Volume 1 — Issue 01 — Feb 2026Est. 2026 · Air Hockey Editorial
Chapter One

The Fastest

Sport

Nobody's

Watching.

Longform journalism, tournament breakdowns, and training science for the players who've bled knuckles on the rail.

Read Issue One
50+Years of Competition
9×World Champion Colin Cummings
128Players Per World Championship
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USAA World ChampionshipColin Cummings · 9× ChampionTriangle DefenseL-Drift · Center Drift · Diamond DriftGold Standard Tables128-Player Double EliminationBaytown TX · Aug 2024AHPA · USAA · AAHL
USAA World ChampionshipColin Cummings · 9× ChampionTriangle DefenseL-Drift · Center Drift · Diamond DriftGold Standard Tables128-Player Double EliminationBaytown TX · Aug 2024AHPA · USAA · AAHL
— Vision & Mission

Competitive air hockey deserves the same editorial weight as any Grand Slam.

Since 1973, a close-knit community has kept this sport alive through video-game booms and Brunswick's exit from manufacturing. They moved tables into barns. They published newspaper ads asking for donations. They drove trucks across state lines to keep the circuit alive. That story has never been told with the seriousness it deserves.

Puck is the sport's first dedicated media home — built for USAA-ranked players hunting meta shifts in defensive positioning, rec-league regulars who just discovered there's a World Championship, and college kids who turned a dorm hobby into a regional circuit obsession.

It's a lot of grunting and groaning and yelling, kind of like wrestling. That surprises people — that air hockey can be that way.

Phil Arnold · USAA Founder
— The Mission

Building the sport's first real media home — one issue at a time.

◈

Longform Profiles

Deep dives on ranked players — their training regimens, mental frameworks, and drift sequences.

◎

Tournament Science

Post-event analytics: defensive positioning heatmaps, shot selection patterns, bracket mathematics.

◇

Training Lab

Biomechanics of the mallet grip, reaction time protocols, and the physics of the L-drift.

— Inside Issue One

Three articles. All locked.

Subscribe to unlock the full issue. The best air hockey journalism ever written — your words, not ours.

Competitive game table under overhead fluorescent lighting in a tournament venue
Player Profile
Feature · Issue 01

Nine Worlds: Inside Colin Cummings' Unbeaten Mind

The Hyatt Regency ballroom in Baytown, Texas goes quiet in a way that feels wrong for a room this size. Two hundred people holding their breath while a 25-year-old from Honolulu lines up a center-drift sequence that he's run ten thousand times in a converted garage. Colin Cummings doesn't look at the puck when he shoots. He looks at his opponent's mallet — a tell he discovered watching tape of his own losses from 2018. "The moment you watch the puck," he says, settling into a folding chair with the quiet authority of someone who has won nine times and plans to make it ten, "you've already lost the point. You're reacting to physics. I want to be reacting to...

Portrait of sports journalist Marcus Delray, contributor to Puck magazine
By Marcus Delray
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Abstract overhead view of a table game surface showing geometric angles and motion lines
Tournament Breakdown
Analysis · Issue 01

Triangle Defense Is Dead. Here's What Replaced It.

For fifteen years, the triangle defense was gospel. Pull back to the corners when you read a bank shot, hold center for straight lines, and trust the geometry. Jacob Weissman dismantled that orthodoxy over the course of three tournaments in 2023, posting a defensive efficiency score that AAHL analysts are still arguing about. The key wasn't positioning — it was timing. Weissman introduced what the Houston circuit calls the "float reset": instead of committing to a corner on the read, you...

Portrait of sports analyst Priya Nair, tactical writer for Puck magazine
By Priya Nair
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Close-up of hands gripping sports equipment showing precise finger placement and wrist positioning
Training Lab
Science · Issue 01

The 400-Millisecond Window: Reaction Time and the Mallet Grip

A competitive air hockey shot takes between 80 and 120 milliseconds from initiation to table contact. Human visual processing takes 150–200 milliseconds to register motion and route a signal to the motor cortex. The math is unforgiving: by the time your eyes have confirmed the puck is moving, your window to respond has already closed. This is why elite players don't defend shots — they defend intentions. The grip is where it starts. USAA rules mandate...

Portrait of sports scientist Dr. Kenji Tanaka, biomechanics writer for Puck magazine
By Dr. Kenji Tanaka
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3 articles · 1 issue · free to subscribers
— Sport History & Rankings

Fifty years underground.

From a barn in Minnesota to a Hyatt Regency ballroom. The full history, for the first time.

1972

Bob Lemieux & Brunswick develop the air hockey table — goals, puck, pressurized surface.

1973

First World Tournament held in NYC. Marv Albert on play-by-play. $5,000 prize pool.

1975

Phil Arnold founds USAA. Official sanctioning body established.

1978

Brunswick exits. Video games gut the market. The sport goes underground.

1980s

Arnold & Robbins rent a barn in Minnesota. Newspaper ads. Donations. The circuit survives.

2015

AHPA launches. Colin Cummings, 18, wins his first World title — youngest champion ever.

2024

Baytown TX Worlds. Cummings wins his 9th title, losing only one game across the entire singles event.

2025

AAHL adds biometric heart rate monitors to live streams. The sport enters a new era.

USAA World RankingsUpdated Aug 2023
01Colin Cummings
9× World
02Jacob Weissman
1× World
03Pete Lippincott
04Avery Yebernetsky
05Jacob Munoz
1× World
06Austin Fernandes
07Vince Sauceda
08Billy Stubbs
09Brian Accrocco
2024 Worlds · Baytown TX
Players Competed128
Games Won by Cummings98%
Prize Pool (Singles)$1,000
Years of USAA Championships50+
Active Competitive Circuits
🇺🇸Houston, TX
🇺🇸Chicago, IL
🇺🇸N. Carolina
🇺🇸Boise, ID
🇪🇸Barcelona
🇷🇺St. Petersburg
🇨🇿Brno
🇷🇺Moscow
— Join the First Issue

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