The bad thing is that the side tourneys are usually taking too long or are being played all at once along with the mains which might cause players not get to play all of the tourneys
Totally agree. They should really just run a quality main and 1 side imo.
Especially with a high number of players participating
Amazingly as it turns out I could actually come to this (via a free trip to England and then a cheap flight to Poland) but after I saw the 50 EUR entry fee and only 350/200/100 as prizesâŚyeah no LOL. I dunno what it is thatâs in the water over there but that is some absolutely crazy shit. Sounds reasonable if you are expecting 30 people and have to pay for the venue or something. Otherwise that is absolutely ludicrous.
To be clear Iâm not âin it for the moneyâ but it would be nice to have a decent chance at writing off at least the hotel expenses or my flight. 350/200/100 for a âmajorâ? Come on.
BTW, I think it is AWESOME that you guys are managing to have EPC in Poland. Iâll be honest, I basically had no idea there was a scene out there. Just shocked as we would be absolutely crucified for running a tournament at that price / prize ratio here in the US. Obviously things are different, but Iâm just curious how those figures ended up where they did.
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In my opinion the prizes are already high, but im just a simple player who doesnât compete much and itâs the first tournament with cash prizes for me.
You could talk with the ones who are responsible for this tournament (see links in my previous posts)
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Just as a point of reference, a $50 tourney (50 EUR ~= 55 USD) in the US with 80-100 players would likely turn out like this:
1st: $1200
2nd: $700
3rd: $400
4th: $250
5th-8th: $125
9th-16th: $60
Thatâs only $3500 out of the $5000 taken in entry fees which leaves $1500 for venue fees and trophies. You could probably easily chunk out another $500-800 for venue fees without affecting the prizes too much. Just for perspective as to where Iâm coming from. Even with those prizes some people would probably complain about too much being taken out of the prize pool.
Well thatâs a lot of money compared to this yearâs EPC and much more prizes.
I looked up EPC2015 prizes and yes there were also higher.
Itâs definitely tougher in Europe to even have any prize money at all . . . I mean we havenât paid a dollar out in prizes for the IFPA WC for IFPA8, IFPA10 or IFPA12 and people seem to still sign up 
Is this due to legal restrictions of the host countries/cities on having cash prize payouts for competitions?
Yep . . . May 20, 2011 was one of my most enjoyable days.
Nothing like having Patrik Bodin show up to the museum we were at during our vacation out in Stockholm to let us know everything was being shut down 
The cut in the second round is crazy if you ask me.
80 players down to 16!! 8 groups of 10 with only the top 2 going through from each group, that is brutal. I understand the need to speed things up, but I do think that cut is a bit nuts
Maybe they learned it by following you UK guys?
http://www.pinballnews.com/shows/ukpinballshow2009/index.html
The 2009 EPC was the most brutal format Iâve ever played in.
161 players down to 32 (based on one PAPA style run of 6 games - with one replay)
After that blood bath, the final 32 were welcomed to the next round . . . where only the top 8 advanced (based on one PAPA style run of 3 games - you played each machine twice and kept your highest)
Final 8 played one game in the lovely seeding of 1/3/5/7 and 2/4/6/8 . . .top 2 advanced from each group.
Finals was one additional game played for all the marbles.
It was INSANE
(and we probably played for no money, but honestly I donât even remember lol)
speed things up to have the tournament ending at 21.45. Some really weird things in the time schedule, players for the 80âs tournament have to wait the whole day on sunday to play their finals at 19.00!
Ah yes the classic UK format, I know it well
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EPC 2010 had itâs own flavor of format funkiness: a 2 1/2 (?) hour time window, play as many machines as you could get on, points for your scores, top 48 (?) advance to seeded-with-byes match play. Had a bunch of zeroes on games I didnât get to, but still qualified. They had to guess at the time window, and it wasnât long enough to get to everything; thatâs the problem with that many players and limited qualifying time available. Still, the best players pretty much all qualified, and in not-that-unreasonable order, plus I had a great time. It did make for some strange decision making re game selection, though: wait for a machine youâre better at vs. one more likely to be available sooner? You also had to consider how long your game would take. It was a tradeoff for everyone between number of games to play vs. expected quality and time required for it. Whatâs better, going for two I-expect-to-get-80-points scores that might take 15 minutes each vs. going for three 50 or 60 point scores for 10 minutes each? Not an easy decision to make, especially when you add the complication of waiting time for each machine. Itâd be a fun thing to try to write a program to optimize, but youâd need lots of data re game times, scores and machine popularity re waiting times!
Classics was different, but better IMHO: HERB-style qualifying, then a 10-round (?) Swiss-style head to head match play phase, then a single four-player game final of those with the best match play records. Only thing I would have changed was to make the final more than one game.
(Iâm guessing at these figures, donât recall them for sure.)
On another note, retirement doesnât help your game when your reflexes are 30 years past their prime. Your brick percentage gets higher each year at some point.
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yes EPC in Switzerland was about this (3h15 on 25 games, 30 players per group, top 48 qualified/9 rounds swiss-style) and I knew it in advance that not everybody would be happy with this format (it wasnât my decision, I had something more commonly accepted in mind) - but yes, top players were on top, good players qualified. It was inconvenient, but experienced players had an advantage for exactly these decision makings and I would totally prefer this format to the UK/France/Spain format.
Classics was unexpected popular for us, the 10 (or 12) machines were played constantly through saturday and sunday morning (Classics in the previous years didnât have this attention), so it was HERB-style but points were only rewarded for the first 10 (or 15) places! something I would have changed for sure, if I knew this in advance.
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Anyone have the results? Was any of it streamed on a Twitch channel?
I donât think thereâs a stream
Thanks, Michael