Two weeks before the Georgia Pinball State Championship, Schoolhouse Brewing is hosting a tournament open to everyone for big points and big bragging rights.
This is your chance to:
Enjoy some great beer and pinball with a shot at some cool prizes.
Get a head start on 2025 WPPR points for next year’s State Championship.
Practice on games that are expected to be in this year’s state championship.
Try out the new Hybrid format.
Be a part of Georgia’s first 200% TGP event (possibly even 250% with 48+ players).
Entry fee: $1; plus coin drop for each game.
Prizes: Trophies for top 4. Random swag giveaways for participants.
Schedule
Qualifying times:
Finals:
Quick summary: Put up your 2 highest scores on each of 6 different machines, playing Thursday through Saturday. Everyone gets a maximum of 24 entries. Top qualifiers play in a head-to-head final on Sunday.
Volunteer to help
Let Tommy know if you want to be a scorekeeper or assistant TD. We’re going to need help to pull this off!
More info: Message Tommy
Or on Facebook Georgia Pinball group
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Qualifying format
Hybrid Best Game
6 machines available for tournament play.
Game scores are ranked and mapped to points of 100, 90, 85, 84, etc…
Your top TWO scores from each of 6 machines count towards qualifying standings. (That’s a total of 12 scores counted.)
You get 24 entries you can use as you wish across all the games. (That’s 4 per machine if you spread them evenly.)
Qualifying will be run without keys. See notes at the end for how we will deal with stuck balls and malfunctions. Extra balls will be on during qualifying; play extra balls.
You may use your entries all at once and skip the other two days of qualifying or you may spread your entries across multiple qualifying days.
Finals format
Finals format will be determined by the qualifying player count.
Qualifying player count used to determine finals format is the number of players who submit at least 6 counted scores.
Less than 32 qualifying players: top 8 double elimination bracket with best-of-5 winners bracket and best-of-3 losers bracket.
From 32 to 47 qualifying players: top 16 double elimination bracket with best-of-5 winners bracket and one game per round losers bracket.
For 48 or more qualifying players: top 24 SINGLE elimination bracket best-of-5 with a single round bye for the top 8 qualifiers.
With 48+ players we expect this to be an IFPA Certified event.
Venue info
Schoolhouse does not have any food trucks on site during this tournament but you are welcome to bring in takeout or order delivery. They also have pretzels, non-alcoholic drinks, and (of course) beer.
Game list
Games will be announced closer to the event.
Check Pinball Map for potential games: https://pinballmap.com/map/?by_location_id=20023
Check Match Play Events for the latest info: https://matchplay.live/schoolchamp
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TGP
Expected TGP and event booster:
If participation is low, with many players opting to not use the full 24 entries, the IFPA may recategorize the format to something other than hybrid. That would result in reduced TGP, possibly around 120%.
Tiebreakers
Players who are tied for a meaningful placement (cut line for finals; bye line if applicable) will play a one game tiebreaker on a randomly selected game in a randomly determined order.
Players who are tied for seed in the finals will have their seed determined by automatic tiebreaker based on best game points. The automatic tiebreaker will compare points from the tied players’ highest scoring result; higher points gets the better seed. If tied on first result then we will compare second result; etc.
Tiebreakers will be played on Sunday at 12:30 pm. Alternatively if the tied players are present and all wish to complete the tiebreaker early it can be completed on Saturday around 9 pm after qualifying games are complete.
Open to the public
Access to these games will not be restricted during qualifying. They will be open to the public if anyone not participating in the tournament wants to play them. We will use common courtesy to ask to play next. The queue will restart once the person at the front of the queue is up on the game. Players who are part of the tournament have the option to practice without using an entry if 1) there is not a queue of other tournament players waiting for the game and 2) they are not in the queue themselves. Communicate clearly with the scorekeeper or TD at the start of your game if you intend to practice. Double check that you’re at the top of the queue on Match Play Events before starting a tournament game. If a player attempts to argue that a practice game score was actually a tournament game without properly entering the queue before the start of the game they will at least be given a yellow card and will likely be disqualified from the tournament on the spot. Don’t try to cheat a practice game into being a tournament game. We don’t expect access to games to be an issue but we will add up to a half hour of qualifying time at the end of each day if access to machines was significantly impacted during the scheduled qualifying time.
Once the finals has started, there should be no practice games on tournament machines by players still in the finals.
Rulings during qualifying
We are not able to have keys on location with the TD for all hours of qualifying. We will make rulings consistently without using keys even if keys are present for portions of qualifying. If a ball is stuck, attempt to free it by nudging or ask a TD to attempt to free it. If the TD causes a danger (or two) while freeing the ball the player is expected to continue play without compensation. If the TD causes a tilt, play out the rest of your game then you will get a compensation ball on a fresh game. If you tilt you will not receive a comp ball.
If the game sends out a chase ball, alert a TD and play on. If you free the stuck ball while playing with the chase ball and one drains it will likely prematurely end the ball. This will likely put the game into an inoperable state with two balls in the shooter lane and an inaccurate ball count. Assuming you notified the TD during the ball search and chase ball launch process, then before you plunge your next ball the TD will record your current score and ball number. If the game continues to put additional balls into play, the TD will power cycle the game and you will get comp balls for any remaining balls to be played based on the ball number displayed (not counting stacked extra balls).
Alternatively if you are able to trap up with the chase ball and the formerly stuck ball, you may request that the TD void the entry and abandon the game. You have the option to rejoin at the back of the queue.
If you have a stuck ball in multiball you may play on.
We will deal with major malfunctions by awarding comp ball(s) on a fresh game on the same machine if the malfunction can be fixed after a restart.
If a game is affected by a catastrophic malfunction we will deactivate the arena and attempt to get the tech on site for a repair. If the game can’t be repaired we will keep scores if the game has been available for at least 50% of the scheduled qualifying time; otherwise we will remove scores recorded for that game and return those entries to the players for use on a different game. We may instead decide to reduce the game count from 6 to 5 in the case of a catastrophic malfunction.
We will have keys for the finals and will use the IFPA/PAPA tournament rules without the above workarounds during the finals.
Absences at the start of finals
If players who qualified for the first round of finals are absent at the start of finals (Sunday 12:30 pm) we will move down the standings to find the next available alternate. The first round of finals is expected to start by 12:40 pm. Any player who is skipped over due to absence will have a results position outside of the finals rankings. Players who have a bye are assumed to be playing in the finals and do not need to check in at 12:30; they should arrive ready to play by 1:15 pm.
Finals game choice
High seed gets first choice of game or position. For subsequent games in that matchup, loser of the previous game gets first choice of game or position. Players may choose any game that has not already been used in their match. The same game can be picked again in a later round. A game that is already in use can be picked and that group will wait for the game to become available. It is ok to abandon a choice and switch to a different game if the other groups are taking longer than the game picker wants to wait.