Latest activity

Latest activity

 Social Media Forum list

WNT Florida Open 2026, August 4-9, Orlando, Caribe Royale

L
uk_9_ball_convert said:
he missed a pretty easy 9. Jayson had an uncharacteristic amount of misses in the last few frames, not sure if he'd just lost focus or was actually trying to let the guy win a frame.
Click to expand...

I kinda think he did want to give him a chance to win a rack without making it too obvious.

Right after, DQH played an amateur as well (who seemed to have more chops) but still beat him 9-0.
Click to expand...

30 min practice spurts.. better then hit a million balls?

Frosty
ShootingArts said:
The real issue is that you have built a straw man to do battle with. I don't know of any instructor who limits their lessons to thirty minutes or says that further table time is useless.

Hu
Click to expand...
Actually, I built no straw man Hu. My reply that you quote is in response to the original post of the thread where the OP spoke of a podcast where he said an instructor stated this. That players should only practice 30 mins. at a time, as that is the range of focus for the average individual.

I don’t know of an instructors that advocate this either, and the original post didn’t name the instructor on the podcast.

You’re a veteran of action, as am I, and we both know that in serious action, sessions can go anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days. Also that any hope to do well in these matches is dependent on being to able to grind it out. While I’ve never been a tournament player, the rigors of tournament play and to do well is based upon the same thing, to be able to maintain your focus and thereby your full abilities to be successful in that arena.

The point of my post is to state that to be able to do that, you have to prepare for that. Everyone is different, but every great player I’ve ever known had a period of their life of being totally immersed in the sport, with long sessions of practice and matches that developed the skills that made them great.
Click to expand...

30 min practice spurts.. better then hit a million balls?

Island Drive
trob said:
I was watching clips on my phone and they showed a clip from a pod cast of an instructor discussing the hit a million balls theory being incorrect. He said when Efren was asked how much he practices he said only a half at a time. If he practices in the morning he will again in the afternoon and that’s it. This instructor said it makes sense because if you have long practices the average person will lose focus and that’s when bad habits will sink back in and then frustration. He tells his students to go 4-6 weeks where they are only practicing 30 mins a day and they see real progress. So my personal thinking is

1) As I’ve said many time I don’t like to compare what I do or the equipment I use to the best players in the world. They have more natural ability then I do so comparing yourself to the goat just seems like stinkin thinkin. Svb is known to shoot the same shot for hours upon hours upon hours but I think he is born with a concentration and focus the average person may not possess.

2) but I think for some of it stands out. I try to now take a little break. I tend to play a race against the ghost then stroke drills. Then another race and then more stroke drills. Lately I’ve been throwing some straight pool in there because of an upcoming league but just taking 5 mins to rest in between .. whether it’s watching tv or looking at my phone for a bit seems to keep my concentration at a higher level for practice longer.

I love the game to much and with a diamond table in my garage (it’s like having a mountain of crack in your house and telling a crack head not to touch it.) I’m going to struggle only playing a half hour a day lol
Click to expand...
For me I have to have something to give me a reason to not want to miss.
In college we'd play nickle/dime/quarter nine ball.
If I won enough to eat for the day I was satisfied, we played with the weaker players that had some money.
If there's no Cost to your mistakes, then learning doesn't come as quickly as it should from my position.
Click to expand...

Best Handicapping System

mikepage
sbrownn said:
<resurrecting an old thread here>

Just a tip to all league operators out there, do not use a handicap system that adjusts at the team level by awarding overall frame / match game wins or points towards the overall team match for the night. I am playing in a rotating 8, 9 and 10 ball season BCA league with 1 or 2 individual match head to head games in a round robin format. For 9 and 10 ball, calculated handicap frame game wins are awarded to the lesser index ranked (by Fargo) and it is such a double whammy because there are no chances for the better team to win any of the handicapped awarded automatic wins. It is much better to adjust at the race level (cannot in our league format) or at the potted balls required to win the head to head match instead of the overall team match.

Also, any handicap system with a multiplier is just going to be used to "grow the league and get more people into the bars" which is basically the APA business model that no one likes.
Click to expand...

I'm not following what your format is nor understanding your objection. Here is what it MIGHT be. Perhaps this will help us to communicate.

Two 5-player teams are playing in an 8-ball round-robln format that includes individual 5-game ROUNDS, e.g. a ROUND might be
A2 v B1
A3 v B5
A1 v B4
A5 v B2
A4 v B3

Points are awarded in each game (rack): 10 to winner and # balls pocketed to loser. What matters for the standings is who won this ROUND. That team gets a ROUND point. That's a benefit of this format. Each round is a mini competition with it's own drama.
The format can be unhandicapped--just add up the points--or handicapped. That's an operator-level choice.

If handicapped is chosen, here is how that works.
Each rack has an expected score. Suppose for the first rack A2 is a 620 and B1 is a 420--a 200-point gap.
A2 has a 0.8 chance of getting 10 points and a 0.2 chance of getting a points-per-loss score
So A2 is expected to get 0.8*10 + 0.2 * 3.6 = 8.7
and B1 is expected to get 0.2*10 + 0.8 *4.8 = 5.8

The different points-per-loss numbers reflect historical outcomes for people beating opponents of the rating of your opponent.

The system before you play adds up these expectations over the 5 racks and gets, say, TeamA 37.2, Team B 34.2
If it is 100% handicapped (again an operator choice), TeamB starts with 3.0 points
Click to expand...

To Be a Better Player

trob
SSP said:
That negative self talk comes from thinking while down on the shot, once you get in your stance your ONLY thought should be moving your cue straight in the direction of the shot, don't even think about speed of stroke, your body already knows what to do, you have to allow it to, one of the things that clicked with me from the book was this....
You do thousands of things everyday you don't think of that require great skill and accuracy, you probably woke up this morning, got out of bed, walked to the bathroom, opened the door, turned on the light without a single thought, you didn't calculate how much pressure it would take to open the door or turn on the light, let alone the balance required to walk, how did you do it? You've done it thousands of times, you've done it so many times the subconscious part of your brain already knows how to do that, much like walking and talking, the problem comes when the conscious part of the brain tries to take over what the subconscious part of the brain already knows what to do, like thinking when I was down on the shot, for most people including me it takes a lot to learn to "let go" we are taught to think things through, when it comes to performing precise physical tasks, first calculate with your conscious brain and then free your subconscious brain to do what it does best.
Click to expand...
The inner game of tennis.. a player and b player. A player tells you what to do. B player is the one that gets down and does. Getting them to work together and not against each other is the trick and what that book talks about.
ShootingArts said:
Some people do something for thirty years and are masters. Some people do something thirty years and have one year of experience repeated twenty-nine times!

Hu
Click to expand...
Lol true.. I became a good player in the area rather quickly. But there are people in leagues I’ve seen playing for 30 years .. play a lot.. and they can’t put 4 balls together but they love the game. They play and support it so I appreciate them. All games are like that though. I know plenty of golfers who play their whole life and can’t break 90. I know people that hardly play and you would think they play their whole life.
Quick story I got hooked up on the course with a father and son on Father’s Day. His son is playing with an old set of clubs with running shoes on. Not a big guy. He’s blasting drives straight down the fairway with a 3 wood. Beautiful approach shots. Chips great . Putts great. I say to his dad did his son golf a lot. Nope .. once or twice a year. Confused I said did he ever thinking he had to have a time he was obsessed with the game to play this well. Nope.. he was a runner in high school and college he only plays occasionally to hang out with me .. he’s just a natural athlete . dude shot a 78 and he never golfs 😳 I thought man..f$#% that guy 🤣
Click to expand...

30 min practice spurts.. better then hit a million balls?

trob
ShootingArts said:
Anything you want to compete at, even informally, should first of all be fun. I am competitive by nature and have started many activities for fun then got so involved competing I forgot to have fun. I started finishing my practice with a pistol with a "mad minute" actually twelve seconds or so. Fifteen rounds center, speed reload, fifteen rounds head of a B-27 target. It was good practice but more importantly it is fun to rip up a new target rapid fire with a .45. With pool I did something similar to speed pool. Move around the table rapidly, plant and fire. Sometimes I fired as I was planting, sometimes afterwards. My stance had to be aligned right, there was no second chance!

Hu
Click to expand...
Good point here.. I’m a strong amateur but I never just set out to be good at pool. I love the game. Playing every day is my favorite part of my day. Becoming as good as I can at the game is a great feeling because first and foremost I love this game.

Something I didn’t consider with 30 mins practice is how important it is for things to become 2nd nature . The more you do without thought the better you’ll play in my opinion. Does that make it more difficult if you are only play 30 mins a day.
Click to expand...

Filter

Back
Top