I think I get some of it, but not all of it. If the issue here is with minimizing the impact of extra balls, then why is pressing the flipper buttons to change the flashing rollovers for a skill shot prohibited on all balls? Or am I missing something here?
On your extra ball, to limit the impact of that extra ball, only allow a plunge. No flipping (before or after the plunge). If there is a ball save, let that run, then plunge again (if no auto plunge).
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Oh, itâs on the extra ball only! That makes a lot more sense now. All this time, I thought it applied to ALL balls, not just the extra one. Thatâs what I was missing.
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Yes, thatâs how we play it in my neck of the woods. Itâs generally understood by players (since the same rule is also used by other local directors) and also announced at the start of the tournament.
Edited to add: of course I mean on âunallowed extra ballsâ â not in general. 
True story: Played a 1 & 3 2P game on Capt. Fantastic in a comp at Australian Pinball Expo a few years back. The 2P score (note, not the actual second/other player) was better than mine 
OK, sounds like youâre on board with the idea that we were talking about setting up skill shots only for âunplayableâ extra balls, not for every ball.
However: if youâre really going âabsolutely nutsâ with lane-change on skill shots (talking about basic top-rollover-lane skill shots as seen on, say, AFM, Spiderman, or Ironman), I would suggest that you try not doing that. Thatâs a great situation to develop your skill in predicting where the ball is going to go, which is a highly useful skill everywhere in pinball. For example: on games with auto-plungers, the game will usually launch the ball the same way every time (in the short term), so youâd expect the ball to wind up in the same top lane every time. So select that lane before you launch, and then just monitor the proceedings⌠only if you notice that the ball is following an unusual path should you need to switch. That simple act of noticing the ballâs path is a skill. Bringing a manual plunger into the mix becomes a bit more interesting, because you will have probably have more variability than an auto-launch solenoid⌠but the âwatch the ballâs pathâ concept still applies, and you should often be able to forecast a couple bounces ahead and make a reasonable guess of where the ball will wind up⌠select that lane and monitor.
The nice thing about using the skill shot to work on this technique is that thereâs minimal risk. Worst case, you may lose some points, but you probably wonât lose the ball. But by improving this skill, hopefully youâll become a better judge of the ballâs path throughout the entire game, which should allow you to avoid some ball drains by reacting early enough. Sometimes I call this âcheckmate in X movesâ⌠you hit an errant target, and you just know the ball will now ricochet off some post, then into a slingshot, then swish into an outlane. The geometry of these games is intentionally designed for that sort of thing to happen. But if you recognize that early enough, you can make some effort - say, a well-timed nudge - to disrupt the path and avoid the drain.
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@Shaneus, Check out the Bowden Dictionary thread from a month or two ago - we have a name for players 2 & 4 in that situation now, lol⌠You sir lost on Capt. Fantastic to John Plungeâs Australian cousin, Wally Plunge. 
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Maybe itâs because of how fiddly a lot of these machines in public are, but a lot of the time, even with autoplungers, they donât go down the same rollover each time. The only machine that has both a blinking rollover skill shot and an autoplunger Iâve ever played on that consistently goes down the same lane is the Rocky & Bullwinkle at Pins & Needles. There is a Johnny Mnemonic at a bowling alley I sometimes visit where the ball, while more likely to go to the right one, has a good chance at either of the other two as well.
You are right thoughâthe reason why I often press the flipper buttons a lot is because either the ball goes cleanly down a rollover before I can even do much, or I see it sitting on the rubber between two of them and Iâm not sure which one itâll go into. Itâs even more the case if there are only two lanes, like Attack from Mars or Metallica (though the latter is more complicated). The only time Iâm safely sure which one the ball will travel to is if I know it missed the rollovers by an inch or so and will roll back. Note that I donât do this every single time, and it depends a lot on which game it is but it happens enough times where all I can do is try to follow the ball as it bounces left and right and eventually decides on a rollover lane to enter.
I can get a reasonable estimate of where the ball will go if I see it trace an arc (though it throws me off greatly if the machine is slanted left or right), but Iâm still not good enough to predict ricochets. Between that and my bad aim, I am very prone to having the ball hit something and zoom down the center with nothing I can do about it.
I had a very unique occurrence at Pinburgh last year. I tilted through on Centaur (not unique), but it was my opinion that the machine did not properly tell me that I had tilted in the first place (flippers still active). So I asked for a ruling from an official, which took some time to happen. The official listened patiently while I explained it - he said I get a DQ, but if it happens again, heâll rule it a catastrophic malfunction and we could go from there. When the game restarts, the wrong player (the player I tilted thru) steps up and plunges the next playerâs ball. Ruling?
The ruling seems odd; Iâll ask the other TDs about this one, it seems like a weird call.
The second situation is just a new ruling, independent of the other. The other player gets a DQ for playing out of turn. Since both players now have a score of 0, you have a one-ball tiebreaker at the end of the game, on the same machine.
This was the second ruling and the 1 ball playoff occurred, but I was wondering why it is different from the ruling when a player plays out of turn, if a second player then plays out of turn he/she is not punished, but when a tilt thru occurs the second player who makes a mistake is DQâd? Obviously a similar mistake was made by the subsequent player, because he thought it was his turn when it wasnât due to a disqualifiable (not a word but I like it) play on my part.
Iâm not sure what you meant by all that, sorry.
If you mean that a second player isnât punished for playing out of turn â I believe that applies to playing the âemptyâ turn. If someone had played your turn they wouldnât have been DQâd for it, because youâre already dead.
Is that what you meant?
Ah. I understand. I was under the impression that until the error was discovered anyone subsequently playing out of turn would not be DQâd for it.
WaitâŚwhat? I guess I always interpreted the ruling as the player getâs a zero for the match, not a score of zero on the machine. I always assumed 2 players DQâd would be 4, 2, 0, 0. I was reading extra into it, and my interpretation would not work for things like pingolf, and the correct interpretation would. Still I think they should both get a zero. If two people got DQed for being late, would they get a 1 ball time break?
Edit: oh wait, 3,2,0,0. But same point.
Timed-out players would be eliminated from the group altogether. It isnât fair to give someone free wins against another person who never shows up, so the group would become a 3-player or (sadly) 2-player group in the case of multiple no-shows, and all no-shows receive an instant 0-12 for the entire round.
The rules are pretty careful to say âa score of 0â in these situations, which says that their score for the game is 0 points. The double-DQ tiebreaker has definitely happened. It stinks, but then someone wins!
âA score of 0â is slightly ambiguous: that reads to me as a score-in-pinburgh-points, not game points.
I also think the latter (3-2-0-0) is a better solution unless software explodes if two people both get 0 on the same game.
How would this be handled in group strike tournaments (where you are either receiving a strike or not - thereâs no value for each individual finishing position)?
The only way Iâve ever read this is the game score for the machine is a â0â . . . the TD then does what they want with that data, and put it to use base on whatever situation their format calls for.
The double DQ simply results in two players finishing with the same game score . . . in this case, â0â.
A few days have passed since pinburgh. Anyone willing to admit to playing out of turn on the big day? am a not trying to throw salt in wounds or question rulings, but despite getting warned in the opening announcements, I am sure it happened. I heard rumours of someone who conceded, but not to an official that caused out of order play. I like to keep track of the edge cases that cause these (like fireball).
The group next to me in round 10 (Division C) had a player play out of turn. Was on the Virgo bank (Simpsons Pinball Party/Dragon/Taxi/Count-Down) but donât remember what game it was on.
I stopped Derek Thomson from playing one of my balls during the quarterfinals. He was walking onto the stage, cost me a point 
The worst I saw was someone plunging a ball on an EM and the ball not making it past the gate before everyone realized what was up. I donât remember the official rules on the matter, perhaps Iâll look it up, but we didnât seek a ruling as everyone was fine with no harm no foul.
Other than that, no one I played with this year fouled out. Previous year, Roy Wils played someoneâs extra ball on BK in a group I was in.