Question about John Schmidt Shot

Dan White

Dan White

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Steve recently posted up a 127 ball run by John Schmidt here (thanks to both!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdX8HNm806I&feature=youtu.be

I'm making a separate thread because this is really about 1 shot, not the run in general. At about 43:00 into the video, John cuts the 14 into the side and sends the cue ball 2 rails into a cluster. What attracted my attention is that John was kind of chatting before this shot, and didn't seem to require much thought about how to get into the cluster. I've diagrammed it in Cuetable below. I don't know if John is online lately, or if willing to answer questions, but I'll try anyway. See questions below Cuetable:

12216301924.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

I'm going to pose these questions to John, but if he (understandably) doesn't reply, of course it's open for anyone to comment.

1. Were you trying to hit the 12 square on as you did, or were you happy to just hit the bottom row of 12-8-11 since you had the 9 and 15 there?

2. It seemed like you didn't need to think much to execute this shot - almost like an automatic shot for you. You contacted the first rail at about 2.5 diamonds. I know you shoot a bazillion balls, but do the diamonds help you know that you are going to hit that 12 from where the 14 is? In other words are you playing purely by feel, or is this a sort of "canned shot," meaning that if you hit the first rail in a certain shot, you are sure to send the cue ball through the center of the rack area?

I have certain shots that I know are automatic, but they aren't always obvious as being so. This looked like one of those shots for John, so I thought I'd ask.

Thanks for any comments!
 
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Bob Jewett

Bob Jewett

AZB Osmium Member
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Please remove the Wei table (CueTable) diagram. It makes my browser crash. It's sad that the functionality of it seems to have been disabled for many people.

What does work is for you to format a shot on CueTable -- if you can use it at all -- and do a screen capture and post the image.

The shot in question is time-linked here: http://youtu.be/vdX8HNm806I?t=42m41s
 
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Dan White

Dan White

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Bob Jewett said:
Please remove the Wei table (CueTable) diagram. It makes my browser crash. It's sad that the functionality of it seems to have been disabled for many people.

What does work is for you to format a shot on CueTable -- if you can use it at all -- and do a screen capture and post the image.

The shot in question is time-linked here: http://youtu.be/vdX8HNm806I?t=42m41s
Click to expand...

Yeah, I couldn't even see the Cuetable in AZ after posting it. It'd be nice if they could fix that. Only took me an hour to figure out how to post a screen cap. :rolleyes: Oh, and thanks for posting that time-stamped video. That's great! (makes the Cuetable unnecessary).
 
DogsPlayingPool

DogsPlayingPool

"What's in your wallet?"
Silver Member
Great idea on the screen capture. I can't stand the cue table diagrams either, for some reason my scroll function doesn't work when there's one somewhere on the page.
 
acousticsguru

acousticsguru

player/instructor
Silver Member
Dan White said:
Steve recently posted up a 127 ball run by John Schmidt here (thanks to both!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdX8HNm806I&feature=youtu.be

I'm making a separate thread because this is really about 1 shot, not the run in general. At about 43:00 into the video, John cuts the 14 into the side and sends the cue ball 2 rails into a cluster. What attracted my attention is that John was kind of chatting before this shot, and didn't seem to require much thought about how to get into the cluster. I've diagrammed it in Cuetable below. I don't know if John is online lately, or if willing to answer questions, but I'll try anyway. See questions below Cuetable:

12216301924.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

I'm going to pose these questions to John, but if he (understandably) doesn't reply, of course it's open for anyone to comment.

1. Were you trying to hit the 12 square on as you did, or were you happy to just hit the bottom row of 12-8-11 since you had the 9 and 15 there?

2. It seemed like you didn't need to think much to execute this shot - almost like an automatic shot for you. You contacted the first rail at about 2.5 diamonds. I know you shoot a bazillion balls, but do the diamonds help you know that you are going to hit that 12 from where the 14 is? In other words are you playing purely by feel, or is this a sort of "canned shot," meaning that if you hit the first rail in a certain shot, you are sure to send the cue ball through the center of the rack area?

I have certain shots that I know are automatic, but they aren't always obvious as being so. This looked like one of those shots for John, so I thought I'd ask.

Thanks for any comments!
Click to expand...

That's a shot I like and will shoot anytime, especially given safety valve balls at the bottom of the stack - you forgot to include the 13 near the side rail! This is important because if one shoots this shot a gazillion times, one is bound to figure out that it's almost impossible to miss the corner ball (here the 12, next to the money ball spot) on the inside - there's a much greater chance of drifting over to the side rail hitting it on the side of the 8, or miss the 12 altogether and hit the 8 or 11, hitting the shot with speed, again drifting to the side rail and out (that's where the 13 comes into play as a likely safety valve). What John does there is is hit the shot medium-slow and with precision to give himself the best chance of coming away with a break shot to open up the next rack (instead of blasting that mere handful of balls). That takes guts because sometimes (admittedly rarely), especially on new cloth and hitting the 12 right on the nose, the cue ball may drift right through (all it takes is a half-rotation) to where the 12 was positioned before, and freeze against one of the other balls.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
_________________

„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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3andstop

3andstop

Focus
Silver Member
On the other hand, set up that shot with the two balls, place the rack on the table and try to miss it. :) that might be harder to do.
 
sjm

sjm

Older and Wiser
Silver Member
Great shot, as expected, by John. I'd suggest that running into the eight would be just slightly preferable to running into the twelve. That said, John had a bit of a funny angle on the fourteen in which he had to hit a softish outside english draw, and this is a tough shot in which to control whitey with perfect precision. John made a really nice stroke here and showed us how it's done.

The two railer off a shot in the side to open clusters is a shot you need to have in your 14.1 bag of tricks. Nice thread.
 
Dan White

Dan White

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
sjm said:
Great shot, as expected, by John. I'd suggest that running into the eight would be just slightly preferable to running into the twelve. That said, John had a bit of a funny angle on the fourteen in which he had to hit a softish outside english draw, and this is a tough shot in which to control whitey with perfect precision. John made a really nice stroke here and showed us how it's done.

The two railer off a shot in the side to open clusters is a shot you need to have in your 14.1 bag of tricks. Nice thread.
Click to expand...

John was nonchalant enough that I wondered if this was in his bag of tricks, as in something like "if the object ball is less than a diamond from the rail then hitting the second diamond with the cue ball will put you in the middle of the rack, adjust as necessary."
 
M

markgw

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Dan White said:
Steve recently posted up a 127 ball run by John Schmidt here (thanks to both!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdX8HNm806I&feature=youtu.be

I'm making a separate thread because this is really about 1 shot, not the run in general. At about 43:00 into the video, John cuts the 14 into the side and sends the cue ball 2 rails into a cluster. What attracted my attention is that John was kind of chatting before this shot, and didn't seem to require much thought about how to get into the cluster. I've diagrammed it in Cuetable below. I don't know if John is online lately, or if willing to answer questions, but I'll try anyway. See questions below Cuetable:

12216301924.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

I'm going to pose these questions to John, but if he (understandably) doesn't reply, of course it's open for anyone to comment.

1. Were you trying to hit the 12 square on as you did, or were you happy to just hit the bottom row of 12-8-11 since you had the 9 and 15 there?

2. It seemed like you didn't need to think much to execute this shot - almost like an automatic shot for you. You contacted the first rail at about 2.5 diamonds. I know you shoot a bazillion balls, but do the diamonds help you know that you are going to hit that 12 from where the 14 is? In other words are you playing purely by feel, or is this a sort of "canned shot," meaning that if you hit the first rail in a certain shot, you are sure to send the cue ball through the center of the rack area?

I have certain shots that I know are automatic, but they aren't always obvious as being so. This looked like one of those shots for John, so I thought I'd ask.

Thanks for any comments!
Click to expand...

Don't want to hijack this incredible thread but I just wanted to mention this. I watched John play Parica in 1 pocket for 5 hours the other night and he came with a couple of incredibly creative position shots. I was trying to call what he was going to do from the rail and I was dogging it majorly!! That was an incredible treat to witiness and he set up the shot again when the match was over I guess because of how sikkk it really was"-). I wish I knew how to diagram it. Scott Frost would probably want that one for his play book.....
 
lfigueroa

lfigueroa

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I am no JS, but, IMO, at a certain point this is one of those shots you gain enough familiarity with that you don't sweat it too much. Not much different than having to go to the end rail from various angles to gain position on a side of the rack break shot.

While the diamonds are reference points, I think what happens is that you just get to a point where you know to use the right speed and spin to gain the right contact point/angle on the first rail to come off right the second rail. You can't hit too it too hard or you go too far up the first rail and you need the right amount of spin coming off the second rail to go into the back of the rack. I doubt John picked out the corner ball, rather, he was going into the rails at the right speed and spin to ensure he'd hit the back of the rack, somewhere.

Lou Figueroa
 
Dan White

Dan White

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
lfigueroa said:
I am no JS, but, IMO, at a certain point this is one of those shots you gain enough familiarity with that you don't sweat it too much. Not much different than having to go to the end rail from various angles to gain position on a side of the rack break shot.
Click to expand...

You're probably right about that. On the end rail shot you mention at least you can look at a half ball hit 30 degree angle, or a 90 degree stun angle and get a feel for your starting point. I wondered if there were a similar thing going on here. Maybe you 1-p players have these 2 rail kicks down to a science?
 
alstl

alstl

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
In Irving Cranes 150 and out vs Balsis he uses a similar shot for his break shot, no insurance ball. Don't have time to find it right now, I'll post a link later when I have time to find it.
 
lfigueroa

lfigueroa

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Dan White said:
You're probably right about that. On the end rail shot you mention at least you can look at a half ball hit 30 degree angle, or a 90 degree stun angle and get a feel for your starting point. I wondered if there were a similar thing going on here. Maybe you 1-p players have these 2 rail kicks down to a science?
Click to expand...

No, no, no. At break shot speed it has nothing to do with 1pocket -- it is totally a 14.1 shot.

Lou Figueroa
 
alstl

alstl

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Dan White

Dan White

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
alstl said:
Here, 4:20 mark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udCgvbO34nYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udCgvbO34nY



My favorite shot of the run here at the 9:30 mark. I didn't see this coming but he played it this way. Very creative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4aldfgdQAU
Click to expand...

It's amazing that I mention a shot made by John Schmidt, and somebody finds a similar shot from 45 years earlier! This internet thing might just catch on yet.

BTW, why is your favorite shot at the 9:30 mark? Are you referring to the combination on the 9 in the corner? To me this looked like a fairly routine shot. It's just a matter of whether you can judge the proper amount of throw needed, if any.
 
alstl

alstl

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Dan White said:
It's amazing that I mention a shot made by John Schmidt, and somebody finds a similar shot from 45 years earlier! This internet thing might just catch on yet.

BTW, why is your favorite shot at the 9:30 mark? Are you referring to the combination on the 9 in the corner? To me this looked like a fairly routine shot. It's just a matter of whether you can judge the proper amount of throw needed, if any.
Click to expand...

Because he came off the rail and bumped the first ball toward the side pocket perfectly. A lot of people would have drawn the ball and played it in the same pocket.

Good shot to have in your arsenal.
 
Dan White

Dan White

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
alstl said:
Because he came off the rail and bumped the first ball toward the side pocket perfectly. A lot of people would have drawn the ball and played it in the same pocket.

Good shot to have in your arsenal.
Click to expand...

I thought I replied to this post, but I don't see it. Anyway, I completely missed that little bump you mention. It was interesting he chose to do that rather than draw back. I guess he didn't want the first ball to squirt away if he hit harder with draw? It seems he took some risk there, but maybe not as much as I think. It just looks like a touchy shot.

Thanks.
 
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