Eighty-five players at LITT: the October 2023 open that set the template

LITT Pinball Bar had been open for fifteen days. On October 29, 2023, eighty-five people walked in for a Sunday afternoon three-strike and started something that is still running every last Sunday of the month, three years later.

This is the fourth-biggest tournament in the Minnesota data by WPPR value, and it is the largest by field size that is not a Kentucky Derby. It is also the single monthly edition that beat every other edition of the same monthly, which is why it is the one that gets a post.

The numbers

Ninety-five games for eighty-five players tells you exactly what a knockout is. Most of the room played two or three games and went to the bar. The people who stayed played eleven.

Tony Midtling's afternoon

Tony Midtling won ten of the eleven games he played. That is not a figure of speech; the game results have him first in ten of eleven, and the one he lost he still survived. He finished on ten points to Jared Eshelman's nine.

The head-to-head that decided it happened in round eleven, on Rollergames, and it took ten minutes and fifty-six seconds. Midtling first, Eshelman second, done.

Midtling was ranked around 723 in the world that month, with a career best of 548. Eshelman, who had made the trip from Nashville, sat just outside the top 1,000 at the time and has since been as high as 202. Marshall Hilgemann in third was at 707. None of that mattered much on the day.

The machines

Forty machines saw play, and LITT's lineup then was already what it is now: a wall of new Sterns with a row of eighties Ballys and Williams tucked behind them.

Zeke Weber took three wins on X-Men Wolverine (LE), the only player in the event to win three games on any single machine. If you were drawn onto Wolverine that afternoon and Weber was in your group, that was bad luck.

The long ones

The longest game was 52 minutes and 7 seconds on Godzilla in round one, a four-player with Tony Midtling and Zack Schuster both surviving and Jim Hartley and Katie Baklund both taking strikes. Godzilla in 2023 was still new enough that most of the room was learning it in public.

Next:

• 41m23s on Scooby-Doo (CE) in round three.
• 37m34s on Cactus Canyon in round two.
• 37m17s on Spider-Man in round seven, Mark Larson and Joseph Nordenstam through.
• 36m55s on Cirqus Voltaire in round three.

The quickest was 8 minutes 49 seconds on Radical! in round four.

The upsets

Shawn Rivet, ranked somewhere north of 21,000 at the time, knocked out two players ranked inside the top 5,000 on consecutive rounds: Betsy O'Connor on Funhouse in round two, then Kathy Tifft on X-Men Wolverine in round three.

Others:

• JJ Bottem, around 9,300, beat Keith Hanson, around 510, on Meteor in round three.
• Jordan Gatzke, around 7,800, beat Nathan Reardon, around 598, on Taxi in round four.
• Garrett Wright, around 8,000, beat Leonard Passofaro on Jurassic Park in round four. Wright is now inside the top 2,000 and finished fourth at the 2026 Kentucky Derby.

The rivalries

Knockouts do not generate the big repeat-meeting numbers that matchplay does, because everyone gets eliminated eventually. Even so:

• Marshall Hilgemann vs Jared Eshelman met six times, 2-1 to Eshelman with ties. All-time these two have played forty tracked games across eleven events, 22-12 to Eshelman.
• Mike Muggli vs Keith Hanson, three meetings, both wins to Muggli.
• Marshall Hilgemann vs Matthew Sitko, three meetings, 2-0 Hilgemann.
• Jack Copeland vs Eric Fryc, three meetings, 2-0 Fryc.

Five debuts

Five players had their first tracked tournament here. Two of them stuck: Chelsea Tollberg has 109 tracked events now and Madison Reine has 147.

The bigger picture

Eighty-five players is a lot, and LITT has done it repeatedly. The January 2025 open pulled 84, November 2023 pulled 81, and the Kentucky Derby Tournament #5 in May 2026 broke a hundred. The monthly open is the most reliable large field in the state, and the October 2023 edition is the highest-valued single instance of it.

If you want the machines LITT is running right now, the venue page tracks the Pinball Map listing, which is updated more often than anything a blog post could promise.

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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
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 (this post)
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.