Competitive Pinball

Rankings, world points, and the path to state finals

IFPA — International Flipper Pinball Association

International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA)

The International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA) promotes competitive pinball worldwide. It organises and endorses tournaments and leagues, maintaining a ranking system to recognise the world's top players.

Visit IFPA website

Australian Championship Series ACS

The IFPA Australian Championship Series is an annual pinball competition: players qualify throughout the year, and at year's end, the top-ranked players from each state/territory play off for the title of IFPA State/Territory Champion.

ACS standings

What Is a WPPR?

WPPR stands for World Pinball Player Rankings, the point system the IFPA uses to measure competitive achievement across every endorsed tournament and league on the planet. At the Tasmanian Association of Pinball Players (TAPP), most of our events are IFPA-endorsed, so playing in one earns you WPPR points based on how the event was run and how you placed. Those points are what your world and state rankings are built from.

Colloquially, players often just pronounce it "whopper" rather than spelling out the letters.

Where Your WPPRs Count

Your points feed two separate leaderboards, each with its own rules:

World Ranking

Your global rank counts your best 15 events, and results lose value over time — full value for the first year, 75% in year two, 50% in year three, then nothing. This keeps the world rankings reflecting current form rather than a lifetime of past wins.

ACS State Ranking

The Australian Championship Series runs as its own annual competition, tracked separately for Tasmania and every other state/territory you compete in. Your best 20 results at IFPA-endorsed events within a given state each calendar year count towards that state's leaderboard, resetting fresh every year to decide who reaches the state finals.

Any IFPA-endorsed event within Tasmania (not just TAPP's own) counts towards both the state and national leaderboards.

The Path to the Top

The ACS ladder runs each year, with three titles to chase: State Champion, Australian Champion, and World Champion.

Earn Points

You earn WPPR points at every IFPA-endorsed event you play in Tasmania, TAPP's regular meetups included, and your best 20 results that year are what count toward your in-state ranking total. Check the Tasmania Leaderboard any time to see where you currently sit.

State Champion ACS

Once the year's done, the top 16 players on that list get invited to the Tasmania State Final, a single-elimination bracket that decides who takes the state title. You'll be contacted directly if you've made the cut, so keep your IFPA profile's contact details up to date.

States with 200+ active players and 50+ events that calendar year run a 24-player final instead of 16.

Australian Champion ACS

From there, the top 4 finishers at each state final go on to the ACS National Final, an annual 64-player event. The rest of the field comes from the national WPPR ranking, using the same best-20-results rule as the state rankings, just counted across the whole country instead of one state.

States that ran the larger 24-player final send their top 6 through instead of top 4.

World Champion

Doing well at the National Final can also qualify you for the IFPA World Championship. Each country with enough ranked players gets two reserved spots — one for its highest world-ranked player, the other for whoever finishes best at the National Final without already qualifying that way. The rest of the field is filled from the world WPPR rankings at the end of the year.

Special Events, Majors & Other Titles

Tasmania ACS

TAPP's flagship events run longer than a regular night, meaning more TGP and more points toward your ranking.

Special TAPP Events

Australia ACS

The Brisbane Masters, the Australian Open, and the IFPA AUS/NZ Pro Circuit Championship, each with a title of its own up for grabs.

World

IFPA's own Majors: the World Pinball Championship, PAPA Worlds, the European Championship, Pinburgh, and THE OPEN.

IFPA Majors

All still IFPA-endorsed and count toward your world ranking. These just run bigger, or carry an extra title on top.

How WPPRs Are Earned and Calculated

You earn WPPR points just by playing in an IFPA-endorsed event. No separate sign-up required. Every endorsed event has a WPPR value determined by how many players compete, their strength, and how long the tournament runs, and that value gets split across finishing positions.

You don't need to understand any of it to play — IFPA takes care of the maths for every result automatically.

It has to be: the goal is to fairly rank every player in the world, which means accounting for the skill of the opponents they beat and the length and quality of the tournament itself. Flip a card below to see the formula behind each step.

Step 1

Points Pool — Based on Players

The base points available are proportional to the number of players entered. In general, each player contributes around 0.5 WPPRs to the pool — though higher-ranked players add extra weight on top of that.

Step 1

Points Pool — Based on Players

The pool starts with a flat base tied to how many Rated players are in the field — a status only reached after 5 sanctioned events — then adds more on top for how strong that field actually is, separately for Rating and for Ranking. (What sets those two apart is explained further down the page.)

Base value (0.5 per Rated player, capped at 32)

B = min (0.5 N_{rated}, 32)

where $N_{rated}$ = Rated players in the field.

Rating adjustment (top 64 rated players)

T V A_{R} = i = 1 \sum 64 min (0.390625, max (0, 0.000546875 R_{i} - 0.703125))

where $R_{i}$ = IFPA Rating of the i-th top-rated player — $T V A_{R}$ is how much a strong field of well-rated players adds to the pool. Each player's contribution is capped at 0.390625 (equivalent to a rating of 2000) so the component can't exceed its stated 25-point maximum.

Ranking adjustment (top 64 ranked players)

T V A_{K} = i = 1 \sum 64 max (0, - 0.211675054 ln (K_{i}) + 1.459827968)

where $K_{i}$ = IFPA world ranking of the i-th top-ranked player — $T V A_{K}$ is how much a strong field of highly-ranked players adds to the pool.

Points pool

P = B + T V A_{R} + T V A_{K}

where $T V A_{R}$ and $T V A_{K}$ are the rating and ranking adjustments above.

Rating and Ranking are two different numbers. Ranking is a player's current spot on the World Leaderboard, built from their best results. Rating is closer to a chess ELO — a single number for how strong a player is right now. A player unlocks a Rating after their 5th IFPA-sanctioned event (becoming officially Rated) — the same milestone that counts them towards $N_{rated}$ above and feeds $T V A_{R}$ . Ranking, and $T V A_{K}$ , start from a player's very first event.

Step 2

Scaled by Tournament Length (TGP)

That points pool is then multiplied by the Tournament Grading Percentage (TGP), a measure of how many games are played. More games means a more reliable result. Most events land somewhere between 0–200%, with certified and major events going higher.

Step 2

Scaled by Tournament Length (TGP)

$V_{1}$ is the maximum anyone can earn from the event — 1st place takes the full 100% of it, and every other position earns a scaled-down fraction in Step 3.

1st-place event value

V_{1} = P \times T GP

where $P$ = the points pool from Step 1, TGP = Tournament Grading Percentage as a decimal (0–2.00).

Building TGP (what each game is worth)

Each meaningful game (a 2-player head-to-head match) is worth 4% TGP. Games played in 4-player groups count double, so 8% each.

Worked example

A qualifying round where everyone plays 15 two-player games grades out to 15 × 4% = 60% TGP. Add a single-elimination finals bracket on top (4 more head-to-head rounds for whoever makes it) and that's another 4 × 4% = 16%, bringing the whole event to 76% TGP. A points pool ( $P$ ) of 40 WPPRs at 76% TGP gives a 1st-place value ( $V_{1}$ ) of 40 × 0.76 = 30.4 WPPRs.

Beyond that, TGP has its own further limits and conditions depending on the format, whether it's qualifying or finals, and how the event is sanctioned — each format calculates it differently, but they're all built to balance out to roughly that same 4% per meaningful game. Certified and Major events also apply an Event Booster multiplier (×1.25–×2.00) on top. See our Tournament Formats page for how TAPP's own formats weigh TGP, or the IFPA TGP Guide for the full per-format breakdown.

Step 3

Distributed by Finishing Position

The winner takes the full event value. Every other position earns a declining share based on how they placed relative to the field, with the top half picking up a significant bonus.

Step 3

Distributed by Finishing Position

Once the pool is built (Step 1) and scaled down to $V_{1}$ by TGP (Step 2), that value gets split across every finishing position using two overlapping shares below: a linear share spread evenly across the whole field, plus a dynamic bonus that tops up the stronger half of it.

Linear share (spread evenly across the field)

L_{scale} (p) = \frac{N + 1 - p}{N}

L (p) = 10% \times L_{scale} (p) \times V_{1}

where $p$ = finishing position (1 = winner), $N$ = players in the tournament, $V_{1}$ = the 1st-place value from Step 2.

Dynamic share (bonus curve for the top half)

D_{scale} (p) = max 0, (1 - (\frac{p - 1}{N _{rated} /2})^{0.7})^{3}

D (p) = 90% \times D_{scale} (p) \times V_{1}

where $N_{rated}$ = Rated players in the tournament. As of IFPA's 2024 (v6.0) rules, this divisor is uncapped — earlier versions capped it at min(N_rated/2, 64).

WPPRs earned

WPPR (p) = L (p) + D (p)

$L_{scale} (p)$ and $D_{scale} (p)$ are the two share shapes (0–1 fractions of position) before the 10%/90% weighting and the event value are applied.

Bottom line: for more points to be on the table at an event, it comes down to two things: the number of players, and how long the event runs (its number of matches).

For the full methodology, see the IFPA ranking rules.

Ranking vs Rating

IFPA tracks two different numbers for every player, and they measure different things. Your WPPR Ranking is a running total that rewards playing more events and doing well in strong fields — it's what decides the leaderboards above. Your IFPA Rating is closer to a chess rating: a single number estimating how strong a player you are right now, based on who you've beaten and lost to, regardless of how many events you've played.

A player who plays rarely but wins consistently can carry a high Rating with a modest Ranking. A player who plays constantly can build a high Ranking through steady placings, even with a middling Rating. Both numbers show up on IFPA player profiles.

Rating itself doesn't gate anything: it isn't used in any leaderboard or to qualify for state finals, ACS, or Worlds; Ranking decides all of that. Its only functional role in the system is weighting how much a tournament is worth (the Rating adjustment in Step 1 above). Beyond that, it moves purely on recent results: beat a player rated well above you and your Rating jumps, get beaten by one rated well below you and it drops hard, and results against someone close to your own level barely move it. Flip a card below to see the maths behind each step.

IFPA handles all of this automatically. You don't need to know any of it to play. This is just for the maths/stats-curious.

Step 1

Pick the Comparison Window

Up to 32 players who finished above you count as losses, and up to 32 who finished below count as wins, recalculated fresh for every tournament you play, based on that event's own finishing order.

Step 1

Pick the Comparison Window

This runs separately for every tournament you play — each event's own finishing order picks up to 32 players above your position (each a loss) and up to 32 below (each a win), capped by however many actually exist on that side. These become the opponents $j$ that feed Step 2, and it's a fresh window every time: play five tournaments and you get five separate batches, not one running list across your career.

Worked example

Finish 5th in a 60-player event: only 4 players finished above you (1st–4th), so all 4 count as losses — there's no 32 to cap. Below you there are 55 players, but the window caps at 32, so 6th–37th count as wins and 38th onward simply doesn't factor in. That's 36 opponents (4 losses + 32 wins) feeding Step 2 for this one event.

Small field, no cap

Finish 3rd in an 8-player event instead: 2 players above (1st–2nd, both losses) and 5 below (4th–8th, all wins) — just 7 opponents total, since the field is far smaller than the 32-player cap on either side.

New players sit on a shared provisional 1300 until their 6th event, once they've built up enough history for this window to mean anything.

Step 2

Calculate the Glicko Update

Each result nudges your Rating by how much it beat or missed the expected outcome against that opponent — weighted by how confident IFPA is in both ratings.

Step 2

Calculate the Glicko Update

Expected score (your odds against opponent j)

g (R D_{j}) = \frac{1}{1 + 3 q ^{2} R D _{j}^{2} / π ^{2}}, q = \frac{ln 10}{400}

E (r, r_{j}, R D_{j}) = \frac{1}{1 + 1 0 ^{- g (R D_{j}) (r - r_{j}) /400}}

where $r$ = your rating going in, $r_{j}$ = opponent j's rating, $R D_{j}$ = opponent j's rating deviation.

Rating update (after the whole batch)

d^{2} = (q^{2} j \sum g (R D_{j})^{2} E_{j} (1 - E_{j}))^{- 1}

r^{'} = r + \frac{q}{\frac{1}{R D ^{2}} + \frac{1}{d ^{2}}} j \sum g (R D_{j}) (s_{j} - E_{j})

where $R D$ = your rating deviation going in, $s_{j}$ = 1 for a win and 0 for a loss against opponent j.

Step 3

Apply the New Confidence (RD)

Every result also tightens your Ratings Deviation (RD) — how sure IFPA is in the number — which otherwise decays the longer you go between events.

Step 3

Apply the New Confidence (RD)

Confidence update

R D^{'} = (\frac{1}{R D ^{2}} + \frac{1}{d ^{2}})^{- 1}

RD sits between 10 and 200, decaying by about 0.3 a day between events. Play regularly and your RD shrinks, meaning your Rating moves less per result next time.

These are the standard Glicko formulas the system is built on — IFPA hasn't published the exact parameters it plugs in (RD bounds, decay rate, window size), so treat Steps 1–3 as an illustration of the shape of the calculation rather than IFPA's literal source. See IFPA's Rating Calculation page for what they do publish.

How to Get Started

Find an Event: Visit our Events Calendar for upcoming TAPP events.
Attend: Play your best, and have fun.
Customise Your IFPA Profile: Your results are tracked automatically once a TD submits them, so there's nothing to set up — but you can optionally add a photo and details like your location and age here. (optional)
Stay Updated: Visit our website or follow us on social media for the latest news.

Join us at TAPP and start earning your place on the national stage.

Special Events Tournament Formats Leaderboard Events Calendar Play at TAPP