Well yeah, when the only games in the tourney bank are Shadow, Dirty Harry, I500 and Corvette it does get boring.
Wait⌠those games are awesome! Go Europe! 
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Another European here agreeing with Martinâs views.
I understand the need of unlimited entries to build up the prize pool, but without prize money it would be hard for me to find good reasons to use the herb style format.
I probably wouldnât ever make a trip to US to only play in a herb-style tournament. It has to be at least a combination a good tournament and a good pinball expo type of event, or multiple tournaments (IFPAPA omg yes it really is happening soon!!!). Planning to attend Arcade Expo some (hopefully already next) year Iâm a little worried that would I even have time for both, going through the amazing expo collection of games and also devoting enough time for the tournament to have even a remote possibility of qualifying.
The PAPA qualification format with unlimited entries I understand much better, since itâs also about being consistent enough to perform well throughout all the games in the entry. I thought this format was unique for pinball, but I was surprised to find out that also some bowling tournaments seem to have same kind of unlimited re-entry system:
http://www.ballmaster.fi/en/rules
http://ptbc.co.uk/Events/2015/EnglishOpen/Format.aspx
â
Olli-Mikko
You should have more than enough time to play as many IDCISC entries as youâre comfortable with, and do all the Expo things you might want to do, provided youâre planning on spending both friday and saturday at the event.
That was a Great game of Godzilla! 
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For you⌠
For me⌠
Good luck in A this year!
Haha Yea, thatâs the only downside to that whole situation, was A Restricted in Pinburgh too (came in dead last in A) and suspect I will only be entering a few tickets in A just to say I did it before running back down to B next year. Who knows tho?!?!
No @Caseman0202, you didnât come in dead last in A. Iâm pretty sure you and I tied for second last (4 wins ahead of dead last). The difference was I played well day one and started in the middle of the A-pack and got my butt kicked and you started at the bottom of A and caught up against A-level competition (with a winning record on day 2).
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Yay for second last, much better! Lol
http://neverdrains.com/bpso2016/playerIndex.php?disp=player&pid=104
What would happen if there was a tournament with a limited number of voided entries? Say once you hit 10 voids or so then your ticket stands as is.
SoâŚyou can keep playing as long as you want, itâs just that your most recent scores supersede any previous ones?
Interesting example youâve selected. The entry fee for this tourney is $1 per game plus coin drop. If you limit players to 10 voids max, your prize pool isnât going to get very big. Also, this tourney has two full 14 hour days of qualifying, less than 100 player and 10 games. If you limit players to 10 voids, youâre going to have a lot of players standing around idle games. Lastly, the player in the example finished tied for 18th. Was it really worth all the effort?
A recent Papa A division winner had 30+ voided entries. And no one cared.
No hate here, I like the format quite a bit. I feel like it lets me keep playing until I get a âgood for meâ score on each game. Sure, I could keep going after that hoping for an outlier âblow it upâ game but really its much more likely that I would be throwing away money for minimal chance of improvement. So once Iâve got a reasonable score on a game I usually move on.
My dislike stems from a philosophy that pinball should be an egalitarian activity. Since unlimited is almost never really unlimited, but rather limited by money, it creates a barrier to qualification beyond the only barrier I want to matter⌠skill.
I just donât like the idea of a player who must operate within an inelastic budget getting disadvantaged against someone with an elastic budget. A fixed cost, even a high fixed cost, keeps the monetary aspect level (or as level as we can expect). Everyone knows they need no more (and no less) money than the fixed amount.
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I grew up in a poor household. Even though Iâm well enough off now, throwing away money to try to do better in this kind of context is probably always going to cause me much more stress than many of the people I find myself playing against. This doesnât go well and I end up bowing out of competitions. At this point Iâve decided that Iâm just not going to enter any more pump-and-dumps regardless of the context or how well I think I can do. Itâs not a format Iâm willing to support.
I hope that people that have always been privileged can understand that this âpay until you do as well as you wantâ is intrinsically elitist and unfair.
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Limited entry is a disincentive for players who are traveling. You spend a couple hundred bucks on hotel, airfare+car rental or gas+tolls and then you play 10 or 12 games for $25 or $40 bucks and if you werenât âonâ yet, youâre done? Not a good plan. Would you go to Pinburgh if you were told youâre out of the tournament if youâre not above the cut line after round 3 [12 games]?
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Sounds like a great plan to me. Fair is fair. The idea that people that have already spent more money via travelling are entitled to spend yet more money to do well makes no sense to me.
Can you imagine if the Olympics were pay-per-attempt?
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If you look at past results from CAX, which recently switched from unlimited to limited, youâll see that itâs pretty much the same guys making the playoffs each year.
If itâs such a big advantage, why arenât we seeing more examples of weak players âbuyingâ their way into the playoffs? Can anybody even show an example or two of this?
I posted this one way up thereâŚ
Iâve witnessed this sort of thing on multiple other occasions, but I donât have those results to dig through, not that Iâd really want to if I did.
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Highly ranked players also do this. A recent Papa A winner had more than 40 entries.
Indisc showed much the same trend. The vast majority of additional funds spent appeared to be from qualified players jockeying for position, and not from players attempting to qualify.
I donât think there is any actual data that will back up the hypothesis that unlimited entry tournaments somehow favor only those who spend the most money, but we seem doomed to argue it based on the âfeelingâ that itâs bad, because it has the potential to cost more.
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