Those skills include quick reflexes, patience and hair-trigger timing with the flippers to best direct the ball. Strategic strengths include knowing when to keep batting balls and going for broke and when to cradle the ball in the crux of the flipper and deliberately aim it toward certain targets for more methodical scoring.

As players warmed up amid a cacophony of clacking flippers and bonus-point bells, plungers were pulled back and released, sending silver balls springing into rapid routes and ricocheting off blinking bumpers.

Players leaned into the machines, their fingers fast-twitching on the flipper buttons, punctuating this with emphatic body English and jostling the machine to coax the ball in different directions.

As competition began at midday, Matthew Carlson, a video editor for reality television from Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, fueled up with a tall Red Bull and an energy bar, which he said helped keep him alert and properly jittery.

Mr. Poverelli opted for a glass of whiskey.

“I usually play in bars, so this is my normal comfort zone,” he said. “I was drinking when I won my last tournament.”

Mr. Poverelli, a real estate manager, took on Beth Senturia, 49, a life insurance agent from Manhattan and the only woman in the tournament. She gained a love of pinball from her father, an avid player who put her on a stool to play when she was 5.