Yes, I was referring to the US and no, I don't know of any other organizations that are promoting 14.1 events other than poolrooms.
1 Reason For All The 100 Ball Runs
- Thread starter Johnnyt
- Start date
Yes, I was referring to the US and no, I don't know of any other organizations that are promoting 14.1 events other than poolrooms.
I Guess Mosconi's 526 shouldnt stand
Mosconi set the world record by running 526 consecutive balls without a miss during a straight pool exhibition in Springfield, Ohio on March 19–20, 1954. To this day the record has not been toppled and many speculate it may never be bested.[10][11] A handwritten and notarized affidavit[12] with the signatures of more than 35 eyewitnesses exists as proof of this feat.
The record was set on a 4 × 8 foot Brunswick table with 5 1/4 inch corner pockets at the East High Billiard Club.
Mosconi set the world record by running 526 consecutive balls without a miss during a straight pool exhibition in Springfield, Ohio on March 19–20, 1954. To this day the record has not been toppled and many speculate it may never be bested.[10][11] A handwritten and notarized affidavit[12] with the signatures of more than 35 eyewitnesses exists as proof of this feat.
The record was set on a 4 × 8 foot Brunswick table with 5 1/4 inch corner pockets at the East High Billiard Club.
I agree with this on so many levels although to be clear, I think a newly clothed Diamond is ideal for 14.1 tournament competition. Once the cloth gets a couple months of use, those tables can play pretty tight. With the equipment they're currently using, and the relatively short games, it's practically a coin-flip in each match.
Those would include the high run challenges and the Accu-stats invitationals.
Isn't that what fans want to see vs banging balls into the rails.
you didnt read the rest-Apparently 4 7/8-5 1/8 has not been the standard in the rules for a while. If 5 & 1/4 wasn't allowed in 1954 by the rules of the time then right-that shouldnt be a record for pool.
I was not playing in 1954, i was only 3 yrsold !
But when Mosconi made his record run I can imagine the cloth being a very nappy type
and the balls maybe the old clay balls !
Under those conditions maybe the bigger pockets were actually needed.
Just a speculation here.
Any thoughts by our senior members who can remember !
:groucho:
But when Mosconi made his record run I can imagine the cloth being a very nappy type
and the balls maybe the old clay balls !
Under those conditions maybe the bigger pockets were actually needed.
Just a speculation here.
Any thoughts by our senior members who can remember !
:groucho:
I'm actually disappointed you would regard the high run challenges as a legitimate 14.1 event. I think it's great what Steve Kurtz and Charlie Eames do with very limited resources but that's not real 14.1. It's a high-run challenge using 14.1 rules.
The Accu-Stats invitational is also another incredible idea by Pat Fleming and one I hope to see continued but it's limited to a 6-player field. It's Fleming's show and he can run it as he sees fit but I wouldn't regard this as another opportunity for the hundreds of 14.1 players capable of running 100+ to make a little money.
My original point, sadly lost in this discussion about semantics, was that the only thing any 14.1 fan should hope for is that there are more 14.1 tournaments. Complaining about table-size when the opportunities to compete in 14.1 are so extremely limited is silly.
I believe on the stream they said it is Championship Tour Edition.
But in most of the high-run challenges, they use the high-run portion as a qualifier for a true 14.1 tournament (although with a small field and, perhaps, just single elimination). Unfortunately, a couple of those "tournaments" have not been run to full completion.
Yes, the few 100's so far have been on the GC's. But the streaming table (Olhausen) has yielded some good runs as well:
Appleton 98 & out
Deuel 92 and 45
Robles 55
Hatch 40
Can 40 and 49
Immonen 51
Hohmann 41, 42, and 43
Eckert 43
Bustamante 66
Based on that picture, it looks to me like the mouth of that pocket (measured between cushion noses) is about 5.1".
I agree.
I knew they were buckets, but I got to see just how big they are after the end of Day 1 activities, when JA and Shaw were messing around on the TV table. Someone had placed two balls side-by-side in the lower right corner pocket, and they were WAY down deep in the throat of the pocket.
Here's a shot of the same ball setup, only on my table (which I have measured very carefully to have 5" pockets).
Notice the typical Olhausen pocket facing angles as a well. Probably 143º as opposed to 141º for Diamonds. Pockets with that much flare spit out hard hit balls, balls that have their centers hit the facing well inside of the points but rattle out anyway. During his match with Eckert, SVB has a real heartbreaking rattle on a hard hit ball that ended a nice run and jarred his confidence. It looked like that ball should have gone to me. I see the same thing happen to me all day long on my table. It just doesn't happen to me on the "tighter" Diamond pockets at my local room.
Attachments
So, the 100 ball runs were all on the the tighter GC's, while the TV table - with it's obviously ginormous pockets - had runs mainly in the 40s and 50s. Interesting.
The cut of those pockets absolutely affected the outcome of this event.
Hated Olhausens since forever because of the way legitimately struck balls will jar for no reason.
I remember when people were arguing about TAR's choice of rails and pockets,
and a lot of people said "1 miter degree isn't going to make a big difference".
I'm becoming convinced those little things are huge. That pocket cut
makes those tables play worse than a diamond or GC or even a gandy.
There's also something about the rails that causes this... they're softer and squishier
at the facings. This causes the ball to sink in and then rebound more towards the other facing,
rather than towards the hole.
I appreciate them sponsoring pool, Olhausen doesn't make a bad table otherwise,
but they've been making pockets wrong for years and don't seem to be aware of this
or making any effort to fix it.
Hated Olhausens since forever because of the way legitimately struck balls will jar for no reason.
I remember when people were arguing about TAR's choice of rails and pockets,
and a lot of people said "1 miter degree isn't going to make a big difference".
I'm becoming convinced those little things are huge. That pocket cut
makes those tables play worse than a diamond or GC or even a gandy.
There's also something about the rails that causes this... they're softer and squishier
at the facings. This causes the ball to sink in and then rebound more towards the other facing,
rather than towards the hole.
I appreciate them sponsoring pool, Olhausen doesn't make a bad table otherwise,
but they've been making pockets wrong for years and don't seem to be aware of this
or making any effort to fix it.
First of all, let me say that I have not been watching the current tournament, but I did spend part of last week watching the Accu-Stats Make It Happen 14.1 event. I am a huge 14.1 fan. About the only pool I watch is one-pocket, 14.1, and bank pool when the game is down to one or two balls on the table. As soon as the players start shooting the balls in numerical order, my interest wanes.
1. What many people see as a disadvantage in straight pool, I see as an attraction. I refer to the fact that at any time, including the break, one player is in danger of never getting to the table again, or even at all. Straight pool is sudden death from the lag. Who doesn’t like sudden death? I watch the eighth and ninth innings of baseball games on TV, not the first three.
2. You want slightly larger pockets for straight pool so that there can be high runs because of what I said in #1.
3. In the old days (and, Oldzilla, if you were only three years old in 1954 you are a mere child), but, as I was saying, in the old days players would frequently shoot a ball from the rack area up into one of the two top corner pockets. Mosconi did it all the time. That frequently simplified a rack so that the players could play stop ball position to the key ball and break ball. No one does it now because the pockets are so tight. The result is that many racks have to be played out with fairly complex patterns with a good deal of movement of the cue ball.
4. Straight pool on a 5 x 10 looks different. Rarely can you play stop ball position or just nip a cue ball to tip it into position. You have to roll into position much more often than on a 4.5 x 9.
5. I’m not sure what we see played right now should even be called 14.1. I haven’t seen how the Champion cloth plays, but on the Simonis close-to-billiard-speed cloth that the game is now played on, the racks open much more than they used to. Only five or six times in my life, playing for fun, have I tried to do what Thorsten Hohmann commonly does when he has a break shot on which he is using draw: draw the cue ball off the rack all the way up to the cushion at the head of the table and bounce it off that cushion back to the middle of the table with the balls going all over creation. As Jack Colavita used to say, the LAST THING you want in straight pool is a break that sends the balls all over the table.
6. I’m all for a time limit in pool, but it should not be “zero-tolerance” (administrative speak for “I have a brain but I’m not going to use it.”) The referee should be able to declare that certain situations in pool, and especially straight pool and one-pocket, are peculiarly strategic and therefore the time limit will be either suspended entirely or greatly extended. The shot after the break and safety battles would be such situations. I remember seeing a straight pool match between Crane and Lassiter in which they probably had a ball-per-inning average of about 5 or 6, but the match was extraordinarily exciting. Safety battles can be fun too!
7. What is this thing with cleaning the balls? Is something wrong with the chalk?
1. What many people see as a disadvantage in straight pool, I see as an attraction. I refer to the fact that at any time, including the break, one player is in danger of never getting to the table again, or even at all. Straight pool is sudden death from the lag. Who doesn’t like sudden death? I watch the eighth and ninth innings of baseball games on TV, not the first three.
2. You want slightly larger pockets for straight pool so that there can be high runs because of what I said in #1.
3. In the old days (and, Oldzilla, if you were only three years old in 1954 you are a mere child), but, as I was saying, in the old days players would frequently shoot a ball from the rack area up into one of the two top corner pockets. Mosconi did it all the time. That frequently simplified a rack so that the players could play stop ball position to the key ball and break ball. No one does it now because the pockets are so tight. The result is that many racks have to be played out with fairly complex patterns with a good deal of movement of the cue ball.
4. Straight pool on a 5 x 10 looks different. Rarely can you play stop ball position or just nip a cue ball to tip it into position. You have to roll into position much more often than on a 4.5 x 9.
5. I’m not sure what we see played right now should even be called 14.1. I haven’t seen how the Champion cloth plays, but on the Simonis close-to-billiard-speed cloth that the game is now played on, the racks open much more than they used to. Only five or six times in my life, playing for fun, have I tried to do what Thorsten Hohmann commonly does when he has a break shot on which he is using draw: draw the cue ball off the rack all the way up to the cushion at the head of the table and bounce it off that cushion back to the middle of the table with the balls going all over creation. As Jack Colavita used to say, the LAST THING you want in straight pool is a break that sends the balls all over the table.
6. I’m all for a time limit in pool, but it should not be “zero-tolerance” (administrative speak for “I have a brain but I’m not going to use it.”) The referee should be able to declare that certain situations in pool, and especially straight pool and one-pocket, are peculiarly strategic and therefore the time limit will be either suspended entirely or greatly extended. The shot after the break and safety battles would be such situations. I remember seeing a straight pool match between Crane and Lassiter in which they probably had a ball-per-inning average of about 5 or 6, but the match was extraordinarily exciting. Safety battles can be fun too!
7. What is this thing with cleaning the balls? Is something wrong with the chalk?