Card Ticket Formats

[Wayne J]

As promised here are my thoughts regarding how to face a card based tournament, whether that's a 3 or 5 card tournament.

I'll say at the start of this, that this isn't some magic formula to guarantee you qualifying for the finals every time, you still need to actually be able to play pinball. However, it could get you a few extra points as well as reducing the amount of entries you take.

Preparation pre tournament

Most tournaments post the entrants and the games beforehand, so it is good to do some prep and set some expectations/goals of what you want to achieve. That may be finish top half, make the finals, get a bye etc. Be realistic so as not to get frustrated on the day/ over the weekend. If all the top players in the world are in attendance, and you've only just started playing you're unlikely to be aiming for a double bye through qualifying.

Take a look at what games are going to be used, and group them.

1. Games you're completely familiar with all of the rules.
2. Games you know roughly how to play, or at least have one strategy.
3. Games you've got a rough knowledge of.
4. Games you've never played.

Group 1
Don't be complacent just because you think you know how to play the games. There may have been some changes from default such as MB settings, posts removed, thicker posts, etc. meaning your normal strategy won't work as well. Don't spend hours practicing at home on a game that's going to be included - it will have a different feel whether that's angle, cleanliness, different rubbers, etc. and will play differently. So much so that you may find it hard to readjust from your muscle memory of playing at home at it be detrimental to your games.
Group 2
Maybe look in a bit further details of a second strategy, as if your first strategy doesn't work you need a viable alternative. Think Move Your Car in CFtBL or Creature all day on MB if either of the feeds aren't repeatable.
Group 3
Brush up on the details to become more familiar with the rules.

Group 4
I would say avoid completely. You can't learn hoe to play a game from tutorials or PinTips etc. You want to be able to make a shot without having to think about where that shot is. You want to know where the feeds come back without having to think about it. If you MUST play the game don't use it on a live card and find one simple strategy and repeat, that may be start a MB or hit the spinner.

If you've got a long journey try and get to a hotel close by the night before. It's going to be a long day, you don't want to be shattered halfway through the day.

 

[Wayne J]

There's no need to be the first person to get your ticket in (although it's always nice to be the first and have a perfect card sitting top of the leaderboard because no one else has submitted their cards yet)

Take your time and look at what's going on. Have any of the games changed? Have any been removed? What games are people gravitating towards, or steering clear of.

Play the games you are most familiar with, or think will be your best games FIRST. You'll be fresh, relaxed and not have the pressure of trying to beat any other scores yet. Don't worry about what scores other people are getting or doing - it's way too early for that.
Play a couple of tickets then take a step back and have a break. You can use this time to take a look at how others are doing or what the scores are like on all of the games.
Using the recent UK Open as an example, it was clear from the scores that lots of people were heading towards Monster Bash. It's familiar with almost everyone and we all know what to do. However despite the huge numbers of people playing it there weren't many great scores - in fact there were a lot under 3 mil from some of the top players - let alone those that were voided. This would suggest that the game was set up brutal, or the scoop was firing it near to STDM, the feeds from orbits were going in to the slings, whatever. What it does say is that the game wasn't playing easy. Based on that I would avoid that game altogether, or if I felt I had to play it it would be the first game on my card.
Speak to other people there, ask them how they're doing, get an idea of how all of the games are playing. Ask them for tips. There are very few of the top players who won't give you advice, they're confident enough that they're going to beat you and like sharing their knowledge.

 

[Wayne J]

Mid Qualifying

About halfway through qualifying is the time to start looking at your position and others around you.
Using the UK Open as an example. 40 made it through to the finals, so if you were to get the 40th highest score on each of your 5 machines you should be very close to qualifying. That equates to 5 x 153 pts = 765pts. That would have put you 39th with 9 points safety margin.
That's much more beneficial than looking at the GC scores, as unless you're Zac, you're not going to qualify with 5 perfect scores.

Let's assume we're 3/4 of the way through qualifying. You need to be aiming for the 30th best score to allow for scores bleeding down to 40th.

Now is the time to start looking at scores on games to see what could give you the best chance, and also make some educated assumptions about the way things are going.
I've already discussed MB having huge volatility in scores by the top players, there will likely be a few others, usually Flash Gordon! looking briefly at the MB scores. At the top I would say that Josh was the only person who got to Monsters of Rock, Yuen, Johnny and Olivier the 3 that got to Monster Bash. So if you are 'only' aiming for a top 40 score starting Frank MB with maybe another mode running could well be enough for a top 10 score. I've seen other MB scores where there may be 20 people getting to MoR, therefore you're pretty much tied in to going for the same strategy.
Other games have a more linear scoring system, without the big payoff of getting to a high scoring mode.

Looking at Alien Star - Zach has 3 scores submitted and Craig has 4. It's clear they're both very comfortable and confident with the game and they are putting it on their best ticket (rather than just playing it for experience). So the question then becomes are they going to play it any more? If they have qualified in a high position maybe not and you wouldn't expect them to play it again, however if they haven't yet qualified where they want to the likelihood is that they are going to play it again AND get a good score meaning you need a great score as well to reach your target of 40th.
The same can be seen with Danielle on Avatar, Metallica, Shadow and Twilight. So whether he is going to be playing them again is also under consideration.

It's also worth checking out the scores of those people who you believe to be around your skill level, and see what they're scoring on games to see if your target score is actually achievable by you.

It's also worth noting that the games when the tournament first started would have been freshly cleaned (hopefully!) tested and playing as fast as they ever would be all weekend. Conversely the flipper coils and eject coils may have started to overheat (unless you've attached flipper cooling units )and you may no longer be able to make shots as easily as earlier. All of these things need taking in to consideration to eke out every last point.

Based on the scores as they stand my choice of games (and target score for 40th) would be:

Flash Gordon (450k), Cheetah (1mil), AIQ (80mil), John Wick (25mil) & I500 (330mil). With PF, TNA, TZ & FH as backups if original choices didn't go to plan.

Obviously if you score more than your target of 40th on any machines, that gives you some leeway on other games to not do as well.

 

[Wayne J]

Final stages

As qualifying draws to a close you should have a much clearer understanding of your standing and possibilities.

First thing to note is, be realistic with your target. It's unlikely your scores are going to change significantly from what you have previously posted and you're suddenly going to shoot to the top of the leaderboard.
Likewise if you've played the same machine 5 times, and had 4 average scores and one mega high score, don't go chasing that high score, as you're much more likely to get the average scores you've been getting.

Assuming you don't think you can actually beat the card you have submitted, what you need to do now is look at those players near to you and evaluate if you can take points off them by beating their scores on their qualifying card, as well as protecting yourself from those just below you.

At the close of the qualifying for the main comp at the UK Open Matt was in the last qualifying spot in 40th, 4 pts clear of 41st yet 12pts below 39th. Not really much chance of moving positions. Instead we'll look at the battle for the 7th, 8th & 9th - which could get you an additional bye.

7th Danielle - 893pts - TZ 1st, Met 2nd, TWD 7th, AV 15th & I500 59th
8th Yuen - 891pts - MB 2nd, JP 5th, AV 16th , AIQ 23rd & Lab 32nd
9th Roy - 891pts - I500 8th, AS 9th, Bay 9th, Gen 21st & Shad 27th

Despite being in the lead Danielle is actually the person most vulnerable due to his relatively poor standing in 59th place on I500, although he needs both players to pass him to lose out on the bye.

If I was Yuen, I would be playing I500 to potentially take points off both his competitors (but most likely Danielle), Shadow and Genesis. If those first 3 games beat any one of the other scores posted I would play any random 2 games not on anybody's ticket just to submit the card. If however all 3 games were good games better than the 3 worst games on his current card, I would be playing MB & JP again. This is because I am already familiar with those games and put up good scores, but more importantly IF I beat the previous scores posted it wouldn't negatively effect my standing because the new card would replace it anyway.

For Danielle, I would recommend playing AIQ, LAB, Gen & Shad to damage his closest opponents cards.

With Danielle and Yuen being so close to each other on Avatar, I wouldn't recommend playing it for either of them as a better score will damage both of their scores only benefitting Roy.

For Roy, I500 is a given to take a point of Danielle, but ideally he needs to finish just below his score in 8th place so as not to damage his existing card. AV is on both his rivals cards so it's a given to play that, as well as choosing AIQ & Lab, plus another.

You could even encourage other players to play the games which would benefit you by damaging your closest rivals. This is definitely a done thing already.

Although this was focussing on just those 3 vying for a bye - the same thing can be applied to anywhere in the standings if you want to gain a few additional places.

 

[Wayne J]

Voiding cards

Voiding a ticket is perhaps the most misunderstood and misused factor of card qualifying.

I would suggest the reason people void a ticket is either to
a) save time and move on to another ticket,
b) they think they have poor scores across the board or have a better qualifying ticket or
c) they have 1 great game on the ticket and they don't want to have to compete against that later on a different ticket.

Let's take them in order.

a) Yes if you void a ticket after just one game because you think you've had a shocker. It will save time and get you back on to another ticket. However, I have seen multiple times where someone voids a ticket and goes straight back to the same game and gets an equally poor score because they've put additional pressure on themselves to beat the poor score they just achieved. I would say it does have it's merits near the end of qualifying when time is running short but it's more beneficial in the long run to play out a full ticket and get some experience on other games (you can always void it later *see b). It can also work out very costly doing this.

b) If you have got to the end of your 3 or 5 games on the ticket and you don't think that it will beat an existing card you have in, or will be good enough to qualify a lot of people void it. Maybe even because you're embarrassed about the scores and don't want others to see? However this is ALWAYS a bad idea. What you think may be just a mediocre or poor score in the grand scheme of things can have a big impact.

Let's go to the UK Pinball Republic standings for an example.
Getting scores of
12.4 mil on Tron and getting just 82pts for 111th, 291mil on DM -79pts for 114th, 8.2 mil on IM -99pts for 94th, 90 mil on FT -104pts for 89th & 238k on Meteor - 85pts for 108th
Would give you a total of just 449pts leaving you placed 103rd in the overall standings BUT those scores would have taken points of 7 different people who qualified who had them as the worst game on their qualifying ticket. So although it was of no direct positive use to you, it was of detriment to others.
This is more relevant on a smaller bank of games where the scoring has a bonus for 1st and 2nd (effectively gaining an extra 5 pts for each position). There aren't many cards which don't have at least 1 poor result on them which can bleed points. (Zach and Timber both had a game with scores outside the top 30, yet still qualified 2nd and 3rd).

c) This is perhaps the best use of the void, so you don't have to compete against your own scores on a future, or existing ticket. If you have 2 games which are much better than you'd normally expect to get, then have 3 really poor games. It's unlikely that that ticket will be good enough to qualify. However if you submit it anyway, to show off your scores or for whatever reason, it means that you could be potentially taking points off yourself unless you beat your extraordinary scores.
As an example Zach qualified in 1st place in the main with 2 first places and 3 second places, but 2 of those 2nd places were actually beaten by other scores of his effectively costing him 10 pts. Clearly in this instance it didn't make any difference as he was so far ahead of everybody else, but for the rest of us it can make a significant difference in your chances of getting as many points as possible.

There is actually an option of 'Finishing a ticket' early without voiding it. It will actually submit any of 1-4 games to the scores without having to play them all through. I've never seen a competitor do it in competition yet (in fact I only found out while score keeping and pressed the wrong button), but that could also have an important role to play near the end of the qualifying when you are trying to sabotage other players scores.

 

[Wayne J]

Clearly, none of the above is set in stone, a lot is based on statistical analysis (which I studied at Uni, and use every day at work) which holds true despite sometimes being counterintuitive. The rest is based on my own personal experience of competing for more than a decade in similar formats.

I'd be interested to hear anybody else's thoughts, or if they have found something that works best for them - I know there are a number of others who collect the data from tournaments to analyse themselves.

 

[Taxiturn]

Thank you, really helpful. The part of the voiding strategy I found myself struggling with was around the “exceptional game” cards. I realised that I would probably be taking a point off “future me” if I continued to play that machine, but also figured that if that score was very good then I would also be taking a point off almost everybody else choosing that machine. Case in point being my JP2 275m score on an otherwise pretty bad card:



By your rules this should have 100% been voided - but at that point in the tournament I had no real idea who my nearby rivals were as I was still moving up. I tended to err on the side of “submit”. Total head scratcher at the time!

 

[Nickoss II]

Thanks Wayne, appreciate the detailed thoughts

There is actually an option of 'Finishing a ticket' early without voiding it. It will actually submit any of 1-4 games to the scores without having to play them all through. I've never seen a competitor do it in competition yet.

in last year's Open there was one European player who spent about the last hour and a half of qualifying playing one game on a machine (presumably to knock down someone around him), finishing the ticket to save the score, and immediately requeueing the same machine to repeat the process! Seems an expensive way to move up not very many places!
A few others have asked to finish & submit an incomplete 'spoiler' ticket at the end of quali when there wasn't enough time to get the last games of the ticket in to complete it normally.

 

[roadshow16]

Final stages

As qualifying draws to a close you should have a much clearer understanding of your standing and possibilities.

First thing to note is, be realistic with your target. It's unlikely your scores are going to change significantly from what you have previously posted and you're suddenly going to shoot to the top of the leaderboard.
Likewise if you've played the same machine 5 times, and had 4 average scores and one mega high score, don't go chasing that high score, as you're much more likely to get the average scores you've been getting.

Assuming you don't think you can actually beat the card you have submitted, what you need to do now is look at those players near to you and evaluate if you can take points off them by beating their scores on their qualifying card, as well as protecting yourself from those just below you.

At the close of the qualifying for the main comp at the UK Open Matt was in the last qualifying spot in 40th, 4 pts clear of 41st yet 12pts below 39th. Not really much chance of moving positions. Instead we'll look at the battle for the 7th, 8th & 9th - which could get you an additional bye.

7th Danielle - 893pts - TZ 1st, Met 2nd, TWD 7th, AV 15th & I500 59th
8th Yuen - 891pts - MB 2nd, JP 5th, AV 16th , AIQ 23rd & Lab 32nd
9th Roy - 891pts - I500 8th, AS 9th, Bay 9th, Gen 21st & Shad 27th

Despite being in the lead Danielle is actually the person most vulnerable due to his relatively poor standing in 59th place on I500, although he needs both players to pass him to lose out on the bye.

If I was Yuen, I would be playing I500 to potentially take points off both his competitors (but most likely Danielle), Shadow and Genesis. If those first 3 games beat any one of the other scores posted I would play any random 2 games not on anybody's ticket just to submit the card. If however all 3 games were good games better than the 3 worst games on his current card, I would be playing MB & JP again. This is because I am already familiar with those games and put up good scores, but more importantly IF I beat the previous scores posted it wouldn't negatively effect my standing because the new card would replace it anyway.

For Danielle, I would recommend playing AIQ, LAB, Gen & Shad to damage his closest opponents cards.

With Danielle and Yuen being so close to each other on Avatar, I wouldn't recommend playing it for either of them as a better score will damage both of their scores only benefitting Roy.

For Roy, I500 is a given to take a point of Danielle, but ideally he needs to finish just below his score in 8th place so as not to damage his existing card. AV is on both his rivals cards so it's a given to play that, as well as choosing AIQ & Lab, plus another.

You could even encourage other players to play the games which would benefit you by damaging your closest rivals. This is definitely a done thing already.

Although this was focussing on just those 3 vying for a bye - the same thing can be applied to anywhere in the standings if you want to gain a few additional places.

The bye positions for UK Open were actually top 4 for 2 byes and top 16 for a single bye, so no real fighting was happening between the players you talked about here.

However, pretty much exactly what you were talking about was happening between 6 of us for the single bye and that 16th spot. Myself and Andy teamed up and were trying to knock down Raymond, Keri and Luukas by playing their weakest games on their tickets. Then Los joined the fold by putting in a late ticket, right around the same spot, between 856 and 849 points and it became a 6 way battle, with only 4 of us getting the bye. Everyone was putting in tickets as spoilers, playing each others games to try and knock each other down.

In the end my weaker games of AiQ and TWD were pummeled by a number of tickets from the guys and I ended up in a tie with Luukas for that 16th spot and we had to play off for the bye at gone midnight. It was pretty exciting stuff . He played better than me on the playoff game of TWD and got the bye, which meant I was top seed and picking games in the first round at 7.30am, fun stuff.

Raymond had exactly what you described going on, on the last ticket of the day. He started playing to knock people down, but got on a flyer and ended up turning it into an attempt at a better ticket than his qualifying ticket. He had a better TWD and AIQ than mine on that ticket, but then screwed it up on the last game meaning he fell short of his qualifying ticket by 2 points. In the end he decided to void that ticket because entering it would have knocked his best card down a spot. Much to my joy and Luukas' dismay, because of course had he entered it, Luukas would have been straight through without a playoff.

All fun and games

 

[Wayne J]

Thanks Craig, after I'd written it I realised that the byes were in a different place, but as it was hypothetical I let it run.

Your story though does prove the principle.

 

[Wayne J]

The same happened to me at last year's Open.
I was playing out my last ticket right at the end of qualifying, and hadn't realized how good a ticket I was having. Not knowing what to play next Nick wanted me to JP to take points of the last person in qualifying and bump him up.
Unfortunately for Nick, and luckily for me, I had a stormer of a game and qualified myself with the last game of the day. Knocking both Nick and the other person out.