Mark Larson has played 134 of his 136 tournaments in one building
Minnesota's No. 2 holds the highest Match Play rating in the state's top 25 and a 35-month entry streak that has never broken. Almost all of it has happened at LITT Pinball Bar.
·4 min read·Tilt Stats
Most competitive players chase events. Mark Larson waits for them to come to him.
Of the 136 tournaments Tilt Stats has tracked for him, 134 were at LITT Pinball Bar in Minneapolis. The other two were at Northstar. He has a home room and an entry streak that has run 35 consecutive months without a gap, which means he has not missed a month since the middle of 2023.
It has worked. He sits second in the 2026 Minnesota standings on 238.75 points from 18 counted events, and he carries the highest Match Play rating of anyone in this year's top 25 at 1821, one point clear of the man in first.
The numbers behind the seeding
| Measure | Larson | Where that lands |
|---|---|---|
| Game win rate | 60.1% | 99th percentile of 285 ranked players |
| Average finish | 76% | 100th percentile |
| Tournaments tracked | 136 | 40 wins, 75 podiums |
| Average finish at LITT | 1.71 | over 685 games |
Roughly three out of every ten tournaments he enters, he wins. Across 685 games at his home bar he has 369 outright firsts. An average finishing position of 1.71 in four-player groups means the typical Larson game ends with him first or a close second, and rarely worse.
His recent form reads steady: 73% over his last ten games against a 76% career baseline. For a player operating that high, steady is the good outcome.
A machine list that refuses to concentrate
Here is where his profile diverges from everyone else in the top five. Larson has recorded games on 90 different machines. Only three of them have eight or more games behind them.
| Machine | Score | Win rate | Games |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attack From Mars | 0.690 | 78.6% | 8 |
| James Bond 007 | 0.682 | 75.0% | 9 |
| Paragon | 0.483 | 47.1% | 8 |
That is the whole qualifying list. Tilt Stats needs a handful of games on a machine before a per-machine score means anything, and Larson's play is spread so wide across LITT's rotating floor that almost nothing accumulates. Seven wins from nine on James Bond is a fine sign. It is also nine games.
The practical read: there is no scouting shortcut on him. You cannot find the one game he cannot play, because the data does not show one. What you can do is check the LITT lineup before you go, since the machines there turn over and his record on any given new arrival starts at zero like everyone else's.
Nobody has a losing record on him except one man
Sort his opponent records from worst to best and the list barely dips below even:
- Chris Frame: 4-6, 40% over 10 games
- Jason Lynch: 5-4-1, 55%
- Erika Corio: 5-4-1, 55%
- Daniel Hammond: 8-6-4, 55.6% over 18 games
- Eric Fryc: 36-26-4, 57.6% over 66 games
- Steven Skochinski: 37-27-1, 57.7% over 65 games
Read that again. His six worst matchups against regular opponents include five he is winning. Chris Frame, sitting at No. 11 this year, is the only player in the tracked field with a positive record against him across a meaningful sample, and it comes from ten games.
The flip side is brutal. Against Joel Ring he is 25-0. Against Leonard Passofaro he is 18-0 with two ties. Blake Pierce has taken six of forty. Where most top players have a handful of names that give them trouble, Larson's list of problems is one name long.
His busiest rivalry is with Skochinski, the man directly below him in the standings, and the two have played 65 tracked games with Larson ahead 37-27-1. The head-to-head page has the machine-by-machine split.
The big rooms
Larson's wins come in the largest fields the state produces, which is what a monthly open at a 70-player venue looks like:
- LITT October 2024 Open, X-Men launch party, 79 players
- Kentucky Derby Tourney 2024, 74 players
- LITT July 2024 Open, 70 players
- LITT December 2023 Open, 50 players
- LITT D&D Launch Party double elimination bracket, 31 players
Three of those five came out of a field of 70 or more. He also shared the top of qualifying with two other players at the 61-player June 2025 open, which the standings record as a first place apiece. Winning a 79-player open is a different achievement from winning a 12-player weeknight, and the tournament pages carry the full standings for each if you want to see who he had to get through.
The 2026 season so far
His summer was uneven in a way the season totals hide. He won Summer Competitive League round six on July 8 and shared the top of round five a week earlier, then finished 42nd of 65 at the July open. Three weeks later he was second of 49 at the August open and second again in its finals, losing that one to Skochinski.
A 42nd place in a 65-player 3-strike event is what variance looks like at the top. One cold bank, two bad groups, and a player who wins three in ten goes home early.
Playing him
Pick a modern game he has not seen much of and hope. There is no exploitable hole in his record, his home floor advantage at LITT is real and measurable, and his average finish says he will be in your group's top two most nights.
The scouting report will compare your machine list against his before the event, though be warned that his thin per-machine samples mean it will have less to say about him than about most opponents. The rest of the top 25 profiles are here.