{"id":12621,"date":"2014-05-31T02:19:40","date_gmt":"2014-05-31T02:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/challengedetroit.org\/blog\/ruthmclachlin\/?p=71"},"modified":"2014-05-31T02:19:40","modified_gmt":"2014-05-31T02:19:40","slug":"foozapalooza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/foozapalooza\/","title":{"rendered":"Foozapalooza"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/challengedetroit.org\/ruthmclachlin\/files\/2014\/05\/foosball.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-74 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/challengedetroit.org\/ruthmclachlin\/files\/2014\/05\/foosball-1024x685.jpg\" alt=\"foosball\" width=\"584\" height=\"390\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">My host company has a strict foosball policy &#8211; everyone must be good at it. Well, actually, that&#8217;s not entirely true. Some people choose to not even play foosball&#8230; but others (myself included) take it very seriously. And my competitive bent\u00a0along with the jovial nature of my colleagues\u00a0has inspired me to become a much better foosball player. In fact, on more than one occasion my five bar has been called &#8220;a wall&#8221;&#8211;quite the foosball compliment. And yet, I am still firmly camped in Division 2. So, in honor of our upcoming Foosball Tournament, I&#8217;d like to take this moment to research and consolidate foosball tips, tricks, and best practices. <em>After all, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/06\/17\/jobs\/take-breaks-regularly-to-stay-on-schedule-workstation.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">regular office breaks have been shown to increase\u00a0productivity<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>First off, evidently I&#8217;ve been serving wrong. It seems serving the foosball is just as much a part of the strategy as other moves\u00a0in game play. And it&#8217;s okay to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foosballsoccer.com\/foosball-serve.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">serve the ball to yourself<\/a>!! Here I was trying to seem unbiased and get it centered when I\u00a0serve.\u00a0Or throwing it to my opponent&#8217;s side every now and then when I feel bad because I\u00a0think\u00a0it crossed to my side too much. No more!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right\">When playing foosball, I&#8217;ve discovered that once you learn your opponent&#8217;s tendencies it&#8217;s much easier to defend against them, which\u00a0led me to assume the best player can pull a wide variety of shots at any time. This tactic seems up for debate\u00a0with foosballsoccer.com advocating that you <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foosballsoccer.com\/foosball-strategy.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">develop expertise<\/a> in a particular shot instead of being a\u00a0jack-of-all-trades.<\/p>\n<p>One thing I know I struggle with is passing the ball from my five-bar to my three-bar to set up a shot on goal. Usually I just hit the ball really hard with my 5 and it ends up in my defensive opponent&#8217;s possession. It seems I need to learn the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foosball.com\/content.php?page=101\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Brush&#8221; Pass<\/a>,\u00a0where I basically push the ball through a gap in my opponent&#8217;s defenses instead of trying to smack it as hard as I can. Will work on\u00a0that.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right\">Defensive strategy&#8211;the position I significantly lack skills in&#8211;is obviously very different from playing offense. Instead of summarizing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foosballsoccer.com\/defense.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this entire page<\/a>, all I can say is, it\u00a0was pretty much all new to me. I need to practice my D. Side note, why are they foosball &#8220;men&#8221;? I prefer the title\u00a0foosball players.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Well, clearly I have some strategies to solidify. So over the next few weeks, you will likely find me spending a portion of my lunch break happily foosing away. But for now, why not ruminate on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zTFbVN7LD-M\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this impressive shot<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My host company has a strict foosball policy &#8211; everyone must be good at it. Well, actually, that&#8217;s not entirely true. Some people choose to not even play foosball&#8230; but others (myself included) take it very seriously. And my competitive bent\u00a0along with the jovial nature of my colleagues\u00a0has inspired me to become a much better [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":301,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[63,310,311],"class_list":["post-12621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-detroit","tag-detroit","tag-foosball","tag-strategy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/301"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}