j2pac said:

At their price point, I don't think the Thoroughbreds can be beat.

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Kjackxon said:

I’m back to clear up one last uncertainty.
Another cue tech removed the cushion pad from the botched install, flattened the ferrule, and installed a new cushion, followed by a new vault plate. The tip was sanded down and glued.
When I took a glance at the repair, I asked why would the vault plate sit over the tip cushion? My reasoning was that the vault plate was designed to fit over the ferrule. I was told that Predator no longer used a vault pads, and it doesn’t matter where the cushion ended. Then I really blew my cool when they told me that I had picked the order of placement.

Again, a tech who has access to, and after speaking with a Predator Rep, told me this. Needless to say, the sound of the hit has changed.

Although I have the BK 2 shaft, the following should still hold true.
“The Predator V-TEK Tip Silencer creates a stronger and more tactile gluing surface that protects the Vault Plate, while creating an audibly pleasing sound upon contact with the ball.”

Does the order of placement “really matter?”

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middleofnowhere said:

I just watched a match with Gabe Owen and Bob Jewett. From the 2019 US Open. On his second inning Mr. Jewett was reaching over a ball and called for the shot to be watched in case he fouled. Some people are very rule conscious.

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Bob Jewett said:

Sharivari has a good video discussing the shot and showing 8-first and 4-first shots. In each case the cue ball follows the ball it hit second. That is for shots that clearly hit one ball first.

A very general principle in physics says that as the incoming line of cue ball is very gradually changed from hitting one ball first to the other ball first, the final path of the cue ball will smoothly vary from one direction to the other. These in-between directions happen when the cue ball is in contact with the two balls simultaneously. The contacts are not instantaneous. They last about 0.2 milliseconds or 200 microseconds, or about a tenth as long as tip-ball contacts.

The "normal" situation is that the contact begins with one of the object balls, the cue ball and first object ball acquire their new speeds and directions, and then the cue ball leaves contact with the first ball. It travels a little distance and then contacts the second ball.

The unusual situation is when the cue ball is still in contact with the first ball when it hits the second. The two contacts overlap in time. This is pretty rare, because the duration of each contact is so short.

A reasonable way to decide which was first for overlapping contacts is to see which of the "normal" paths the cue ball is closer to. This requires you to know what the normal paths are. A very simple case is when shooting directly between two frozen object balls. If the cue ball comes perfectly straight back, you hit the balls simultaneously. If it goes even slightly to either side, that tells you which was struck first. I have seen the cue ball come back within a couple of degrees of straight back, but never perfectly straight back.

I think the positions of the balls for the shot in question was pretty complicated and it was not easy to predict the exact paths of the cue ball for various sequences of hit. Maybe a video review would have helped, but I doubt that the actual collisions would have been in separate frames. The frames are typically around 10 milliseconds apart and only very expensive equipment could see the actual ball-ball contacts.

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Icon of Sin said:

Heading up this afternoon... can someone confirm if the action room is still a thing... heard there wasnt much of one this year.

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ShootingArts said:

Efren had $200.000 on the line best I recall. When he reaches and shakes his shirt it is an indication his heart was beating like a triphammer! Mike was one of the few people with a winning record against Efren at the time. Efren was even nicknamed the bridesmaid for awhile because he came second to Mike so often. Mike has a mouth but he backed it up for years.

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smoochie said:

simultaneous is very rough and kind of impossible but lets entertain it, if you hit both balls at the same exact time - then if you got draw on the cueball then it would draw in between both balls going backward, and if you have follow then it would go tangent in between both balls exactly, provided you are coming straight behind both balls (Not the actual footage of the incident).

For the incident if he hit both of them at the same time i would guess with a draw it will come back exactly where it came from direction-wise. I could be wrong on this, but why do you want to know this tho...

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AtLarge said:

Apex tables were used for this event (at least for the main feature table) in 2022, 2023, 2024, and this year. The ARC was used only in 2025.

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ShootingArts said:

People, fair warning an almost totally off topic post about racing. Straightline, when I was racing dirt there was a track the owner tried mightily to make perfect, track and grounds. Just inside of turn one there was a small mudhole. My left front tire went into the mudhole every lap! The track owner asked me why I hit the mudhole every lap. I told him the truth, I just herded the car around the track, the car chose the exact path. I tried a few times staying out of the mudhole but the car must have been part pig, it liked running in the mudhole! I also ran snuggled up against the wall on the straights so I was using every bit of the track and a little more!

I told him I wouldn't be upset if he put a big tire or mound of dirt where the mudhole was at but as long as I could run there I had to. It was the fastest way around the track for my car.

As for contact, I have never been black flagged but I have caused the flagman to pick it up a handful of times. Mostly I preferred a polite nudge at exactly the wrong moment for the other car and plausible deniability!

OK, back to the regularly scheduled program!

I won't mention any names but anybody that could run 820 legal or not could run 833 if they had the balls of a bull gerbil!

Hu

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