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SUMMARY
The Indianapolis Pinball Championship Series (ICS) is a recurring seasonal tournament series with the intent to crown an Indianapolis-area pinball champion at each season’s culmination. Each individual event in the season will be IFPA-sanctioned, as well as having an associated ICS seasonal point total that aggregates through the course of the ICS yearly season. The calendar will run from February to October, broken up into 3 month segments. An ensuing tournament will follow each segment with a cash pot accumulated from the segment’s events, paid out to the event’s top finishers. Segment tournament participants will include the top-16 ranked players in the respective segment. Overall point totals will be tracked across the season, and the player with the most points at season’s end will be crowned the ICS Champion and given the ICS trophy for keeping until the next champion is crowned. During the offseason, an invitational Champion’s Cup tournament will be held only including players that won an event from the season prior.
STANDINGS AND QUALIFYING
Points are accrued at weekly events, and as it is expected that not every participant will be able to attend every event every week of the season, the 24 best finishes (of 36 total events) will be counted in each player’s standings at year end. For each segment tournament, the top 8 finishes will be used in seeding (out of 12 possible events).
In the event that there are less than 36 events in a season then the number of events considered will be reduced by one for every three cancelled events (i.e. if only 34 events occur, the top 23 finishes will be used) to a minimum of 18 out of 24 events on the year. For the affected 3-month segment, the number of events used will only be affected if more than one event is cancelled, at which point the number of events used in seeding will then decrease by one with each event cancelled after the first, not to be less than 6 events within the 3-month segment. The only exception is if a recurring monthly event were to be cancelled indefinitely, the event would drop off entirely and the max best finish used amount would be reduced to 18 on the year/6 per affected segment.
Event qualifying points will be awarded as calculated based on a linear progression adjusted by the total number of participants (up to 16). The event winner will always earn 100 points, and last place (or 16th if more than 16 players) will always earn 10 points. If there are greater than 16 participants, the 17th place finisher(s) onward will earn 5 points each. This scoring is to provide better balance to scoring that was not present in our 1.0 version in 2022.
EVENTS
The weekly events each month are subject to change during the offseason, but are planned to be as follows:
Week 1) Loom- 1st Sunday of each month @ 3:00 PM
Week 2) Escape Pod - 2nd Thursday of each month @ 7:00 PM
Week 3) Tappers Arcade Bar - 3rd Sunday of each month @ 3:30 PM
Week 4) PinVault - 4th Sunday of each month @ 1:00 PM
Any changes to event time/format/etc. will be handled on a case-by-case basis and communicated as early as possible. Alerts will be communicated via the respective location page as well as the ICS Facebook page.
Segment tournaments will be hosted at varying locations on a non-conflicting weekend date, and will be in the format of a seeded group play tournament consisting of the top 16 players in the respective segment standings.
The offseason tournament will be a champion’s cup event, where only those players who have won a weekly event or segment tournament may partake, along with the regular season champion. There is no maximum number of players– all event winners will be invited. The tournament will be a standard 4-Strike tournament, with the winner receiving a trophy specific to the Champion’s Cup event, as well as top finishers receiving cash payouts.
PAYOUTS
Payouts for each individual event will be handled by each respective tournament organizer. Portions of each event will accumulate in a pot reserved for the final standings leaders, with a payout structure as follows:
1st Place - 35% of pot
2nd Place - 20% of pot
3rd Place - 15% of pot
4th Place - 10% of pot
5th-8th Places - 5% of pot each
Payouts for the Champion’s Cup will be as follows:
1st Place - $150
2nd Place - $100
3rd Place - $50
The prize money may increase as sponsors are added to the series, but the percentage for the ICS standings will not fluctuate nor will the payout for the Champion’s Cup decrease over the course of the year. Trophies awarded to the season ICS Champ and the Champion’s Cup winner will have the winner’s name on a plaque on the trophy, and will be given to the possession of the winner until such time as a new champion is crowned.