New Pinball Dictionary: After Hours Beat Down

After Hours Beat Down

It takes many people to help run an event successfully. Some of those people are scorekeepers who have volunteered some of their time to help out. Many volunteer scorekeepers are also tournament players who are looking to qualify for the event as well. As a reward for the volunteers who perform scorekeeping duties during the competition, some tournament directors will give them a period after the qualification time is over to qualify for the tournament on their own. This has been referred to as the “Scorekeepers Hour” because it is a period where only the scorekeepers are allowed to play the qualification games.

During this time, players who have not done any scorekeeping are frozen in that they can’t improve their scores. They have to watch as the scorekeepers continue to hammer on the games. Not only that, the scorekeepers have less wait times between games than usual. Since the majority of the competitors are on the sidelines, the queues are much shorter or non-existent.

As a result, players who thought they have qualified for the finals before the Scorekeepers Hour may start to see their points drop quickly with each completed game by the scorekeepers. These players may find their seeds lowered significantly, or they may even find themselves kicked out of the Finals, due to the performance of the scorekeepers.

To defend against this, players who are on or nearly above the cut line may choose to play entries feverishly before the end of qualifying. The goal being to raise their rank enough to protect against the potential results of the Scorekeepers Hour.