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WNT Hanoi Open 2025, Vietnam, Oct 7-12

sudocrushms
Flakeandrun said:
I regularly give 3 or 4 from the break/suit selection as a spot. Wouldn't let the same player take them prior to the black though. More balls for me, and less traffic from the off.
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"Since when did you play 8-ball?"
"He's giving me 4 balls off the break."
"4 balls off the break is the biggest hustle in the world. You're just getting your balls out the way so he can shoot em..."

(Couldn't resist :ROFLMAO:)
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The Big Ball

jay helfert
ShootingArts said:
I used to be able to hurt the ears of people for a few tables around. Problem was it hurt my ears too! I had a half or three-quarter speed break that almost always pocketed balls so I rarely used a full power break. Even now if I use a full power break the first couple of balls tend to hit a pocket and pop out on seven footers. Shooting softer they stay down so no sense breaking out a gorilla break which is hard on my arm these days.

For a few years I had a four ball break on a bar table hitting a full rack. Two balls would go straight in the bottom pockets, two balls would crisscross into the bottom pockets. With four balls gone on a bar table finding a runout wasn't too hard if I needed one. I wasn't exactly a bar table specialist but that was all that was nearby when I had a feud going with the big city police department. Son of a bitch had tried to strongarm steal a cue I bought new. The cue was shattered in the fight. Turned out the guy was an undercover cop. I couldn't go into the city after dark for a few years after that.

A pain in the ass because the big roads to anywhere were in the city. It was over a hundred miles into unknown territory to go the opposite direction. A pain for a nightly trip when I owned businesses or was a working stiff getting up early every morning so I found myself on seven foot bar tables a lot. A few nines but they were all old and very ratty. A few eights and sixes too. Eights were neither fish nor fowl and for some reason I disliked sixes so much I wouldn't play on them. Never got the feel for six foot tables. I played a good bit on the super eights. Always wondered why they came into existence? To use up damaged slate that had accumulated over the years?

Been a long time since playing on super eights but my favorite practice pool hall had them and I didn't find that playing on them hurt my game since I played on other things too. Left town a few years and when I came back my favorite hall and owner were both gone.

The good ol' days when times were rotten! I miss the old days and the young Hu. He was dumber than a box of rocks sometimes but somehow managed to survive all of the dumb situations he got in! Amazing thing, I have a lot of scars from foolish activities but none put there by other people.

Hu
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Oversized eight footers were pretty standard all over the MIdwest. Not a big step up to the nine footers and made the regular eight footers seem easy. I liked them.
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The Big Ball

jay helfert
garczar said:
Where i learn to play in the midwest the 'big rock' ruled. Once you figured it out you could do some crazy shit with it. Players like Matlock, Shuput, Hyland, Rod Curry were absolute wizards with it. Matlock was/is a good 3c player and he could power the shit out of the big ball with that monster stroke. He did things no one else even dreamed of. He was giving a top Tulsa player the 8b on a Valley with the big ball and he played a 'SIX RAIL' safety and locked the dude up good. The whole joint was just like 'WTF did we just see?'?? Six rails and a perfect hook on a 7' table with that grapefruit cueball. Stupid.
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I used to say that Matlock could overpower the table and he did. I didn't mind so much playing with the big ball in the bars where no one could play that good. I knew that even with a light touch I could make any shot easily enough. No power needed, the big ball did all the work. But I really didn't like it when playing against decent to good players. I could never draw that ball more than a foot or so. My stroke just wasn't strong enough.

I first played Bakersfield Bobby on a bar table with the big ball. He killed me, winning game after game. I had no chance. When he came to my poolroom and we played on the big box, I could hold my own with him and even come out ahead a time or two. Huge difference. Bobby was strong as an ox from all those years working the farms. No one to mess with either.
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Why do I naturally pocket balls better with outside spin?

jay helfert
Renderu said:
I’ve been rethinking why shooting with a bit of english feels more natural to me. One theory I’ve heard is that it’s very hard to strike the exact center of the cue ball. But I see the counterargument too: if you’re aiming for a specific amount of english, you can also easily mis-hit that spot.

What I’d really like to know is this: suppose I’m aiming for dead center and I miss by some small amount (let’s call it delta_x). How much spin does that create (delta_s)? Then compare that to aiming with a little english and missing by the same delta_x — is the resulting change in spin bigger or smaller?

In other words: is center ball the most “sensitive” place on the cue ball, where a tiny miscue creates a relatively large effect? If so, it would make sense why some players feel more comfortable using a bit of english on most shots.
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You said a lot right there. Hitting good center ball shots is a true skill. Buddy probably hit the ball better than anyone else back then. His strike always made such a clean sound - center ball! Not many players could do that, or nearly as well.
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