I was lucky enough to slip into the TAR room shortly after one of the big matches at the Derby last week and listen to some dialogue between Cliff and Billy about the prior match. I do not claim to have alot of one pocket knowledge and will not go into some of the details they covered about position and advantage in that earlier one pocket match but what i thought was interesting was that Billy told Cliff you did play good but you did not play solid. What did he mean by that, he proceeded to review a singular position where there were three balls remaining on the table. Two were near Cliffs hole and one was up table. Cliff made a good shot but gave up position when he sent one of those balls up table allowing the opponent to then clear out the remaining ball giving up his hard earned positional advantage . Billy said you made a good shot but you gave up position so it was not a solid decision, to give up the major weight you not only have to play good ALL of your decisions must be solid. You have to take advantage of your position and constantly apply pressure, you have to make decisions and moves to constantly apply pressure. Listening to the dialogue between these two great players really opened my eyes to the game of one pocket. It shows some of what is going on at the highest level of pool, these players were working to analyze what happened and what could have been done to change the outcome. Billy was acting as the Coach/Yoda and Cliff was trying to absorb the lesson. I wish I had a hi caliber player reviewing my matches and shot selection I know the path to solid play would be shorter for me.
