Dirty Pool Podcast - Ep39 - Tasker Smith: A Quest for Pinball Mastery

Tasker Smith discusses his new pinball mastery book, its scope, and philosophy on teaching ball control and competitive skills.

Tasker Smith, author of 'A Quest for Pinball Mastery,' discusses his path to writing a comprehensive physical book on pinball gameplay, skill development, and competitive play. Smith details his pinball origin story (discovering a Valley Dixieland machine at age 10), his COVID-era deep dive into Avengers Infinity Quest, and his research into both traditional pinball resources and performance-enhancement techniques. The book represents nearly 50 years since the last substantive gameplay instruction manual was published, and Smith emphasizes visual clarity, accessibility for newcomers, and transformative skill discoveries as core design principles.

Highlights

• Tasker Smith purchased Avengers Infinity Quest during COVID lockdown at MIT while working remotely to commit serious time to mastering a single machine
• No substantive books on how to play pinball (not history) have been published in nearly 50 years since the late 1970s; Pinball Wizardry is cited as the gold standard prior resource
• The book's working title was 'Pinball Manifesto' but was changed because the manifesto framing was confusing to audiences
• Tasker Smith's current IFPA ranking is approximately 20,000; he does not prioritize competitive ranking because it doesn't bring him joy
• The final published book is 256 pages and Tasker Smith had approximately another 100+ pages of material that did not make the cut, including sections on playfield LED vs incandescent lighting and sensory deprivation techniques
• All technical illustrations in the book were created by photographing machines in Tasker Smith's barn, then hand-drawn in Adobe Illustrator, completed before AI image generation became prominent
• Tasker Smith's editor at Schiffer Books was not a pinball player, which influenced the book's explanatory arc and accessibility to newcomers