Well if the ball is perfectly going straight down the middle, no flipping will save you. If the tilt allows you want to do a slide save to get the ball over to one of the flippers. If tighter tilt, a slap save will move the ball to one side just a hair to be able to get a piece of the flipper on the ball. When going perfectly straight down the middle I like to slap the game from one side on the flipper button, getting a piece of the flipper on the ball and then letting the ball dead bounce off the other flipper on a deflection.
I call it perfect drunk. For me itās around 6-8 beers. The perfect mix of confidence without too much loss of your wits. Haha
A big problem with having a flipper raised ā especially both of them ā is that any non-lateral motion of the flipper is moving in the wrong direction (toward the drain). You want to be poised to hit the ball away from the drain as much as possible. Even if holding both flippers allows you to deflect a wannabe SDTM ball, now what? You can only hope the ball bounces someplace favorable, you have limited ability to help that happen.
Not saying the double flip will never work, but Iād rather have my flippers ready for attack.
Bounce passes work a lot more often than you might think. Best to experiment and see for yourself.
If lowering the flipper on impact leads sdtm the ball was probably coming from the flipperās ābackhandā side in which case a live catch is often a good call.
Also I want to mention that the flipper gap is not smallest when flippers are raised, it is the smallest it can be if both flippers are horizontal, ie. pointing directly at each other.