Tournaments
When playing pinball, many people just try and keep the ball from draining, some people like to focus on trying to beat their own high score or the ones other players have scored on a specific machine, and other people might primarily play to progress through a game's rules and try to reach "mini-wizard" and "wizard modes". In these cases, players have unlimited attempts to try and play their best game of pinball. Tournament pinball offers another way to play the game and will often force you to readjust the way you play a game on-the-fly based on what your opponents have done during the match. But, even more importantly, pinball tournaments are a great opportunity for a bunch of people to meet up and play pinball.
We run monthly pinball tournaments using a few different formats. Typically, these involve players being placed into 4 players groups, playing 1 or more games together, and being awarded "match points" for how well they do in each game or being given "strikes" for how many people finish ahead of you.
About
Schedule
Tournament Formats
We try and change up the format we use for each tournament, the following are the main ones we use.
Group Match Play:
Qualifying Stage:
Players are placed into 4 player groups, play 1 to 3 games with their group and receive match points based on their finishing position in each game. They will then be placed into new groups and repeat the process. The Qualifying Stage typically consists of 6 total games played.
Playoff Stage:
The top 8 players, based on match points earned in the Qualifying Stage, will move onto the Playoff Stage. Players will again be placed into 4 players groups, play 3 games, and the top 2 players in each group will move onto the final round.
Strikes/Knock Out Tournaments:
All players begin with 0 strikes, play in 4 player groups, and receive strikes based on their finish position. If a player accumulates the set number of strikes, they are eliminated from the tournament, the final player with fewer than the set number of strikes will be the winner. There are a few potential variations based on the number of strikes given per game or the number of strikes given in the event of a 3 player game:
Fair Strikes:
4p games: 0/1/2/3 strikes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th place
3p games: 0/1/2
Progressive Strikes:
4p games: 0/1/1/2
3p games: 0/1/2
Traditional Strikes:
4p games: 0/0/1/1
3p games: 0/0/1 (slow) or 0/1/1 (fast)
PinGOLF:
This is an interesting format because instead of seeing who can get the highest score on a game, each machine is set to 5 balls (instead of the usual 3), assigned a target score, and players are tasked with reaching the target score using as few balls as possible. If you hit the target score on ball 1, you score a "hole-in-1" and receive a score of 1 for the game, if you reach the target score on ball 2, 3, etc., that is the score you receive for the game. Similar to Group Match Play tournaments, a PinGOLF tournament will end with a Playoff Stage but use the PinGOLF "low score wins" format instead.
Head-to-Head Single Elimination:
Players will face off against a single opponent and play a best-of-7 (first player to win 4 games) or best-of-5 match (first player to win 3 games). The winner moves on to the next round, the loser will be eliminated from the tournament. This format is best used as a Playoff Stage following a Qualifying Stage using some other format. The IFPA Saskatchewan Provincial Championship uses this format as do the POBPL and FQPL league finals.
Max Match Play:
Players will play a set number of head-to-head (2 player) games where the winner receives 1 match point. When a player completes a match, they will enter the waiting room to wait until they are assigned a new match. Matches are NOT played on a round-by-round basis, instead, when a sufficient number of matches are completed/machines are available, new matches will be created using players in the waiting room. The number of matches played may be set from the outset or, more commonly for our tournaments at least, the number of matches will be based on time remaining where, with an hour remaining, the average number of matches played by ALL players will be calculated and have 3 additional matches added on to set the total number of matches to be played.
Note: Because the format is not round-based, some players may have more or less matches played at any given time. The additional matches added at the 1 hour remaining mark is intended to allow all players to have at least 1 more match to play after that point.
This format is best used in Qualifying Stages due to the un-equal "strength-of-opponents" that is bound to occur. However, the "strength-of-opponents" is often used as a tiebreaker for the assigning of player seeds in a subsequent Playoff Stage.