Craig Pullen, UK Pinball Champion, explains how to play the bounce pass - letting the ball land on the flipper and bounce to the other. It's really touch to learn to leave the ball alone and not flip, but this adds a whole new facet of control to your game.
Written By: Andy Beresford
Video Transcription:
Craig Pullen: The next skill that I'm going to talk about is, perhaps, I think, the most important skill that you can possess when first starting out with pinball, and that's called the bounce pass.
Okay? So, all it is, basically, is the ball, the ball is going to come down, so imagine it's going to come down here and straight away, what you think it is, flip the ball away. The thing is you don't always have to flip. Okay? So sometimes what we can do is we can let the ball hit the flipper, like this, and we're in a lot more control. Whereas if we are always flipping the ball away every single time, then we're going to be stiff a lot more time because then the ball is going to be much less in control. So, if we just -- I have to play a little bit now just to demonstrate that. But if the ball is out of control, we can just let the ball bounce. I could have easily just trapped it up there but actually in terms of getting the ball back under control, we let it bounce and it comes back under control.
So, you know, it's almost, you know, you need to understand where it is. This is the situation. When the ball comes out here, it's going to come onto this right flipper, I would imagine. And I'm going to let it bounce and then I can get it back underneath control rather than flipping the ball away.
So, let's just demonstrate again. Let it bounce. Let it bounce. Let it bounce. So every single time, the ball is coming to that flipper, I know, as long as it's in the middle here, then the ball is going to go back over here and then I can get back into that lovely position I was talking about earlier, which is the trap. Okay?
So, let's just try again. Here we go. A nice bounce. Another one. A nice bounce. So, really, you know, it's just a case of giving it a go. At the start, I'm sure that's going to happen an awful lot. There's going to be times where the ball will go down the drain. But you have to just kind of take your time with it, let the ball just hit the flipper, rather than flipping.
A way that a lot of people think is a really good way of practicing is actually playing one-handed. So, instead of playing with both hands, you know, what happens is -- so, I know now that I couldn't do it because I haven't got a left hand anymore. Okay? So I have to let the ball bounce. Again, okay, I should have flipped there. But practicing one-handed, use your stronger hand and then what will happen is there's no way that you're going to be able to move your hand quick enough so you're going to have to learn the bounce pass. The sooner you learn it, the better really.
So, I'll just try and demonstrate that for a bit. So, the ball is out of control. I actually let the ball bounce then off the left flipper, it bounced off the right. So you can see -- it's just getting a little bit easier to do that. So, perhaps, if you have got that time to do that and you have got your own machine, which is really important because you don't want to be paying a pound a go every time till you're playing one-handed, but if you've got your own machine, you can just take your time with it, then actually it will really help in terms of a skill and in terms of controlling the ball and getting that ball back under the trap position.
Narrator: Okay, so for more pinball videos with Craig Pullen so please visit homeleisuredirect.com/pinball.
