Haha. I mean, I know why it made the cut. The new “WPPR only” qualification rule is cold, calculated and doesn’t account for quality! See you in Chicago 
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Funny enough, YOU actually put it on the SPC. Based on your WPPR rank and IFPA Rating at the time of the tournament, you added 1.15 WPPR’s to the pot.
Take those away, and Ohio slips below the Dutch Pinball Open and K15 Open. While I believe the DPO would have passed, I think K15 would have accepted the invite if given the option.
#itsallyourfault 
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Are you sure on that math?
If you drop Ohio '17 from 55.26 to 54.11 without my value that only changes the 3 year average from 44.99 to 44.61. Still in the same place above DPO and K15.
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Damnit you’re right . . . I subtracted it from the 3 year average total and not just the 2017 total.
Carry on
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As there are only so many weekends in a given year, this is bound to happen occasionally. Pin-Masters and Louisville are both on the circuit and both the same weekend, for example, and share the same dates as the IFPA US National Pinball Championship and the IFPA Women’s World Pinball Championship.
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I know that I’m not supposed to take this statement at face value, but I think it’s bad optics to bring up this atomized view of the SPC selection process.
I’ve assume that you want the perception to be:
Hey tournament organizers, now is your chance to build a tournament that players want to go to, so that you can get on the Stern Pro Circuit
Instead of:
Hey players, don’t want to feel obligated to go to a tournament? Well you never should have gone at the time when you had no idea that this was going to affect things!
Do you really want players with a high ranking and/or rating to feel like they are now participating in some sort of weighted democratized selection process? Or would you rather that they continue to make the decision to attend or not attend a tournament without an extra source of regret and obligation toward the ‘greater good’ of next year’s circuit?
With the New York City Pinball Championships, our team has a goal to create a major pinball tournament, grow it over the next several years, and provide a quality tournament pinball experience in New York City. The new changes give us 2 great things, a clear measure of our progress toward the goal of joining the SPC, and a timeframe that allows us the opportunity to ramp up this event each year. However, in order for people to experience this event, they will need to go and try it for themselves. I would prefer if people didn’t necessarily need to see this as voting, since the travel and expenses are already significant enough for both us and our attendees.
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I don’t believe players feel that way. I think the selection process for players is typically a mix of the following:
-
Is it very convenient to attend from where I live? (This overcomes whether or not it’s a Circuit event, and whether or not it’s actually a “quality” event or not - an example of this would be the old Expo Flip Out days that simply drew a large midwest crowd because it was convenient)
-
Is it a quality event? (This overcomes whether the event is on the circuit or not, or whether it’s convenient for someone to get to - an example of this would be the year the NW Championships weren’t on the Circuit and still drew some great players - I think you’ll see this with PAPA 21 as well with it not on the Circuit and not convenient for people to travel to)
-
Is it a Circuit event? (Some people have Circuititis and will go to an event that perhaps isn’t quality and isn’t convenient, simply because it’s a Circuit event - I’ll leave the more obvious examples of this off of this post)
I don’t assume any high ranked players think twice about their own WPPR value that they bring to events. That’s some seventh level shit that sounds like the opposite of fun to me.
We’ll just have to wait and see if these high ranked players offer themselves up for sale to would be SPC TD’s to get them to attend their event 
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Having to circuit events on the same day is quite a bit different than sabotaging one of your own circuit events with the actual finals of the circuit event. Especially one where this is their first year as a finals event.
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I agree with Trent. I’m not in the circuit finals this year, nor do I expect to be next year, but I plan to give the circuit a run at some point. It will mostly consist of the events within driving distance of me.
If I’m good enough to make the finals one year and my following year gets off to a bad start because I cannot make one of the circuit events in my area because of the previous season’s finals, that will hurt big time. Much different than two circuit events same weekend like Trent said.
Hopefully this can be worked out next year.
I am looking forward to seeing how Trent pulls off going to both 
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Today in pinball: Trent 2 makes a live appearance at Wizards of Ohio, claims the Trent in Chicago is a phony. Trent 3 is said to be somewhere in North Carolina playing a monthly tournament, but the pinball devastation left in his wake leaves no evidence.
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We fixed the problem on papa.org that was causing changes to revert or not be seen. Circuit standings are now showing like they should. https://papa.org/competitions/papa-tournament-circuit/?target=standings
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Our date has been set for a while (just not public).and with all of the coordination required to get all parties involved a date they could work with (Stern, Replay, IFPA and the special guests) it’s not feasible for us to change the date nor is it reasonable to expect us to schedule around any of the possible circuit events.
It is unfortunate this happened this year, and with 20 Circuit events every year plus finals there is probably a decent chance it will happen again in the future.
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Well right now it seems like there are no major events on Saturdays from Jan 27-Feb 24, March 10, March 31, April 7, April 28 and May 12-26th. That is 12 open weekends out of 18 weekends total and none of them worked for you guys?
It certainly seems reasonable that you could avoid scheduling during a Circuit event. And of the 6 weekends there were events? Only 3 were Circuit events meaning there were technically 15 open weekends out of 18.
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Speaking personally for my circuit event … no, none of those dates worked for me.
Speaking personally as a coordinator … no, none of those dates worked for me.
Speaking personally as a TD … no, none of those dates worked for me either.
This may be one of the best series of messages I’ve ever read anywhere.
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Circuit Standings: BUCS vs. Official version.
Please note the following for consideration of changes to your figures:
Fred Richardson has some points as “Frederick” Richardson [from Pinvasion] in your sheet. Likewise, you have Brian ONeill and Brian O’Neill split. I believe both should be combined as in BUCS.
Escher split 33rd-34th-35th with Brian O’Neill and Lyman at Pinburgh, so each of them should get 11 points rather than 12.
On my own sheet, which I’ll update here after Magfest, I have corrected my totals for Alberto and Chris W [off by one, I had them tied in Cleveland], and removed a suppressed player.
My yearly reminder to @pinwizj to allow apostrophes on IFPA so we don’t run into these problems.
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