Never Neglect the 10 or You might Blow Chance
Copyright 1993 By Lary Faris
It was a hot day in Lakeside, Ohio. Some kind of crazy weather phenomenon had the temperature at 93
in the north and only in the low 80’s in the south.
I was doing what I’ve done on hot days since I was 3 years old. That is, I was sitting quietly on a bench
watching four old men play shuffleboard. Of course, I’m just as old now as they were.
Watching these guys play makes for a nice afternoon. They usually play a lot on the board and they are
pretty clever too.
So, I just sat, not moving in the heat, while they kept my brain in gear with their intriguing play. I should
note here for non-shufflers that shuffleboard can be an exciting spectator sport. Sure it doesn’t have the
violence of football or the acrobatics of basketball or the mental challenge of chess. But, for folks who
truly understand the game – the decisions, the drifts, the pressures – it is exciting, especially when
you’re close enough to kid the players a bit.
One of the games came down to an exciting finish that has a possible twist that’s interesting to ponder.
The score was 68-68 with play at the head of the court. Yellow had the hammer, black had the lead. The
court had several drifts, but in the center, there was a 3-4 inch drift from left to right, from black to
yellow. Play had progressed to the seventh shot, black’s last. Yellow had managed to bury a good 8, the
potential winning score. And buried it was. As the diagram shows, there were three discs in front of the
8.
Now, what should black try to do?
The winning disc is on the board, and if not reversed, yellow will win without even having to score the
hammer. There seems to be two ways to attack the 8. The first is to bang it out using one of the
protection discs.
Yet this is nearly impossible. Because of the way they are positioned, none of the three can be hit
directly toward the 8 – the three interfere with each other’s route. So to bang the 8 out would take a
double drive,that is one protector would have to be hit into a second protector so that the second
protector would knock out the 8. That will happen about once in a season.
The second way to get at the 8 is to try to use the drift to curve into the 8 for a chip-out. That’s a tough
shot too.
So what shot to try?
The shooter attempted to use the drift but in shooting hard enough to to remove the 8 with a clip-out,
he lost a couple inches of the drift and sped right by. The game was over.
The shooter looked around and said, “That’s the only shot I had.” Everyone agreed. But was it?
Why not try for a black 10? If the shooter makes it, he’s ahead by 2 and the pressure is on the opponent
to score his hammer or take a loss. Hammers that are shot under pressure often go awry. Actually
scoring a hidden 10 is superior to removing the 8 because it gives black a chance to win.
In either case, yellow wins by scoring his hammer; but if yellow hits a line with his hammer, black wins
with a 10 but if he’d chipped out the 8, the game would simply move to the foot end for another yellow
hammer.
Never, never, neglect the 10, even on a hot afternoon with old men playing