Last Chance at Lukie's 2023: thirty-seven players, 233 games and a year-end scramble

The name is the pitch. December 30, one day before the IFPA year closes, and if your ranking needs one more decent finish this is the last chance you are going to get. Northstar Pinball Collective had been open for less than a month. Thirty-seven people showed up anyway and played pinball until seven at night.

It is the second-biggest tournament in the Minnesota data, and the only reason it is not first is that its successor two years later drew six more players.

The numbers

Last Chance at Lukie's ran on December 30, 2023, organized by Luke Nahorniak. The listed format was four rounds of double-up matchplay in four-player groups, two games a round, though what actually got played stretched well past that: the data has 233 completed games and twenty-one qualifying games per player. Match Play graded it 200% TGP, the maximum.

A fully rated field is unusual and it matters. WPPR value is built from the ratings of the people in the room, and an unrated walk-in adds a body without adding strength. Thirty-seven rated players is worth more than fifty with fifteen newcomers mixed in.

Who came

The out-of-state entries are the tell that this event had a reputation before it had a history. Jared Eshelman came from Nashville and qualified sixth. Mike Loftus drove from Sioux Falls and qualified ninth. Dan Stephney made the trip from Fargo, which he has done often enough over the years that the tracked data lists a hundred of his events.

Qualifying went to Luke Nahorniak on 44.5 points, one of those margins that looks small until you remember the scoring scale. David Marcis was second on 42.

Then the finals rearranged everything. Luke won, which was the expected part. Eric Fryc, who had qualified eleventh, came second. Zack Schuster went from twelfth to third, and Zach LaVone from seventh to fourth. David Marcis, who had been the closest thing to a co-favorite all day, did not make the podium.

Sixteen players made the cut. The finals paid 49.59 to Luke, 34.18 to Fryc, 26.58 to Schuster and 21.18 to LaVone. Qualifying second and finishing outside the top four is an expensive way to spend a Saturday.

The machines

Forty machines saw play, and the mix is a good snapshot of what NPC was in its first month: heavy on late-seventies and eighties solid states, with a thin layer of modern Sterns on top.

Look at the spread on that list. Avengers took nearly four times as long per game as Pro-Football. A tournament that mixes both is asking for two completely different skills in the same afternoon: the patience to work a modern ruleset and the nerve to survive three balls on a fifty-year-old flipper game where one bad plunge ends you.

The long ones

• 74m42s on Attack From Mars in round four. Jared Eshelman won it over Daniel Hammond, Eric Fryc and Naomi Lund.
• 73m33s on Avengers: Infinity Quest in round five, Luke Nahorniak first.
• 71m36s on Total Nuclear Annihilation in round seven, Luke again, with David Marcis second and Tony Midtling third.
• 70m44s on Attack From Mars again in round two, Andy Fleming taking it.
• 69m28s on Game of Thrones in round three, Eric Fryc over David Marcis.

The quickest was 8m01s on Supersonic in round seven, won by Naomi Lund.

The upsets

Jake Nahorniak, ranked around 21,300 at the time, beat Marshall Hilgemann, ranked about 608, four separate times. Round four on Hot Hand, Comet and Total Nuclear Annihilation, then again in round six on Pro-Football. He added Brooke Hipsher in round seven on The Munsters for good measure. Being drawn into the same group as a top-1,000 player and taking three off him is a story. Doing it twice in the same tournament is a different kind of story.

The one that stands out most, though, is smaller on paper and larger in context. In round two, Zach LaVone, ranked around 4,580, beat Luke Nahorniak on Stranger Things. Luke was ranked sixth in the world that month. LaVone went on to finish fourth in the finals.

Leah Odegard also took two, beating Eric Fryc on High Speed and Matthew Sitko on Hot Hand in the first two rounds.

The rivalries

The draw did its usual thing and stuck some people together all day.

• Louis Acre-Kendall vs Daniel Hammond: eighteen meetings. Eighteen. Acre-Kendall edged it 10-8. That is a full tournament's worth of games against one opponent inside one tournament.
• Marshall Hilgemann vs Kaitlyn Schick: twelve meetings, 9-3 to Hilgemann.
• Eric Fryc vs Jared Eshelman: twelve meetings, 7-5 to Eshelman, which makes Fryc's eventual second-place finish over Eshelman's fifth a small piece of revenge.
• Krista Larson vs Kathy Tifft: twelve meetings, 8-4 Tifft.
• Nathan Reardon vs Chris Frame: nine meetings, 7-2 Reardon.

Scores worth writing down

Luke Nahorniak's 104,230 on Pro-Football is the best raw score recorded at the event, on a 1973 Gottlieb wedgehead. Eric Fryc's 66,410 on Gulfstream leads a tight three-way on that machine, with Nathan Reardon at 61,240 and Zack Schuster at 60,470.

Two years later

The same event came back in 2025, drew forty-three, ran seven rounds instead of four, and became the biggest tournament in the state's tracked history. Luke won that one too. Whatever the formula is, it has held.

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The full top ten

Ranked by the WPPR value paid to the winner, which folds field size, field strength and TGP into one number. Recurring events appear once, at their best edition.

1. Last Chance at Lukie's 2025: the biggest pinball tournament in the Minnesota data
2. Last Chance at Lukie's 2023: thirty-seven players, 233 games and a year-end scramble (this post)
3. The NPC Amazing Race: fifty machines, sixty-nine players and a Friday night that ran past midnight
4. Eighty-five players at LITT: the October 2023 open that set the template
5. One hundred and one players: the Kentucky Derby Tournament at LITT
6. Thirty players, 188% TGP: the NPC Spring Classic and the value of playing all day
7. The day LITT opened: 87 players, 261 games and twenty-eight people's first tournament
8. Sixty-five players, thirteen machines: Broken Clock runs the tightest room on the list
9. Sam and Jared's farewell party: fifty-seven people show up to say goodbye
10. NPC opening day: sixty-eight people in a brand new room, and Neil Graf wins eleven of twelve

Every number here comes from the tracked Match Play data behind Tilt Stats. Tournament, player, machine and venue pages update as new results land, so the live figures will drift from the ones written down above.