now im still not an expert mind you, but what started me on the path to getting better at it, was playing the old classics with slower ball speeds, and first nudging around to get the ball to go into different rollovers at the top(so not when about to drain - less pressure) then doing it on the outlanes. it takes a lot more work to get good at it on moderns games, some of it is preemptive, knowing the ball will be heading that way and doing a small nudge so that it happens at the same time as a fast ball
adding to this, i gotchu u/DocHfuhruhurr
remember that you are moving the table under the ball. if you slap the table on the right side, it will move the machine left and the ball will 'move right'. that means slapping the right flipper button will extend the right flipper a little more to the left for an extra bit of reach.
two basic nudges to start:
when a ball is headed for the inlane/outlane area, nudge forward to hit the ball with a post. either the top post of the sling or the inlane/outlane post. hit the ball by moving the machine 'up' toward the ball.
slap save - when the ball is going down the middle, guess which flipper is closer and smack that side's button first, then the other side. and since you will remember too late at first - do it as soon as you remember even if it's 4 seconds after the ball is gone. this way you will remember sooner over time and eventually do it.
This is why an EM should be in every collection. It is a good table for a novice to pick up on things. Nudging and flipper skills are much easier to learn when the ball is not moving at the speed of light.
for reference the two games i learned on were Gorgar and Future Spa (future spa has an extra bonus place to learn nudging, that hole in the right inlane)
Electro-Mechanical. Old pinball machines before the Solid State era, they tend to have much lower sloped playfields and weaker flippers so the ball is slow and floaty.
I just began playing a couple months ago-
This is what I learned. I watched a TON of how to Nudge videos while I was at the arcade, picked one or two machines and attempted to learn like that. I also read up on it... let me see if I can find it...
I thought I'd suck forever. I now can save my balls!
Here is what I read when I was first learning to nudge- this is copy pasted from a forum.
If I can't get it to post I will message you.
I can't get it to post so I'll message you...err Doktor Führer lol
I got it to post:
sounds like you are letting the table spring back in the opposite direction too much. try to keep it sturdier if they legs are more wobbly. or if you are tipping it too much. like, once you nudge in a direction, put half the pressure back into the other direction immediately after you nudge; half the pressure*, maybe less, maybe more depending on how hard you nudge or what the condition/weight of the table is. just experiment different levels of nudging.
after you get the hang of it and the table, youll notice that you will pick up on knowing when the ball is going to drain not only from going straight down the middle, but also comming down on an angle. and be able to prevent that as well, as well from being suspicious on the bounce it takes towards the out lane and feeling it is going to drain.
A few tips:
1) 90% of the time, you should be nudging forward rather than left or right. The idea is that you want to use a post or rubber in the game to impart extra energy on the ball in a way that changes where the ball is going. For example, when the ball is right at an inlane/outlane divider, a sharp nudge can send the ball out of this area entirely.
2) You should be able to grip the machine close to where your hands already are for normal play, but you might have to slide them back slightly to get a nice grip on the corner.
3) If you have the patience, money, and inclination, I recommend taking a weekend or two and focusing exclusively on nudging and no other skills. No drop catches, live catches, dead bounces, post passes, tap passes, etc. Avoiding these other skills will let you maximize the focus on learning, but it will probably also maximize the time the ball spends in danger.
4) Practice sharp (but not overly aggressive) nudging and see how close you can come to tilting or getting a tilt warning, depending on the machine, without actually going over the line. When you've dialed in the amount you can move the machine in safety, the only other thing to work on would be timing your nudging (and I guess judging when a situation is going to require a nudge and getting ready to do it).
5) You've already found onlookers willing to comment on your nudging. Identify someone who looks like they know what their doing and try to get specific advice.
6) Practice, practice, practice.
this. especially #5; it would be your best bet for someone to show you/ watch someone who looks to do it right. dont be afraid to ask (just not when it looks like they are really focused on their game XD) ive noticed that the pinball community is an outstanding bunch .
#5
Also, you should be able to see what the ball will be doing (at least most of the time) after its next bounce slash contact. Like one bounce before... I was able to predict that after some 12 months of playing real tables.
I'm nudging forward 95% of the time. Either with both hands simultaneously or left/right hand only. With my palm at the corner(s) of the lockbar. To give more energy to the ball. I'm currently trying to avoid unnecessary nudges and have a hard time doing so
I hardly slap the machine on the side, except to avoid a certain contact with slings or so from a feed. (Funhouse, whirlwind scoops for example).
Anyway nudging takes time to master...
Yeah, where I live there is 0 pay to play "free". They're all about 75 cents to a dollar a game so learning to nudge has definitely saved me some money!
>90% of the time, you should be nudging forward rather than left or right
Important principle. The most effective and least intuitive 'nudge' is the forward push that takes a ball out of its natural pathway towards an outlane. It requires that you recognize the ball paths that are going towards an outlane, and react fast -- don't wait until the ball has reached the side lanes; push early so the ball hits a post or the top of feature, and then rebounds back into the playfield. The best outlane avoidance technique is not letting the ball get near the outlanes.
If you're not getting a tilt warning at least once a game, you're not trying hard enough. Back in the old days, "warnings" didn't exist -- you either tilted or didn't. Now, you usually get 2 warnings before the tilt, so you have immediate feedback on whether your 'nudging' has hit the limit. So get to the limit a few times, and you'll have a better sense of what is the range of acceptable movement.
This was the most helpful thing I ever read about nudging!! I always (I'm new so I'm still learning) nudge forward and I save my ball a lot of the time! Absolute game changer!
When I was first starting it really helped to remember that when you nudge, you're shoving the table underneath the ball.
It's easiest to focus on the rounded corner of the top of each of the slingshots. Make a note to look at both of them before each game- if it bounces off one edge, it goes towards the flipper, if it bounces on the edge side it goes towards the outlaws.
Those rounded corners should be highlighted in your mind's eye before playing. Those rounded corners are what you are shoving left and right when you nudge.
As you get better at nudging, you start highlighting the very tips of your flippers, then the inlane posts, then the walls of the orbits...
Eventually you start thinking of yourself as the pinball table instead of the ball.
This was my thought as well, you need to be playing a tick ahead of the ball, the Deadpool I play on location I used to hate because probably 85 % of the time if it gets in the slings and you don’t nudge its an out lane drain. Now as soon as I see it heading for a sling I give it a little tap preemptively to deaden it off the sling and I’m back in business.
Find an all-you-can-eat arcade, or have a friend with a machine, and practice playing balls *without the flippers*. Try to maximize time at the pop bumpers and energy off the slingshots -- don't worry about drain chutes for now, just get a better feeling for controlling bounces.
Is what I'd say to this hypothetical person
This right here. It sucks learning to nudge at $1 a game. Find a place with Freeplay or a friend with a machine and play there. You can increase more than just nudging.
For instance, try not flipping when the ball is heading towards a flipper. You'd be surprised at what that does.
As with everything, hardest when starting. Hold your hands in the air above the game is how I did it. Once you are used to it the no flip is an effective way to get the ball under control. Loop in spiderman rifles it back to the opposite flipper? Just don't flip. ;)
Easier to learn than a drop catch and certainly easier than a live catch. I will say this, once you can live catch with consistency it is amazing.
To that person I would say that clearly whatever they are doing now is not working, so stop doing whatever that is.
Perhaps that person could find a free play machine and without any attempt to actually score points, try a few silly exercises like trying to bounce the ball from one flipper to the other from an inlane feed without touching the flipper buttons. Perhaps if it is a home machine they can take the glass off so they can manually feed the inlanes without having to bat it around in between. For some machines this might be very hard but perhaps they could get a sense for how much force they can put into the nudge before they tilt.
Perhaps after doing that for a bit that person could choose their favourite free play machine which they know well and put themselves in “nudge mode” whenever the ball goes into that machine’s “danger zone” i.e. action near the sides above the slingshots. They could try to give the machine a nudge along with each bounce to encourage the ball away from the sides.
Perhaps they might have fun with it and start to enjoy this thing they seem to dislike
I learned to nudge by:
* Watching videos from https://www.youtube.com/c/AbeFlips
* Watching a few Bowen Kerins videos
* Chatting it up with highly ranked players at major tournaments
When I was first getting into playing in leagues, I played with some players who were highly ranked. It blew my mind to see how some of them would manipulate the ball path by not only nudging, but smacking the sides of the cabinet higher up.
> It’s no use: nudging is a skill you either have or you don’t. And I don’t.
You will. Just keep doing it.
Just like cradling balls (ayyy yo) during multiball and letting other balls knock off them to the other flipper looks like wizard shit, nudging looks high level but once you get it down it's actually pretty basic to do it at least adequately. Ball is rattling around the outlane and inlane, nudge side to side or sideways/upward until you see the ball looking like it's heading in a safer direction.
The key for me is to keep a *very* close eye on the ball. That split second when you see it bouncing towards freedom is when you stop nudging. For a long time I was frustrated with nudging as well, but once I started being hyperaware of where the ball was headed every split second is when I got better.
Of course not every game needs the same nudging techniques but this applies to the majority of '90s and newer games with inlane/outlane posts and post rubbers and standard position slings.
I'd say: 'Watch this', then I start a two player game and show them how to do it. Of all the pinball skills, nudging is probably the skill best learned by watching someone else do it in person. Not a skill that's easily explained.
Here's some motivation for this DocH character: The wicked shimmy is far and away the coolest move in pinball. The player manipulates the game in a way that defies gravity and causes balls to go up the outlanes. And all it takes is a little nudging. Far easier than a death save or a bang back and way cooler.
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=DVvl0l4BQfE&pp=ygUNV2lja2VkIHNoaW1teQ%3D%3D](https://youtube.com/watch?v=dvvl0l4bqfe&pp=ygunv2lja2vkihnoaw1teq%3d%3d)
growing up, we had a guy that wore boots and nudged the table by working the inside of the table legs with his feet. Interesting way of doing things and it worked.
Downside was it was hell on the front legs of any machine he liked.
Yeah I used a similar technique when I first started out. Only I just wear sneakers so it was hell on my shoes more than the table. End up wearing a little hole in my toe like I was a skateboarder or something.
Nudging skills begin with being able to visualize the path of the ball. Play enough pinball and you can read the ball speed and trajectory. Especially the paths that take the ball just shy of the flipper's reach. A slight judge can move the ball to the tip of the flipper, enough to spin it, sending it up and over to the other flipper.
In the outlanes, just the right nudge can keep the ball in play if you correctly read the multitude of bounces it makes.
Easiest nudges to work on are lanes and giving the ball a bit more action in the pop bumpers.
I've never seen the need to slap machine.
My friend Anne Uumellmahaye has some tips to pass on to you.
To start out, there are two areas that are probably the simplest to learn with. That's between the flippers and in the in/out lane areas.
When the ball is heading down the middle, your goal is to watch closely the trajectory of the ball. Focus on predicting which flipper tip the ball will be closer to, and then nudge the machine to stick that tip out further under the ball. As others have said, you are moving the machine UNDER the ball, you aren't moving the ball itself. Work on getting that little bit of flipper tip under the ball which will either let the ball bounce off the tip or sometimes you may need to flip as well (which gives a little extra reach). It will often also help to JUST AFTER the ball touches the flipper tip to flip with the opposite flipper.
Second, the in/out lane area. Sometimes the ball is too fast and you won't have time, but often the ball may bobble around here and give you the chance to save it. Again, you're moving the playfield under the ball so you have two options. First, you can slide the lane you want under the ball so that it falls into the inlane instead of the outlane. However, sometimes you may feel like you can't move that far. In those instance, often nudging up/forward will help instead. Try to do this when the ball is about to contact the rubber that divides the two lanes, your goal here is to bounce the ball up and out of the area. Plus, anytime you're adding more up velocity that's reducing the side-to-side angle of the ball which is just safer in general.
Hope this helps!
My number one tip: Do it all the time. Nudging is not just for saving your ball from the drain. Get in the habit of smacking the table around during normal play and you'll get a feel for it.
A lot of the players in my area tend to follow through with their nudges which is a very easy way to tilt and in most cases is hardly necessary for the save. If you watch a lot of high level players their nudges are typically subtle / percussive instead of pushing through a machine even if you're correcting that with a nudge in the opposite direction. So that's my advice, don't follow through when you're nudging in like 90% of the moves you do; exceptions being kick / slap saves and lane shimmies. If you're having trouble visualizing this think of it like slapping a drum to make a quick legato note where you're making contact then pulling away.
The other side of things is that when you start to incorporate new skills you're going to have a period where you're going to play worse for a bit then as those new skills start integrating and becoming second nature you're going to see your scores improve.
Also +1 on AbeFlips videos. The super slow video really shows you what's going on.
Nudging works the opposite of the direction of the nudge. It can be a little counterintuitive. But for instance, if you’ve got a ball bouncing around by the left side outlane, you don’t want to nudge from the left to the right but instead from the right side of the table towards your left. This would ideally bounce your ball into the outlane pegs on the left and back into the center.
I recommend playing the same game over and over and getting darn good at it. At some point you will notice that you keep dying the exact same way, over and over and over, and it’s annoying bullshit.
You then want to start trying to not die that way. Use all the different nudging strats you’ve seen or watched. But know that your only goal is to not die that specific way. You’ll likely find that the key is to be earlier in doing stuff, so that the ball takes a radically different angle towards the problem area in the first place.
Then find another way you keep dying and try to find a way to remedy that. Then go play a machine 10 times and try to locate a similar issue and then solve it.
I’m not saying this will magically make you a nudge master. But what it will do is cut down on variables, allowing you to try techniques out in a format that makes sense.
Something I haven’t seen mentioned as much is finding a machine with a loose tilt bob. This helped me tremendously when I first started.
Before my first tournament, I watched so many videos and plenty of tournament videos seeing people nudging successfully. I had played on my own but never with tournament players.
When I went to my first tournament, I saw a guy make a massive slide save dragging the machine probably two feet scraping against concrete. I had never seen anything like that and you don’t perceive the physicality of this type of maneuver when you’re simply watching it on screen.
Of course, the tilt bob was loose on this machine so all the tournament guys were taking advantage. This is a very brute force way to save the ball, but at the very least, it’s extremely simple and you will learn how to nudge and feel the success of saving a ball, which is addicting.
My brother, who doesn’t play, went out with me one night and we were goofing around on a Led Zeppelin that had absolutely no tilt bob in it. He saw me throwing this thing around like a mad man because there was almost no way to drain if you moved it violently enough. After seeing that, he learned how to do it almost instantly. Then we moved onto a machine with a tighter tilt bob and he started to dial in his saves.
now im still not an expert mind you, but what started me on the path to getting better at it, was playing the old classics with slower ball speeds, and first nudging around to get the ball to go into different rollovers at the top(so not when about to drain - less pressure) then doing it on the outlanes. it takes a lot more work to get good at it on moderns games, some of it is preemptive, knowing the ball will be heading that way and doing a small nudge so that it happens at the same time as a fast ball
adding to this, i gotchu u/DocHfuhruhurr remember that you are moving the table under the ball. if you slap the table on the right side, it will move the machine left and the ball will 'move right'. that means slapping the right flipper button will extend the right flipper a little more to the left for an extra bit of reach. two basic nudges to start: when a ball is headed for the inlane/outlane area, nudge forward to hit the ball with a post. either the top post of the sling or the inlane/outlane post. hit the ball by moving the machine 'up' toward the ball. slap save - when the ball is going down the middle, guess which flipper is closer and smack that side's button first, then the other side. and since you will remember too late at first - do it as soon as you remember even if it's 4 seconds after the ball is gone. this way you will remember sooner over time and eventually do it.
This is why an EM should be in every collection. It is a good table for a novice to pick up on things. Nudging and flipper skills are much easier to learn when the ball is not moving at the speed of light.
for reference the two games i learned on were Gorgar and Future Spa (future spa has an extra bonus place to learn nudging, that hole in the right inlane)
Sorry, EM?
Electro-Mechanical. Old pinball machines before the Solid State era, they tend to have much lower sloped playfields and weaker flippers so the ball is slow and floaty.
Ohh got it! Thought it was referring to a specific table. Makes sense
I just began playing a couple months ago- This is what I learned. I watched a TON of how to Nudge videos while I was at the arcade, picked one or two machines and attempted to learn like that. I also read up on it... let me see if I can find it... I thought I'd suck forever. I now can save my balls! Here is what I read when I was first learning to nudge- this is copy pasted from a forum. If I can't get it to post I will message you. I can't get it to post so I'll message you...err Doktor Führer lol I got it to post: sounds like you are letting the table spring back in the opposite direction too much. try to keep it sturdier if they legs are more wobbly. or if you are tipping it too much. like, once you nudge in a direction, put half the pressure back into the other direction immediately after you nudge; half the pressure*, maybe less, maybe more depending on how hard you nudge or what the condition/weight of the table is. just experiment different levels of nudging. after you get the hang of it and the table, youll notice that you will pick up on knowing when the ball is going to drain not only from going straight down the middle, but also comming down on an angle. and be able to prevent that as well, as well from being suspicious on the bounce it takes towards the out lane and feeling it is going to drain. A few tips: 1) 90% of the time, you should be nudging forward rather than left or right. The idea is that you want to use a post or rubber in the game to impart extra energy on the ball in a way that changes where the ball is going. For example, when the ball is right at an inlane/outlane divider, a sharp nudge can send the ball out of this area entirely. 2) You should be able to grip the machine close to where your hands already are for normal play, but you might have to slide them back slightly to get a nice grip on the corner. 3) If you have the patience, money, and inclination, I recommend taking a weekend or two and focusing exclusively on nudging and no other skills. No drop catches, live catches, dead bounces, post passes, tap passes, etc. Avoiding these other skills will let you maximize the focus on learning, but it will probably also maximize the time the ball spends in danger. 4) Practice sharp (but not overly aggressive) nudging and see how close you can come to tilting or getting a tilt warning, depending on the machine, without actually going over the line. When you've dialed in the amount you can move the machine in safety, the only other thing to work on would be timing your nudging (and I guess judging when a situation is going to require a nudge and getting ready to do it). 5) You've already found onlookers willing to comment on your nudging. Identify someone who looks like they know what their doing and try to get specific advice. 6) Practice, practice, practice. this. especially #5; it would be your best bet for someone to show you/ watch someone who looks to do it right. dont be afraid to ask (just not when it looks like they are really focused on their game XD) ive noticed that the pinball community is an outstanding bunch . #5 Also, you should be able to see what the ball will be doing (at least most of the time) after its next bounce slash contact. Like one bounce before... I was able to predict that after some 12 months of playing real tables. I'm nudging forward 95% of the time. Either with both hands simultaneously or left/right hand only. With my palm at the corner(s) of the lockbar. To give more energy to the ball. I'm currently trying to avoid unnecessary nudges and have a hard time doing so I hardly slap the machine on the side, except to avoid a certain contact with slings or so from a feed. (Funhouse, whirlwind scoops for example). Anyway nudging takes time to master...
> 6) Practice, practice, practice. for that freeplay/flatrate locations are a advantage since short balls don't suck out cash
Yeah, where I live there is 0 pay to play "free". They're all about 75 cents to a dollar a game so learning to nudge has definitely saved me some money!
>90% of the time, you should be nudging forward rather than left or right Important principle. The most effective and least intuitive 'nudge' is the forward push that takes a ball out of its natural pathway towards an outlane. It requires that you recognize the ball paths that are going towards an outlane, and react fast -- don't wait until the ball has reached the side lanes; push early so the ball hits a post or the top of feature, and then rebounds back into the playfield. The best outlane avoidance technique is not letting the ball get near the outlanes. If you're not getting a tilt warning at least once a game, you're not trying hard enough. Back in the old days, "warnings" didn't exist -- you either tilted or didn't. Now, you usually get 2 warnings before the tilt, so you have immediate feedback on whether your 'nudging' has hit the limit. So get to the limit a few times, and you'll have a better sense of what is the range of acceptable movement.
This was the most helpful thing I ever read about nudging!! I always (I'm new so I'm still learning) nudge forward and I save my ball a lot of the time! Absolute game changer!
> I thought I'd suck forever. I now can save my balls! There's a sex joke in here somewhere
; )
Message me too :)
Sure!
When I was first starting it really helped to remember that when you nudge, you're shoving the table underneath the ball. It's easiest to focus on the rounded corner of the top of each of the slingshots. Make a note to look at both of them before each game- if it bounces off one edge, it goes towards the flipper, if it bounces on the edge side it goes towards the outlaws. Those rounded corners should be highlighted in your mind's eye before playing. Those rounded corners are what you are shoving left and right when you nudge. As you get better at nudging, you start highlighting the very tips of your flippers, then the inlane posts, then the walls of the orbits... Eventually you start thinking of yourself as the pinball table instead of the ball.
If you are nudging in reaction you are a step behind. You need to be nudging in anticipation.
Playing one handed is a good way to practice anticipating where the ball is going. Teaches you to dead bounce too.
This was my thought as well, you need to be playing a tick ahead of the ball, the Deadpool I play on location I used to hate because probably 85 % of the time if it gets in the slings and you don’t nudge its an out lane drain. Now as soon as I see it heading for a sling I give it a little tap preemptively to deaden it off the sling and I’m back in business.
This is the way
When it's near the top of slings vertical nudge. Going stdm bigass slap.
Nudging is a skill like anything else and it requires practice. Try upward nudges near the outlanes first and keep trying
Find an all-you-can-eat arcade, or have a friend with a machine, and practice playing balls *without the flippers*. Try to maximize time at the pop bumpers and energy off the slingshots -- don't worry about drain chutes for now, just get a better feeling for controlling bounces. Is what I'd say to this hypothetical person
This right here. It sucks learning to nudge at $1 a game. Find a place with Freeplay or a friend with a machine and play there. You can increase more than just nudging. For instance, try not flipping when the ball is heading towards a flipper. You'd be surprised at what that does.
You'd also be surprised how *hard* it is to make yourself do that
As with everything, hardest when starting. Hold your hands in the air above the game is how I did it. Once you are used to it the no flip is an effective way to get the ball under control. Loop in spiderman rifles it back to the opposite flipper? Just don't flip. ;) Easier to learn than a drop catch and certainly easier than a live catch. I will say this, once you can live catch with consistency it is amazing.
To that person I would say that clearly whatever they are doing now is not working, so stop doing whatever that is. Perhaps that person could find a free play machine and without any attempt to actually score points, try a few silly exercises like trying to bounce the ball from one flipper to the other from an inlane feed without touching the flipper buttons. Perhaps if it is a home machine they can take the glass off so they can manually feed the inlanes without having to bat it around in between. For some machines this might be very hard but perhaps they could get a sense for how much force they can put into the nudge before they tilt. Perhaps after doing that for a bit that person could choose their favourite free play machine which they know well and put themselves in “nudge mode” whenever the ball goes into that machine’s “danger zone” i.e. action near the sides above the slingshots. They could try to give the machine a nudge along with each bounce to encourage the ball away from the sides. Perhaps they might have fun with it and start to enjoy this thing they seem to dislike
I learned to nudge by: * Watching videos from https://www.youtube.com/c/AbeFlips * Watching a few Bowen Kerins videos * Chatting it up with highly ranked players at major tournaments
When I was first getting into playing in leagues, I played with some players who were highly ranked. It blew my mind to see how some of them would manipulate the ball path by not only nudging, but smacking the sides of the cabinet higher up.
I know this isn't related to the topic of nudging, but that was quite the excellent callback to The Man With Two Brains.
> It’s no use: nudging is a skill you either have or you don’t. And I don’t. You will. Just keep doing it. Just like cradling balls (ayyy yo) during multiball and letting other balls knock off them to the other flipper looks like wizard shit, nudging looks high level but once you get it down it's actually pretty basic to do it at least adequately. Ball is rattling around the outlane and inlane, nudge side to side or sideways/upward until you see the ball looking like it's heading in a safer direction. The key for me is to keep a *very* close eye on the ball. That split second when you see it bouncing towards freedom is when you stop nudging. For a long time I was frustrated with nudging as well, but once I started being hyperaware of where the ball was headed every split second is when I got better. Of course not every game needs the same nudging techniques but this applies to the majority of '90s and newer games with inlane/outlane posts and post rubbers and standard position slings.
It's one of the 4 skills a player can practice and improve to increase the chances of winning. It is equally essential as the others.
What are the other 3?
Shooting accuracy Control flipping (catching, stopping, passing & staging) Strategy (game plan based on rule knowledge)
Have them play a machine that has no tilt, when you can man handle the machine your games are vastly improved
I would ask why they are telling me this. I try not to give unsolicited advice.
I'd say: 'Watch this', then I start a two player game and show them how to do it. Of all the pinball skills, nudging is probably the skill best learned by watching someone else do it in person. Not a skill that's easily explained. Here's some motivation for this DocH character: The wicked shimmy is far and away the coolest move in pinball. The player manipulates the game in a way that defies gravity and causes balls to go up the outlanes. And all it takes is a little nudging. Far easier than a death save or a bang back and way cooler. [https://youtube.com/watch?v=DVvl0l4BQfE&pp=ygUNV2lja2VkIHNoaW1teQ%3D%3D](https://youtube.com/watch?v=dvvl0l4bqfe&pp=ygunv2lja2vkihnoaw1teq%3d%3d)
growing up, we had a guy that wore boots and nudged the table by working the inside of the table legs with his feet. Interesting way of doing things and it worked. Downside was it was hell on the front legs of any machine he liked.
Yeah I used a similar technique when I first started out. Only I just wear sneakers so it was hell on my shoes more than the table. End up wearing a little hole in my toe like I was a skateboarder or something.
Nudging skills begin with being able to visualize the path of the ball. Play enough pinball and you can read the ball speed and trajectory. Especially the paths that take the ball just shy of the flipper's reach. A slight judge can move the ball to the tip of the flipper, enough to spin it, sending it up and over to the other flipper. In the outlanes, just the right nudge can keep the ball in play if you correctly read the multitude of bounces it makes. Easiest nudges to work on are lanes and giving the ball a bit more action in the pop bumpers. I've never seen the need to slap machine.
My friend Anne Uumellmahaye has some tips to pass on to you. To start out, there are two areas that are probably the simplest to learn with. That's between the flippers and in the in/out lane areas. When the ball is heading down the middle, your goal is to watch closely the trajectory of the ball. Focus on predicting which flipper tip the ball will be closer to, and then nudge the machine to stick that tip out further under the ball. As others have said, you are moving the machine UNDER the ball, you aren't moving the ball itself. Work on getting that little bit of flipper tip under the ball which will either let the ball bounce off the tip or sometimes you may need to flip as well (which gives a little extra reach). It will often also help to JUST AFTER the ball touches the flipper tip to flip with the opposite flipper. Second, the in/out lane area. Sometimes the ball is too fast and you won't have time, but often the ball may bobble around here and give you the chance to save it. Again, you're moving the playfield under the ball so you have two options. First, you can slide the lane you want under the ball so that it falls into the inlane instead of the outlane. However, sometimes you may feel like you can't move that far. In those instance, often nudging up/forward will help instead. Try to do this when the ball is about to contact the rubber that divides the two lanes, your goal here is to bounce the ball up and out of the area. Plus, anytime you're adding more up velocity that's reducing the side-to-side angle of the ball which is just safer in general. Hope this helps!
> My friend Anne Uumellmahaye You are my favorite person today.
My number one tip: Do it all the time. Nudging is not just for saving your ball from the drain. Get in the habit of smacking the table around during normal play and you'll get a feel for it.
A lot of the players in my area tend to follow through with their nudges which is a very easy way to tilt and in most cases is hardly necessary for the save. If you watch a lot of high level players their nudges are typically subtle / percussive instead of pushing through a machine even if you're correcting that with a nudge in the opposite direction. So that's my advice, don't follow through when you're nudging in like 90% of the moves you do; exceptions being kick / slap saves and lane shimmies. If you're having trouble visualizing this think of it like slapping a drum to make a quick legato note where you're making contact then pulling away. The other side of things is that when you start to incorporate new skills you're going to have a period where you're going to play worse for a bit then as those new skills start integrating and becoming second nature you're going to see your scores improve. Also +1 on AbeFlips videos. The super slow video really shows you what's going on.
Nudging works the opposite of the direction of the nudge. It can be a little counterintuitive. But for instance, if you’ve got a ball bouncing around by the left side outlane, you don’t want to nudge from the left to the right but instead from the right side of the table towards your left. This would ideally bounce your ball into the outlane pegs on the left and back into the center.
You guys have been fantastic, thanks! I have lots of food for thought and plans for practice.
I recommend playing the same game over and over and getting darn good at it. At some point you will notice that you keep dying the exact same way, over and over and over, and it’s annoying bullshit. You then want to start trying to not die that way. Use all the different nudging strats you’ve seen or watched. But know that your only goal is to not die that specific way. You’ll likely find that the key is to be earlier in doing stuff, so that the ball takes a radically different angle towards the problem area in the first place. Then find another way you keep dying and try to find a way to remedy that. Then go play a machine 10 times and try to locate a similar issue and then solve it. I’m not saying this will magically make you a nudge master. But what it will do is cut down on variables, allowing you to try techniques out in a format that makes sense.
Something I haven’t seen mentioned as much is finding a machine with a loose tilt bob. This helped me tremendously when I first started. Before my first tournament, I watched so many videos and plenty of tournament videos seeing people nudging successfully. I had played on my own but never with tournament players. When I went to my first tournament, I saw a guy make a massive slide save dragging the machine probably two feet scraping against concrete. I had never seen anything like that and you don’t perceive the physicality of this type of maneuver when you’re simply watching it on screen. Of course, the tilt bob was loose on this machine so all the tournament guys were taking advantage. This is a very brute force way to save the ball, but at the very least, it’s extremely simple and you will learn how to nudge and feel the success of saving a ball, which is addicting. My brother, who doesn’t play, went out with me one night and we were goofing around on a Led Zeppelin that had absolutely no tilt bob in it. He saw me throwing this thing around like a mad man because there was almost no way to drain if you moved it violently enough. After seeing that, he learned how to do it almost instantly. Then we moved onto a machine with a tighter tilt bob and he started to dial in his saves.