7Baller said:

Niels Feijen had a tip come off during a tournament not that long ago. Switched shafts but had never played with the new shaft and so the tip hadn’t been played in and played completely different. He struggled to make a ball and lost the match. Said it was a lesson learned.

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Good point. Given that the top pros get all their shafts and tips for free, it would make sense for them to keep a “tournament ready” back up shaft - with the tip played in just how they like it.

SVB did a “what’s in the case” segment on Karl’s YouTube channel and I could not believe how many back up shafts he had in his case. Also had multiple break shafts with different tips (super hard for 10b and more responsive for the 9b cut break).

Niels Feijen had a tip come off during a tournament not that long ago. Switched shafts but had never played with the new shaft and so the tip hadn’t been played in and played completely different. He struggled to make a ball and lost the match. Said it was a lesson learned.

Chili Palmer said:

I'm amazed at how the Filipinos can come here and play in silence.

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I may have told this story before, but I remember watching a live stream of a major event held in a casino or convention center. Might have the International Open.

Alex Pagulayan was playing another Filipino pro on the stream and the fire alarm goes off. All the tables stop and wait for the alarm to be turned off.

Alex says to the referee “Can we keep playing? We’re Filipino it doesn’t bother us” (or something like that). They played on without missing a beat.

I’ve often thought that pro players would do well to spend a year in the Philippines playing money games with 100 people crowding the players, chickens running around and loud scooters driving by every few minutes. The Mosconi Cup chaos would be like a church in comparison.

Another important aspect is hitting the cue ball on the horizontal center. Since it is the break and you are shoot much harder than normal, folks do not realize if they are hitting the center. Get a 'REMPE' cue ball, hit a break shot, and look for the chalk spot on the cue ball. That will tell you a lot.

The best is (sounds like what this guy does) when a dude walks around the table a chalks with every piece of chalk before shooting, someone that does that needs a good whack upside the head with the fat end of a house cue. Same when they put the chalk upside down on the rail, just why???? The dude needs to be explained to that's its a foul if a ball goes up on the rail and strikes a piece of chalk, that's why you don't want 5 chalks on the rail. One night at league there were excessive chalks on the table and people were only using the one good one, when it was my game the chalk was out of reach from where I was shooting from and all of the crappy chalks were grouped together, I used my cue like a hockey stick and slap shotted them across the room, everyone started laughing. I didnt do it for the humor, more or less just making a point to get the crap off of the table, especially if its not being used.