Zach Schuster is eighth in Minnesota on exactly one series win
Twenty counted events, one of them won. The rest were finishes good enough to bank 196 points, which is what a state championship series rewards when you never have a disaster.
·4 min read·Tilt Stats
Every one of the seven players above Zach Schuster in the 2026 Minnesota standings has more series wins than he does. He has one.
He is eighth anyway, on 196.43 points from twenty events, because a state championship series pays for the whole result sheet rather than for trophies. Finish second, third or fifth often enough and the arithmetic comes out ahead of somebody who wins three and busts out of the rest.
(A note on the spelling: the Match Play data behind this site records him as Zack Schuster, IFPA has him as Zach. Same player, same profile page.)
The consistency case
- 138 tracked tournaments, 14 wins, 45 podiums
- 720 games, 48.7% of them won outright
- 95th percentile for win rate, 92nd for average finish, out of 285 ranked players
- 24 consecutive months with at least one entry
- Form running hot: 80% over the last ten games against a 65% baseline
A 48.7% game win rate is elite territory. In a four-player group the field average is 25%, and Schuster is winning close to half of everything he plays. That number carries a player a long way even when the final standing keeps reading "third".
His one win on this year's series calendar was the LITT July finals out of 16, after qualifying seventh from a 65-player field. He also took Summer Competitive League round three out of 20 and Mike's Midnight Madness out of 26 in April.
Six rooms, one home
| Venue | Events | Games | Average finish | Firsts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LITT Pinball Bar | 83 | 410 | 1.80 | 213 |
| Northstar | 20 | 166 | 2.24 | 56 |
| Broken Clock | 12 | 104 | 2.19 | 32 |
| Blainbrook | 11 | 94 | 2.44 | 19 |
| 56 Brewing | 5 | 50 | 2.02 | 19 |
| Bad Penny | 5 | 40 | 2.23 | 12 |
Six venues with real samples, which is more spread than most of the players ranked above him. The gap between LITT and everywhere else is stark: 1.80 average finish at home against 2.24 at Northstar and 2.44 at Blainbrook.
That Blainbrook line matches his head-to-head record. Blaine is where the players who beat him live.
The second-place machine
| Machine | Score | Win rate | Games | 1st/2nd/3rd/4th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JAWS | 0.743 | 80.4% | 18 | 7/10/0/1 |
| Paragon | 0.698 | 80.4% | 10 | 7/2/0/1 |
| Demolition Man | 0.687 | 73.8% | 14 | 7/4/3/0 |
| Godzilla | 0.682 | 73.6% | 15 | 8/5/1/1 |
| Jurassic Park | 0.671 | 71.3% | 15 | 7/5/3/0 |
| Stranger Things | 0.657 | 68.9% | 16 | 8/5/3/0 |
Read the JAWS distribution again. Eighteen games: seven firsts, ten seconds, no thirds at all, one fourth. Seventeen of eighteen times he finished in the top half of the group. That is remarkable consistency and a fair summary of his whole game. He is extremely hard to beat by much and slightly harder to beat outright than that suggests.
The weak end is shorter and one entry stands out:
- Centaur, 0.396 over 8 games
- Red & Ted's Road Show, 0.397 over 11 games
- Spider-Man, 0.443 over 9 games
- James Bond 007, 0.460 over 17 games, a 48.8% win rate
Seventeen games of James Bond under half is the one to file away, because Bond is on floors all over the metro right now and two other players in this top 25 have it at the very top of their machine list.
Who he can and cannot handle
Against the field immediately around him he is comfortable:
| Opponent | Record | Games |
|---|---|---|
| Andy Fleming | 40-16-4 | 60 |
| Nathan Reardon | 34-20-8 | 62 |
| Jack Copeland | 24-9-5 | 38 |
| Jim Hartley | 23-13-4 | 40 |
| Adam Turgeson | 8-3 | 11 |
That Turgeson line is the outlier of his career: he has taken eight of eleven from the man ranked ninth, who has 1,978 tracked games and 48 tournament wins.
Then the other column:
- Luke Nahorniak: 5-27, a 15.6% clip over 32 games
- Mark Larson: 9-24-3 over 36 games
- Trevor Klungseth: 3-9 over 12 games
- Neil Graf: 4-11-2 over 17 games
Five wins from 32 against the state's No. 1 is the harshest number on his sheet. He is level with Louis Acre-Kendall at 23-23-4 over 50 games and level with Steven Skochinski at 20-19-1 over 40.
Best fields
- Broken Clock 3-Strike, March, 43 players
- Finals for the LITT February 2025 Open, 27 players
- Mike's Midnight Madness, 26 players
- Stern Army BCBC Three-Strike, December, 25 players
- Friday Night Fight Club at Bad Penny, 21 players
His biggest fields came with company. He shared the top of qualifying at the 61-player June 2025 open with two others and at the 56-player April 2025 open with four, both of which the standings record as firsts. The 43-player Broken Clock 3-Strike is his largest solo win.
Playing him
Take the group to James Bond 007 if it is on the bank. It is the only machine in his file with a real sample and a sub-50% record. Failing that, Centaur and Red & Ted's.
Keep him off JAWS, where he has finished in the top half of the group seventeen times in eighteen tries, and off Godzilla and Demolition Man.
Pull your own record on the head-to-head tool before you commit. The rest of the 2026 top 25 is here.