Author Topic: A Guide for hosting a FLiPS Tournament  (Read 1151 times)

Offline pinballcorpse

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A Guide for hosting a FLiPS Tournament
« on: May 02, 2011, 01:16:30 PM »
The FAQ Tourney guidelines for FLiPS hosts:

Having and competing in a local tournament is a lot of fun, but there are always many dilemmas.

Some things that keep coming up that hopefully this guide will answer: (It will probably expand/be modified over time)


What games should I use? Whatever you feel like that you think will make it fun! It is typically best to choose games that are reliable and can have 4 players.  If you want to use a single player game like a wedge head, then have a format that accounts for that.


I have several games I want in the tourney, can I just add all of the scores together?  Not recommended.  Often the orders of magnitudes are way off.  There is no effect of adding your AFM score with a typical replay value of 10 BILLION to a 1960s EM where scoring 5,000 points puts you in demigod-territory.   Even the current W/B or Stern games are not all evenly balanced.  Each game should stand alone with its own result.


So how do I score each game? If you are using groups of 4 to a game, typically, the winner gets 7 points, 2nd place is 5 points, 3rd is 3 points, 4th is 1 point.  That is the raw score for the game.  Add up the raw scores for each game played to get a cumulative score.  You could also choose 1, 2, 3, 4 raw points for each place example, if you want.


Isn’t that the same as adding all of the scores together just with easier math? No. How a player performs on one game has no bearing on the next game. No game has more value than another. 


Seems like the tourneys should have groups of 4.  How do I group people? Groups of 4 are not required, but it allows for an efficient elimination of players if you want multiple rounds. Random choosing seems to have worked ok so far, but can eventually lead to a strong or weak team or anything in-between. Unfortunately a quad can have one very strong player and 3 newbies, or 3 strong players and a newbie etc.  It will never be 100% fair.  However, there is a long-term benefit to playing with stronger players to learn and watch. 


Ok, why not have equally ranked players on the same team competing against each other? There is no way at this point to accurately rank everyone in FLiPS or create divisions.  Over time, it will become clearer who the stronger players are and maybe we can rank players later on. Since none of the tourneys are for any significant prize, random grouping allows all players to potentially compete with each other. It is all bragging rights, anyway.  Trust me, eventually a weaker player will beat a stronger player on a given game and that will make them smile.  Nobody wins every game they play.



What should the order of play be? For the purpose of FLiPS, random order works best for now unless there is a qualifying period allowing several tries or multiple games are used.  Typically tourneys with multiple rounds allow the stronger players to choose game or playing position.  Many house games are winner has “honors” and go first. When a stronger player goes last he has the opportunity to see how much he needs to score and to see how a game feeds or reacts.  One piece of information like knowing the feed from the slot machine on TZ can make or break the results.  In some cases, there should be a “reward” for doing well in a previous round.  There are many great discussions on this one idea including a fantastic write-up by Lyman Sheats.

With groups of 4 playing multiple games, one method is to pick a first order and just keep switching game to game. Start at 1234, then 4123, 3412, 2341, 1234 etc

With qualifying and subsequent rounds, order can be performance based or random.

In any case, pick a method known upfront.



How about a Round Robin tourney? In a perfect competing world, all players get to play each other many times to see who is better over the long haul.  A FLiPS event doesn’t have that kind of time. The tourney should not and cannot last forever.  There has to be a method used to cut the field quickly.



Ok, then, how much time does a tourney take? That depends on many factors.  A rule of thumb for a modern DMD, 3-ball game is easily 3-5 minutes per game/per player so about 20 minutes per game for a group of 4.  With 9 games in a tourney like pin-golf, it could take 3 hours to get through one round.  Don’t forget people will want/need to take a break, need to use the restroom etc.  With EM games or early SS games, the times could be significantly faster.



What if I only want to use one game in my tourney? Well, this is easier. You can just use the scores without the raw score format. You can have players play one at a time this way.  The time factor is still about the same 3-5 minutes per player per game.  Some players will take longer, others much shorter.



How many balls per game? Whatever you want. Some older games have features that are better on 5 balls.  Make sure people know if it is 3 or 5 ball or something else. Extra ball settings are best left off.



Do I need to change my tilts/outlanes/playfield pitch?  In general, no.  Just keep in mind that anything that can make the game last longer (allowing aggressive nudging or having closed outlanes, many extra balls) will affect the flow of the tourney.  Factory settings for a game are always about right for casual tourneys, with some exceptions. The games should at least be fully working,  level side-to-side and the flippers should be aligned.  If you don’t know how to set up your game or think your game needs tweaking but are not sure, ask someone to help you.



Wow, a FLiPS tourney sounds like a lot of work.   It is, but worth it.  People are having FUN.  Every FLiPS event has much discussion on how to run the tourney and had a lot of behind the scenes work required to get the games ready for 15-20 people playing the games for hours on end.  Sometimes, last-minute decisions have to be made.  The hosts and other dedicated collectors do what they can to make the tourney events fun, exciting and fair for the participants and give opportunities for ALL players to win.  Not everything will be perfect and someone will always feel something should have been different.  Sometimes games will not be the way you are used to, not be at 100%, or will just flake out. That is pinball life. Before being too critical, step back and experience running a tourney.  After every tourney there are many positive comments and people keep showing up, so something is working right. 

Thanks for reading and all your support.  Comments welcomed.

Sincerely,

Jeff
“Winning (contests) isn’t the word. I won it once. The rest of the time you’re just defending” -Rodney Mullen, skateboarding legend

Offline Ron Donohue

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Re: A Guide for hosting a FLiPS Tournament
« Reply #1 on: May 02, 2011, 03:23:22 PM »
I had a thought about how we could handle the issue of the potential for disparities among the groups.  It seems to me that one could pretty easily build a spreadsheet ranking all players on all games, and then provide the scores based on those rankings.  So, if there are 12 players, the highest scorer on a specific title across all players would get 12 points, the second highest would get 11 points and so forth.  This could be reversed if you prefer to use the low numbers for better scores.

Then, those rankings could be aggregated across all games for each player, with the result that the we would have rankings from 1 to 12 on each game which in no way were biased by the random group selection.  This would also allow for playing groups to self-select, if that is something we would like to have.  I would be willing to work with the next party host to set up the sheet and automate the ranking so that all we would need to do is put in individual scores and everything else would be automate.  I could also bring a projector to project the current rankings on the wall if folks would like to see the results as we progress.

Just a thought.

Ron

Offline pinballcorpse

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Re: A Guide for hosting a FLiPS Tournament
« Reply #2 on: May 02, 2011, 03:54:20 PM »
I had a thought about how we could handle the issue of the potential for disparities among the groups.  It seems to me that one could pretty easily build a spreadsheet ranking all players on all games, and then provide the scores based on those rankings.  So, if there are 12 players, the highest scorer on a specific title across all players would get 12 points, the second highest would get 11 points and so forth.  This could be reversed if you prefer to use the low numbers for better scores.

Then, those rankings could be aggregated across all games for each player, with the result that the we would have rankings from 1 to 12 on each game which in no way were biased by the random group selection.  This would also allow for playing groups to self-select, if that is something we would like to have.  I would be willing to work with the next party host to set up the sheet and automate the ranking so that all we would need to do is put in individual scores and everything else would be automate.  I could also bring a projector to project the current rankings on the wall if folks would like to see the results as we progress.

Just a thought.

Ron

The thought is good :)

I did this with my Superhero tournament.  Qualifying was one game on each Superhero game SM, IM, BDK.  Scores were ranked high to low on each game, and a composite score was calculated to create a ranking for the next round.  Top 3 advanced automatically, and all others played one more game as a last chance to fill the 4th slot. Those 4 then played down to 2, then the final 2 played best out of 3.

The pin-golf format in January implemented this as well, but used fewest amount of balls required to reach a target score as a way of determinign the composite.  Even though you were in a cart with other people, you were competing against everyone else.

It also sounds similar to how PAPA scores. You play 5 games, your scores get ranked based on the games you chose and then a composite score is formed. 

Many ways to solve the issue.  The 4 players to a group tourney seems popular.
“Winning (contests) isn’t the word. I won it once. The rest of the time you’re just defending” -Rodney Mullen, skateboarding legend