Hello everyone!
Man, its great to see that foos is still alive! I lived and breathed foos through the 80's and into the mid 90's! In the 80's in my area the pull reigned supreme. (Minnesota) My only regret is I was a lil too young to enjoy the late 70's huge TS Tourneys with the big turnout, big cash and big players! By the time I had any kind of a 5 row foos had died big time
.
Anyway tho, we tried to keep it alive in our area by forming leagues and holding small tourneys. We had pretty good action and even drew some fairly decent names to some of our tourneys in those days! I, of course, as most had did a pull shot but of course played around with all the other possible shots and loved to do what we called the front and back pin shots. I put in so many hours everyday working on my 5 row that the passing game was up there with the best of them. Near the end of my "lived for foos" era, a few years after we had formed a fairly large crowd of local foosers but no longer coordinated leagues, I walked into a bar and there was one of the younger guys that hung and learned the ropes with us. By then my foos hours per week had gone down considerably, but had managed to have kept my pull shot in tune enough to still be able to put it where I wanted most of the time.
This younger fella had kept his game up in full fashion and had traveled to the Twin Cities quite often to play foos there. In this time he had developed this kind of new shot "back then" called the "rollover". He was just blowing everyone away with it. He was quite good at it although I don't know how he compared to the tourney caliber player of today. So, me the kind of "old school" fooser had an attitude like "there's no way this new shot is going to prevail against the old ways!" I have to admit, at first he was doing quite well with the rollover when I was playing the back. BUT, this shot forced me to go to the defense that some of us also spent alot of time doing, the random "D". The random D is very difficult to master and I won't say I was a master, but if one practices enough both alone and in any match you can get into, you concentrate to make sure you are not creating patterns. Or sometimes you would go into a pattern but change patterns at random times. You might do a random pattern for a second, maybe 3. maybe once... Maybe keep it totally random with no pattern. It seemed tho that if once you get the feel for the shooter you could change your pattern just before they shot, disrupting their concentration. I will say one thing tho, the rollover did make me put serious concentration on my random D and I started to shut him down basically making him lose confidence in that shot and he then went to the old standby, "The Pull"
Otherwise, all in all, that night was a blast, it is great fun to get back together with old foos foes and see what's new in their arsenal. Unfortunately tho in my area foos got harder and harder to find which lead to settling into the family life like everyone else
The reason I came to this board tho is that I have been thinking about getting a table. I would prefer to buy new and would like to find out what table is the most popular for tourneys these days. In my foos era we started out with TS greens (I still think the greens were one of the best for banks from the back
), then blues, then the brown top (which was one of my favs, esp for pinning), then it was the Dynamo, then the Tornado along with a few men style changes. So if anyone has the time to list it out I would greatly appreciate the info! Money is really not an object as I prefer quality and endurance esp on a table that I am going to practice on. Here is what I can think of that I may have concerns:
1. Table - coin op or is there a home model that compares?
2. Rods - thicker, thinner walled rods? only on coin op or also found on home models?
3. Bushings? - is there only one type? which is better which lasts longer?
4. Handles - Are they still wood and people put chunks of bicycle inner tubes on them?
5. Goalie rod - Is the top table still Tornado? still have the 3-man rod?
6. Balls - am I going to get a tourney caliber ball with the table I buy or will I have to order them? which ones? or are there more than one choice?
7. Parts availability of recommended table?
8. Any tricks that anyone uses to protect the corners of the goals? Esp if one practices a pull, that close corner takes a beating
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