Air Hockey

Score with angles, not just power

Air Hockey against the computer comes down to two jobs: send the puck where the opposing mallet is not, and keep your own goal covered while you do it. You drag your mallet to strike the puck, and the puck bounces off the side walls with almost no loss of speed. Those walls are your best weapon. A straight shot is easy to block. A puck banked off a wall arrives at the goal from an angle the computer has to scramble to cover.

Power matters less than you think. A medium-pace shot aimed at a corner beats a rocket aimed at the middle, because the middle is exactly where the defending mallet already sits. Speed only helps once the angle is right.

The puck is live off every wall, so rallies run long. Keep your wrist loose and make small moves. Big arm swings drag the mallet out of position and take ages to recover, and the puck does not wait for you.

Three shots worth learning

Serious air hockey players give their shots names, and three of them cover nearly everything on this table.

• The straight shot. Hit the puck flat and firm at one corner of the goal. Use it when the computer's mallet drifts to the other side and a gap opens. Aim at the posts, never the centre.
• The cut. Line up as if you are shooting straight, then catch the puck slightly off-centre at the last moment so it changes line. The disguise is the whole point. The defender commits to the straight ball, and the puck slips by on the other side.
• The bank. Aim at a spot on the side wall so the puck rebounds into the far corner. Picture the triangle before you shoot: mallet to wall, wall to goal mouth. The puck leaves the wall at the same angle it arrives, so a shot that meets the wall past the halfway line comes off it tight toward the goal, while one that meets it early drifts wide. From the left of your half, a bank aimed about two thirds of the way up the right wall lands in the top right corner.

Then mix them. Play two straight shots to fix the computer in the centre, and follow with a bank. Every defender, human or not, leans toward the shot it saw last.

Do not lose on defence

Most matches are lost at your own end, not won at the far one. Four habits fix that.

• Do not chase the puck deep into the computer's half. Overcommit and the rebound travels back up the table into an empty goal. This one habit decides more games than any brilliant shot.
• Park your mallet a little in front of your goal, not inside the goal mouth. From there you can reach either post, and you will not bundle the puck into your own net off your own mallet.
• Meet the puck instead of swiping across at it. A sideways swipe that misses by a finger's width lets the puck straight through, while moving forward into its path blocks the whole lane.
• Absorb hard shots rather than blocking them dead. Give a little ground with the mallet as the puck arrives. It stays close to you, and your next attack starts at once instead of from a loose rebound.

A tabletop classic

Air hockey is younger than it feels. A small team of engineers at Brunswick Billiards built the first tables in the early 1970s. They pushed air through hundreds of tiny holes in the surface so a plastic puck could float almost without friction, and arcades took to it straight away. By 1975 the United States had a players' association and proper tournaments. Competitive matches are played to seven points, the same target used here, and the best players win with cuts and banks rather than raw muscle. Fifty years of the real table teach one lesson that carries straight over: the puck keeps its pace off the walls, so the player who controls the angles controls the match.

One last habit. Between points, watch the computer's mallet instead of the puck. Where it waits shows you which corner it is slow to reach, and that corner is where your next two shots should go. Seven points sounds like a long match, but against a defender with one slow corner it can be over very quickly.