Overdose

So, many of you are probably tired of my foosball obsession. But I did say I would post this one thing and after that, no more. Unless people actually want to see this, then whatever.

This is the back view of my snake shot. For those who don't know, the snake shot is where you pin the ball to the ground using the front of your foosman. The shot is also know as the rollover shot, because when you execute the shot you move the rod to the left or right and then spin it so it strikes the ball. This, if done properly, is virtually impossible to simply react to, or to "race" as foosball players say. Instead, the defender is forced to present a series of seemingly random open holes and tries to bait the shot into a spot he is about to cover.

There's not much to say about this, because the foosman blocks the view. You will notice that I screw up the first time, curse, and succeed in sounding like a 7-year-old thanks to recording equipment. There is something actually important that I noticed here. I have a "tell." Similar to a poker tell, a foosball tell reveals something about your shot, which good defenders pick up easily. You'll notice that on both attempts, my rock (the side to side motion before I shoot) slows down considerably just before I hit the shot. It's a huge advantage to know when exactly your opponent is hitting their shot. Since they're unlikely to aim it right at your defense, you can just move to cover a new hole and freeze. I get blocked like this a lot.

For those of you who simply don't care about foosball, I would like to point out the lovely little happy faces on the foosmen. Isn't that awesome? You'll also notice the door in the background that has a swipe-y thingy for access. One time, my friend tried to swipe his card, apparently confident that he had some sort of inside contact in the CMU services. He was sadly mistaken, and a rather embarrassing alarm went off. That was awkward.

This second, shorter clip is of my attempt at the same shot from the front. Here we get a better view of how the ball travels into the goal. There's another significant problem here. The ball is supposed to travel along the white line and into the goal. My shot very clearly "sprays" to the corner instead of going straight to the corner. This makes it harder to shoot around defenders. If I spray my shots they are easily blocked by pointing the guys outward. This is strange because if you examine the slow motion of this video, you can see that my foosman actually pulls past the ball before swinging at it and sending it in a straight line.

For those of you who don't care, that video was probably short enough to skip. It's like, literally 2 seconds or something.

Anyway, It's 10 pm. Which means I have been awake for the last 25 hours. Given that I have my first 251 exam tomorrow, I think it's time to head off to sleep.

Cheers,

Ved