First Attempt

First attempt.

I read on airhockeyworld.com that in Glendale Heights there was an airhockey weekly tourney every saturday at noon.  I got my google map and headed out.  Just directions, mind you.  I went to Brunswick zone and found the air hockey tables amidst an incredibly large arcade.  There was no air hockey tourney… after waiting for awhile.. I went and got lunch – and happily discovered a great vietnamese place that served pho. My brother-in-law lives in the area and I had told him that I’d be around – so I met him there and we bowled a game, had a beer, and played a little air hockey – which was the first time I’d played in probably a year and a half.  Didn’t find a tourney… so I went home.  I left a message on the airhockey forum to see when a game would be… and Goran posted that they’d be playing on the 10th.

Excellent.  I’d be there.

This time.. I show up – and again… no tourney!  What the hell.  I go and get some pho and I drive home… except this time – I see another Brunswick zone.  Aha!  I had been going to the wrong one! Who would have thought there’d be 2 Brunswick Zones 2 miles apart on the same street.  Sonofabitch.  I go in, hearing the distictive noise – and I had finally found it.

I was far too late to join the tourney.. but there it was.. a group of 20-somethings competing in incredibly intense games of air hockey.  Cool.

Now, I should say that though I wanted to think I was decent at air hockey, I had no pretension at thinking I’d actually beat someone who’d been playing for awhile.  I saw on the website that Goran was ranked in the top 20 in the world.  I don’t imagine that some guy with zero competitive experience off the street and having played once in the past year or so could come in and even put up a game on someone like him.  In fact, I was pretty sure I would not win against anyone there at all.  My goal was to be competitive… and barring that – to see if my style of play is even in the same realm as these guys.

I should also give you an idea of what an air hockey tournament looks like.  First off – it’s in a Brunswick Zone… which is basically a very large bowling alley… complete with a full arcade where the air hockey tables are.  Saturdays, in the winter – are partucularly busy.  Kids’ birthday parties, people filling the lanes, kids playing video games surrounding the tables – just a place filled with people and noise and distractions.  And you’ll see some very intense young people playing air hockey.  Sweat, an occasional jump of joy and people hunched over, shaking their head as they pick the puck out of their goal… every once in awhile a basketball or ball from the skee-ball games bouncing on the ground.  It’s a shame that it’s in such a noisy, busy environment – and I’m surprised there weren’t more passersby coming by to see what was going on.

Anyway – I storm into the Brunswick Zone – the correct one, and try to find Goran, hoping I could join the tourney late.  I find him – and he looks absolutely nothing like the picture of him that’s on the web.  I was expecting a tall, skinny, clean-cut, boyish looking guy – instead is a guy with a little bit of a paunch (like myself), a scruffy beard, long hair, with a wizened sort of joyous demeanor.  He genuinely seemed thrilled to see a new person showing up to play… and invited me to play a little inbetween matches… and I leapt at the chance!  Here I was – going to play against one of the highest ranked players in the world… sweet!

I don’t remember exactly how it went, but I went into my triangle defense – with my mallet out in front of the goal some inches… while Goran goes into his diamond drift.  Until this point, I’d never seen anyone on the other side of the table do any of this kind of thing.  It’s just amazing at how well people can control the puck and be deceptive.  We played maybe a minute or two… I must’ve blocked a couple of his shots, and I may have snuck one past – but I was clearly outmatched… but Goran didn’t hesitate to exclaim that it was really great that the “new people” could “play”.  Apparently another guy had come earlier and was decent.  I don’t know how competitive I was, but it seemed as though Goran was happy to have me there.  Even though I was getting my ass handed to me – I was happy to play.

And then I played John.  It seemed like John had a tough go of the tourney and was ousted early.  I remember playing two games against him and actually winning a game – which seemed lucky and awesome.  At this point – I’m just trying to soak up as much information as possible – and it became clear to anyone watching me play that I had a pretty effective straight in shot… and that my accuracy is what helped me score.  After these two games – I recall fielding a couple questions like, “How did you know to hold the mallet like that?” (by now I’ve been using the traditional hold with your fingers on the inside ridge, and not holding it by the big round thing that begs you to grip it).. I remember being asked if I’d competed in any other tourneys before – and I hadn’t.  Sean, aka “Darth Mallet” from the airhockey forums even gave me a couple lessons.  The first thing he taught me was to not get caught not defending your goal.  The mallet covers a certain percentage of the goal – so if the puck is flying around – be diligent and get your mallet back quickly – and you can save yourself a lot of otherwise easy goals.  Sound advice.

Mostly, I just sat and watched.  At this point in the tourney – it was down to just the winners.  I knew Goran was good – and probably the best there.. so I studied him.  I knew I wasn’t going to just all of a sudden develop a diamond drift, but I could watch him play defense.  What I saw was someone who played a full foot or more in front of his goal and moved very, very little.  He was incredibly disciplined in his defense… he never ‘chased’ the puck.. but is able to trap pucks that miss to the left or right.  I made a mental note to try to play further out – as it does a good job of cutting off straight shots.  He’s also incredibly good at not getting out of position. If someone tries to sneak a shot past one way against him – he doesn’t overcompensate his defense to defend that shot… he just anticipates blocking it better.  I even caught Goran inbetween games – and I got to play a couple games against him.  He had just watched, I believe it was Geoff, go down with a very distressed wrist/forearm injury and was determined to learn from others misfortunes… so he played me left handed.  He was doing everything he normally does – the crazy diamond drifts… but just a bit slower… and he still fucking beat me left handed.  All finesse – very little power, he beat me.  Playing again – I took a game from him… but the only way I was able to take a game from him was if he played left handed.  Next time I should ask him if he could tie both his hands behind his back.

Soon after, I got into my first challenge match.  Apparently – after you play a couple different people who have their ranking – you will get a ranking yourself.  I went back to playing John.  It went down like this:

John Baldyga 74777
Dan Meyer 17555

I got beat pretty bad the first game.. but I came back and won one… before getting trounced 4 games to 1… but still!  winning a game against someone who’s played for much longer than myself was pretty sweet… and I was doing what I had hoped to accomplish – which was being competitive.  Getting 5 points in every subsequent game I think qualifies as ‘competitive’.  It was clear that John had started to figure out my game, and was coming out to block my straight in shots – of which, I had no answer.  My game involves zero feinting or ‘razzle dazzle’ – John was able to defend my shots well – and as a student, my game is still very much lacking.  Still, I was eager to play another match.  I got paired up with a kid who had beaten John earlier in the tourney… he may have been in high school, but it’s more likely he was in middle school… but I didn’t take anything for granted as he beat the guy I just got trounced by.  After a couple of early scores, he got visibly flustered.  I mean, who was I – but some guy off the street that had only just minutes before played his first ‘ranked’ game?  I’m sure he thought he shouldn’t be losing to me – that, and the fact he was grabbing his wrist after every stoppage of play.  After I took two games, he decided not to continue – and held onto his wrist.  He’d done well in the tourney and was just playing “the new guy”… but it’s not worth it to push your body that hard.  It was the 2nd injury I’d witnessed that day.   Anyway – it went down like this:

Jeremy        43FF (Wrist Injury)
Dan Meyer 7777

I had won my first challenge match – but I didn’t really feel good about it.

With a couple of matches down, and having learned so, so much just by watching everyone else play – Sean asked me if I’d like to play.  Again, I was happy to do so.  By now – it was likely past 4 o’clock, and probably close to 5.  People had been playing for some time, but I was still pretty fresh.  Sean was being very nice to me, giving me tips… being very encouraging, etc… like a father showing a son how to play a new sport.  When we started playing – I was able to sneak a couple straight shots past him.. when I did so – he enthusiastically kept saying, “Nice shot, very good!”.  One thing I noticed is that Sean is not someone who’s going to chase pucks on defense… he’s pretty stoic and he’s hard to fake out.  Well.. at this point in my game – I don’t have much deception at all.  In the past – I’d typically hit straight overs.. but he was blocking that shot – so I went for the under, and had great success.  I took the first game and was brimming with confidence.  I surprised myself by playing incredible defense.  Not only was I blocking shots, but I was keeping the puck on my side.  I can honestly say I have not played better air hockey in my entire life.  I got 2 games up and Sean stopped giving me enthusiastic encouragement… his tone had completely changed, and when he said “Nice shot” – it was more to himself, and had a more quiet befuddled/amazed sort of tone.  There were several times when I’d pause… look at his defense, drift left or right – then smack a straight in shot on my first attempt.  He’d look down at his defense – see he hadn’t done anything wrong, and mumble to himself.  I got to that point where I had a mental edge… and though I hadn’t been playing very long (only my 3rd real match!) I felt the importance of this mental edge.  Sean didn’t have an answer to my offense, and he was particularly surprised by my effective defense – which is probably even more rare for a newbie to have this kind of command.  Anyway – here’s how it went down:

Sean Fried 54765
Dan Meyer 77477

Wow.. I won 4 games to 1… I didn’t remember it being that lopsided, and there were some close matches in there… but I had won! When I went home, I looked up Sean’s ranking – and it was 28th in the world. In my very first day – I had beaten a guy in the top 30 in the world. Now.. I know it was pretty late in the day and Sean was likely tired, but I was incredibly encouraged.

I know I told all my friends about my accomplishment… and the vast majority just rolled their eyes… dismissing it like I’m a person who’s really into Excel spreadsheets or something. “Yes Dan, boy… that’s some accomplishment.. air hockey, huh? what’s next for you? You gonna buy a Donkey Kong machine and try to break the world record? You’re treading into King of Kong territory there.” It became another reason for creating this blog – I can’t talk to my friends about it… their eyes just glaze over and they quickly get bored.

I understand my enthusiastic talk of strategy on the air hockey table is not for everyone, but its still pretty enjoyable to me.

The Beginning

If I were a superhero, this would be my origin story.  I’m not – so this pretty much starts with me drinking at a bar looking for something to do.

I’ve been playing competitive air hockey for about a month now.  I’ve had a hard time keeping it out of my head – and my wife is tired of me talking about it and she’s encouraged me to start a blog about this – so here it is.  In no way am I an expert and I’m writing this because I’d like to document my progress in this sport.

So, the first question you may ask yourself is how I got to the point of actually joining an AH tourney in the first place.  Well… this goes back a couple years when I was living in Madison, WI.  There’s a bar on State St. called simply, “The Pub”.  It’s filled with great bar games.. darts, pool, foosball, a couple video games, etc. – and an air hockey table.  My friend Matt and I (among others) were pretty regular visitors to the Pub for some time.  We got to know a lot of the people who went there as well as the bartenders – and one bartender was a guy we worked with.  We weren’t very good pool players, seriously outmatched in foosball – and I generally beat all my friends in darts…. plus it was pretty popular and you generally bumped into people going to the bathroom and was a fairly high traffic area.  The air hockey table in the back was great – there was seating around it, it was far from any loud speakers – so you could have a conversation… and let’s face it – air hockey is fun to play.

Matt and I became fast rivals.  Matt’s approach to air hockey is how he approaches every sport.  If it’s bowling… throw it hard – hook it hard… if it’s wiffle ball (he loved pitching) – throw it hard, curve it hard.  I’m pretty sure he didn’t finesse a dart to the board when playing darts.  Air hockey was no different, he got to be amazing at hitting the puck incredibly hard and very accurately.  Straight in shots… no banks.  I also shared this philosophy… we found that straight in shots were surprisingly hard to block (this is before we learned the intracacies of the triangle defense, mind you).  We didn’t move the puck around much… very, very little drifting was used.  We likened it to a pitcher throwing at a batter – for us, it was more about trying to figure out what side of the goal we were going to score our straight in shot.  Bank shots were using sparingly – the defense had a better chance to keep it on their side of the table with them, it seemed.  Straight in shots gave us more opportunities to score – if we didn’t screw up.  If we weren’t playing each other – this simple strategy of hitting it hard, and being very accurate was more than enough to win against random people who’ve never played.  At this point in time, we held onto the high-top mallets by the ‘handle’ in the middle.

We played frequently… and our battles were epic… we traded wins, but it seemed as though Matt was getting the best of me more times than not.  His straight over was pretty amazing.  He’d essentially drift over to his right (he’s a leftie), and as I adjusted my defense to follow him.. he’d hit a straight in shot over my mallet.  I realize now that I wasn’t coming away from the goal enough to defend his straight in shots… but back in the day – it seemed like it was very difficult to defend, as he mixed in enough bank shots to keep me off guard and make me feel vulnerable coming out from the goal.  It seemed as though if I came out more, Matt would make his shot from further back – eliminating my advantage from coming out from the goal… and since he had such a powerful shot – it was hard to defend.  It was essentially an aggressive baseline strategy from tennis.  Hard, straght in, incredibly accurate shots became our forte.

This became our ’strategy’ – as I had pretty much the same game.  We looked online to see what others were doing.. which is where we discovered people doing diamond drifts and other fancy things.  It didn’t seem as though these flourishes would drastically impact someone’s offense from our perspective… we saw pros… miss very frequently with their shots – and we knew that when we were accurate with our shots… it was a huge advantage.  It seemed as though our ‘power’ game was in direct contrast to the finesse game that we saw on the few youtube videos we were able to find.  I remember getting curious enough to try to find an air hockey tournament in the area… but there were none.  The closest we could find was a place in Glendale Heights.  I remember thinking it would be fun to visit at some point to see if we could put our ideas to the test… against people who actually knew what they were doing – to see if this strategy would actually work.

There was a period of time when I’d have a running bet with strangers at the Pub who wanted to play air hockey… I loved playing to people to see if I was any good (how do you know if you’re any good if you don’t play other people?).  I’d suggest that if someone paid for the game and beat me – I’d give them $5 (enough for a drink.. maybe sometimes I offered a drink instead).  I didn’t ever have to pay up, but I do remember losing to a random person – I played horribly and scored against myself more than once… our rematch, however, was a blowout. My friend, Jamal was a bartender there – and the self-proclaimed air hockey stud.  He’d heard that I was good and decided to challenge me… and talk a good amount of shit in doing so.  His theory was that he had probably played a lot more than I (working at the Pub), and had success beating others.  Our match wasn’t even close… one thing I did to him was a ‘changeup’ a soft rail shot, that he incorrectly overcompensated for – over and over again.  It felt good to toy with him.

And then we stopped playing air hockey.  Our love affair with the Pub had been on rocky grounds for a long time.  We had issues with the Pub… and I think after one New Years when Matt was accused of stealing a bottle of champagne – he soured on it completely… really – it was the last straw.  For starters, we knew the bartenders – they were great people, and they thought they were doing us a favor by making our mixed drinks so strong.  There were many nights of being overserved cheap liquor with led to many awful, awful mornings.  Matt decided he needed change in his life, and the Pub was out.  No more late nights pickling his brain, no more superficial friendships based on drinking, and no more frivoulous spending of money for something that just led to a bigger gut and hangovers.  Like many 20 somethings – he’d grown tired of the ‘bar scene’.

For myself and other friends – we rarely visited the Pub any longer for a variety of reasons… and my playing of air hockey completely stopped.  Over the course of a year or two – I had completely forgotten about air hockey.  In February of 2008, I got married and finally sold my condo in Madison.  In May, I had moved to Chicago – and within driving distance of the Glendale Heights weekly tourney.  Sadly, it took until January 2009 before I thought of air hockey again and drove out to join a tournament.  I can’t remember what prompted me – but I went to airhockeyworld.com.  The rest, as they say, is well… very recent history.

In which I talk about the experience of joining the world of competitive air hockey

Hey there.

So, I’m starting this blog because, all of a sudden, I’ve been thinking far too much about air hockey.  I’ve participated in a couple small tournaments and I think I’ll be doing this fairly regularly… I hope so, at least.  This is basically a diary of where I can dump my thoughts regarding the experience I’ve had getting into competitive air hockey.  To date, I’ve been in a grand total of 2 tourneys – so this is all from the beginning.

Basically… my wife is tired of me talking about air hockey and suggested I do what other people who like to talk about themselves do – start a blog.  They tend to be banal, only interesting to the person writing the blog, and terribly obnoxious.  This blog will be no different.  I imagine there will be an incredibly small number of people who would be even remotely interested in this subject.  I don’t think there are too many people who even give it a second thought – a shame, as air hockey is a great sport combining agility, strategy, and mental toughness.

-Dan