Shuffleboard champ shows Ambella Home table
Heath E Combs -- Furniture Today, October 24, 2011
Table shuffleboard champ Dave Shewbridge plays his favorite game on a new table in the Ambella Home showroom.
AT THE MARKET— If you find yourself playing with Dave Shewbridge this weekend, try to slide in a nice feel.
"Nice feel" is table shuffleboard slang and something you might hear from Shewbridge, whose team took first at the North American Shuffleboard Championships in 2010.
Players get a "nice feel" when a pushed weight lands in the last six inches of a shuffleboard plank. It is the second highest point scoring area for the game, the highest being a hanger - which hangs off the edge of the table.
Points are won when the weight enters marked scoring areas.
Shewbridge is serving as his game's ambassador here as Ambella Home promotes a new shuffleboard table and bench in its showroom. He will demonstrate the fundamentals of the game in the company's showroom in the International Home Furnishings Center, space C-357.
Shuffleboard is said to go back five centuries and is probably best known as the standing variety game played with cues, sometimes on a ship's deck.
Ambella hopes to draw attention to the shuffleboard table it is introducing here, a sleek playfield in an elegant case featuring acid-etched metal and hardwoods finished in a 14-step, hand-applied patina.
The company introduced its first shuffleboard table in April. This market's version stretches two feet longer.
The surfaces are three inches thick and are solid poplar with a quarter-inch polymer coating that protects the surface and gives it a slippery sleekness.
The new, longer table features leg levelers with climatic adjusters to keep a perfect pitch regardless of the degree of humidity or dryness in the air, according to the company. The playfield is 20 inches wide, four inches wider than the 12-foot table.
George Moussa, CEO of Ambella, said the company's product is more upscale than other tables in the category and has a better finish.
"The ones out there are very commercial looking, rather simple, and don't have much flair. Ours does and the reception has been fantastic," Moussa said. "We have just started in this category and we will be expanding it even more by next market. We are all very excited about it."
Moussa said the tables are aimed at medium to upper end stores, designers, design studios and catalog companies. The retail price for a shuffleboard table is about $7,499.
Shewbridge will play market attendees and will be in the showroom here from 9 a.m. to noon today (Monday, Oct. 24). Games usually last about thirty minutes, he said.
Shewbridge, who owns a screen printing business in Baltimore, Shewprints, began playing the game more than two decades ago to help relieve barroom boredom.
Attracted to the skill required to play, he was instantly addicted.
"I wanted to get a taste of the blood so to speak. I always wanted to see how far my talents will go," he said.
He began watching matches, studying their intensity and began traveling through the game's local social circles. He began saving vacation to compete in local and eventually national tournaments.
"There's a pleasure in the game at every level, so you don't have to be a world champion ... to play this game," Shewbridge said.
Some of the national competitions can last up to 12 days, he said. Big tournaments take place in Houston and Del City, Okla., with the national title game in Reno, Nev.
Shewbridge, who is also president of the Table Shuffleboard Assn., said this market is likely to be one of the few times when a shuffleboard champion has served as a product spokesman.
"It's going to be exciting when it gets out to the shuffleboard world," he said.
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