# Playing Tips with Eric Stone

**Source:** Pintastic Pinball & Game Room Expo  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2025-02-07  
**Duration:** 29m 12s  
**Beat:** Pinball

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

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## Analysis

Eric Stone delivers a pinball tutorial at the Pintastic Expo, demonstrating that knowing game rules dramatically improves play compared to raw skill alone. He coaches a volunteer through Demolition Man, showing her progression from 39 million (no rules knowledge) to 372 million (after instruction), emphasizing control, flipper positioning, and understanding feed patterns as core skills applicable across games.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Knowing game rules is more important than being an advanced player who doesn't understand rules — _Eric Stone's opening premise: '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' — answered via demonstration with score improvement_
- [HIGH] Volunteer player improved from 39 million to 372 million after learning Demolition Man rules — _Stone explicitly states final scores and credits instruction: 'you got 39 million you got what 372' and 'with my help...she got 372 million that's pretty good'_
- [MEDIUM] Holding the flipper up as the ball comes down from a scoop will cause it to stay on the flipper approximately 4 out of 5 times on Demolition Man — _Stone: 'four times out of five it just stayed there it did...other times it comes down and you can actually let it bounce off one flipper the other'_
- [HIGH] Post pass technique differs based on which flipper you use on the same game — _Stone demonstrates: 'the post pass from this side to this side is different than this side to this side so you have to get a feel for it'_
- [HIGH] In tournament play, Demolition Man's multiball can only be accessed once; casual play allows unlimited repeats — _Stone: 'in a tournament you can't just do this ramp and shoot the multiball all day they turn that off in the tournament you can do it one time that's it'_
- [HIGH] YouTube and pinball-specific video sites (Pinball Videos) are essential learning resources — _Stone recommends Bowen's tutorials and Pinball Videos website to watch pro players competing on specific games in tournaments_
- [MEDIUM] Eric Stone beat Bowen in a Texas tournament 'a few weeks ago' after many years of play — _Stone: 'hey I did beat bow a Texas few weeks ago so finally I mean it only took me I don't know how many years'_
- [HIGH] Jason Zerb is a top competitive player Stone has lost to in major tournaments — _Stone: 'I lost in fantastic to Jason Zer I lost this year in the Nationals to Jason Zer'_

### Notable Quotes

> "you saw her first score not knowing what to do 30 something million and then with my help...she would have had over 400 million"
> — **Eric Stone**, ~35:00
> _Core thesis of the presentation: rules knowledge creates orders of magnitude score improvement_

> "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 it it's like night and day"
> — **Eric Stone**, ~32:15
> _Restatement of central teaching principle comparing skill vs. knowledge_

> "it's all about control if you could now that's a that's a kick up in the air"
> — **Eric Stone**, ~15:30
> _Emphasizes control as the foundational skill across all pinball machines_

> "so you learn by other people doing it but you have to have your hands on"
> — **Eric Stone**, ~36:00
> _Acknowledges video learning must be combined with hands-on practice_

> "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"
> — **Eric Stone**, ~38:30
> _Describes elite player technique: trap-shot-trap rhythm with deliberate decision-making_

> "when you're always in control isn't it easier to play"
> — **Volunteer player**, ~28:00
> _Volunteer confirms the value of control-focused gameplay_

> "it's the nuances of every single pinball game...every game is going to play different"
> — **Eric Stone**, ~33:45
> _Explains why learning transfer between games requires understanding core principles but also machine-specific knowledge_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Eric Stone | person | Pinball instructor/player; competitive tournament player who recently beat Bowen; presents tutorial on rules and control; mentioned as streaming on Twitch (Batcave Pinball) |
| Volunteer (Female Player) | person | Participates in live tutorial; married to owner of Fun Spot; played Whirlwind previously; improves from 39M to 372M on Demolition Man after instruction |
| Fun Spot | organization | Commercial arcade venue; Eric Stone has attended since childhood; volunteer is married to owner |
| Demolition Man | game | Primary game used for tutorial; features multiball modes, claw mechanics, ramps, post passes, and tournament rule variants |
| Bowen | person | Top-tier pinball player; known for excellent tutorials; controlled playing style; Eric Stone recently beat in Texas tournament; has lost to in major tournaments |
| Jason Zerb | person | Elite competitive player; defeated Eric Stone at Nationals and other major events; described as very polite, controlled player, and well-developed young competitor |
| Zach McCarthy | person | Mentioned as one of newer generation of well-mannered, skilled competitive players |
| Batcave Pinball | organization | Eric Stone's Twitch channel where he streams gameplay and rule explanations |
| Pinball Videos | organization | Website resource for watching professional tournament play on specific games for learning purposes |
| Pintastic Pinball & Game Room Expo | event | Event venue where this tutorial is being conducted |
| Whirlwind | game | Classic pinball machine; mentioned as game Sierra played last year, improving from 1M to 7M |
| Sierra | person | Player mentioned from previous year's Pintastic event; played Whirlwind, improved from 1M to 7M |
| Metallica | game | Modern Stern game referenced in feed discussion; features scoop mechanics |
| Guardians of the Galaxy | game | Modern game referenced for scoop mechanics discussion |
| Godzilla | game | Modern game referenced for scoop mechanics discussion |
| Jaws | game | Recent game release Eric Stone plays casually; plans to study YouTube tutorials before tournament play |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Rules knowledge vs. raw skill, Flipper control and technique, Ball feed understanding and positioning, Multiball strategy and mode progression, Post pass and trap techniques
- **Secondary:** Game-specific vs. transferable skills, Learning resources (YouTube, Pinball Videos), Tournament vs. casual play rule differences

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.85) — Educational, encouraging tone throughout. Eric Stone is enthusiastic, patient, and celebrates volunteer's progress. Community interactions are supportive. No negativity or controversy.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** Eric Stone actively mentoring new players at major expo event with hands-on instruction; volunteer clearly learning through supervised practice (confidence: high) — Full tutorial session at Pintastic Expo with volunteer; Stone providing real-time feedback and score-based progress measurement
- **[community_signal]** Extensive YouTube and online video resources (Bowen tutorials, Pinball Videos website) available for rules learning and pro play study (confidence: high) — Stone directs players to YouTube, Bowen's channel, and Pinball Videos website as essential learning tools; notes difference between casual learning and tournament preparation
- **[competitive_signal]** Emphasis on control-based gameplay and trap-shot-trap rhythm as elite skill marker; multi-ball mode progression as core score strategy (confidence: high) — Stone repeatedly emphasizes control, trapping, and deliberate shot selection. Describes Bowen's elite technique as 'hit a shot now I'm going to trap the ball...think about the next shot'
- **[community_signal]** Eric Stone established as accessible expert willing to provide detailed one-on-one instruction at public events; described as competitive but mentoring-focused (confidence: high) — Full tutorial demonstration; questions about nudging technique; reference to Twitch stream for gameplay breakdowns

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## Transcript

so what we're GNA do is a shorten 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 re it's a it's a really good question because I thought well gez I don't know now you don't know the rules of this game at all right not at so what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you how much better if you were here last 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 7 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 okay I'm going to just let you flip away and then we're going to start explaining the rules quickly because we got 20 minutes and we're going to see how much the the score improves and also show a couple tips and tricks so let's get started and you could play as you're you could 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 funpot because she's married to the owner of funpot and everybody knows I've been going to Fun Spot since I was like this high four years old last night last night last night she did well I was going around to her telling her when I saw her in a game okay this is what you do this is what you do it must have worked I I somehow made it through eight rounds so yeah I mean that's I don't know 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 demoan 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 no no 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 A bridged version and and kind of show you 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 when you plung the ball you want to hit either in here or you want to hit up the ramp that's the skill shot okay it's easier to hit it in here all right now I I don't have any practice on this one so you could also use these as flippers um it doubles your score on combos but to me it's a lot harder and it's I like using the regular flippers but you can choose to do either one so I'm going to try it the skill shot which I missed so now 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 you 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 shoot that you want to use this one because that will light your multiball Oh 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 am it is it going to f come over here and then I got to flip it on the fly so this is a very hard shot see the start 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 that's what you call a drop catch when it's coming down here and I I rais 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 nor they screwed me you see that it didn't give it to me you didn't get oh no now when it comes out of here what do you do so so let's let's see how the feet 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 got control again now let's see if it gives it to me this time give it to me it gave give 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 and one flipper and I'm playing with one ball so there's one jackpot I'm going to use these eyes 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 hit on the oh I didn't get the super okay that's still not bad so now what what do I want to do I want to control the ball so now now I'm controlled yeah combos are very important in this game if you can get 10 combos you like this computer award and you can get good stuff you can get a multiv ball 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 a tournament it 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 see the 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 if you're looking 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 linan see that now what am I going to do I'm going to hold this flipper up cuz you remember how it came down okay come on and I'm going to hold this flipper up and you remember I 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 uh another drop catch it's all about control if you could now that's a that's a kick up in the air yeah you know so sometimes sometimes you 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 you what you want to do is move move the game and some games will tilt some won't obviously that didn't tilt okay what do we doing the first thing skill shot right we're going to try to get the skill shot right there NOP 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 them the fly look at that look at that gosh terrible huh me a lot I know it does there we go there's there's the skill shot and you know what's going to happen so now now this this is interesting The Claw is ready when you have multiball 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 Norman they screw me again what is going on so now we're going to see if I can do it this way now now see that little bump that I did that 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 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 cuz right now every single Jack ja pot's lit right so now you just go crazy as long as the ball save is on I don't try to I don't try to control the balls now the ball save is off so now I got two balls trapped on one flipper I'm 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 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 yeah that's what you call a little tip over which is really hard to do um and then if you do that then you're good then it's over right and and if if you heard of a cradle separate what I'm trying to do is I got the 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 oh that that's even better watch this boom oh 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 but what I just did right there is at the very tip of the flipper I I I quickly flipped the ball and it popped the one ball over 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 a my free shot with a chin I call that the chin shot oh let's try to hit one on the Fly no okay claw see that I just roll 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 okay but we're playing for fun we're not playing tournament so what do we do we hold this flipper up now see how that was a little bit different but it's okay yeah always want to shoot this because now you're the safe shot now you get the ball back here right you want oh that was my 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 and 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 now see how I I bumped the game up it it 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 a 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 cuz a lot of times the ball will come to this side rather than this side so here we go oh that was it okay wow well he told me I couldn't play long so I kind of had it yeah all right I got 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 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 okay it will light 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 beat what was that don't beat 600 okay I think we're going to 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 I supposed to do no no but now you want to try okay now you want to try to hit that ramp oh that okay try to control it y so just hold the flipper up hold the other flipper up okay flip now now you see it didn't work up here uh-oh uhoh don't ever forget about now hold that flipper up this one up yep okay almost that that's okay now just hold it up okay now 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 ramp oh my gosh just like that come on come on guys and GS just 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 all right now you got multiball multi 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 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 now I I would use the the two buttons oh chin time oh I didn't chin time it you 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 you're getting too good at this somebody pull the fire launch she's she's going to beat me all right now try to get control hold pull 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 cling for you okay so now what are you going to do right 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 full bre yep see when you're always in control isn't it easier to play yep so much easier it is so now now shoot yep there you go now hold the hold the right flipper up and see see what happens when it comes down keep it keep it up you got to trust it because I normally would never 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 the Yep this ramp yep that ramp right there look at that now shoot the other ramp oh my God yay okay okay wait a minute hold on a sec a minute not again no okay now move it move it here move it right move it right oh she forgot now now shoot the middle so you actually started a mode the mode this mode is you want to shoot the middle all day shoot that oh I about 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 it 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 cuz it's a lot safer so here we are no oh almost that that's okay so now again you now hold 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 it it's 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 I'm a meteorologist if people that don't know who I am all right so now what so now I'm going to ask you yeah what do you do now that's a great what you going to do now I I feel like it's going to be the ring yeah and why is it going to be the ramp uh because we're going to try for multiball again well because you got to roll over that oh right to then get and then you shoot that ramp 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 ramp oh oh now hold okay now there you go now it doesn't always work holding the flipper up but but see she's got a good reaction that when she knows it's going to go go on the in trouble she flips a lot of people just hold the flipper up and like oh it didn't work okay so now you want to shoot that ramp uhoh oh uhoh oh there you go that was a good tip pass now normally on normal games when 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 attempt a post pass yeah okay so here actually actually let me show you so if 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 know see oh almost almost okay well one way or another but 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 he tilted my game I did I did D you that's right so so anyway you can see that the post pass from this side to this side is different than this side to this side so you have to get a feel for it but I'm you know I'm showing you how to do it one way or another 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 sh shoot the ramp yeah it it's hard because it's coming down fast now you could have shaken it a little bit more good job now shoot the ramp yep and now shoot the right ramp oh almost almost now now see how it's nice now try to do the post pass really quickly oh now don't don't flip this one don't flip the left now now there you go now flip because okay oops very good no it's coming up here oh forgot about that oh you did the same exact thing as last time but you got lucky okay good job now hold the right flip rep see what happens okay there you go there you go oh I got to get control again see she's not panicking oh oh until there you said 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 okay so what are you going to do first well skill shot yep come around skill shot and then what and then the ramp you got it see that so okay so knowing the rules is so much better than you know if 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 it it's like night and day so you got 39 million you got what 372 so here we go all right oh good job that's a skill shot now good job oh my God on wow now I got now now you remember what to do up here right I got remember what to do up here go to there there you go yep yep there you go now it's going to come down now what are you going to do now you're in multiball remember if you hit both red buttons at the same time you're going to get a jackpot oh that's right you want you want to shoot the middle shot first that's okay you you got a ball now you want to hit both buttons real quick both buttons did I do it no sometimes you you have to hit them now now try to dude now just hit the buttons now just hit the buttons now okay did I do it not do it it did it it gave okay see that she got the Jack now you want to control the ball uh-oh good job wait a minute is the ball save the ball save was still on go ahead yeah get that yep so now you want to hit the ramp right uhoh that's that's trouble oh oh way trouble A lot of times when it comes down off this ramp yeah it 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 that's a all right so first thing you're going to do skill shot yep ramp there you go all right look at that P here pretty soon you're going to have one of these a fun spot I just know uhoh the ball STS on the ball St on see see the red now get up oh now see you you weren't ready for that hold the okay now you got have to shoot a ramp okay there you go okay now shoot 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 now shoot the oh oh maybe I should have done that shouldn't have done that oh see that I mean a lot of times pinball you got to pay the price when you miss a shot unfortunately yeah or when you use a flipper should use that you shouldn't use all right so skill shot time skill shot all right now shoot that ramp it's going to come down fast ah uh-oh move it but but she still beat her her 39 million did all right so you can see that with a little tricks with knowing 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 on 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 do I or 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 this another Demolition Man you may not be able to hold that flipper up you may you may have to do something else you may have to flip it on the Fly you 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 for the fire alarm does anybody have any questions or comments okay I think you were first oh very good so he um so the the the question was how does the 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 and 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 it 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 you want to do this because if the ball's coming side to side nudging up isn't going to do anything but if if right as it hits the rubber to go on the outlane you give it a little Shake it'll hit the rubber hit the wall and sometimes bounce out so it 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 give it some of that body English so correctly I'm 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 of tilting of tilting yes she would have had over 400 milon so do you have aend for how to learn the rule set of particular games yeah Play and Learn by doing you watch YouTube so 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 to into a tournament I go to YouTube you know Bo everybody knows Bowen he's got good tutorials if if you go to my twitch Channel Batcave pinball I do a lot of blowing up games um I don't quite do a tutorial on it but I say okay well now I have to do this now I have to do that LE you do 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 turn that off in the tournament you can do it one time that's it so in a tournament you'll 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 in a tournament I'll be like all right let's see what let's see what the pros did and let's see what 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 well do a lot of praying you still even when the outlane rubbers are gone and the ball is coming I guess can you put the full screen up of the game all right when the the outlane 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 um as far as the up and down uh 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 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 like one of these right you'll get one side to side shake you got two dangers and then you got to be like on on your tiptoes any other questions who's your favorite player that you played with that's say man I want to play like that guy besid like yeah um hey I did beat bow a Texas few weeks ago so finally I mean it only took me I don't know how many years you know Jason Zer is one heck of a player yeah and he's a good kid and a lot of these kids like eer um Zach McCarthy like a lot of these kids they're they're brought up really well like they're very polite and they'll they'll 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 in fantastic to Jason Zer I lost this year in the Nationals to Jason Zer you know but you know I I I love 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 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 it's it's a metal game too sometimes you 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 uh so yeah you know there's a lot of a lot of players I look up to

_(Acquisition: youtube_auto_sub, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 754464ec-8d9e-40bb-a84f-f49be694f858*