# Playing Tips with Eric Stone

**Source:** Pintastic New England  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2025-02-07  
**Duration:** 29m 12s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP3qWXxD8tk

---

## Analysis

Eric Stone provides an instructional pinball clinic on Demolition Man, demonstrating the dramatic difference that understanding game rules and mechanics makes to scoring ability. A student player improves from 39 million to over 372 million points through learning skill shots, multiball strategies, ball control techniques, and feed nuances. Stone emphasizes that controlled flipper play and knowledge of how the ball feeds from various ramps is more important than raw reflexes, and recommends YouTube tutorials and pinballvideos.com for learning tournament rules variants.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Knowing the rules of a pinball game is more important than being naturally skilled but uninformed about game mechanics — _Eric directly demonstrates this by having the student player improve from 39 million to 372 million points by learning rules and mechanics_
- [HIGH] Skill shots are the first priority on any pinball game — _Eric repeatedly emphasizes 'the first thing you do, you go for the skill shot' throughout the demonstration_
- [HIGH] Holding the flipper up when the ball comes down allows you to catch and control it on most machines — _Eric demonstrates this technique multiple times and notes 'four times out of five, it just stayed there'_
- [HIGH] Ball control and trapping is more important than shooting on the fly — _Eric states 'I never like to shoot on the fly' and repeatedly prioritizes getting control of the ball before attempting shots_
- [HIGH] Tournament versions of Demolition Man restrict multiball access to one time only, unlike home play — _Eric explains 'in a tournament you can only get the multi-ball one time. But we're playing for fun'_

### Notable Quotes

> "Knowing the rules is so much better than, you know, if you're really good and you don't know the rules versus if you're just any player and you know the rules, it's like night and day."
> — **Eric Stone**, ~45:30
> _Core thesis of the entire clinic; establishes that rule knowledge trumps raw skill_

> "It's all about control. If you can – now that's a kick up in the air... It's all about getting control."
> — **Eric Stone**, ~15:00

> "Can you see how much easier it is to play pinball when you always have control of the ball? Yes. It's like night and day."
> — **Eric Stone and Student**, ~38:00
> _Student confirms the teaching point through direct experience_

> "I like watching the controlled players because you can tell. You can tell, oh, man, this guy's good. He's got the ball trapped. He hits the shot, traps the ball."
> — **Eric Stone**, ~52:00
> _Explains what separates elite players like Bowen Kerins and Jason Zoller_

> "It's the nuances of every single pinball game... every game is going to play different. Another Demolition Man, you may not be able to hold that flipper up."
> — **Eric Stone**, ~48:00
> _Emphasizes that while principles are universal, execution varies by machine_

> "So YouTube is very very important... pinballvideos.com actually shows tournaments that were streamed. You can select the game, say Demolition Man, and you can watch the greatest players in the world and see what they do."
> — **Eric Stone**, ~50:15
> _Practical resource recommendations for learning game rules and strategy_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Eric Stone | person | Pinball expert and instructor hosting the clinic; demonstrates advanced techniques and rules knowledge on Demolition Man |
| Bowen Kerins | person | Elite competitive pinball player referenced multiple times as an example of superior controlled play and ball trapping |
| Jason Zoller | person | Competitive pinball player described as having controlled, excellent play style; defeated Eric at recent tournaments |
| Sierra | person | Player who played Whirlwind last year, improved from 1 million to 7 million points after learning rules |
| Demolition Man | game | Pinball machine used for the instructional clinic; Papa Dukes game with ramps, multiball, skill shots, and claw mechanic |
| Whirlwind | game | Classic pinball game referenced as example where learning rules dramatically improved player score |
| Fun Spot | organization | Arcade/location operator; Eric has played there since age 4; owner's wife participated in the clinic |
| Pintastic New England | organization | Event/venue hosting this instructional clinic |
| YouTube | organization | Recommended resource for learning pinball game rules and watching expert players |
| pinballvideos.com | organization | Recommended website featuring streamed tournament pinball footage organized by game title |
| Bat Cave Pinball | organization | Eric Stone's Twitch channel where he explains pinball games and strategy |
| IFPA | organization | Competitive pinball organization; mentioned in context of tournament play (Pro Edition rules) |
| Metallica | game | Modern Stern pinball game referenced as having a scoop mechanism; used as example of machine variation |
| Guardians of the Galaxy | game | Modern Stern pinball game referenced as having a scoop mechanism; used as example of machine variation |
| Godzilla | game | Modern Stern pinball game referenced as having a scoop mechanism; used as example of machine variation |
| Jaws | game | Recently released pinball game mentioned as example of why learning rules via YouTube is important |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Pinball Rules and Game Knowledge, Ball Control and Flipper Techniques, Skill Shots and Multiball Strategy, Tournament vs Home Play Rule Differences
- **Secondary:** Competitive Pinball Players and Playing Styles, Online Resources for Learning Pinball, Nudging and Body English Technique
- **Mentioned:** Machine Variation and Playfield Ergonomics

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.85) — Enthusiastic, encouraging instructional tone. Eric is patient, supportive of the student, celebrates her improvements, and creates an engaging learning environment. Audience is appreciative (clapping). Only minor frustration expressed at missed shots, which is self-directed rather than negative about the overall experience.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** Eric Stone actively teaches pinball rules and strategy through live demonstrations and one-on-one instruction at Pintastic New England event (confidence: high) — Entire clinic format demonstrates community education commitment
- **[competitive_signal]** Controlled ball play and trapping mechanics differentiate elite players (Bowen Kerins, Jason Zoller) from average competitors (confidence: high) — Eric emphasizes controlled players like Bowen and Jason Zoller; notes 'you can tell, oh man, this guy's good. He's got the ball trapped'
- **[competitive_signal]** Tournament versions of games (Pro Edition) have different rule sets than home versions, particularly restricting multiball access (confidence: high) — Eric explains 'in a tournament you can only get the multi-ball one time' and references Pro Edition variants on pinballvideos.com

---

## Transcript

 So what we're going to do is a shortened version. Usually I would play, she would play. Somebody asked me last year, not last year, last week, I don't even know what year it is. They asked me last week, they said, is it more important to know the rules of pinball, like say know 100% of the rules of this game, or is it better to be a more advanced player and you can kind of figure it out? And it's a really good question because I thought, well, geez, I don't know. Now, you don't know the rules of this game at all, right? Not at all. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you how much better, if you were here last year, you saw Sierra that played Whirlwind. She started out with a million, and when she knew what to do, she got up to seven million, and she almost beat me. Now, you're not allowed to do that. You did that last night. So we're going to have you play a game of this, and I'm not going to say a word. I'm going to just let you flip away, and then we're going to start explaining the rules quickly because we've got 20 minutes, and we're going to see how much the score improves and also show a couple tips and tricks. So let's get started and you can play as you're, I mean you can talk as you're playing. So here we go. Can we see it good? Oh yeah, look at that. That's great. Now I call her Mrs. Fun Spot because she's married to the owner of Fun Spot. And everybody knows I've been going to Fun Spot since I was like this high, four years old. Last night she did. Well, I was going around to her and telling her when I saw her in a game, this is what you do, this is what you do. It must have worked. I somehow made it through eight rounds. Yeah, I mean, I only made it through seven. I lost by 58 points on target pool. That was fun. All right, so. I'm really good at that. So far you're not doing too bad here. Now, I'm sure most of you guys probably know Demoman. You've seen it before. It's a pretty popular game. All right, here we go. I'd be happy if I'd hit a ramp here. Yeah. Well, ramps are very important, actually. Now, see, there is a little light that says start multiball. You always want to go for that one. Always. Oh, and I didn't. Okay, so I'm going to play an abridged version and kind of show you the ropes. Okay? Most games, as we always say, they have some sort of skill shot, right? So, $33 million. Now, we're going to watch that improve. So, the skill shot is basically when you plunge the ball, you want to hit either in here or you want to hit up the rim. That's the skill shot. It's easier to hit it in here. All right? Now, I don't have any practice on this one. So, you could also use these as flippers. It doubles your score on combos. but to me, it's a lot harder, and I like using the regular flippers. But you can choose to do either one. So I'm going to try to hit the skill shot, which I missed. So now, again, everybody that knows me, I try to get control. I want to hit that ramp, okay? You want to hit this ramp with the claws lit. So now you have this thing, right? Now, normally you'd have no idea what to do, but what you want to do, and see how you can move it with the flippers? You want to use this one because that will light your multiball. See, it says start multiball? Yep. Now, here's a trick. I want the ball on the right flipper, so I'm going to hold this flipper up when it comes out of here. And look at that. It goes right to the flipper. Let's see if it stays, and it stays right there. So you want to know the nuances of a game. What happens when the ball goes in here? Can I hold the flipper up and it stays? Do I have to flip it? Or is it going to come over here, and then I've got to flip it on the fly? So this is a very hard shot. See how it's a star multiball? So that's what I want to hit. It's very hard, and I missed it. So here we go again. Now, it's going to come down here, and I missed it again. Now, that's what you call a drop catch. When it's coming down here, and I raise the flipper up and dropped it right as the ball was coming down. Always want to get control of the flipper. I never like to shoot on the fly. So let's see. There it is. Oh, Norma, they screwed me. You see that? They didn't give it to me. You didn't give it to me. Oh, no. Now, when it comes out of here, what do you do? So let's see how the feed is. Sometimes you can catch it. Just like that. Look at that. So when it comes out of here now, put it in your memory bank. You want to hold the flipper, and look at that. Now you've got control again. Now let's see if it gives it to me this time. Give it to me. It gave it to me. Now, you get one free jackpot. I don't like using it there because that's an easy jackpot. Well, usually. In multiball, I like to try to control the balls, right? So I got one ball, one flipper, and I'm playing with one ball. So there's one jackpot. I'm going to use these. And you can use your face, your mouth, whatever you want. So now that's the next jackpot. And the right ramp is the super. Uh-oh, can I handle the floor? Oh, I didn't get the super. Okay. That's still not bad. So now what do I want to do? I want to control the ball. So now I'm controlled. Combos are very important in this game. If you can get ten combos, you like this computer award, and you can get good stuff. You can get a multiball light up, you can get collect bonus, you get all sorts of stuff. So you also want to access the claw. And when this is lit, you can go back up here and in a tournament, this will be disabled, the claw. But if you're just playing for fun, you can keep trying to get this multiball. So why don't we do this? Why don't we hit the ramp on the left and try to get the ramp on the right, which I can't seem to do. Get up there. Thank you, boy. All right, so here we are. So now you could try to get all five of these, and then there's a wizard mode. But if you're looking for score and you want to just get multiball all the time, which, again, you're trying to improve your score, right? Yeah. Start out with this. So now look. Oh, it's Linneken. See that? Yep. Now what am I going to do? I'm going to hold this slipper up because you remember how I came down. Okay, come on. and I'm going to hold this flipper up. And you remember I've got nothing to worry about because it stopped. And now I want to hit the shot. Uh-oh, that might not be good. Again, that was another drop catch. It's all about control. If you can – now that's a kick up in the air. Yeah, you know, sometimes you've got to put a little English on it. You know, I was trying to get control. I lost it. No, no, you're good. You're good. If you see the ball coming straight down the middle, right as it gets about here, what you want to do is move the game. And some games will tilt, some won't. Obviously, that didn't tilt. Okay, what are we doing the first thing? Skill shot, right? We're going to try to get the skill shot right there. Nope, missed it. But that's okay. There we go. Try to get control. It's all about getting control. Okay, now I know it's going too fast, so I have to flip on the fly. Look at that. Look at that. Gosh. Terrible, huh? It happens to me a lot. I know it does There we go There the skill shot and you know what going to happen So now this this is interesting The claw is ready When you have multi lit and this is a good rule if you shoot the claw and hit this it automatically starts multiball. Pretty cool huh? But we're going to do it, oh Norma they shoot me again, what is going on? So now we're going to see if I can do it this way. Now see that little bump that I did? It obviously didn't work. When the ball gets to the corner of the flipper, when you have it up, if you bump it up, it'll push the ball up and try to get it to the other side. It wasn't as strong on that one. Okay, so here we go. So now, now we start multiball. Remember, I get a free jackpot with this, but I want to save it. I want to save it for a harder shot, because right now, every single jackpot's lit, right? So now you just go crazy. As long as the ball save is on, I don't try to control the balls. Now the ball save is off. So now I've got two balls trapped on one flipper. I'm going to play with the other two balls. So right now it's impossible for my multiball to end. Do you see that? Because I've got three balls on one flipper and one on the other. So it's like I'm playing single ball. It makes it a lot easier on multiball, right? So here we go. You know, we're having a good time. We're shooting shots. Now this is going to be interesting. Watch this. That's what you call a little tip-over, which is really hard to do. And then if you do that, then you're good. Then it's over, right? And if you heard of a cradle separate, what I'm trying to do is I got the balls cradled. I'm trying to pop this up a little bit, have it bounce and bounce over. So let's see what we can do. Oh, that's even better. Watch this. Boom. Oh, okay. Okay, but that's okay. You know, working with three balls is a lot easier than two balls. Here we go. we're going to try and tip it over. So basically, what I just did right there is at the very tip of the flipper, I quickly flipped the ball and it popped the one ball over to the right flipper. So let's do this. And again, right now I'm showing you the tips and tricks. Okay, now let's separate these. Let's see if we can do it right. There we go. That's okay. Now what I'm doing is I'm hitting shots and remember I still have this so that's my free shot with my free shot with a chin I call that the chin shot uh let's try to hit one on the fly no okay claw see that I just rolled over the claw so now I want to shoot up there and which one do I want to go which one the multiball yep yep the multiball which is right here okay and again in a tournament you can only get the multiball one time. But we're playing for fun. We're not playing a tournament. So what do we do? We hold this flipper up. Now see how that was a little bit different. But it's okay. Always want to shoot this because now you're in a safe shot. Now you get the ball back here, right? You want more. Oh, that was my fault. Now see how I just let the ball bounce over? I want the ball on this flipper. Don't be afraid not to flip. Let it bounce right over, and now I have the ball right where I want it. But again, I missed the shot. and we do it all over again. Come on, let's get it this time. Boom. Again, I let the ball bounce over. Now I catch it. See, always trying to catch it, always trying to control the ball. It's a very, very hard shot. Now see how I bumped the game up? It propelled it to the right flipper. Otherwise, it would have just died. Oh, my gosh. It's actually a very, very hard shot. Now the other thing I can do is I can try to spell these three. Again, the rule is if you spell these three, it lights this for the access claw. And then I can get the multiball without anything. But it's really hard to get up there and do that because a lot of times the ball will come to this side rather than this side. So here we go. Oh, that was it. Okay. Whoa. Well, he told me I couldn't play long, so I kind of had to. I guess. All right. I've got it. Okay, so now you know a little bit more of the rules. So the first thing you do, you go for the skill shot. The next thing you do is this claw is ready, you shoot this and you get it in here. And then that lights the multiball on a hard shot right here. But you can still do it. But if you spell the three up there, which you can move with the flippers, it will light this for the claw. In order to hit this switch, you need to shoot this ramp and then it rolls over the switch and then you try to shoot that. So let's see if we can beat the 39 million. but don't be, what was that? Don't be 600, okay? I think we're gonna be okay with that. You never know, you never know. Okay, so skill shot. All right, skill shot. She hit it, I could hit it once, okay? Oh, I forgot what I was supposed to do. Now, you wanna try, okay, now you wanna try to hit that ramp. Oh, that. Okay, try to control it. So just hold the flipper up, hold the other flipper up. Okay, flip, now you see it didn't work. Up here, uh-oh. Don't ever forget about now. Hold that flipper up. This one up. Yep. Okay. Almost. That's, okay. Now just hold it up. Okay. Now do you see? See how you can just, now you want to control the ball. So now you're in control. Now you want to shoot that round. Oh my gosh. Just like that. Come on. Come on, guys. Now you want to move it to here with a flipper. With a flipper. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Okay. Right there. A little bit more this way. Okay. Now you got multiball. So when you're ready, you hit both of those red buttons, or you can use your chin because that's more fun to do. And you can get a jackpot. So look, the first thing you need to do is shoot the middle. See that? Oh, the middle right there. There you go. Now I would use the two buttons. Chin time. Oh, I didn't chin time it. You got it. You actually got it. Now you want to shoot the left ramp where it says jackpot. See it? Man, you're getting too good at this. Somebody pull the fire alarm. She's going to beat me. All right. Now try to get control. Hold the flipper up. Keep it up. Look at that. You're in control, and you've already got five times your score, and they're all clapping for you. Yay! Okay. So now what are you going to do, right? That's a great question. Well, because you don't know. You see how this is lit. See that? What I like to do on this is shoot the middle shot, try to get it, shoot this computer shot. It feeds it to this flipper. Shoot this ramp. I mean, it's very easy what I'm saying, right? The computer shot is that, right? The computer shot is shooting this. Okay. So try to shoot directly up the middle. Oh, so close. There you go. Oh. Okay, hold the flip wrap. Yep. See, when you're always in control, isn't it easier to play? Yep. So much easier. It is. So now shoot. Yep, there you go. Now, hold the right flipper up and see what happens when it comes down. Keep it up. You've got to trust it. I normally would never have trusted that. Of course not. Right. So now what you want to do is you want to shoot the left ramp because you want to roll over this. This ramp. Yep that ramp right there Look at that Now shoot the other ramp Oh my god Come on Yay Okay. Okay, wait a minute. Hold on a sec. Wait a minute. How does this work? Not again, no! Okay, now move it here. Move it right, move it right. Oh, she forgot. Now shoot the middle. So you actually started a mode. This mode is you want to shoot the middle all day. Shoot that. Oh. Oh. Now, see? You weren't ready with this flipper. I wasn't. And because of that, because of that, you lost the ball. So you always want to be ready. Oh, my God. You got half of my score already. Oh, boy. We need another volunteer. So skill shot again, right? So, again, the first thing you want to do, skill shot, which is right here or here. But I like this one because it's a lot safer. So here we are. Oh. Almost. That's okay. Okay, so now again, now hold the ball. Yep, yep, yep. Now you see how this is lit, right? Can you see how much easier it is to play pinball when you always have control of the ball? Yes. It's like night and day. It's like a tornado yesterday in Tampa and a fire alarm going, no, that's the same thing. I'm a meteorologist. People don't know who I am. All right, so now I'm going to ask you. Yeah, that's a great question. What do you do now? That is a great question. What are you going to do now? I feel like it's going to be the rim. Yeah. And why is it going to be the rim? Because we're going to try for multiball again. Well. Because you've got to roll over that. Oh, right. Right. To then get. And then you shoot that rim. Right. Okay. And see, eventually, she'll be able to do it without me telling her. I don't know how long that will be, but. Okay. So now. No, no. Oh, I did it wrong. That's okay. Now shoot the right rim. Oh. Oh. Now hold. Okay. Now. There you go. Now, it doesn't always work holding the flipper up. But see, she's got a good reaction that when she knows it's going to go in trouble, she flips. A lot of people just hold the flipper up and be like, oh, it didn't work. Okay, so now you want to shoot that rim. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. There you go. That was a good tip pass. Now, normally, on normal games, when it's coming down here that fast, it will not stop. But, hey, we're playing this one. Okay, so again, you need the ball on this side. Do I try to attend a post pass? Yeah, okay, so here, actually, let me show you. So if you want to get the ball from one flipper to the other, right, and I don't know how it's going to go on this one. If you flip it quickly, you can hit the post and roll it over here. Let's see. I don't know. Ah, see? Oh, almost. Okay, well, one way or another. But most games, but I could have at least shot the shot, right? So, there's a post pass to that side, and there's a post pass to that side. Now, hold on. So, what I'm trying to do is get the ball back on this flipper. That was a stupid pass. Oh. Oh, it tilted my game. I did. I did. T-2, T-2, that's right. So anyway, you can see that the post pass from this side to this side is different than this side to this side. It was different. So you have to get a feel for it. Yeah. But I'm showing you how to do it one way or another. Yeah. Okay. So now play this ball and try to hit the skill shot. Okay. And then try to hit this right ramp. So here we go. Skill shot first. That's good. Now it's coming right here. So now just shoot the ramp. Oh. Yeah. It's hard because it's coming down fast. Nope. Nope. shaking it a little bit more. Good job. Now shoot the ramp. Yep. And now shoot the right ramp. Almost, almost. Now, now see how it's nice. Now try to do the post pass really quickly. Now don't, don't flip this one. Don't flip the left. Now, now there you go. Now flip because okay. Very good. Now it's coming up here. Oh, you did the same exact thing as last time, But you got lucky. Okay, good job. Now hold the right flip rep and see what happens. Okay, there you go. There you go. Oh, I got to get control again. She's not panicking. Oh, but then I did. Now, but it's a lot better than $39 million, right? So you got, with my help, with my hurt, you got $372 million. That's pretty good. But I'm going to have to do it again to play a full game. So now I want you to tell me what you're going to do. Oh, no, really? Yeah. So what are you going to do first? Well, skill shot. Yeah. Come around, skill shot. And then what? And then the ramp. You got it. See that? Okay. So knowing the rules is so much better than, you know, if you're really good and you don't know the rules versus if you're just any player and you know the rules, it's like night and day. So you got $39 million. You got what? $372 million? So here we go. All right. Oh, good job, that's a skill shot. Now, good job. Oh my God. Wow, now I gotta do this. Now you remember what to do up here, right? Yeah, I gotta. Remember what to do up here. Go to there. There you go. Yep, yep. There you go, now it's gonna come down. Now what are you gonna do with, now you're in multiball. Remember, if you hit both red buttons at the same time, you gotta get a jackpot. Oh, that's right. You wanna shoot the middle shot first. That's okay, you got a ball. Now you would hit both buttons real quick, both buttons. Did I do it? Nope. Sometimes you have to hit them. Now try to, just hit the buttons now. Just hit the buttons now. Okay. Did I do it? I'll do it. It did. It gave, okay, see that? Wow, okay. She got the jackpot. Now you wanna control the ball. Uh-oh, good job. No, no, no. Wait a minute, was the ball safe? The ball safe was still on. What? Go ahead. Yeah. Did I get that? Yep. So now you want to hit the ramp, right? Uh-oh, that's trouble. Oh. Way trouble. A lot of times when it comes down off this ramp, it'll go right down the middle. But, again, when the ball gets right here, you can try to shake it really hard. But this is a very heavy game, and it's even hard for me to kind of shake it sometimes. Yeah. All right. So first thing you're going to do. Skillshot. Yep. Ramp. There you go. All right. Look at that. There's a pattern here. Pretty soon you're going to have one of these at Fun Spot. I just know it. Uh-oh. Oh, I did it again. Oh, I did it again. Oh, ball came out. The ball came out. Oh, ball came out. Oh, ball came out. See the red? Yep. Now, get up. Oh. Now, see, you weren't ready for that. I wasn't. Now hold the... Okay, now you have to shoot a ramp. Okay, there you go. Okay, now shoot the left ramp because you need to hit this. The big thing is access the claw. There you go. Hit the other ramp. Oh, almost. Now shoot the... Oh, maybe I should have done that. Yeah. Yep. Shouldn't have done that. Oh, see that? Sometimes pinball, you gotta pay the price when you miss a shot, unfortunately. Yeah, or when you use a flipper that you think you should use that you shouldn't use. All right, so skill shot time. Skill shot All right now shoot that ramp It going to come down fast Uh Move it But she still beat her 39 million. I did. All right. So you can see that with the little tricks, with knowing how feeds are going to come down, right? Knowing that when the ball's coming down here, you held this flipper up. Yep. And four times out of five, it just stayed there. It did, yeah. Other times, it comes down, and you can actually let it bounce off one flipper, the other. It bounces up, and then you hold the flipper up, and you can catch the left flipper. This trick, coming down here, just holding this flipper up, and it pops over to here. So it's the nuances of every single pinball game. If there's a scoop that kicks out, maybe there's a scoop over here like Metallica or Guardians of the Galaxy. What do I do? Or Godzilla. Do I let the ball bounce, and it comes over here nice and easy? Do I hold the flipper up and it hits the point of the flipper and then it comes to your other flipper? It's all about, and every game is going to play different. Another Demolition Man, you may not be able to hold that flipper up. You may have to do something else. You may have to flip it on the fly. You may have to try to catch it as it's coming down here. So because of time, and I know it's 1051, thanks to the fire alarm, does anybody have any questions or comments? Okay, I think you were first. Oh, very good. So the question was, how does nudging the game forward affect the ball? So when you're on the outlanes, if the ball is, say the ball's bouncing up and down, okay? Say it comes here, it hits this rubber, that's when you want to nudge it up because you want to bounce it up, okay? If you time it right and you nudge the ball, you nudge it right when the ball is about to hit this rubber, then instead of bouncing and maybe going down, it's going to bounce and hit this rubber and maybe come back out this way, and you're going to save the ball. Now, if the ball is coming side to side, that's when you want to do this because if the ball is coming side to side, nudging up isn't going to do anything. But if right as it hits the rubber to go on the out lane, you give it a little shake, it'll hit the rubber, hit the wall, and sometimes bounce out. So it's a very good question that sometimes you want to nudge up right here so that it goes, it hits here and hits there and comes out. And other times, if it's coming this way, you want to nudge side to side and give it some of that body English. So correct me if I'm wrong, what I hear you saying is knowing the rules of the game you're playing is important. Very, very, very, very. Because you saw her first score not knowing what to do, 30-something million. And then with my help of tilting. Of tilting, yes. She would have had over $400 million. Thank you for that. So do you have a recommendation for how to learn the rule set of particular games? Yeah. Play and learn by doing? Do you watch YouTube? So what I like to do, like when a new game comes out like Jaws, I like to play it and see, you know, just because it's fun. But if I'm going into a tournament, I go to YouTube. You know, everybody knows Bowen. He's got good tutorials. if you go to my twitch channel bat cave pinball i do a lot of blowing up games um i don't quite do a tutorial in it but i say okay well now i have to do this now i have to do that right so you learn by other people doing it but you have to have your hands on because you know say you know she never saw this game in her life if you would have watched a tutorial on me of or somebody of playing this she would have known what shots to do but so i basically gave you a personal tutorial so now you know what shots to do so yeah correct yep so youtube is very very important because there's so many games that you can go another website's called pinball videos so you can play this and i said a lot of games play different in a tournament you can't just do this ramp and shoot the multiball all day they they turn that off in the tournament you can do it one time. That's it. So in a tournament, you'll see all five of these white lights. You'll go for all five of those modes. And then it lights this blue one called demolition time. And then you get a lot of points. So pinball videos actually shows tournaments that were streamed. You can select the game, say demolition man, and you can watch the greatest players in the world and see what they do. So a lot of times if I play a game, I never played a tournament. I'll be like, all right, Let's see what the pros did and let's see how different it is than what we just did right now. So, yeah, online, I mean, and we didn't have that 30 years ago. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I have one question to the outlanes. Yeah. So, sometimes you get to a machine that's not in a factory set up, but outlane rubbers are gone. How do you adjust your play? Well, you do a lot of praying. you still even when the outlaying rubbers are gone and the ball is coming well i guess can you put the full screen up of the game all right when the outlaying rubbers are off and the ball is still coming this way you still want to shake it and actually sometimes instead of shaking it and then it getting caught up in the rubbers you can shake it and it hits the metal and bounces out As far as the up and down, you know, there's not much up and down you're going to get on metal to metal. So you can still try to nudge it up and maybe get a little bit, but you don't have as much play to work with. And that's why, you know, the rubbers are off in tournaments to make it harder. And, of course, a lot of the new sterns, when you do shake it side to side, you'll get two dangers. So you do get one of these, right? You'll get one side-to-side shake. You've got two dangers, and then you've got to be on your tiptoes. Any other questions? Who's your favorite player that you've played with that's, you say, man, I want to play like that guy? Besides Bowen. He's like a creature. Yeah. Hey, I did beat Bowen at Texas a few weeks ago. So finally. I mean, it only took me I don't know how many years. You know, Jason Zoller is one heck of a player. Yeah. And he's a good kid. And a lot of these kids like Escher, Zach McCarthy, a lot of these kids, they're brought up really well. They're very polite. And they'll tell you how to play the game. And then when you play against them, they'll kick your butt. And, I mean, you know, last year I lost to Fantastic to Jason Zoller. I lost this year in the Nationals to Jason Zoller, you know. But, you know, I love how he plays. He's very controlled, just like I am. And I like watching the controlled players. because you can tell. You can tell, oh, man, this guy's good. He's got the ball trapped. He hits the shot, traps the ball. And Bowen is very, very good at that. He's one of the best at, okay, hitting a shot. Now I'm going to trap the ball. Think about, you know, do a little dance, you know. Think about the next shot. But it's very important to do that. And it's a mental game too. Sometimes you've got to reset yourself when you're missing shots and just relax or with me, go crazy, tell myself that I stink, you know, and say, come on, man, make that shot. you know, whatever helps you. So yeah, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of players I look up to.

_(Acquisition: youtube_groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

---

*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 73a9a620-f7e3-41c2-ac75-9a2cb507fa93*