Discussion on changing up finals for the Pintastic show tournament.

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Tournament format is old PAPA ticket qualifying. We have a 12 game bank. Ticket consists of 5 games. 10$ a ticket. Unlimited entries. We use Never drains for questing and all the usual stuff like that. It’s been a great success and wonderful Turnout every year(120+ I believe). Qualifying is all day Friday and 1/2 the day Saturday morning with finals commencing 1 hour after qualifying closes. We payout top 8 currently.

What’s everyone’s thoughts on this for switching up finals for pintastic tournament. Looking to embrace the silverball rumble name of it. Normally we take top 24 and top 8 get a bye round one. Finals is head to head best of 5 games bracket. Pretty basic but fun and head to head stuff gets pretty intense.

Thinking of going with top 24 still by making it more wwfroyal rumble style similar to circuit finals but not take alllll day. Time is an issue with shows as we’ve discussed plenty here. So top 8 get a bye into phase 2 of finals (the ladder match phase). And the higher the seed in the top 8 the further you can sit out. In finals. Phase one is the other 16 players get matched up in 4, 4 player groups. They play one game loser of the 4 player match is eliminated.

New game played with only 3 in group. Loser eliminated again. Then one more game with 2 players and loser is eliminated. That gives us 4 from the 16 left and the 8 byes from before. 12 left.

Now we start the ladder. 4 survivors from before start it off and play one game. Loser eliminated and seed 8 from byes joins the group.

As that player who was just eliminated leaves he tosses out a game from the whole bank and can never be picked again in the finals.

Play again. Loser is out and seed #7 comes in. Loser kills another game.

Repeat until seed 1 comes in and have 3 more games to determine the winner. And at this point only 3 games remain and the final head to head match basicly is game chosen by third place finisher.

Makes most of the final matches super easy for everyone to focus on as only one game is ever going on at a time. Better for spectators. Better for stream and top players keep adding to prize pool trying to jockey for good spots.

I’d love to go top 40 but I don’t see a way to work the numbers on any format like this in a reasonable time. We’ve always finished up finals late in the evening at the latest. Maybe 8-9PM last year

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I won’t be there, but I do see one aspect that could be an issue. This format guarantees that the #1 seed finishes at worst 4th. That’s an awfully big edge for someone who might just have one good 5-game run in qualifying! It also means that someone could play just 6 games total and get 4th place, or 8 games total and win it all. [Hmm, better check the TGP on this one.] The whole stepladder aspect places a huge premium on having a good ticket. IMHO, having one hot streak doesn’t merit that big an edge in the playoffs. But hey, if you want to try it to see how it goes and how the players like it, especially if the other feedback you get supports you, go for it.

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This is an interesting concept but it’s kind of broken in my opinion. I don’t think eliminated players should have that kind of control over what happens next, there’s a weird “kingmaker” aspect to it. I don’t mind the rest of it, but this didn’t make sense to me.

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I would not be interested in a finals format like this of one game and done. Your players have worked too hard and too long to be eliminated after one bad game.

One of the key aspects why I think the old style PAPA ticket (RIP) is a great qualifying format for high level play, is because it best simulates the importance of consistent good play during finals (vs importance of sporadic outstanding play for single game best-game formats). It would be weird to still promote the reason behind the old style PAPA ticket during qualifying, but then devolve to a one-and-done just-don’t-suck format for the finals.

Completely agree with Bowen. Definitely don’t do this. I know of a tourney once that had something similar (but even worse) where the ladder-style eliminated player got to “rage pick” the next pin for the next round to compete on. Naturally, all the worst pins were picked. It was awful.

Bob’s right: your TGP for this format is going to be VERY low… 5 + 1x2 + 1x1.5 + 1x1 = 9.5 for the #1 seed’s possible games played.

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Wonderful points everyone. Exactly why I brought this up trying to hash out something different than the norm. TGP was the factor I hadn’t even got to yet but knew there would be some very weird math there at the least.