Run a TOPs tournament. My best one paid out over $400. Software is already there. Charge $2 for a tournament game with $1 of that going towards the prize pool. Once started, the display shows details about the tournament including prize pool and current top scores. I ran mine for around a month each and always finished them on a weekend so people could get paid that day. You'll need a tournament button, if you don't already have one. Marco sells them.

Many cities now have all their rules listed online. Use search terms like amusement, video games and of course pinball. Rules can vary greatly from city to city and lots of large cities have no rules at all regarding pinball machines and video games. Always best to check first. Some cities have quirky rules leftover from the 80's when video games went nuts. My city requires a police background check if you operate 10 or more games at a single location, which I never did.

I never considered getting insurance when I operated pins because in the 50 years I've been playing (and 10 years of operating), I've never seen or heard of anyone getting hurt by a pinball machine. The businesses I put my games in did have insurance.

Huh? Have you looked at the pinball map in the last ten years? While we haven't had a huge resurgence, numbers have steadily increased for more than ten years. The popularity of barcades has played a big part. Covid has set things back, but saying pinball has been dead is flat out wrong.

That can't happen. You can win one game max on your first game. Stern's don't allow you to win more than one game. You might win a second game by getting the GC score, but that takes an awesome game and you can easily turn off replays for GC scores. No way at all to win 10 games on your first play. Once you do get a replay, the replay score reflexes up and it gets even harder to win a second game.

I ran a dozen or more tournaments. Had some of the best players on the planet compete in them. Neil Shatz, Rick Stetta, Andrei Massenkoff, Marc Connant. Every tournament made me money. Please stop repeating this misinformation LTG. You're flat out wrong.

You may have run a tournament on wedgeheads, but you didn't run a TOPs tournament. The software is only on Stern Whitestar games and newer. No software on wedgeheads.

LTG said a person could play one game and win 10 replays. That can't happen on a newer Stern or most any other game built in the last 40 years.

In the scenario you suggest, a player has to play 10 epic games, all getting replays, before playing any tournament games that count. Even if you could do it, you would be fatigued after those 10 epic games and you're not going to play your best with any remaining games. Not a winning strategy on a number of levels. When I play in a TOPs tournament, I play one non-tournament game to warm up, then play tournament games. As I said, some of the best players in the world played in my tournaments and they all made me (and the business) money. The audits don't lie.

https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.pinball/c/dUAKUzXyVFU/m/MYaMV-eSy0UJ