Table shuffle tactics: hammer, guards and knock-offs
Table shuffle looks like a game of touch, and it is — but the order of the pucks decides as many rounds as the hand does.
The hammer
The last puck of a round is called the hammer. Whoever has it can always answer the other side's best puck, either by knocking it off or by stopping beyond it. Because the side that scores throws first in the next round, the hammer passes to the side that has just been outscored — the game balances itself.
Throwing first
Without the hammer, a puck deep in the 3 zone is mostly a target. A puck in the 2 zone, slightly off centre, is harder to knock off cleanly and leaves room for your later pucks to stop beside or in front of it. Your aim in the early part of the round is to make the last shot difficult, not to score big at once.
Guards
A guard is a puck left short of the scoring zones, directly in front of your leading puck. It scores nothing, but the straight line to your leader is now closed and the other side has to cut the shot at an angle. On this table a guard in front of a puck in the 2 or 3 zone is often worth more than a second scoring puck.
Knock-offs
To remove a puck, hit it full and fast. A full hit sends it off the far end and your own puck usually stays near the spot of the collision — sometimes in a scoring zone. A thin hit only moves it sideways or pushes it deeper. Near the sides, both pucks may fall off, so take the centre of the target.
Practise
The table shuffle set-ups start with three pucks already down, which is exactly the situation where these choices matter.