I really hope so mate, thanksYou’ll definitely make it Dean, probably pretty soon. You’re so much better than I was after like, three tournaments or whatever you’ve played now
Just keep turning up and the stars will align
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A diary of a beginner tournament player
- Thread starter Taxiturn
- Start date
Okay friends, before I head back to work and have to confront the real world again, here’s the promised “wrap-up” of my first year in competitive pinball and the end of this diary. I’ll start with some stats and then get into learnings / goals going forward at the end.
Tournament stats
I entered 26 IFPA-registered tournaments this year, broken down as follows:
Group matchplay - 13 (inc. 1 critical hit)
H2H matchplay - 5
Best card - 4
Pingolf - 2
Best game - 1
Launch party - 1
Zooming in on group matchplay:
- In 13 tournaments I played 196 games across 87 machines (counting Pro/Prem/LE together as one machine).
- Using the 7/5/3/1 and 7/4/1 scoring system, I averaged 3.73 ppg across the year.
- However, this obviously includes my very early tournaments where I was doing quite badly. I think my performances improved significantly from the UK Open (end of Sep) onwards, and if you just look at the period from then to date, my average improves to 4.14 ppg.
- I qualified for two finals in group matchplay (Bigger Pin Barn and Turkey Leftovers).
- Qualifying for finals in tournaments will typically require a score in the region of 4.5-5 ppg, so I will still need to improve further and get this up a bit more if I want to be consistently qualifying.
- I have maintained stats by opponent so if you want to know how you faired against me, just drop me a PM!
Looking at H2H matchplay:
- In 5 tournaments I played 124 games across 48 machines, against 42 different opponents.
- I won 55 of those games giving me a win rate of 44.4%. I had a win rate of at least 50% against 22 of my 42 opponents.
- I made 1 final (Not Another Birthday Tournament - my first final across all formats).
In best card:
- I placed in the top half of 3/4 tournaments (only finishing bottom half in the UK Open Main).
- I didn’t make any finals.
For a bit of fun, I also added up my tournament mileage. This came to a total of 3,281 miles of round trips from Bristol - sometimes tournaments were combined with other trips / activities but still, a lot of time on the road. My longest trip of the year was a 300 mile round trip to the Pinball Office.
IFPA stats
- I finished the year with 74.27 WPPRs from my best 15 tournaments, which puts me at 63rd in the UK and 3,047th in the world. Almost all of my “counting” tournaments were from PinFest onwards.
- I still have six counting tournaments with <2 WPPRS (and two with <1) so still plenty of scope to improve in this metric.
- My most WPPRific tournament was Turkey Leftovers (11.77 for finishing 9th), and weekend was obviously the UK Open (30.11 across the three tournaments).
- My WPPR “efficiency” was 6.29% (WPPRs scored divided by available).
- My IFPA “rating” is currently 1436. This is a very flawed version of a Glicko rating system which counts wins and losses against those ranked 32 spots either side of you in a given tournament. Nonetheless, my “rating” was as low as 1066 back in April, so has improved by over 350 points at the time of writing (it can swing quite wildly).
- I believe I have finished 76th in the UKCS standings, so did not qualify outright but will hopefully end up getting a place.
Pindigo
I log my high scores religiously on the Pindigo app, my username is the same as here if you want to find and “follow” me. According to Pindigo have played 199 different machines (not including duplicates in different venues). There is definitely joy in variety! Also a very useful tool for seeing your scores improving over time.
Things I think I’ve done well
- Playing a lot. As with pretty much any skill, if you want to get good then you need to practice, and I have played a lot of pinball in many different formats and on many different machines. My play also improved markedly when I was able to borrow Road Show (the first modern-ish machine that’s been in my house), and practice all sorts of flipper skills when convenient and with glass off when needed. Being deliberate with your practice time is also important - focus on a specific machine, shot or skill you want to develop, rather than just treating each game as having a high score objective.
- Rules knowledge. My play took a notable uptick when I started taking rules seriously. I have a Google doc with rules summaries I’ve written for around 200 different machines - not the only way of doing it, but works for me. I think that if you want to take improvement seriously, then doing your rules homework is absolutely essential.
- Taking advice and being curious. If I’m drawn in a group with a really strong player I’m not worrying about winning, but instead watching them as intently as I can (without being weird) to see what they’re shooting for, how they are controlling certain feeds, which skill shots they’re choosing etc. And if appropriate, maybe chatting to them after the game about anything interesting or weird to get a fresh perspective. I will also watch streams of the “super players” on YouTube / Twitch for tactics ideas, though have to temper my expectations on replication.
- Starting to slow the game down. At first I was in the beginner trap of “flip away”, but I am starting to develop some of the required skills and calmness to not do that all the time.
- Temperament. I think I manage to mostly stay calm and positive - much harder on the bad days, but at the end of the day we are playing games for fun and we should think and behave accordingly. For every bad outlane or getting pipped by 100k points, I generally get another one back in my favour later.
- Self-review. As evidenced by this entire thread, I think a lot about why things happen as they do and try to avoid chalking things up to “bad luck” wherever possible. Yes bad luck exists, but there is often a controllable misstep somewhere in the chain of events which could lead to a better outcome.
Things I want to improve in 2025
- Slow the game down even more. I still suffer from some “rushes of blood to the head” where I revert to lizard brain flip away tactics, or in some cases I don’t have the skill and/or confidence in the moment to execute the drop catch or tip over required. Every flip is a drain risk and I’m still making too many of them. I also want to significantly improve my shot accuracy - and one of the easiest ways to do that is trapping up as often as possible.
- The lunch dip. My performances in matchplay tournaments tend to be U-shaped with strong starts and finishes and a distinctly squishy middle (much like me!). I’ve tried eating, not eating, playing more, playing less - could almost be a mental block at this point or just coinciding with other people peaking. I also think the strong finishes are more a function of other people fading harder than me rather than me playing particularly better!
- Advanced flipper skills. I am getting fairly good at judging dead bounces and live catches, but my drop catches need more work and I almost never use alley passes or tap passes in a tournament setting due to the risk attached. I hope to add these to my tournament repertoire as I go through the year.
- Saves down the middle and nudging high up the table. My nudging has come on a lot in terms of outlane saves and some saves down the middle (like… from not touching the machine at all when I first started out), but I still think I suffer too many centre drains from either not moving the machine enough, or by getting an unsaveable SDTM because I missed an opportunity to nudge while the ball was at the top of the playfield. I’ve not quite developed the skill in reading the ball to be able to see three bounces ahead and know if I need to make a move or not. I think this will only come with more time and experience.
- Awareness wider than the ball. It is REALLY easy to fall into the trap of staring at the ball at all times, but with modern games (especially in loud environments) there is loads of information in the playfield lights and the screen, which you’ll not get if you never look at them. I have missed starting mini wizard modes because I didn’t know I had them lit. I want to develop this wider spatial awareness more this year. This also extends to things like changing inlanes (e.g. FIRE on Medieval Madness), which is easy to neglect if you’re focusing solely on your next flip. I think this will also come as a natural effect of making quicker and clearer decisions on shot choice and ball control, because then I have the time to think about the lanes.
Goals for 2025
Focusing on my play as per the development points above is key to all of this, as especially in matchplay that is all you can control. But some more “measurable” goals would include:
- Making more finals. So many variables in this so I don’t want to put a percentage on it, but I would like to make more of them through solid play in qualifying and go further in the ones I do qualify for. Winning a tournament this year is not a particularly realistic goal for me yet, given the quality of the top UK players of which I am not one.
- Playing a tournament overseas. It would be nice to combine pinball with some travel!
- Perhaps cracking the UK top 50 by the end of the year - stretching but not impossible. It gets exponentially harder to climb the ranks and playing often and at big tournaments (as is the way to maximise WPPRs in the current system) can only cover actual pinball skill deficiency to a certain degree.
Some highlights and thanks
Highlights for the year are probably:
- First tournament buzz from not totally embarrassing myself and even winning a couple of games.
- UK Open - mega intensity, bordering on torturous at some points but amazing to be in the room with so many great players.
- Making my first final.
- Having a magical game on Road Show and putting up just short of 10 billion, one of those real “it’s actually coming together” moments.
- The friends I’ve met along the way! (vom)
I would like to wrap up the diary by thanking a few people who have been particularly instrumental in this great first year of pinball.
Pete @Moonraker for helping me first get into this madness by introducing me to the SW league and of course for continuing to operate the excellent Special When Lit and the league meets and tournaments held there.
@robotgreg @GezTheHealer @cyberkryten and Rich M (in addition to Pete) in particular for taking the time early on to give tips and demonstrate skills, really helpful! I could reel off more names for ages, I’ve picked up useful nuggets of info from loads of people along the way.
@roadshow16 for advice, moral support and the loan of one of his Road Shows which really helped supercharge my progress.
@kevlar who will always sniff out the nearest Spoons when we’re on the road and for letting me come over and play his lovely collection!
@Lickashot for being weirdly excited about updates to this thread, it’s nice to have Stans
And all of the TDs and league meet hosts who make the scene possible at all - @Lecari @David_Vi @Tilt_Birmingham and the teams at PBR, PinFest and the UK Open to name a few.
I hope this thread has been at least somewhat useful to newer players, my PMs are always open for any “newbie questions” or otherwise I look forward to seeing you all out on the circuit this year!
Many thanks,
Simon
Tournament stats
I entered 26 IFPA-registered tournaments this year, broken down as follows:
Group matchplay - 13 (inc. 1 critical hit)
H2H matchplay - 5
Best card - 4
Pingolf - 2
Best game - 1
Launch party - 1
Zooming in on group matchplay:
- In 13 tournaments I played 196 games across 87 machines (counting Pro/Prem/LE together as one machine).
- Using the 7/5/3/1 and 7/4/1 scoring system, I averaged 3.73 ppg across the year.
- However, this obviously includes my very early tournaments where I was doing quite badly. I think my performances improved significantly from the UK Open (end of Sep) onwards, and if you just look at the period from then to date, my average improves to 4.14 ppg.
- I qualified for two finals in group matchplay (Bigger Pin Barn and Turkey Leftovers).
- Qualifying for finals in tournaments will typically require a score in the region of 4.5-5 ppg, so I will still need to improve further and get this up a bit more if I want to be consistently qualifying.
- I have maintained stats by opponent so if you want to know how you faired against me, just drop me a PM!
Looking at H2H matchplay:
- In 5 tournaments I played 124 games across 48 machines, against 42 different opponents.
- I won 55 of those games giving me a win rate of 44.4%. I had a win rate of at least 50% against 22 of my 42 opponents.
- I made 1 final (Not Another Birthday Tournament - my first final across all formats).
In best card:
- I placed in the top half of 3/4 tournaments (only finishing bottom half in the UK Open Main).
- I didn’t make any finals.
For a bit of fun, I also added up my tournament mileage. This came to a total of 3,281 miles of round trips from Bristol - sometimes tournaments were combined with other trips / activities but still, a lot of time on the road. My longest trip of the year was a 300 mile round trip to the Pinball Office.
IFPA stats
- I finished the year with 74.27 WPPRs from my best 15 tournaments, which puts me at 63rd in the UK and 3,047th in the world. Almost all of my “counting” tournaments were from PinFest onwards.
- I still have six counting tournaments with <2 WPPRS (and two with <1) so still plenty of scope to improve in this metric.
- My most WPPRific tournament was Turkey Leftovers (11.77 for finishing 9th), and weekend was obviously the UK Open (30.11 across the three tournaments).
- My WPPR “efficiency” was 6.29% (WPPRs scored divided by available).
- My IFPA “rating” is currently 1436. This is a very flawed version of a Glicko rating system which counts wins and losses against those ranked 32 spots either side of you in a given tournament. Nonetheless, my “rating” was as low as 1066 back in April, so has improved by over 350 points at the time of writing (it can swing quite wildly).
- I believe I have finished 76th in the UKCS standings, so did not qualify outright but will hopefully end up getting a place.
Pindigo
I log my high scores religiously on the Pindigo app, my username is the same as here if you want to find and “follow” me. According to Pindigo have played 199 different machines (not including duplicates in different venues). There is definitely joy in variety! Also a very useful tool for seeing your scores improving over time.
Things I think I’ve done well
- Playing a lot. As with pretty much any skill, if you want to get good then you need to practice, and I have played a lot of pinball in many different formats and on many different machines. My play also improved markedly when I was able to borrow Road Show (the first modern-ish machine that’s been in my house), and practice all sorts of flipper skills when convenient and with glass off when needed. Being deliberate with your practice time is also important - focus on a specific machine, shot or skill you want to develop, rather than just treating each game as having a high score objective.
- Rules knowledge. My play took a notable uptick when I started taking rules seriously. I have a Google doc with rules summaries I’ve written for around 200 different machines - not the only way of doing it, but works for me. I think that if you want to take improvement seriously, then doing your rules homework is absolutely essential.
- Taking advice and being curious. If I’m drawn in a group with a really strong player I’m not worrying about winning, but instead watching them as intently as I can (without being weird) to see what they’re shooting for, how they are controlling certain feeds, which skill shots they’re choosing etc. And if appropriate, maybe chatting to them after the game about anything interesting or weird to get a fresh perspective. I will also watch streams of the “super players” on YouTube / Twitch for tactics ideas, though have to temper my expectations on replication.
- Starting to slow the game down. At first I was in the beginner trap of “flip away”, but I am starting to develop some of the required skills and calmness to not do that all the time.
- Temperament. I think I manage to mostly stay calm and positive - much harder on the bad days, but at the end of the day we are playing games for fun and we should think and behave accordingly. For every bad outlane or getting pipped by 100k points, I generally get another one back in my favour later.
- Self-review. As evidenced by this entire thread, I think a lot about why things happen as they do and try to avoid chalking things up to “bad luck” wherever possible. Yes bad luck exists, but there is often a controllable misstep somewhere in the chain of events which could lead to a better outcome.
Things I want to improve in 2025
- Slow the game down even more. I still suffer from some “rushes of blood to the head” where I revert to lizard brain flip away tactics, or in some cases I don’t have the skill and/or confidence in the moment to execute the drop catch or tip over required. Every flip is a drain risk and I’m still making too many of them. I also want to significantly improve my shot accuracy - and one of the easiest ways to do that is trapping up as often as possible.
- The lunch dip. My performances in matchplay tournaments tend to be U-shaped with strong starts and finishes and a distinctly squishy middle (much like me!). I’ve tried eating, not eating, playing more, playing less - could almost be a mental block at this point or just coinciding with other people peaking. I also think the strong finishes are more a function of other people fading harder than me rather than me playing particularly better!
- Advanced flipper skills. I am getting fairly good at judging dead bounces and live catches, but my drop catches need more work and I almost never use alley passes or tap passes in a tournament setting due to the risk attached. I hope to add these to my tournament repertoire as I go through the year.
- Saves down the middle and nudging high up the table. My nudging has come on a lot in terms of outlane saves and some saves down the middle (like… from not touching the machine at all when I first started out), but I still think I suffer too many centre drains from either not moving the machine enough, or by getting an unsaveable SDTM because I missed an opportunity to nudge while the ball was at the top of the playfield. I’ve not quite developed the skill in reading the ball to be able to see three bounces ahead and know if I need to make a move or not. I think this will only come with more time and experience.
- Awareness wider than the ball. It is REALLY easy to fall into the trap of staring at the ball at all times, but with modern games (especially in loud environments) there is loads of information in the playfield lights and the screen, which you’ll not get if you never look at them. I have missed starting mini wizard modes because I didn’t know I had them lit. I want to develop this wider spatial awareness more this year. This also extends to things like changing inlanes (e.g. FIRE on Medieval Madness), which is easy to neglect if you’re focusing solely on your next flip. I think this will also come as a natural effect of making quicker and clearer decisions on shot choice and ball control, because then I have the time to think about the lanes.
Goals for 2025
Focusing on my play as per the development points above is key to all of this, as especially in matchplay that is all you can control. But some more “measurable” goals would include:
- Making more finals. So many variables in this so I don’t want to put a percentage on it, but I would like to make more of them through solid play in qualifying and go further in the ones I do qualify for. Winning a tournament this year is not a particularly realistic goal for me yet, given the quality of the top UK players of which I am not one.
- Playing a tournament overseas. It would be nice to combine pinball with some travel!
- Perhaps cracking the UK top 50 by the end of the year - stretching but not impossible. It gets exponentially harder to climb the ranks and playing often and at big tournaments (as is the way to maximise WPPRs in the current system) can only cover actual pinball skill deficiency to a certain degree.
Some highlights and thanks
Highlights for the year are probably:
- First tournament buzz from not totally embarrassing myself and even winning a couple of games.
- UK Open - mega intensity, bordering on torturous at some points but amazing to be in the room with so many great players.
- Making my first final.
- Having a magical game on Road Show and putting up just short of 10 billion, one of those real “it’s actually coming together” moments.
- The friends I’ve met along the way! (vom)
I would like to wrap up the diary by thanking a few people who have been particularly instrumental in this great first year of pinball.
Pete @Moonraker for helping me first get into this madness by introducing me to the SW league and of course for continuing to operate the excellent Special When Lit and the league meets and tournaments held there.
@robotgreg @GezTheHealer @cyberkryten and Rich M (in addition to Pete) in particular for taking the time early on to give tips and demonstrate skills, really helpful! I could reel off more names for ages, I’ve picked up useful nuggets of info from loads of people along the way.
@roadshow16 for advice, moral support and the loan of one of his Road Shows which really helped supercharge my progress.
@kevlar who will always sniff out the nearest Spoons when we’re on the road and for letting me come over and play his lovely collection!
@Lickashot for being weirdly excited about updates to this thread, it’s nice to have Stans
And all of the TDs and league meet hosts who make the scene possible at all - @Lecari @David_Vi @Tilt_Birmingham and the teams at PBR, PinFest and the UK Open to name a few.
I hope this thread has been at least somewhat useful to newer players, my PMs are always open for any “newbie questions” or otherwise I look forward to seeing you all out on the circuit this year!
Many thanks,
Simon
Lickashot
Registered
Never has one felt such an overwhelming sense of euphoria and contentment from reading the sequel to War And Peace !!!
This was a very good read. You have come on loads from your first year. Keep it going.
From a personal point of view I have really enjoyed the last 6 months of discovering competitive pinball. I have made a lot of new friends.
I have a long way to go on my journey but I am strapped in and ready for it.
I really want to develop my skills because at the moment I do tend to just flip away and like @Taxiturn mentioned sometimes it's best to stay calm and have that control of the ball.
My 2025 goals:
- Firstly I would love to have a machine at home so I can practice more
- Qualify for my first finals
- Get into the UK top 100
- Play more tournaments
- Play a tournament overseas
- Learn to slow things down and not just flip away
From a personal point of view I have really enjoyed the last 6 months of discovering competitive pinball. I have made a lot of new friends.
I have a long way to go on my journey but I am strapped in and ready for it.
I really want to develop my skills because at the moment I do tend to just flip away and like @Taxiturn mentioned sometimes it's best to stay calm and have that control of the ball.
My 2025 goals:
- Firstly I would love to have a machine at home so I can practice more
- Qualify for my first finals
- Get into the UK top 100
- Play more tournaments
- Play a tournament overseas
- Learn to slow things down and not just flip away
Lickashot
Registered
This will start to come more naturally Dean, probably sooner than you think.