As the new year approaches, I look forward to our pinball leagues and monthly tournaments down at Main Street Amusements. Our league has really become like a little family to me in Lafayette and I appreciate all of our nights down there together competing and having fun. My emphasis is on fun and good times and I hope everyone else has them as well. I would greatly appreciate feedback and input from you guys and gals, the other members of our league, as we head into the next season in regards to anything you would like to see changed to help make the league and monthly tournaments more enjoyable.

The big change for next year is the IFPA (the group who we submit results to, in charge of rankings) is requiring a $1 fee, per player, per event, when submitting results starting in January. Because of this new fee, I have looked at ways to increase our point earnings for events so we are literally getting more bang for our buck. Here is an analysis by former league member, Phil Grimaldi, on the actual impact of the $1 fee.

For league everything will remain mostly the same, except now our finals will be split into divisions (to be determined by survey results and feedback).

For our monthly tournaments, I have have found a way thanks to David Yopp, a tournament director from Tennessee, to increase our points, participation, and hopefully fun. Instead of playing a 3-strikes format where some players are done within 3 games, we will now have a time-based qualifying where players play head to head just like we would normally do, at the end of the time (to be determined by survey results and feedback), players are grouped into divisions and have a finals. This allows everyone to participate for the full evening.

Please if there is every anything bothering anyone about our league or our tournaments feel free to reach out and share your concerns. I have made a survey below of questions that I would like input on for the next season as well as our tournaments for 2018. There is also a blank area for anything you would like to write about at the end. The survey is completely anonymous. I hope to hear from a lot of you about things you would like to see. Thank you as always for playing in our leagues, and thank you to Dan for providing us such a great place to play.