Paul Tvedt has 1,661 games on file and a 46-game record on one machine

Paul Tvedt has played 228 tracked tournaments and 1,661 games. Eight of those tournaments ended with him alone in first place.

That is the widest gap between volume and conversion anywhere in the 2026 top 25, and he is seventeenth on 140.52 points regardless. A series that counts twenty results does not ask how many you won.

January was the month

On January 9, at Erika and Kate's Critical Hit Birthday at Northstar, 49 players entered. Tvedt won the qualifying outright and then won the 16-player finals as well.

Six days earlier he had won NPC Friday Night out of 16 and its four-player finals. In February he took the Stern Army NPC Friday Matchplay out of 19.

Four of his eight career outright wins came inside eight weeks at the start of this season. The 49-player result is comfortably the biggest of his career and it is what turned a grinder's year into a top-twenty finish.

Northstar and Bad Penny

One hundred and forty-five events at Northstar, 1,126 games there, 374 firsts. His average finish of 2.16 at home is the best reading he has anywhere, and everything away from it sits in the 2.33 to 2.46 range.

His game win rate of 36.1% puts him in the 72nd percentile and his average finish in the 60th, both of which are the lowest of any player in this year's top twenty. He is here because he plays constantly and because January went right.

The Reardon problem

Nathan Reardon, four places above him, has beaten Tvedt 54 times in 67 games. Tvedt has 12 wins and a tie.

That is 18.7%, and it is one of the most lopsided long-sample records between two top-25 players anywhere in this list. Both are Northstar regulars; the sample will keep growing.

Elsewhere it is worse before it is better:

• Louis Acre-Kendall: 4-19 over 23 games, 17.4%
• Luke Nahorniak: 16-77 with 13 ties over 106 games, 21.2%
• Neil Graf: 3-10 over 13 games
• James Skelley: 23-44-2 over 69 games

And then the records that hold him up:

The Mutchler record, 117 games at 56%, is his deepest positive and it is against the player ranked twelve places above him.

The 46-game machine

Forty-six games of The Uncanny X-Men: 24 firsts, 14 seconds, six thirds, two fourths. That is the second-deepest single-machine record in this year's top 25 and it is unambiguous. He knows the game.

Monte Carlo at 24 games and TX-Sector at 22 are the other two with weight, both older titles, both comfortably positive.

His weak list is steep and mostly Williams:

• Meteor, 0.296 over 12 games, a 26% win rate
• Creature from the Black Lagoon, 0.297 over 9 games
• Big Guns, 0.312 over 9 games
• Granada, 0.315 over 17 games, a 28.9% win rate

Seventeen games of Granada at under 30% and twelve of Meteor at 26% are the two picks. Both sit well below the 0.40 mark, which is unusual for a player who has seen 172 machines.

Current form

Cold at 43% against a 54% baseline, the lowest recent reading in the top twenty. He was ninth of 20 at the Super Ball XL finals on September 19, his only tracked result since June.

If you draw him

Granada first. Seventeen games at 28.9% is more evidence than most weak-machine entries carry. Meteor and Creature after that.

Do not put him on The Uncanny X-Men under any circumstances. Forty-six games is the deepest evidence anybody in this list has on any machine, bar one.

The scouting report will run the comparison for the venue you are playing. The rest of the 2026 top 25 is here.