2017-2018 PAPA Circuit Events

Try free tournaments. I run a free 3 strike tournament every second Friday of the month. Do it at 8 pm and new people come out the woodwork to play. If it’s free they don’t feel pressure. I know 5 bucks is nothing but I’ve tried that. Free actually added to attendance.

Also. Come up with awards for people other than the winners. I give out a prize to the first person knocked out. I also give a prize to the person with the most kills (get a kill if they issued someone their third strike)

I also think it helps that my location isn’t frequented by the best players in the world. Everyone down to the newest newbie has a shot.

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Agreed. That’s why this year’s TPF will have A, B, Novice, and Women’s division finals.

I set the Novice at 3000+ ranking restriction.
And first place for Novice will also get a custom molded trophy just like the A div champion. + $100 cash.

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Could you make another map with the majors and minors overlapping each other?
Would look cool
And im too lazy :smiley:

I think you need a cartographer! I just attached that image from the web

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I know forum posts are not the best way to give feedback, but i wanted to see if others agree.

I was disappointed with no streaming coverage( that i could find) for PATZ this weekend. On top of that, the neverdrains finals stopped being updated in the quarter finals. I am assuming this was an unforseen technical difficulty. This is just a timely example, I am sure it was a great event, and I don’t mean to single it out.

I would really like to see “ability to watch / follow the event” as part of the selection criteria. It would be good if their was a minimum expected commitment to be a circuit event. It would be great if we could get to a point all circuit events had archived videos.

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Lack of PAPA support for some circuit events is disturbing as well. Some events they go all out and others they just throw the Papa logo onto it. No posts or write ups on facebook page or on any pinball forum, etc…

If the event benefits a charity no disclosure of how much was raised or sent to such charity is communicated. No presentation of a check or cash is ever published publicly.

Hope these areas can be improved as gammagoat makes some great points in his feedback.

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We can’t travel to every event unfortunately. Last year our crew only fully made it out to one non-PAPA event (CLEPIN), and the director of the show worked with us financially to make it happen. We all have full-time jobs outside of PAPA so until traveling to circuit events becomes a full time job, our on-site support is limited to the free time we have.

This year all of the events are receiving a box full of giveaways for the event and each event has been promoted on our facebook page as well.

I send out an email prior to every event and ask the director what they would like to see promoted and also ask them to send us pictures of the winners to post on our social media. If they do not respond, I don’t have much to post.

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I’m betting the lack of a completed finals bracket probably has something to do with software failure on their end. Probably not much they can do once that happens in the middle of finals.

I would love it if every event had streaming, and archived video of the event. Realistically we are not at that point. It takes a ton of time, money and people to put together a quality stream for viewers. They are great when events can pull it off, I agree. At this point I would rather see the Circuit directors focus on running a high quality event first and streaming a distant second.

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Doug is correct on both points. The software froze during the quarterfinals and we had to change to paper. The top four finishers were:

  1. Aaron Grabowski
  2. Jason Magnuson
  3. Andy Rosa
  4. Jeff Teolis

We would have loved to stream the event. However, when we took into account the equipment cost, mediocre wifi at the convention center, and the added manpower needed to create a quality stream, we did not feel that we could pull off an overall tournament experience that met our standards. Instead we focused on running a very high quality tournament. IMO we were able to deliver on this.

As Doug said, pinball is not yet at a point where you can realistically expect all circuit events to provide a stream.

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Thanks for putting on the event. Hopefully I can make it someday.

PATZ tourney should probably focus on the basics like leveling games before worrying about things like streaming. Baby steps.

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Which game/games were not level? This is the first I heard of it all weekend. I would have fixed it at any point if I would have been told.

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Maybe you should have brought it up to a tournament director instead of complaining about it after the fact. FWIW I didn’t notice any major unleveled games. The tournament was very well run and the folks there made me feel very welcome there.

I’d love to see the neverdrains page still updated with the results just so the record is digitally represented. I’m also interested to hear about how much was raised for charity.

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Thanks for the kind words. We were glad you came out and supported the tournament!

I wanted to update the neverdrains site, problem is it would never let me move past the tie breaker in round 2. I actually think I may have just solved the issue and will update the scores if I can find them.

The gross amount was over $2000 after the first two days. I don’t know the final count after the Saturday morning qualifying and women’s tournament but will be updating the facebook page once I know. There is a $5 per player PAPA/Replay Foundation fee plus $100 of trophy costs coming out of the total but that is it.

In response to one person in particular… Last year not sharing the amount raised was 100% my fault and not on purpose. I just completely forgot. It was an honest mistake and won’t be happening this year. I remember the final donation being in the $1700 range.

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Is this something that tournament directors are obligated to do? I’ve always taken the ‘play it as it lies’ stance on it but there’s been plenty of times that I’ve noticed a game doesn’t feel level in a circuit event. I’d really like to know what the etiquette is on this from both perspectives.

I would certainly bring it to the attention of a tournament director. I can’t think of any valid reason for a game not to be level. The TD might respond with “it’s close enough” or “people are already playing it so it’ll remain as-is”, but then you’ve at least made them aware of the situation.

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I played every game at PATZ except Flash Gordon and didn’t notice any issues with games not being level.

Aerosmith mostly, a couple others less so, but still noticeable. Leveling aside, I felt the games I played weren’t really PAPA Circuit caliber. Drac had an issue with balls flying off a habitrail and draining. Flintstones just felt loose & sloppy overall. Playable, but meh. I realize you’re mostly at the mercy of whichever games people choose to bring. It is what it is.

Apparently the vast majority of competitors were happy, so don’t sweat one person’s opinion. I’m not the kind of tourney player who’s driven to compete whether I’m having fun or not, so I decided to have fun wandering the show floor, playing dollar games with friends, etc.

In my experience, TDs understandably aren’t very receptive to nitpicking. Similar to what @PinballNarcissist said, I find the attitude is basically “it’s the same for everyone, outside of a major malfunction just play it as it lies.” And you know what, fair enough. It’s human nature that people don’t like their hard work criticized. Grumbling after qualifying is a national pastime. My assumption (perhaps incorrect) is that any TD who would relevel a game based on one complaint mid-qualifying would just level games to begin with.

You underestimate the power of the Rosa slide-save

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