it's time for another pinball profile i'm your host jeff tiolis you can find our group on facebook we're also on twitter at pinball profile email us pinball profile at gmail.com and please subscribe on either itunes stitcher or google play and also check out our under construction website pinballprofile.com this is episode 155 but also the first in our live series here on papa pinball on youtube so thank you very much for joining us listening to this audio maybe after the fact but we are live right now here on tuesday september 18th and we're going out to pittsburgh the home of all things pinball i think for many of us fans doug polka joins us today he is our special guest hi doug how are you good evening i can't possibly follow up that introduction That was super professional. Yeah, but the content you're going to be providing is what we're all here to talk about. And today's topic is about tournaments, too. You've run several. In fact, a great one that I experienced last year is coming up at the end of October in the Pittsburgh Pinball Open. We'll let you talk about that right now. Yeah, so we just threw it on the schedule. We had a difficult time getting the facility ready for the tournament. But it's going to be October 27th through the 30th. Pittsburgh Pinball Open. We have a main tournament, classics tournament, women's tournament, a unique format called Pinkymon, which if you go on the website, you can read the details on that. There's a Facebook page out there now, so if you go on Facebook and search for Pittsburgh Pinball Open, you will find the event. We're in our ninth year, which is amazing because I still remember lugging the games into the basement of a bar to run the first one many years ago, but we're really excited. You know what's great about this tournament too for some of those people that like the throwbacks to the papa familiarity that we see in usually in april when the building's not being sold or whatever the papa ticket system it's so difficult to get in but ppo has that and uh i always find that really benefits the better players i know because i've never even come close to making it with the ticket system you have to have five great games in the main you have to have four great games in classics and then pray, cross your fingers, that you're in the top 24. Yeah, actually, when we created the PPO, me and a couple people in the Pittsburgh area, back in nine years ago, the idea was there wasn't all these tournaments that we see now. We're kind of spoiled that every weekend there's somewhere to go and there's somewhere to go play pinball. But nine years ago, there wasn't that. For us in the Pittsburgh area, we basically went to Papa, and then we would go to another event that was in Fairfax, which doesn't occur anymore, but I hear it may be starting back up. So me and a couple local people got together and said, you know what, we love Papa and we love the Papa format. And while we don't have a building with 400 games in it, we can kind of replicate it in a way. So that's pretty much how the PPO was born, to basically rip off Papa. Well, it's a lot of fun. And I know, was it Bowden who won it last year or Alex? I can't remember. I think Bowden got revenge. I think Steve won it last year. Alex won it the year before. No chairs were thrown last year. That's all I do remember. There were no chairs harmed in the making of Pittsburgh Pinball Open last year. So while we're on the topic of tournaments, I definitely want to talk to you, Doug, about maybe some do's and don'ts for tournament directors and even players, too, because not everyone's going to be a tournament director. So I think of when we first started playing pinball, and for me, it was just playing a game. Maybe it's an arcade. Then you found out about a league, and then we joined leagues, and there's a little bit of competition there, but really it's more about the social aspect, too. Playoffs, obviously, a little more competitive. But then the tournaments themselves. The first time I went to a tournament, it was a pinball competition. I was hooked. It was fun. There was some adrenaline going on. I wouldn't say there were any tensions, but I've been to pinball tournaments where that has been the case too. So at one point, after being in a tournament, I thought, I want to start my own tournament. And I went to Papa.org, a great place, great tips to see, some good advice for tournament directors. And even though you think you know how it's going to run, things always pop up. things you can't really anticipate to happen. So that's why you're here to talk about maybe some of the things that we can do. And we're also going to invite people that are watching on YouTube on Papa Pinball to offer some suggestions. We've got a few questions already, too, that we'll get to and acknowledge, too, because this really is your show as well, too, as we do it live here for the first time. So there are different types of tournaments. And, Doug, I think we're going to exclude some of the maybe one, two-hour, just a light tournament. We're going to be talking about if you want to have a tournament that maybe maximizes TGP GP for the IFPA standings. Maybe you want to have multi-day events. So this is where you're going to come in and maybe give some good advice to some people. Yeah, and as Jeff said, we're going to be talking more about larger formats. Most of the stuff we're probably going to talk about doesn't apply to the knockout tournament at the local pub or whatever. So some of the things I may be saying, you guys may think, I can't do that. I don't even have keys to the game. Yeah, that's excellent to mention too because you're right. The pub nights where you want to be in there two, three hours maximum, those strike tournaments usually are the best too. We're looking at more of maybe you've got a bunch of games or a bunch of people are going to put them together. We're looking at those kind of tournaments that pop out that sometimes even turn up to be on the Stern Pro Circuit because they're so popular. Pro Circuit shirt on today. I've got mine on too. I think it's the first time I've worn it. I always feel guilty because I'm an alternate, but whatever. Shirt fits, I'm wearing it. Anyway, so these are the larger tournaments. So there are different varieties too. We know there are the pump and dump tournaments, so the Herb style score, where that might be multi-day and multi-hour. So it's really your best score, and there's a scoring system starting at maybe 100, and the next score is 90, then 85, 84, 83, down the list. And your best four or five games, whatever the tournament director has determined, will place you into the playoffs. Now, those are big tournaments for people to run, but they're the ones that usually generate the larger amount of people, correct? Yeah, the pump and dump or the herb style or best game, it depends on what you want to refer to. Every format has its benefits and its drawbacks. So like you were talking about earlier how the PPO is the pop-a-ticket system. The pop-a-ticket system rewards consistency across a number of games because your ticket consists of four or five games, and then your total ticket score is what counts. Whereas in Herb or Best Game, what you get is you can play Batman 66 over and over and over and over and over and over again, and you're just going to keep your top score, and your top score is the only one that's going to count. So where that differs from a player's perspective is with the Herb style in the big tournaments, you're always looking to just blow the game up. You're always just looking to destroy the game with the highest possible score. Whereas in the PAPA format, there tends to be a little more strategy when your ticket's playing out. If you blew up the first and second games, sometimes you'll see players take a safer strategy on their last few games so that that ticket sticks. Because you don't want to go for a big risk strategy and put up a goose egg and then basically make that whole ticket worthless, despite the fact you just put the top score of the tournament on NASCAR or whatever it might be. Here's the thing. The PAPA ticket is unique, and we're going to see it at the PPO and eventually at the next PAPA event. We are also talking about match play, which a lot of people are familiar with, too. And that is something that's huge at Pinberg. And that's something, if you're going to do that, you really need a lot of different machines. And you can kind of calculate how many people you can maximize at a tournament like that, depending on how many machines you've got, how much time you've got. I would always recommend a hard number of rounds as opposed to time. I've been in some of those tournaments where they try to do match, and they say, we're going to play for four hours. Well, what if the first group is an hour deep playing Firepower 2 and just stealing a lot, something like that, and then, well, that's one round. We've only got three hours left. I would recommend a hard number of rounds versus a time limit. Do you agree? It depends. It really depends on the tournament. Some of them, match play can even, besides like Pinberg where you're counting wins and losses, is strikes tournaments are also essentially match play tournaments. They're just ones where you don't necessarily get to play the entire time. You're only going to play until you get however many strikes it is and you're eliminated. I've seen tournaments like, for example, the 24 Hours at the Sanctum is a great event. I've personally never been there, but I've never heard anybody speak ill of that tournament. And that's one that's done by time. It's not done by rounds. You're right. If you are doing it by time instead of rounds, you can get into a situation if your games aren't balanced properly that you know somebody's going to sit on world poker tour for two and a half hours and everybody else is going to be standing around and generally players like match play because we're not standing around we're not waiting we're not queuing on a game we're we're playing we're in as soon as our game's over and everybody else's game's over we're going to jump on our next game and then we're going to jump on our next game or like pinberg where you where you have a schedule and you know that i show up at this time and I'm going to play four games and I show up at this time and I play four games and there's not as much downtime so generally match play is the one that I we we receive the best feedback on when we send out the circuit surveys but like you said that there are benefits and drawbacks to everything match play you know you need enough games to be able to have everybody on a game at one time so if you want to have 840 people in a tournament like pinberg you need 300 plus games with your backup games, which obviously not many people can pull off. But there's only one tournament that is that size. True. And it's one of the best. It's one we all flock to. And it kind of makes us want to run our own tournaments, too. I know so many people. I think of Tracy Lindbergh from Arizona, who years ago came to Pinberg and was in love with it and then just took it back to Arizona. And she's a TD now. She's even a TD at Pinberg, too. So you create monsters with these great tournaments. And that's why pinball keeps growing and growing. It's great. So let's talk about some of the things that I think really matter. And the first one I want to talk about, it's the one that I think matters to me the most as a player, and it's transparency in every aspect too. The transparency of the rules in advance so that a player knows what they're getting into. There should be no kind of surprises. You know how the dollars are going to be executed and how they're going to be tallied, what the costs are, what the payouts are, if that's something that matters to you, what the format is, including the playoffs. And when you have that transparency and there are no surprises, I think it makes it much easier for the TD, too. I remember talking to Josh Sharpen. He always said, you know, when you're thinking of the tournament, try to avoid something that's going to create a problem. Try to anticipate what the problem might be and avoid it. It could be a game selection. It could be a rule. It could be something that's a gray area. And I think that's something that all TDs should strive for is that transparency. Yeah, I mean, one of the first things when people come to me and say, you know, I'm thinking of running a tournament, where should I start? And once again, we're referring to generally larger format tournaments when we're talking about this stuff. Number one is a written set of rules. Like, it seems simple, but, you know, you can use the IFPAPA rules that are available on PAPA's website or the IFPA website, which basically are generally agreed upon tournament standards. But make sure you have a schedule. You know, make sure people know when does qualifying start, when does qualifying end. How is everything divvied up? Is there an A division? Is there a B division? What do playoffs look like? Are there any special circumstances in your tournament that you might need to define? So, for example, especially if you're running a Herb-style tournament or best game tournament, you might want to have a rule in your rule set that says, after this time of qualifying, if a game goes down, we're going to leave the scores there. But if it breaks before that, then we're going to void the scores and refund people. So that's one of the things that you should think about. One of the things that trips up a lot of people, I've seen a lot of comments about it recently, is what do you do with the entry fees? I am not of the belief, especially when you're running a bigger tournament, there are a lot of costs involved with running large events, circuit size events. a lot of times besides the sweat equity that the organizers put into the tournament they also very frequently sink a lot of money into a tournament and especially if they're trying to grow their scene like we were talking about the ppo earlier the first probably four or five years i ran the ppo it ran at a tremendous loss because i paid for all all the trophies out of my pocket you know the trucks to transport games you know i paid some text to be on hand you know things like that And that stuff adds up. But as the tournament grows, I don't think it's reasonable to expect the organizers to just eat that cost. That being said, transparency is important. People should know what they're getting into. So like for something like Pinberg, you know what it's going to cost to enter Pinberg. Pinberg also has set payouts. So if you're a person who's thinking about what does this cost versus what I'm putting in, You can look at the payout schedule. You can see how much it costs to get in, and you can make your decision there. For best game tournaments, I have no problem with tournament organizers not paying out 100%. In very few circumstances do I think they should because, once again, there's a lot of expense that goes into it. Just make it clear what the payouts are. In my opinion, you don't need to break it down. You don't need to say 60% is going to go to the players and 22% is going to go to the game owners and 5% is going to go to the trophies. You just need to give people a general idea, like 60% is going to payouts or 80% is going to payouts. Or if you're doing 100%, 100% is going to payouts just so that the players know what I'm putting in. This is the percentage I can expect to get back out if I should win anything. Yeah, I think you're right. You don't need to break down the expenses, but maybe just it would give a good example to people that might not realize, especially if you've never run a tournament, what goes into it. You talked about the hours and hours that people put into it. I don't think anyone's taking expenses for that. But if you're paying volunteer tax to be there, that's a big thing. And I have zero problem with that because we're going to get that later. You want games that work. And if the tax are there to make it work and games aren being pulled and you don have to refund the money that great So those are some of the hard expenses too What about the rental of the hall What about if your machine is being lent to you So those are some of the things you have to think about Yeah, the trophy. So maybe it's, like you say, 60% going back to the players, the other 40% expenses, and they are A, B, C, D. You just have to say what that clump is. I think that's safe. And it's up to the tournament directors to decide what those percentages should be. And then if you're being transparent and it's in your written rule set or whatever, where it's going, then the players can decide if they want to attend that tournament based on that information or not. In my experience, with all the tournaments that I've seen and been to and helped run or whatever, players flock to good tournaments. I've seen there are plenty of tournaments that are charity tournaments that have no payout at all, and people go and play in them anyway because it's run well or they choose to support the charity. So I don't believe that you need to have 100% payout to have a great event. I don't think anybody in a tournament director position like yourself or anyone should have to pay out of pocket. I mean, they're putting in enough already to bring everyone to come. The time, the effort, the games. Without them, we don't get to play pinball. So I don't think there should be any question or qualms about any expenses. Again, if you're transparent, and that's the key, everyone knows before you get in. So what about the predetermined qualifying times and the playoff structure? It depends, I guess, on how many people you have. And I'm really impressed that certain tournaments, and I'll say some by example, the New York City Pinball Championship put on by all those great New York guys, the Never Beef Productions group, they kind of realized this is going to be pretty big. And they capped it at 140 people, which was a smart thing to do. They probably could have taken 240, maybe more. But it was a first-time event, and they realized, you know what, we want people to have a good experience. We want people to be playing the games as opposed to being in long queues. and whether it was guesswork, whether it was their experience from other tournaments, it was the right number, it was good. So that's something I think TD has to think. In an ideal world, it'd be great to have a huge, huge event, but you have to be realistic. And I think of Eric Hortenberger, who's going to be running Pinsonati coming up later on in a few months. He's realized, you know what, we're starting off, we're going to go maybe 64, I think is the number. I could be wrong. I think it's 64 that we're going to do for the first time, And then we can grow because you, again, want those people that are there to have a great experience. Yeah. If you know your space and you know your limitations, then set a player cap. There's nothing wrong with doing that. Yeah, for sure. You know, part of that predetermined qualifying time is really involved in the game setup too, Doug. And Papa does a great job at that. Now, if you're on location, obviously you don't have the keys to the machine. There's not much you can do. But let's just assume you've got a rental hall or somebody's place that's going to be running this. you do have the keys, you can do some things. And you would have to explain. If you get an extra ball, you either plunge it or play it or whatever the case may be. But if you can set that up beforehand where you don't have extra balls, where you don't have to ask questions, maybe adjust the tilts, maybe some of the rubbers as well, these are very important things for TDs to consider. Yeah, and there are many, many ways to adjust the difficulty of a game. A lot of first-time events I go to, the biggest mistake that I think people make is they pitch every game as steep as it goes, and they set the tilt ridiculously tight. You have to give the players a chance to play the game, and, you know, everybody makes mistakes. We've set up games here at Papa where we underestimated or overestimated how long people were going to play them, and they've just been ridiculously difficult before. But in general, what you're searching for is playability based on the skill level of the people attending your tournament. So when I say that, a lot of the games at Pinnberg, for example, are not set Papa A Division tough because Pinnberg has 800 and some people in it. And you want everybody to be able to enjoy the tournament. So you don't want every game you walk up to has lightning flippers and pulled posts and ridiculously tight tilts. You want to give people a chance to play those games. And one of the things that we do leading up to Pinberg is we actually know all the games that are getting used in the event. We'll start to set up the banks. We'll put the banks, you know, we'll pull all the games in a certain area, pop our headquarters, and we have people out to playtest them. Like, for example, for this year's Pinberg alone, we played over 5,000 test games. And when I say test games, it's not just somebody walking up to it, hitting start, and flipping around. like competitive games that people were trying to win and we're timing the games so that we know how the banks are going to time out we did over 5 000 games like that then from january to june just leading up to pinberg be able to get the setups right for those games now i don't expect anybody else to do that because everything everything is in scale pinberg is just ridiculous with the size also who has that kind of time or resources to do that kind of stuff besides, you know, idiots like us. But it's important to sit there and play the games and try and figure out where they're going to be, especially if you're doing a match play tournament. I mean, you kind of want all the rounds to end kind of at the same time so that nobody's really sitting around. And as I was saying, there's lots of things you can do to make a game difficult. One of the things I think people overlook that makes a game exceptionally difficult is adjust the sensitivity of your slingshots. If you have super tight slingshots that when the ball touches them, it's flinging them towards the out lanes like that messes people up badly. And just a simple adjustment like that, spend a couple of minutes in there and get those slingshots tuned perfectly will make the games that much more difficult without cheating the players. You play TNA at all. That's a great game. And you breathe on those slings. Boom, there it goes. It's a great thing. But you're right.