Shuffleboard Tips: The Basics of Shooting Shuffleboard Pucks

When you want to up your game, brushing up on some basic shuffleboard tips is a great first step. In order to become the grand champion of shuffleboard tables, you have to be an excellent player. Improving your skills requires understanding how shuffleboard pucks move across the board, which leads to figuring out why they slide, or fail to slide, in certain directions. As in many other tabletop games, the ability to control the direction of the puck is all in the hands.

Handling A Puck Properly

Before we get into some more specific shuffleboard tips, let’s refresh the proper way to hold and shoot shuffleboard pucks. With your dominant hand, set the puck on the surface of the table and hold it there. Your palm should cover the top of the puck, with your thumb behind the puck and nearest to you. Lightly touch the sides of the puck, but don’t let your fingers touch the tabletop.

To get an idea of the table’s speed, slide the puck up and down a few times without releasing it. When you’re finally ready to shoot the puck, simply extend your elbow forward and move your hand in the direction you want to shoot. Release the puck and watch yourself land a coveted hanger.

Puck Placement

Unless you’re a pro, you’re probably going to need some more practice before you can just throw hangers left and right. Basic mastery of shuffleboard is all about where your pucks land on the table and how they interact with your opponent’s pucks. This is why learning how to shoot shuffleboard pucks well is important for stepping up to the challenge of a good game. Although getting your pucks the furthest down the table is the main objective, you can also use your pucks in other ways to achieve more points for yourself or block your opponent from scoring.

Advanced Techniques

As your shuffleboard skills grow, you can begin to employ some more advanced techniques. The first thing you can do is learn how to play with both hands. Sometimes, you have a better chance on one side of the table rather than the other. Using both hands will give you free reign to develop angled shots.

Another method, particularly for improved accuracy, is a shuffleboard tip known as side-wheeling. This refers to shooting from an outside edge of the board instead of the middle. The third and fourth fingers of your shooting hand balance along the side of the table, acting as a guide for a more precise shot.

A third technique you can employ is the English backspin, a move borrowed from billiards. Using your thumb and forefinger, the English acts like a brake on the puck, thus increasing the chances that your puck will stay on the board.

Shooting shuffleboard pucks may initially seem simple, but there’s more to the game than meets the eye. Since the surface of shuffleboard tables is coated with wax, pucks can slide great distances down the playing surface. Therefore, the importance of control over the puck is obvious. Try some of these shuffleboard tips and hopefully you will increase your command of the puck and turn into a shuffleboard powerhouse.