Great video and I did see something very subtle that I was looking for. I am going to watch it a few more times before I comment.
This is exactly what I am having a hard time accepting even though I can’t identify anything that would cause a different footprint. That was a real good video above on the topic. I wish they would create the same video using a guy with exception ball handling and comparing it to someone who has fair ball handling abilities. Let us watch it not knowing who was stroking the ball.
It seems obvious to me that it doesn’t matter. At this timescale, the stick is like an oil tanker. It is already moving at some velocity and no amount of human input can change how it imparts its impulse to the target.
How it got to that point is a different story, but that happened hundreds of milliseconds beforehand.
I was almost one or two posts earlier to add a disclaimer that I personally probably could not hand in a race to 100 with LSLGuy nor most likely take down Sam_Stone in 9-ball (I can wire the balls, but I don’t have the break for 9-ball that specialists at that game do).
I do have drilled into my brain leaving a break-ball, or, for eight-ball even, just cleaving the table keeping that in mind. 9-ball is quite a bit different. And, yes, size matters. (Of the table!).
I’d like to revise that (in-my-head) statement.
Meh, no, not really. I don’t have any bona fides, just a regular mook whose high run in 14.1 is in the several dozen. I can’t get multi-packs in 9-ball unless the other player breaks, makes, and doesn’t have a clean wire-up path for the rest of the rack.
Really? Good players are good at the game? Mind==blown! 
As to the first two paragraphs, total agreement. We’re of similar skill level and in total agreement.
Referring back to an earlier post of yours I didn’t have time to reply to whenit was current …
The 15th ball in 14.1 is as hard as the previous 5 put together. IMO it’s a tightrope with 14 steps on a taught steel cable between supports then 1 step on a floppy loose frayed Manila rope to the next support, then 14 steps on a taught steel cable, then one on a loose frayed Manila rope. Lather rinse repeat until you fall. Which you will. Just hope the other poor dumb bastard falls more often / first.
That game is hard on the nerves.
As to the last paragraph of the quoted post, I will offer another quibbling footnote to your good work for all our consideration.
Pros, armed with near-perfect stoke and aim, a small, high curvature, and hard tip, plus excellent shaft, and excellent chalking, can deliver significantly more draw / follow / English to a shot without miscuing.
That is a difference a tyro can see. e.g
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When I try to masse the ball goes nowhere and the cloth is torn. When they masse the ball goes lots of magic.
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When I try hard draw and English I miscue. When they hard raw and English the cue ball performs miracles.
The difference is down to delivering the stroke at the limit of cue-ball adhesion. Which requires an excellent tip, excellent chalking, and excellent awareness of where the limits of adhesion are. And the ability to reliably deliver a stroke right at those limits.
The vastly larger CEP of the amateur stroke against the cue ball at these high-offset shots puts the point of impact half the time too far off center and in the miscue zone. Bad noises and apeshit cue ball motion ensues every time. Game over against somebody who’s good.
And the other half of the time the cue impacts the cue ball in the “Not enough to achieve to goal” zone. The cue ball wanders generally towards the target but the shooter’s total intent is not reflected in the action. They might make that shot. Even if they do, they probably can’t recover to run the remaining table. Game over against a skilled opponent.
The conclusion of the amateur in either case is it’s all magic and mirrors.
It’s not. It’s really not. If the amateur could have good tools well-prepared and deliver the impact at, but not beyond, the friction limit they’d kill it to. But they can’t, and they can’t see the difference between what they’re doing and what they’re trying to do.
Watch an hours’ YouTubes of folks drifting cars. It’s magic. Watch an hour of epic fails of guys trying to drift and instead hitting streetlights, bridges, and other cars. It’s painful. The difference is not the cars, nor the roads, nor the tires. It’s knowing what to do when to very tight tolerances. And a smidgen of equipment prep at the extreme margins. You can watch guys drift 1970s conversion vans on narrow tires through 3-revese slaloms at speed followed by Maserati’s wrapping themselves around oak trees. Skill counts for far more than does equipment.
Well that’s just a matter of addressing the CB correctly, and identifying the breakball early and clearing the rest of the table! Same as leaving the 8 in a good position in 8-ball, doing the same with the “solids” or “stripes,” no?!
So, the OP’s question is solved, AFAICT.
9-ball’s different…mostly…more cueball movement than a good 14.1 player, or 8-ball player, would tolerate, unless he or she were reckless.
I have a crazy fantasy in my head of making a robot computer machine to make an initial break of 15 balls in the game of 14.1. I have a suspcion that machine would make the “classic” perfect initial break pretty close to 100%.
However, as a sop to the OP, real people starting a game of 14.1 somehow always seem to screw up a tiny bit. Don’t know why.
If it needs explaining, 14.1 is a call-pocket game, including all break shots, and, well…I don’t know…look it up or something. The initial break of 15 can’t foul…must drive two balls to the rail…&c&c.
The break is what drove me away from straight pool. I actually had quit playing pool (9 ball) almost 50 years ago. Looking to get back into it (8 ball leagues) I am relatively happy with my stroke and position play but my shot making ability is in the toilet. 1 pocket, a game I never really learned seems to be popular with older guys. I may look into that but after watching some videos on it I suspect the learning curve may be longer than I have to offer to the game.
I don’t blame you one bit! I think about 80% of my practice time at the table is spent working out break shots (one break ball + the 14-ball rack). Even the first break at all 15 balls…yes, it’s very mechanical to make the “textbook” break…but if one ever needs an absolutely perfect stroke, it’s there.
TBH, I can’t even think about one-pocket without my mind exploding. To my mind, it’s just such a different game than 8-ball, 9-ball/10-ball (each of which are themselves are quite different) that I feel there’s no room left in my head to really explore it. I don’t think I know anyone who plays it!
Yeah, I can understand having other strengths than shot-making…it’s not everything! Maybe especially in 8-ball, and even more especially on a 7-foot bar table, where everything can get crowded in a hurry, and maybe even in some clusters that might appeal to the puzzle-solver in certain players. If you know how to play safes and have good cue ball control, that could be arguably just as game-winning. I know some people make fun of APA leagues, but I’ll give them that their handicapping system seems very fair and more involved/evolved than, say, a BCA league. The people I know who play in 8-ball APA leagues seem to have fun, at any rate, and there can certainly be very strong players who play in that world.
To be taken with a large grain of salt: I have no doubt LSLGuy was/is way more of a 14.1 player than I’ll ever be, and it wouldn’t take much for someone who really focused all their energies on 9-ball to make me look like a fool. Sam_Stone could no doubt take me down without much effort, as I’m sure you could have “back in the day,” and very probably now as well.
I’m just in love with the table and the action, in most of its forms. I’m a strong player in my tiny little circle of acquaintances, but not at all a contender even in my medium-sized city for much of anything.
(Sorry about the double post…missed the edit window).
Nah, I make no claim as to my current skill level. I’d probably consider a successful game one in which I didn’t put someone’s eye out with the cuestick.
I set up a few racks of 14.1 the other day, and managed to run a big 7 balls without a miss right out of the gate. Once I got to the end of a rack, made a successful break, then missed on my next shot. I don’t think I’m much of a threat to anyone right now.
For straight pool learning, about 20 years ago I bought a VHS tape of Mike Sigel explaining his strategy, It’s awesome. He talks a lot a out developing the break shot, the spin to put on the cueball for various break locations so you don’t bury the cueball in the pack by accident or something, and other strategies. Then he runs a bunch of racks while talking through his decisions for every shot. It helped me a lot.
I haven’t played serious pool for probably 15 years. I have a table at home and I knock the balls around once in a while, and that’s about it.
I love one-pocket. But I never play it, because players need to be at a certain skill level before the games becomes fun, and I have no one to play with who knows the game and can play to a minimum atandard required. Maybe I can’t either, but I have fun tryinng.
I won’t say this is an “old” thread, nor that I have anything important to say.
However, I noticed something very curious when reading The Color of Money the other day.
Generally, Tevis’s descriptions of the layout of a given table and shots taken are really very good.
However, he does, very pointedly, describe Fast Eddie’s stroke (as he’s learning 8-ball, then moving “up” to 9-ball, in particular) at times as including a “little extra wrist action” or similar.
A few times, at least. No, I’m a bit lazy to find exact quotes.
That leads me to think that as recent as 1984, when the book was published, there were some remnants of this kind of thinking still floating around.
Now, you won’t find it in Phil Capelle’s books, or in Dr. Dave’s big book or his time-lapse videos, or in Robert Byrne’s stuff.
But the notion does seem to have at least some history.
Anyway, I found that finding curious.
Interesting, I am going to go back and watch it again. It does apply to the topic.
In the book, not the movie.
The notion that special wrist action is a secret technique is still around. It’s one more thing that prevents weak players from getting better.
It is really interesting…but as someone who’s seen the movie a million times and just read the book once…you won’t find it in the movie!
But, I wouldn’t discourage you from watching the very good movie again!
Says the guy who purposely bought some gradient-tint oversized prescription sunglasses because he thought Paul Newman made them look cool (and, actually, they are just perfect for me when playing pool…nothing blocking the sightline…lighter at the bottom so you don’t trip over things), and owns a black T-shirt that says “VINCE” in white block letters!
If someone was going to make an arguement for something happening in the shooters arm there is only a very narrow spot that would come into the argument. If the cue is in contact with the cue ball for .001 of a second at a speed of 10 fps that would come out to about .375 of an inch travel. So if someone agrees there is a difference it would have to take place during that brief contact time which is more than zero.
I have no idea what you are trying to say. After all the evidence in this thread, are you still claiming that wrist action helps add extra english to the ball?
There is no difference. Wrist action doesn’t matter.
Why are you so stuck on writs action? If you don’t believe there is a difference in the hit that would eliminate you from this particular topic. I was very specific in my last post, can you address it as it was written?
Well, the only way I can see to interpret your post…which I’m not 100% sure I understand…is a last tiny adjustment made by the shooter to compensate for swerve or deflection. I suppose one could do it with the wrist, but the wrist (IMHO) is relatively slow compared to very quick lateral forearm motion.
The only things that come to mind are analogies drawn from music technique, at the guitar (let’s say at the picking/fingerpicking side of things), or at the keyboards, where wrist action is ideally kept to a minimum, in favor of the larger, faster motions possible using the shoulders and the whole complex of muscles in the arm.
Those are just WAGs at analogies, from things I sort of remember from a long time ago. Haven’t cracked open Grey’s Anatomy in quite a while, you know!
For me, it’s an aspect to consider, though: as in, it seems instructive to me, but YMMV.
There have been a number of interesting post/threads at azbilliards where some, presumably, B players at least, where analogies have been drawn between firearm/archery target practice. That’s maybe worth exploring, but I don’t know enough about these topics to say if the analogies are helpful or obscure things.
One thing I heard that might make sense is the simple answer acceleration. Maybe a pro tends to accelerate more into a shot than say a b player. I am just convinced that there is a difference in the actual hit.
Sam, you are actually one of my favorite posters. I always enjoy your logic and objectivity, so please don’t take anything I say here personal.