Play your best 8 ball....by Phil Capelle

danquixote

danquixote

DanQuixote
Silver Member
This book would be a great addition to anyones pool library. Over 400 pages contain well thought out and well diagramed curriculums for any level of player.To those of you hoping for a more detailed review, I apologize. There are far too many chapters and my niche in life is not that of a professional writer. For fear that my lack of ability to do the book complete justice may hinder those considering its purchase....I will forego any attempt at detail.....suffice it to say....if you are able to find this book, my understanding is it is currently out of print, you will have no trouble reselling it.....though i seriously doubt any of you would let this book leave your hands. in closing I would like to quote an excerpt..
" If you approach learning eight ball like a college studentwith a well thought out plan of attack, you could learn everything in this book in perhaps five to seven years".....I find this honesty refreshing....no quick fix...no magic secrets that you will only find here......no promise of a dramatic improvement in your game overnight. Phil constantly reminds us that there is simply no substitute for practice.....and he outlines perfectly the steps to insure you practice sessions are fruitfull.......Dan
 
D

duckie

GregH
Silver Member
When I returned to playing pool about 6 years ago, this is one of the first books I bought to learn from. I read it for a bit and then put it away.

I happen to look in it the other day and started scanning through the book. The differnce this time is I did so after 6 years of alot of table time and games, something I didn't have when I first got the book.

What I realized now was how good this book is in simply, clearly and with good visuals explains how to play pool.

All areas of pool are covered. Shotmaking, position play, aiming, patterns, routes and more are discussed in clear, concise language.

All drawings are to scale and are easily understand.

A good book for your pool library.
 
Ratta

Ratta

Hearing the balls.....
Silver Member
It takes it s time to go through this book. But do yourself a favor and fight yourself through this book. A VERY strong book. For me the best about 8-ball by far.
 
acousticsguru

acousticsguru

player/instructor
Silver Member
It's the best book on 8-Ball that I've read, and I've read it from beginning to end. Like all good tutorials it's bound to be useless unless one puts things to practice. Up to intermediate level players will be occupied for weeks if not months if they don't just leaf through the pages. Having said that, I came away a little disappointed because I could not find a single thing I didn't already know. That may be excusable given I've been playing for 25 years, even so, I was hoping to learn something new and didn't. As to the writing, it's not overly didactic at all, on the contrary, albeit neither funny nor witty (e.g. à la George Fels), the descriptions are lucid without ever sounding patronizing or being boring. There are few mistakes (grammar, let alone orthography), maybe two or three content-wise, in other words, excellent proof-reading. The diagrams, in order to save space and paper, sometimes contain more than one example and/or steps within e.g. a succession of shots in a run-out, which can be mildly (but not very) confusing. What's lacking, at least from an instructor's perspective, is a chapter full of exercises/drills - maybe Capelle's practice book covers those (I have yet to look at it more closely)? All in all, recommended.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
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„J'ai gâché vingt ans de mes plus belles années au billard. Si c'était à refaire, je recommencerais.“ – Roger Conti
 
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