POSTPONED – Weekly League at Speedy’s

UPDATE: League has been postponed. The original announcement prior to postponement is left intact below for historical interest only.

It’s official! Our first weekly league will be at Speedy’s Fast Track (11440 Hempstead Road, between Antoine Drive and West 34th Street) on June 7, 14, 21, and 28, with the playoffs on a date yet to be decided (July 5, 7, or 12). There will be no dues for this league, in part because the IFPA is still not endorsing leagues or tournaments at this time.

There will be only four games per week; this differs from (what will eventually be) the usual number of five games stated in the rulebook. Scoring will still be IFPA 7-5-3-1/7-4-1, and the lowest of the four weeks will be dropped to determine ranking for playoffs.

This league will be capped at a maximum of 24 players per meet, with players having played in previous weeks getting priority.

Edit: dates updated to reflect cancellation of original May 24 meeting due to low attendance.

Bayou City Pinball League Launch Tournament, 2021-01-24 (Sunday)

It is official! We will be having our first tournament on Sunday, 2021-01-24, at Speedy’s Fast Track, 11440 Hempstead Road, Houston, Texas (see map below). Check-in/warmups start at 1:00 pm, tournament will begin promptly at 1:30 pm.

Entries will be limited to 16 players. Format will be a five-round group match play with a three game playoff for the top 4 finishers. No entry fee as such, $8 toward a group use game card for tournament games plus one warm-up game per player. No prizes or physical awards will be issued for the results of this tournament; however, this is something we will be offering in later tournaments and leagues. Since the IFPA is still not endorsing and ranking tournaments, this will not be a WPPR ranked tournament; however, this too is something we will offer when the IFPA resumes.

Machine lineup: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Iron Maiden, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Deadpool, Batman, The Munsters.

The league rulebook as will be used for this tournament will be published on or before 2020-12-18 (Friday).

Update for 2020 July

It’s now July, and not a whole lot has changed. Arcades have re-opened at reduced capacity, bars were open for a while but have since been ordered to close again. Perhaps most importantly, the IFPA has not reinstated endorsement of tournament and league play, and has started up something else called the IFPA Challenge Rankings to fill in the void. That we have been without IFPA-endorsed tournaments for this long and that the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be nowhere near over both suggest we could be in for a rather long wait for competitive pinball in general to return to normality, let alone for BCPL to finally officially launch.

At minimum, I’m waiting for arcades and bars to return to operating at 100% capacity. Meanwhile, with the downtime, I have been working on the league’s rulebook, which I will finalize and put online at least a couple of weeks before our first tournaments and/or league nights.

But for now, we wait. Hopefully, not for terribly long.

Shawn K. Quinn
Founding Commissioner, Bayou City Pinball League

An update on our inaugural tournament and the COVID-19 situation

Hello fellow Houston pinball players,

Since my previous announcement, further emergency measures have been enacted to address the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Most notably, here in Houston/Harris County, restaurants have been ordered to shut down their dining rooms and only serve food to-go (or deliver) and bars and nightclubs have shut down. It is reasonable to expect locations likely to have pinball machines not falling in those categories to follow suit.

I do still plan to go ahead with our first tournament when the crisis has passed; I’m just not sure when that will be. Any announced date should be treated as tentative, though I will endeavor to announce any necessary rescheduling at least 48 hours out.

Future updates will be posted here as they become available.

Shawn K. Quinn
Founding Commissioner, Bayou City Pinball League