Does play order matter in tournament pinball? What 21,000 games say
Every player has heard that going last is an advantage. We checked 21,331 four-player tournament games. The player who goes first wins a little more often than anyone else, the player who goes last wins a little less, and the whole effect is small next to the choice of machine.
·5 min read·Tilt Stats
Ask a room of tournament players whether they would sooner go first or last, and many will say last. The reasoning is sound. The last player knows every score on the board before the final ball, and can choose between a safe plan and a risky one with full information.
We have the play order for every game we track, so we checked. The belief does not hold up in our results. It is the first player who has the edge, and the edge is small.
The numbers
These are four-player games where all four players finished in different places. With no order effect, each seat would win 25% of the time.
| Seat | Won the game | Finished last | Average finish |
|---|---|---|---|
| Player 1 | 26.5% | 24.4% | 2.46 |
| Player 2 | 24.2% | 25.1% | 2.51 |
| Player 3 | 25.0% | 24.9% | 2.50 |
| Player 4 | 24.2% | 25.7% | 2.53 |
That is 21,331 games. With a sample that size, the first seat's 26.5% is too far from 25% to be chance. Player 4 wins the least often and finishes last the most often.
The smaller games show less.
| Game size | Games | Player 1 won | Even split |
|---|---|---|---|
| Three players | 7,058 | 34.1% | 33.3% |
| Two players | 5,620 | 50.4% | 50.0% |
In head-to-head games, order makes no difference we can measure.
Is it the seat or the player sitting in it?
Before crediting the seat, we have to ask whether the seats are handed out evenly. They are not quite. How order is set depends on the format and the organizer. In many qualifying rounds it is random. In finals and in some formats it goes by seed, or the higher seed chooses.
To check, we took the 14,145 four-player games in which every player has an IFPA rating, and looked at where the highest-rated player in each group was seated.
| Seat | Highest-rated player sat here | Lowest-rated player sat here |
|---|---|---|
| Player 1 | 27.3% | 23.6% |
| Player 2 | 24.4% | 25.1% |
| Player 3 | 24.1% | 24.9% |
| Player 4 | 24.2% | 26.4% |
The strongest player in a group goes first a little more often than chance, and the weakest goes last a little more often. So part of the first seat's edge is that better players sit there.
It does not account for all of it. Here is the win rate for each seat, split by how the player ranked within the group.
| Player's rating within the group | Seat 1 | Seat 2 | Seat 3 | Seat 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Highest | 41.7% | 39.2% | 38.6% | 39.2% |
| Second | 27.1% | 26.3% | 26.3% | 26.6% |
| Third | 20.5% | 18.8% | 20.4% | 20.3% |
| Lowest | 14.8% | 12.7% | 14.6% | 12.8% |
In every row the first seat has the best win rate, in one case by a hair. Against the average of the other three seats, it is between 0.7 and 2.7 points better. A strong player wins more from seat 1 than from anywhere else, and so does a weak one.
We cannot fully separate the seat from the seeding with the data we have. A format that seats by standing may also put a better than average favorite in seat 1, and rating alone would not show it. What we can say is that nothing here supports an advantage for going last, and what there is points the other way.
Why first might be better
We do not know, and the data does not say. Two explanations fit.
The first player plays without a number to chase. There is nothing to react to, so the plan is the plan. A player who is behind and knows it tends to take on riskier shots, and riskier shots lose balls.
The information that the last player holds is also worth less than it seems. It only matters on the final ball, and only when the scores are close enough for a change of plan to make the difference. Most games are not decided that way.
Does the age of the machine change it?
No. We split the games by the year the machine was built.
| Machines | Games | Seat 1 | Seat 2 | Seat 3 | Seat 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built before 1990 | 10,798 | 26.9% | 24.0% | 24.9% | 24.3% |
| Built 1990 or later | 10,511 | 26.2% | 24.5% | 25.2% | 24.1% |
The pattern is the same on both. We also looked at individual machines, and the numbers jump around from one to the next. With 200 to 500 games each, a single machine cannot tell you anything about seats, and we are not publishing those figures.
What to do with this
If you are offered the choice of machine or order, take the machine. The largest seat effect we can find is under three points. The spread between machines is far larger. On Gorgar, the most open machine in our data, the underdog wins 46.6% of pairings. On Game of Thrones, the most reliable, it is 27.4%. The upset rates post ranks all 97. Your own record varies from one machine to the next as well, and the scouting report shows which machines favor you against a given group. The scouting walkthrough covers the routine.
If you are offered only the order, do not agonize. Going first costs you nothing on average and may help. If you like knowing the target, go last. The price is small.
If the order is assigned, forget about it. A bad seat is worth a point or two of win rate. A missed skill shot is worth more.
How we counted
- Tournament games in our data with a machine recorded, as of late September 2026.
- Only games where every finishing position was different. Formats that give two players the same points for a game, such as some strikes formats, record a tie, and a tie has no clean winner.
- Play order is the order the players were listed on the machine in Match Play.
- Ratings are current IFPA ratings, which means a player's rating today stands in for their rating at the time of the game.
Your own split by play order is on the insights tab of your player profile. If it is lopsided, check how many games are behind it before you change anything. The order for any past game is on its tournament page, in the rounds view.
For the numbers these are built on, see pinball ratings explained. For your record against one opponent, see the head-to-head tool. For machine by machine advice, see the tournament strategy guides and how to play classic games in a tournament.