Table shuffleboard against the computer. Push your red puck up a long wooden table and let go — stop it in the 1, 2 or 3 zone, hang it over the far edge for 4, or knock the AI's pucks away. Only the farthest puck scores each round, and the first to 15 wins the match.
Touch your red puck at the bottom of the table, push it up the table with your finger and let go. The puck keeps sliding at the speed your finger had in the last moment before you let go, so a gentle push stops short and a hard one flies off the far end. If you lift your finger after holding it still, or pull back, nothing is thrown and you can try again.
The far end of the table is marked in zones. A puck that stops in the 1, 2 or 3 zone is worth that many points, and one that ends up hanging over the far edge — more than half of it still on the table — is worth 4. A puck that slides off the end or off a side is gone. A puck that stops before the upper dashed line (the foul line) is taken off the table, so every shot has to travel at least that far. You can only start a shot from below the lower dashed line.
You and the AI take turns, four pucks each per round; the dots next to the scores show how many are left. Pucks bump into each other, so you can knock the AI's pucks off the table or into a worse zone, and it will try the same against you. After all eight are thrown, only the side with the single farthest puck scores: it gets the zone points of every one of its pucks that lies farther than the other side's best puck.
The first side to reach 15 points wins the match, and the turn order alternates from round to round. Win a match and the next one starts with your win streak one higher; your score is that streak. The AI aims more precisely with every win in your streak. Lose a match and the streak ends — save it to the Hall of Fame from the result card.
Find your power before you chase points. The puck slides at your finger's speed at the moment you let go, and friction slows it evenly, so the distance grows with the square of the speed: push twice as fast and it goes four times as far. Spend your first few shots on a smooth, even push of the same length and notice where it stops, then adjust a little at a time rather than guessing between gentle and hard.
Think about the last shot of each round. The side that throws last — the hammer — can always answer, so when you have it, keep your earlier pucks safe in the 2 and 3 zones rather than risking hangers that a single hit can knock off. When the AI has the last shot, a puck in the 3 zone with one of yours just in front of it as a guard is much harder to clear than a lone puck.
Use collisions on purpose. Hitting an AI puck head-on with a firm shot sends it flying while your puck stops near where it hit, which is ideal when its puck is the farthest on the table. A softer, glancing hit can nudge your own puck from the 2 zone into the 3 zone, but it can also push it off the end — the harder you hit, the farther the struck puck travels. And remember that only the farthest puck matters: two pucks in the 1 zone are worth nothing if the AI has a single puck in the 2 zone.
Table shuffleboard grew out of a game played in English taverns centuries ago, sliding coins along a table, and today it is played on long wooden tables in bars and clubs, with the pucks often called weights. This version keeps the core of it — slide, stop, knock away, and only the leader scores — on a table sized for a phone. The AI starts loose and sharpens with every win in your streak, so a long streak means beating a player who almost never misses.