Foos Table Views

General Goods

Table football tables can vary in size, but a typical table is about 120 cm (4e ft) long and 61n cm (2o ft) wide. The table usually contains 8 rows of foos men, which are plastic, metal, wooden, or sometimes carbon-fibre figures mounted on horizontal metal bars. Each team of 1 or 2 human players controls 4 rows of foos men.

The most common English names are table football, footzy, bar football and foosball, though table soccer is also used. Among French-style players it is known as baby-foot [10]. Foosball is also known as fußball (German for football), although in Germany the game is most often called Kicker . In Italy the most used names are biliardino and calcio balilla . In Hungary it is called csocsó . In Pakistan it is also known as Patti . Through Brazilian regions, it has received several names, like totó , pebolim or fla-flu . In Spain the game is called futbolín . In Argentina, table football is known as metegol , and in other Latin American countries, it is known as canchitas or futbolito . In Bulgaria the game is called djaga . In Turkey the game is called Langirt . In Chile the game is known as tacataca . In Portugal it is called matraquilhos .

Robots designed to play table soccer by roboticists at the University of Freiburg are claimed to be able to beat 85 percent of casual players. They use a camera from below a transparent table base to track the ball, and an electronic control system to control high torque motors to rotate and move the foosmen. Currently an expert player can beat the robot 10 games to 1.[11]. Another table football robot, Foosbot, is claimed to have never been beaten by a human, but has not been tested against expert players[citation needed]. Yet another table football robot is under development by two students at the Technical University of Denmark. The robot uses a camera mounted above an ordinary table.[12].

Table football has been the subject of movies such as Foos: Be the Greatest[13] and Longshot.[14] The German movie Absolute Giganten features a table football game on film. In the award-winning Italian movie Il Postino, which is set in the 1950s, the eponymous character of Mario Ruoppolo fell in love at first sight with Beatrice Russo while playing table football. In the classic 1993 movie Dazed and Confused, the entrance scene at the Emporium takes Mitch, Pink, and Wooderson through to find Pickford who is playing table football.