http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcueball.html
Sorry about the title, but you know me…
Question, one of the coin op tables at my local bowling alley will sometimes return another ball along with the cue. No predictable repeatability, tho. Is that a magnet ball or a big ball table? I seem to remembr the cue being slightly larger, but beer is often involved and I usually go to this neat little place in little Vietnam to play. That establishment keeps the table in immaculate condition and they are all regulation. (We also play cards and the bones there. It’s smokey and loud, and has a bar, what more could one ask for? )
Oh yeah, back to the question. The coin op tables… What do you think?
I suppose the table could be of either variety. Even if the playing surface is maintained quite well, dirt and chunks of chalk can become lodged in the return mechanism, thus causing faults. I suspect, however, that a table using the oversized cueball would be more susceptible that one employing a magnetic gizmo.
Mebbe ask the manager which type of cueball he’s buying?
According to my friend, who owns my favorite bar, her tables are the big-cue-ball kind, and they occasionally return a numbered ball. They also occasionally don’t return the cue ball. The reason for both of these problems is usually stuff that accidentally fell into the pocket. That’s chalk, cigarette butts, and GOK.
By the way, an oversize cue ball makes only a little difference in English (intentional cue ball spin,) but a player who tends to make a very hard, follow-English shot on the break will sometimes launch the cue ball across the room when it hits the numbered balls.
The bowling alley manager won’t talk to me anymore. I once asked him if he had 16 pound balls, and when he replied affirmatively, I made a juvenile pun at his expense. Live and learn.
The foreign matter idea fits my mind best. Without that, tho, I would assume the big ball table, because of a smaller ball slipping thru before the cue. Tho, I guess that could easily happen with the magnetised type, too…
I wish I could post some brilliant cite or observation or deduction, NCB, but I can offer nothing better than what UncleBeer already said. I too have had tables misbehave at times; on one table an occasional legally sunken ball would be returned. We even turned it into a game once - the suken ball that was returned became the “antimatter ball” - it was placed on the table at a random spot, and from that point on could not be touched by any ball during a shot, or else the shooter would lose the game. The problem was when you had 2 or 3 antimatter balls, it became impossible to make most shots…
From the staff report: “…some players allege that having a larger diameter cue ball throws off their shots and changes the dynamics of the game.”
I can assure you that this is definitely the case. Whilst I consider that I’m a reasonable pool player, I play most of my games on coin-op tables. On a English Pool table, the cue ball is usually smaller than the other balls - you can easily see the difference with a naked eye. This makes it much easier to impart backspin on the ball, since its smaller mass relative to the object ball means it has less forward momentum on impact than a ball the same size (not sure about the physics vocabulary here, but you know what I mean). Conversely, it is hard to make the cue ball follow through after impact by imparting topspin. Clearly when the cue ball is larger than the other balls, the situation is reversed.
When one is used to playing with a smaller cue ball, it is incredibly difficult to get any backspin at all on switching to a larger cue ball.
I’d never heard of or seen the magnetic ones before - sounds interesting, and seems to be the best compromise.
In this day of technology, can’t you use a regulation cue ball and have sensors that determine the color of the ball as it goes down the chute? You could also have a white cue ball mixed with dyes that shine under infrared or ultraviolet light, which would trigger the gates.
Also, how does the table actually separate the oversized cue ball and the other balls, if this is the method used? The larger ball might trigger a gate switch; but if a sizing hole was used, it seems the oversized cue ball would still tend to fall in and get stuck.
Do either of these methods mean that you could buy a box of cue balls, paint them, and play all day long with one coin drop? :eek:
Cost might be an issue with those excellent ideas, G. Most of the coin op tables I’ve seen look pretty cheap overall, and they’re sized smaller than a “real” table, which can be quite pricey.
Dead Cat, I presume that backspin refers to a shot where the cue ball not only stops when hitting another ball, but rebounds backwards somewhat? With regulation balls, this could be done by putting a true backspin on the balls, but with a smaller (and presumably lighter) cue ball, true backspin would not be necessary to get this effect. Your explanation concerning momentum is close enough for the mark; more to the point, for any given energy, the ball would have less momentum than a regulation ball. I think there would also be an effect from the point of contact being below the center of the object ball, but I’m not sure exactly how that would work, offhand.
And off the top of my head, one could also discriminate between balls by using differing moments of inertia (how tight the mass of the ball is into the center). Balls with different moments would roll down a ramp at different speeds, which could be arranged to have them drop into different slots at the bottom of the ramp. I’m not aware that this is actually used on any tables, though.
Gezellig, in my experience of smaller-size cue balls, all the balls go down the same chute, but at some point there is a hole large enough for the cue ball to drop through, but small enough that the others don’t - problems with this such as you mention are, perhaps surprisingly, rare.
Like the idea about buying a set of cue balls and painting them! However, at $4 each, you would have to play more than 60 games (if the table charges $1 per game), without getting caught, before you got your money’s worth :).
Chronos, yes, by “backspin” I meant the cueball comes backwards after impact as opposed to stopping dead. In Britain, these shots are distinguished by the use of the words “screw” for backspin and “stun” for stopping dead, but I wasn’t sure how common these terms are in the US. For example what you call “English” (sidespin on the cue ball) we would term “side”. Anyway, you’re right - if one puts true backspin on a smaller-size cue ball, it will come back much further than the same amount of backspin with a normal-size ball.
The pool tables that I’ve seen inside use undersize cue balls, and have an arrangement of two almost-parallel bars within the return-mechanism route. The colours roll down the length of the bars, onto another chute and into the holding line. The smaller cue ball falls through the widening gap between the bars. If you’re in a quiet bar (!) you can often hear the change of sound as the balls run through this section.
This is how the Valley (most popular) brand coin operated pool table works:
All balls come down the same chute. This chute has a rail. The rail is used to separate cue balls from the numbered balls.
Oversize cue balls are tipped over the rail to the return side of the chute.
Regulare size cue balls with a metal core are pulled over the rail by a magnet.
The table does not know when the cue ball is scratched. But if the rail it not positioned correctly the cue ball will not always return or the numbered balls will also be returned.
It could work, but the coin-op tables I’ve seen and played are strictly mechanical, with no electric parts.
I’m an engineer, and to me, adding color sensing devices would make the table more complicated than it needs to be and would be one more thing that could go wrong.
I’ve actually been playing a good deal of coin-op pool of late (at, like *NCB in at least one instance, a local bowling alley), and I just this weekend took close note of the cue ball upon seeing this thread. It appeared to have faint gray speckles upon close examination; is this a sign of a magnetic table?
Not to mention, all of a sudden, you’d need to plug the table into electricity. In and of itself, that’s more complication than the average bar would want to mess with.
