iusedtoberich said:

There was a guy in the pool room a few nights ago that brought in a contraption. It sat on the table vertically. It was made of plexiglass or possibly glass, about the size of 2 pieces of typing paper, one on top of the other. It had lines drawn into it, and I think might have been a mirror surface, I'm not sure. I was half the room away in an action match so only paid it slight attention. I think it was meant for the player to stroke into it and it would show him the flaws.

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One device like that is a mirror that sits above the cue ball. If you cue straight at the mirror, the reflection of the stick will be in the same line as the stick. If you are off a little, the stick will look broken.

dr_dave said:

This could be calculated based on the compression of the balls, but I have not done this. I would guess the range is in between your two guesses, maybe in the 0.05mm to 0.01mm range, but that is a total guess. Faster speed would make the range a little bigger (since the balls would compress more).

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I think you can figure overlapping contact from the speed of the cue ball and the contact time. After first contact, the direction of the cue ball and its speed will be changing to the new path, so it's a little complicated, but you can take an average to determine how much it will move towards the other ball during contact. The time will be about 0.1 millisecond. If the cue ball is moving towards the other ball at 1 m/sec on average during the contact time, it will move about 0.1 millimeter, so any shot within +-0.1 mm of the exact center will result in overlapping contact. That's for a medium speed shot. A slower shot has to be more centered because the contact time will be about the same but the average speed sideways will be smaller (and directly proportional to the incoming speed).

uk_9_ball_convert said:

Accents are ridiculously regional in Scotland. Higgins is from Wishaw (hence the Wizard of Wishaw nickname) which isn't that far from Glasgow, but I'd say the accent is still subtly different from a true Glaswegian accent.

I don't actually think McManus sounds that Glaswegian either, didn't realise he was from Glasgow. But feel like he's probably toned his accent down for the media a lot more than Higgins.

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mcmanus has the greenkeeper willie variety of scottish accent. brilliant pundit, loves the game passionately, knows every technical aspect of the game and can verbalize / analyze it.

There was a guy in the pool room a few nights ago that brought in a contraption. It sat on the table vertically. It was made of plexiglass or possibly glass, about the size of 2 pieces of typing paper, one on top of the other. It had lines drawn into it, and I think might have been a mirror surface, I'm not sure. I was half the room away in an action match so only paid it slight attention. I think it was meant for the player to stroke into it and it would show him the flaws.