As the old saying goes, while the cat’s away the mice will play 🙂 Since Chris is off this week and I was back to doing scores I thought it might be a good time to introduce everyone to where we are headed with the league in terms of upgrading our scoring system.

For as long as I have been in the league, the week to week scores and groupings have all be handled on a excel spreadsheet that has is really a work of art in and of itself, and kept working on the sheer perseverance of one member, that being Charles Blaquiere. I can’t even imagine how much more difficult it would have been to run this league without that Excel spread sheet all these years, so thanks very much Charles for your hard work up to this point.

Staring with Frolic last year TOPL started an initiative with Joe Schrober of the FSPA, to move onto a new system for scoring in the league. With the help of Joe doing all the back-end work and PAPA donating the hosting services we are very close to finally moving off onto this new piece of software.

This will open up a realm of new opportunities for us from a tracking and data perspective as all information is kept available at all times on this site, forever. One thing is to get all the historical data into the system but that is a long term project.

Keep in mind we are still working out the kinks, we only have 2 full seasons worth of data, plus the current in session season and the most improved award hasn’t been added in yet.

But everything else is there, so without further ado I’d like to introduce everyone to the Toronto Pinball League Manager, brought to us by the FPSA and PAPA!

Main page:

http://topl.league.papa.org/

This week’s results:

http://topl.league.papa.org/meetResults/2/6

The spreadsheet will get updated this week so we can publish the most improved, but for now I wanted to give everyone a glimpse into some of the stuff the leadership team has been working on in the back-end.

First and foremost before I introduce everyone to the new initiative we are going to try I want to thank Eddie for his generous donation of $300 to the League to help fund the purchase of these shirts.  Without Eddie’s donation it would not have been possible for us to be able to offer this to the membership, so please if you get a chance thank Eddie if you see him in person, attend a DRAPL league night (details here http://www.drapinballleague.com/) or send him an email expressing your gratitude.

So without further ado I would like to introduce the Toronto Pinball League Mystery Score T-Shirt Giveaway.

The concept is simple, just like a mystery score on a pinball machine, a 5 or 6 digit mystery score will be written down on a sheet of paper and sealed in an envelope before the start of league night.  The only person who will know the score will by myself (which will obviously mean I am ineligible to participate).

The player who’s last 6 or 5 digits on any machine that was played during league play that is closest to the score written down on the paper will get 1 of the TOPL Grey Colored T-Shirts for Free!

We are not going to set a schedule for when these giveaways will be happening but we will make sure that we announce when we are doing them at least 2 weeks in advance to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to attend.

So with that in mind I would like to announce that the first Mystery T-shirt giveaway will take place on Monday May 25^th at Luch’s place!

I look forward to seeing everyone there!

Adam Becker

President – Toronto Pinball League

Another record turnout for a location this week, with 33 players crowding into my basement for pinball.  It’s great to see so many people out, and despite the numbers, things still moved pretty well, with only a couple of minor malfunctions in stuck balls and a light bulb coming falling into the trough on Spider-Man and wreaking havoc with the optos in there. 

Also, just a quick reminder to everyone to make sure you sign in when you get to the location for a league night.  The sign in sheet will usually be somewhere obvious, and if you don’t see it, ask Chris, Luch, or Adam.  Making sure to sign yourself in makes things much easier for us when putting groups together, and it means we can get going much faster.  The sheet is ordered by the point total from the last time you were out, so if you have a hard time finding your name, try to remember what your total was the previous week. 

Continue reading Scores and standings-week 5 →

We had a great turnout at Nick’s this week, with 34 people showing up to play, which is great to see.  Lots of regulars, lots of new regulars, and three more new members, who were a little awestruck at Nick’s collection of games (with good reason), so welcome to Richard, Harry, and Jeff!  Hope to see you guys out for the rest of the season.  And of course, thanks again to Nick for hosting all of us and keeping everyone fed (with an assist from samosa man Kev). 

This week’s high scores went to:

Continue reading Scores and standings week 4 →

Thanks to Andrew for hosting again this week, and for sharing his games with the league.  He has some great unique titles in his lineup, and it’s always great to change things up and add new games into the rotation.  Also, welcome to Reg, who made it out to his first TOPL night this week.  Hopefully you manage to make it out again despite the drive! 

Continue reading Scores and Standings-Week 3 →

I wanted to take a moment and recognize a family fun center that has been kept running by the sheer determination of one of the founding members of the Toronto Pinball League.

InPlay now with 2 locations, one in Newmarket and one in Barrie was started by Sarah Brown, I want to say some 10 years ago now.  It is a great location that the league used to visit until we out grew the location.  My last visit, Sarah was still keeping the pinball spirit alive with Medieval Madness, Cirqus Voltaire and Monster Bash at her Newmarket location.

We wish Sarah continued success in her venture and if you are ever in need of a location for a party you should give InPlay a look.

http://www.inplayinc.ca/ 

Thanks to Kim for hosting another great TOPL week.  Many of the new people from last week made it out again this time around, so we had a solid 31 players for Kim’s large collection. 

High scores this week went to several people who weren’t Adam:

Congratulations to Mario and Glen for getting their first high scores! 

Here’s the full scores for the week, and the current standings.  Still lots of time left for things to change.

We’re taking next Monday off for Easter weekend, but we’re at Andrew’s the week after that.  Have a great long weekend, and see everyone in a couple of weeks!

Welcome to the start of another TOPL season!  First, a huge thanks to Luch for hosting this week, which is always one of the busiest weeks of the year.  We had a good number of regulars come out, as well as a couple of folks we hadn’, but what was unprecedented was the number of new players we had this week.  Usually, there are one or two new people in a week, and maybe a group of three or four, but this week we had eight new players out for their first TOPL week (although to be fair, Andrew made it to playoffs).  So welcome to Mike, Julian, Mario, Josh, Andrew, Jeff, Mandle, and Glen-it was great that you all made it out, and hopefully you had a good time.  Remember that your league fees cover you for the entire season, which runs from now until the playoffs in July (tentatively scheduled for July 19).  The only money you’re on the hook for week to week is the host fee ($10), so enjoy the season!

High scores this week went to:

Continue reading Scores and standings-Week 1 →

Thanks again to Adam and Denise for hosting everyone for the playoffs at their place this past weekend, and for keeping the food coming through the day.  It was a hard fought tournament with 20 rounds of match play, so everyone had a great day of pinball on a wide variety of really tough games.  The earlier start and time change didn’t seem to deter anyone, and we didn’t have any late arrivals who missed out on changing their clocks, so the 21 players who showed up were there for all 20 rounds.  At the end of qualifying, here’s how things stood:

Continue reading Playoff results-March 2015 →

Just to reiterate a post by Chris previously we are changing the start time of playoffs to 11 am with doors opening at 10:30.

Why this is important is because the clocks spring forward on Sunday, so make sure you keep that in mind for this Sunday!

I look forward to seeing everyone there!