Thanks to Nick for hosting us this week, with a great turnout after a week off for the long weekend.  Scores are up here for the week, and it’s still early, so things are still pretty clustered, but as we get more weeks in, things should start to spread out a little more.  One more week and we can also start tracking most improved, but even without the handicap system, it seems that Julian is having a great start to the season, so I’d expect to see his name crop up there.    We also had 4 new people in this week, so welcome to Andy, Chris, Qui, and Mike.  New faces, but some familiar names-I don’t think we’ve had a group of 4 Mikes in one week, but it’s theoretically possible now…  Hopefully everyone enjoyed themselves, and you’ll be back for the rest of the season-still plenty of weeks left!

Enjoy the warmer weather this week, and I’ll see everyone at Andrew’s next Monday!

Thanks to Luch for hosting this week-results are up in the usual place.  3 weeks in and Adam and John are tied for the season lead, while taking handicaps into account, Julian is still in the lead. 

Now that we’re not tracking high scores anymore, you might notice that we may spread groups out onto more games if they’re available to try to keep things moving.  Before, we needed 4 groups on each game to have a valid high score, but now the only time we need 4 groups playing the same game is with groups of three, which will need median scores.  This also means that if you notice that things are backing up waiting for a particular game, and the entire group agrees, you can ask myself, Adam, or Luch about swapping for something else that’s available, and we’ll see what we can do. 

There’s no pinball next week because of the May long weekend, and then we’re at Nick’s place the week after that.  Have a great May 24, and see you all in 2 weeks!

Thanks to Jim for hosting this week, and also to Adam for taking care of the groups/scores while I was away.  Scores are posted on the PAPA site, and the handicap system is already showing some results.  John, Adam and Julian are leading the season so far, but with Julian’s big improvement for the season start, he’s ahead when handicaps are taken into account.  Keep in mind that on the PAPA site, you can sort the standings by clicking the column headings, so you can always see who’s ahead.

Next week we’re at Luch’s place-see everyone next Monday!

Welcome to another TOPL season.  Thanks to Scott for hosting this week, with his warehouse of ever-changing pins.  The scores for this week are up on the PAPA site, and you may notice the new “bonus points” column on the score sheets, and a new “Total w/ Handicap” listing on the totals.  This is based on the new handicapping system that we’re trying out this season, so you’ll notice things like Henrik’s 14 being worth more than John’s 16 in the handicap results.  We’ll see how this works out over the course of the season.  High scores are still showing up on the system, but these are just there for fun/information vs any prizes or trophies now. 

Also, congrats to Ian, who won the mystery score giveaway, which includes tickets to the Robert Gagno documentary Wizard Mode on Saturday at the Hot Docs festival.  There are two more screenings this week (Wednesday and Saturday) if you want to catch the movie in a theater, or you can also get it on Vimeo right now via the official site. 

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

Barry, our current playoff champ, has just compiled a list from the TOPL trophy of everyone with a plaque on it going back to 2001:

For those keeping score, that’s 39 tournaments, and only 10 winners:

And most of the winners are still playing with the league today.  Thanks for pulling this Barry! 

First off, thanks to Pete and Ann for hosting the playoffs today, and for keeping everyone well fed through the day.  Things went really well, and despite the long drive, it was a great day of pinball.  Final stats are available here.  This is where things stood at the end of 20 long rounds of matchmaking:

We had 8 players in the B division, so we ran two separate playoff brackets.  The B division playoff ended up like this:

Resulting in two tiebreakers.  In the end, Mike beat Myles on Iron Man, and Henrik beat John on Metallica to put Mike in 1st, Myles 2nd, Henrik 3rd, and John 4th:

For the A division, the top four players stacked up like this in the finals:

For a clean final result with no tiebreakers needed.  Congratulations to Barry for taking home the playoff champ trophy for what I believe is the first time, pictured here with a disappointed second place Steve:

Thanks to everyone who played in the season and today’s tournament, and in a week we start it all over again with a brand new season on May 2 at Scott’s warehouse. 

Thanks to Andrew for hosting this week, and also thanks to JRF for helping out with the scores while I was out sick.  This brings another regular season to an end, and the scores for the season are up.  After a strong finish at both PAPA and the IFPA championships, it surprised nobody that Adam won the season, but with strong finishes from Jack, Barry, John, Steve, and Josh, all with over 140 adjusted points.  Adam wins a replay into next season for taking the season champ spot, and another plaque on the trophy.  Adam also took the lead in the final High Score champ competition that we’re tracking.  For most improved, Ian Glasner ended up keeping the top spot with 12.19%, so congrats to Ian, who wins a replay for next season as well.

Just a reminder that playoffs are this Sunday, Apr 24 at Pete’s.  Doors open at 10:30, and we’re starting match play at 11 and going for 20 rounds.  As usual, when you get there, you’ll need to sign in (with Chris or Adam), and pay Luch your $15 host fee.  For those that are eligible for the B division, let us know you that you want to play B when you sign in.  Remember that in order to play in B, you need to have a valid percentage for the season, and have not placed in the top 3 in A for at least 9 seasons.  If we have enough players, we’ll run a B playoff with a separate prize pool for the top 4 B players (everyone plays everyone else in match play).  Playoffs are open to all, but non-members need to pay a $50 registration fee.

The next season starts on Monday May 2 at Scott’s warehouse in the bluffs, and will be the first season where we start tracking using the new handicap system in parallel to the regular points totals.

Have a great week everyone, and we’ll see you all on Sunday.  It should be a great day of pinball!

Scores are up on the PAPA site for the penultimate week of the season, and the season champ award is Adam’s yet again.  The high score trophy will also go to Adam for the last time, before it’s repurposed into a new award for the season champ under the new handicapping system that we’re rolling out next season.  Most improved could come down to the last week of the season though, with Julian and Ian both extremely close to each other in the standings. 

We’re taking next Monday off for the PAPA world championships, and there will probably be several TOPL members competing in all divisions.  Leave a comment on the post and let us know if you’re competing so we can track the standings this weekend.  Immediately following that, Adam is competing at the IFPA world championship at the PAPA facility.  Good luck to everyone competing!  Also a reminder that this is the last year we’re taking a break from regular pinball specifically for PAPA.  We left the skip week in this time to get things on track for playoffs at the end of April, and a new season starting May 2, so enjoy the time off, and this should give everyone plenty of time to plan for next year.  The last regular season week will be on April 18 at Andrew’s place, followed by playoffs on April 24th at Pete’s place. 

In the past 5 – 10 years of TOPL the season has largely be ruled with an iron fist by either JRF or AB being the only names on the Season Champ Trophy.

The TOPL Leadership recognizes that creates apathy toward regular season nights with a large majority of our players never really in the hunt for an opportunity to win a Season Champ award.

With the transition to the FSPA/PAPA League management software this opens up a whole new world of possibilities one being the creation of a new handicapping system that, with the help of Joe Schrober, we have been able to implement!

The new system will work as follows:

After players have participated in 14 total weeks they will be assigned what we are calling a lifetime %.  The lifetime % is a calculation based on every single league night a player has ever attended that is currently entered into our system.  The reason we are using a lifetime percentage rather than the current season percentage is that the season percentage can vary wildly season to season and there can be quite the swing as a percentage settles down during the season.  The lifetime % will be more steady so players can count on or expect the points they are going to receive each night.

Based on a players lifetime percentage players will now receive bonus points on a every league night based on that percentage, the break down being:

20% – 30% – 6 points

30% – 40% – 5 points

40% – 45% – 4 points

45% – 50% – 3 points

50% – 55% – 2 points

55% – 60% – 1 point

This means that potentially a player who’s current lifetime percentage is in the 20% – 30% range, in the event they were able to achieve a 16 on the night would then actually earn 22 points on that given league night.

The lifetime percentage will decay in order to represent a players current skill level.  After a player has 90 weeks (6 seasons) of attended league nights in the system, the oldest results will drop off and we will calculate the lifetime percentage based on the most current 90 league nights in the system.  We feel this will give us a good sampling with which to base the lifetime percentage on while at the same time accurately reflecting a players improvement or decline as time goes on.

The award for this new system will be exactly the same as it is for the current season.  The players name on a trophy and a “Replay” into the next season.  With that in mind the TOPL Leadership has also decided to retire the Pinball Wizard (High Score award trophy) and repurpose it for this new System.  We feel that the high score award while fun to track is not relevant from an award perspective, chances are if you winning the season you most likely are going to win high scores as well so it just represents the rich getting richer so to speak.  All the current plaques will be removed from the trophy and we will award our first Pinball Wizard plaque under this new system in the upcoming season!

With the retirement of the high score award we are also hoping this will help speed up league play since player 4 when in the lead on a machine at the end of ball 3 does not have to play if they don’t want to in order to attempt to achieve a high score on the night.

Finally this does not replace the regular Season Champ award, that will remain in place exactly the same and our submission for WPPR points during the season will be based off those standings.

We hope this shows our continued commitment to our entire membership to hopefully make the regular season more relevant to more players.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask us in person or in response to this message.

Your TOPL Leadership Team

Mike, Chris and Adam

Thanks to Kim for hosting this week!  Scores are up on the PAPA site, and it’s still not quite a walk off for the season champ total, but it’s also going to be a challenge for anyone to catch Adam at this point.  Ian and Barry are continuing to lead the most improved category. 

Just a reminder that we’re taking next week off for Easter Monday, but that is is going to be the last year we take a break for Easter Monday and PAPA (details are here).  We kept those skip weeks in this season, as well as the 15 weeks of play, because people may have already made plans that depend on these skip weeks, and also because it made the season finish up at the end of April.  This way, we should still be able to get three seasons in a year (14 weeks starting this summer), and they should each fit into a 4 month chunk of calendar. 

We’re back at Luch’s in 2 weeks-see everyone then!