Yeah I agree, compensation ball. This is common software behavior and not really a malfunction at all—ball search runs, software can’t locate ball, game serves new ball, ball drains, ball over. I’ve seen it happen many many times but mostly it’s fine because there’s a ball stuck under a ramp or on top of a plastic somewhere where it can’t be dislodged.
Agreed. Add another ball to that person’s score. My rule of thumb as a TD is if the issue happens again when the game or ball is replayed, then the match should be moved to a whole new machine (or you can wait until the machine is fixed if you have a tech and keys).
Ouch. I remember something similar happening in my first knockout tournament, on the first round, on TX Sector. I got a ball stuck during a solid ball 1, and when our friendly neighborhood repair munchkin/TD came over to free it, he slam tilted the game on accident and we had to start over. I got 20% of that first ball score and eventually found the door winless.
And to think I’m helping him with things now. 
Great thread. I think I’ve struggled with all of the things people have mentioned!
One of my first pieces of advice I give to players (and remind myself of), is to learn how to lose. It’s pretty important, because this will affect you always, because there are always occasions where you will lose! How you handle that is crucial, because as has been mentioned here, rebounding from that blackhole your mind just went down can be difficult and can affect your game ongoing.
I’ve especially struggled with disappointment in my own play, which has nothing to do with my opponents. I set expectations for myself and if I don’t meet or exceed those I can get pretty depressed. That leads to not enjoying the game, which leads to more unhappiness. It’s an ever downward spiral.
I hear people also saying ‘just enjoy yourself! Don’t take it so seriously!’, but I honestly believe it’s not that simple. I tried that philosophy for around a year, and had horrible results. This in turn did not allow me to enjoy myself! As a result of that failed experiment, I completely reversed this mindset and started hyper focusing, even changing my stance so I crane over the table and watch every tiny movement as much as I can. This had immediate results which was quite eye opening for me, and made me realise that just relaxing is not good enough, you need to be on point, you need to be ready to react. Being cavalier about the situation is not helpful in a competitive environment.
So the key is a good balance in my opinion. Focus on your game, do take it seriously, but only on the table in front of you. Your opponents are not in your sphere of influence or control, so if you lose to them it’s fine - they played the table in front of them better than you did. Watch what you did wrong, analyse it, and learn from it. Own the loss and improve.
Again it comes down to learning how to lose, and how you build those constructs to move forward, rather than looking back.
But I think the most important thing for everyone is to treat your fellow players with respect, because they are all trying to do what you’re doing, and it’s a fun path to travel down together.
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Oh yes! One more thing I would like to point out: I also play a bunch of other things competitively, and regardless of what it is, or the tournament format, there is always one thing I do: Whenever a match begins, I expect myself to lose. I always tell myself mentally, “I will lose this match.”
This does four things: It causes me to focus even harder to win, it keeps my attitude humble, it allows me to enjoy victories more, and it allows me to take losses better.
I don’t know if this will work for everybody, but it works for me. This is the mindset BattleBots champion Donald Hutson says he commits himself to whenever he has to bring his bot out into the ring, and you can see it when he does lose, he is one of the most graceful losers of robot combat.
(Of course, it also helps that I am naturally not a competitive person, and I use competitions as a means to partake in lots of a particular game at a time against a variety of opponents whom I might otherwise never face.)
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Has anyone experienced how as you get better, people have higher expectations of your play and then that affects how you play? I guess similarly, for top players, do you feel any additional pressure to win when you know you are technically the superior player?
I’ve felt the guilt of winning thing and feel like overall I’m a good loser, but as I get better it seems harder for me to focus and play consistently to the level of skill that I have.
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I’ll be honest…half of the pressure I feel regarding winning is because when someone beats me on any game, they lord it over me and brag to everyone else for like a week that they beat me as if it’s some miraculous accomplishment and not something that kind of just happens. I don’t think I’m that great and maybe I should take it as a compliment, but it still gets old.
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I feel this, too. A lot of my feelings about losing stem from embarrassment, like I should have better demonstrated my skill and because I didn’t people are judging me (even though they probably aren’t). As much as I recognized intellectually that beating someone notorious is really exciting for the winner, it doesn’t feel good to hear people celebrating my loss, and those moments stick with me.
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it come with the reputation, similar in all sports I would assume? It’s part of being a pinball celebrity? 
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The only person I can think of that I’ve ever truly cared about winning against is the guy that tried to bully me into selling him my Nip It for $100, and then threatened to fight me at league over it. Oh, and Johnny Modica. So two people actually…
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@CFFLegs did you feel any of that at the women’s tourney recently now that you are a WORLD CHAMPION and all?
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Oh, totally! Thankfully the matches I lost were against two ladies that I love and respect and compete against on a regular basis, but every game I played was nerve wracking specifically because I had been at the same venue two months earlier and became the president of pinball or whatever. A similar thing happened in Seattle a few years ago…I won the Powderpuff tournament in 2011, and when I got knocked out the next year there was quite a bit of celebration. I wasn’t even pissed about losing the match (@kayluh and I played some amazing games of Champ Pub) but when you know that spectators are rooting against you (not even against you, just rooting for someone else), that’s a whole other thing to deal with mentally.
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I wish I had a magic formula to staying positive. I wonder if anyone could stay positive through this situation that happened to me in league last week.
I run the league so in addition to playing, I have to make rulings, etc. We had about 26 players in league that night. We use FSPA scoring. First game all was well but I played poorly. Put up 47,100 on Jet Spin to take a zero. Second game was Stern KISS. We get 1/2 through the game and realize we have 2 or 3 balls stuck in the back of Gene’s mouth(he does that, ya know?)
We decide to play on since it is just Demon MB that nobody will be able to start. We started having more issues with the game. We got the keys and took the glass of to make repairs. About that time the manager informs me that one of the pins we are going to be using in league is sold and the person is there to pick it up now. Then two other groups come to me for a ruling on a malfunction in their match. Then one of our players(who is an employee of the store) has to leave in mid-game to help the customer load up the game. I was rattled to say the least and never recovered from it. Put 30 million on KISS to take a zero. Then put a lousy 11M on S-M to take another zero. Last game was Eight Ball. I put 110,560 on it to narrowly score one point. So out of a possible 20 points, I scored 1 point!
It was 100% mental. If I could’ve found a way to get out of my head and just play I would’ve had way more fun and scored way more league points!
Although I haven’t experienced this many distractions yet at the tournament I run, I totally see where you’re coming from. I havent been focused for a single one yet just due to all the other things I’ve been thinking about.
One of the best things I ever did as a TD was to ask other participants to act as referees, so that I wouldn’t be pulled away all the time. Highly recommend it for other organizers.
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That sounds incredibly stressful. It’d be a huge achievement to play well while also trying to deal with that many problems at once. Maybe you can have one or two reliable league players to step in as assistant TDs for times when there’s multiple issues happening at once.
I won a major Australian tournament last year, and participated in the same tournament this year just recently. I felt the pressure to prove that I hadn’t done it by accident, and that I did actually deserve to win it the previous year on my own merits. Unfortunately I bombed out completely (for multiple reasons, other than poor play!), and I was disappointed that I might have created the perception that my previous win could have been a complete fluke.
No other players said anything or gave the impression of the above, and I bet it was all in my head. I wonder how much of this contributed to the result I ended up with though. Having said that, I hadn’t played with the emotional attitude of feeling pressured, and I certainly wasn’t nervous. In fact I felt pretty confident… But there was that niggling thing in the back of my mind…
Fascinating stuff. I’m sure there’s good literature on the subject out there for all kinds of high level sports.
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I think outside of the handful of truly elite players and the handful of complete novices, tournaments generally have a large number of players who are competent but inconsistent. If one of those players happens to be “in the zone” on the day of the tournament, they may win. I think everyone who’s spent much time on the competitive scene understands this, everyone’s hoping it’s their day to be “on”, and no one will condemn you for doing well today or failing to do well next time, because we’re all in the same boat. Is it a fluke that you won last year? In a way, yes, but there’s nothing wrong with that… the winner next time is probably a fluke too.
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With the passing of Mohammed Ali just the other day, I got to thinking about how much of his mental/talking game prior to a bout was less about psyching his opponent out and more convincing himself he didn’t need to stress about winning…
Not that competitive pinball is about psyching your opponent out (obviously), but getting in the mindset that whilst you might not necessarily be “playing for fun” (which I’ve tried to convince myself of numerous times, rarely with success), you have the skillset to be able to pull off whatever you need to and don’t need to stress about it. And hopefully the fun will come
We’ll see tonight, I guess!
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tl;dr.
I have struggled enough with this issue in the past to need extended breaks from competitive pinball. I thought I might be headed toward another break again recently, but I recognized the negativity brewing inside me and mentally reset myself overnight and came back the next day fresh and positive.
I want to be positive about playing pinball whether I win or lose. But at the same time, I do not subscribe to the “It’s only pinball” camp not caring about how I do/only competing for the enjoyment of playing pinball. I want to get better, which doesn’t mean I want to score bigger, but I want to make better decisions and become more accurate and save balls with the least machine movement, etc. I care about the competitive aspects, in a very similar way to how I feel when playing chess or basketball.
I draw a line, though. I won’t celebrate my opponent’s failures. I won’t talk trash to make my opponents fail and I won’t rub it in their faces if they do. If I find that I am, I need a break for my own sake. This is the line where I find that playing competitive pinball makes sense for me.
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