Around the World
Seven spots around the three point arc. You and your opponent take it in turns to shoot from the spot you have reached. Sink it and you move to the next spot; miss and you stay where you are and the turn passes. First all the way round wins.
The shot
- Press on the aim box to choose where to throw the ball; on a phone the crosshair sits above your finger. Let go, and a marker sweeps along the power bar. Tap to stop it on the sweet spot.
- A good stop sends the ball close to where you aimed. Off the sweet spot the release scatters, and the further off, the wider. The scatter comes from the game's seed, so nobody, including the site, knows where a mistimed shot goes before it is thrown.
- Even a perfect stop is not a certainty. A hand is a hand, and the best release still misses sometimes, which is why the spots nearest the baseline are the ones people finish on.
- You can aim anywhere in the box, and the middle of the ring is not the best place. A ball that catches the BACK of the ring is thrown up and forward and can still drop through; one that catches the front is thrown away. Shooting a little deep is worth having, which is what coaches mean by shooting deep.
The basket
- The ring is ten feet up and forty-five centimetres across, the international dimensions, and the ball is a size 7.
- That leaves a little over a hand's width of clearance around the ball as it goes through, which is the whole difficulty of the game.
- The ball can hit the ring and drop in, rattle between the ring and the backboard before it settles, or bank in off the glass. Every one of those is a made shot and the log says which it was.
- The spots run from one baseline corner round to the other, on and just inside the three point arc. The corners are the shortest shots and the top of the key is the longest.
How a lap ends
- First player to sink the last spot wins the lap.
- A MISS COSTS YOU THE TURN AND NOTHING ELSE. You stay on the spot you were shooting from and your opponent shoots. You never go backwards, and there is nothing to lose by trying.
- There is a cap of forty shots each, so that a lap between two cold shooters cannot go on for ever. At the cap, whoever has reached the further spot wins, and level is a draw.
- A player who resigns or misses the move deadline loses the lap there and then.
Worth knowing before you start
- Every shot is one move deadline, for the player whose turn it is. Your opponent's clock does not start until you have thrown.
- The bot plays at one of three strengths, drawn per game from the seed. The three differ in one thing only: how well the bot stops the bar. They all aim the same, because the best aim was measured and it does not change with skill.
- Where every ball went follows from the aim, the power and the game's seed, which is published when the lap ends, so anybody can replay it and check every shot.
The court and the basket are the international dimensions, and the spots are on and just inside the three point arc. Nothing here is played for money, and the site takes none.
Around the World terms
- the lap
- the seven spots, in order, from one baseline corner round to the other
- a spot
- one of the seven places you shoot from; you stay on yours until you sink it
- sweet spot
- the band in the middle of the power bar where a stop sends the ball closest to where you aimed
- the ring
- the hoop itself, ten feet up; the ball can drop in off it as well as through it
- a bank
- a shot that goes in off the backboard, the glass behind the ring
- a rattle
- a ball that bounces between the ring and the backboard before it settles, in or out