Bride of Pinbot pinball tournament strategy: one ramp, five shots, two balls

The Machine: Bride of Pin-Bot is a two-flipper, two-ramp game from 1991 with a rotating head at the top of the playfield. The head has four faces, and turning them is the game. It has 567 tracked tournament games in our data, most of them at Blainbrook.

It is famous for the billion point shot. In a tournament you will usually find that shot has been turned down or switched off, and the game that is left rewards something less dramatic: making the same ramp, from the same flipper, over and over.

The short version

1. Plunge for the fourth hole, worth 200,000.
2. From the right flipper, shoot the left ramp until multiball starts. It takes five shots on factory settings.
3. When the head releases a ball down the left side, hold the left flipper up so the ball hops across to the right flipper.
4. In multiball, get one ball out of the way and send the other up the left ramp.
5. If the left ramp is not going in, shoot the center ramp three times in a row and keep going. Every shot from the third on is a million.

The Shuttle Ramp

The left ramp is the Shuttle Ramp, and it is a right flipper shot. Depending on what is lit, it sends the ball into the head or up to the small PinBot playfield in the top right corner.

On factory settings the route to multiball is five ramp shots: PinBot, then the mouth, then PinBot again, then the first eye, then the second eye. The first eye holds the ball and serves you a new one. The second eye starts a two-ball multiball.

Each trip pays in several ways at once. The faces score 250,000 to 750,000 each, and those values double from the second eye on. The PinBot playfield pays 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 twice and then 600,000 with an extra ball lit. And some trips send the ball back to the shooter lane, which matters because of how the skill shot works.

The skill shot grows

The plunge drops the ball into one of five holes. From nearest to farthest they pay 50,000, 75,000, 100,000, 200,000 and 25,000. The ball bounces on the way, so the 200,000 hole is hard to hit every time.

Every time you plunge again on the same ball, the skill shot value gains another 1x. You plunge again after the first eye lock and whenever the PinBot playfield drops the ball out its right side into the shooter lane. A player who keeps making the Shuttle Ramp can be plunging for ten or twenty times the printed values by the end of a long ball.

Multiball

In multiball, most scoring doubles. The plan has two steps.

First, lock both balls back in the head. That gives you the fourth face, Metamorphosis. After that, every time you lock both balls again, the Big Wheel spins.

Second, control the ball you are not shooting. Trap it on the left flipper, park it in the pop bumpers or send it around the right loop. Then shoot the ramp with the other one.

If multiball ends before you reach Metamorphosis, two eye locks start it again. If it ends after, you start over from the first face.

The Big Wheel, and why to ask about it

The Big Wheel can award 1M, 5M, 10M, 50M, a special or a lit billion. A lit billion is collected at the center ramp before a timer runs out.

On factory settings the billion comes up often, and one billion outscores everything else a player will do all night. For that reason many leagues and tournaments turn it down. A common setup puts the billion and the 50M at 1% and cuts the billion timer to one second, which makes a lit billion impossible to collect.

Ask the tournament director how the wheel is set before you play. If it has been turned down, do not chase a lit billion. The points are in the ramps.

Two other routes to a billion remain even then. One is a combo of ten loops. The other is to light all four inlanes and outlanes for an extra ball and then roll through one. Neither is a plan, and both are worth knowing about if the chance comes up.

The Heartbeat Ramp

The center ramp is a U-turn that returns the ball to the right inlane. Either flipper can make it, and repeating it usually means a backhand from the right flipper.

The first two shots in a row pay 100,000 and 500,000. The third, and every one after, pays 1,000,000, or 2,000,000 during multiball. The value times out if you wait too long between shots, about seven seconds on factory settings.

With one ball held on the left flipper during multiball, looping this ramp for 2M a shot is the steadiest scoring on the game.

Bonus

Bonus is the base plus 10,000 for each loop on that ball, times the multiplier. The multiplier goes up when you complete the three standup targets, one above the left slingshot and two under the entrance to the right loop. Neither bonus nor multiplier carries to the next ball.

The standups are low risk and the multiplier has a very high ceiling. One player on Tilt Forums reported a single league ball that paid about 45M in bonus, more than half the score of that game. On a machine with the wheel turned down, the standups are part of a serious plan.

Where the ball drains

• The far left lane is a narrow shot next to the Shuttle Ramp. A miss hits the rubber on the ramp's left side and heads for the left outlane.
• A weak shot at the Heartbeat Ramp rolls back down the middle. A nudge usually saves it.
• Aiming at the bottom of the right loop is close to a sure drain.
• The pop bumpers mostly feed the right flipper, with no guarantee.

On factory settings you get two tilt warnings, and the third swing of the bob ends the ball.

What the tracked games say

Numbers are from late September 2026. The Bride of Pinbot machine page has the live ones.

The upset rate is how often the lower-rated player in a pairing finishes ahead. At 36.9% the game sits a little above the average of 35.5%, close to Paragon and Silverball Mania. It is a middle of the road pick for favorites and underdogs alike. The full ranking is in upset rates by machine.

The players who are good at it are very good at it. Trevor Klungseth has won 39 of his 67 games outright and finished ahead of 76% of the opponents he has faced on it. Adam Turgeson has won 30 of 58 and Bryan Moen 30 of 62. A repeatable ramp shot rewards the people who have made it a thousand times. If one of them is in your group, check the scouting report before you agree to play it.

Where to play it

• Blainbrook in Blaine has had it in tournaments since 2021, with 411 tracked games. See the Blainbrook guide.
• Julie's Pinball in Farmington lists one on its floor.
• LITT Pinball Bar used one in tournaments through June 2026. Check its page for the current lineup.

Some machines carry the Bride of Pinbot 2.0 kit, which replaces the rules with a different game. Tips written for 2.0 do not apply to the original.

Before your next game

The Bride of Pinbot playbook has player tips, videos and rulesheet links, and the scores tab shows the best games on record. For the full rules we leaned on the Pinball Primer guide and Keefer's rule sheet.

More from the same era: The Getaway and Attack From Mars. The whole series is in the machine strategy guides.