May 23, 2014
Pearl Vodka Information
We are proud to announce that we are joining the Partners Promoting Darts group of operators that run the Pearl Vodka Tournaments and Remote leagues and Tournament of Champions.
There's going to be a lot of information about this, so we're going to put out there what we can tell you so far. We don't have everything all set yet, but Emily has been getting our player database, locations, and dartboards set up with their system and undergoing the training to set everything up with PPD/Pearl Vodka. Here's what we know so far:
The group is called Partners Promoting Darts (PPD - how clever, huh?), and they run the Pearl Vodka Leagues and Tournaments. You might have heard about or seen them in Arachnid advertisements.
There are 2 different branches of the PPD Pearl Vodka Darts:
The first branch of Pearl/PPD is the Remote Leagues and Monthly Tournaments that they run.
For leagues, they seem to run an insanely awesome amount of remote leagues. Players go to the website and sign up for either 2, 3, or 4 person teams at the G3 Bullshooter location of their choice. Then they choose their day of the week and time. This allows us to offer more league options on different nights and against different people! It's great for our G3s out in the middle of nowhere where there is no league, for players in cities looking for more competition, for small towns that only have leagues 1 day a week, for summer when we don't have too much going on, and for players who want to do just a doubles or 3-man league for a change, too. It just gives everyone more choices.
For tournaments, they run a monthly Saturday tourney - their All-Star Series (see attached poster). Players can sign up on their website ahead of time for them, then go to the bar of their choice with a G3, and plug the board with the entry fees. PPD deposits their winnings through Paypal or mails them their winnings (along with some occasional prizes and swag from Pearl Vodka and other sponsors). To qualify to play in the monthly All-Star Series, you will need to play in one of the aforementioned remote leagues for 24 games. Again, I’m not through my training yet with PPD, so bear with me if I’m off by a week. Anyway, if you play in the remote league, then you qualify to play in the tournament, and the first tournament we’d be eligible to play in would be the one on July 12th. See the poster attached here below for more details about the tournaments.
The second branch is the Pearl Vodka Tournament Of Champions.
The Tournament of Champions (or TOC) is the thing a lot of players have been talking about. The Operators (like Midstates) buy vouchers for their players to "earn" during the season (January - October) to go to the TOC in Kansas City in November that year. Once the vouchers for the TOC are sold out, there is no more room for any more operators to join that year. This year, all the vouchers were sold, and they’re not accepting any more Full Members into the PPD until likely after this year’s November TOC.
Now there are 2 levels to membership in the PPD. There's Associate Membership and Full Membership. I mentioned that they don’t have any room for a Full Membership for us this year yet. In the meantime though, we can be Associate Members. This gives us access to play in their Remote Leagues and the Monthly Tournaments for now. As soon as a Full Membership spot opens up (which it sounds like will happen after this November’s TOC so we could get in the tournament for next year!), we will be taking it. We don’t know how many vouchers we will be buying as this is all new, so we’re open to your thoughts. If going to the November Kansas City Tournament is something you’d be interested in for the future, let us know!
If you want specifics or have more questions or want to talk about maybe going to the TOC when we’re eligible, contact Emily at epickart@midstateamusements.com. The PPD Pearl Vodka website is http://www.dartstoc.com. Feel free to take a look around. SOME of our information is in there already, but not all of it is in the database correctly yet. So you can poke around on the website and check it out, but PLEASE don’t sign up for anything right now because it’s not ready to take our information. It might look like it, but we’re not set up yet.
Also, we've bought more G3s to put out there to participate in this. We'll also be working this summer with many of the existing bars with G3s to get their internet up to where it needs to be to participate. Currently, not every G3 is set up to work right, but it's a matter of fixing or upgrading the internet at that bar. Don't worry, we're going to be working on those bars this summer to get them ready asap. (So if you see Frank and Randy out there, buy them a drink. Those poor guys are going to be working their butts off all summer!!)
As of right now, this is all the information I have for you! That will be changing over the next couple of weeks as we get further along in this process. We’re excited to be a part of the Pearl Vodka and PPD group and look forward to getting you in on these great events!
Keep watching this space for updates
Update #1 - Games and Length:
6 teams play 20 weeks (5 rounds)
7 or 8 teams play 21 weeks (3 rounds)
9 or 10 teams play 18 weeks (2 rounds)
You play 501 freeze rule, Cricket, and 501 stacked. All Open In/Open Out.
4 person teams play 15 games each week - each person plays 9 games, last game is 701 stacked.
Triples play 12 games.
Doubles play 15 games.
Update #2 - TOC eligibility
All Extreme-Team remote league games count for TOC and All Star Series eligibility requirements for players of PPD member/vendors who own TOC vouchers. Midstate will likely have vouchers for 2015's TOC which 2015 TOC statistical year starts on July 15th 2014......so all games after that date will begin to count for 2015's TOC eligibility. Meanwhile, all remote league games count for the 2014 All Star Series eligibility.
event website
