Most everyone has dropped a quarter into a pinball machine and intently followed the silver ball as lights flashed, bumpers rang and scores mounted.

Or watched the ball slide -- "drain," in pinball parlance -- out of play.

But Trent Augenstein is not like most everyone.

"Like any hobby, you can be a player, a collector, whatever," said Augenstein, 29. "It depends on where you want to go with it."

He is a player, arguably among the top two dozen in the country.

Augenstein, a farmer and land investor, has been known to travel to Cleveland or Chicago to practice six or seven hours on a machine that he can't find in the Ohio State University area or at an I-70 truck stop.

Like the fictional flipper wizard Tommy, Augenstein and others are heading for Las Vegas in hopes of playing "a mean pinball."

Some of them will be competing for "world's greatest pinball player"--and $10,000 in cash and prizes, including a trip to Hawaii--during the Professional and Amateur Pinball Association world championships Thursday-Sunday at the Sahara Hotel and Casino.

More than 1,000 players from around the world are expected for the association's sixth competition.

Once a player finds out which machines will be used in competition and the proper plan of attack for maximum scoring, there is little more to do than pump in those quarters and practice.

"There's a lot of luck in pinball, but it's basically consistency," Augenstein said. "If you're consistent, you won't have a problem."

The Internet has become an invaluable source from which to cull the nuances and programmed scoring patterns of machines.

Unlike games at the corner store, machines used in Vegas and at regional competitions also have a steeper pitch and bigger "out" lanes for faster action.

"It's all mental," Augenstein said.

And preparation and luck.

Therese Edwards and her husband, Tom, put his game background and their interest into a pinball business, TNT Amusements, on the East Side. They started a league for players of all levels.

"Our goal was to one day park a car in our garage," Therese said of their game collection. "We haven't reached that goal yet."

The Edwardses sponsored a monthlong tournament with two players advancing to an international team competition in Vegas. The two winners, Michael Dawn from northern Kentucky and Greg Dunlap from Chicago, Il, came to post their scores at TNT, near Hamilton Road and Main Street.

In Vegas, Therese will play women's singles ($1,500 first prize) and doubles; Tom will compete a notch or two below the top men's level.

"I have the skill to do it if I catch a lucky day - if I'm in the zone," Therese, 41, said.

"When I first started going to tournaments, I really didn't know what I was doing," she said, displaying three trophies from a recent tournament in Michigan."I'm not real good-or at least not yet."

Jill LaMasse, who started playing seriously just six months ago, has played tournament doubles with Therese and also will try to qualify for singles in Vegas. Players pay $20 for each qualifying attempt in hopes of reaching head-to-head competition.

"If I qualify, that's wonderful," LaMasse, 30, said. "But if I don't, I won't be completely devastated."

"My (current) ability warrants me to be as competitive as I would choose to be. At this point, I'm more frustrated. If I continue, I'll become - knowing myself - much more competitive."

Tom Edwards, 43, has worked on games since high school. He always played but until recently never took time to learn the games' scoring patterns.

He witnessed the birth of video games in the early '80s - and what many thought would be the death of pinball. Instead, after a lull, pinball has returned with the advent of more sophisticated electronics. "When the video craze happened," Tom said, "pinball definitely got pushed to the back of the the bus, so to speak."

"Pinball differs from video games because of the randomness of it. Video games are games of memorization."

"(In pinball) you have to know what shot to hit and then be able to hit that shot. Then you'll get big scores."

Pac-Man and its ilk came up against a pinball game called Black Knight in the mid-'80s. It had more action and a voice that seemingly talked to players.

"It had everything a game could have. It sort of set the standard," Tom said.

Games followed with more and more challenges and visual displays that caught the eyes and ears of a new wave of players. Purists would be shocked to learn some games warn aggressive players a couple of times ("beeeeeee careful") before tilting.

"Today they have just about everything-multiball, multilevel, sound," Tom said, pointing to games such as the Addams Family and Medieval Madness, "and just about a whole movie on the display (screen)." Still, he said, the basic concept has never changed.

"When you get down to it, it's just a silver ball rolling around on a piece of painted wood."

Tommy, that fictional deaf, dumb and blind kid, would surely disagree. "That's why we say around here a lot of us play by sense of smell," Therese Edwards said with a laugh.