Chaos Theory lol… It’s the same reason my 3 & 5 year old can put up Scores that leaves my scratching my head. They step up and just flip like a crazy person keeping the ball up. But in that randomness they are making the shots.

I think when you are less focused and relaxed while flipping your natural skills shine through more. Happens to me all the time.

Don’t worry about score for a while. Practice this stuff instead.

Dead bounces
Life catches
Drop catches
Nudging.

Watch these videos. They are great. Once you get some of these down, you should see improvements in your scores.

https://youtube.com/channel/UCcX-RTccjyvQS2k3ozBKW8Q

What I’ve noticed is that I get worse scores after I know the rules. When I play a game for the first few times, I’m just trying to keep the ball from draining. Once I’ve played the game a bunch and I know what to aim for to maximize my score, my poor aim results in hitting posts instead of ramps and targets, and a lot of those post hits drain immediately.

I seem to do better as well when I am not sure what I am trying to shoot for. Just a few weeks ago my local arcade got godzilla pro and my 4th game on it I got 806 million without knowing what was going on. Now that I know some of the rules I haven't broke 400 Million in 20 more games.

Back when I was trying to learn a new technique, my score went down dramatically for a while.
Till I was able to incorporate it without thinking about it.
Same when you actually learn the rules/shots to a game.
Eventually you'll do better than most people that just flip at it, just takes time.

I experience the OPs dilemma more often with multiballs, but there is often a similar thing with games that are new to me as I evolve from the feeling-out the shots phase and begin to consciously aim for game objectives. I think it's just a function of how (some) of our brains are wired to process the cornucopia of stimuli that pinball games throw at us.

With multiballs, I tend to get the most satisfying overall results (but not necessarily the highest score) by trying from the outset to remain focused on game objectives and tolerating a few "sacrificial" drains until I am down to 2 balls (insert joke, "that's what she said", etc.); at that point it is just much easier to keep up with them and actually aim for shots with some hope of accuracy. The frustrating thing is, when I take the other less-precise approach of simply trying furiously to keep four or more in play I can rack up a higher score, but have no idea how I did it, and then when I am down to a more manageable 2-3 in play I'm sort of lost in terms of where I am in the game and am scrambling a bit to catch up.

I've had this problem on my IMDN. What I've noticed is that when things are getting bad, if I go out to a location a play a bunch of different games, when I get home I'm immediately playing better on mine.

My hypothesis is playing that same game over and over leads to some zoning out and practicing just as many bad habits as good ones. Mixing it up with other games breaks up the the passive memory and more paying attention.

Sometimes cleaning and waxing the game(s) I'm focusing on will help improve my scores if I'm in a slump.

And yeah, there's usually a downturn in scores for a bit while learning the rules and trying to make specific things happen in the game. Compared to when a game is new and I'm just exploring and trying to keep the ball in play. Then after a bit, learning the rules and shots pays off and the scores go up.

Drop catching (as well as the other techniques) will change your life if your not already doing it.

Just putting pressure/expectation on yourself to get better will cause you to tense up and cause frustration if it's not going well. I like to be aware of the rules but only focus on shots I know are easier for me and not chase modes or parts of the game that are more difficult. My basic strategy is to get from mutiball to multiball and if I happen to exploit some of the rules along the way then great.

Ahhh. The classic simuldraineous event. Happens all the time.

Stop over thinking it. Many times I've put up high GCs on games right out of the box but as I learn the rules and shots I start to think to much and scores don't get close to the mindless GCs i set when I've never played the game before or know the rules. Over time once you can get in the zone(know all the shots and rules without thinking) is when the big scores will happen. At least that's my experience.

Every now and then out of the blue I just have a awesome game, and I can hit pretty much everything I am trying for.

But most of the time the shot I need to make I can never hit it, and when I do not need to make that shot it is all I can hit.

I tend to make the same shot 20 times in a row, when I am actually trying to hit something else.

But it is all very fun, and I enjoy these big boy toys.

When I was regularly playing leagues/tournaments, I would frequently have warmup games go great, and then in the same game in league/tournament play it would just go to hell. Most notably, on Game of Thrones I once put up a 100M+ score (I want to say like 160M+ but I can't find the blog post right now) in warmups, then barely 2M or 3M during league play.

I can't say that practice makes me worse necessarily, but I do know I've put up quite a few good scores after not playing for a long time and/or during one of the first few times, if not the very first time, playing a brand new title.

Practice or no practice, l will always play bad lol