My wife and I both started in the hobby at the beginning of 2019. We've definitely been sucked in, accumulating 14 machines and spending probably an-hour-or-more playing five days a week.

We have 6 modern Sterns (GB, SW, Aero, BM66, GOTG, IM) and haven't 'completed' any of them yet...and that's with moving the outlane posts in on all of them. I'm wondering how normal this is?

Interested in opinions:
- How common is it for owners to have not 'completed' their games with standard 3-ball games?
- What's the learning curve for pinball, in general - do players typically keep improving year-after-year - or do you pretty much plateau after X years
- What's the typical learning curve for a modern game - how many plays are typical for typical players before they 'complete' all of the goals on a modern machine?
- We both just celebrated 49th bdays. Is pinball like other sports where natural skills/abilities begin declining after peaking in 20's or 30's? Why?
- Maybe sexist-loaded question: I know tourneys are split between men & women. Do men statistically score better on average than women? Why would this be the case? Is it just a larger pool of players? Women have more important things to do than play pinball all day? Something else?

Sure would like to complete a Wizard mode on one of these Sterns some day!

Yeah, I still have a lot of fun playing, but I just can’t help but keep thinking ‘I should be better than this by now’.

Star Wars just about completed all of the planets...think I got as far as completing all but 1 scene...but didn’t complete all of the other challenges

Aerosmith...got within two shots on last song

Others...maybe 70%, at best.

Wow. Lotsa tips and encouragement in this thread. Thanks everyone.

Laid off the Sterns and let Getaway kick my ass tonight.

I could probably spend some time on videos and learning a bit more technique, but seems the consensus is to ‘just enjoy’ and don’t worry too much about where I’m at on the scoreboard.

River City Blues Club is a great place. Wife and I visited a couple of times and were thinking about joining the league. Maybe we will when things get back to normal...