Because they are spot targets.
This is a strange one to me. I just never have this problem. In fact, I have difficulty activating the nudge. I actually have to hold my finger down and pretty forcefully slide it to get the nudge to work. I often can't seem to do it when I try to, let alone accidently nudge when I don't. Not discounting what you are saying, I'm just curious as to why our experiences would be so different with this function...
Just further to the physics, while I like the general feel of the ASK engine, I do think there is something fundamentally not right about how the tables play. I played a bunch of Blackbelt last night and then compared my experience to what I see in the one video of the table on youtube. What I notice is that there is (in the ASK version) a very pronounced tendency for certain things to happen the same way over and over again. I'm not sure how to explain it or account for it but its sort of like there's not enough "granularity" in terms of how the ball interacts with the table features. Just as an example on Blackbelt when you pull the plunger and shoot the ball, if you watch the video you'll see the ball ring up around the top to the (newly added in the game) one way gate and then bounce back and usually bounce off a couple of the little top bumper things before settling and dropping down through to the main area. There's a fair bit of randomness in terms of which of the four slots the ball drops through. In the game, it seems like no matter how hard you shoot the ball, it bounces off the one way gate and then drops down through the left-most slot almost every time. That sort of lack of variety is evident all over the table including how the ball comes off the flippers. It almost feels like theres only a handful of different angles that the ball can leave the flipper no matter how you attempt to aim it.
I guess what I'm saying is that the physics lack dynamics. There is a rigidity and a bit of a primitive quality to how the tables feel. To some extent that actually works as the tables are simple and somewhat primitive to begin with, but it ends up feeling like the tables aren't quite working properly and the physics don't feel convincing...
Yes, something is 'off' and I hope the physics get some more perfection to them. I bet this is the hardest part to get it right.