(Topic ID: 59929)

Practicing for tournaments

By ahanson

10 years ago


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  • 37 posts
  • 18 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 10 years ago by jayvo86
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    #5 10 years ago
    Quoted from practicalsteve:

    I would say practice ball trapping and learn to try and cradle the ball more. The more control you have the better. If you know of the games in the tournament ahead of time, try and brush up on the rules and figure out how to get the big points.

    Definitely. To expand on this advice: Control, Shot accuracy and Strategy are the three big elements to develop and practice. Flipper control skills and shot accuracy can be practiced on most games. Depending on how anal you want to get, you should practice on games with the same era of flippers as the tournament you're going to (there ARE differences that will alter some control techniques)...but that might be too extreme right now. ;P

    How I tend to warm up before going to a competition is on something like F-14. I put a 4-player game in and I'll just work on putting the ball into screwed up situations and attempt to gain control. Then I might attempt to do 10-20 post passes in a row. Maybe shatz the lanes 10-20 times. Then point at a random shot and attempt to shoot it in as few tries as possible (while regaining control via flipper skills). I don't so much play for points, I put the ball into "situations" which I have to recover from.

    Side-quick-rant: Patience is the key to control IMO...and patience is only developed through confidence...and confidence is only developed through experience. I feel a lot of players flail at the ball and send it into randomness because of a lack of confidence. I know that's when I wind up flailing in tournaments/leagues. The key is to always stay calm and learn to only flip when you have to. Catch yourself when you've entered a flailing meltdown and in the moment force yourself to calm down and gain control. It has done wonders for me in stressful situations where I was set to blow it big time. This is all IMO of course.

    Rules...rules, unfortunately, you can't really practice. You gotta look them up. Unless there is something oddball or rare, you can usually look up a rule sheet/strategy discussion online. Or one of Bowen's tutorials.

    Good luck!

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