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UK League Finals

What is your preference as to how/when the UK League Finals should be held?

  • Ran at Pinfest?

    Votes: 15 75.0%

  • Ran as a stand alone event?

    Votes: 2 10.0%

  • Ran as 1 of 2 competitions held over a weekend?

    Votes: 3 15.0%
  • Total voters
    20
Wayne J

Wayne J

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WWJ
As most know, the league finals took place on the Sunday of the Pinfest weekend.

There were a few issues with it taking considerably longer than is normal, due to players (and me) being involved in the Open and Classics.

On the one hand it meant that players who had to travel from afar had the whole weekend of pinball to mitigate the expense and travel, but it kind of faded into the background and wasn't given the focus it deserves.

The question is should it be

Ran at Pinfest next year (hoping whatever other competition is running doesn't detract from it)?
Ran as a completely stand alone event?
or, Ran on a Saturday with another competition on the Sunday (open to everyone)?
 
I like it was part of Pinfest meant not having to find another weekend off!

Not your fault it taking longer, maybe next time we get it over and done with on the Friday evening?
 
Tilt_Birmingham said:
I like it was part of Pinfest meant not having to find another weekend off!

Not your fault it taking longer, maybe next time we get it over and done with on the Friday evening?
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Personally I think Friday evening would be a bad idea as it means people would have to stay the night or make two trips if they want to visit for the full day on Saturday or Sunday. Simply not practical for many.
 
My thinking was all pinheads would make this a weekend of pinball. Including staying over. It's a celebration of all things pinball in the UK.

I realise there may be reasons some people have to be home but the majority would want the whole weekend set aside for the event.

That's the dream in my head anyway. A kind of weekend pinball(city) break.
 
I htink the main reason the league finals would have taken that much longer than in previous years is because the same bank of 5 machines was used for both A and B finals whereas in the past different machines have been used so both finals can run concurrently.
 
Run league finals on the Saturday morning of Pinfest.

As you say, the UK Open and Classics were very time demanding, each requiring all players to be 'available' for the two or three hours over qualifying.

I think with a few tweaks to make the qualifying less demanding on all players being present at once, it should be possible to run the league finals concurrently with qualifying. Possibly best running the league finals early Saturday so that once that is over people are free for other things (including talks etc).

Greg's point about using two banks is a good one too, though I also thought that using the corridor (pretty much at capacity with those 5 machines) helped keep things separate from the public area whilst the league finals took place.
 
I liked it at pinfest. Like @Big Phil it's the whole weekend thing for me and playing the silverball for a couple of days and getting away from it all is what the event was all about for me. I'm sure the open and the classics will be tweaked next year so hopefully more time for the league. Alternatively hold them Saturday night??
 
Personallly I would hold the finals at a seperate event alongside another competition. That is unless the comps at Pinfest change. I was qualifying for the Open and Classiscs for most of the day Saturday. Sunday was the finals of both of these comps and the League finals and it was ridiculous! Constantly moving from one comp area to the other all day and holding up both events. I loved the weekend at Daventry, but the timings and structure of all the comps combined was too much.
 
Matt Vince said:
Personallly I would hold the finals at a seperate event alongside another competition. That is unless the comps at Pinfest change. I was qualifying for the Open and Classiscs for most of the day Saturday. Sunday was the finals of both of these comps and the League finals and it was ridiculous! Constantly moving from one comp area to the other all day and holding up both events. I loved the weekend at Daventry, but the timings and structure of all the comps combined was too much.
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I think if you are going to run it as a stand-alone event then running another event at the same time gets you the same experience as UKPinfest.

I think it’s also valuable to run at a neutral location with pins not well known to the players.

I think coordination of timing at UKPinfest didn’t work as we expected and I think that’s easy to fix for next time and then properly adding segregation to the open/classics area and a proper event system like matchplay would help with making it easier to cope with the various events.

Cheers,
Neil.




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Big Phil said:
Mornings may be a bad idea as I got the impression some players couldn't see straight.....
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In my view that’s not a good reason to avoid mornings! Pretty much every other serious compo starts early in the morning! :) pinburgh is bright and early at 8am! NYC was 9am, Texas the same.

What is for sure - you won’t please all of the people all of the time :)


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On Wednesday night at sunshine - they ran three compos at the same time using matchplay on the same set of machines. Worked beautifully. And the place was packed!


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Very true! Although that is also a symptom of having comps that take up so much of your day. I felt on Saturday that I had hardly caught up with anyone when i finally arrived at the bar pretty late in the evening.
 
Matt Vince said:
Very true! Although that is also a symptom of having comps that take up so much of your day. I felt on Saturday that I had hardly caught up with anyone when i finally arrived at the bar pretty late in the evening.
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I agree Matt and I also had seminars to run ! I gave up on the classics in the end as it was too hard to do it all!


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Neil McRae said:
I think if you are going to run it as a stand-alone event then running another event at the same time gets you the same experience as UKPinfest.

I think it’s also valuable to run at a neutral location with pins not well known to the players.

I think coordination of timing at UKPinfest didn’t work as we expected and I think that’s easy to fix for next time and then properly adding segregation to the open/classics area and a proper event system like matchplay would help with making it easier to cope with the various events.

Cheers,
Neil.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Click to expand...

I do agree with this, I would suggest that each region could be tasked with bringing a certain number of machines for the comps perhaps. A number of the games had issues before we started and even more weren't level etc. This is not a dig at Peter, he was up to his eyeballs all weekend, but should he have been? In the league finals, each region winner brought a game along and it worked well. Maybe the Open just needs to be more of a collective rather than on one persons shoulders.
 
Matt Vince said:
I do agree with this, I would suggest that each region could be tasked with bringing a certain number of machines for the comps perhaps. A number of the games had issues before we started and even more weren't level etc. This is not a dig at Peter, he was up to his eyeballs all weekend, but should he have been? In the league finals, each region winner brought a game along and it worked well. Maybe the Open just needs to be more of a collective rather than on one persons shoulders.
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I agree also Matt we should get a committee or something to help run it and make sure it’s as good as it can be!


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Given the league is mainly run regionally, a lot of players compete in it that dont necessarily travel afar for tournaments. Having it at the main UK event means it can enable as many as possible of qualifiers to enter that wouldn't have travelled just for the tournament, but are there anyway for the rest of the show. Especially for e.g. Scottish & Irish regions where distance is a bigger factor. Did the finals have better attendance than when it was held outside a big show for the last couple of years?
 
Imho ....

Much as I loathe committees (unless there is proper delegation and the ability fire useless people) it might be time for one in UK Pinball.

Some sort of committee is needed to determine how major tournaments are held in the UK. If for no other reasons than to improve and legitimise decision making, and to spread the load. Maybe each UK league region votes for a rep once a year, and that forms the committee. The committee should include folk who have been to events held abroad, who understand iPad tournament management programmes/ streaming so they can introduce some lessons learnt.

I fall into the camp that believes that home advantage does favour some competitors over others. Pinball has extremely volatile scoring, so anyone can argue that home advantage is not an advantage. Bowen Kerrins would consistently beat any of us no matter what machine you used etc etc. But in the real world, most guys that take part do not know strategies for 300 titles. A tournament at special when lit on old Gottliebs favours its regulars. And a tournament at Tilt on the latest releases favours its regulars.

So major tournaments (especially the uk open, and finals of the UK league) ought to be made up of machines sourced from a large pool. Just knowing how a skillshot works, or dip settings in a Bally SS game is enough to win a narrow margin match. Many matches are settled by very fine margins

This means hosting the UK open and UK league finals at a large show.
 
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Nickoss II said:
Given the league is mainly run regionally, a lot of players compete in it that dont necessarily travel afar for tournaments. Having it at the main UK event means it can enable as many as possible of qualifiers to enter that wouldn't have travelled just for the tournament, but are there anyway for the rest of the show. Especially for e.g. Scottish & Irish regions where distance is a bigger factor. Did the finals have better attendance than when it was held outside a big show for the last couple of years?
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The A Finals had a higher proportion of people competing who had qualified than previous years - mainly due to the Irish contingent, who I guess wouldn't have made the trek for a one off final. Although a couple of people who did attend didn't enter the comp because of the time constraints.

The B Finals had a lower than expected turnout of just 11 people from a possible 20 - I don't necessarily want to abandon the B Finals, but if people aren't going to attend...

DRD said:
So major tournaments (especially the uk open, and finals of the UK league) ought to be made up of machines sourced from a large pool. Just knowing how a skillshot works, or dip settings in a Bally SS game is enough to win a narrow margin match. Many matches are settled by very fine margins

This means hosting the UK open and UK league finals at a large show.
Click to expand...

I don't want to muddy the waters talking about the UK Open, which is an entirely different competition. The UK League Finals were ran with each regions winner having the opportunity to bring their own machine, or nominate one from the floor to use - thus providing a deserved advantage to the winner of each region, as well as spreading the knowledge.

All of the regional co-ordinators regularly discuss any changes or improvements that could be made, some go through - others are consigned to the bin.
 
Ok here is my take on the finals and I was one of the longest travelers to it.
Why were there 5 machines hand-picked and separated for the qualifiers when 120 could have been used?

Problem 1 it suited the region winner and has an advantage. I finished top of B qualifiers did I get to pick a machine that suited me hell no but plenty in the main hall could have been moved.
A solution in my eyes let the top qualifiers pick the machine and get it moved to a separate area on a dolly its like 4 mins to move one in one out and use a room like where the baby machines were.
For me, I was there at 10 am and did not start my games till 2.30 pm having to wait. same with finals supposed to be 4pm did not start till after pinfest closed and anyone I knew gone home

Problem 2 not enough time to play 2 or 3 comps
A solution would have been assigning people into a group beforehand and give them a time and machine list ie a,b,c,d starts at 10 am on machine number 1,4,6,9,11,14 if a player does not turn up then tough your out. then people know when they're free or not
Same with the pinball open I spent hours looking for people to play head to head when all of those 10 should have been told stay together and these are the machines you play on by staggering the groups, ie group a has these 10 players and these 5 machines and start at 10 am and you round robin till your done group b same time just 5 other machines. next groups start 1 hr later and so on, at least I know where and who/what I got to play.
 
Wayne J said:
The UK League Finals were ran with each regions winner having the opportunity to bring their own machine, or nominate one from the floor to use - thus providing a deserved advantage to the winner of each region, as well as spreading the knowledge.
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I quite like this. When the advantage of 'home machines' can't be fully eliminated (I'm not sure the UK scene is big enough to make that happen) then trying to equalise the chance for all to gain a portion of that home advantage seems the way to go.
 
PBrookfield said:
I quite like this. When the advantage of 'home machines' can't be fully eliminated (I'm not sure the UK scene is big enough to make that happen) then trying to equalise the chance for all to gain a portion of that home advantage seems the way to go.
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agreed seems fair enough
 
Wayne J said:
All of the regional co-ordinators regularly discuss any changes or improvements that could be made, some go through - others are consigned to the bin.
Click to expand...

Are these discussions minuted?

One of the things I'd like to understand is why the regional leagues are not IFPA qualified and why do we play 4 balls? When can we fix what ever is wrong to tackle point 1 and get us back to three balls.

Neil.
 
Personally speaking I only attended the finals as it was at pinfest, im not that desperate for a few ranking points to travel to a small location with only a handful of machines (i know theres more to it than that but hopefully you know what i mean). When the finals where held at Davids last year (big respect for him hosting) I didn't have a lot of interest from the rest of the Irish league members and not sure I could justify the expense for only a few games on a few machines.

I do enjoy playing with other players and this is something we will probably look at doing in our league games (more often that not the games were 1 player during our meets)

There needs to be something done with the other tournaments at these events to get times allotted for league final games. what needs doing ? I dont know. I cant even start to think how I would run a major tournament like Peter and his team did and big respect again for him taking this on and for the most part doing a great job.
Maybe returning to the open on the saturday and the classics on sunday might be worth considering ? Also I think using differnet group numbers/letters for the open and classics would have helped over last weekend, maybe starting the open groups at A and the Classics at Z and working backwards ? Also as has been said pre assigning players and games might have been better (not sure how easy this would be to achieve) I do know a lot of my and im sure everyone elses time was spent either looking for an opponent or waiting on a game that had people already playing on it (once or twice even had another couple waiting in front of myself and my opponent)
A few of my opponents just used random number genertors on their phones and we retried if the machine was occupied, seemd fair to me but maybe not ??
I dont think I will be playing in the open again next year mainly because it sucked up all my time on the saturday. I only played my open games and my classic games, went for a quick bite to eat and then back for the vip evening session to get a few games on machines i wanted to play.

I'm veering off topic now so ill stop waffling.
 
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