I finally found someone who plays air hockey seriously.  As a table down his way was out of commission, I invited Dain up to Celebration Station to play.  I certainly wish Celebration Station would keep up their equipment.  At least there was one table that was still good...

I have a one sentence summary of the session: It wasn't bad, but it hurt on all sorts of levels.  The least important hurt is my right knee and leg; I hit it against the table so many times that it's tender.  That's to be expected, but I overdid it.

Now, for the game summary.  I at least won once or twice... of perhaps eight or ten games.  I began with using "twitch" for my defense, but I couldn't keep the reaction time up.  I then began doing my version of the triangle defense, which he commented after the session was better than he expected.  That's not to say much; I wouldn't expect too much of someone who has never played someone serious before.

His offensive style was fairly aggressive, but not as much as I had been prepared to see.  It had me defending for a fair amount of time, but that was fine once I moved to the triangle defense--though I switched between both defenses depending upon the shot I thought I'd see.  He said he was rusty, but I could tell he could aim far better than I.  So it was good thing he was rusty.  He had some good control over drifting the puck, something on which I'll still have to improve.

My offense wasn't too bad.  The worst score I had was 7-2 and the average seemed to be 7-5.  I found some shots that, if I could aim reliably, would normally get around his defense.  If I had a slightly faster reaction time, I could have executed more shots to get behind his mallet when he tried to go for the puck around the centerline.  My offense was adequate tonight, so I can't complain too much.  He said he was weak against "over" shots, and I could do those on a fairly inconsistent basis.  The best shot he said I had was a cross straight when I was using a three finger grip and flicking my wrist.  That was odd because I don't practice that grip often at all.  Considering the stance I take at the table, I'm not surprised that grip has some potential.

His defense was mainly playing the center of his side, going after the puck as often as he could.  Yes, that left a lot of holes, but his defensive experience tended to help him there.  But a puck would still slip past some times--including the rare event of it ricocheting off the back of his mallet.  The bad thing about my offense was that he could predict my shots dead on 30% of the time, though it seemed like more (or else he was just in the right place).

I already mentioned my defense.  I could switch from the offense three finger dip grip to my defensive two fingers around the top and one finger in the dip grip pretty quickly by twirling my mallet on my fourth finger.  If I wanted to change grips, it took a bit more effort to get from a defensive grip to an offensive grip.  I still had many holes in my defense.  The triangle defense isn't bad, but I lack experience playing good people with that defense.  I have far more game time with twitch, so I frequently caught myself pulling back from triangle into twitch.  This not only wasted time and energy, but gave more room for a puck to go in.

Finally, two interesting things.  First, I learned that moving the mallet a few inches side to side on the triangle defense will negate the initial resistance the mallet undergoes when I move it from a standstill to where I need it.  That seemed to help a bit.

Second, this marks the most times I have let go of the mallet.  Normally, I don't lose control of it at all.  Even for that rare day when it happens, I may lose control twice--max.  Since I was shifting grips and trying out new ways to do old things, I knew I sent the mallet flying at least five or six times.  That also hurt--on the embarrassing side.  The puck also went flying a good number of times.  I have never seen it fly off the table that many times, save for when I use the red or green (light weight) pucks.

All in all, it wasn't too bad.  Playing Dain many times will tire me out more than anyone else.  It was a fairly beneficial learning session.  I came away with a few good ideas and a general direction for improvement.  Even though I have some ideas, I don't know which direction I will take it.  After all, you really only improve when you play someone better.  I know there isn't anyone like that at Celebration Station, but there are some close people.

Who knows?  I hope I will continue to improve by playing him.  I wonder how far I can take it?