This seemed like a simple ruling at the time but I thought I would post it anyway in case there is some nuance worthy of further discussion.
— Compensation ball being played by player two on a 2-player playoff on Meteor. —
I happened to be watching this ball as the malfunction happened. I saw what I thought was a right outlane drain but then noticed that the ball was still in play. I was at a non ideal vantage point due to how the machine was positioned so I thought I read the ball path incorrectly but then the same thing happened again. At this point I told the player to trap up and walked up to the machine. I noted that the right inlane ball guide had popped out of its hole and was resting against the rail thus providing a permanent ball save on that side. I asked the player how many times the ball tried to go down the right outlane and to his credit he admitted “twice”. I ruled beneficial malfunction and told the player to drain his ball and replay the comp ball after I fixed the malfunction. I should mention that I asked the player why he kept playing and he responded that he thought that it was a “feature”. (Unfortunately the player didn’t do well on the additional comp ball and was eliminated.)
I suppose if only one ball had been saved I could have fixed the problem and allow the player to play on. In this situation if the player had told me that it would have been a trickier ruling as I could not be entirely certain of my observation of two instances.
