[FSPA] Preplays and malfunctions

[Joe Schober]

Steve Peck wrote...

> Is there any rule about preplays when the machine condition is different in a way that significantly impacts scoring?
> 
> Several seasons ago I had to play against an alien poker preplay of over 1 mil, but during my game the queen drop wouldn't fall making that score basically impossible and punishing the players w/o actually showed up since the preplay was done when it was fully functional
> 

So for most of the life of the FSPA, we had pretty rigid rules on when preplays could be done, for exactly this reason.  There could be undated ("emergency") preplays which had to be submitted by week 3 -- the idea there was that all undated preplays were done at roughly the same time, hopefully under similar machine conditions.  And then dated ("known absence") preplays were supposed to be done "as close as possible" to the date that was to be missed ... again, trying to have the preplays be under conditions as similar as possible to the live play conditions.  

But particularly with some league locations having a large number of games, preplaying all the machines started taking a long time, and the league officers got lots and lots of requests to change it... leading to the current "banking" system where preplays can be submitted as needed, and individual games can be backfilled when used.  But one of the downsides of this is that preplays aren't necessarily recorded under "similar" machine conditions.

Of course, "similar machine conditions" is kind of a myth.  Targets can break anytime, flippers sometimes get weaker as the night goes on, and a big slide-save during the first game of a night can totally change the leveling for the second game of the night.  So in practice, sometimes preplays will be done under better conditions than the live-play match where they're used, and sometimes worse.  (In the example you gave, just as easily it could've been the preplayer who had the broken drop target, with it fixed by the time the live-play session took place.)  Hopefully it all evens out in the wash.

Also note: one constant disadvantage of preplays is that your live-play opponents know exactly what the preplayer's scores are right from the start, so the live-players can tune their strategies appropriately (even if that just means knowing whether it's worth risking a tilt on a big save attempt). 

--Joe

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