I meant one player had 20 unused entries. About 40% of all players had at least one unplayed entry. Almost 95% of all players played more than 10 of the 20 entries.
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IMO the prize pool would be solved if you did something like the old Fraser Valley tournaments where you do $20 buyins up to a cap of sayâŚ$60 or $80. Itâs a little more like an unlimited qualifying tournament in terms of prize pool then, but players who are less serious arenât forced into buying $40 of tickets (while the hardcore players will more than make up for it with their spending, without feeling like theyâre forced into spending $100-$200+).
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Sorry if I wasnât clear, I was speaking specifically about the game issue regarding the CAX tournament and that a matchplay format, like the Pinball at the Lake* event Jim and Karl run, would be difficult to pull off since it requires there to be a game to play for every 4 players entered. Greg mentioned above that he had some difficulty getting together the 12 games CAX used this year, and from talking with people that have been attending for some time, this appears to consistantly be the case. Itâs a fun format though and can be done in a day.
As for the show, I never go to these things for that and wouldnât have much opinion one way or the other.
*PATL is match play where the first XX players to XX wins qualify. So in a 3 2 1 0 scoring format, if 21 wins is the magic number, 7 straight match wins puts you in. One game per round, randomly assigned if I recall. Itâs also laddered. I donât go to enough events to know if this is similar to another show or not.
Same here. I started at about 1:30 Saturday, took an hour off for dinner, and was only able to play 13 entries by closing. Because of the dwindling number of games (9 at the end), waiting times were averaging about half an hour a game. Starting one game short on Friday wasnât a good start.
It was awesome for Chris Kuntz to bring the EMâs, but unless we have him (or someone else) to keep them working, EMâs are a liability. There are a ton of tourney-worthy games within 15 minutes of the show. I looked around the room and many of the guys there have large collections. Iâm not sure what it will take to motivate folks to bring them, but theyâre out there.
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Iâve always been disappointed by the CalEx machine-bringers unwillingness to let their games be in the tournament. Hundreds of games on the floor, most being used nearly constantly the whole weekend, and theyâre âafraidâ to let serious players use them? Used in a tournament where if the machine has issues, it gets fixed a.s.a.p.? Where there are people watching constantly, making it less likely the machine will be abused? Where once the playoffs start, the machine will be used less, on average? As said above, with all the games in the Bay area, youâd think itâd be super easy to fill the tourney roster.
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I canât speak for the machine loaners at CalEx, but I can let you know that here in the UK when weâre running a show we sometimes find loaners that explicitly donât want their machines in the tournaments.
Their objection mainly is with tournaments in general, with the view that machines in the tournament are not available for the public to play. Nothing to do with maintaining the machine or concerns about damage, more in following the ethos of âpinball for the peopleâ
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To be somewhat fair, almost all the games on the floor are from like four people, and those people also contribute games to the tournament. That said, I do also wish we had more community involvement in supplying games. We had a couple people offer games this year that had no way to transport them, but otherwise all the games offered came from Mark, TJ and Chris.
All that said, this thread is about unlimited qualifying as a format not CAX as a tournament and I feel like weâre getting a little sidetracked here.
I actually quite enjoyed the CAX limited Herb this year. It is what it is though. I will never prefer it over straight match play but we all know when a tournament is attached to a show it almost has to be this way to satisfy those who also come to play at the show.
Iâd be curious to see the different rates of tournament growth via format. Such as Expoâs 256 man bracket compares to CAX or TPF limited Herb, At the Lakeâs match play format, NWPC straight Herb format ect. If attendance constantly dwindles at what point to you switch the format to try to bring people back?
The best athletes would go one and done and the rest would keep trying until they ran out of time, money or will power 
Now I want to try a Pinball event that is run like high jump. There is a constantly increasing scoring objective. You can pass at any level you want. 3 failed attempts in a row and you are out. Only problem is it is only one TGP.
Edit: oh and no direct play. So maybe I will do it just for fun.
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What if you did this in a pingolf style where the objective was a score across a bank of games? Eliminate anyone that doesnât make the first âeasierâ goal. Then play again with harder goals, rinse, repeatâŚ
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Jay,
Interesting idea, but what would the TGP be, Josh?
There are all different types of players, and there isnât a format that will appease everyone. The best players in the world want as many attempts as they need: they traveled a long distance to play, they have an advantage over all other players (and more attempts is more opportunities to cash in on that advantage), and they have a chance at actually winning money.
The proliferation of circuit events is supposed to spread pinball, but if the format (and payouts) were so favorable that the top 10 players showed up at each one of those events - weâd see the opposite. The other 50,000 players in the world would know they donât stand a chance, and stay home.
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How about eliminating bus driving in Herb formats rather than limited Herb? One of the great things about match play tournaments is you are forced to play on games you are not comfortable on which just doesnât happen for a high qualifying Herb player and generally why you see the same 10 people in finals.
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So whatâs the most anyone has ever spent on qualifying?
Thatâs one thing I liked about some European tournaments - - matches where both game and order are random, sort of like in strikes-format here, except the formats are round robin, match play or elimination. Part of the reason for long lines in Herb format is people who want to drive the bus playing more entries at the same time that others are just trying to make the playoffs.
Exactly. I donât want to play trio in the finals so Iâm gonna keep qualifying until I am assured I wont 
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There was someone who used to play PAPA A and would routinely spend a grand (and I donât think ever qualified.)
50 entries (1000/$20 old pricing) * 5 games per entry = 250 games. 42 hours of qualifying. Means you have to play 1 game about every 10 minutes (including wait times) to complete those full tickets. Ouch!
So if we used Herb for the next Indisc but changed it so that the playoff machine assignments were random but all else was the same - - pairings of seeds, byes for the top 8, higher seed gets choice of position - - would âprospective bus driversâ like yourself prefer that so you could do other things than play entries going for the #1 seed?