Tag Archives: IFPA

Flippers Spring Tournament on April 25

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Flippers Arcade in Grandy, NC has announced that they are going to have a Spring tournament on April 25, 2015.  The only available details right now are that they will have an A division and a B division for less experienced players.  Flippers is hoping to be included in next years PAPA Circuit.  In order to do that, they need at least forty people to attend the tournament this year.

Flippers does a great job running their tournaments and is an amazing arcade.  They have almost all, if not all, the modern Stern machines as well as A and B list Bally/Williams titles.   The machines are all in excellent condition and play very well.

This is an IFPA sanctioned event which will award WPPR points as well as North Carolina State points.  There will be cash prizes and trophies awarded.

Saturday, April 25, 2015 starting at 11:00 am or noon
Located at 6615 Caratoke Hwy. in Grandy, NC
20 minutes from the Outer Banks of NC
$ 20.00 Entry Fee which will include a free
Tournament Shirt.
1st Place: Trophy & 40% of Entry Fee &
2nd Place: Trophy & 30% of Entry Fee
3rd Place: Trophy & 20% of Entry Fee
4th Place: Trophy & 10 %. of Entry Fee

Follow Flippers on Facebook for updates.

IFPA State Championship Series

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Today is the day for the IFPA State Championships. River City Flippers has players in Northern Virginia for the Virginia Championships and at Flippers for the North Carolina championships. More details to follow. Updates on Facebook.com/rvapinball and on twitter @rvapinball and on Instagram @richmondpinball.

The Virginia bracket can be viewed at http://www.challonge.com/ifpa2015vascs

Interesting New Tourney Format

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https://pinside.com/pinball/events/none-shall-pass-2015

I was checking on the events calendar on pinside and came across a tournament like no other. James Daley is running the tournament and he is also your first round opponent. To qualify for the tournament, you have to play James and beat him in the best out of five games. I really like the creativity involved here and hope to get to DC to challenge James soon.

Looking at RVA Pinball in 2015

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The end of 2014 has seen River City Flippers maintain its maximum number of 20 members.  We have an active group of pinheads who spread the word about pinball at every turn.  Just down the street from the River City Flippers locations, a second league has formed and it filled up almost as quickly as it was announced.

Richmond sits in the shadow of the Northern VA/DC/MD area where there is a lot of public and private pinball and many excellent players.  How can we get the word out and get more pinball excitement here in Richmond?

I have heard that there are plans to have a public location opening soon with four or five tables.  That should be enough to have league nights at that location and tournaments as well.  Anyone interested in Richmond pinball needs to be sure to support what little location pinball we have and encourage those locations to maintain their machines.  I know that RVAPinball.org and River City Flippers will offer support to any location and would be happy to run tournaments in any location enough machines.

I hope to have more tournaments in my home arcade this year and bring my machines out to the public more often like we did at Glave Klocen gallery.  The owners of the gallery enjoyed having the machines and said that they were very popular with their visitors.  Each machine was played over 400 times during a three week period.  The gallery owners said many of the people were happy to be able to play pinball for the first time in years.

If you know of a location that would like to host a pinball tournament or have a machine on location, please let us know.  If you have a pinball machine and would be willing to have it be part of a pop up/temporary arcade/tournament in Richmond, please let us know that too.

Hopefully, 2015 will be the year that Richmond takes steps to add location pinball to our fantastic dining, art and beer scenes.

NOVA/MD WPPR WEEKEND!

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Can you get away to Northern Virginia this weekend?  If so, you can get in three IFPA/WPPR tournaments in a two day period.

Start out at noon on Saturday at Mighty Mike’s in Sterling, VA for Flippin’ With the Greats

Make your move to Pinholics Anonymous to close out Saturday

If you are still standing and need more pinball Sunday head north to – Third Annual Day After Kevin Stone’s Quarterly Tournament

Can you handle it?

Flip This 2014 in the books

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Flip This 2014 was held this past weekend by Taylor.  Many members of River City Flippers were in attendance.  There were also players who came down from Northern Virginia and some players who came up from North Carolina.  As usual, Taylor’s machines were playing very well and were set to the hardest settings.

The main tournament was a three-strike knockout tournament run on Brackelope.  The machines in the tournament were: WCS94, Bram Stokers’ Dracula, Indy 500, Monopoly, Attack From Mars, Safecracker and Dr. Who.  There was also a one ball side tournament on Wizard of Oz.  The Wizard of Oz tournament was open for four hours with the top four scores playing in a one ball game.

The Wizard of Oz tournament ended up: (1) Taylor Reese (2) Chris Booberg (3) Joe Said and (4) Chris Newsome.

The main tournament ended up: (1) Chris Newsome (2) Taylor Reese (3) Jeremy Hakes and (4) Rob Cordoba.

Both tournaments were eligible for IFPA WPPR points.

As usual, it was a very fun tournament that was followed by some cash game action until the wee hours.

Thanks to Taylor for a great tournament.

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Wizard of Oz side tournament entries.

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IMG_0423  Dr. Who stucky.

IMG_0427  Main tournament winners.

IMG_0429 Side tournament winners.

The full results were as follows:

Main Tournament
1. Chris “Maximillion” Newsom
2. Taylor Reese
3. Jeremy Hakes
4. Rod Cordoba
5. Dave Klionsky
5. Paul McGlone
5. Scott Durfee
8. Chris Booberg
8. Greg Lambert
8. Jeff McElhannon
8. Joe Said
8. Jack McHale
13. Mike Ogilvie
13. Malik Berger
15. Dan Cotter
15. Sam Rugg
15. Matt Lively
18. Bayless Rutherford
18. Dale Geiger
18. Joe Cummins
18. Paula Bailey
18. Rob Hurley

Side Tournament
1. Taylor Reese
2. Chris Booberg
3. Joe Said
4. Chris Newsom
5. Paul McGlone
6. Dale Geiger
7. Dave Klionsky
8. Jeremy Hakes
9. Dan Cotter
10. Mike Ogilvie
11. Rob Hurley
12. Malik Berger
13. Sam Rugg
14. Joe Cummins
15. Jack McHale
16. Scott Durfee
17. Greg Lambert
18. Bayless Rutherford
19. Jeff McElhannon
20. Paula Bailey
21. Rod Cordoba

Josh Sharpe Weighs In On the Suppression Issue

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Josh Sharpe created the WPPR system and operates the IFPA.  In a discussion in the facebook Club Pinball group, he has this to say:

If what you are saying is that a player shouldn’t have control over whether they are listed on the IFPA site or not, it’s a question we had to deal with back in 2006 when the rankings launched.

It’s interesting because a player choosing to compete in an event, is obviously allowing their name to be used at that event. We are simply using those results for our purposes, and how much power should a player have over letting us use the results of someone else’s event that they openly chose to compete in.

Ultimately we came to the decision that rather than forcing a player to have to be ranked because they chose to compete, we left the decision on them to remove themselves for whatever reasons they so choose.

Like Molly Atkinson pointed out, there are people that definitely take WPPR’s far too seriously that it ends up being a stress adder in their lives, versus an enjoyment adder. While I would like to think that a majority of the 28,000 players see WPPR as an indifferent/positive thing, there is definitely a group where it is a stressful thing. For those people if removing yourself will make your life better in any way, the IFPA wants to support that by not forcing you to remain as listed.

IFPA Suppressed Status?

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Joe Said is a damn good pinball player and nice guy too.  He posted to his website clubpinball.com about a player going into suppressed status with the IFPA.  The idea of suppressed status was news to me.  Apparently, a player can be registered with the IFPA and receive WPPR points when entering sanctioned tournaments, but not have the points earned listed publicly and not participate in the ranking system.

As the player involved stated, he is creating a points black hole.  If a suppressed player enters a tournament and wins second place, the points awarded for second place will be awarded to that player, but will not be listed with the IFPA because the player’s status is suppressed.  This affects the remainder of the players in the tournament as these points are not able to be earned by other players – the black hole.

The suppressed status also affects the tournaments in which a suppressed player is involved because the ranking of the suppressed player is not factored in when determining the value of the tournament.  As a result, the players in the tournament are playing against and beating or losing to the suppressed player, but the value assigned to the tournament does not factor in the skill level of the suppressed player because he is suppressed – a second layer of the black hole.

Should a suppressed player be allowed to participate in an IFPA sanctioned tournament?  I think all IFPA tournaments are open to IFPA and non-IFPA members.  In order to receive points toward an IFPA ranking, a player has to register with the IFPA.

If you look at it from this perspective, a suppressed player affects a tournament the way a non-IFPA member would affect a tournament.  This seems like it would not be a big deal until you consider that the suppressed player may be a highly ranked and highly skilled player whose suppressed status can have a big impact on the tournament difficulty and the points that are available to be won by the other participants.

Since there appear to be only 20 or so suppressed players, it is not a big or widespread issue from an IFPA standpoint, but it is interesting to consider it as a way to opt out of the ranking system while retaining the ability to impact the ranking system.

A Pinball Short Film

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About six weeks ago, I got an e-mail from a guy named Scott Roberts who I thought wanted to play in the league. He responded and said that he is a student at VCU who was assigned to do a ten minute film on a subculture. He had seen an article in Wired magazine about increased interest in pinball. A google search lead him to this blog and then to me. Taylor hosted a pinball night at his house during which Scott interviewed members of our league. I also told Scott that he should get in touch with Kevin Stone who hosts Pinholics in Northern Virginia. The result of Scott’s hard work is this excellent short film.

The Walking Dead Tutorial

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With the Flippers tournament coming up and no Walking Dead machine nearby to pump quarters into, this tutorial may be the best thing we have to figure out what the heck is going on.

Taylor and I had a chance to play it at the York show.  The shots are pretty  familiar and I remember a couple of tight shots on the right on the sides of the ramps.  It seems like it takes a long time for the ball to get all the way around the ramps and back to the Flippers.  It will feel pretty familiar to anyone who is familiar with modern Stern machines.