K15 Open 2022 - rules document for the pinball tournament

Edit Nov 26 2022: Added details about tie-break shcedule. All tie-break matches will be played on Sunday morning.

1. A summary of the rules and the schedule

1.0 Registration and country exemptions

While registering to the tournament, each player will choose one of the three qualifying sessions for the tournament. Qualifying spots will be filled in the order of registration, maximum of 30 players per session. Tournament organizers reserve the right to either reject additional registrations per group or expand the groups in case of overbookings.

We are providing four country exemption spots for every country until the start of open registration process. Contact your IFPA country director for an exemption spot. The open registration starts on Wed 10th August 2022 at 20:00 local Finnish time (EEST, UTC+03:00) at the main page of this site https://k15.fi

1.1 A summary of the rules

There are 12 machines in the main tournament machine bank, from which six are modern Bally/Williams machines and six are modern Stern machines. Each player will be randomly assigned three WPC and three Stern machines for the player's qualification entry. Two entries per machine, both of the entries per machine count.

The point distribution per game is 105, 95, 90, 86, 82, 78, 74, 71, 68, 65, 62, 59, 56, 53, 50, 48, 46, 44, 42, 40, 38, 36, 34, 33, ... 2, 1, 0. The total score of each player in the qualification phase is the sum of the points he has gotten from all the 12 played entries. The top twenty-four (24) will proceed to the playoff rounds on Sunday.

Playoffs will be played with PAPA style 4-player groups. The qualifiers 1-8 will receive a bye. The highest seeded player of each group will have the choice of machine or position, but any machine can only be chosen once per player during the entire playoffs bracket.

Two best players per group will advance to the next playoff round. The advanced players will be seeded to the next round's bracket based on their original qualification seeding.

A Google Sheets Spreadsheet will be published here to visualize the playoff bracket and the schedule for Sunday.

In addition to the main tournament, a four-game PinGolf side tournament will be played. All players will play all four games twice in qualifications, both attempts count. All PinGolf games in qualification and in playoffs will be played with pingolf scoring on games set to 3-ball play. A target score reached with one to three balls will be a score of 1 to 3. In case of the final score being lower than the target score, a linear score limit of 80%, 60%, 40%, 20% and 0% will determine the final score of 4 to 8.

Top 16 qualifiers advance to the playoffs played on Sunday. In case of tie-breaks in qualifying the number of tied players' hole in ones will be compared, then if still tied number of scores of 2 will be compared etc. Only in the unlikely event of both players' entries being identical and the tie being meaningful, a tie-break match on a randomly drawn game will be played before the start of the playoff rounds on Sunday morning. For all PinGolf playoff rounds, the lowest seeded player in the group will start all games of the round.

Read more about rules from section 2.3.

1.2 Schedule

In playoffs all players must be available on site and ready to start playing from the announced starting time, in order to get through the competition on time, hopefully even ahead of the announced schedule. In qualifications you don't need to be present at the start of your session start time, but you have to be finished with all your entries when your qualification session time is over.

NB: The daily Flipperikellari tournaments are played in another location, you need about 25 mins (car/taxi) to 45 mins (public transportation) to get there from K15 location.

The organizer reserves the right to change the schedule. Possible changes in the schedule will be informed on the event web page and to the players on site.

Friday 25th Nov

At 12:00 K15 doors open.

At 12:01 Friday qualification session.

At 19:00 Start of Flipperikellari daily tournament. (head-to-head matchplay, machines from all eras)

At 22:00 End of the Friday qualification session. The K15 venue closes.

Saturday 26th Nov

At 10:30 K15 doors open.

At 11-16 Saturday qualification group 1 qualification time.

At 16-17 The organizers reserve a possibility to empty the location from players to get more fresh air for players at later qualification session.

At 17-22 Saturday qualification group 2 qualification time.

At 18:00 Start of Flipperikellari daily tournament. (4-player group matchplay, classics machines)

At 22:00 K15 doors will be closed.

Sunday 27th Nov

At 8:45 K15 doors open.

At 9:00 PinGolf playoff round 1 start.

At 10:30 The first round (top 24) of the Main tournament playoffs start.

At 12:00 The second round (top 16) of the Main tournament playoffs start.

At 14:00 Start of Flipperikellari daily tournament. (strikes tournament, modern machines)

At 21:00 K15 Open and PinGolf prize ceremony and closing words.

2. Detailed rules

2.1 Main tournament qualification

The players will play their qualification, consisting of twelve (12) attempts, on six (6) out of twelve (12) qualification machines randomly drawn for the player in the order and pace of their choice. Each player will play three WPC and three Stern machines. The automated online scoring system will do the random draw and distribute the randomly drawn games as evenly as possible between all the players. The players themselves must ensure that all their attempts have been played before the end of the qualification period.

Before starting a game, the player must ask the staff to confirm that a machine is available and that the game can be started. After the attempt the player must confirm that the score is written down correctly by the staff. A player is allowed to play both of the qualifying attempts consecutively without re-queuing between them. The player is not forced to play both of the attempts consecutively, though.

Player's both scores for a machine will be compared to other players' scores. The the best score will gain 105 points, and the next best will score 95, 90, 86, 82, 78, 74, 71, 68, 65, 62, 59, 56, 53, 50, 48, 46, 44, 42, 40, 38, 36, 34, 33, ... 2 and 1 points, respectively. No points are given for positions 57 and onward. The qualification result of the player is the sum of the points for all 12 attempts.

If two (or more) players are tied, a tie-break game is played only if one (or more) would proceed to the playoff round and the other(s) would not, or if one (or more) would receive a bye and the other(s) would not. If both (or all) will proceed to the playoff round, their positions will be drawn. If both (or all) will not proceed to the playoff round, they will tie.

All possible tie-break matches will be played on Sunday morning before the start of main tournament playoffs. All players in tie-break positions need to be present at 10:30 on Sunday.

The bookkeeping will be done using an in-house built scoring application and its supporting Google Sheet speadsheets. The public version will be displayed on site and on the competition web page.

The qualification live standings will be available at http://scores.k15.fi and play-off brackets at http://live.k15.fi as soon as the tournament starts.

2.2 Main tournament playoff rounds

The main tournament playoffs will be played among the top 24 players. If a player announces to drop off from playoffs or fails to appear on site on time for the first round of playoffs, the player will be replaced by the best not qualified player present. In the unlikely case of a no-show for a player receiving a bye for playoffs, this position will not be replaced by any other player. This is due to players with bye not needing to be present at the venue when the first round starts.

The playoff structure is PAPA style 4-player 3-game match with game choice for the highest seeded player, but the same game cannot be chosen more than once during the entire playoff bracket.

The highest seeded player has the choice of machine or position for all games. If the highest seeded player chooses position, the game choice goes to the next highest seeded player. In case of all players in the group choosing position and no one choosing a machine, the machine will be randomly drawn from the available ones. No one in the group spends their game choice to this randomly drawn machine.

In case of playoff tie-breaks, the higher seeded player will again have the machine or position choice. A game chosen to a tie-break match can not be a machine previously chosen by the player, or chosen in the later play-off rounds by the player.

In the unlikely situation where a player has already chosen all the available machines during the play-off rounds and tie-breaks, all the machines will again be availble for choosing for that player.

Qualifiers 1-8 receive a bye and start their matches on the second round. Qualifiers 9-24 start on the first round.

The playoff games are started as soon as the previous round has been finished. All players must be available on site and ready to start playing, in order to get through the competition on time.

2.3 PinGolf side tournament

A player registered to the main tournament is eligible to participate in PinGolf side tournament during the player's qualification session. PinGolf is a four-game tournament, where the player tries to reach the target score of every game with least amount of balls used. All four games will be played twice in the qualifications and both of the attempts on every game will be counted towards the final qualifying score of the player.

PinGolf games are set to 3-ball play with tournament mode on and extra balls off. If a player doesn't reach the target score during the player's 3-ball game, the final score depends on the percentage of the target score reached: A score less than 20% of the target score is 8, a score less than 40% is 7, a score less than 60% is 6, a score less than 80% is 5 and the score less than 100% is 4. Otherwise the score will be the ball number (1-3) where the target score was reached. The player's total PinGolf qualifying score will be the sum of the eight attemps (from 8 to 64 points).

16 best PinGolf qualifiers will advance to the PinGolf playoff rounds played on Sunday starting at 9:00. The plafyoff rounds will be played on the same four games played in qualifications.

The PinGolf playoffs will be played in 4-player groups on three machines. The games will be assigned numbers 1-4 and for the first round the highest seeded player's group will be randomly assigned a starting game n out of the four games. The second highest seeded player's group will then start on the game n+1, third highest seeded player's group starts on game n+2 etc. All groups move from game n to game n+1 (and if on game 4, move to game 1) as soon as the previous group has finished their match.

For the second round of PinGolf playoff, a starting game for the highest seeded player's group will be randomly drawn. The second highest seeded player's group will start on game n+2. In the finals, again the starting game will be randomly assigned and the group then moves to the next game.

In case of PinGolf playoff tiebreak, a tiebreak match on the fourth game in the lineup will be played. If the score is still tied after the first tiebreak game, next tiebreak game will be randomly drawn from all of the pingolf bank machines. If still tied, another tiebreak machine will be drawn from the three remaining games. After that the draw is from the two remaining games etc.

For all PinGolf playoff rounds, the lowest seeded player in the group will start all games of the round and the highest seeded player will be player 4 for all games.

PinGolf tie-break rules

The nature of PinGolf tournament scoring makes it probable that some tied positions will occur in qualifications and in playoffs. The following rules will settle most of the likely tie-break scenarios.

The cut-line tie rules for qualifications

  • The player with more hole in ones is the better one. If tied after this, compare the number of 2's, then number of 3's etc. If both of the players have identical qualifications score sheet, a tie-break game on randomly drawn machine will be played.

All possible tie-break matches for PinGolf will be played on Sunday morning before the start of PinGolf playoffs. All players in tie-break positions need to be present at 09:00 on Sunday.

The tie-break rules for playoffs

  • If two or more players are tied after the three playoff round games, the fouth game will be the tiebreak machine chosen.
  • If there is still a tie, another tiebreak machine will be drawn out of all the four machines.
  • If there is still a tie, another tiebreak machine will be drawn out of the remaining three machines.
  • If there is still a tie, another tiebreak machine will be drawn out of the remaining two machines.
  • If there is still a tie, another tiebreak machine will be played with the fourth machined.
  • If there is still a tie, another tiebreak machine will be drawn out of all the four machines.
  • Etc...

3. The staff

The organisers will provide a sufficient number of staff for the competition. The staff is allowed to participate the competition as well, but may not call judgement regarding their own play.

Some additional qualifying spots outside the three 30 players groups may be assigned for the staff and scorekeepers. These players may play their qualification entries in available slots during all the three sessions. No scorekeeper of staff may submit their own scores to the tournament score database.

4. General rules

  • The PAPA/IFPA Tournament Rules document will be the baseline for all the rulings.
  • Competition machines are set on three balls and tournament modes. Extra balls have been disabled.
  • If a machine awards an extra ball, it can be played. This must be always informed to the staff, though.
  • Competition machines are for competition play only. Practicing and free play is forbidden.
  • If a machine breaks down to unrepairable state during the qualification phase and less than 30% of the players assigned to the machine have played it, the machine will be replaced by another one. If the machine breaks down to unrepairable state and at least 30% of the players assigned to the machine have already played it, the remaining players for the machine will be reassigned to another machines as evenly as possible.
  • If a machine breaks down to unrepairable state during the playoffs phase, the machine will be removed from the lineup and won't be replaced by another machine.

Issues outside this document will be dealt with by the staff. They will do their best to call judgement as fairly as possible.