Pretty Fly For an Ely: An Interview With Pinball’s Nicest Stone Cold Tournament Player

Dalton Ely (the overly-clever title nonwithstanding, his last name is actually pronounced E-Lee) is currently the 18th ranked best player in the world – but if 2024 is any indicator, that’s gonna change in a hurry. Just this year he’s placed first in INDISC’s side tournament, first in Lumberjack Johnny’s WPPR Chopper 8 Fair STrike, and OH YEAH he won the IFPA North American Pinball Championship back in March. Look at his IFPA player page. It’s a litany of accomplishments. 

You’ll see dozens of tournament wins, literally winning thousands of dollars (including 15k at the INDISC High Stakes tournament) and a metric ton of pinball machines (he’s won several, most recently a Venom from a Stern Pro event), and uh, just a ton of elite pinball play. Plus a super fun Twitch stream, where he gives tips, rips thru games, and makes the same kinda goofy jokes that most good natured 23 year olds also make.

I’ve wanted to talk with Dalton for a while. Where a lot of competitive pinball players can be, well, intense, Ely is chill. Like almost weirdly chill for how young he is and the stakes he plays at. Sure, people are gonna laugh when I say high stakes and competitive pinball in the same sentence, but if there’s anyone in the world playing in those situations – it’s Dalton Ely. 

We’re living in a golden age of young, fun competitive players. We’ve covered Kassidy Milanowksi, but there are a whole slew of players 25 or under that are absolutely dominating competitive pinball in a way we haven’t really seen before. Too-young-to-drinkers like Jason Zahler, Neil Graff, Escher, and Arvid Flygare are becoming the norm at the top of any major tournament finish. 

That’s good news for the hobby. It reminds me of the 1980s, when a new generation of hungry-ass goofballs took over a hobby and completely blew it up. Is Dalton a part of that? Well, when I sat down with him he didn’t seem overly concerned. In fact, he was downright chill. Kinda like his play style. Unflappable. 

Nudge: How did you get into pinball? Are you not from one of those families that owns an arcade? 

Dalton: I can vividly remember when I was about three years old, flipping on a Simpsons pinball party. You know, me being a baby and not knowing a thing. It was the Simpsons pinball party. Ripley's Believe it or not, and roller coaster Tycoon. You know, some of them early 2000 Sterns.

Nudge: Oh, you learned on the HARD Sterns. As a frickin’ baby. No wonder you’re good. 

D: When I was a little kid, I got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas and along with it I got the Pinball Hall of Fame Williams and Gottlieb collections. My dad was always watching me play and saying, “I remember playing these at the arcades. I remember playing Pinbot, Firepower, Whirlwind.” All the old Williams and Gottlieb Games. We both liked them. 
So then when I was about 10 years old, My Grandparents bought me a real pinball machine for Christmas. They bought me a Gottlileb Premiere Monte Carlo. I still have it, it’s in my living room right now. In my opinion, it’s an underrated game. 

N: Oh definitely, and it has a great art package. Love the art direction on it. It’s almost a weirdly classy game for a ten-year-old to get as a present. 

D: This was way before the price bubble. In general, I think the Gottlieb 80b games are the most underrated in pinball.

N: I think in general I know what you mean, but could you break that down a little?

D: Like Genesis, TX Sector, Robo War…

N: You’re speaking my language. I love TX Sector. With that era, you just get so much bang for your buck.  it's late enough that you have ramps and it's not all just like single level things. I mean, there are subways in TX sector. The mechs are there, but  it doesn’t feel like a Williams from the nineties or something like that. It's, it's a really cool era. 

N: So when did you feel like you really arrived on the scene as a tournament player?

D: I'd say my first big jump in the rankings was probably Expo 2021. You know, right after the IFPA got reinstated post-COVID and all that because I finished seventh place in that and got third place in the classics. I ended up with something like 100 WPPRs that weekend and I jumped like almost instantly to the top 100.

N: Where were you before that? 

D: I think I was in like the two hundreds? After expo I was 70th. 

N: So you were already pretty well ranked, like 200 is still very very good – but then you’re in a more elite group. So what was the next year like? 

D: That's when we started to figure it out more and more. I did good at Louisville Arcade Expos tournaments and then at Wizards World War IV, which is like our first real whopper weekend, so to speak. I did really good. I won the tournament, won the pinball machine.  (Rush by Stern) 

Technically, it was a raffle but you got more tickets the better you did in the tournament.

Like if you swept the round of the three bank round, you get like plus five tickets. And needless to say, yeah, I had pretty good chances. And then after, after Wizards World, it was Expo 2022 and that was my first final four finish. That was the legendary Escher Dalton Godzilla game. That’s the one everyone talks about. 

In 2023, I won P Masters and that's how I won my Iron Maiden – at Southern Fried. I got like a couple of top four finishes and at Expo, I got runner-up to Escher. And then after that, you know, we entered this year with Indi and win in the high stakes at INDISC and then winning the North American Championship, you know, earlier this month and that brings us to today.

N: That’s wild. Congrats, dude. Like what a crazy ride it’s been. It’s funny because you’re right, that Expo matchup was what put you on our radar. It was so exciting. That was truly when it felt like the youth movement was fully on. Of course there are good players of all ages, but when it seems like half of the top twenty are 25 years old or younger, it’s pretty crazy. It’s you, Jason, Escher, Arvid, Kassidy, so many now. Do you keep in contact with those guys?

D: I mean, we text sometimes on Discord or twitch chats – that’s mainly when we see each other, if we’re watching a tournament stream and just shooting stuff. Nothing serious, just ‘hey, what’s up?’ and all that. 

Comic by Dalton Ely

N: So you guys keep it cool? There’s no rivalry? I was just watching that Netflix documentary, and I was surprised that so many people can balance the rivalry with friendship. Do you compartmentalize that at all when you’re playing? 

D: Well, in the end, when the competition dust settles, you know, we’re just some dudes playing pinball. I mean, it’s fun, you know. Sure we’re rivals and friends and we want to face each other on stream – and we definitely want to give people an epic battle. We enjoy that show, you know? But after the competition, we’ll just hang out and it’s on to the next one basically.

Nudge: Wow, that sounds like a wildly healthy view of competitive pinball. I was not ready for that. You’re not really taking the Eric Stone approach, who we love, but is also so, so, so, exhaustively competitive. You’re more like a baseball player – you forget the last at-bat. 

D: I mean, obviously there’s a time to be serious and all that – but you can’t be serious all the time. You gotta have fun and keep loose. If you’re just thinking “THIS IS MY TOURNAMENT LIFE ON THE LINE” You know, you start to rattle yourself a bit. But as soon as you just stop thinking, you’ll do a lot better… I don’t think too much about it, because when you start thinking is when things go bad. 

Nudge: Wow, that’s very Taoist or Zen or something. It jives with how I play pinball, even at a much lower level, I want to get outside of myself and my ego. When I do it, that’s when I play so well. I wanna be in that flow state. 

You’re so good at playing off the fly. What’s the secret to playing that way? Is it just a feel thing?

D:  I like to consider myself a momentum-based player – or a hybrid between on-the-fly and controlled shots. I mean, I like getting some control but when I start making my shots, it's like I'm building up my momentum and then that's when I start making shots in succession and on the fly, stuff like that,  just like a little bit of a combo between controlled and on the fly. It's like Goldilocks.

I always tell my dad that if I'm in the playoffs of a tournament, the first playoff round is always the hardest because you have the pressure of getting put out in the first round, but once you advance to the next round, the pressure eases off a little bit. And if you get through that round, you know, that momentum builds up and the steam is building, and that's when you keep rolling along.

N: You’re touching on a lot of the things that I wanted to explore with you about the actual ACT of playing pinball. Like it seems like it’s not just about mental toughness, but mental FLEXIBILITY. 

D: I mean, I always like to say you got the physical in pinball and then you got the mental part of pinball., I always tell people I'm willing to argue that the mental part of the game is almost bigger than the physical skill because you could have so much skill – you could have

all the skills in the world. But as soon as something enters your mind, as soon as you get rattled, you just lose what to do. And that's when you crumble, you know what I mean?

N: Yes, (laughs) I think everyone in pinball has experienced that.  Do you have days where you don’t play pinball? Like you say ‘I’m not going to play pinball today?’ or are you in the lab pretty much every day? 

D: Do I take breaks? Of course, you know, everybody needs a break sometimes. I'll go a day without playing pinball.I stream every week,  either at my place, or at Portal, but ain't nothing wrong with taking a day break. You don't have to play every day. I usually do, but you don't have to play every day, you just have to play enough.

N: That's a great thing for our readers to hear because you're an elite player that a lot of people really look up to. I think, in terms of your skill and all that, basically, what you're saying is, keep it fun. This is a game that you should enjoy.

D: I still play A LOT. Back at the old Portal location, we'd go there at five o'clock and play all day until they closed at midnight—back when they used to be open until midnight. But like I said, you just have to play it enough. You don't have to oversaturate yourself with all these games just to try to make yourself play better. Take some breaks, you know, give yourself some time to think about it.

N: Usually, tournament games are set up differently. On top of that, every machine plays a little differently. How long do you have to play a game at a tournament before you feel comfortable with THAT particular game?

D: I mean, obviously you learn by doing, you know, as soon as you start a game, you get the little primer. I’m figuring out ok, the ball does this when you do this, this flipper is a little stronger,  this flipper is a little steeper. You know, once you get a couple of flips in, that's when you start like recalibrating because your mind is still calibrated to the previous time you played it. 

So then you’ll be recalibrating your mind to play better with how the flipper feels, or how the ball rolls and you're just thinking it's like, ‘OK, I got to adjust to flip just a split second later or a split second earlier.’ But I mean, you know, once you learn more and more, it, it just becomes the standard of all games that you play on location and stuff like that is just to start with that little bit of calibration in mind. That's all the thing, all these tournament games that you go to, it's all about calibrating your mind to the reactions of the ball.

N: Boy, you DO sound Buddhist. Be like water. Fill whatever vessel. 

D: Pour the ball into the cup. It becomes the cup (laughs). 

N: What’s an important skill that pinball people don’t talk about or don’t focus on enough? 

D: Oh, this is a good one. One of my favorite skills that I've really honed in on, and in my opinion I think I'm really good at, is stage flipping with upper flippers. (editor’s note: I’m going to insert a stage flipping vid here) and the half press of the flipper button. With that you're doing the best of both worlds, you're shooting AND you're holding a ball. That’s accuracy and timing all in one. it's such an important skill. Also: It's a cool skill and it's very crucial in some instances.

N: That’s a good call, and something you can practice on your own pretty easily. I know I need to do it more. Does it ever get weird when you’re playing old people in games and you’re better than them at classics?

D: I joke about it a lot. I’ll always say stuff like, ‘I wasn’t even born when Road Show or Attack from Mars came out.’ just to mess with people. It’s like seeing their back go out or something, there’s a little bit of mental games to it. 

N: What’s the biggest difference between playing classics and modern games in tournaments? Is there different emphasis? You obviously can’t really control in the same way with a game that has scissor flippers. 

D: If the game is like scissor flippers or something, control isn’t going to work the same, but that said there IS control in every game. 

I think with the newer games of today there's more leeway to being on the fly. You know, we got ball saves and there's ramps and combos. It allows you to get in a zone and you can be on the fly a little bit.

Some of these old games, you know, there’s no ball saves. They were designed from the start to be made to take your quarters, you want to try to get control really, as much as you can. Learning control on an old game is just as important if not more so. 

A PARAGON of competitive pinball! GET IT?????

N: Yeah, absolutely. I think I’m just talking about  how the ball moves and how the flippers react because just physically, right, the flippers are different in a classic. In some ways, you can actually kind of get away with more, right? Like with microflips and tip passes and stuff? 

D: Yeah. Oh, micro flip or flip pass, whatever. I think that's the name of it. But, I mean, you know, now flippers of the day they're harder to do tap passes on and, you know, you can post pass on some games you can on the older games, you know, it's just each type of flipper has its own, I, I'd say skill set basically. That's what I like to. That's probably the best way to put it.

Each flipper's got its own skill set and you got to adapt to every flipper skill set. You know, because, you know, some flippers have more control, like the super steep gottlieb flippers, some have more bounce to them, like the old gottlieb ems or some of them can have different mix like the tap passing and stuff like the ball games and some of them have got more power and control like the string games, you know, I mean, yeah, you gotta learn to adapt to all the flip different types offlippers. 

Just don't ask me what to do with banana flippers because I stay away from banana flipper games. I'd rather play Chicago coin big flipper than, I mean, you have more control on the hot hand giant clock flipper than you do with banana flippers. It's like the worst thing to happen to pinballs since the Gottlieb plastic spinner.

N: (laughing)

D: Thankfully the banana flippers only went on two games – I think time warp and disco fever. That was a weird time. That said, eventually Gottlieb DID right some of their wrongs. They started with a plastic spinner, but eventually moved to the checkerboard metal spinners like on Aerostar. It’s like they were saying ‘we’re sorry about those crap spinners, here’s an awesome spinner for you.’ 

How does a company go from having the worst spinner of all time to the best spinner of all time? 

N: We may never know. 

D: I’d like to talk to whoever was in charge of sourcing spinners over there.