Quoted from TOK:So how are you preventing the side drain or blooper straight down the middle? I think adjusting to an overly sensitive tilt means you just have to play very safe with constant trapping and keeping the ball away from the outlanes. Its fine until you play against someone on a normally set up machine.
The video of Lyman playing the Metallica pro shows a finesse player/nudger. To me, this is a level that anyone should find acceptable. The machines were designed with this in mind. The PAPA tutorials are great too, but they way they are filmed makes it hard to see the movement (only ones that are really obvious are the quick left/right shifts to prevent a drain down the middle).
» YouTube video
Lyman is one of the best to ever play the game. I made a point of telling him that: "My life is better for the work you have done." The last time I met him.
As to your technique, Side drains are best "anticipated" by ball movement, placement and seeing further ahead of the trajectories and their most likely paths around the table. My spidey sense starts tingling earlier and earlier before a ball gets into a dangerous position/ place when I am playing well.
A true SDTM path is difficult to deal with even with a liberal setting on the tilt mech. Once again, the further off you can see it, the better of a chance you will have to defend against it. Watch Keith Elwins tutorial on Warlok as well as Ripley's Believe it or Not for some more excellent examples of these techniques. They may not be immediately apparent at first, but as you get better as a player, you will start to see what these guys are doing as soon as they sense a dangerous oncoming play.
