The ‘No Spin Zone’ Foosball gets organized BY SAM PFEIFLE

Though most gamers try to be well rounded, everyone has holes. There are games they just can’t play well. Many soccer players have a tough time with basketball, and vice versa. It’s a counterintuitive thing. Cribbage players tend to suck at poker. I think it’s because they’re counting points instead of cards. It’s similar to why good card-players are often frustrated by Scrabble.

Personally, though I’m fair to middling at most bar games — darts, cribbage, quarters, pool, pinball, those stupid computers — I’m just plain terrible at Foosball. I don’t have the patience to set up the shots, am always tempted to spin the handles wildly, and can’t ever line up the goalie with the oncoming shot. I often get shut out, or score only by luck and mistake.

Lately, however, I’ve been compelled to work on my skills, ever since I’ve noticed the creation of the Maine Division of the New England Foosball Association. There’s nothing like a good, competitive league to make a game a hell of a lot more interesting.

Andy Ambrose, league organizer, says he had been playing regularly on the weekends with friends Dave White and Steve Hodgkin down at ForePlay, on Fore Street in the Old Port. There were always games to be had, many of them lorded over by one Wayne " Coach " Story. " Wayne has been playing off and on for 30 years, " says Ambrose with a touch of awe.

So, a scene was building up. " There was never a shortage of players to play on the weekends, " Ambrose says. " People came and went during different seasons of the year, but we always remembered each other, maybe not by name, but by the way they played. "

Things started getting competitive, so Ambrose thought he might as well start keeping track of things. " I started organizing in August, 2002, as the Maine Foosball Association, " he says. " I gathered a few players’ emails that I knew and created the Maine Foosball email list and built the Web site [http://www.geocities.com/somainefoosball/]. " Things quickly went from word of mouth to hand cards and advertisements, and the league started to grow.

Story, too, " has been a major factor in the organization of our group in Maine, " says Ambrose. " Any decision that involves the running of the local tournaments I have made, I always consulted with Wayne for his unquestionable wisdom and expertise. Many of our players owe our playing ability to Wayne. "

Thus advised, Ambrose got started in earnest. He launched with three monthly tournaments in Portland, and now has four in Portland and two in Brunswick; he went from 20 initial members to nearly 70 now.

" In January, " he says of charting growth, " I merged up with the New England Foosball Association (NEFA) based in Massachusetts to open up local players to other tournaments in New England. While New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island converge to play in Boston, I have the only state-organized system in New England. "

Currently, the Maine tournament schedule is as such, with all tournaments starting at 7 p.m.:

• at ForePlay Sports Bar, in Portland, on the first Monday of every month.

• at McMillan & Co.’s Explorers Pub, in Brunswick, on the first Thursday of every month.

• at The Gold Mine, in Portland, on the second Tuesday of every month.

• at Commercial Street Pub, in Portland, on the third Monday of every month.

• at McGillicuddy’s, in Brunswick, on the third Thursday of every month.

• at Geno’s, in Portland, on the fourth Monday of every month.

You don’t have to be a member or sign for anything to get in on the tabling. Just show up, hand over the tourney fee (to be used as prize money) and say you want in. The process is very democratic. Ambrose always employs the draw-your-partner (DYP) system, whereby all the names go in a hat and folks are paired randomly. Then the teams of two battle it out in single-elimination format. Last team standing takes the purse.

Ambrose keeps track of the results and says, " We have rankings computed by the win/loss record of each player in the tournaments. We print out our monthly rankings at the beginning of each month so people know how they compare with their respective players. " That’s the crux right there. It’s really hard to resist a good ranking system. Don’t good cribbage boards have extra slots for games won? Didn’t you have someplace to keep track of Street Fighter matches in college? Don’t you wish you could point with veracity to a scorecard reserved just for your personal Wiffle Ball games with your brother and sneer, " I’m nine games up in the series. You won’t catch me till 2005. "

Well, maybe you’re not that weird, actually. Maybe you just play for the fun of it. And, since things haven’t changed much, you can still find a fun game of Foosball on just about any Saturday afternoon and night at ForePlay.

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at spfeifle@phx.com