Thanks to Luch for hosting this week!  Scores are up on the PAPA site, and you might notice that in addition to the badges, there’s also an icon that shows a streak of how many times you’ve won your group.  So far Mike is at 3 in a row, and he also happens to be winning the season so far! 

Next Monday we’re back out to Nick’s place-have a great week everyone!

Thanks to Walt and Scott for hosting us at Bluffs this week!  Despite the snow, we still had enough people make it out to make for a great league night-hopefully everyone made it home safely.  The scores are up on the PAPA site, and it looks like Mike Capocci is off to an early lead on the season.  There’s still a lot of pinball to play though, so we’ll see how the season develops. 

Next week we’re at Luch’s place-have a great week everyone!

Thanks to Adam for hosting everyone all day today for a great tournament, and a special thanks to Player One Amusements for the loan of the Guardians of the Galaxy machine!  We had a decent turnout for playoffs considering that it was the last full weekend before Christmas stuff starts in full gear.  After 16 match play rounds, and a four game final, here’s the final standings:

Congratulations to Adam for winning the tournament, although Dave Smith did take it to the final game. 

Also, congratulations to Myles who won the machine giveaway for the year!  Myles will be taking home the recently restored Hot Hand that we purchased as a prize:

This was the last official TOPL event for 2017, and we’ll be taking a break until January.  Have a merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and if you have time off over the next few weeks, enjoy that too.  We’re starting into the new season on January 8 at Eddie’s place.  If you’ve got friends who are interested in coming out, it’s a great time to start, since we’ll have loads of space, lots of games, and the first week of a brand new season!

Despite the snow this Monday, we still had 17 people make it out this week to close out the season.  Final scores are up on the PAPA site, and as expected, Adam has won the season again (despite only being #3 in Canada now).  With the handicap rules, Adam Hollander has taken the win, and on the Most Improved front, Charles has captured that trophy.  Congratulations to all the winners, and your trophies should be ready early next season after we get the new plaques. 

Speaking of next season, a reminder that we’re getting ready to launch the new scoring system in January.  Week 1 is going to be at Eddie’s place, where we’ll be signing members up for the new season, but also giving everyone a chance to participate in a Guardians of the Galaxy launch tournament.  The Guardians tournament is being run as a separate event from the TOPL league night, and will be a separate $5 entry fee.  Doors open at 6, and TOPL will still start at 8, so if you’re interested in playing both, come out early. 

We’ve still got the playoff tournament for this year at Adam’s place on Sunday though, which should be a good day of pinball to cap off the year.  Doors open at 10:30, and we’re aiming for an 11 am start for match play.  Remember that this is an open tournament, so if anyone else wants to get in some last minute points to qualify for the provincials in 2018, this may be your last chance.  Have a great week, and I’ll see everyone at Adam’s on Sunday!

Thanks to Jim for hosting this week!  A smaller turnout than last week, but even numbers meant being able to have game choice, which is a good preview for what’s coming next season.  Everyone I’ve talked to about it seems to like the idea, so hopefully the switch in January goes well.  There’s still this season to finish out though, and the results for this week are up on the PAPA site.  Adam Hollander is leading the handicap race, while Charles is hanging on to most improved. 

Next week we’re back up to Adam’s place, which should be a good warmup for the playoffs on the 17th.  Have a great week everyone!

Thanks to Andy and Chris (and Andy’s Parents) for hosting this week!  Scores are up on the PAPA site, and Dave, G Adam H, and Charles are all quite close to each other for Most Improved with only a few weeks left to go in the season. 

Next week we’re at Jim’s place, and just a reminder that Playoffs are coming up on Dec 17th at Adam’s place if you haven’t been checking the calendar.  Have a great week everyone!

Thanks to Adam for hosting this week!  Scores are up in the usual place, and Becker is still leading the season.  Adam Hollander has a lead on the handicap, while Andrew Lounsbury is still ahead in Most Improved. 

Next week we’re at Andy McNab’s place-have a great week everyone!

Over the past few years, we’ve made some changes to how TOPL works to try to keep league nights moving, fun, and competitive.  Nobody wants to spend their Monday night waiting to play pinball, they’d rather be playing, so we’ve done things like put more games into league rotations, get rid of the high score standings, and introduce the handicap system to try to keep things interesting.  The other thing we’ve experimented with is giving people choice of games, which unfortunately has only been possible when there are no groups of three players, since we need median scores for those groups.  We looked at a system where we could use “lifetime medians” of a game, but that doesn’t account for new games, code changes, physical game changes, etc, so it’s not exactly bulletproof.  Then we started looking at the new IFPA system for match play groups (which is similar to Pinburgh scoring), where a 4 player group gets 7-5-3-1, and a 3 player group gets 7-4-1. 

The key to this system is that the expected value for a match, or the average score, is the same for a 4p vs 3p group (in this case, 4 points).  Now you might think that 3p groups are “unfair”, since coming in 2nd on a 3p game only gets you 4 points instead of 5, and coming in 3rd gets you 1 instead of 3, but over an entire season it does work out virtually identically.  To demonstrate this, Joe at PAPA (who developed the league manager software that we use) has generously set up a test site, and imported the data from the last two seasons, so you can check out the winter 2017 results using both the old and new systems, as well as the summer 2017 results (old and new).  The final season standings end up almost identical in both cases.  There are a couple of discrepancies where players were tied before, and become untied with the new scores, and vice versa, but the overall integrity of the season results is maintained. 

The plan going forward is to adopt this new system for the Winter 2018 season.  Under these new rules, groups will be allowed to choose their own games every week.  We’ll still seed players based on their previous week’s scores, but now the player who is listed as p1 gets to choose the game.  For 3p groups, the player in last place going into game 4 gets a second choice.  If 2 players are tied for last in a 3p group going into game 4, then the player in the lead gets choice.  As for game choice, any game at a location can be chosen by any player at any time, provided it hasn’t already been identified by either the host or an SLO as ineligible for league play (usually due to a known malfunction).  These will be announced/posted (and possibly turned off) at the beginning of a league night.  Players should use their own judgment in choosing whether to wait for a game to become available.  In general, if something is being played, and you can tell it’s going to take a while, you can either choose a different game, or let another player take their pick and come back to your choice later.  We’re all adults here, and this is a friendly league, so we hope things work out.  If a group can’t agree on a course of action for a game choice though, an SLO will make a ruling on which game to play.  If this becomes problematic, new rules may be introduced to deal with the situations.  In the event of a major malfunction on a game that requires it to be changed out, the player who chose the game gets the choice of replacement. 

Hopefully, this new change helps keep TOPL more fun and competitive, and ends up with less waiting and more playing.

Thanks to Nick for hosting this week!  Scores are up on the website, and Adam has managed to establish a decent lead for season points.  Adam Hollander is leading the race with the handicaps taken into account, while Dave Glen is sitting at 15% improvement over past performance. 

Next week we’re at Adam’s place up in Keswick-have a great week everyone!

Thanks to Luch for hosting this week!  Scores are up in the usual place, and Adam and Les are still close for the season lead.  Les is also leading in the Most Improved race, but there’s still half the season left to finish. 

Next week we’re playing at Kim’s place-see everyone there!