OK, State, USA and World make you repeat the stage with a different table configuration if you mess the final trick shot.
Problem is, someone can get to the trick shot while having lost 2 shots during the stage, so it wouldn't make it infinitely repeatable.
It is only infinitely repeatable if you don't miss a single shot, or miss one shot and get the extra shot. Those are the only two possible ways to repeat a stage endlessly.

The most proper set of rules for this would be if you fail to advance to the next stage, whether by a lack of points or by missing the trick shot, your run ends.
But it is too late in the week to do such drastic rule change.

The solution is murky, but so far only I and Daniel beat the game.

What about low score/progress?

 

A lot of the scores posted don't show the progress, yours included.
That would invalidate them and that would be pretty bad.

I wish I had time to play this Sunday so I would have found this issue earlier.  
 

Is anyone else besides Bea going to bother trying to map the various layouts within the next 3 days? I think you guys are way overthinking this.

BTW, for next time the contest rolls around (if ever), I think an excellent (and tough!) winning condition would be to win the world championship with the fewest total points possible.

I'm waiting for everyone else to show their hand before I post my awesome score !
 

Totally meant to quote Dans previous post!

I am waiting on the final verdict on the rules before playing this again.  

I was going to post a score too....

You're totally right man, this is definitely the best way to play this game for a contest. You would think that a billiard game got the high-score mecanism right, but no, they can screw that up too.

Speaking of screwed up scoring, I've been playing Trog and I can't believe that the the levels don't have a timer to prevent endless point pressing. It's an arcade game!

Having limitless retries and not penalizing your score for failing is pretty stupid.  

Well, we'll just have to live with that stupid broken score system I guess...

Sorry I broke the game, I guess. My fault.  

Sorry everyone for that mess, we should have tested more thoroughly the game prior to scheduling it and especially choosing the better set of rules.

I'm not going to repay this one. I'm good if my score is not valid

Tables can't be touched in sports so the points from this contest aren't as significant as they could be.

Everyone's score are valid, fuck this game.

Hahaha that's kickle territory hombre 
 

That little snow fucker is better to appease my mind about that game, that's my last rampart at this point, haha.

I guess I will try to get a 666,000 score during the weekend out of spite.
Fuck this game indeed.
I wonder what sort of drugs the game designer was using when he came up with that bloody stupid idea of infinite stage repeats.

LieS!  
 

It's probably a design flaw. Unless it was just a decision made that we don't understand (perhaps the manual tells the story?). Or maybe it was put into place and never thought of again. It is a 30-year-old game at this point.

 

Sorry I couldn't weigh in on the rules sooner for this game. A fan to the power supply in my computer bit the dust and I needed to have it worked on for a couple days. I was afraid we would have issues with looping when I created the rules. I knew this was a possibility and just left the rules as is and hoped people would pick up on it on Sunday. Unfortunately, no one picked up on it until it was too late to change the rules. My suggestion: don't exploit the looping to rack up a ridiculous high score that people will not be able to beat. This is a general rule of thumb for the contests. I'm with everyone in saying fuck this game. It will likely be a while before we play this game again (it will not be on the list for next year), so that will give us time to come up with a better set of rules. In the meantime, let's use this game as a coaster  

I see your Alf Pogs and raise you an Alf for the Sega Master System