Winning Foosball

Author:   Bruce Nardoci <footsball@worldnet.att.net>         

Date:     1999/01/13                                         





              The following are some excerpts from my

              forthcoming book on winning foosball:



THE SERVE: One of the most important parts of the game is the serve.

Possession of the first serve is determined by a flip. You flip the

table, and whichever team the ball tray side lands at has the first

serve. Serving strategy: instead of dropping the ball between the 5-man

rods, drop it between their 5 and your 3-man rod - if you do it fast

enough they may not notice.



KEEPING SCORE: For some reason when most people score a point they move

only one score marker. An obvious improvement is to move 2 or 3 at a

time instead of one. This takes very little practice ant should produce

an immediate improvement in the number of games you win. You might even

try it when your opponents score!



CORRECT USE OF THE TIME OUT: If you find yourself in a situation where

you desperately need a point, call a time out. When your opponents turn

from the table quickly call time in and shoot.



PSYCHOLOGY OF PLAY: Every time your opponents score reach over the table

and slap them. Toward the end of the match you will notice their point

production will drop off considerably, almost as if they dreaded

scoring.



TIPS ON DEFENSE: Get a beer, instead of setting it on the floor or the

side of the table, set it in front of your goal. This makes it

considerably harder for your opponents to score. If you're playing

doubles, make your partner buy a beer too. I don't know why people say

not to drink a lot when you play - I always seem to block better after a

few beers.



TIPS ON OFFENSE: The four most effective styles of shooting are the

Elongation method, Molecular Dispersion method, Fragmentation method,

and the Time Warp method. The Elongation method is where you shoot the

ball fast enough that it stretches out (elongates) so that it is not as

wide as it normally is, thus allowing the ball to go in a hole it

normally wouldn't be able to. The Molecular Dispersion method involves

hitting the ball so hard that it disassembles into its various

molecules. These molecules diffuse around the defensive men and

reassemble into a ball inside the goal. With the Fragmentation method

you hit the ball so hard it breaks up into many little pieces. Your

opponent won't be able to block all the pieces and so most of them will

go in the goal, scoring a point (or points if you want to count each

piece as a point - depending on how many pieces the ball breaks into you

could win the whole match on one shot!). While these three methods are

extremely effective, perhaps the best method is the Time Warp. This is

done by shooting the ball so fast it actually goes back in time to

before when the defensive men were in front of the ball. In fact with

this method its possible to shoot the ball in before your opponents even

got to the tournament!



Finally, if you still lose even after using all the tips I've shown you,

when you shake your opponent's hands squeeze as hard as you can. If you

can't beat them at least you can make sure they don't win any more.



APPENDIX #1: I have an idea to make the tournaments more interesting.

Instead of simply having to play various players or teams as determined

by the tournament chart to win, there could be obstacles on the chart

itself. For instance there could be automatic defeats scattered

throughout the chart - if you run into one of those you would

automatically go to the losers bracket and your opponent would receive a

bye (if you were in the losers bracket you would, of course, be out of

the tournament). Also there could be "exchange positions" in various

places on the chart - if you ran into one of these you would have to

change places on the chart with the corresponding team in the

other bracket (i.e. if you were in the winners bracket you would be put

in the place of a team in the losers bracket, and vice versa). These

(along with blanks or other tournament obstacles) could be covered up on

the chart so you wouldn't know what you were going to run into ahead of

time. Another possibility for adding more life to the tournaments is to

every half hour randomly draw a name off the chart and eliminate them

from the tournament (a team that had previously lost out of the

tournament could take their place). Also, once or twice during the

tournament the head official could call "time", and whomever is ahead in

the matches at that point would win the match. He could also call

"rotate" at periodic intervals - the players would then rotate so that

they had a different partner, and whichever side wins the match would

then be the new team that moves on in the tournament. Finally, every few

tournaments the head official would designate a spectator to declare

someone (other than theirself) the winner of the tournament, whether

or not whomever they declare as the winner had entered the tournament.

This would certainly increase spectator participation at the

tournaments.



APPENDIX #2: In order to cut down on luck shots, I'd like to propose a

new rule that you have to call your shot (like in pool) so luck shots

won't count. Let me know what you think about it.



Bruce Nardoci