Tournament strategy, the numbers behind competitive pinball, and what is new on Tilt Stats.
Five years and 281 tournaments at a bowling alley game room where Eight Ball Deluxe, Hot Tip and Nugent settle more matches than anything built this century.
·4 min read·Tilt Stats
Four numbers follow a competitive pinball player around, and people argue about them constantly. Here is what IFPA rank, IFPA rating, Match Play rating and our own machine score each measure, who works them out, and when to ignore them.
·7 min read·Tilt Stats
The biggest average field of any room in the record, run once a month on a Saturday afternoon in a Northeast Minneapolis taproom, on a bank of fourteen games.
·4 min read·Tilt Stats
October 14, 2023, LITT Pinball Bar opens its doors with a Venom launch party and eighty-seven people sign up. Three players went 6-for-6, twenty-eight played their first tracked tournament, and a scene got a new center of gravity.
·5 min read·Tilt Stats
Tournament value, TGP, the 10 percent linear pot and the 90 percent cubic decay. A plain walkthrough of the IFPA points formula, why a strong field is worth more than a big one, and how to read the WPPR tab on any tournament page.
·7 min read·Tilt Stats
155 tournaments, 5,800 games and a late-eighties Williams bank that ate people alive. A look back at a room that was still growing when it stopped.
·4 min read·Tilt Stats
A tour of the venues that actually run tournaments in the Twin Cities and beyond, what the format tends to be at each, how deep the machine lineup goes, and how to find out what is on the floor before you drive there.
·6 min read·Tilt Stats
Twelve machines, thirty-player fields, ten different winners in fifteen events, and two 1988 Williams games that have ended more afternoons than anything modern on the floor.
·4 min read·Tilt Stats
Comparing two ratings tells you almost nothing about a matchup. The record between two players, machine by machine, tells you a lot. Here is how to pull it up, what the win probability is doing under the hood, and why your nemesis is probably not who you think.
·5 min read·Tilt Stats
