How It Works

The PAPA 22 World Pinball Championships is a four-day tournament event held at Enterrium in Schaumburg, Illinois. There are three tournaments: the Main, Women's, and Classics.

Qualifying for the Main tournament will run Thursday through Saturday, with finals (split into A and B divisions based on cutoff) held on Sunday. Qualifying for the Women's and Classics tournaments will run Thursday and Friday, with finals held on Saturday. On Saturday, Women's finals will be played first, followed by Classics finals, approximately 30 minutes after qualifying closes.

Each player may make as many paid qualifying attempts as they like, each for a paid fee. These attempts may be made at any time while qualifying for the division is open. The system rewards consistently good play on one attempt, making it virtually impossible to "buy your way" into the finals.

In each qualifying attempt in Main or Women's, the player selects and plays five of the machines provided for that division. The resulting scores are then ranked against every other score that has been recorded on each selected machine, yielding a point total. That total is then ranked against every other qualifying attempt in the division, including attempts by the same player. This yields an overall ranking of all players in the division. Note that qualifying attempts that have not been completed, or have been intentionally voided, are not considered in these rankings.

In the Main, the top 72 ranked players will proceed to the A division finals. The next 8 ranked players will participate in the B division finals (excepting that any player ranked #250 or better by the IFPA will not be eligible for the B division finals). During finals, players will compete in groups of four on three machines, with two players advancing from each group. In the A division, seeds #1-4 will receive three byes, seeds #5-8 two byes, and seeds #9-24 one bye.

Qualifying in the Women's tournament will work in the same fashion, with the top 24 ranked players proceeding to finals, and seeds #1-8 receiving one bye.

In the Classics tournament, each entry (sold in sets of 4) allows the player to compete on one machine. Each player's best 8 scores across all machines will contribute to their point total, except that of course each machine can only contribute once to the total. The top 40 players will qualify for the Classics finals. Seeds #1-4 will receive two byes, while seeds #5-16 will receive one bye.

A large section of the facility will be closed to the public during the event, in order to preserve space for the competing pinball players.

Our logo was was designed by the insanely talented Ryan Claytor and features the teal and purple colors for suicide awareness. This year's logo is an homage to Medieval Madness, one of Lyman's many masterpieces.