I want to watch the best of the best playing pinball to see what I can glean from them but I can't tell which PAPA matches are the closest to the best of the best because I don't understand how they are titled on youtube. This video clearly seems to be a good one but I don't know what else to watch:

Also so I don't have to start another thread, is it really a live catch if the ball rolls up the inlane like happens sometimes with a drop catch? That happened to me alot today on Dr. Who and I'm wondering if they are legit live catches or if maybe the ball is just bouncing up the inlane. Also in Taxi I can get the ball to stop but I think it's more of a post catch than a live catch. On terminator 2 I get some legit live catches but they are extremely inconsistent. On fishtales today out of about 5 games I never succeeded in a single live catch. I think I have to solumly accept that I blow at live catches. I am getting better at everything else though so that's good but live catches are so damn effective at improving ball control that I feel like I need to master them too.

ah... I was confused by the round numbers... If I want to see the supposedly best players in action I look for "final round". The only local league I'm aware of meets on a day I have class late. I am going to try to join them after this semester. For now I do sometimes compete with my dad but I don't learn much from him because he is better than me strickly by aiming almost perfectly rather than being good at other ball control techniques. I will ask the league guys who I see at the bar on random days to play vs me and I'll watch what they do. Watching competition is interesting to see how often they use various skills and the commentators opinions. I see your point about style points and when I watch competition videos those guys can rarely get the ball to stop dead on the flipper either so I shouldn't worry about it.

The guy who won the tournament I was watching was a pro at live catching that's why I want to learn it better. But you're right I am one of those guys who tries to live catch everything. I get in live catch mode or dead flipper pass mode rather than discerning on the fly which skill to employ

I just wasted like $20 on pinball. I have a bad habit of having too many beers when playing and they really don't help after a certain point. I had one good game on doctor who and that's it. Can't seem to find a great way to get the ball to the left flipper consistently since it's lighting flippers and the gap in the middle is big. Working on kicking the ball back on the right flipper and post transferring it but neither technique is consistent at this point, it's a hard game to post transfer on. I love terminator 2 but I have days where either my pinball skills are on point and I can't aim that damn "take your best shot" thing or days where my pinball skills are shit but I hit every shot with that toy.

I'm trying to change up my skill set in too many ways at once and it's making me suck. I think I should just work on one new skill at a time. I am trying a new way to aim that my dad uses. Instead of timing in my head how far down the flipper to shoot each shot I'm visually looking at how far down the flipper the ball is for each shot. I'm not sure if this is an improvement or a worse way of playing.

Anyway there are only three leagues in my area I am aware of: the closest I have a conflict with when they meet, Marvins only meets once a month which is dumb, and the detroit pinball league requires you to have your own collection. I have had a couple people mention coming over to their place and if you guys are serious that would be cool. I have only serial killed two people in the last year so I think I have that out of my system for now.

Appeac which is the way you do aiming? Timing in your head or distance down the flipper?

FishTales is a good example of factoring speed when you are going for the monster fish. The more you send that ball looping around the ramps the faster it goes. I never thought of trapping it.

Yeah I think I get less frustrated when I focus on one thing at a time, but it's hard because some of this stuff doesn't work as well on the different machines. The place I go has all different kinds of flippers and two of my favorite machines have lighting flippers. I want to go sue whoever came up with lightening flippers for stealing my right to pursue happiness

*I also have this conspiracy theory that the guy who owns the machines I play has all different kinds of flippers so that it's harder and he gets more quarters...

Yeah recently I have played "with" people three times, two out of the three times the pressure got into my head and made me worse than normal but one of the times I psyched myself into being on my A game. So I can see the point in getting use to playing with people especially who are better than me. But I think there is no substitute for watching finals games cause you are seeing how the best of the best play and there's no arguing that they are mostly doing all the right things and when they don't, the commentators say what they should have done.

Yeah I have been to M-Brew we could play there. My girlfriend might want to come too because they have her ToM. Last time I was there before I could tell one of the girls who came that I like pinball she was like "yeah they have an arcade downstairs with pinball; who plays pinball? It's so slow, I like action games." lmao Pinball has more action than a first person shooter if you ask me, you are making big decisions every few seconds that if you jack up, you loose!

I feel like live catches work better on old flippers and are not so easy on bouncy rubbers or lightning flippers, maybe not the lightning flippers part.

and yeah i attempt live catches on like 70% of my catches and succeed about 2% of the time making the ball come to a complete stop, but even the pros only occasionally make that happen (still much better than myself