Pinballrankings.com got a new web site design a month ago, and now Pro & Amateur Pinball Association PAPA does the same for their website papa.org.
The most interesting thing about this site update is the launch of a new tournament feature: PAPA Tournament Circuit. It is a series of ten existing pinball tournaments in North America. By performing well in these tournaments, players receive points for the circuit. After all the tournaments have been played, the players with most points will be invited to the Circuit Final, which is played a day before Pinburgh 2013.
The tournament structure for Circuit Final is something new and interesting, having more than 15 endurance phase rounds and after that 10 rounds of maraton phase for the final four. Full rules of the tournament can be found here. The best player of each round receives a $100 prize money and the winner of the Circuit gets $2500. Nice amount of money will be given to the players, total prize package being more than 10000 US dollars.
For European players PAPA Tournament Circuit might feel to be too far away and not worth going for, but actually this is not the case. The winner of every Pinball Circuit event will receive an invitation to the final, so it’s really not necessary to attend all the ten circuit events to qualify to the final. And what is even better is that the papa.org front page states, that “In future years, the Circuit will be revised and expanded to include overseas locations.” This has to be directed for the European audience and most likely the best annual European tournaments will be Circuit tournaments too in the future.
The first Circuit event of 2012 is Pinburgh and the third one is Northwest Pinball Championships. This means that I’m attending at least two of the circuit tournaments, but I’m not expecting to receive an invitation to the finals. Maybe I should get a sponsor to afford to attend the other Circuit events too to have a chance? :-)
