How can I improve?

This is really getting me down now, I want to be better but no amount of practising is helping, what's wrong with me?

Do you just play for high scores or do you go after goals/HOF points/achievo's?

Judging from your reported real-world TZ score, which I doubt I could achieve if I lived to be 200, I don't think I can offer any useful advice for you...

Sometimes its mental I notice my scores differ alot depending on my mood. I scored my best score last night after a few beers and bumping dub-step on headphones. Maybe the settings on the machine? I played a FAMILY GUY at an arcade and scored 2x amount I score on another FAMILY GUY at a different location. I find 3 deep breaths through the nose out the mouth give me a temporary boost in clarity.

This demonstrates my problem, consistency!

Are you bi-polar? Thats an interesting way to view your progress, instead of individual game scores focus on your average like batting average or K/D Ratio on COD.

I think that's the first time I ever saw a Dr. Dude graph.

Sumez said:

I think that's the first time I ever saw a Dr. Dude graph.

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Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Seriously though. Even "professional" players will tell you that sometimes the game will just own you. That's why they love it. If you could get constantly awesome, the game would become boring. Love and relish the unpredictability that is pinball.

Well said because its so true. Playing TPA will inflate your ego and REAL PINBALL will check you at the coin door.

Carl Spiby said:

This is really getting me down now, I want to be better but no amount of practising is helping, what's wrong with me?

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Probably nothing. I'm by no means an expert, but having played real pinball more-or-less continuously for about a year now, here's what I've observed.

Pinball scoring is extremely volatile: That photo in the TZ strategy thread with my 1.65B score on TZ...guess what my score was in the game immediately before that? Not 500M...not 200M...not even 50M. Five freaking million. (And 4.8M is the minimum possible score on TZ without tilting.) The only reason I even started that next game was that I was pissed at my performance and refused to leave on such a depressing note...and I scored 320 times my previous game.

Pinball scoring is not evenly distributed: In other words, you will have a lot of low-scoring games and relatively few high-scoring games. For example, let's say my lifetime high score on TZ is 1B for the sake of argument. (Obviously that's true no longer, but I need a nice round number for this.) Then, since I've played a lot of TZ and have a nice big sample size to work with:

• Fifty percent of my games will be 125M (one-eighth my high score) or below.
• Eighty percent of my games will be 250M (one-fourth) or below.
• Ninety-five percent of my games will be 500M (one-half) or below.
• Ninety-nine percent of my games will be 667M (two-thirds) or below.

Right away we see that most of my games are going to suck relatively speaking. And after 1500 rounds of TZ, I can confirm that most of my games do in fact fall under that quarter-billion mark. A quick perusal of the PAPA tournament videos shows this effect is not limited to amateurs - we see world champions having games that even I'd find embarrassing. So we can take refuge in the fact that it happens to everyone.

Pinball progress is not linear: When you first start out, you advance rapidly, because you are learning the basics and the basics, being basic, are picked up relatively quickly. Then you start getting into post transfers, cradle separations, and so forth, which are tougher to master. And not everyone at the same level is equally good at all techniques: I can't drop catch to save my life, but if the table I'm playing allows post transfers at all, I'll probably be able to do it.

In parallel with your raw skills, there is what I call table knowledge. This covers the ruleset of course, but it also covers the idiosyncrasies of your particular real-world tables. For example, I know that my local Dracula has a somewhat underpowered right flipper and that to shoot the left ramp from a trap is generally unsuccessful and will result in a center drain. So I know to take running shots at that ramp, which is not something I'd normally advise on that table, but on my local one, it's the only way. Table knowledge is gained only through experience and observation; the PAPA videos can't really help you here except in general terms (like that center target bank on Dracula, which is universally a death shot).

And expect to plateau from time to time. Don't be upset if you go weeks or months without seeming to learn anything new; what you are actually doing is consolidating and internalizing your current knowledge and skills.

Pinball is a mental game: Your mind is your own worst enemy. Everyone knows the feeling: You're doing well, you get excited, BAM! Instant powerdrain. Conversely, if you're upset at a previous poor game, you're liable to not do so hot in your current game either, as my league experience shows.

Mental control actually becomes harder as you get better at pinball, the reason being that when you're just starting out, you're happy if your game lasts more than 3 minutes. You aren't aware that you had a stupid drain, so it doesn't bother you. But add a little bit of skill and suddenly that drain that you brushed off earlier in your career becomes a "GOD @#$%! IT!" moment. You now know it was a stupid drain.

I don't really have tips for you here; this is an aspect of the game where I could use some help myself. The one thing I can tell you is to do your best to forget your past games and balls, whether good or bad. The only ball that really matters is the one (or more!) on the playfield right now.

I guess there is one more thing: When you notice you are getting close to some long-term goal (like Lost in the Zone), you will naturally get excited. Do whatever you have to do to calm and re-center yourself: trap up the ball, take a few deep breaths, close your eyes, and focus. Shoot only when you have a clear head. I think one of the reasons I did so well in that 1.65B game was that I didn't notice LITZ was getting close until 11 door panels in, and then I was just like, "oh, it would be nice to LITZ"...and then proceeded to ignore the possibility of LITZ and shoot the LR-RR-P combos with the mental goal of starting regulation multiball. Of course, these are the exact shots that advance towards LITZ as well, but by mentally substituting an easy goal I get nearly every game, I removed my own mind as an obstacle to progress.

Analyze risk vs reward: Every shot you take on a table is a risk, some more so than others, but still, every time a ball leaves your flipper it could potentially drain. Therefore, it behooves you to learn where the point-maximizing shots are. So on Cirqus Voltaire, yes it's fun to try for Strike-an-Arc Multiball and look at the pretty neon, but the big points are in the Ringmaster's head, so better to shoot there. Or on AC/DC...is that cannon shot for a 1.5M song jackpot really worth the totally-out-of-control ball that results? Maybe you should put the ball up the left orbit or strike the bell instead - less immediate payoff, but maybe better overall scoring through a longer ball time. At what point is a song jackpot shot worth taking? 5M? 15M? 50M? Maybe it depends on how well the other players (if any) are doing.

And this includes not swallowing what those PAPA tutorials tell you hook, line and sinker without considering your personal abilities and issues. For example, Powerball Mania offers a big payoff on TZ and is a worthy goal to pursue. But if you know you suck at handling the Powerball and often don't make that last shot for Powerball Mania, then pursue regulation multiball instead. (And on your practice games, deliberately try to get the Powerball and practice handling it so this is no longer a problem!)

Choose one or two goals, and make no shot that does not advance these goals: On the modern tables, there are often so many different paths to pursue that players sometimes try to pursue everything at once and get nowhere with any of them. Instead, pick a goal and stick to it, keeping open the possibility of a change of plan in respond to changing circumstances. For example, "I want to play the Bats round." "I want to load the gumball machine and try for Powerball Mania." "I want to bring Bride and Wolfman into Frankenstein Multiball." Then take no shots that do not advance toward these goals. So often I see a player have a go on TZ, and their game ends with two locks lit, the Powerball next up in the gumball machine, and maybe 6 door panels lit. Yes, he got a lot started, but he never actually finished anything and consequently did not score well.

On the other hand, don't slavishly follow your plan when a change of strategy is called for. If you had been going for regulation multiball and player 2 left the Powerball next up in the machine and you have Load Machine lit on the right Spiral, it is definitely worth pausing your own plan to take advantage of the opportunity being presented to you.

Practice, but sparingly, before a match: I find that if I practice too long, I play my "good" games before the match begins. Your mileage may vary, but for me, 3 games is already verging on too much. I generally first find a machine with a shot I like and can make comfortably. For me, this is AC/DC's left orbit. I will do nothing other than make this shot and practice whatever techniques are necessary to regain control. This is to build focus and confidence. After a few shots, I will deliberately start missing shots and practice regaining control. This primes your body to make quick reflex saves during the actual match. For the second "game", I will find a machine notably different than the first. (So if I started on AC/DC, a fast "flow" table, I would move to something like TZ.) I play a pedestrian game, concentrating more on accuracy and technique than scoring. For the third game, I find another machine different from the first two. This game I play seriously, but only 1 ball of it (sometimes 2 if the first ball was a house ball). After that, no play until the match begins.

In all of these practice games, if I start doing really well I will deliberately drain, to avoid expending too much effort on a game that isn't going to count for anything.

Do not play tired, do not play caffeinated, do not play intoxicated: Your physical state affects your play more than you think. If I do not get a good night's sleep the day before my league games, I'm pretty much guaranteed to suck. And keep off the booze - informal testing on a sample of one shows that my average score declines 10% for each drink including the first even though I don't "feel" it at all. Think about it - pinball is a game where reaction time is critical. What's the first thing to start declining what you start drinking: your reaction time. So defer your drink until after your match.

Do not focus on results: When you're playing competitively, it's easy to get hung up on results. I've done it, you've done it, anyone who's ever played competitively has done it many times. Remember, pinball is a volatile game. I have led my league before, but I have had nights where the lowest-ranked player we've got has kicked my arse eight ways from Sunday. These things happen. (The flip side of this is that you will sometimes take down players far stronger than you by the sheer accident of them having a bad night and you having a good one, which boosts the morale considerably. Remember, 50% of even strong players' games are 1/8 of their high score or less!)

Refuse to die: I've pulled near-impossible wins from "ball 3, down by 80 million" scenarios more than once. You can too, not all the time, but more often than you think. Try to ignore the opposing score and just play a solid game with your last ball; most of my abysmal failures to rally occur when I start thinking "oh no, where am I ever going to find that many points?" Well, you don't have to find them all at once. Just play your best game and see if the pinball gods smile upon you or not.

And finally, remember to have fun: If pinball starts feeling like work, you're overdoing it. Take a break from trying to improve and just enjoy the game. Go play CV for the neon. Play a game of FunHouse with no goal other than to see how many times you can make Rudy take it to the face. Pretend you're a novice again and just bat the ball around. (This may also bring its own epiphany as you realize how far you've already come.)

Good luck!

For further reading: Many of these topics I've covered at length in my blog. The interested reader can find out more below.

• For gory details on the distribution of pinball scores, as well as what you can do with that knowledge, see Why You Don't Achieve At Least Half Your Score At Least Half the Time.
• For my own story about (re-)learning pinball and the struggle to improve against the Twilight Zone, see On Returning to Real Pinball and the Taming of the Twilight Zone.

Sean's post, directly above this one, should be its own thread, and then Stickied. As a complete novice, I appreciate that post.

George Klepacz said:

Sean's post, directly above this one, should be its own thread, and then Stickied. As a complete novice, I appreciate that post.

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I took advantage of the "Blog This Post" feature due to that post from Sean. I had to edit it a little to meet the char. limit though

http://digitalpinballfans.com/entry.php/52-How-can-I-improve

Carl, I'm on the mailing list for your leagues results (god knows why).

Was it you that was getting a bit overexcited with the nudging?

The culprits identity was hidden in the email.

Nik Barbour said:

Carl, I'm on the mailing list for your leagues results (god knows why).

Was it you that was getting a bit overexcited with the nudging?

The culprits identity was hidden in the email.

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Nope, not me!

Wasn't Gillian was it?

She did tilt on Road Show, after the ball got stuck and she banged the side after me telling her how to free it.

You can guess who got the blame for that.

Ugh that leftmost tiny flipper on Road Show... It's begging for tilts!

Sumez said:

I think that's the first time I ever saw a Dr. Dude graph.

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Dudeosity-monitoring technology has improved since the days of the first primitive Dude-O-Meters.