June 2020 featured the launch of the new IFPA Challenge Rankings (ICR) system.

The first month of ICR play saw 326 players participate in nearly 4000 matches during June!

Travis Hockemeyer from Fort Wayne, Indiana finished the month ranked #1.

A reminder that the top 64 ranked players as of 1/1/21 will qualify for the inaugural ICR Championship.

For full details on the ICR, please click HERE.

To join our IFPA ICR Discord click HERE and connect with other players to organize IFPA Challenge Matches.

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American Pinball is proud to present the first officially licensed HOT WHEELS™ pinball machine.

The exciting and fast-paced world of HOT WHEELS ™ comes to life under glass, featuring a dazzling array of gameplay objectives that will keep players of all ages racing back to play again and again.

There’s Car Collecting and Races. Track Building and Crashes.
Epic Challenges, Creature Battles and much, much more !

Players will find themselves propelled into the middle of HOT WHEELS ™ CITY, a hit YouTube series entertaining millions of viewers with all the adventure and excitement taking place in the teeming metropolis. Besides some high-powered driving and racing, there are ever-present challenges posed by the villainous Draven and his army of relentless Creatures.

American Pinball captures all of the outrageous antics, thrills and spills with attention-grabbing footage from the series as HOT WHEELS™ drives a total pinball experience unlike any other.

HOT WHEELS™ puts players into the driver’s seat to become the Ultimate HOT WHEELS™ Legend.

• Players accelerate to take the checkered flag and earn VICTORY LAP MULTIBALL.
• There’s HOT WHEELS™ cars to collect for heart-thumping CAR CHAOS MULTIBALL and Super Ultimate Garage™
• Players need to save the day when they take on and defeat Draven and the Creatures of HOT WHEELS™ CITY
• Players will gear up to score with EPIC RAMPS, EPIC LOOPS, EPIC CARS and EPIC POPS
• TRACK MULTIBALL keeps the action in high speed around every turn and loop
• Revving the tachometer delivers increased scoring and the ultimate REDLINE MANIA
• Players will be challenged to Collect Classic HOT WHEELS™ HERO CARS in order to become a HOT WHEELS™ Legend

To celebrate the launch of the IFPA Challenge Rankings (ICR), Stern Pinball is going to include 5 winners this week to become eligible for the Stern Rewards Program.

We had 88 players that had won at least one IFPA Challenge Match before the June 7th deadline. We selected 5 of those winners at random for inclusion in the program:

Adam Lefkoff
Andrew Goren
Tom Graf
Chad Hobbs
Paige Casselman

Detailed rules for the $tern Rewards Program, including an updated list of qualifiers, and updated list of rewards available can be found HERE.

For full details on the ICR, please click HERE.

To join our IFPA ICR Discord click HERE and connect with other players to organize IFPA Challenge Matches.

Statement from IFPA President Josh Sharpe:

The IFPA stands together with the Black Lives Matter movement. 

Our organization was created to promote the enjoyment of pinball throughout the world, and we cannot ignore the responsibility this platform now gives us to speak out against racism. We know that players have experienced racist comments and discriminatory treatment at IFPA-sanctioned events. We want to be clear: it is unacceptable and we will not tolerate it. People have been hurt by these comments and actions, and that is not ok. We will not allow the hurt to continue through events that our organization sanctions. Black Lives Matter. 

We are accelerating our work on initiatives to support organizers and players, with a focus on intentionally shaping a play environment where racism and other forms of discrimination are not tolerated. That includes resources for tournament and league organizers on how to deal with these issues and how to proactively shape a more inclusive community. Our goal is to make that available on the IFPA website in the coming weeks and to continue to add to it as an ongoing project. While we are creating and compiling these resources, we welcome anyone’s thoughts on policies and resources that would be beneficial for competitive pinball. Please reach out and share your insights and recommendations to help support this work.

Most importantly, please contact us if you experience or witness any form of racism at an IFPA-sanctioned event. The global growth of the hobby brings challenges around awareness and accountability that we need players and organizers to help us address. We need all players to be vigilant and hold one another–and us–accountable so that we are all better equipped to address discrimination at pinball events. This is the only way we can move forward from conversation to meaningful concrete actions for change.

Statement from the IFPA Women’s Advisory Board:

Black lives matter.

The Women’s Advisory Board was formed in part to bring a more diverse set of perspectives into the IFPA. It is an extension of the anti-sexism work that existed long before the Women’s Board was conceived. While women are more visible and a larger share of participants in competitive pinball events now than ever before, this community remains overwhelmingly white. Black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) are significantly underrepresented.

It is not enough to be “not racist” or “not sexist.” Anti-racism needs to be as much a part of the conversation as anti-sexism. Some tournament directors, organizers, and players are already doing the work of anti-racism within pinball. It’s time for the IFPA to join them. Being aware of and reacting in the moment to racism and sexism and other forms of discrimination is part of that work, but another part is being proactive.

We recognize that the work necessary to dismantle racism and sexism is ongoing. We are currently prioritizing making resources available, but we plan to expand and evolve them, as well as our anti-racist and anti-sexist initiatives, on an ongoing basis.

To that end, work has already started on the following initiatives:

1. In October 2019, we revised the PAPA/IFPA Complete Competition Rules to specifically prohibit offensive comments and actions related to gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. We commit to enforcing these rules as written, up to and including banning players for egregious conduct, and we unequivocally support event organizers in enforcing these rules as well.
   1. We encourage event organizers to modify our rules for their own use under the Creative Commons license. Please cite PAPA.org within your rulesheet in order to comply with this license.
   2. Organizers of IFPA-sanctioned events should strive to create an environment where players feel welcomed as well as supported in reporting any unwanted or inappropriate behavior.
2. We are creating additional resources to support event organizers in all aspects of running IFPA-sanctioned events, from calendar and results submission and format selections to how to create codes of conduct and restorative processes to deal with issues of personal conduct within local communities.
3. We are working with the Open Pinball Database (OPDB) to provide a resource relating to machine art. This involves compiling an easily identifiable list of machines with explicitly racist and/or sexist artwork that players and organizers may have questions about. We plan to create reference material that explains which aspects of the artwork are problematic, places them within historical context, and identifies concrete ways to make a difference regarding the issues depicted. Leveraging these resources, event organizers can avoid including offensive art in their line-ups or call attention to the art in order to initiate deeper engagement with issues of representation, racism, and sexism in our hobby’s history.

We welcome feedback and assistance from our community in creating and expanding these resources. While the focus of our organization is pinball, our commitment doesn’t stop there. We hope that you join us in supporting BIPOC in your local communities and commit to doing the work to dismantle racism and sexism more broadly. All of us must be each other’s allies. Intersectionality and collective liberation are the only path forward.

As some of you may already know, Steve has begun the fight of his life against an aggressive cancer. As a resource for Steve, I wanted to use this platform as a place for people to share their stories on how Steve has impacted their lives, but just as important how competitive pinball has impacted your lives. Without Steve Epstein, competitive pinball wouldn’t be “a thing”.

It’s easy for me to point to my dad meeting my mom as the most important relationship that formed in my lifetime. That relationship gave me life. Right behind that would be the importance of my dad and Steve meeting all those years ago. That relationship gave my life meaning.

The bond they formed through their common love of pinball lead to the idea that it could be viewed as a legitimate form of competition. The impact that idea had on my life is immeasurable. I wake up every day thinking about what I can do to help spread that love of competitive pinball to as many people as I can reach. That passion is directly linked to how Steve approached his daily relationship with competitive pinball from the Broadway Arcade days, to the creation of PAPA, to the creation of IFPA. This continued into 2020 with Steve recently joining the Project Pinball Charity team.

I can remember sitting with my dad and Steve at dinner back at Pinball Expo 2005. We talked about the potential re-launch of the IFPA (which ended up happening a few months after that dinner conversation). We talked about the idea of being able to grow this player base of 500 players to over 1000 players as one of our biggest goals, with the WPPR system being the catalyst to motivate that growth. As I sit here 14 years later, looking at the number of 78,870 ranked players in our system, it’s clear to me that the legacy of what my dad and Steve set out to do all those years ago will continue to live on for generations to come.

My thoughts and prayers to Steve, Sondy, Dale, Erica and the rest of the Epstein family as they begin this fight. The Sharpe family wouldn’t be what it is today without all of you.

For anyone that has similar stories to share, we welcome that through our website comments. We will be sharing this directly with Steve as he begins his fight.

The IFPA Challenge Rankings launched yesterday, with 22 unique players competing in 53 official IFPA Challenge Matches.

The first published standings of the ICR is available HERE.

A reminder that the IFPA will be looking at any eligible player that wins an official IFPA Challenge Match between now and June 7th at 8pm CST. We will select 5 of those winners at random for inclusion in the Stern Rewards Program.

For full details on the ICR, please click HERE.

To join our IFPA ICR Discord click HERE and connect with other players to organize IFPA Challenge Matches.

To celebrate the launch of the IFPA Challenge Rankings (ICR), Stern Pinball is going to include 5 winners this week to become eligible for the Stern Rewards Program.

The IFPA will be looking at any eligible player that wins an official IFPA Challenge Match between now and June 7th at 8pm CST. We will select 5 of those winners at random for inclusion in the program.

Detailed rules for the $tern Rewards Program, including an updated list of qualifiers, and updated list of rewards available can be found HERE.

For full details on the ICR, please click HERE.

To join our IFPA ICR Discord click HERE and connect with other players to organize IFPA Challenge Matches.

In order to provide a competitive alternative while we aren’t sanctioning events for WPPR points, the IFPA is proud to announce the implementation of the IFPA Challenge Rankings (ICR) for all players. In partnership with MatchPlay.Events, the ICR will be based on the results of official IFPA Challenge Matches held between any two players around the world. Through the results of these official IFPA Challenge Matches, we will be calculating a player’s ranking within the ICR.

In conjunction with the launch of the ICR system, we’re also announcing the inaugural IFPA Challenge Rankings Championship. The top 64 eligible players in the ICR as of January 1, 2021, will advance to the Championship Finals. The IFPA will be funding the ICR Championship prize pool with $1 for every player ranked in the ICR up to $1000.

For full details on the ICR, please click HERE.

To join our IFPA ICR Discord click HERE and connect with other players to organize IFPA Challenge Matches.

Looking forward to kicking this off on June 1st! Best of luck to anyone participating. Any questions don’t hesitate to reach out to us HERE.

The IFPA Board of Directors continues to monitor the impacts of COVID-19 as we consider our path forward. We have received questions from the pinball community about the ongoing suspension of IFPA-sanctioned tournaments and leagues and what criteria we will use to determine when to end our suspension. While we do not plan to lift the suspension in the immediate future, we want to share some of our criteria for making this decision as well as offer some alternative avenues to encourage the continued enjoyment of competitive pinball.

We wish we were able to sanction events right now. Not only does our organization depend on competitive pinball in order to exist, pinball is a source of joy and community for each of us, and we are impacted by the absence of tournaments and leagues on both an organizational and a personal level. Given the close quarters and high-contact nature of pinball events, we recognize the heightened level of risk that they carry, and we are not comfortable incentivizing gathering in groups, regardless of size, to play pinball during a highly contagious pandemic.

Additionally, the IFPA is a global organization. While some regions are reopening or were not as severely impacted by the virus, we want to ensure that our plans to restart sanctioning are fair to all players. We rely on the expertise and guidance of our IFPA Country Directors and State Representatives to understand the situation on a regional basis, and we are listening to their input regarding whether they feel that tournaments and leagues are possible and prudent based on the specific realities of their communities. As of May 19th, our Country Directors and State Representatives are unanimous in their opinion that it is not safe to re-open IFPA sanctioning at this time. We will continue to consult them as the situation develops. All IFPA staff, country directors, and state representatives are volunteers, so please be respectful in offering your feedback as we navigate the re-opening process.

While we are honored that our work is a motivating factor in many players’ competitive pinball journeys, the IFPA does not control pinball tournaments and leagues outside of the sanctioning and ranking systems that we offer. If restrictions are eased in your area, you are welcome to gather for a pinball event within the guidelines of your local health authority. These events will not be worth WPPR points, but they can be for money, prizes, and/or glory. We appreciate the various ways the competitive community has innovated during our sanctioning hiatus, including Dead Flip’s virtual invitationals and Laura Fraley’s Quarantopia selfie league.

The IFPA is currently working on a campaign to reintroduce IFPA Challenge Matches as activity we will approve during this period where we are not sanctioning tournament and league play. We will share more about this initiative shortly, as we are very excited to start this on June 1st.

The IFPA will continue to monitor the situation closely and communicate with our Country Directors and State Reps to determine when it will be appropriate to restart our sanctioning process. Stay tuned for additional details in the coming months, and stay safe!