In August of 2018 I interviewed an acquaintance, Jon Bismut, who’s a big pinball aficionado/player/fan. He’s not a big name in the pinball world, but he knows enough that I thought it would make an interesting interview for people, like myself, who don’t know much about pinball. One thing that initially struck my interest and made me want to interview him was him saying how big an edge highly-skilled pinball players have on lesser opponents; it’s a very big edge. This was surprising to me, being a novice who usually can’t last more than a few seconds on a pinball machine, so I wanted to delve into what makes a great pinball player and what makes it such a skill game.
Also, did you know that “tilting” in poker has its origin (so it’s widely assumed) from when pinball machines would go on Tilt from being jostled too much? Just an interesting poker connection.