Haha. Get it! I had a similar experience when I played in my first few events. I got my teeth kicked in and realized I was not ready for games that were setup that hard. So I went home and set my games up even harder than that. Practiced constantly and saw dramatic improvement.

I’ve found in pinball it just takes the “want to”. If you just play a ton, study, work on all the angles, the sky’s the limit.

Tighten those tilt bobs!
That and less (or more) beer will improve your skill.

Be careful calling it practice...now there may be a coach-and he/she may put you in a different position

Practice makes perfect (resized).jpg

Who gots time to practice (resized).jpg

I feel like I need to go back to school and skip practice. I think I could improve my overall scores by really learning the rule sets and strategies better for each game. I will make this a goal this year

And on this day, sataneatscheese became a man.

Top competitors often have good rules knowledge but you can usually find enough in a few minutes at pintips.net and a few other places.

Practice will teach you when to dead bounce, drop catch, or live catch. It will teach you how the speed of a ball traveling through in in-lane will affect your accuracy. When to nudge BEFORE the ball ever has the opportunity to become uncontrollable. How to recover from a missed shot and what to shoot to keep a miss from turning into a drain.

If you're (un?)lucky, along the way you'll notice the limitations of competitive pinball's ranking system so you'll become an organizer and try to run fun events for a wide variety of skill levels. Then you'll become a world-class pinball stream commentator, and finally graduate to Pinside cynic.

Your competition is the pinball machine you’re playing.

Was it his Pin Mitzvah?

I'm not playing pinball any more. Then again, I'm not playing pinball any less, either. Goldilocks tells me the amount I'm playing is just right. But she's been arrested for breaking into the Bear family's house, so maybe her advice is not the best to take.

I almost didn't join the local pinball league years ago because I didn't want to turn something I do for fun into a competition. The guy that pulled me in explained its just a beer and basement league - some of the guys are serious, some just like to hang, goof off, drink beer and play.

I'm in the second group. "Working" on pinball skills to compete against others doesn't interest me in the least. It's a game, I play it. I've sold games that I've owned for years and never even knew all the rules or reached the wizard modes. It's not about beating the game or getting a higher score, it's about having fun regardless of the outcome. For me anyways.

Now that’s a tournament I’d play in! No ball holds, just flip when the ball comes your way and drink beer. To me, it’s more satisfying to hit a shot while the ball is moving then stop, hold, and flip (which to me is boring).

I suck. I wouldn’t even call some of my games practice. Public humiliation is more like it.