Rochester Pinball Collective Crowns Jezioro

Mark Jezioro walked into the Rochester Pinball Collective on a rainy July evening as the rating favorite in a 22-player field, and by the time the last ball drained he had done exactly what favorites are supposed to do: he was the last man standing. Across the twelve games he played in a marathon Max Match Play session, Jezioro posted the top score on nine of them — a machine-conquering run that left little doubt about who owned the night.

The third stop of the Flour City Summer League brought together 132 games and a rotating slate of opponents, but the story kept circling back to the same table: whichever one Jezioro happened to be standing at. This was dominance of the quiet, relentless variety — no theatrics, just the best player in the room proving it game after game.

A Full House at the Collective

The Rochester Pinball Collective in East Rochester has become one of the region’s most beloved rooms, and it’s easy to understand why. Regulars rave about the friendly, genuinely enthusiastic staff and a deep, well-kept lineup of machines, a reputation reflected in a near-perfect 4.9 rating across dozens of reviews. On a night of light rain and summer humidity, the place offered exactly the kind of shelter a pinball obsessive dreams about.

The field itself was a classic weekly-league draw: 22 players, 14 of them IFPA-ranked and eight still building toward their first rating. Every competitor called New York home, and 14 carried a NACS state ranking with an average state position around #270. The strongest paper credential belonged to Syracuse’s Michael Geiss, ranked NY #23 and IFPA #1158 — a distinction that would matter, because Geiss spent the night trading haymakers with the eventual champion.

The format kept everyone busy. Max Match Play strings together two-player head-to-head games on demand, avoids repeat pairings, and guarantees every entrant the same number of games — a design built for volume and variety. Over 71 different machines were available, spanning everything from a 1961 electromechanical to brand-new 2026 releases, and by night’s end the humble Gottlieb basketball table Hoops had seen the most action of any of them.

Jezioro’s Machine-by-Machine March

The engine of Jezioro’s win was sheer consistency. His round-by-round finishing line tells the whole tale — first place in ten of twelve games, with only two runner-up results the entire evening. He averaged a finishing position of 1.25 and reeled off a five-game winning streak in the middle of the night, the kind of run that quietly puts a tournament out of reach.

His machine card reads like a highlight reel of eras and themes. He took top honors on the Guardians of the Galaxy LE, on Judge Dredd, on Johnny Mnemonic and the Uncanny X-Men Premium, and he was just as comfortable on the old EM classics like Little Chief and Excalibur. The Fairport local, an IFPA #1633 player sitting near his 2026 career peak, has 19 wins and 40 top-three finishes over the last three years — pedigree that showed in how little of the room’s variety seemed to trouble him.

If there was a chink in the armor, it barely registered. Jezioro dropped his games on Far Out, WHO dunnit and Old Chicago, and in a rare shared-machine wrinkle he and Bob Geiger split the two tables they crossed on directly, each edging the other once. Everywhere else, the top score belonged to the champion.

Geiss Answers With a Six-Game Surge

Michael Geiss did not make it easy. The Syracuse standout matched Jezioro’s 1.25 average finish exactly and produced the night’s most explosive stretch — six straight wins in the heart of his twelve-game slate. For a while it looked as though the strongest-ranked player in the building might run away with it himself.

Geiss arrived in form, carrying three podiums across his previous five events, and his machine work backed it up: wins on Star Gazer, Demolition Man, Royal Flush, the EM Black Jack and plenty more. What ultimately separated him from the top step was a razor-thin margin of games, not any collapse. The rivalry between these two runs deep — 26 tournaments shared and still, by every measure, a coin flip. Tonight Jezioro evened the ledger, and their long-running duel stays exactly as balanced as it’s always been.

One of Geiss’s rare stumbles came on the Williams cult favorite Jack•Bot, a 1995 Barry Oursler and Larry DeMar design (all 2,428 of them) where a nine-minute grind ended with unheralded Jim Maglier stealing the win. In a format this dense, a single lost game like that can be the difference between the top two steps of the podium — a reminder that in Max Match Play, no opponent is safe to overlook.

Connelly Holds the Third Step

Rochester’s own Emilia Connelly rounded out the podium with a performance every bit as steady as the two ahead. She finished with a 1.33 average and a four-game winning streak of her own, notching top scores on a wildly varied spread that included Flight 2000, the Star Trek LE, the Mandalorian LE and the classic Volley. It’s the kind of range that speaks to a player whose rating has been climbing all year.

Connelly’s résumé is quietly one of the most active in the field — 104 career events despite only a year of official activity, with two wins in her last five outings and a career-average finish of 10th. One of the night’s marquee small-stage moments belonged to her: on Gottlieb’s Hoops, the very machine that would close out the evening, she beat fellow front-runner Eric Werner in a tidy five-minute head-to-head. Werner, playing in just his handful of career events, pushed all the way to fourth, matching Connelly’s 1.33 average and proving one of the night’s genuine surprises.

The depth kept going from there — Gabe Weiss, Jarret Whetstone with a six-game streak of his own, Eli Tilly and Stephanie Guida all packed the upper reaches of a leaderboard where the margins were paper-thin.

The Best Player in the Room

There’s a particular satisfaction in watching a favorite deliver, and Jezioro delivered without a wasted motion — no drama, no lucky bounces to explain away, just a Fairport veteran methodically posting the best score on nine of twelve tables and leaving the room in no doubt. Six years into his competitive life, with a state ranking on the rise and a peak still fresh, he looked every inch a player finding another gear at exactly the right point in the summer.

When the last ball settled on Hoops and the standings were final, it was Mark Jezioro alone in first, Michael Geiss a hard-charging second after his six-game surge, and Emilia Connelly on the third step to complete the podium at Flour City Summer League #3.