I started doing this last season, albeit reluctantly. It’s hard to say no when players point out a way they could be receiving more points just because I feel kinda weird about it. Ultimately it falls under the same explanations as to why SCS finals can be worth points, as far as I can tell.
Still, I wouldn’t find anything wrong with making a simple rule that says leagues can’t submit regular season and season finals for points.
Also @joe, since we run finals in divisions like many other leagues, we can really only submit the “A” division finals results.
I’ve talked with Josh about this before but I’ll bring it up here.
TOPL does this as well, we only started doing it with WPPR 5.0 since it made the most sense to do it after the change.
But we still play a 15 week season with 4 games played every night so 60 games within a season. (120 games now with 5.2 since we use 4 player groups so we get the 2x multiplier 
)
Then our playoffs which we submit as a separate event are 100% open and anyone can participate even if they haven’t played a single night during the regular season, the only disadvantage for not playing in the season is choice of order since we play swiss format for our finals.
So I really don’t see what we do as anything that bad since yea we are double dipping a bit, but since anyone can show up we could just call our Playoffs something else and just treat it as it’s own event.
That being said every other local league in my area has what I call affectionately the “Adam can’t play rule” where they require attendance minimums during the regular season in order to be eligible for playoffs. They also submit both playoffs and season as separate events.
Thankfully these leagues don’t use direct match play for their format so 5.2 means they can no longer do that, so I’m looking forward to having that conversation with them
I was going to start submitting each of our league events separately to try to get in line with the WPPR exploits that are happening in our region and then decided it wasn’t worth it. I don’t run a league for WPPRs, I like being recognized by the IFPA simply for the fact that there is a digital record of our results from season to season.
That’s only true if the lower divisions are artificially restricted in some way, right? (Like “if you won B division last season, you’re forced into A division this season”) For example, an FSPA league might have three divisions, but in no way do we restrict divisions, nor do players declare divisions… it’s all done by math based solely on the current season’s performance. If I’m interpreting @pinwizj’s comments correctly, we could then theoretically submit the results of each of our division finals as a separate tournament. (Our current WPPR submissions are based on regular season results only.) With only 3-5 players qualified per division each season, the WPPR value of those tournaments would be pretty small, but some people go gaga for any fraction of a point.
The restriction doesn’t necessarily have to be artificial, it can be organic as well. You can’t create subgroups of a given group of players to then be able to submit divisional play, whether those divisions are subject to artificial restrictions or not.
There’s no way we would allow tournaments/leagues to submit lower divisions as distinct events. Only the highest division is eligible for IFPA endorsement in those situations.
For leagues that submit results for each meeting, do you know if there are rewards for winning at each meeting (aside from WPPR points)? Like, is someone crowned the winner at each meeting and then gets the pot, or are the meetings purely steps for seeding the finals? I don’t think I’ve ever played in a competition where there isn’t some sort of reward - monetary, or a prize like a translite. I’m not invested in points, so I don’t really care, but I personally wouldn’t consider competition without rewards to be worthy of WPPR points.
I’m not exactly sure for all the leagues out there. I know that ‘technically’ leagues are welcome to run their meetings as stand-alone events similar to something like the PAPA Circuit where the standings are made up of some subset of meetings.
Whether there’s actually ‘prizes’ at the meetings, or the sole function of those meetings is to simply add to the Circuit style standings I’m not really sure.
I’m with you personally that if a winner isn’t really “crowned” at the event, it lends itself more to an exploitation of those results being included in the rankings strictly for a WPPR grab.
The day that Pinburgh submits qualifying results after Day 1, then submits qualifying results after Day 2 as a separate event, then submits finals results as a separate event is the day we take a deeper look about what constitutes a competitive event that we’re willing to endorse 
I totally agree. My opinions on tournaments and “leagues” that clearly exist just to exploit for WPPRs range from disdain to abhorrence.
We just started Season 2 here in Syracuse, NY. We borrowed from our friends in Middletown, NY. $5 per person, per league night. 100% of the pot gets paid out that night (usually to the top 5-6 places, and a random winner gets their $5 back).
Results go into season standings, and after 4 meets, top 6 players go to the heads up Finals.
Theoretically, we could submit at each League meet, but the TGP would only be 20%-32%, based on how many machines are available on that night
But it’s not direct competition if scores are compared outside that 4-player game. Direct competition means I beat your score and that’s good for me and bad for you regardless of what any other group’s scores were.
The league I was in didn’t submit both. Just regular season. The finals were held based on those who qualified during regular season, but was just for the trophies/glory.
Submitting league finals as a separate IFPA event that is restricted to those that did well enough during league seems weird. But I understand the argument/logic that someone uses of comparing it to SCS championship, IFPA championship, Circuit Finals, etc. in order to justify this decision. I’m not too worried, because assuming that a league finals is a small field, and held during a typical league session, it’s not going to award many points. Our league that had 4 finalists playing 5-game FSPA-style finals would have gotten a whopping base value of 0.4 WPPR for the winner.
For a league “finals” that is simply open to anyone that shows up, I wouldn’t call it a league finals, I’d call it a tournament.
Now that I’m helping run the league, I wanted to know what my options were. I prefer to have the finals determine who wins everything: glory, trophies, cash, WPPR’s, etc. I guess that’s the American in me.
Oh wait, there’s this thing called World Cup… 
A Texas tourney with a weird format?! Surely you jest lol
We went through the same thing for our WNY league. We were going to split it up to maximize the points but then we realized it was going to create some annoying issues so we decided it wasn’t worth it. One league season, one set of results, one submission… sometimes simple is better.
Tuesdays, huh? Sounds right up my alley. I work on weekends (that’s when they need my help the most, so I can’t easily turn it down), and Tuesdays are one of my days off. I always had the impression that pinball events are all set on Saturdays and Sundays.
The video game tournaments I can recall having seen in enough detail or having participated in, besides EVO, to comment on are Starcraft, Pokémon (the video game series), the Super Smash Bros. series, the Nintendo World Championships, and Splatoon. In all of these cases, there are local preliminaries where players are pitted head-to-head with as many players in one match as possible (2 in Starcraft and Pokémon, 2 or 4 in Smash Bros. depending on the format, 8 in Splatoon, and the Nintendo World Championship are about comparing scores, just like in pinball). Each person who wins their local preliminary are then brought over to either further preliminary rounds or the championships, depending on their size, where they play in the same fashion as the preliminaries in single-elimination or double-elimination until only one player remains (or one team, if they’re playing a team-based game).
With Pokémon, the local preliminaries are run Swiss-style (no one is eliminated, but people are ranked based on their records) until the final rounds, which are single-elimination, and are some exponent of 2 based on how many people are there (but no more than a quarter of the total entrants). When playing in tournaments, each player is assigned a score that goes up when they win and down when they lose, which includes both the Swiss rounds and the finals. After a year-long season ends, the people worldwide with the 256 highest scores receive an invitation to the World Championships (this year, it was set in Boston, which was infamous for two of the players making death threats and bringing hunting rifles with them–this is NOT typical at all).
For Splatoon, the game is still too new to have anything major, but there is an ongoing event set throughout Japan. There are preliminaries in each major city in Japan and the finals in Kyoto (where Nintendo’s HQ is located) In these events, everyone who signs up will play 8-player matches with randomly assigned teammates and opponents until only one person with an undefeated record remains. That person will then move on to Kyoto, where they will play against the other city champions, single-elimination and best 2 out of 3. Since this game works as two teams of four players, once only one team remains, there’ll be a second finals match set to 2-on-2, then a third finals match set to 1-on-1 to determine the winner. There are a few restrictions though: Players are limited to the default clothing given to them at the beginning of the game, and they are restricted to the 5 maps available on the game’s release (though one of them received a complete overhaul in its layout in August; the tournament will use the updated version of that map).
In any case, whether a nationwide or global video game tournament has a direct-play requirement comes down to the organization running it. There are many different ways to do so. For Smash Bros., unofficial tournaments have drastically different rules than official ones, for instance. I have never been to a video game tournament that uses a bracket system though, where you face other people in the same group.
Yep, I’ve been to most of those locations. I haven’t really had much talk with the people who run them though. A few of them DO have events (82 does, so does Pins and Needles, and now I know Lake Alice does).
Family Amusement Corporation is a business that mainly rents out arcade machines, and their arcade is pretty much just extra income on the side with no dedicated maintenance person. I doubt they’d be much interested in running events, as they’re not employed by fans.
The Lake Forest and Aliso Viejo Ice Palaces have an operator who’s active in Pinball Map but I can’t seem to figure out who it is. I am pretty certain it’s the same person as the machines at Wagon Wheel Bowl, however.
Casa de Carlos has a club-like gathering each Saturday, but it’s not competitive, nor is there much interest in competitive play. It’s just a gathering for people to play pinball.
Neon Retro Arcade seems to be a good place, if you ask me; if I want to start an event, that’d be first on my list, and I seem to be liekd by the people there.
Pinz Bowling Center has events of its own, but I am not entirely sure how it works. It seems much too busy to have events there, and since it’s a place with a lot of children, I’ll likely run into problems of guests attempting to play on machines not knowing there’s an event going on without blocking the area off.
Most of the Ventura County locations look pretty good, but they’re much too long a drive for me to go every week.
Chaparral Lanes already has It Never Drains in Southern California going on, so we got that. I think it’s run by whoever has the machines at Chaparral 300 and Oak Tree Lanes, as they seem to swap machines every now and then. However, I’d definitely try Chaparral Lanes.
I would like to have something at Blipsy Arcade, but I have always been confused at where to park. Also, the machines are not really in good condition.
Comic Hero University is definitely an excellent place. It’s also one of the testing grounds for those ColorDMDs. If there isn’t already a league there, I’d be surprised. I’ll put that on my list too. Same with James Games, but that’s pretty far from me. There seems to be a tight-knit group at James Games.
Linbrook Bowling Center is about as loose as it gets. I could never figure out who’s in charge. There’s never anyone in the arcade who works there.
The Santa Monica Pier’s machines are in horrible condition. I’d do pinball a disservice having an event there. It’d give people bad first impressions.
I’ve never been to either of the Round 1’s. They were recently documented on Pinball Map, and I haven’t had the chance to go there yet. They sound promising though.
Shatto 39 Lanes is in an area I’d rather avoid. It also seems weird to have an event where half the machines are Pinball 2000.
[quote=“CFFLegs, post:129, topic:872, full:true”]To @SunsetShimmer 's comment that the operators in the LA area don’t seem as invested as the players do (and keeping in mind that I have never played pinball in SoCal), I suggest reaching out to the operators either to invite them to pinball events or to partner with them in throwing pinball events. Using another Portland-centric example, I feel like Cashbox’s machine quality has skyrocketed since one of their techs got involved in the tournament/pinball community. Introducing operators to the real people (and, let’s be real, the money-making opportunities) within the hobby makes keeping games playable a more tangible thing somehow.
[/quote]
Sounds like a good idea. I’ll keep that in mind. Did Cashbox used to have janky, dilapidated machines until the operator was convinced to keep them in good condition?
Aye. And they had a really antagonistic relationship with players.
yeah but know that you can get OPs to change. We did that with one location here and now the OP maintains that locations machines really well. Maybe not their other locations but def this one and we host tourneys there now semi-regularly so you can get them to change
I totally forgot to put a link to my TGP calculator in this thread. Check out http://tgp.slapsave.com/ to calculate TGP for all your WPPR 5.2 tournaments.
It covers all the formats on the IFPA TGP guide and I’ll update the calculator as the IFPA revises that guide.
If you are using a smartphone it looks best if you turn your phone sideways.
For those interested the code (and tests) are available at https://github.com/haugstrup/IfpaTgpCalculator – it’s a javascript implementation that will work both in the browser and as a node.js module
(trying to get this thread past 200 replies)
WPPR 5.2 may be the best system in the world, but if it doesn’t allow for six-player superfinals on Frankenstein or Baywatch, it’s officially dead to me.