My longtime dream was finally realized: Lansing now has a true women’s league! We previously held monthly women’s tournaments under the Lansing Lightning Flippers name, but they have now been transformed into a semi-monthly league. The league uses match-play scoring instead of best-game scoring (like the open league uses). Everyone plays five games against two or three other people, and is scored 7/5/3/1 or 7/4/1 based on their finishing position on the game. Game choice rotates, but everyone can only choose a given game once in the season (until finals). The lowest night is dropped, and after the end of the sixth qualifying night, there is a finals phase that happens immediately, which will use a ladder format.
I was worried about whether we would get enough people to avoid having any two-player groups because then we would have to use 7/1 scoring, which is really suboptimal. The only way this would happen would be if we got five total players. Fortunately that was averted and handily: our turnout was a healthy nine! I had figured if we could get at least six people coming regularly the league would be successful. This did mean everyone played in a three-player group which is a bit less fun than four, but I’m sure our population will fluctuate over time, giving people a chance to play in a full group.
Some of our usual Flippers players attended, including Tim, Mackenzie, Stephanie, Christy, and Linda. We were also joined by Abby from Grand Rapids and Dana and Amy who played in a previous season of the open league. Lexi had planned to attend but had a family emergency, but she is hoping to attend starting tonight.
As a side tournament, we will have something called the Lansing Lightning Rater every night. The purpose of the Lightning Rater tournament is to get people “rated” for IFPA purposes, which requires having played in five prior tournaments. If all our players are rated, it will make the league more valuable to the IFPA. The Lightning Rater tournament is the most minimal possible tournament: one ball qualifying on my American Girl pinball machine “The Flip Side” followed by a single four-player game for the finals. This is intended just for the unrated players but is technically an open tournament so I did not anticipate how many people would want to play. I figured I’d just get the unrated players to do it in our spare moments, but instead most of the rated players attending also participated. Ultimately Amy won, which I think will be her first officially recorded IFPA tournament win. The record of your wins doesn’t distinguish ridiculous from non-ridiculous tournaments, so congratulations!
Overall I think the league got off to a great start and it seemed to me that people really enjoyed the match-play format. I have always wanted to run a match-play league but for various reasons I think the open league will be resistant to changing. Starting a second league ex nihilo gave me the canvas I needed to run a league the way I’ve always wanted to – and it seems like I’m not the only one to like the new format. It was a relief to have our first meeting go so well as I had been very worried about it being a flop.
That’s all for the first night’s report, but we’re about to have our second night very soon! Our league uses Matchplay and so you can view the results for the night and the season there.
Leave a Reply