I'm reverse-engineering Nerual. He (they?) have a very cool algorithm. First of all they 100% mimic your hits - speed and angle. They'll send you the puck back how it arrived. They'll serve exactly how you served first. And finally, they seem to have a "magic band" where they guess (or look into the matrix) the puck's arrival point. The only way to avoid this magic positioning is to send a huge hit, so fast the puck's Y coordinate goes from "too far" to "too close"... And hope their standard movement speed is too slow to reach it - otherwise, you're getting the same rocket right back at you.
Demo in the screencast of the Mac version: