Steven Skochinski is peaking at exactly the wrong time for everyone else
No. 3 in the state, nine straight months of entries, and a last-ten-games win rate of 90% against a career baseline of 69%. He took the August open at LITT out of a 49-player field.
·4 min read·Tilt Stats
Two tenths of a point separate second and third in the 2026 Minnesota standings. Steven Skochinski sits on 238.55; Mark Larson sits on 238.75. One more group win in one more event, at any point since January, and the order flips.
What makes the margin interesting is the direction of travel. Skochinski has been playing the best pinball of his tracked career over the last month, and the season is not finished.
The form line
Tilt Stats compares a player's last ten games to their own long-run baseline. Most players sit within a few points either way. Skochinski is at 90% against a baseline of 69%, a 21-point gap and the second-highest raw reading in this year's top 25.
The results follow. On August 30 he won the LITT August open out of 49 players, then won the finals as well. In June he won the LITT June finals after qualifying third out of 68, and took the Stern Army matchplay at Stray Dog out of 17 the same weekend.
Season totals: 238.55 NACS points, 20 counted events, seven wins on the series calendar. Career totals across everything tracked: 106 tournaments, 24 wins, 47 podiums, 488 games, a 52.5% game win rate that places him in the 98th percentile of the ranked field.
Where he plays
| Venue | Events | Games | Average finish | Firsts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LITT Pinball Bar | 66 | 330 | 1.83 | 170 |
| Northstar Pinball Collective | 29 | 222 | 2.01 | 86 |
| Broken Clock | 8 | 69 | 2.09 | 23 |
| Stray Dog | 2 | 13 | 1.77 | 5 |
| 56 Brewing | 1 | 10 | 2.00 | 5 |
Two thirds of his play is at LITT, where he averages 1.83 and wins more than half his games. The Northstar split is a small step down and still comfortably above the room average. His entry streak currently runs nine months, shorter than several players below him in the standings, which tells you he came into this season from a quieter stretch.
The machines he owns
| Machine | Score | Win rate | Games |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit of 76 | 0.857 | 92.0% | 9 |
| King Kong: Myth of Terror Island | 0.765 | 84.6% | 10 |
| JAWS | 0.702 | 74.5% | 19 |
| Jurassic Park | 0.676 | 75.9% | 12 |
| James Bond 007 | 0.651 | 72.0% | 9 |
| Attack From Mars | 0.624 | 67.2% | 10 |
JAWS is the honest one: nineteen games, thirteen firsts, four seconds, no thirds at all and two fourths. That distribution, where a player either wins or takes second and almost never lands in the middle, is the signature of someone who knows a ruleset well enough to build a score every time and occasionally gets outgunned.
Spirit of 76 at 0.857 across nine games is the best single-machine number he owns, and the sample is thin enough that a bad night would move it a lot.
His softer spots are all modern:
- Elvira's House of Horrors, 0.483 over 8 games
- Stranger Things, 0.520 over 11 games
- The Uncanny X-Men, 0.556 over 8 games
A player whose worst games are recent Sterns and whose best include a 1975 Gottlieb is unusual in this crowd. Most of the state's top 25 lean the other way.
Who gives him trouble
The rivalry that defines his season is Mark Larson, the man he is chasing. Larson leads it 37-27-1 across 65 games, and Skochinski beat him in the August finals anyway. Pull the whole record and you can see which machines swing it.
Beyond Larson, the names that trouble him are not the ones you would predict from the standings:
- Landon Acre-Kendall: 1-5-2 over 8 games
- Erika Corio: 4-12 over 16 games, a 25% clip
- Phil Frazier: 2-5-2 over 9 games
- Keith Hanson: 11-20-2 over 33 games
- Tony Midtling: 5-9-2 over 16 games
Erika Corio does not appear in the 2026 top 25 and has beaten him three times out of four. This is the sort of thing that only turns up when you look, and it is a reminder that state ranking and any individual matchup are two different questions.
Against Zack Schuster he is 19-20 with a tie over 40 games, which is about as close as a rivalry gets.
The other direction: Jon Sieker has taken two of seventeen, Brooke Hipsher one of sixteen, and he is 9-0 against Bill Weihrauch.
Results worth pointing at
- Broken Clock 3-Strike, Super Series Part Deux, 65 players
- LITT August 2026 Open, 49 players
- Alyssa's Dirty 30, 46 players
- Dr. Chuck Ells Holiday Charity Tournament, 45 players
- LITT December 2025 Open, Walking Dead launch party, 41 players
Four outright wins in fields of 45 or more. The 65-player Broken Clock result stands out because 3-strike events give a hot player nowhere to hide a bad game. He also tied for the top of qualifying at the 74-player October 2025 open and the 56-player September 2025 open, which the standings score as shared firsts.
If he is in your group
Take him to a modern Stern if the bank allows it. His three weakest qualifying machines are all 2019 or later, and his strongest work happens on older titles where he appears to know exactly what the game wants.
Beyond that, there is not much comfort available while he is running at 90%. Check the head-to-head tool for your own record against him first, then look at what is actually on the floor on the venue page before you commit to a strategy. More of the 2026 top 25 is here.