The catching technique in foos is usually very similar to drop-catching when done right. There is a shot clock to make you actually do something eventually, but as long as you have the ball under control on a particular rail there’s no time pressure. Hence you see the very crisp movements interspersed with long set-up times.
The PBP was definitely designed for ‘insiders’, rather than ‘outsiders’, to watch. I’d guess that most of the people watching foos on the internet are pretty committed players. The slang has shifted since I last played foosball seriously about 10 years back, so I had to infer from context myself…
The basic strategy when shooting is fairly rock-paper-scissors: you can shoot either corner or the middle of the net, and the defender can block two of them if he plays it right. The snake that the guy on the left uses has the advantage of being able to go either left or right, but shoots a bit slower than many shots because of the need to get 350° of rotation.
Bringing it back to pinball: a lot of pinball commentary doesn’t have enough PBP, in my opinion. PBP is hard: there’s a reason that on pro-sports the colour guy is often an ex-athelete, while the PBP guy is a professional media guy.
@haugstrup: The 13-player design means that there’s no dead space in the corners, which on italian-style tables usually has an angled section to return the ball to play. I don’t like the feel of tornado tables personally, but that’s the idea behind them. It also means you can make plays between the back bar and the 2-bar, which I’ve always found really weird because I’m not used to them. The through-rod design does make maintenance much easier, though.