HawaiianEye said:

And then the "air stroking" rage came into being and the "surveying" and stalling started.

People walking around the table measuring, looking at every angle and then air stroking dozens of times, getting up, getting down, getting up again, surveying some more....etc, etc, etc.........

People would have laughed you out of the pool hall if you did that back when I grew up playing.

I have played for decades and ran thousands of racks and have NEVER, EVER, spent 5 minutes looking at a ball or surveying, no matter what game we were playing or how much it was for.

It pains me to watch most tournaments now.

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Who 'm I but air shooting the shot does work. Any alignment error is immediately evident and you can adjust that until it locks in. This is not mere air stroking in some cool pose but air rehearsing the shot until you can't miss it.

9BallKY said:

Two guys were woofing one day when one guy offered the other guy the 8. The other guy replied
“I’ll get down on my hands and knees and crawl naked all the way to your place for that game”. It was about 50 miles away

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In Maryland there was a local trick shot artist named Chester Morris who once got quoted in a local newspaper as saying he'd "swim a sea of sewage to play Minnesota Fats." When I saw that article, I got a girl I knew at the pool room, Jenny Gale, to draw a picture of Chester swimming across the sea, complete with a snorkel, while on the other side a terrified Minnesota Fats was sitting on his throne with a king's robe, sweating bullets. I wish I still had that picture.

David in FL said:

8 in the same session.

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Thank you!

Oh, I've been practicing the 10 ball break a LOT. Maybe 5 hours across 3 days. I started it on the 9' GC in Atlanta. Making a ball was super hard. But I finally figured out how to develop a lot of power and control. I then took that to the 7' Diamond and it all paid off. On that table, the power was enough to pocket the balls. When I played the Vegas event last Jan, I had almost no success on the break. I should be in a better shape for that now.

While I was in Atl I was doing the Kinnister/Neils drills on the 9' GC for a couple weeks. Then the last week there I played only on the 7' Diamond. Now in Philly I'll be only on the 7' Diamond until the Vegas tournament. I think it was a good decision to do the 9' first to learn the drills better, then switch to the easier table.

A year has passed. Would you believe I am exactly the same? haha. 570 1/8/25 and 570 1/10/26. I'm def playing the best pool of my life right now, even though I was 577 6 months ago. I feel on fire.

The tournament in Atlanta went great. I won my first two matches by a huge margin. Then I played 2 strong players that got the best of me. The second was Kim Davenport. First time I ever played him, or watched his game up close. He still was playing with a 1990 cue, haha. It was something custom from the time with a long ivory ferrule. Of course he beat me, but I won won game with a really nice out, and should have won a second but dogged the 9.

I'm back in Philly now. I played a Solatto match last night. My opponent was mid 400's, but I broke and ran 5 or 6 racks in 4 sets (barbox). And had a ton of runouts after his early miss or scratch. I think the last time I broke and ran a rack was 6 months ago.

I have a lot of games lined up the next two weeks, and I've been doing the 6 pointed star several times each week. I'll be the most ready I've ever been for a tournament for the Vegas 567 cap at the end of the month.

him- "hey can you loan me some money"
me - "sure what have you got to put up"

I played in a tournament in my home town and several of my college friends came to play also. Many of the locals didn't care for out of towners coming in to play, especially if they were good. At the time, the opponent racked for the breaker. Before Troy broke, he checked the rack. A guy says out loud "he must have seen that on ESPN". Later in the game, Troy makes a fantastic safety shot, caroming off a ball midtable and sending the cueball three rails to rest behind another ball on the rail. Troy comes up to me and whispers "I saw that on ESPN too".