Welcome to another TOPL season!  Thanks to Luch for hosting the season opener-scores are up here.  We had a few new people out this week, so welcome to Matthew, Aly, and Sebastan.  This is shaping up to be a good season-we have 10 hosts on the calendar for the first 10 weeks.  There are still some dates to fill in, but for those planning ahead, playoffs are planned for Dec 18. 

Next week, there’s no pinball on Labour Day Monday, so enjoy the long weekend!  Week 2 is at Nick’s place on Sept 12.

Another playoff tournament is in the books!  Thanks to Adam and Denise for having everyone out to the new building for the day, and for keeping everyone very well fed.  We had a good turnout, with a bunch of new players, and some familiar faces visiting from out of town.  We also tried something a little different for the A/B divisions this time around.  For the first 7 rounds, we used regular match play pairs with everyone playing everyone else.  Then we split the player base in two, and reset the standings for B division in a separate tournaments for the next 8 rounds.  Here’s how the A and B standings looked after qualifying (15 rounds in A, 8 in B):

There were then 4 separate playoff rounds-2 for each division-to determine the top 8 players in A and B, and decide prize money.  In the end the final standings for A division were:

And for B division:

Thanks to everyone who made it out, and congratulations to all the winners!  Next week, we start with a brand new season at Luch’s place.  Also, remember that we’re still giving away a machine at the end of the season (the Black Pyramid that you may have played at Adam’s this weekend), and you get an entry for every week that you make it out to TOPL. 

Thanks to Nick for hosting the last league night of the season!  The final season results are up here, and John came extremely close to tying Adam for the season points total.  Close doesn’t count though, so Adam takes the season champ trophy again.  This also gives us the first season with results for the handicap system, and it looks like the system is working.  Congrats to David Newman, who not only took the lead in that race, but in most improved as well!  That means he gets both trophies, and a replay into next season. 

Playoffs are coming up on Sunday at Adam’s place, and doors open at 10:30.  We’re aiming for an 11:00 start for match play rounds.  As before, there’ll be an A and B division for playoffs-I’ll send out more details later in the week once we finalize eligibility. 

Thanks to everyone who made it out this season, and see you on Sunday.  Remember that playoffs are an open event, so if anyone wants to drop in and get a full day of competitive pinball, they’re more than welcome to come out.  League nights for the start of next season have also been posted to the Yahoo and Facebook calendars.

Thanks to Andrew for hosting this week, and for giving most of the league their first chance to play The Hobbit!  There’s only one more week left in the regular season, and the scores are up here.  Most improved and the handicap race are both incredibly close.  We’ll see what next week brings.

Speaking of next week, we’re at Nick’s next Monday for the end of the regular season, and then out to Adam’s the following Sunday for playoffs.  Have a great week!