Zac Juelich went from 56 tracked events to fourth in the state

Look down the 2026 Minnesota top 25 and count tracked tournaments. Most of the names have between 100 and 360 events in the system. Zac Juelich has 56, and he is fourth.

That is the headline. A player with the shortest competitive history of anyone near the top of the table has out-pointed twenty-one people with two or three times his experience, by playing a full 20-event calendar and converting it.

The summer that built the season

Three of his five career tournament wins landed between late June and the end of July 2026:

• June 28, first of 68 at the LITT June Open
• July 8, first of 25 at Blainbrook Matchplay #2 MAX
• July 30, first of 27 at Blainbrook Matchplay #5 Banks

The LITT result is the outlier in his record and one of the largest field wins by anyone outside the top three this year. Sixty-eight entrants, a monthly open format, and he came through it. He then finished third in the same event's finals, which is the quirk of split-qualifying formats: you can win the qualifying and still lose the night.

Earlier in the spring he took Broken Clock's April 3-Strike out of 51.

Home is Blainbrook

Blainbrook carries half his events. The interesting line is Northstar, where his average finish drops to 2.31 across seven visits, the worst of any room he plays regularly. Northstar's floor leans older and more electromechanical than Blaine's, which matches what his machine record says.

Six venues in 56 events, which is a wider spread than most players at this level manage. He turns up wherever the calendar has something.

What he plays well

Paragon is the most trustworthy entry: sixteen games, ten firsts, four seconds, one third, one fourth. A 1979 Bally wide body is a strange game to be best at, and it is a long enough sample to believe.

The weaker end tells a stranger story, because it is full of the same era:

• Joker Poker, 0.371 over 8 games
• Hot Tip (EM), 0.378 over 17 games, a 41.2% win rate
• Silverball Mania, 0.417 over 10 games
• Nugent, 0.485 over 12 games

Seventeen games of Hot Tip at 41% is the most solid negative number in his file. He is fine on old machines in general and specifically bad on that one. If you are picking against him at Northstar or Blainbrook, that is the pick.

The matchups

His two closest rivalries are with the players immediately above and below him in this year's Blainbrook pecking order:

• Trevor Klungseth: 28-29 over 57 games, 49%
• Adam Turgeson: 18-17 over 35 games, 51%
• Phil Frazier: 13-13 over 26 games, dead level
• Daniel Mickelson: 12-11 over 23 games, 52%

Four rivalries, four coin flips. That is the profile of a player who has arrived at the level of the room he plays in.

The problems are elsewhere. Chris Frame has him 22-9 over 31 games. Bryan Moen leads 30-18 over 48. Alex Huth, who sits ten places below him in the standings, is 13-5-2 up on him across 20 games, which is the kind of lopsided record that survives being ranked lower.

He is 14-1 against Lucas Gross and 11-2 against both Joshua Anderson and Richard Johnston.

The cold reading

His last ten games have run at 53% against a 63% baseline, the second-coldest form line in the top five. Late August has been rough: 40th of 49 at the LITT August open, 30th of 65 at July's.

For a player whose NACS total is already banked, a cold September matters less than it would in March. The points from June and July are not going anywhere. What it does mean is that anybody drawing him in the last stretch of the season is meeting him at a low ebb.

If you draw him

Old Gottlieb and early Bally titles with heavy random elements have eaten into his record more than anything modern. Hot Tip specifically, Joker Poker if it is on the bank, and Silverball Mania over any of the newer games where he is comfortable.

Run the scouting report with him as an opponent and it will do that comparison against your own list. The rest of the 2026 top 25 profiles are here, and the standings sit on the rankings page.