True for me also. I do have a lot of the initials on my own machines on location (because I play them often), but very few initials anywhere else. I only play a handful of wizard modes over the course of a year, and I have at least 8 machines where I've never been there at all.

Success in tournaments with direct play has almost nothing to do with the ability to blow up games. It'll all about consistently solid scores.

And repetitive goals that usually don;t have a ton to do with Wizard modes.

Time on the machine. 100 games is good.

Practice makes perfect. If you would have practiced, you would've been perfect.

all future software packages should have among their options: timed balls.

Sorry for the dumb question, but how does one practice by playing one handed? Do you use one hand and move back and forth between the flippers, or do you just have one hand on one flipper and try to nudge to keep the ball away from the other flipper?

Pick a hand and go back and forth between flipping either one. I put my left hand in my belt loop behind me so it stays there. When we play dollar games in Kansas City the extra balls are always played one-handed and I've seen some pretty crazy ones. It's fun and educational.

I wold love this. 2m per person. Each player plays their full two minutes then it goes onto the next person. Hell 5 mins is fine. Anything to keep a four player game to 20mins or under is alright with me. Would make it better to watch as well.

I believe I can do this on my WOZ with the pindemption dongle.

Having that ability would make running tournaments so much easier.

I have run several casual tourneys with a forced time limit per ball/game (some as low as a 1 minute total game) to facilitate accommodating a large group of people, generating numerous quick rounds, and ending the tourney within a couple hours. It is surprising that the sudden presence of the clock changes the psychology of things, but people still have fun and the same cast of characters typically still performs well.

It is kind of like CIU on Metallica. The player has the length of whole song to do whatever they like, but most of the CIU songs are 5+ minutes. The audit for length of game on most machines is probably less than any CIU song. The point is there are probably not that many instances where the player is scrambling in CIU to finish/cash out. Not saying it can't happen, just probably rare. Again the clock changes the psychology.

Everyone entitled to their opinion of course but I find this hard to believe. I’m not saying that it’s the number one trait but my feeling is that nudging is absolutely crucial to top players. Nudging at a high level can be very subtle and almost invisible on streams but I see it as something top players are constantly doing as they play. Not rarely but constantly.

For example, you will see top players nudge to help low dead bounces make it to other flipper, if they use the flipper tip to touch ball to other flipper, to guide the ball to one lane over another etc. Slight nudges to influence the ball trajectory just slightly away from slings as ball travels down loops to flippers (see Bowen MM tutorial for example). Never mind for saves like slap saves and nudging out of outlines or out right shakes out of the outlane. Every tiny nudge that influences a ball away from the outlane IS an extra ball - that’s how important nudging is.

one of the key things I've found to playing better (and I'm not a great pinball player but I'm better than I was when I started playing two years ago) was not to put myself under any unneeded pressure and ----> To make sure you enjoy playing. So many people play terrible because for whatever reason they aren't enjoying it usually because they've put themselves under pressure. I saw it at NYCPC where a lot of the top players were finding it hard on the incredibly hard setups that the Never Beef crew had put on. I figured I was the worst player there and had nothing to lose so just played and enjoyed it and from my own point of view did really well. Many of the top players took a while to find their mojo, some, like Elwin, didn't and blasted to the top right away. But I remember watching many players struggle the first day; let me pick two, and two guys that I absolutely love and that are pinball greats - Steve Bowden and Lyman. I saw both put themselves under a lot of pressure, or at least thats how it looked to me.

https://www.neverdrains.com//nycpc2018/playerIndex.php?disp=player&pid=227

Steve struggled with some games on the first day, got his mojo on the second day, but I would say was enjoying it more on the second day and he smashed it and made it all the way to the final.

https://www.neverdrains.com//nycpc2018/playerIndex.php?disp=player&pid=183

Lyman had to fight AFM and Iron Man (we all did Ryan blowing it up I think the only player that nailed do or die?). But look the scores are all pretty low.

I'm ranked 4000 and something on IPFA I missed qualifying for the B final by 1 point and 20 seconds! But I look at my scores and am happy with how I played with positions above many top 500 players- I went there to enjoy it and have a good time and my pinball was the best I ever played.

I look at the scores for Star Trek, AFM and Iron man and I'm super happy; but I just played it as if I'd never played those games before (pretty much true for Iron man!)

then you watch Bowen, he made a lot of mistakes, but enjoyed it and won from a very uncertain position at more than one stage (watch the video).

Neil.

https://www.neverdrains.com//nycpc2018/playerIndex.php?disp=game&sel=Main

One aspect I haven’t heard much is multiball skills which I find quite different from single ball play and must be very important to score big scores. Not just trapping up and all the various skills like cradle separations etc but having the periferal vision skills to manage all the balls intelligently. Multiple play fields going on WOZ and TSPP for example. I sometimes feel like there is a much greater chance for me to loose all balls during multiball than to loose just my single ball so sometimes multiball feels more dangerous than single ball play to me. This is my current shitty skill level than I’m trying to improve upon.

LOTR_breath was the first guy I saw cradling multiple balls on a flipper during a multiball. I had all of these thoughts within about a second:

1. Wait, is that legal?
2. That’s kinda like juggling.
3. Jugglers are kinda nerdy. Is this nerdy?
4. No. This is cool. I need to learn this.

I’ve seen my level of play omcrease over the last year as I have spent more time playing on my machines than working on them.

The one aspect of my game that I believe has improved a lot is a subset of nudging, and that’s the ability to read a ball’s trajectory and the predict where the ball will is going and what it will do. You then can nudge at the appropriate time to place the ball on a less risk area of the playfield.

age, 10000 hours, autism, smoking pot, add, adhd, ocd, and a few other topics of interest are the differences for top players.
In the end, you either get pinball or you don't... The unknown factor.
Those like us that don't play well... we compensate by collecting the games.

Now that is really interesting. I do have 2 very small kids so for the past year all I've done is play on location, at night.
But also, I enjoy mode based games and very long games. And I don't mind having to play a game over and over again.
I don't know

My post ended up being far more controversial than intended

I was just trying to say that if you play on (most) locations or watch say Keith's or Bowen's tutorials, they will nudge a lot. So you might end up with this false impression that you can nudge your way in top level tournaments but you can't, because they games are set really tight. Because if they weren't then these players would play for hours which is what happened when Keith go to the wizard mode of Nascar and almost conquered the universe a few years ago at California Extreme.

This is why I was really trying to drill down what the OP was after.

Like people have said repeatedly, wizard modes and top players in top tournaments are really different things.

Anyway.

I think the main factors are Game Knowledge, Nudging skills, succeeding under pressure, and adapting to machines you are not use to playing. For Example tilt sensitively, simple shots, etc. and 1 more thing that has not been mentioned. when your opponents pit up a monster Score, A top player knows what the best possible way to achieve the scores your opponent put up. For example if a player dropped a 150 million Score on Midevil Madness, and your opponent stepping up only has 5 million starts his Multiball, now a top player would ignore the jackpots and just keep pounding castles because that is the best way to catch up to your opponent.

And even the best players need a little luck from the Pinball Gods

Brains, seeing angles and using geometry, then making your flipper hit that shot. Timing and knowledge of rules and "trick"s. I'm not a very good player lol

Try drawing the ball with back spin. Hit just right and induce e the spin.

I think it all comes down to balls. If you have balls of steel, you will play better!!!!

I was reading something recently about how a lot of the people who study this kind of thing think "Outliers" and the 10,000 hours rule is nonsense. Their argument is that it's not about just putting in the time, it's about putting in the time while maintaining a disciplined focus on learning and improving. What keeps most people from becoming "true experts" has less to do with being unwilling to put in the time, and more to do with being unable (or unwilling) to stay focused enough to benefit from the time they put in. You don't become a great three-point shooter in the NBA just by practicing your shot over and over again, you do it by being able to learn a little bit from each one you take.

I think that's very much related to why a lot of people in this thread have said that concentration is the most important thing that separates top players from everyone else.

Well said.