Between following Dunlap’s Facebook commentary on the chase for the last OR SCS spots I found myself rooting on my dad tonight via refreshing MatchPlay every 5 minutes. He pretty much needed a first or second place finish to punch his IL SCS ticket … which he came up short on.
First time for me where I really felt the last week or two feel like the last few hours of open qualifying for a typical weekend event.
Anyone else see some last week action for their State (or Province)?
Derek Fugate was dead in the water for getting into KY, but he shows up to the last tournament of the year, is in the final four, and if he gets top two of this event he should get enough points to leapfrog two to three people and get the 16th spot. Wild.
There were 4 people vying for the 16th spot going into tonight and 3 of them played. The 4th decided not to play. They were all within 1-2 points of each other in the standings.
Yes, I was following a Matchplay tourney last night in Tennessee even though I am state rep for Alabama. There’s a player who is currently undecided and is on the bubble in both states. He took a 5th place finish so that should solidify his position in Tennessee. Waiting patiently for our last couple of events to post so the standings are finalized.
I held a tourney for 30 people over the weekend that will probably earn 16-17 points.
There were several people in attendance who had a shot for a last minute entrance into the Florida SCS, and by the same token, there were people on/near the bubble fighting to keep a spot.
There were also people fighting for the first round bye since we meet the Super State requirements,
In a wild twist, my mom played in her first IFPA event ever. We’ve joked that maybe one day we could have 3 generations of Florida champions.
(Despite having access to games at my house, she will only play FH on occasion. She always asks to play the Bucko game)
As the TD, and her son, I felt double obligation to make her first tourney experience smooth and easy, but mainly fun and introduce her to some nice people. Everyone was extremely supportive (and probably expecting some easy rounds since only last place received a strike)
However, some of the rounds were almost something you’d see on a scripted comedy.
Mom, you’re playing with these people on Kings and Queens
Ok.
It’s your turn,
Ok. How do you start this?
Press this button.
Ok.
Where’s the ball?
Use this lever.
Ok
Now just plunge the ball.
Ok.
The ball drained, Am I done?
No, you get 5 balls. Look down here to see how many you played.
So, use this lever again?
Yes.
Wow, look at the ball hop, this is fun!
Oh no, it drained. Hey, the lever’s not working
Your game is over, See the backglass.
Oh, ok. Is that a good score?
(Spectators clapping)
You won.
Really?
She survived 8 rounds before getting eliminated, playing games she has never played, brought smiles to everyone, including herself, and added a 3rd generation pinball player to the mix 
Exciting day. There will be some SCS shakeup though.
There’s a classics tournament this afternoon in Maryland at Spinners. I expect a decent amount of Maryland’s finest will be there jockeying for seeding or qualifying.
Nope, not at all here. Glad some are getting enjoyment.
P.S. I already in.
In Ontario there were two 40 person tournaments over the weekend. They will shake up the order a little. I wasn’t at them so I don’t know if anyone was WPPR chasing for the NCS. I will be interesting to see how things end up, but we will need to wait for Adam’s well earn time out of the cage.
Things were pretty well wrapped up in CT. We had our sanctum Christmas party the Monday before Christmas. 3 strike group knockout event.
We had 80 people sign up at the door from 4 different states.
The final 2 were both regular players here and have never come close to winning any regular events with much smaller/easier competition. The winner was Jim O’Brien and took home 30+ points for the win. He was around 50th in the state and rocketed into qualifying position, and even moved up a few thousand spots in his qualifying position too. No one saw that coming. Not even himself!
Went pretty smooth and quick for an 80 person 3 strike group knockout that didn’t kick off till 8 at night.
That’s awesome. If that doesn’t keep him coming back for a few years, I don’t know what will. Haha
He’s been playing here for years and had no intentions of ever stopping before 
Interesting thing I heard from another player this week regarding the change using only top 20 scores. Before it was only top 20, this player and another player were vying for the last spot in Maryland and due to the weeklies in Maryland, they kept barely jumping ahead of each other. So it was literally a weeks long race to get that last spot. So even though final standings may not have been much different with all scores or only 20 scores counting, that week to week battle was exciting for them. Compared to this year where it seems the field had been somewhat defined earlier. Personally I think that type of excitement could happen with either format, such as what you mention with your Dad. And I like the highest 20, it actually gives you a chance to catch someone that already has 20 since they can only ‘improve’ on a previous score.
Figured I’d mention this particular experience these guys had before it maxed at 20 though.
As Josh mentioned, Oregon’s last couple months were pretty insane with people vying for the bubble spots. I stoked this madness pretty heavily with regular updates to our local Facebook group detailing who all was still in the running and by how much. We also had a very large number of events in the last month. In the last two weeks of December we had 12(!) events in Oregon.
Things changed pretty heavily in the last month, and even in the last week. On the 26th, Brandon Rangel from Eugene took #24 by .08 points, with the #25 and #26 players (Stacey Moritz and Mike Smith) chasing him relentlessly. He eventually sealed his position on the 29th by outright winning the last Eugene tournament of the year, ending up at #22.
The main Portland fight was between myself, Stacey Moritz, and Mike Smith. After Brandon won his tournament I got pushed to #24, with Stacey at #25 and Mike at #26. This all culminated in our local SuperLeague finals, which have a controlled qualifying portion, so they’re worth a ton of points. The finals are standard ladder format. I qualified in 5th (guaranteed 8th) and Mike qualified first (guaranteed 4th.) I completely tanked and took 8th. The way I calculated it, Mike need to get at least 3rd to have a chance, and a 2nd would have clinched. His first game was Big Guns, he was player 4, and he needed 200K to catch player 3. He plunged, missed the skill shot, got a weird feed, flipped and it ended up straight in the outlane. When the dust settled, if he had gotten that 200K he would have gotten in. We did have one more tournament after that on NYE which they both went to, but neither managed to score and that was it. I managed to hang on to the bubble spot by my last fingernail.
As I’ve said in another thread, the Top 20 change really impacted people’s ability to climb the ladder. Brandon had a floor of .20 going into the last week, so almost anything would have given him incremental progress. I had .6, so I needed a little more but getting some amount of progress was still fairly easy. Mike and Stacey had a floor around 1.6, and that was really causing them problems, especially as a lot of the final tournaments weren’t that large.
Organized them both so out of towners had a worthwhile trip. Got myself enough points to get into 8th, so the first round bye! First time I’ll make the 2nd round at Provincials!!
I’d like to see a list of the top point earners of 2018 that didn’t qualify for any SCS. I gotta be pretty high on the list. ha. We need a bubble boy tourney for those people!!!
#1 requirement. All players need to be in a bubble while they compete.
Oh, wow, that’s really rough. Sorry to hear that.
Seems that in 2018 Kentucky fell 9 tourneys short of Super State status. It had well more than 400 players but only 91 tourneys.
Maybe come the start of Q4 this year, if it is known the Super State projection might be short, maybe band together with a few others and make a massive campaign to host/TD events to reach 100.
I suspect that with the advent of the Super State status, that a lot more tourneys will pop up in the USA; there is a massive difference between 16 qualifiers and 24.
Best of success to you in 2019.
Oh. @mizary was banging the drum for a 12 days of Christmas tournament marathon in December. Felt icky to me (and he was joking anyway)
KY should naturally get to super state in 2019 unless one of the big tournament spots drops off, which I don’t see it happening. Also Lexington is now holding events.
I really appreciated that, Walt! It’s tricky for those of us outside of southern Ontario to crack into top of the Provincial standings because there are just so many events down there. We’re growing the Ottawa scene for sure, so maybe things will shake out differently next year, but it was really nice to have a last ditch (high point value) attempt available.
WA first alternate (at 25th) is sitting 86pts if that helps you feel better? 
