James Skelley has entered 182 tournaments and won six of them

One hundred and eighty-two tournaments. Six wins.

That ratio would look like a problem if James Skelley were not tenth in the 2026 Minnesota standings with 163.66 points. He has 43 podium finishes to go with the six victories, and in a series that counts your best twenty results, a stack of thirds and fifths in big fields outpoints a thin calendar with a trophy in it.

Where he plays, which is everywhere

Six rooms, four of them with twenty events or more. That is the broadest spread of anybody in the state's top ten, and it shows up in his machine log: 163 different machines with tracked results, more than all but three players in this year's list.

His best average finish comes at LITT at 2.06 and his worst at his busiest room, Northstar, at 2.25. The reason for that is in the next section.

The Northstar tax

Skelley's record against the two players who live at Northstar tells the whole story of his 2.25 average there:

• Luke Nahorniak: 19-63 with 13 ties over 95 games, a 26.8% clip
• Nathan Reardon: 39-54-6 over 99 games
• Daniel Hammond: 22-37-11 over 70 games
• David Marcis: 7-23-8 over 38 games
• Eric Fryc: 14-29-4 over 47 games

Five names, 349 shared games, and he is behind in all five. Playing your 78 busiest tournaments in the room that also hosts the state's strongest player is expensive.

Where he does well:

Sixty-five percent against Tvedt over 69 games and 63.5% against Koppelman over 74 are the two most reliable positive readings on his sheet.

What he plays

Twenty-two games of Attack From Mars with nine firsts and nine seconds is his most dependable machine. Nothing on his list runs away from the field the way the top players' best games do, which fits a profile built on consistency.

The weak end is unusually steep for a player this high:

• Hot Hand, 0.304 over 10 games, a 28% win rate
• Eight Ball, 0.339 over 8 games
• Eight Ball Champ, 0.415 over 10 games
• Royal Flush, 0.419 over 8 games

Four Bally and Gottlieb solid states from 1977 to 1985, all under 0.42. If a bank has any of them on it and Skelley is in your group, that is your pick.

The six wins

Six wins, zero shared firsts, which means every one of them was outright. The BFG Memorial in January out of 32 players is comfortably the biggest, and the LITT June 2025 finals came out of a 61-player qualifying field.

The 2026 season

Steady is the word. Form reads 62% over ten games against a 61% baseline, which is as close to flat as the metric gets. He was ninth of 20 at the Super Ball XL finals on September 19, fifth of 49 at the LITT August open, and third of 16 at the Flip Into Summer A finals in June.

Three deep runs in three months without a win in any of them is the shape of his whole career, and it has still carried him to tenth.

If you draw him

The old solid states. Hot Hand first, then Eight Ball or Eight Ball Champ. He has 36 games across those three at a combined win rate in the low thirties.

Avoid Attack From Mars and anything Star Wars. Check your own record against him on the head-to-head tool first, since with 163 machines and 1,146 games on file there is a good chance you already have a sample. More of the 2026 top 25 is here.