anyway…
You will hardly ever find any significant European main tournament using unlimited entries. Players generally consider it grossly unfair for the reasons cited here earlier. The format is sometimes used for Classics or side tournaments, but it’s still seen as a slightly ‘dirty’ way to run things.
When I’ve explained the pump-and-dump format to non-pinball people they find it astonishing a serious competitive event would be run that way.
Shows in particular (as opposed to dedicated tournaments) have a difficult balance to maintain. In general if I’m at a show like the TPF from earlier years or Expo, I will skip the tournaments entirely. It’s not that I don’t want to compete - I do - but it’s a show. There are people to meet, seminars to attend, new games to try, pictures to take, videos to record, and drinks to be had.
I walk the corridor at Expo and there are the same people standing in that line for days on end trying to qualify or protect their position. My idea of Hell is standing in line for hours and hours, over and over, and I can think of no worse way to spend my time or my money.
Now, at TPF this year I also skipped the tournament and I kinda wish I hadn’t, even though it would have been very tough to find the time to compete. The format looked fun without being overwhelming. Several people I know who are quite good players but probably wouldn’t have bothered competing in previous years gave it a go this year. The NWPAS show last year had a format I could find time to play in, and so I did. I probably will this year too. So kudos to Ken and Dave for those.
At some other shows I will just buy a couple of entries (as that’s all I have time or are inclined to play) and they will either get me in or they won’t. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, but I’d rather not qualify than waste countless hours waiting in line. Where’s the fun in that? I guess that means I’m not a serious competitive player. 
But I do appreciate that you hardened tourney players don’t want to travel long distances for potentially a dozen games which don’t qualify you. You may have no interest in the rest of the show. You’re there for the tourney, right? Paying hundreds or even thousands in entry fees is as much risk/reward as playing the game, and that’s part of your fun.
I guess in the end it depends for whom you’re running the event.
A dedicated pump-and-dump tournament is really just for the hardcore players. It’s not inclusive; it won’t attract the less-dedicated players as they perceive the barrier to competing on equal terms is just too high. In essence, you’re organizing these types of events for yourselves.
That’s OK for stand-alone tournaments since everyone knows what they’re getting from the outset, but it’s not a suitable format for a show tournament, where you should also be trying to bring new players to competitive pinball IMHO. For these you need something which is manageable for show visitors both in terms of time and money, not something with huge long lines and high entry fees, where potential players will take one look, shake their head, and walk away.
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Who the heck stands in line at an unlimited herb anymore? Karl’s DTM software has fixed that and I can’t think of any tournaments running the format that aren’t using it.
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At CAX you can’t walk too far as there’s usually no cell phone reception in the tournament area 
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you still can get an idea if you are 3rd in line on a Star trek game 
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Part of what Martin has observed is due to the different degree of “social” aspect of competitive pinball in the US vs. elsewhere and part is due to “winnings rules.” The non-US events I’ve been to have had a higher degree of “hanging out with the gang”-ness than US events. A greater portion of a player’s time at the event is spent socializing vs. competing. Not that we don’t socialize, I just see more of it elsewhere. And then where you’re in a country that’s not allowed to have cash prizes, or severely limited ones, there’s no point in Herb-style.
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One aspect of the problem is the “you’re never safe” angle. Many “already in” players would like to stop playing and do something else, but they dare not because they’re not safe. I’ve had times when after day 1, I was not just in but had a “bye” position, but then as day 2 progressed, saw my position erode to where I had to play again just to make the playoffs. In cases like that, the “already in” people would probably prefer limited entries to preserve their “in” status.
In the end, we vote with our money and our feet. The events that get head-count and $$ support will continue to use whatever format got them there. Other formats will only make inroads if they get support from the players. Personally, I like limited entry for a fixed fee (and some types of match play), but I prefer an average of about 3 tries per game (and player’s choice, not a fixed 3 tries per machine) to even out for both getting the feel of the games, offsetting part of the “guy who brought the game” home-court advantage, and dealing with getting hosed on some mostly older games that tend to do that to you.
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Or player 4 on a game of Star Trek at Pinburgh, and everyone has played Kobayashi on ball 1. At least in the DTM run Herb tourney, I can take a bathroom break, sit and relax, or go play a couple games on the show floor (if there is one) while I wait for my turn to come up.