Good topic!
One thing I find interesting is shifting what I’ll call “raw talent” to honed skill. As other have mentioned, you can play a whole lot of pinball and get pretty damn good by yourself. Maybe it’s sessioning the game you had growing up, or living near an arcade and being able to play regularly whenever you wanted. I’ll call this type of learning raw/general talent.
Then you start playing with others in a competitive environment and you realize that while you might have the raw talent to put up an occasional monster score, you don’t have the consistency to make it through a bracket. This is where the ability to take that raw skill you’ve acquired on your own and mold it with techniques/efficiency to take things to the next level.
I also believe that the “raw talent” factor is something that not every has, and not everyone can get. The hand/eye thing is just one of those things that some people are naturally great at, be it pinball, horseshoes, disc golf, darts or whatever.
I’d love to say that with enough work anyone can be as good as the PAPA/IFPA world champs, but I don’t believe that. I do believe that with enough time and dedication to learning all of skills and techniques that anyone can become a really solid player though. There’s like 5-10% extra that i don’t think you can simply learn, and that’s what makes those guys amazing to watch
Another thing I will ponder from time to time, is what ratio makes up a persons current abilities (raw talent/acquired skill).
Personally, I think I’m at about 65/35 raw/acquired skill. I grew up playing pinball whenever I could, played a lot of video games etc. My personal best demo man score to this day happened years before I’d learned any techniques about how to “properly” play pinball. I think all those years of playing solo attribute more to my playing ability than the skills I later learned. That said, I think those skills allow someone to fully take advantage of the raw talent/skill they’ve gotten up to that point.
My arch nemesis/friend Aaron Nelson picked up pinball relatively recently (6 years ago?), and has more natural raw talent than I do. I’d guess he’s probably like 75/25. I bring him up as an example as we’re generally very even competition wise. If I’ve been playing my whole life and he only 6 years, how come I’m not significantly better than him? He just has got more natural reflex/hand eye etc etc than I do. I think I’m a bit more controlled/efficient than he is - tough to say. We are very different players, yet evenly matched. I find it all very interesting.