and in that idea you have an max games but no min games?
so some one can end up sitting for most of the event with way less games played and way more wait time then other players?
at least with flip frenzys now when waiting you are in an fixed line with no jumps. and you have some time to take quick brakes.
With that idea you can end playing back to back to back for an very long time
To be fair, he said, ‘a queue’, not several queues.
We have no rules regarding how you do pairings for Group Play or Head-to-Head play.
You can pair people using Swiss, Tiered Swiss, Balanced, Random . . . or the future most popular version “Available pairings”.
Even if this totally theoretical 3p/4p software that we totally didn’t make during pandemic actually existed, my presumption is that a 4p will get the 2x boost but be multiplied by 1/2 to bring it back to 1TGP per game.
Josh is repeatedly trying to clue you guys into the “fix,” which is everyone playing the same number of games. Once you accomplish that, it ceases to be a flip frenzy and is just an X round heads-up tourney with an efficient queue.
…an efficient queue and the world’s worst pairing algorithm 
Not with 2 player games and an odd number of players
and may force real tie barkers as there will be no seeding
I don’t understand the hate for the Flip Frenzy (FF) format. If anything, it’s a more pure repsentation of competitive pinball than the rest. Why is that, you ask??
…because if pinball is ever going to become a “real” sport, like hockey, it has to be exciting to watch, aka fast! There is nothing more boring during competition than waiting for some guy to trap up before every friggin’ shot. It’s like what basketball would be without the shot clock, or golf without the… - nevermind golf, bad analogy!
Any clown can make their shots if they take all day to do it, even me! That’s not real pinball, it’s a gross perversion of the sport. It’s like saying you can play “Eruption” on electric guitar and then taking 30 seconds between every note. NOT MUSIC!
Anyway, FF is super fun and rewards not only playing well, but also playing well quickly - aka less time for all you “extremely disciplined” players to waste all of our precious time, and more chance for guys like me that just like to flip (like, a lot!) to do well. Perhaps the IFPA WPPR rankings should be more heavily based on LESS time played, vs. more. Think aboutit…
(kidding / not kidding)
I’m gonna ignore the rest of the stuff about flip frenzy and just ask about this part. What is “faster” to watch? A player who traps up and has a higher shot percentage, or a player who doesn’t trap up and has a lower shot percentage?
The 2nd one. More shots, more potential reward and more risk. Ideally, the flow player that also has a reasonably high shot percentage (paging Andrei Massenkoff!). What’s fun to watch is someone lighting up a game, exhibiting amazing ball control skills, and making difficult shots. What’s not fun to watch is a player who spends 3/4 of the game time waiting for every shot to settle down on a flipper so they can make their next shot. Not to mention the soul-sucking cost to the other players waiting for their turn.
Even curling has a total shot clock time that each time cannot exceed navel gazing about what their next shot should be (can you tell I’m Canadian, eh?).
EDIT> Forget to mention that flow play is a skill like anything else and can be developed with practice. So today’s flail-fester can be tomorrow’s Andrei if they have an incentive to change the style of their play. Currently rewards go to the stop and control every single shot method of play, which is not fun to watch, wait for, and overall bad for pinball IMO.
flip frenzy has more overall action and less over all waiting and say moving cameras game to game adds more slow down.
With non flip frenzy one game may go 1 full round with no players
In flip frenzy games get played more.
also
for viewing do you want to stick with the top groups only and show lot’s of long games or show more players?
IDK, I brick shots from a trap all the time. Does this only work if you’re wearing the makeup and floppy red shoes? 
I said can, not shall! 
No offense to Andrei, he’s a friend, but I’d much prefer to watch a surgical player like Neil Shatz take a game apart. You can usually see where Neil is going and while Andrei also has a strategy in mind, it’s harder for the viewer to discern where he’s going due to his playing style. Both great players, but I prefer watching control players methodically taking a game apart.
If IFPA cared about the overall hobby, not just the sport, tournaments and leagues held in public locations would get a bump in points. I’ve suggested this in the past and it went nowhere. I wonder how many of the WPPR farms are on coin drop, but I suspect I don’t want to know the answer.
Here’s some ideas to improve flip frenzy tournaments.
Instead of a standard first-in-first-out (FIFO) queue use a priority queue. When someone enters the queue they are placed above anyone that already has more games than them, but below anyone that has less games. For example, when a game ends, P1 gets paired with someone from the queue then P2 enters the queue. If the current players in the queue are
A (7 games)
B (8 games)
C (9 games)
and P2 just finished their 7th game, then P2 get placed between A and B. If P2 just finished their 6th game, P2 goes to the top of the queue.
This doesn’t guarantee there are an equal number of games at the end of the tournament if it’s timed. Two players could theoretically play a single long game for the entire tournament!
And this would eliminate the rush to finish or concede and get back in the queue.
Another idea would be to do something a little more sophisticated. When P1 finishes their game each waiting player is assigned a number based on a few factors and P1 is paired with the waiting player with the lowest number. The number is calculated based on number of games played so far, how many times they already played P1, and win percent compared to P1. Each of these has a weight in the formula. The idea is to favor pairing P1 with someone that has less games so far, someone P1 has played less so far, and someone that is doing about the same in the tournament (kind of like Swiss pairing).
For each waiting player
N = (number of games played) + X * (number of times played P1) + Y * (difference in win percent)
(It could be that the difference in win percent would not be factored in until players have at least a certain number of games.)
Now by assigning weights to X and Y you get a number for each waiting player. P1 would be paired with the waiting player with the lowest number N.
For example, let X = 1 and Y = 3.
Now if P1 is 5-0 and a waiting player is 0-5 and played P1 once then for this player
N = 5 + 1 * 1 + 3*(1.0 - 0.0) = 9
If another waiting player was 5-1 and played P1 twice, then
N = 6 + 1 * 2 + 3*(1.0 - 0.83) = 8.5
and the algorithm would pair P1 with this player over the first player.
Now someone has to code this up and try it! Or someone can improve on these ideas.
I think (or hope) that if it’s done right then no one would get stuck in the queue for too long. And even if they do have a longer wait time it’s only because they are skipping getting paired with someone they already played a lot or someone of extremely different playing ability.
Some are on pay fee to enter and games on free play places and some people do list that as (coin drop)
and some (coin drop places have time play arcade cards)