JAM said:

James Rempe is the one who told me about the table height and trucks. I don't think it is an urban myth, mainly because he was alive and active in pool at the time when the height changed. I could be wrong, though. He's was recently at a pool room this week with Rodney Morris. I'll see if I can track him down and ask.

Photo credit: Clarky's Billiards in Scranton, PA, which I think is where he currently lives.

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JAM said:

In the early aughts, I was at a Joss NE 9-Ball Tour weekend tournament at Salt City Billiards in Syracuse, NY, before the fire, of course. There are a lot of Italians in this region of New York, and the owners of this room served Italian delicacies. I will never forget the homemade Tortellini soup. It was absolutely delicious.

There were a lot of first-class champs in attendance. The finals ended up being Jim Rempe versus Karen Corr. Corr defeated Rempe the weekend before in the finals, and so this was a little revenge match between the two of them, a friendly revenge but a revenge altogether.

During a break, I'm wolfing down some of this homemade Italian Tortellini soup, and much to my delight, Jim Rempe sits down at my table with me. I have heard many stories about Rempe, and in fact, in the '70s, Rempe's name was in all the headlines of the pool media. He traveled the world in an era when pool wasn't quite so mainstream elsewhere, and he even won a brand-new car playing pool. He did make a cameo appearance at Gene Hooker's 10-Ball Challenge in Atlantic City, which utilized the two-shot/push-out rules. The finals came down to Canadian Danny Hewitt and James Rempe in a tense hill-hill match, with Danny coming out on top.

Rempe told me he suffered from lower back pain, which is one reason he does not compete as often anymore. He said that when he was hitting 'em in his prime that the Gold Crowns and other pool tables were 2 inches higher than they are today, and when the table manufacturing companies tried to increase their profit margin, they decided to lower the height of pool tables by 2 inches, so they could fit one more table in the truck for deliveries. Rempe said when that happened, his back troubles began. He was dead serious, and I believe him.

Oh, meanwhile, back at the tournament, Jim Rempe got his revenge and beat Karen Corr! Keith McCready came in fourth place. He was happy to have a little extra jingle in his pockets, and I was elated to have experienced the ambrosial Italian cuisine of Salt City Billiards. The owners at that time were strong pool enthusiasts.

At any rate, this is just a little urban legend about a tall player that I thought I would add to the thread. Here is me and Keith standing outside in front of Salt City Billiards and a photo I took of Jim Rempe the same tournament at Salt City Billiards. Last photo is at the IPT King of the Hill event, December 2005, in Orlando. You can see how tall King James is compared to Keith, who is 5'10".

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Rusty in Montana said:

There are 3 different doors into and out of the house last winter 2 of them had snow drifts over 8' in front of them , then in the yard or driveway were drifts over 5' deep .

Even in town the streets were emergency travel only if you had a snowmobile , my sled was buried under 6'+ of snow ha ha !

It took nearly 3 days to clear the driveway of snow and get it piled up in the front yard , weather like that will teach you about stocking up on things that are needed on a regular basis , thankfully we didn't loose power !

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pt109 said:

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realkingcobra said:

The problem with those rails is that table was built long before Valley started mounting T-nuts in the rails and using machine bolts to secure the rails, and they were actually made out of Maple, not popular. There was another company called American Shuffle Board that made coin ops with the same maple hardwood and lag screws to mount them. They would be a direct fit if Penguin still makes them, but you need to pre-drill the screw holes first, or you'll split the rails. I've worked on a few of them over 40 years ago.

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sjm said:

Nice post. I think we like Chua for many of the same reasons.

Chua is certainly super-aggressive on offense and that, as you suggest, makes him great to watch. The exact same thing can be said of both Jayson Shaw and Naoyuki Oi, who wow you by going for everything. All three of them produce great theatre. You are right in suggesting that Chua takes on shots that the top two pass on, but that might possibly be because his defense/kick/jump skills are not as elite as they might be.

Chua, per your description. is not a truly complete player, while I'd rate someone like a Ko Ping Chung as super-elite at both offense and defense, which is why he has both a World 10ball and a US Open 9ball on his resume. Personally, I like KPC's game over Chua.

Still, Chua is a very special player. Maybe he'll shine at the upcoming World 9ball. That would make both of us happy.

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Texas Carom Club said:

but near 200 off the retail seems too good to be true

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billiards_watch said:

Nice.

I would personally lower them to narrow the light.

I'm assuming it lights up the entire room.

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Goody04 said:

Hey, I am looking at your project and had a few questions. Did you buy 2x4 parabolic louvers then cut them into 2x2 sections, or did you leave them intact. I was able to find 2x4 LED panels from Sunco that are able to produce up to 9000 lumens, do you think these will be sufficient?

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jbart65 said:

Being very familiar with statistical significance in my day job, I can assert quite confidently that a 12-point gap between Filler and Gorst, and a 12-point gap between Gorst and Chua, is statistically insignificant. Margin of error.

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