Guys,
I'm not talking about the pockets themselves. I'm talking about the sound that the balls make when they fall into the rubber pockets. The rubber pockets like the ones on my Gold Crown IV. The only way you get that sound is if instead of nylon/kevlar the balls fall into that rubber pocket.
Hey. You are reducing this to the lowest common denominator. As for pocket noise use the Diamond app and put the pocket tones on mute. Mine is on vibrate. I’m still waiting to see how the pocket cloth was wrapped. Any V cuts showing. You keep ducking.
If you had signed up and payed your entry and on game day find the balls they're using are actually mismatched sets with slight discrepancies in size and weight, what would you do??
Over the years I’ve had to deal with mis-matched ball sets; being assigned a match on a GC, with the next match on a Diamond; old cloth on one table, new on the next; tight pockets on one table, buckets for the next match.
I’m told there’s a pool hall in STL that stopped using Aramith CBs because they kept getting swiped, so they replaced them with cheap, lighter knockoffs. Funny thing is some guys like them because their draw shot improved with the lighter CB, lol.
One thing I've noticed about mainland Chinese players, both pros and amateurs, is that some of them shoot bizarrely hard and fast. Shooting hard makes sense because of how the Chinese tables work, but I can't figure out for the life of me why they're playing at such a fast tempo and how they're making it work on 3.5" pockets.
Here's an example of two players playing Golden Nine like they're imitating Tony Drago about to miss his flight: Login to view embedded media
Some highlights
13:15 - great example of what I'm talking about. It's a routine shot but it's still the 9 ball and missable and Meng shoots it like it's a hanger
23:45 - Tong with a tough runout, averaging about 10 seconds per shot. The entire rack would have been that fast if he didn't need to grab an extension
32:05 - Another tough runout with a tricky shot on the 3 and it's still < 10s per shot
36:51 - It's a close match and both players attempt insanely steep cuts on the 9 ball without taking any time to evaluate. No checking of angles or anything, just YOLO
40:22 - WTF was this sequence? Neither player takes their time and Tong takes the lead by absolutely smoking in a tough 9 ball with zero pre-strokes or any semblance of a pre-shot routine
Now, to be fair, these guys (especially Tong Lu) are extreme examples, but they're pretty good representations of what I'm talking about.
Compare this to Joshua Filler, who we consider a fast shooter, shooting a very routine 9 ball (43:55 if the link doesn't work).
For a more direct comparison, here's what some non-Chinese players look like when playing the exact same game
Ko Pin Yi - Skip to 2:27:56 and 4:06:40 to see him shooting some routine 9 balls. Same KPY we always see - takes his time, checks his angles, not slow but not fast
Wu Jiaqing (moved to China as an adult, so I'm counting him here) shooting a routine 9 ball - Skip to 1:45:15 if the link doesn't work. Normal pre-shot routine: chalks, checks the angle, squares up, shoots
Do you think it is possible that the 45 degree rule was misunderstood in the very beginning and that it really meant that you supposed to shoot the cue ball at a 45 degree angle away from the object ball instead of jacking up your cue at 45 degrees?? I never understood what jacking up 45 degrees accomplished.
Do you think it is possible that the 45 degree rule was misunderstood in the very beginning and that it really meant that you supposed to shoot the cue ball at a 45 degree angle away from the object ball instead of jacking up your cue at 45 degrees?? I never understood what jacking up 45 degrees accomplished.
The last thing anyone wants is to continue propagating the culture of pool being a haven for the willfully ignorant. The fear of people gaining knowledge is narcissistic in the sense that it threatens the ego of those that feel emotionally invested in the creation of their self image, which in many cases is based on mythology or the tribal mentality of a negatively polarized collective.
Telling people not to learn is a ridiculous thing to do.
Nobody is suggesting not learning. It is interesting to know, but it is intrusive to the game to allow a person to slow down the game for something that isn't obvious to a person watching.
We all know that there are players who deliberately slow games, this is another tool in their arsenal that they will use to delay, distract, and disrupt. At the very least, the power to use the technology cannot be controlled by the players without some checks and balances.
If a player chooses to go to replay, there should be a penalty if they are wrong, either loss of timeout or a ball in hand for their opponent. If there aren't consequences there will be people who abuse it.
There are, to me, a surprising number of European players, mostly Eastern Europeans, with 700 Fargoes or better in the event. I expect a few notable upsets.
If you had signed up and payed your entry and on game day find the balls they're using are actually mismatched sets with slight discrepancies in size and weight, what would you do??
I hope that they either have a Delta or Diamond wood rack. In 8 ball I always look for loose balls while pushing the back row forward, if I find any they go in the back row starting at the corners and working their way in wards, hopefully there are no more than 5 tiny balls. You can do the same with 10 ball but its tough with 9 ball, as long as its not the 9 thats small its not a huge deal. One tournament I played in had Valley's and I believe polyester balls, you just couldn't get a good break, its like the rack was dead, the balls just would not move, they were all new and pretty though.
