Pinball tournaments: where to find them, which ones to target, and how to win

Competitive pinball is structured, global and far more accessible than it looks: everything runs through the IFPA (International Flipper Pinball Association), its public calendar and its WPPR ranking. There is no membership fee, no licence, no selection process to get started: you play a sanctioned tournament, the tournament director submits the results, and you are ranked worldwide. Here is where to find tournaments, what each one is for, how the formats work — and the techniques that actually gain you places.

How competitive pinball is organised

One body has authority: the IFPA. It sanctions tournaments, publishes the global calendar and maintains the WPPR ranking (World Pinball Player Rankings), in place since 2006 and now in version 6.2. The player with the most WPPR points on 31 December is crowned "World's Greatest Pinball Player" for the year.

How a tournament "earns" points

This is the part everyone gets wrong. The value of a win doesn't depend on tournament size alone, but on three ingredients multiplied together:

• Base value: 0.5 WPPR points per "Rated" player (a player becomes Rated after 5 sanctioned tournaments), capped at 32 points — reached at 64 Rated players.
• Field value (TVA): up to +25 points based on the rating of the players present, and up to +50 points based on their ranking. Beating the world number 1 pays: his mere presence adds 1.46 points to the pot.
• TGP: the IFPA itself notes that the acronym means both Tournament Grading Percentage and Total Games Played. Each "meaningful game" played by the winner adds 4%. Capped at 100%, or 200% if the tournament includes genuine qualifying and a knockout final stage. Worth knowing: a round played in a group of 4 counts double (a 3-game round = 6 meaningful games).
• The Event Booster: ×200% for a Major, ×150% for an IFPA Championship Series event or "Certified+", ×125% for a "Certified" tournament. Theoretical maximum: 200% TGP × 200% booster = 400%.

Two rules every competitor must know: only your 15 best active results count, and points decay (100% of their value in year one, 75% in year two, 50% in year three, zero beyond three years). The ranking therefore rewards consistency, not a five-year-old moment of glory.

Where to look for a tournament (concretely)

• The IFPA calendar — ifpapinball.com/calendar: filters by country (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada), by radius in kilometres, and by sanctioning level. It is the only exhaustive source.
• The league directory — ifpapinball.com/leagues: this is where you should start, not at a Major.
• Match Play Events — matchplay.events: the software that runs just about every tournament on the planet since 2015 (created and maintained by Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen, also behind PinTips and the OPDB). Pairings, scores and standings live on your phone during the tournament.

And in France?

A necessary clarification, because a lot of nonsense circulates: there is no official "French Pinball Federation". The real structure is the IFPA French Championship Series (FCS): every IFPA-sanctioned tournament played in France between 1 January and 31 December counts, and the top 64 contest the FCS final the following year for the title of IFPA French champion. The winner (or the highest-ranked player not yet qualified) earns a spot at the European Championship and one at the IFPA World Championship. The IFPA Country Director for France is Archibald Lefevre.

On volume, as of 13 July 2026: 1,224 French players are IFPA-ranked, versus 454 in Belgium, 352 in Switzerland, 4,632 in Canada and 49,010 in the United States. France is therefore the leading French-speaking country in Europe on this front — and the most decorated French player in Majors is Franck Bona, with two European champion titles and six Major top-4 finishes.

The big tournaments: which to target

The IFPA officially recognises five "Majors" (×200% booster): IFPA World Pinball Championship, PAPA World Pinball Championships, European Pinball Championships, Pinburgh Match-Play Championship and THE OPEN. The record for Major wins belongs to Keith Elwin: 11 titles (6 PAPA, 5 Pinburgh).

Tournament	Where / when (2026)	Access	Format
IFPA World Pinball Championship	5-7 June 2026, District 82, De Pere (Wisconsin, USA)	By invitation: 80 players from over 20 countries, 77 of them qualified via the WPPR ranking as of 1 January	The most prestigious event on the circuit. Won this year by Jason Zahler, also world number 1.
Pinburgh Match-Play Championship	22-26 July 2026, Bridgeville (Pittsburgh, PA)	Open — $350 entry	The monster. 10 rounds of 4 games in groups of 4 (3/2/1/0 scoring, 12 points max per round), i.e. 20 hours of play against 30 guaranteed opponents. Split into A/B/C divisions after day 1, top 24 per division in the finals. Over $60,000 in prize money.
PAPA World Pinball Championships	10-13 September 2026, Stone Park (Illinois)	Open — $150 (12 entries included), 250 places	Revived in 2024 after a hiatus since 2017, under the name "LFS Memorial for Suicide Awareness", in memory of Lyman F. Sheats Jr. Qualifying in Hybrid Best Game, top 72 in A division.
THE OPEN — IFPA World Championship	Played within INDISC	Open to all	Created precisely to offer a world title accessible without an invitation.
INDISC (It Never Drains in Southern California)	4-7 February 2027, Murrieta Hot Springs Resort (California)	Open	4 days, 8 tournaments including THE OPEN, a Classics championship, a women's championship and a youth championship.
IFPA European Pinball Championship (EPC)	10-12 April 2026, Lund Pinball Academy (Sweden) — 10th edition	64 players: 49 via European Championship Series points, 14 places reserved for national champions (including France), 1 place from the women's series	The European fixture. This is your realistic goal if you're based in Europe.
IFPA Pin-Masters	6-8 March 2026, ORD Pinball, West Chicago (IL)	Open	Beware the misunderstanding: this is the Pin-Golf world championship ("IFPA Pin-Masters: World Pin-Golf Championships"), not a circuit final.
Stern Pro Circuit	A season of 20 tournaments; final in Chicago	Season's top 32	Elite circuit co-organised by Stern Pinball and the IFPA since 2018.

Alongside those, two events worth putting in the diary even if you're not chasing a win: the Texas Pinball Festival (20-22 March 2026, Frisco) and Pinball Expo (14-17 October 2026, Schaumburg, near Chicago) — the oldest pinball show, founded in 1985.

The formats, explained properly

Understanding the format already gains you places: the right strategy is not the same under different rules.

Format	Principle	What it changes for you
Group Match Play (the most common)	Over N rounds, you're paired into groups of 4 (or 3). You score according to your finishing position. No elimination: points accumulate.	Official scoring: IFPA 7/5/3/1 · PAPA 4/2/1/0 · Pinburgh 3/2/1/0. All three are correct — they are simply different scales.
Best Game ("Herb")	No opponent: you play alone on a bank of machines, and it's your best game on each machine that is compared against everyone else's. (The name is said to come from Herb Silvers — an origin reported by the community, not confirmed by an official source.)	Variants: Limited (fixed number of entries), Unlimited, Hybrid. Strategically this is the all-or-nothing format: take risks.
PAPA-style (card)	You play a "card" of several games back to back, and it's your best card that counts — not your best game.	Rewards consistency. As PAPA puts it, this makes it "virtually impossible to buy your way into qualifying" through sheer entries. Here, you dial the risk back.
Knockout / Strikes	Each poor finish earns a strike. At N strikes, you're out. The "fair strikes" scale in a group of 4: 0/1/1/2.	A tense, fast format. Avoiding last place becomes the objective, more than winning.
Flip Frenzy	Fixed duration (3 hours, say). Head-to-head matches are generated continuously; players without a match queue up. Winner = best wins minus losses record.	The friendliest format for a first tournament: you play a huge amount and never sit around waiting.
Pin-Golf (Pingolf)	Each machine is a "hole" with a target score. The number of balls needed to reach it = your number of "strokes". Lowest total wins.	It changes everything: you're not after a huge score, you're after minimum effort efficiency.
Selfie League	You play whenever you like during the month and submit your own score (photo of the DMD).	Worth knowing: the IFPA does not count the unverified qualifying phase in the TGP — it only serves to set the finals bracket.

Your first tournament: what to expect

1. Register for the ranking? No need. Official IFPA answer: play a sanctioned event, the tournament director (TD) submits the results, and you automatically become a world-ranked player. You receive an IFPA number and can create a profile. No membership fee.
2. Start with a league or a monthly, not with a Major. Majors are expensive ($350 for Pinburgh, $150 for PAPA) and book out months in advance; a local tournament typically costs about the price of a cinema ticket. We won't give a precise range for France: we couldn't find a reliable primary source to put a figure on it, and it's better to check the tournament listing on the IFPA calendar.
3. You'll be "Rated" after 5 tournaments. Before that, your rating is provisional (1300 by default, Glicko system). Don't judge yourself on your first three results.
4. The rules to know from day one: coaching a player while they are at the machine is forbidden; there is a yellow/red card system; betting is strictly prohibited (removal from the WPPR ranking for one year); if you're away for more than 3 minutes without telling the TD, they will plunge the ball for you.
5. Watch out for divisions. The IFPA only awards WPPR points for open divisions. Winning the B or novice division is great — but it earns no points in the Open ranking.

How to win: the techniques that actually work

The descriptions below follow the official PAPA Player's Guide. The terminology and the moves are those of competition, not bar-room folklore.

The foundation: controlling the ball

• Cradle. Trapping the ball on a raised flipper. It's the absolute prerequisite: until you can trap the ball, you're not aiming — you're reacting.
• Dead bounce. The most underrated skill. PAPA's advice is literally: "Do nothing!". You let the ball bounce off a lowered flipper: it sheds its speed and comes back out, often towards the other flipper. The whole art lies in knowing when not to flip.

The intermediate moves (the ones that win tournaments)

• Drop catch. You release the button just before contact: the ball hits a flipper on its way down, loses its energy and rolls up into the inlane instead of firing back into play. Essential condition: the drop catch only works if the ball is coming towards the flipper. If it's heading for the centre drain, dropping the flipper will simply guide it into the hole.
• Live catch. The opposite: it works when the ball is coming down towards the centre drain. The idea is to make the end of the flipper's travel coincide with the ball's impact — ideally, the flipper reaches its top position at the precise instant it meets the ball, which dies on the spot.
• Post pass. To transfer a trapped ball from one flipper to the other: you make it rebound off the lower part of the slingshot just above. The button timing varies from machine to machine — it's a move you relearn on every table.
• Flick pass. When the ball is moving too fast to trap: you briefly release the button as it reaches the flipper tip, producing a flick that sends it across.
• Tap pass. A short, sharp tap on the button: the flipper only partially engages and sends the ball only as far as the opposite flipper, instead of firing it up the playfield. Particularly effective on older solid-state machines.
• Loop pass. A transfer via an orbit, on machines where the orbit feeds the opposite flipper: you drop the flipper just before contact.

Shaking the machine: what's allowed and what isn't

Nudging is perfectly legal and ubiquitous in tournaments. The PAPA/IFPA rules explicitly allow shaking the machine to free a stuck ball — provided the benefit isn't infinitely repeatable. The slap save (striking the side of the machine at the precise moment you fire the nearer flipper, to virtually "extend" its reach towards the centre drain) is a standard high-level move.

Two techniques, however, are expressly forbidden by the PAPA/IFPA rules (section III.6): the death save and the bang back. Official reason: their effectiveness varies from machine to machine and, above all, they carry a risk of injury to the player and damage to the machine (sprained or broken wrists). Also banned are shooter-lane juggling and the shooter-lane cradle, because a high-level player can abuse them to stretch a game out for hours. A useful nuance: if a drained ball returns to play by itself without deliberate action by the player (what's known as a "lazarus"), that's the mechanical nature of pinball — you may play it.

Tilt

The rules are clear: losing your tilt warnings without losing the ball is not considered a major malfunction — you get no compensation. On the other hand, waiting for the tilt bob to settle is allowed: take that time, it's free. The mental rule to internalise: your warnings are a resource, not a safety net. Spend them early, on the balls that matter — not in panic on the last one.

Strategy: play the format, not the machine

PAPA puts it well: "Every flip counts!" — every flip should have a specific purpose. And above all, the right level of risk depends on the format:

• Best Game qualifying (multiple attempts, only the best counts) → take maximum risk. A blown game costs nothing. Go for the multiball and the jackpot, even if the game may collapse.
• PAPA-style card qualifying (several games back to back, the card counts) → dial the risk down. One bad game ruins four good performances. Play it safe.
• Head-to-head or group match play → play the target score. Watch what your opponents are doing at all times: locking in a safe 2nd place is often worth more than going for 1st and finishing 4th. With 7/5/3/1 scoring, the gap between 2nd and 4th (4 points) is bigger than the gap between 1st and 2nd (2 points).

One last competitor's reflex before you plunge your ball: test how the flippers respond, note where the outlanes sit, read the rulecard and the TD's instructions taped to the backglass. Thirty seconds, and you're already playing better than half the room.

Where to learn for real

The resources the IFPA itself recommends: PINBALL 101, the tutorial series by Keith Elwin (don't confuse them: Bowen Kerins, another circuit legend with 5 Major titles, authored many PAPA video tutorials and rulesheets, but Pinball 101 is Elwin's), the PAPA video tutorials, PinTips and the Pinball Archive rulesheets.

FAQ

How do you enter a pinball tournament as a beginner?

Go to the official IFPA calendar (ifpapinball.com/calendar), filter by country and by radius around you, and sign up for a local league or a monthly tournament — not a Major. There is no licence and no membership fee: as soon as the tournament director submits the results, you become a world-ranked player and receive an IFPA number.

What is the WPPR ranking?

The WPPR (World Pinball Player Rankings) is the IFPA's world ranking, in place since 2006. A tournament's value depends on the number of ranked players present, the strength of the field, the number of games played (the TGP, +4% per meaningful game) and a multiplier (up to ×200% for a Major). Only your 15 best active results count, and points lose value over time (100% in year one, 75% in year two, 50% in year three, zero beyond three years).

Is there a French pinball federation?

Not under that name. There is no official "French Pinball Federation". The real competitive structure is the IFPA French Championship Series (FCS): every IFPA-sanctioned tournament played in France over the year counts, and the top 64 contest the national final. The winner earns a place at the European Championship and one at the IFPA World Championship.

What is the biggest pinball tournament in the world?

The Pinburgh Match-Play Championship (Pittsburgh, 22-26 July in 2026) is the biggest open tournament: $350 entry, 10 rounds of 4 games in groups of 4, i.e. 20 hours of play against 30 guaranteed opponents, followed by divisional finals (A/B/C). The IFPA World Championship is more prestigious but is invitation-only: just 80 players, qualified via the WPPR ranking.

Are nudging and the slap save allowed in tournaments?

Yes. Nudging (shaking the machine) and the slap save are legal and routinely used at the highest level. What the PAPA/IFPA rules forbid are the death save and the bang back — banned because of the risk of injury to the player and damage to the machine — as well as shooter-lane juggling and the shooter-lane cradle.

Which technique should you learn first?

The cradle (trapping the ball on a raised flipper), then the dead bounce (letting the ball bounce off a lowered flipper, without flipping). These are the two foundations: until you can trap the ball and choose not to flip, all the advanced moves (drop catch, live catch, post pass) are unusable. The drop catch comes next — never forgetting that it only works if the ball is coming towards the flipper.

Sources & further reading

• IFPA — Global tournament calendar · WPPR v6.2 ranking rules · TGP guide
• IFPA French Championship Series
• PAPA — Player's Guide (the reference for playing techniques)
• Complete PAPA/IFPA competition rules (PDF)
• Match Play Events — documentation on formats and scoring
• Pinburgh Match-Play Championship · PAPA World Pinball Championships · INDISC
• IFPA — Resources for learning to play (Pinball 101, PAPA tutorials, PinTips)
• IFPA — The five Majors and their roll of honour