middleofnowhere said:

You covered more subjects then the players playing essentially "Break and first shot" by the breaking player. Honestly, while there is more money then in the past only the winner gets the big check.

If a player plays a bunch of tournaments and isn't first, he is lucky to make at the end of the year the takehome of an assistant manager of a fast food joint.

Second place was only $16,000. First got like 2 and 1/2 times the guy who came in second. Go down much further and the week is a break even or total loss.
I don't know what the weeks total attendance was, but at the final the seats looked pretty empty. People are not falling over themselves to come to pool the tournaments.

I am not sure there is any formula that can make pool much more then essentially (meaning you can't make a living), an amateur sport/game.

I live in a town with over 190,000 thousand people and there is not one pool room.
Years ago when I lived here there were not including bowling alley five pool rooms and I owned two of them. Pool now is almost all bar room play.

Back to the break, I like it with a rack and everything more random. What ever happens happens. In baseball today they don't even need the plate umpire. A computer can call perfect balls and strikes. I would not like to see that either.

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Agreed. I am also a huge baseball fan and I like umpires. Change doesnt always mean better in my opinion. I guess as a baseball purist, I like live umpires with the caveat of helping very important calls be correct....i.e. instant replay. But balls and strikes are balls and strikes called by an umpire. Some may argue that my position makes no sense but as I said, its just my opinion.

As to the prize money.....I see your point very much so. Hopefully, fingers crossed, we are headed in a direction where the break even point for the week is much deeper down the field and if you get top 16 or whatever, you actually came out ahead. Its the nature of the beat though as things stands right now. We can only hope things continue to grow based on all kinds of external factors.

The biggest thing is that sports and the millionaires who make up main stream sports are entertainers when its all said and done. Just because someone can throw a ball or hit a ball doesnt make them rich. But the fact that someone will pay their hard earned money to watch them perform that skill certainly makes them rich. Pro athletes, Taylor Swift and actors are essentially one in the same but at many different levels....they have a skill people will pay money to watch. Depends on your audience as to how much those people will pay. Love her or hate her, she has a product and people will pay a fortune to watch her and her product.

And unfortunately right now, pool players arent very high on that list because not a lot of people will pay to watch SVB run racks. I would. But even my family doesnt understand how or why I am so addicted to this sport.

brent375hh said:

I just bought one on Amazon for $120. It works fantastic with one exception.
The top does not really latch, it just uses friction. You want to hold it down for the 2 minutes that it runs, because it can and will pop open with 16 balls spinning 1000 rpm going all over the room.
I used an alcohol and Aramith solution to clean some very old Centennials I bought off ebay. After 3 runs they were gleaming like new. I am sure regular cleaning will not take more than 1 run in the future.

If it died, I would buy another. Cleaning balls by hand with my old hands hurts more than spending $120.

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can you send an amazon link of the one you purchased?

bump for a great cue

billiards_watch said:

It's a pool cue and anyone that is a good enough player can adapt.

Carbon, more or so, are made for beginners. Not saying advanced players can't play with them but it helps beginners with the learning curve.

I can spot a newbie based on the cue they are playing with. They're usually shooting with a carbon shaft and a measle cue ball.

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At first I thought feedback might just be unnecessary noise in the palm. But now I'm starting to think it is brain trigger.

Carbon is good for beginners but I see most newbies shooting with wood, and I've never seen one bring a measle ball to the hall. I don't even think beginners know what the point of a measle ball is.

Anyway, I actually think Pia is full of shat, but how can the worlds best couple shooters be ill advised. No doubt they are adjusting to a soft hit on rainy days or whatever the difference in humidity is in China. But somewhere along the way they said fk it. I don't have to adapt with Carbon Fiber.

BarenbruggeCues said:

Certainly a misconception. There are many quality cue techs that should be able to do a ring swap that is at the finished size.
I have done this many times in the past.

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I'm not sure if it is the "proper" method, but I've had good luck with turning the old shaft down to make a tenon and then boring a hole into the new shaft. Kept the original indexing, alignment and pin fit that way. The second pic was before final sanding/refinishing the shaft.

I've also done this on a CF shaft and had good luck, but in that case you it really only works if the CF tube OD and the rings are the same size.

fastone371 said:

I didnt hear his answer real well when asked about jumping up on the table in his post victory interview, did he say he hurt his knee when jumping off of the table??

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Yeah, Karl asked him why he didn't jump on the table and he said he hurt his leg/knee jumping off last time.

middleofnowhere said:

This is probably a bit off subject but you might have an insight. Does MR have anything in place that prevents players from cutting the money up? That's a lot of money in the case of this most recent tournament difference between first and second was $24,000.

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I think Matchroom has shown that they are seriously against players doing anything funny with prize money. Whether they have talked to the players specifically about "savers", I don't know.

Really hard to beat Jerry Briesath telling Mark Wilson "I want you to take two weeks off and then consider quitting altogether".

Not really a quote, but after that I'd pretty much have to go with everything Joe Rogan said while impersonating Earl.