Finals night for Season XXI on December 10 finished with Biff winning the B division championship and A division still left with a final match to go. This season the plan was to break before the final match and run it by appointment, since we would likely be unable to finish the 11-person bracket before closing time, as happened in Season XX. Brian, who progressed through the winner bracket, left before the second-chance bracket finished, leaving Derik and Tim to battle it out in the loser bracket until around midnight. Tim prevailed, leaving Derik to go home with the third-place plaque and setting up a repeat of last season’s Brian-versus-Tim finals. Notably, Danny was unable to attend league finals this season due to being on a cruise. Derik remarked that he was probably playing pinball on the cruise, because there is no way Danny would agree to go on a cruise ship that had no pinball machines.
In B division, Peter finished his first season in LPL with a third place plaque and Biff clawed his way up out of the second-chance bracket to challenge Bryan, who had already beaten him once in the winner bracket. In the first round, he defeated Bryan 2-0, so it went into a second round. It was getting late by the end and Biff decided he wanted things to get over with so he chose the league’s closest thing to a coin-flipper, Getaway. This paid off for him as the B division tournament ended with Biff winning the final round 2-1.
Heather also presented the usual end-of-season awards. Two of the three went to league newcomer Nathan, who won Most Improved and Worst Game. The Most Improved award is determined by looking at the growth rate of a player over the season and the likelihood that this statistical growth exceeds what would be expected by chance. Joseph runs the numbers and presents a few likely candidates and then Heather makes a final judgment about the award. The other two finalists for the award this season were Danny and Ethan. Worst Game is given to the player whose score on a game is the furthest below the mean on that game for the night, and Nathan won it for a 164M game on Attack from Mars. I’m not sure if it is unfortunate or fortunate that Nathan was ill and unable to attend finals, because when I read the score Derik made me repeat it and then reacted with considerable astonishment. Everyone agreed that it is actually difficult to get a score that low on Attack from Mars, so it is a kind of achievement.
The Best Game award is given for the person whose score is the highest above the mean for a night, and this season it went to Brian, who scored 627M on Stranger Things.
A Tuesday Night Smackdown was also played off on Uncanny X-Men in order to allow people to get the Launch Party badge that was mistakenly not activated during the actual launch party last month. Peter was our Smackdown champion, which also gives him his first official IFPA tournament win. Linda won the B division on Scared Stiff by a very narrow margin.
Brian and Tim are set to play off the final match of A division tonight at about 5:30 pm, after which we will have our post-season split flipper tournament, Super-Ball XXI at 7 pm.