How was the lesson? I was thinking about contacting him for one as well. I agree on your pinpoint position thinking in a previous post.
It's The CB
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How was the lesson? I was thinking about contacting him for one as well. I agree on your pinpoint position thinking in a previous post.
A pleasure to talk to you
Very good stuff in your posts too. One thing I want to take a second to comment on, a pure pleasure to talk to you. Genuine two way communication has became very rare on these forums and prepare for war if two people have even a slightly different perspective on things.
Our different life experiences and very possibly our different needs guided us down a little different paths and what we both needed to round out the final picture could well have been a little different. My ball making skills and stroke were sharpened on ten footers with deep cloth and snooker tables. I played a lot of bartable too but the skill level I was against usually kept me from paying a major price for poor position play especially since I could usually kick or bank my way out of trouble.(No jump cues!)
Once I started working on very tight shape I considered any shot that caused me to have to alter my original pattern in the slightest a miss. If I had to use a rail or different spin than I had planned at the beginning of a run, that was a miss in my own mind. Even if I accomplished the end goals I planned for every inning at the table if I didn't accomplish them the way I planned to I knew I had botched things up pretty badly.
I wasn't a great player when I started focusing on the cue ball shape. Wasn't a great player when I reached my goals controlling the cue ball. But I had better cue ball control than the vast majority of players and that let me tie up many a good player in knots. Kept many of them gambling waiting for a lucky break that was never going to come(in that session) too. Cue ball control is huge for anyone but even more valuable for a gambler than a tournament player.
One thing that gave me a chuckle was your realization about cue ball control and eight ball. It was by far my favorite gambling game. I don't think any other game lets you control the table as well while hiding your speed. Bar table pool was also the easiest table to control the cue ball when they used the oversized cue ball. It was bigger and heavier than the other balls, the "800 pound gorilla" on the table.
Hu
Very good stuff in your posts too. One thing I want to take a second to comment on, a pure pleasure to talk to you. Genuine two way communication has became very rare on these forums and prepare for war if two people have even a slightly different perspective on things.
Our different life experiences and very possibly our different needs guided us down a little different paths and what we both needed to round out the final picture could well have been a little different. My ball making skills and stroke were sharpened on ten footers with deep cloth and snooker tables. I played a lot of bartable too but the skill level I was against usually kept me from paying a major price for poor position play especially since I could usually kick or bank my way out of trouble.(No jump cues!)
Once I started working on very tight shape I considered any shot that caused me to have to alter my original pattern in the slightest a miss. If I had to use a rail or different spin than I had planned at the beginning of a run, that was a miss in my own mind. Even if I accomplished the end goals I planned for every inning at the table if I didn't accomplish them the way I planned to I knew I had botched things up pretty badly.
I wasn't a great player when I started focusing on the cue ball shape. Wasn't a great player when I reached my goals controlling the cue ball. But I had better cue ball control than the vast majority of players and that let me tie up many a good player in knots. Kept many of them gambling waiting for a lucky break that was never going to come(in that session) too. Cue ball control is huge for anyone but even more valuable for a gambler than a tournament player.
One thing that gave me a chuckle was your realization about cue ball control and eight ball. It was by far my favorite gambling game. I don't think any other game lets you control the table as well while hiding your speed. Bar table pool was also the easiest table to control the cue ball when they used the oversized cue ball. It was bigger and heavier than the other balls, the "800 pound gorilla" on the table.
Hu
Personal experience? I've been playing this game for 56 years John...but that doesn't mean I stopped learning!
Most great shooters do NOT think about aiming...that's a fact! We practise aiming and other parts of the game so we DON'T have to think about them! If you read the book I mentioned above, you will learn that the mind cannot focus on more than one part of shotmaking, so you practise the other parts so they become unconscious. A professional golfer relies on muscle memory to execute his swing, allowing himself the ability to focus on maybe direction or another small aspect of the shot. Likewise, the professional pool player practises so that most of his game becomes unconscious and he can focus on the one thing that will allow him to continue his inning. Usually what he'll focus on is something that varies from shot to shot (none of the mechanics of your stroke should vary by any large degree) like maybe the speed of the cue ball necessary to obtain line or zone position.
Maybe it's just the way you talk down to people John! Just like your statement above, "I can't help it if you continually present things on this forum that are wrong" or in the previous post where you personally attacked TheThaiger with, "Do you add ANYTHING to the conversation? Why bother with us?" This is an open forum where people express their opinions about the op's topic. Because their opinions differ from yours is NOT a reason to attack them personally! Calm down and express YOUR opinion on the topic...not on the people who are expressing their opinions! You'll get along a lot better here! Have a nice day!
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I saw him twice -- both good experiences. I don't think he's good for a beginner, but he EXCELS at advanced stuff. The better of the two sessions I never even hit a ball. I had him commentate a 14.1 run and explain his thought process each step of the way. That, for me, was priceless.
I know there are a few who knock the man because of his views on deflection and throw. However, what they don't get is he doesn't worry about them. He transcends that stuff and just MAKES the ball. He clears his mind and executes. Most of the time he's perfect, sometimes he's not. However, he always rolls to a position where if he undershoots, overshoots or misses to the side------- he always has a next shot.
That's prob why he ran 180 on me, one shot at a time with commentary between each and every shot.
His rate is a steal, imo.
TheThaiger
Banned
TheThaiger
Banned
John Barton is the classic schoolyard bully - he insults all and sundry, yet squeals like a stuffed pig the second he gets a little in return.
Once you see the youtube videos of him shooting, you'll think "awww, bless!" every time he sticks his oar into something he doesn't quite understand. He plays like he writes - all huff and puff, and no finesse.
i see you continually trying to push john and get him going for a while now :thumbup:
TheThaiger
Banned
I like this approach a lot. It was the point I was trying to make about snooker players earlier, in that they just get down and play the shot, shots which are firmly locked into muscle memory. No adjustment needed for anything, just practice and experience, feel and talent.
Quite why we seek to rationalise every minute aspect of the game is beyond me.
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I haven't played for 15 years (just over 2) or hit a million balls yet. I'm one of those guys struggling to learn the game. And while I cannot do all things with spin that john speaks of here, I have gotten reasonably good at "getting the leave". Funny thing is, I didn't make the object ball. It happens to me often, sometimes at least once or twice a game. Miss the shot, but give myself great position for the next shot.
Now of course my mechanics need work, too. But I'm quite sure that aiming properly for the shot at hand is far more important than cue ball control. Perhaps a better statement is that aiming is higher on the priority list. Cuz it's all important.
Thing is, if you miss the shot you can't say for sure you had the cue ball control to fall perfectly on the next ball. Almost by definition the cue ball didn't go where you wanted it to at the speed you intended.
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this is what people do on a discussion forum :thumbup:
TheThaiger
Banned
Meh. Megalomaniacs are fair game in my book.
Getting JB going is the proverbial shooting fish in a barrel.
Please. You come on here and make statements that are false and then go into TROLL mode when called on them.
Our first interactions on this forum were me disagreeing with your views on Asian people which were subsequently debunked by others beside myself.
You are more than welcome to put your money where your mouth is and come to the Super Billiards Expo. Being the super cueist you allude to being with your amazing snooker form you should walk away with all the money.
The only bully here is you trying to push us around with your claims of superiority.
P.S. If getting me going is your goal then you have failed miserably. There are others who are banned from this forum who were experts at it. You are a tiny goldfish compared to them. I swat away your baby-trolling attempts without breaking a sweat.
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Randy you haven't kept up with the discussions. Number one you don't know what they good players think when they are shooting. Unless you have a hidden trove of interviews with them that you are drawing your information from you are only guessing.
Now I will say that you are PROBABLY right that most of the time they are on automatic pilot. But to get to automatic pilot they HAD to spend time at some point in their lives thinking about aiming and execution.
Those of us reading this thread are not professionals. We have not passed into the zone where automatic pilot is enough to beat 99% of the people in the world.
Instead we are still learning and discussing how to play. When you come in and make a statement that we will never get better if we think about aiming each shot and that we will ever learn to control the cue ball by doing that then it's just a 100% wrong statement that has been disproven by many on this board through years of experience.
Maybe it would help you to spend some time going back through the previous posts on aiming and cue ball control to find out who has been in the discussions, what their experiences have been and what they said.
There are tens of thousands of posts for you to read before jumping in.
And the point we make is that you have to have a starting point. Something solid to start with to build that muscle memory. Just hitting balls doesn't do it in the way that most people think it does.
We study the game. Just as people have done for hundreds of years. Lengthy books have been written studying every aspect of every billiard game. It's the way we are as creatures.
If we weren't then we never would have thought to build a billiard table in the first place or improve on it to end up with what we have now. Why you think that biomechanics and optical approaches to aiming are somehow stupid to discuss is beyond me as well.
In other sports these things are studied and dissected into minutiae and the athletes embrace them to continually push their performances to higher and higher levels.
But in pool it's supposed to just all be hitting a million balls? Try telling an olympic hurdler that world class success is as simple as jumping a million hurdles.
You can tell someone to just let go and shoot but the fact is that if they are doing something wrong, be it their stroking action, shaky bridge, or inconsistent aiming then letting go and shooting only leads to frustration as the miss often without understanding why.
If a player starts out with a good foundation though then they do get a point where they drop the shackles of why and just play. But that is built on the foundation of skill building through deep practice of solid technique.
It doesn't just happen.
I have to agree with Johnny & Hu here.
As soon as you make a few balls you should start thinking about CB position. It doesnt mean you have to "control" it at first, the first step is being AWARE of it.
We have all seen the beginner shoot an obvious scratch shot, and call himself "unlucky" when he scratches. We have all seen the beginner shoot the easiet ball on the table which will clearly leave him hooked, but he shoots it anyway and complains about bad rolls.
As soon as you are past a beginner, you need to be aware of where the CB will naturally go after the shot. Do you like this position? will your opposition like it? etc. The first lesson of position is just speed control and very basic geometery.
You cannot be a half-assed decent player without some position control, why would you WAIT to start learning it?
~ personal note, my son-in-law pockets balls about the same as me, but never thinks about position, he even told me his motto "make the shot first and worry about the cue ball later"......who do you think wins over 90% of our games?
As soon as you make a few balls you should start thinking about CB position. It doesnt mean you have to "control" it at first, the first step is being AWARE of it.
We have all seen the beginner shoot an obvious scratch shot, and call himself "unlucky" when he scratches. We have all seen the beginner shoot the easiet ball on the table which will clearly leave him hooked, but he shoots it anyway and complains about bad rolls.
As soon as you are past a beginner, you need to be aware of where the CB will naturally go after the shot. Do you like this position? will your opposition like it? etc. The first lesson of position is just speed control and very basic geometery.
You cannot be a half-assed decent player without some position control, why would you WAIT to start learning it?
~ personal note, my son-in-law pockets balls about the same as me, but never thinks about position, he even told me his motto "make the shot first and worry about the cue ball later"......who do you think wins over 90% of our games?
I've learned to feel better leaving the cue ball where I want it then even pocketing the object ball!
TheThaiger
Banned
:grin::grin:
I read the books and articles by authors who HAVE interviewed them.
Exactly MY point, you practise aiming so it becomes unconcious. That will allow you to focus on the most important aspect of the shot that will continue the inning!
True, we are NOT professionals...but we can learn from them!
There you go again putting words in my mouth to make YOUR argument! I never said that! What I said was "if you need to "think" about aiming every shot, you will never be able to "focus" on what you need to do to get to the next shot! NO WHERE did I say you will "never get better" or "learn to control the cue ball"! Frankly, what you need to "focus" on may have nothing to do with cue ball control!
I'd rather spend my time reading articles and watching videos of the pros. I also spend most of my pool time on the pool table! I come to these forums to share my experiences and knowledge...not to argue with you!
Here's one YOU should read John: http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=25061
Your penchant for insults and personal attracks NEEDS to come to a end!
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