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Episode 353: Josh Sharpe and the 2023 IFPA changes

Pinball Profile·podcast_episode·42m 55s·analyzed·Dec 29, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.026

TL;DR

IFPA 5.8 expands event value ceiling to 200% and restructures tournament scoring formats for 2023.

Summary

Josh Sharp, president of the IFPA, discusses major 2023 ranking system changes (version 5.8) including expanded event grading percentages (up to 200%), new tournament formats, certified rules tiers, and removal of time bonuses for multi-match play. The conversation covers personal anecdotes about his son's cubing competition, international player accessibility concerns, and efforts to preserve tournament formats like Flip Frenzy through rule refinements.

Key Claims

  • The maximum event grading percentage is expanding from 100% to 200% for all events that follow certain steps

    high confidence · Josh Sharp explaining the first 5.8 change directly

  • The three active major tournaments are currently the only ones with major status; Pimberg and Papa would be granted major status if they returned

    high confidence · Josh Sharp discussing major event status and future possibilities

  • Josh Sharp played double the amount of tournaments compared to average top-1,000 players, largely due to District 82 accessibility

    high confidence · Josh Sharp acknowledging his own ranking advantages

  • IFPA is a 'really poorly run business' because they don't operate for profit

    high confidence · Josh Sharp's self-deprecating comment about IFPA's non-profit model

  • Multi-match play time bonus removal was needed because the bonus had distorted tournament format selection historically

    high confidence · Josh explaining that the bonus was added in 5.3 to prevent four-player matches from disappearing

Notable Quotes

  • “I am wildly overranked due to the benefits that I have and the opportunities that I have given myself to play up there. There's no explaining my way out of that.”

    Josh Sharp @ mid-episode — Self-aware acknowledgment of ranking system inequities based on geographic opportunity, suggesting future IFPA policy may address accessibility disparities

  • “Well, if it's the most fun and the fun is the most important thing of the event. We're not killing it. Run it. Well, actually, it's more important that it has Whoppers than it is fun.”

    Josh Sharp @ near end — Cynical but honest assessment of how WPPR point incentives override player enjoyment in tournament design decisions

  • “Whopperflation is here”

    Jeff Teolis @ mid-episode — Recognition that doubling event values will require recalibration of historical point totals (e.g., 1000 WPPR points previously notable will become baseline)

  • “It just takes a lot of effort to do what Eric and the staff do there. To be fair, it's not just effort, right? But you actually, the amount, I mean, how much seed money to get Eric's collection do you need?”

    Jeff Teolis / Josh Sharp exchange @ mid-episode — Discussion of financial barriers to hosting major events, highlighting that infrastructure (game collections) creates systemic ranking advantages

  • “Most flip frenzies are run poorly. You're fine. I know. You're fine. They have to have finals or don't sanction them.”

    Jeff Teolis and Josh Sharp @ near end — Acknowledgment that Flip Frenzy format was historically mismanaged; new rules require finals and proper structure to qualify for high TGP

Entities

Josh SharppersonJeff TeolispersonIFPAorganizationColin SharppersonAmandapersonDistrict 82event/venueEricpersonEscherpersonBrian Shepard (The Unicorn)person

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: IFPA international operations involving prize money and country director coordination; 2022 focused on resolving where funds go and transparency issues

    medium · Josh mentioned spending 'most of 2022 working on' international prize money and fund transparency issues with country directors; now positioned for 2023 international fee implementation

  • ?

    community_signal: Geographic opportunity inequality in WPPR rankings, particularly concentrating advantages to players near high-volume tournament hubs like District 82 and North America

    high · Josh Sharp acknowledged he is 'wildly overranked' due to accessibility; Jeff and Josh discussed widening gap between US/Europe players versus rest of world; both noted IFPA monitoring this as potential future policy issue

  • ?

    event_signal: Papa World Championships and Pimberg major tournaments remain inactive (COVID-era); Pittsburgh community still strong but uncertain about major championship return

    medium · Josh cautious about Pimberg return ('someday, maybe not') due to game requirements; more optimistic about Papa but non-committal timing; Jeff planning hall pass for hypothetical Papa/Pimberg if they return

  • ?

    competitive_signal: IFPA considering accessibility-based adjustments to ranking system in future versions to address global opportunity inequality

    medium · Josh stating IFPA 'watching and monitoring' the accessibility issue; mentioned possibility of future corrections 'down the road'; 2023 will be test year to measure impact of changes on player behavior

  • ?

    design_philosophy: IFPA using point system incentives to control which tournament formats are viable; historical decisions (like multi-match time bonus in 5.3) created unintended format distortions

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.129

0:00
Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends? Josh! Ah! Savior of the Earth!
0:20
One dollar at a time, time, time, time, time. Josh! Ah! You saved me, Josh! It's time for another Pinball Profile. I'm your host, Jeff Teels. You can find everything on pinballprofile.com. We're on Facebook. We're on Twitter and Instagram at pinballprofile. You can email pinballprofile at gmail.com. He's back. It's been a while, at least on this program. It's been too long. In fact, Josh Sharp, the president of the IFPA, joins us. Hello, Josh. What's up, man? It has been a long time. We used to do these every three or four months, but I've been a little busy. Me too. I've also been busy. Good. Then I'm blaming you. All right. I'll cut the part out where I said I was busy. I have things to do, Jeff. I'm not just sitting here doing nothing. You're blowing out birthday candles. How was your birthday? It was very nice. We surprised, I told you before we started, but Colin turned 11 three days before I turned 43. And we surprised him with, he's really into cubing right now. and we signed him up two months ago to play in a cubing tournament in madison wisconsin oh wow so we gave we wrapped up the like entry form into a box and he opened it and like go pack your bags let's go and ran upstairs super excited packed his bags my dad surprised him by coming to watch too so picked up my dad and we drove up north and watched him first first cubing competition that I ever saw, but Amanda took him to the last one. This is his second one. And it was cool. Well, not everyone knows what cubing is. It's like solving the Rubik's Cube or variations of there's different cubes that they solve. But he did the three by three and the two by two and the pyramids, which is like a pyramid. Oh, I love the pyramid one. He he likes that one, too. I don't understand how any of it solves, but he's into it, man. And he just, my dad and I sat at a table for most of the time. And when it was his time to cube, we'd get up and run over, watch him, film him at his little table, and then go back to our seat doing nothing, watching movies on the phone. Much like how Amanda would feel if she came to a pinball tournament.
2:35
Andreas
person
Zach Sharpperson
Beckerperson
Max Match playformat/concept
Papa World Championshipsevent
Pimbergevent
European Pinball Championshipsevent
World Championshipsevent
InDiscevent
Pinball Profilemedia

high · Josh explained that four-player matches were disappearing so IFPA added time bonus; now removing that bonus recognizes format is less desirable. Flip Frenzy similarly damaged by point structure incentivizing other formats

  • $

    market_signal: Doubling of maximum event values (whopperflation) expected to shift player behavior regarding tournament participation patterns and travel decisions

    high · Josh Sharp specifically noted that 2023 will reveal whether international players change behavior based on event value multipliers and whether attendance at lower-value events decreases

  • ?

    product_strategy: IFPA 5.8 represents significant structural changes to WPPR system including event value expansion to 200%, new certification tiers, and format adjustments

    high · Josh Sharp detailed all components of 5.8 changes as official implementation for 2023

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community perception of Flip Frenzy shifting from 'most fun format' to 'poorly run format needing structural fixes' through 2022-2023 rule refinements

    high · Josh received calls from players saying Flip Frenzy was most fun; Jeff agreed most were run poorly and needed finals requirement; new Max Match format reinstates 200% capability to rescue format viability

    • Okay, let's talk a little about the Rubik's Cube because that was the thing when I was Colin's age. And you'd see these competitions. There was no YouTube. There were no cubing competitions. but every now and then you would see somebody who would crack this thing in under a minute, and you'd be like, what, what, what? And then there were books, in fact, how to solve a Rubik's Cube. And I would read those and kind of figure it out because it was always easy to get the one side. Piece of cake. Maybe you'd be able to get the second row all around, but then. They call that a layer, Jeff. Okay, fine. I'm learning so much from my 11-year-old. But solving the last part was like, okay, I'm confused here. but it was a lot of fun. And now I see people do this 30 seconds, zip, zip, zip. I'm like, what? Is it patterns? Is it just, are they seeing something I'm not? It's algorithms. So you get the cube, like, I guess the first part is you move sections into where they need to be, and then at some point you get to, it's kind of amazing, especially the super fast people. Like, they get the cube into some position where they know that there's, like, a 17-step finishing move. And they will do those last 17 steps in like a half a second and throw the cube down before like even checking that it's solved because they know it's done. What about his time? What's his best time? Let me pull up. He had a bunch of personal bests at this one. There's a whole cubing ranking system. Oh, my. He updated his profile. It's like the IFPA cubing site. It's so cool. Let's see. The sad thing is it's going to be bigger than pinball. So, you know, what's awesome is it's not. It will be. Probably. But the, because my dad was, he went to the tournament calendar and it's like, oh my God, there's so many events here. And I'm like, it's a tenth of the number of events that, you know, our pinball calendar has every year. Past competitions. So he, for three by three, where are you? So his best three by three, and you get, so the way they do it is there's like a qualifying round, and you get five solves. They throw out your best solve and your worst solve, and your middle three is your average, and they take your average to determine whether you advance to the next round. So his three by three best time was 24.78. Seconds? Seconds. Good God. And his average was 32.81. Oh, he definitely takes after Amanda. There's no question. Yeah, not me. So he finished 106th out of 200. Why am I interviewing you? Right? Get calling on. Oh, he's in school. Two by two was the first time he advanced to the second round. They sort of cut the field in half or whatever every time. So the two by two, he actually advanced through the first round and was all super excited. He saw the two-by-two in 4.19 seconds was his best.
    5:35
    And the Pyraminx, his best was 7.73. So it's hilarious, man. And he loves it. He's met so many kids he'll, like, end up Skyping with random kids. Yeah, it's cool. That's kind of what pinball is about when you go to these competitions or shows and you get to see people you know through the community, through maybe social media, through Pinside, whatever it is. So isn't that interesting? But I found it interesting when you said in cubing they take the average. Because I'm sure we're going to talk about some way, somehow, about certain tournaments that take the average number of games played. And in cubing, that's the norm. In IFPA, tsk, tsk, tsk. Those are going to be nerfed. Or are they? We'll get to that little flip frenzy comment in a little bit. You bet we will. I find it weird. Like, could you imagine taking your average? like he never gets to keep his best time. Like I think, you know, as far as whatever on the pinball side, we're talking about like grading a tournament. I've never seen an event take an average like you get five, you play five times and we're going to take your middle three average. Like the best game you play in this run will not count. I guess. Isn't that weird? Well, okay. What if you walk up to Twilight Zone and the Powerball's right there and that's your game? Oh, great. I'm all set. This is perfect. or you've already got some locks that are in older games that are right there. Perfect. This is going to be fun. So I kind of get that because with the cubes, maybe are they all set up the same way? Are they all the exact same? There's like a scrambling program that they randomly scramble it to something that gets set. And there are, I guess, like easier or harder solves. So maybe that's it. But I don't know. I find it weird to throw out someone's best and worst because, I don't know, I've just never seen that done in pinball. In pinball, we throw the worst all the time in pump and dumps. But we don't throw off the... Can you imagine a pump and dump where your second best score will be the one that counts? You'd be like, oh, man. Let's not make the cues any longer, shall we? Let's just slow it down. I would like to talk about the 5.8. So there is going to be a big scoring change in the IFPA. And this is the biggest one I've seen in a long, long time. What is going to be happening in 5.8? And don't ask me to explain it. Man, I'm usually... You throw it back. If you can explain it, it means we've done a good job laying it out. Listen, I do these shows. They're interview shows. If I just want to go on and talk by myself, I wouldn't have you on. I can explain it. Maybe you have a Twippy because I hear the people that talk by themselves with Twippies. Yeah, yeah. All right. That matters so much. Go on.
    8:16
    I don't know. Let me run down the changes. All right. So the first change is expanding the tournament grading percentage, the maximum that an event can get from 100% to 200%. So any event that is out there can now double its own value if it follows a couple of steps. Do you want to get into what those steps are? That's like we should stay high level and move on. Well, I find it interesting that you've done that. and it also is the same for leagues too, correct? It's not just tournaments. I didn't say it was for tournaments. I said it was for events. If it was for tournaments, I'd say tournaments. Gotcha, gotcha. So I'm interested in that, and you heard me talk with Brian Shepard. I did, I did. The unicorn came on. You got him. I can't believe it. It was like snagging a huge-ass marlin. It was great to talk to him. I could have talked to him for hours and hours, And one of the things I was excited to hear was this increase for leagues because I thought, oh boy, I know you're concerned about certain formats and tournaments going by the wayside. And I respect that opinion because you've been in pinball for so long. You've seen these different formats. And if everyone's doing the same thing, you know, there might be some writing on the wall that, okay, this isn't the best idea. And I thought leagues were going to be hurt with 5.7 and maybe some other variations. this should bring back some excitement to leagues and some value i agree i agree 100 or i agree 200 percent jeff many leagues i mean our league in chicago played so many games and it was like we talked about like i think we played triple the amount of games we needed so there was a talk of like because it was an annual league and it was like we're this is this dumb do we care Should we be playing three mini-seasons and getting triple the Whoppers? And we didn't care because we've been doing the league since way before Whoppers happened. Well, that's the thing. You said, do we care? And when you do leagues, why do you do leagues? Do you do them because you want to see your friends? You want them to be social? Maybe you're going to different locations? Our league doesn't care, but we understand the pressure that people, I don't know, put on themselves. where even if they're doing something for fun, wanting to maximize their value is always that variable. It like the devil on the shoulder to every organizer I get it because I always played in two or three different leagues every year and enjoyed them for the social In fact I play one league that I help run and the points mean absolutely nothing but it's just, it's great competitions. I was like Chicago. It's fun. It's great locations, different machines. You know, we might play 36 different machines in the year, six nights, six different machines. It's kind of fun. Yep. And the points meant nothing, but now they kind of mean something. And that doesn't matter to me, but I've heard people say, boy, that's a lot of commitment to play all these nights and all that time to get nothing, whereas I can go to one tournament, play four hours, boom, versus several nights. Well, now there's some value in those leagues. It certainly brings some balance to the force.
    11:31
    Good analogy. That's good. That's one of the changes. 200% it's interesting because we're going to be seeing I remember when wow somebody had 1000 whopper points over the last three years 1000 points are going to be nothing next year it's going to be interesting to see but it is definitely whopperflation is here what's the need to increase these we explained with the leagues but why maybe the events going up I know you've put a lot of stock into you should be rewarded for the bigger-sized tournaments for playing a lot longer. And I get it. It makes sense. But is this the way to balance it, you think? I do. I think it gives a longer runway of events being able to have a difference of value. Like, take one extreme. One extreme is our first system. Every event gets 25 points. And it's like, well, at some point, you weren't involved in these discussions 20 years ago or whatever. But, you know, there was that discussion of like, does it really make sense that every event anywhere should be 25 points? And it's like now it's commonplace to be like, well, no, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. So but that we went through those steps of like, it doesn't really make sense that this Texas Pinball Festival is worth the same as a launch party on one machine. You know what I mean? So this continues sort of the spread of what should a large weekend event be worth relative to its peers of events being, you know, one night, four hour monthlies or leagues or whatever. It just gives a bigger spread for events to be able to sort of prove their value. What else is happening with 5.8 starting in 2023? 5.8. The next change, tournaments that run unlimited best game herb or card qualifying with 20 hours or more of qualifying time, they're going to have those qualifying games counted double in value. Wow. So not a huge change, but a big change. You know, as we're sitting here with games played, being the metric. Oh, that makes sense. That makes sense. I see what you're doing. Yeah. If you had to take your best seven games and you're playing for two, three days, you're never going to get that 200%. Correct. Like that format would be screwed with this change because they could have qualifying for six days. And it's like, well, it's still seven games. So this allows us to give those formats a little bit of a boost to make sure that, I mean, I think those formats are excellent and I would hate to see them fall. So hopefully be something that encourages those events to still exist because they can find a way to still be of value compared to their peers. 20 hours. Do most of the Stern Pro circuits, which are the bigger events, do they kind of fall under that 20 hours of qualifying? So that was the 20 hours was also part of the certified rules for 2022. so we found that most events were hitting that metric because they want the extra Whoppers, Jeff. I get chasing the Whoppers. Don't you worry about that. I've been hooked on that little crack that you've provided here in pinball. Well done. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 5.8, what else? Certified, you said.
    14:50
    Yeah, we'll get there. This is a quick one. So majors are going to be worth 200. they're going to have an event value boost that is 200%. And right now, there are only three majors, correct? I know there are five on the books. If Pimberg ever came back, if Papa ever came back, they would be granted that major status. Three are active at the moment. Listen, you don't know, I don't know. The likelihood of a Pimberg or Papa ever happening again, it's been a few years, and certainly we know why it's not around. and just point to COVID. That's it right there. If it wasn't for COVID, we're still talking about Pimberg and Papa. I'm going with the someday, maybe not Pimberg because of the games required, but I believe that the Papa World Championships will be back. Well, that's good to hear. And because you really can't prove me wrong because I'm saying sometime between now and forever. So like, I could always just lean on like, eh, it's not forever yet. Good point, good point. Well, I know the desires there in Pittsburgh is such a great pinball market. They've got some great activity at the dojo. of course, Kickback, and all those people that made those wonderful events happen. So, yeah, my fingers are crossed that someday they'll find a way. I'll be there when they do. You will? I will. You've already got your hall pass? Hall pass for majors. It's on my list. That was part of my wedding vows.
    16:13
    Yes, I'll create a family with three kids, but majors, you have to count to. I successfully negotiated my 11-day hall pass to Germany. Wow, well done. How about that? Oh, man, I can't believe it. Well, that's a biggie. I mean, what you're talking about is the World Championships, which will be happening in late May, early June. But prior to that, there's the European Pinball Championships. I'm so glad they're back-to-back. It makes it a lot easier. Me too. It's less trips to D82 for me in 2023, but I'll take what I can get. I know you like District 82 because there are two Stern Pro Circuit events there. There's the Pin Masters event and also the North American Championships. So it's definitely a wonderful facility. But have you ever looked? I know people have talked about it, and people are like, it's not fair that they do all this. Well, it is fair because anybody can do what they're doing. It just takes a lot of effort to do what Eric and the staff do there. To be fair, it's not just effort, right? But you actually, the amount, I mean, how much seed money to get Eric's collection do you need? Oh, yeah. So I understand the effort part. I mean, it is hard. But if you have the games, it's absolutely doable. Then it just takes effort. But there is a money, a financial hurdle there to be able to do what he does. When you look at the top 100 players, and you look at especially the non-Europeans, but even some Europeans, but mainly the non-Europeans and people from Australia and other parts of the world outside of North America, It's hard not to find somebody in the top 100 that doesn't have one of their 20 scores from District 82. Certainly. All you people from Illinois seem to show up there. You know what? I will gladly be the first to admit that I am wildly overranked due to the benefits that I have and the opportunities that I have given myself to play up there. There's no explaining my way out of that. And anyone who tries to argue otherwise, you know, I'll be the first to sacrifice myself as someone who is undeserving of the rank they have. This is the rare compliment I'm going to pay you. So listen carefully because I won't repeat it. Still might edit it out. I haven't decided. But I think you were underranked when the decay happened and you dropped down to like 132 or something like that. So, yes, now you're back up there in the top 30. and you're saying you're overrated because of the opportunities that District 82 has. Yes. I think you have to perform well. When you look at District 82 and the people that come there, those are some pretty top-notch players, not to mention just the locals from Wisconsin. Oh, yeah. Dude, I'm not saying I didn't earn what I got through my play against really good people. I'm just saying, and we've talked about it offline, in the future Whopper changes down the road if we do feel the need to have to correct things due to sort of looking at things at a global level of who has Whopper-tunities that others don't. And I played double the amount of an average person. And that's just a fact. What you're talking about is in the tournaments that you played, these amount of Whoppers were available. And that's double what a lot of other people have. Well, yeah, it's double the average top 1,000 person. So it's tough to argue that. And there's some people that play way more than I do, right? That play triple the amount of what we call a reasonable amount of play. So I think it's naive to not look at that and just be able to evaluate what accessibility and opportunity does to a ranking system where you're trying to accurately rank who are the best players in the world. You know, it's the thing. It's nothing we're solving yet, but there's a seed of a plant that we're starting to water because we're always watching these things. Every year that we make a change, I know it seems like we just drop changes out of nowhere, but there's things we watch and monitor and simulate. and this difference in opportunity thing, especially, forget about District 82, but like everyone in the US compared to everyone, and US and Europe compared to anyone that's outside of Europe and the US, it's widening the gap of accessibility for sure. That's just fact. It's going to be interesting to see how you evaluate after 2023 because you've got so many other changes happening. If you didn't do these 200%, yeah, I think you're headed down that road, But who knows what these 200%s are going to do to the ratings? Yeah, well, that and who knows if that's going to drive behavior of do international players, are they more likely to now travel to events that are double or triple in value compared to what they were last year? And I think that's the missing piece we don't have yet. Is everyone just going to continue to play the way they do? Or are people not going to go to District 82 for 100% events anymore in terms of the high-level players? You know is Escher going to play in six 100 events when he knows that none of them would hit his card even if he won all six It be interesting to see you know or does he focus his time on going to events that be triple in value That the piece that we learn I think in this upcoming year is the player behavior. That's funny you should say that. Indisk is coming up in January. I'm looking forward to it. Me too. I probably have more success playing classics than I do modern games. It's just a fact. For whatever reason, being old, I think, is the number one factor. But they have so many different events at InDisc, and I actually chose not to play in the target match play on Classics Machines, which is probably my bread and butter as far as having some success, you would think. It takes too much time away from the main event worth, oh, I don't know, 280%? Yeah. Man, I'm surprised. Are you going to play normal the daily Classics or no? One for sure, maybe two. See, I find that the target match play is great. It's great free practice on what the classic schemes are going to be. Yeah, but do you really need practice when you can just go out and play it over and over and over again? You can't play it over and over again that much in one day with those queues. You maybe get like an over and over because I'm not a one-game void guy. So for me, I usually always play my entries full. So I think I'm good for like three or four if I have to. I'll tell you, when I'm in the queue for the main, I'll watch you play some of the games, and I'll see you. There you go. You don't have to necessarily play them yourself. I mean, you did just briefly talk about what international players will do. Well, one thing they're going to be doing in 2023 is bucking up or pounding up or I don't know, whatever their currency is. Yeah. How hard was this to make happen? And it's got to be nice that it's unified, that everyone's doing it now. I mean, how hard is it to make happen is not hard at all, right? We just say we're doing it then that's it. Legally, cough, cough, legally. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's fine. There's no issue with us charging for a service, right? We're a business. We're a really poorly run business because we don't actually do this for profit and money. You're no cubing. Yeah, we're not cubing. No, yeah. What was his entry fee? It was like 35 bucks. Where did that money go? Where's the transparency, damn it?
    23:42
    I think the bigger issue internationally is the prize money issue of it all, But we have found, you know, through working with the country directors, where the funds are going was the biggest problem to solve. And we spent most of 2022 working on those issues individually with each country director. So we're in a good spot. I'd say it's the same, you know, as Becker likes to joke. You know, it's the same. Everyone complains and there's this fear that all these events are going to be canceled and everyone's going to protest. And what will end up happening is we'll have more events than ever before. Oh, yeah. And for my international friends, if you're wondering where those dollars are going, or your hard-earned money. Or pounds, or euros, or Swedish kron, or whatever. If you're wondering where that's going, Josh Sharp has the biggest expense account ever. How can I prove this? He took me to lunch and paid for it at Expo. I did. What was that all about? Yeah. Thank you. Hey, you have me on at least once a year. I can write it off.
    24:43
    More than once. Anyway, it's good to have you back on. But, okay, are we missing anything else from 5.8? So majors get a boost of 200%. The other championship series stuff that we organize, so states, provincials, nationals, all that other garbage, 150% boost. And then we are updating the certified rules. We have two tiers of certified events. We have certified plus and regular certified. certified plus is now events that are 128 players or more and their boost is now 150 percent of whatever their tgp is and the regular certified is 125 percent boost and there is no player minimum for those events it's just a format rules following thing that these events have to follow Is that it for 5.8? Because there's something else. Nope. More. I see the frenzy stuff. I'm not even going to skip it. We'll just go to all of it. So multi-match play now no longer receives the time bonus that we've given to games that are played with three players or four players versus two players. I hear a lot of people complain about that type of format, which you want to play your full game at once as opposed to go, I'm going to play ball one on this machine and then ball one on this machine and then come back to this machine. I get it. Was it a big problem? What's the concern? I would say it was a huge problem for those that love running multi-match play and a huge thank you from everyone that doesn't. That, you know, the spirit of the game and match being played, I played it. I think your world tour when you were here, not this last one, but the one before that. 2019. Yeah, you did multi-match play finals. And that was the first time that I had done that. And it's a little weird. you know you're bouncing around and it's like there's just a difference in the intent and i find as someone who likes to compete there is a lot of it's like that inner game of tennis crap that there's a lot that goes on while you're not playing when you're actively engaged in a match whether it's you know having a bad ball and wanting to get back up there as soon as you can because you're pissed and you want to go but you can't go right now you got to wait and watch your opponent start destroying the game and sort of own that emotionally. Like, all that is taken away. Like, multi-match play, it was all about, like, getting home. Yes, it was. Up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, and all of a sudden it's like, you know, all four games are over and it's like, Jeff, who won? Like, I have no idea who won. Who won? And it's like, hold on, we're adding it up, and it's like, you don't even know who won. Well, that's not quite that extreme. You can see the scores. You do know who won. But I get your point of it's go, go, go. it is a different format. It's not something I... I think I've done it only a handful of times, and that was one because it was a Wednesday night right before Expo and it was going late. It was basically a sternament, so all games were playing long. Your stupid brother put up a 45 minute game of Batman. I'm like, okay, we're getting... That was when it turned to multiplayer. I was like, this is ridiculous. Anyway, I'm kidding. Not a stupid brother. I love Zach. Anyway. And what people don't realize is that the bonus we gave to four-player groups, it's always been because this was a change that was, I don't know, maybe version 5.3. All the chatter was, man, don't run four-player matches anymore. They take twice as long to get TGP.
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    Do head-to-head matches. And it's like, oh, damn it. And they disappeared. Yeah, nobody's running pop-up finals anymore. Why? Because they're not worth anything. So it's like, well, you know what? Now pop-up finals are doubled. So now it's balanced. Go. and multi-match play removes that time bonus that we gave to Papa Style Groups to make sure that the format didn't disappear. So I think we are correcting something we probably should have corrected long ago. Yeah, I'm fine with it. Yeah. No, I think it makes sense. And can you imagine streaming something like that? You'd be like, I'm confused. What, what, what? Anyway, I want to see all matches, not just one game, and then all the matches are done with that one game. I get it. Okay. Flip Frenzy's next. Hit it. Flip Frenzy will be replaced with what did Max Match play? Oh, hold on a second. That's only recently. Before this, it wasn't being replaced. Well, that's not true. I had been giving everyone that I've talked to that called me and was like, Flip Frenzy is so fun. It's the most fun tournament ever, and you're destroying it. And then I get to use my candid response of like, well, if it's the most fun and the fun is the most important thing of the event. We're not killing it. Run it. Well, actually, it's more important that it has Whoppers than it is fun. And, you know, that was pretty much where the conversation would go. Well, what drove me nuts was you were basically multiplying everything times two and nerfing this by half. So you were actually killing it twice. And I was like, okay, hold on. No, let me finish first. It might show I have the conch. Hold on a second here. You can jump in. I'm trying to. The thing that bothered me was I actually agreed, and I've said this many times, that most flip frenzies are run poorly. You're fine. I know. You're fine. They have to have finals or don't sanction them. They have to. The number of people in queue is a factor, too. All these things, there are ways to make this more successful, and I was really hoping the IFK would find a way to make it more successful. Thank goodness. And we have. And through you and through Andreas from Matchplay, explain this new format that is now back to 100%, even 200%. So, oh, you're saying if you run a file, like it has the ability to have a 200% TGP is what you're saying. I'll show you in 2023, you bet. Okay. So, you know, the people that really wanted to keep, they didn't want people waiting around. They wanted people to play. And I provided my own exploit to this flip frenzy rule, which is we don't have any rules with how you have to pair matches. Right. Some people do tiered Swiss. Some people do random. Some people do balance. Some people do straight Swiss. No rules. We don't tell you who you have to play in an event. It has to be Swiss. We don't do that. So I would tell these organizers just run. And I didn't call it max match play. That's Andreas. Use that. I tried for Jeff Frenzy. He said no. I've used flip not so frenzy, but I called it available pairings is how matches will be determined. And it's like when you have some number of people in the queue available to play, just have them keep playing. And it's an X round round robin tournament where everyone plays 10 games and all of the whatever weird part of the flip frenzy format where it's not just about playing your best. It's about playing efficiently, playing your best as quickly as you can to make sure that you are winning enough matches or net winning enough matches to be able to advance or to win or whatever. You know, this allows for there to be no outside influence on a player taking as long as they need to play the best game they can So you mentioned set it for 10 games You can still set it for a time You can yeah And I said well I think the way the queue line will work is... I set it for 75% of your time. It's like if you were going to run a two-hour flip frenzy in the past, I would run a 90-minute flip frenzy knowing that there's problems and set the number of matches at that point and start removing people at the 90-minute mark and then maybe that last half hour will be finishing up of the rest of the matches. To please the IFPA, you need to basically have everyone play the same amount of games, give or take one, correct?
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    Yes. You just don't want the variance of this person played 15 games, this person played 25. We're not doing the 20 average anymore. And even with one different, it takes away that I've played for flip frenzies. I think they're a ton of fun. But you are not going to do well if you simply play your best possible game every game. It's just not going to work. Well, if the setup is most wins, you're right. And that's also one of the bad foot frenzies. Net wins as well, man. Net wins as well. And still, if I play one game for two hours and I kill it, I'm not advancing. I'm not winning. I'm not doing anything. But I had the best game of my life on Batman. And that's crap. So this would allow me to play the best game of Batman in my life and play nine more games or whatever, however many more there are. And that's important. Well, thank you, Andreas, for solving the problem. The fact that he integrated that into match play, I think, will be a great asset to the community. And I'll be curious to see how, you know, what does it do to timing of events? Does a two-hour flip frenzy go four and a half hours? Because, oh my God, all the good players here have six games to go out of ten or whatever. That'll be an interesting part to see how it's executed. I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to it as well. Let's move on to something else in 2023. Just recently announced the Stern Pro Circuit Tour and also some changes to the Stern Pro Circuit. you're not doing the 20 person ladder match which I said at the time was maybe not a great idea I was all over that take away the baby my friend it was not a good idea sorry it was an attempt I understood why you did it because here are 20 people you're going to be paid just for showing up and good money too people forget it was the OG format for a long time so for us it was more about getting back to the roots of what the circuit was all about. And yeah, man, I did really enjoy what time I got home that night. When you run the Stern Pro Circuit finals next year, do you have 20 people or 32? 32. So you made that change with one event left? We did. We made it five minutes after the previous final ended, based off of our post-mortem of the final, which the final would have happened normally in the earlier part of the season. So I would anticipate we're going to now do it this next new way to hopefully sometime in the first quarter of 2023. And there will probably be tweaks to the format after we do the format and see how it all plays out. So on one hand, good for making a change that is for the better. On the other hand, you made the change at the 11th hour. We sure did. And some people might be like, oh, you know what? I could have made the top 32 if I knew that maybe a little earlier. I could have went to another event. Possible. But for those people, it's like they weren't going to make the top 20. And for us, we did talk about, do we do top 16? And it's like shortening the qualifying list, that would be a dick move for sure. So we felt pretty good about Stern wanted some more people in the field. they're throwing more money at the prize pool but that hasn't been announced yet i don't think you know the things that stern wants to see is a part of we can only determine the changes that they want to make after we do something and then talk about that experience so we felt okay as long as we were making it more accessible to more players that the change was okay to make we i vetoed shrinking the field because i like that is completely unfair to me you did that the last time You went from 40 to 20. Right, but we did that in the beginning of the season when there were 15 events left and a pandemic left. So, you know, doing it with one event left and saying like, hey, dude who's 18, yeah, you're definitely not in now. We're changing it to top 16. Like that would be way worse. Okay. The events are interesting. We've got some new events on the Stern Pro Circuit. We always do. But some kind of come in, come out, and we're seeing some totally brand new ones. And I've got to say, it's pretty exciting. Are the dates up? I saw the names, and I saw the venues. So the dates, if you click on the link that takes you to the actual schedule page that we have, there's dates for those that are known. And there are plenty of events where they are not known yet. When do you need those dates? You know, before the event happens. 30 days before to get it on the IPA calendar. It's a little tough. And I mean, I understand how challenging it can be for a group of volunteers to have to nail down a date that has the hotel you've been working with doesn't have the dates you want available. And you're, you know, you're freaking out over not knowing when you can schedule it. So we're all, it's not a professional tour. So we understand that. And we understand these organizers are all doing the best they can to get it on the schedule as soon as they can. The last thing I want to talk to you about before we say so long, my good friend, Marty Robbins, who I do the Final Round Pinball podcast with on the Pinball Network, we were talking about machines and having fun. And he knows that I'm really invested into tournaments and chasing the Whoppers and all that kind of fun stuff. But I still enjoy pinball. And he was talking about certain games. And I was saying, well, on this game, you just do this and do this. And he was like, don't you just try to explore the game and have fun? And I said, you know, I kind of missed those days, I guess I do at home, like when I play the Simpsons pinball party. I will not just hit the garage, go up top, hit the garage, go up top. I'll try to do everything. I'll try to do wizard mode because it's fun. But it did get me thinking, I'm probably not alone as far as trying to have fun with games and really explore games. And I was thinking about you who's been in pinball for a long time. I use the example of Adam's Family or Twilight Zone. Very fun games, some of the greatest sellers of all time, but when we play in tournaments, we only do one thing. What is it for you? Do you still have fun with these games that are a little deeper? I know you've talked about some games being maybe a little too deep, but do you explore them or is it all about score for you? I think the best games tie the overall game experience to the best ways to score, so I look for games that do that the best. Elwin's found that sweet spot. Yeah, for sure. It's like, oh, I don't play everything on Jurassic Park. I only play for, you know, Raptor multiball. And it's like, well, that is a strategy. But I find as you explore and get to things, getting the things, unlock control rooms, and all these different things, if you execute can be huge points that I find those games are the best. and I have fun with Insider Connected where I'm absolutely playing for fun because I've tried to shoot as many side ramps as I can that have nothing to do with score. But outside of that, I really, I like to think most of my collection is balanced in a way where I will naturally reach the end of a game if I play amazing while going for score. Like I find that Jackpot is a great game that way. You know, you're playing the same, whether it's fun or score, it is perfectly aligned. Not all games are like that. No, a ton or not. A ton or not. That's the sweet spot you're looking for. That's where it comes in with code, and you're certainly going to be part of that. Before I let you go, any updates on Cactus Canyon? No updates on Cactus Canyon. People are excited to see what you and Lyman had cooked up. Yeah. I mean, I'm still playing whatever last version we had at the end of last year, and even that version alone will be plenty fun, especially for the tournament people who will already love it. But I think Chicago Gaming spent a lot of their time trying to get games out the door this year and there are only one crew over there so you're either kind of wrestling with production or you're wrestling with development. So I'm hoping that production is now kind of rolling over there for better or worse and we can get back to finishing what we started. Well, you talk about that sweet spot and we said L1. Lyman was the master at that. At making sure, okay, yeah, this is fun. There's not one path. There's multiple and they're all rewarding in both fun and score. Absolutely. I mean, except for maybe medieval, right? You tell castles all day. That used to break Lyman's heart a little bit. But it's like, dude, that's what I'm doing, man. I'm sorry. You don't stack all the multiballs? I do. I get all the ramps. I get the damsels. I get the jousts. I know. I'm going to give you a hug for that. I don't. I will grind castles, especially if the feed is nice. Now, if you disable the drawbridge and it becomes a live ball situation and it's not as easy, then yes. But I think a stock factory game, I think there is an exploit there in terms of value. The only thing I would avoid is trolls. I mean, danger shots. Hopefully I've got some troll bombs to get rid of those quickly because those are… I'm just inaccurate enough that I'm hitting those targets instead of the shots I want. Perfect. All the best and have a happy new year Great holidays and all that kind of good stuff With you and your family Always a pleasure to talk to you Josh Do the outro man This has been your Pinball Profile You can find everything on pinballprofile.com We're on Facebook, we're on Instagram And Twitter at pinballprofile Email pinballprofile at gmail.com I'm your host, hit it Jeff Teels My wife won't let me play I'll never win a major.
    42:47
    Lemon, idiot. Lemon, idiot. Lemon, idiot.