British Foosball Association

Player Skills - Tournament Play

What Makes a Great Fooser?

Posted to RSTS newsgroup by Flow, complete thread available here

I break a fooser's game down into five catagories- talent, brains, heart, experience and discipline. If you rate a player on each of these catagories on a scale of 1 to 20, you can come up with a total score of 0 to 100. This can be informative in understanding a player's game, and how you should attack it. Oh yeah, it's also kind of fun!

A. Talent

By talent I mean the natural abilities a person was born with, or what a person's body is capable of doing. Talent comes in a lot of forms, and they can be a little difficult to pin down, but I'm gonna give it a shot. The most basic, and maybe the most important, is a players reactions. Let's face it, if you don't have pretty good(or better) reactions you're probably going to have a short foosball career. The next talent is power. Power is the ability to hit fast, hard, beat you to the hole, kind of shots. This is where it gets a little tricky. Is power something you're born with or something you learn? It seems to me that power comes from a couple of different sources. One of these sources is strength. Fully developing the muscles used in the action through repitition. The other source of power is technique. Figuring out how to hit the ball to get the maximum amount of power. It seems that both of these factors are learned instead of natural. But it also seems that a persons style of play is more often determined by their personality. Some people are just born to be power players, and they will attain the strength and technique to fit their personality. The next type of talent is what I like to call smooth talent. This is another type of talent that is difficult to define. Players that have smooth talent can be identified by their excellent ball control, and their ability to place the ball.It might be a little easier to visualize the types of talent with some examples of actual players. Two of the most naturally talented players that I've ever seen are Todd Loffredo and Johnny Horton. But they have two completely different types of talent. Johnny is smooth and Todd is powerful. Of course both of these players are smooth and powerful, but in differing degrees. Todd has more power, and Johnny has more smooth. Mares power, Spear smooth. Park power, Moore smooth. You get the idea. Of all of these categories this is probably the most difficult to rate because of the different types of talent.

B. Brains

By brains I mean the ability to analyze the game, and develop strategies. Some people analyze every little thing about the game and others just let it fly. Probably the most important thing about the mental game is being able to think on your feet. Analyzing a match as it's going on and making adjustments. Also learning from playing opponants, so that the next time you'll be better prepared. When people play each other alot , I think that brains will learn to beat talent in the end.

C. Heart

What is heart? You can tell when some one has it. You can see it in their eyes and in their actions. They hate to lose, and if they do lose they want more. They aren't discouraged by losing, it just fires them up and makes them practice harder. Through the years I've seen alot of players come up that had plenty of talent and brains, but somehow that's just not enough. Some of the most talented players I've ever seen never made it past the rookie ranking. Why? Because they couldn't handle losing. It was easier to run than to take the repeated beatings necessary to advance. And believe me, the best way to advance is to take those beatings. I guarantee you that any player that has made the ranking of Pro-Master has a lot of heart, and they've taken their beatings to get there.

D. Experience

This one is pretty self explanatory. You get experience by playing. You learn how to handle pressure by playing in pressure situations. You learn how to win by winning. They always say there's no substitute for experience, and I'll take experience over youth anytime.

E. Discipline

This is kind of an X factor, but may be the most important factor of all. Does a player drink too much or use other substances that might effect their performance? Do they train well for a tournament? Do they get proper sleep and eat well at a tournament? I'm not even sure if it should be included in this system, because most of what we know about other players is through word of mouth. How can we really know what a player is doing after the room closes down for the night? How do we really know how hard they have practiced for a tournament?

I guess only the player themself can give a truly accurate assessment of their discipline, but you can base this one on the knowledge that you have.

So, you can rate a player by giving each of these catagories a rating of 1 to 20. Can anyone ever rate a true 100? I don't think so, nobody's perfect. But it's fun and interesting to rate yourself as well as other players. Based on this rating system who are the best players? Everybody's opinions will probably be different and that's what makes it fun. The hard part will be in honestly rating yourself, and in using this information to improve your game. "He who truly understands his strengths and weaknesses knows how to achieve his best game."

... Flow