1992. Cleveland Open. J.R. Calvert taught him the in's and out's and was his coach against Nick Varner for $20 a game after the Akron open.
Actually, Johnny ran about 239 balls before they made him stop so they could complete the tournament.
Proposed TAR - TOI VS NO AIMING SYSTEM
- Thread starter HawaiianEye
- Start date
1992. Cleveland Open. J.R. Calvert taught him the in's and out's and was his coach against Nick Varner for $20 a game after the Akron open.
Actually, Johnny ran about 239 balls before they made him stop so they could complete the tournament.
Well then let's put it to the test. I will take say Shannon Daulton and you can have whoever you want with Lou coaching. How much are you willing to bet? To be clear Lou has to call the exact shot each time and the player has to shoot it. They are NOT allowed to discuss anything or otherwise have any signals. Still playing well and making world beater decisions are two different things. What you are saying is that Lou thinks like a world beater and I disagree.
It's not the wanting to agree with a champion. I know you don't really think much of champion's knowledge and have had words with CJ over it. For me it's purely 20 years of experience WITH champions from Bustamante to Reid. I know a lot of people on this forum have had interactions with champions but it was my job for twenty years to hang out with them and I used it to pick their brains on and off the table.
Believe me I don't KISS ANYONE'S ASS here. Not CJ's or anyone's. I just happen to have a little more respect for the level that the pros are at than a lot of people here do. And that comes from being around them so much, not from watching them on videos.
I think that an awful lot of people here don't REALLY understand how far away championship world class level pool is from their level. I think I myself didn't understand it for a long time, especially not until I started hanging out with pros, getting lessons, sparring (racking for) with them, talking pool and so on. You may THINK you know pool and THINK you know all the moves but I promise you there are levels and nuances that they know that even good amateurs do not know.
It might be comforting as an amateur to think you have all the same knowledge as them but you really don't. Not YOU specifically because of course I have NO idea what you do or don't know but if I had to bet I'd say that most high level pros still know a lot more than you even as good as you play. Wouldn't be the first bet I lost.
I'll pass,we just have different views on things.You being around so many champs gives you the edge. I surrender, your rite.
If you and Lou ever make it happen,I'm taking the underdog.
I've seen it a lot in 8 ball .A lot of player's can tell you the rite shot but will constantly pass on it just on fear of missing.
Would you consider someone like Earl Kellum,, who never did anything but play pool for a living a amateur?
"Two Shot Shoot Out is more complex and difficult than one pocket" - CJ Wiley
You are certainly old enough to have been playing when I was in diapers, of course anyone over 60 can make that statement.
We are very confident that Two Shot Shoot Out is more complex and difficult than one pocket in several categories and am willing to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt at the appropriate time and place, and for the right "wager".
Here's one of my gambling stories that was written by a well known Sports writer from New York City to over 2.3 Million People in case anyone wonders if I was really a gambler on the road.
Life of Wiley
He hustled pool for a while and made a living, then turned pro and made a killing. Clearly, Dallas’ CJ Wiley is on the ball.
By Michael P. Geffner
IT HAPPENED IN PITTSBURGH in 1986, back when The Color of Money, a movie about a young pool shark, had hit theaters and Carson “CJ” Wiley was himself hustling pool on the road—back when, on a moment’s notice, he would drive hundreds of miles to some backwoods dive on a trip that someone with wads of cash gambled big-time there. On that particular night, Wiley wore fake glasses and assumed one of three aliases, Mike from Indiana. His mark was the owner of a restaurant, a bearded man with receding jet-black hair who led him up a dark staircase to a private pool table on the second floor.
“And the guy is smiling this real goofy smile,” Wiley recalls today, chuckling hard before dragging deeply on a Marlboro Light. “’It’s just like in the movie,’ he says. ‘You saw the movie right?’ And I nod my head but don’t really say anything. Then he says, ‘Oh, boy, I love action. I love playing pool for money. I even love betting on other players. You saw the movie right?’ And I nod again. And we begin playing some nine ball, and I find out right away that this guy can’t play at all. I mean, not a lick. So after I’m done beating him for a few hundred, he has me play nearly everybody in the building. I end up beating his bartender, his cook, his dishwasher, five locals, and finally, the best player in town—and he staked every one of them. By the time he quit, I had him stuck for about seven thousand dollars. And he says to me, not smiling anymore, ‘You know kid, you played a lot better at the end than you did at the beginning.’ And I look him square in the eyes and say, ‘Well, you saw the movie, right?’”
Now semi retired and detached from his hustling days, Wiley lives in the Lake Highlands neighborhood of Dallas. Almost from the moment he turned pro, he has been the highest-ranked pool player in Texas as well as one of the ten best players in the world. He’ll demonstrate that on January 31, when—in an extremely rare live telecast of pool—ESPN will air the finals of its Ultimate 9-Ball challenge, the sport’s biggest annual nine ball event; he hopes to win the three-way competition for the second straight year, outgunning fellow hotshots Roger Griffis and Johnny Archer. “The funny thing is, I've never really considered myself a pool player,” he quietly confides to me as he sits in a hotel lounge during a weekend trip to New York. “It has always been just a game I played. I played it mostly as a way to make money and to express myself. But lately I've come to the conclusion that I don’t exactly know yet, but I definitely feel like I’m being driven by a higher power.”
It is a Saturday afternoon, and Wiley, who usually dresses in Italian designer suits and custom-made shirts initialed at the cuffs, is wearing faded jeans, a pale green polo shirt, a gold chain, and a gold diamond studded watch with a luminous turquoise face. A lean six-footer, he has dirty-blond hair and pale blue-green eyes that, without warning, can suddenly go cold and stare right through you.”I eventually want to be considered the best player in my era,” he says, speaking in a low, sharp voice with a trace of a Texas twang. “Because if I’m the best player in my era, then I’m the best player ever. The players are just better now.”
Wiley has what other pool players refer to as in the Big Games. He has an opening break in nine ball powerful enough to sink six balls and a shot making ability{using TOI} so stunning that even the longest shots seem like tap-ins. He’s also part of an elite few who can string together bunches of racks without missing (in nine ball, where the lowest-numbered ball on the table must be struck first before pocketing a ball, he has put together nine racks in a row on a regulation table and a staggering twelve on a bar table). But if Willie Mosconi was the Fred Astaire of pocket billiards, then Wiley is the Gene Kelly—not so much about finesse and seamless grace as muscle and macho fearlessness. Holding his stick more firmly than the rest, making his veiny forearms bulge, he simply rams balls into pockets. “CJ rarely thinks about playing it safe or carefully maneuvering his way around the table,” observes Allen Hopkins, a 46-year-old New Jersey pro who has been one of the best all-around players of the past quarter century. “He just attacks the rack.”
ESPN’s corny sportscasters have tagged Wiley “the fast gun of Texas,” but not without reason. In the time it takes others to run a rack, he can run three. A nine ball rack, for instance, often takes him less than a minute. “Think long, think wrong” is his motto. “The conscious mind can really be destructive when you’re playing,” he says. “If I slow down, I tend to start double-thinking and make bad decisions.” He moves around the table so quickly it seems like he’s not thinking at all. For each shot he uses a Touch of Inside, and takes no more than three practice strokes. “It can be demoralizing to a weaker player,” says California pro George “the Flamethrower” Breedlove. “He starts running out from everywhere and nowhere, one tough shot after the other and before you ever get to blink, he’s already up five games on you.”
Certainly Wiley doesn't fit any of the standard pool stereotypes. He has a practitioner’s degree in the self-help technique of neuro-linguistic programming; is a second-degree black belt instructor in Ji Mu Do, a combination of eight martial arts; swallows a daily cocktail of herbs, such as Saint-John’s-wort and ginseng, and a special “cleansing “oolong tea that he buys from a Korean herbalist in Dallas; under-goes sessions of acupuncture; and studies Zen. He often talks of “becoming the game” and breathing deeply to “lower my brain waves” and letting my unconscious mind take over.” He says he has reached the point where he can put himself into a heightened trance like state almost at will, that he all but blacks out and is able to play for hours yet not remember a single shot afterwards—as in 1997’s Texas State Championship in Austin, where he began by winning 24 consecutive games on the way to defending his title.
Like all roads players, Wiley planned his days as if he were on a cross-country vacation—only instead of selling his sights on, say, the Grand Canyon, he sought hotbeds of pool activity, or spots. In fact, he always carried a little black spot book, in which he had scribbled information extracted from an underground network of other hustlers: It had the names of players he should play, where they played, how well they played (their “speed”), and their betting patterns. “I really enjoyed the freedom of it all, of waking up whenever I wanted, of going wherever I wanted, and controlling my own destiny,” he says.
Which isn't to say the road wasn't difficult. Wiley says he has been robbed twice at gunpoint—once around the corner from a pool room in Minneapolis, the other at a bootleg liquor joint with a black-room pool table Albemarle, North Carolina—after he won a ton of money. He was punched in Texarkana and served drinks spiked with drugs, he believes, in Queen City and Memphis. Still, he was predatory and merciless. He says he could sense another player’s weakness without even talking to him and got his kicks by crushing opponents to the point of causing their knees to buckle. “I especially loved seeing fear in my opponent’s eyes,” he says, adding that he has not a hint of a guilty conscience about any of his hundreds of conquest: “Listen, all the guys I beat wanted my money just as badly as I wanted theirs. It’s not my fault I was the better player. And besides, a lot of the guys I beat weren’t very nice. I just carried out their karma. God works in mysterious ways.”
It was a life, too, of pure and wildly creative subterfuge. He had his aliases: Besides Mike from Indiana, there was Chris from Missouri and Butch from Tennessee. He had his fake I.D.’s and phony glasses (“Anybody will play someone with glasses,” he says) and at various times posed as a college student, a computer salesman, and a drug dealer. And he had a way to make money, which was to move around a lot, working states from the outside in (that is, playing in the smaller towns first, then the bigger cities), and staying unknown as much as possible. That meant he couldn't enter any high-profile tournaments or—God forbid—betray his brethren by turning pro. Only once during those years did Wiley take a shot as a major organized event: the 1986 World Series of Tavern Pool in Las Vegas. He was 21 at the time, and when it was over, he had beaten out a whopping 756 players to win to win first prize: a piddling $7,500, which he had to split with his backers. On a good night of gambling, he knew, he could make nearly three times as much. I convinced him that hustling was still the way to go.
He continued to believe that for five more years, but he ultimately decided there were no challenges left on the road. With some trepidation he finally went straight and joined the now defunct Men’s Professional Billiard Association. “I really didn't know if I could compete with the best players in the world,” he couldn't crush mentally.” Of course, in his first pro tournament, the Dufferin Nine-Ball Classic in Toronto, he beat four world-class players in a single day: Earl “the pearl” Strickland, Efren “the Magician” Reyes, Jim “King James” Rempe, and “Spanish Mike” Lebron. Overall, he finished in fourth place, earned $3,500, and afterward veteran Cecil “Buddy” Hall gushingly labeled him “the best unknown player in the world.” Says Wiley with a grin: “I played my game and it held up. I went in half-cocked and I came out full cocked.”
That first year, he managed to crack the top ten in the national rankings. He moved to seventh in 1992, fifth in 1994, and fourth in 1995. Then in December 1995, unhappy with the politics of the men’s pro pool tour, he abruptly quit and a month later started a new one, the professional CueSports Association (PCA). That year he captured first place—and a purse of $88,500, a U.S. record—in the ESPN World Open Billiards Championship; he also won the first-ever PCA tour stop, the Dallas Million-Dollar Challenge, and was eventually named player of the year by Pool and Billiard magazine.
Clearly he’s got something—but what? I wanted to see it for myself. So at eleven o’clock on a Monday night, the two of us walked over to a pool room on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a place a little smaller than CJ’s Billiard Palace, a room Wiley owns back home near White Rock Lake. Decked out in a dark pin-striped suit, he began by casually shooting on a table that was dimly lit, though he didn't come close to missing a ball. When it was time to share his secret, he set up a long, sharp cut shot on the six ball. “Now watch. I’m going to shoot this shot with a touch of inside,” he said, bending down in a square, powerful-looking crouch. I watched. He popped his heavy thud of a stroke, and the ball split the right corner pocket.
I didn't really get it; Wiley knew instantly. “Don’t you see?” he asked with some frustration. “With two round objects, it sets up an optical illusion. You can’t aim for a spot on a round object and hit it with another round object. It’s an impossibility. So what I do is look at the two balls as straight lines that bisect.” The explanation only made my head spin faster.
Wiley set up another shot, putting the eight ball on the head spot and the cue ball near the back rail. The balls were about six feet apart—to my mind, a much more difficult shot thank the first one. Yet, surprisingly, he said, “Same shot, with a touch of inside.” And again he knocked it down as if the ball had been magnetically pulled to the center of the pocket.
He sighed dismissively and waved a limp arm in my direction. “Man, this game’s so easy it’s not even funny—once you figure it out,” he said with a sniff. Then, looking straight into my unfocused eyes, he delivered his knew-buckling punch line. “At least it is for me.”
You are certainly old enough to have been playing when I was in diapers, of course anyone over 60 can make that statement.
We are very confident that Two Shot Shoot Out is more complex and difficult than one pocket in several categories and am willing to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt at the appropriate time and place, and for the right "wager".
Here's one of my gambling stories that was written by a well known Sports writer from New York City to over 2.3 Million People in case anyone wonders if I was really a gambler on the road.
Life of Wiley
He hustled pool for a while and made a living, then turned pro and made a killing. Clearly, Dallas’ CJ Wiley is on the ball.
By Michael P. Geffner
IT HAPPENED IN PITTSBURGH in 1986, back when The Color of Money, a movie about a young pool shark, had hit theaters and Carson “CJ” Wiley was himself hustling pool on the road—back when, on a moment’s notice, he would drive hundreds of miles to some backwoods dive on a trip that someone with wads of cash gambled big-time there. On that particular night, Wiley wore fake glasses and assumed one of three aliases, Mike from Indiana. His mark was the owner of a restaurant, a bearded man with receding jet-black hair who led him up a dark staircase to a private pool table on the second floor.
“And the guy is smiling this real goofy smile,” Wiley recalls today, chuckling hard before dragging deeply on a Marlboro Light. “’It’s just like in the movie,’ he says. ‘You saw the movie right?’ And I nod my head but don’t really say anything. Then he says, ‘Oh, boy, I love action. I love playing pool for money. I even love betting on other players. You saw the movie right?’ And I nod again. And we begin playing some nine ball, and I find out right away that this guy can’t play at all. I mean, not a lick. So after I’m done beating him for a few hundred, he has me play nearly everybody in the building. I end up beating his bartender, his cook, his dishwasher, five locals, and finally, the best player in town—and he staked every one of them. By the time he quit, I had him stuck for about seven thousand dollars. And he says to me, not smiling anymore, ‘You know kid, you played a lot better at the end than you did at the beginning.’ And I look him square in the eyes and say, ‘Well, you saw the movie, right?’”
Now semi retired and detached from his hustling days, Wiley lives in the Lake Highlands neighborhood of Dallas. Almost from the moment he turned pro, he has been the highest-ranked pool player in Texas as well as one of the ten best players in the world. He’ll demonstrate that on January 31, when—in an extremely rare live telecast of pool—ESPN will air the finals of its Ultimate 9-Ball challenge, the sport’s biggest annual nine ball event; he hopes to win the three-way competition for the second straight year, outgunning fellow hotshots Roger Griffis and Johnny Archer. “The funny thing is, I've never really considered myself a pool player,” he quietly confides to me as he sits in a hotel lounge during a weekend trip to New York. “It has always been just a game I played. I played it mostly as a way to make money and to express myself. But lately I've come to the conclusion that I don’t exactly know yet, but I definitely feel like I’m being driven by a higher power.”
It is a Saturday afternoon, and Wiley, who usually dresses in Italian designer suits and custom-made shirts initialed at the cuffs, is wearing faded jeans, a pale green polo shirt, a gold chain, and a gold diamond studded watch with a luminous turquoise face. A lean six-footer, he has dirty-blond hair and pale blue-green eyes that, without warning, can suddenly go cold and stare right through you.”I eventually want to be considered the best player in my era,” he says, speaking in a low, sharp voice with a trace of a Texas twang. “Because if I’m the best player in my era, then I’m the best player ever. The players are just better now.”
Wiley has what other pool players refer to as in the Big Games. He has an opening break in nine ball powerful enough to sink six balls and a shot making ability{using TOI} so stunning that even the longest shots seem like tap-ins. He’s also part of an elite few who can string together bunches of racks without missing (in nine ball, where the lowest-numbered ball on the table must be struck first before pocketing a ball, he has put together nine racks in a row on a regulation table and a staggering twelve on a bar table). But if Willie Mosconi was the Fred Astaire of pocket billiards, then Wiley is the Gene Kelly—not so much about finesse and seamless grace as muscle and macho fearlessness. Holding his stick more firmly than the rest, making his veiny forearms bulge, he simply rams balls into pockets. “CJ rarely thinks about playing it safe or carefully maneuvering his way around the table,” observes Allen Hopkins, a 46-year-old New Jersey pro who has been one of the best all-around players of the past quarter century. “He just attacks the rack.”
ESPN’s corny sportscasters have tagged Wiley “the fast gun of Texas,” but not without reason. In the time it takes others to run a rack, he can run three. A nine ball rack, for instance, often takes him less than a minute. “Think long, think wrong” is his motto. “The conscious mind can really be destructive when you’re playing,” he says. “If I slow down, I tend to start double-thinking and make bad decisions.” He moves around the table so quickly it seems like he’s not thinking at all. For each shot he uses a Touch of Inside, and takes no more than three practice strokes. “It can be demoralizing to a weaker player,” says California pro George “the Flamethrower” Breedlove. “He starts running out from everywhere and nowhere, one tough shot after the other and before you ever get to blink, he’s already up five games on you.”
Certainly Wiley doesn't fit any of the standard pool stereotypes. He has a practitioner’s degree in the self-help technique of neuro-linguistic programming; is a second-degree black belt instructor in Ji Mu Do, a combination of eight martial arts; swallows a daily cocktail of herbs, such as Saint-John’s-wort and ginseng, and a special “cleansing “oolong tea that he buys from a Korean herbalist in Dallas; under-goes sessions of acupuncture; and studies Zen. He often talks of “becoming the game” and breathing deeply to “lower my brain waves” and letting my unconscious mind take over.” He says he has reached the point where he can put himself into a heightened trance like state almost at will, that he all but blacks out and is able to play for hours yet not remember a single shot afterwards—as in 1997’s Texas State Championship in Austin, where he began by winning 24 consecutive games on the way to defending his title.
Like all roads players, Wiley planned his days as if he were on a cross-country vacation—only instead of selling his sights on, say, the Grand Canyon, he sought hotbeds of pool activity, or spots. In fact, he always carried a little black spot book, in which he had scribbled information extracted from an underground network of other hustlers: It had the names of players he should play, where they played, how well they played (their “speed”), and their betting patterns. “I really enjoyed the freedom of it all, of waking up whenever I wanted, of going wherever I wanted, and controlling my own destiny,” he says.
Which isn't to say the road wasn't difficult. Wiley says he has been robbed twice at gunpoint—once around the corner from a pool room in Minneapolis, the other at a bootleg liquor joint with a black-room pool table Albemarle, North Carolina—after he won a ton of money. He was punched in Texarkana and served drinks spiked with drugs, he believes, in Queen City and Memphis. Still, he was predatory and merciless. He says he could sense another player’s weakness without even talking to him and got his kicks by crushing opponents to the point of causing their knees to buckle. “I especially loved seeing fear in my opponent’s eyes,” he says, adding that he has not a hint of a guilty conscience about any of his hundreds of conquest: “Listen, all the guys I beat wanted my money just as badly as I wanted theirs. It’s not my fault I was the better player. And besides, a lot of the guys I beat weren’t very nice. I just carried out their karma. God works in mysterious ways.”
It was a life, too, of pure and wildly creative subterfuge. He had his aliases: Besides Mike from Indiana, there was Chris from Missouri and Butch from Tennessee. He had his fake I.D.’s and phony glasses (“Anybody will play someone with glasses,” he says) and at various times posed as a college student, a computer salesman, and a drug dealer. And he had a way to make money, which was to move around a lot, working states from the outside in (that is, playing in the smaller towns first, then the bigger cities), and staying unknown as much as possible. That meant he couldn't enter any high-profile tournaments or—God forbid—betray his brethren by turning pro. Only once during those years did Wiley take a shot as a major organized event: the 1986 World Series of Tavern Pool in Las Vegas. He was 21 at the time, and when it was over, he had beaten out a whopping 756 players to win to win first prize: a piddling $7,500, which he had to split with his backers. On a good night of gambling, he knew, he could make nearly three times as much. I convinced him that hustling was still the way to go.
He continued to believe that for five more years, but he ultimately decided there were no challenges left on the road. With some trepidation he finally went straight and joined the now defunct Men’s Professional Billiard Association. “I really didn't know if I could compete with the best players in the world,” he couldn't crush mentally.” Of course, in his first pro tournament, the Dufferin Nine-Ball Classic in Toronto, he beat four world-class players in a single day: Earl “the pearl” Strickland, Efren “the Magician” Reyes, Jim “King James” Rempe, and “Spanish Mike” Lebron. Overall, he finished in fourth place, earned $3,500, and afterward veteran Cecil “Buddy” Hall gushingly labeled him “the best unknown player in the world.” Says Wiley with a grin: “I played my game and it held up. I went in half-cocked and I came out full cocked.”
That first year, he managed to crack the top ten in the national rankings. He moved to seventh in 1992, fifth in 1994, and fourth in 1995. Then in December 1995, unhappy with the politics of the men’s pro pool tour, he abruptly quit and a month later started a new one, the professional CueSports Association (PCA). That year he captured first place—and a purse of $88,500, a U.S. record—in the ESPN World Open Billiards Championship; he also won the first-ever PCA tour stop, the Dallas Million-Dollar Challenge, and was eventually named player of the year by Pool and Billiard magazine.
Clearly he’s got something—but what? I wanted to see it for myself. So at eleven o’clock on a Monday night, the two of us walked over to a pool room on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a place a little smaller than CJ’s Billiard Palace, a room Wiley owns back home near White Rock Lake. Decked out in a dark pin-striped suit, he began by casually shooting on a table that was dimly lit, though he didn't come close to missing a ball. When it was time to share his secret, he set up a long, sharp cut shot on the six ball. “Now watch. I’m going to shoot this shot with a touch of inside,” he said, bending down in a square, powerful-looking crouch. I watched. He popped his heavy thud of a stroke, and the ball split the right corner pocket.
I didn't really get it; Wiley knew instantly. “Don’t you see?” he asked with some frustration. “With two round objects, it sets up an optical illusion. You can’t aim for a spot on a round object and hit it with another round object. It’s an impossibility. So what I do is look at the two balls as straight lines that bisect.” The explanation only made my head spin faster.
Wiley set up another shot, putting the eight ball on the head spot and the cue ball near the back rail. The balls were about six feet apart—to my mind, a much more difficult shot thank the first one. Yet, surprisingly, he said, “Same shot, with a touch of inside.” And again he knocked it down as if the ball had been magnetically pulled to the center of the pocket.
He sighed dismissively and waved a limp arm in my direction. “Man, this game’s so easy it’s not even funny—once you figure it out,” he said with a sniff. Then, looking straight into my unfocused eyes, he delivered his knew-buckling punch line. “At least it is for me.”
Yep, many factors. I do have to disagree with CJ on any game being tougher to learn than 1 pocket. I never played one pocket until a couple of years ago and can say, it's by far the toughest game I have tried to learn. I know it doesn't help to pick up a game when you are almost 60, but there are so many moves in one pocket, it can take most players many years to play it at a high level, if ever.
'Two Shot 9 Ball' is a "7" and in One Pocket the average difficulty is a "3"...
Allen Hopkins used to beat accomplished one pocket players without ever shooting anything harder than a "Spot Shot"......and I've seen him pass on even shooting a spot shot several times.....he would simply outmove and safety someone into submission.
Playing Two Shot Shoot Out you MUST make tough shots game after game after game.....I'd say the average difficulty of shots in 'Two Shot 9 Ball' is a "7" and in One Pocket the average difficulty is a "3"....that's only one category, but it's a huge difference.
Allen Hopkins used to beat accomplished one pocket players without ever shooting anything harder than a "Spot Shot"......and I've seen him pass on even shooting a spot shot several times.....he would simply outmove and safety someone into submission.
Playing Two Shot Shoot Out you MUST make tough shots game after game after game.....I'd say the average difficulty of shots in 'Two Shot 9 Ball' is a "7" and in One Pocket the average difficulty is a "3"....that's only one category, but it's a huge difference.
I have the nutz.....although I understand why people would think I don't, however.......be careful
It's a crying shame what's happened to 9 Ball the past 20 years, it's slowly but surely been diluted down to the bones......and it's SO MUCH BETTER when played as it was strategically intended.
What's not "real eyesed" is the positioning of the other balls on the table....this sets up an INCREDIBLE amount of options, and two way shots/safeties/two rail banks/three rail "safe banks"/caroms/etc......of course all the shots have built in safeties and sometimes on the roll out it's very important to re position the object balls.....sometimes two at a time. Shooting off the rails become vitally important as well....and did I mention the SPOT SHOT?It comes up in crucial situations.
I made over a million dollars playing this game in the 80s......NO ONE gambled at pool that bet high without playing "Two Shot Shoot Out" and when you guys start to see how advanced it is you'll know why.
It literally takes thousands of hours to learn all the integrities to this game, and it makes 9 Ball at least 10, maybe 100 times better strategically. In "One Foul" you have to play the balls as they lie all the time.....but in "Shoot Out" you re position them every time and control the "battle" for the first shot.
'The Game is the Professor'
I was playing Jerry Bento in a tournament match back in the 80's racing to 9 or 11, I can't remember, but I was on the hill and he had like 4 or 5 games. I never got a shot to win another game, as he put on a exhibition on how to play two shot roll out. If he did miss, It was a two way and I was hooked. It showed how some can shut you down playing two shot. I can also say, I never enjoyed pool as much when I came back from a couple of year lay off and everyone was playing 1 shot.
{ALL RATINGS ARE DONE ON A "1" to "10" SCALE}
Have we ever met? I don't know how well you play or "used to play". Are you a local player in Phoenix or are you from Texas?
I have a feeling they would most of the players would take my side in this debate.
When you look at all the categories it seems obvious to most players.
ONE POCKET VS TWO SHOT SHOOT OUT 9 BALL
1) Difficulty of Shot Making {ALL RATINGS ARE DONE ON A "1" to "10" SCALE}
2) Difficulty of Cue Ball Position (by length and precision)
3) Percentage of difficult shots to routine shots (routine pertains to speed, spin and angle)
4) Required level of stroking power and precision
5) Average difficulty level for shots pocketed
6) Average difficulty level for safeties executed
7) Average difficulty level for Bank Shots
8) Average speed of shots required
9) Average level of English required on all shots
10) Average distance of follow and draw shots required
11) Average shot length
12) Average length of draw and follow shots required
Two Shot Shoot Out 9 Ball wins hands down over One Pocket from my calculations.
Have we ever met? I don't know how well you play or "used to play". Are you a local player in Phoenix or are you from Texas?
I have a feeling they would most of the players would take my side in this debate.
When you look at all the categories it seems obvious to most players.
ONE POCKET VS TWO SHOT SHOOT OUT 9 BALL
1) Difficulty of Shot Making {ALL RATINGS ARE DONE ON A "1" to "10" SCALE}
2) Difficulty of Cue Ball Position (by length and precision)
3) Percentage of difficult shots to routine shots (routine pertains to speed, spin and angle)
4) Required level of stroking power and precision
5) Average difficulty level for shots pocketed
6) Average difficulty level for safeties executed
7) Average difficulty level for Bank Shots
8) Average speed of shots required
9) Average level of English required on all shots
10) Average distance of follow and draw shots required
11) Average shot length
12) Average length of draw and follow shots required
Two Shot Shoot Out 9 Ball wins hands down over One Pocket from my calculations.
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John, your hypothetical situations, and potential player/amateur matchups, and their corresponding dollar amounts, are nothing short of hilarious !..But you do come up with some interesting scenarios..
However, even at a DCC, or EXPO tournament, you would be VERY hard pressed to accumulate all the pros and amateurs, and get them together, at the same time, to prove (or dis-prove) your never ending theorie's, which nobody (but you) gives a sh*t about anyway !..Unless of course, you staked BOTH sides !
John, your time would be better spent figuring out a way to trap poor 'pool dummy' Lou, WITHOUT all the exotic schemes your hyper-active mind can come up with !..You have intimated, he is not too smart anyway !..You and Lou are both over 21,..For Chrissake, just match up a f-ing game, find a $$$ amount you're both comfortable with, and f-ing PLAY !..Trust me it ain't rocket surgery, and its kinda fun !...I been doin' it all my life, and I ain't broke yet !..:wink:
The Dickster
What are you talking about. What theories?I will ask you the same question I asked Anthony.
Two top one pocket players match up. Efren and Scott. Efren MUST shoot every shot that Lou calls. They cannot signal, they cannot discuss. Who are you betting on?
As for matching up with Lou, I can't do much more than offer what I already offered. I offered to donate a minimum of $500 giving up weight just to get him to the table and he has ducked that game for several years now. I offered the $1000 a game action and was told it's not enough. I guess we can't match up. It's too emotionally trying for him I think.
But next year I will be traveling in the USA for an extended period. Perhaps I can get lucky and find a time when Lou is not on his period and we can match up. I am ever hopeful although I predict that whatever free time I have to devote to it he will have a Jesuit conclave to attend or something else. Just seems to be the way his life goes that he always has other plans when it comes time to play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04qBi-hFLCY
SJD was inducted into the One-Pocket Hall of Fame in Jan., 2012 (along with Buddy Hall).
Same as Archer who won the first straight pool event he entered
I practiced straight pool two weeks (after never playing it in competition) and got to the finals in a major straight pool tournament. After beating Efren in the winners side he came back and beat me in the finals. I had two runs over 90 "back to back" and one run of 134 during that week.
Straight pool is not quite as difficult as one pocket strategically, but it's very demanding in ball pocketing, position play and concentration required.
Earl Strickland has a high run of 407 and he's known as primarily a 9 Ball Player....he also got Runner Up in the Derby City One Pocket tournament to another "rotation/8 Ball player".
I practiced straight pool two weeks (after never playing it in competition) and got to the finals in a major straight pool tournament. After beating Efren in the winners side he came back and beat me in the finals. I had two runs over 90 "back to back" and one run of 134 during that week.
Straight pool is not quite as difficult as one pocket strategically, but it's very demanding in ball pocketing, position play and concentration required.
Earl Strickland has a high run of 407 and he's known as primarily a 9 Ball Player....he also got Runner Up in the Derby City One Pocket tournament to another "rotation/8 Ball player".
before my time
That name doesn't "ring a bell".....he must have been before my time I guess.
That name doesn't "ring a bell".....he must have been before my time I guess.
I will ask you the same question I asked Anthony.
Two top one pocket players match up. Efren and Scott. Efren MUST shoot every shot that Lou calls. They cannot signal, they cannot discuss. Who are you betting on?
As for matching up with Lou, I can't do much more than offer what I already offered. I offered to donate a minimum of $500 giving up weight just to get him to the table and he has ducked that game for several years now. I offered the $1000 a game action and was told it's not enough. I guess we can't match up. It's too emotionally trying for him I think.
But next year I will be traveling in the USA for an extended period. Perhaps I can get lucky and find a time when Lou is not on his period and we can match up. I am ever hopeful although I predict that whatever free time I have to devote to it he will have a Jesuit conclave to attend or something else. Just seems to be the way his life goes that he always has other plans when it comes time to play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04qBi-hFLCY
Well, don't take this the wrong way, but I think from what I've been told, you are the underdog playing Lou. So, props to you for taking the worst of a game and wanting to gamble.
I'll pass,we just have different views on things.You being around so many champs gives you the edge. I surrender, your rite.
If you and Lou ever make it happen,I'm taking the underdog.
That would be me. I have never played in all the big deal events that he has. I don't have pictures of me playing all the pros like he does. Obviously he is the big favorite. But I like trying to outrun the nuts once in a while.
But try answering my question directly with no workaround.
Lou tells Efren exactly what shot to shoot, Scott Frost is the opponent. Efren can't shoot anything but what Lou calls without any discussion on it.
Are you betting on Efren or Scott?
No it's good. I beat the guy when I couldn't spell one pocket and ever since then he has never offered to play me at all during the couple times we have seen each other. Now, it was a little race to two but the way I see it is that even in a race to two the guy who is so great shouldn't ever let the novice get close to eight balls ever. The only thing I knew about one pocket at that time was Buddy's fram advice. If you don't know what to do then fram the rack and hope you get lucky. If you get lucky it was a good shot because that's what you were trying to do.
I got lucky.I still can't spell one pocket. Just barely got past the e in one.....
But I have heart. And I know Lou doesn't. Sometimes heart makes up for a lack of knowledge when the so-called better player starts to dog it a little and the underdog gets a surge of confidence.
Anyway this is all useless barking because Lou will NEVER play me. The mere thought of a tiny chance of losing to me and having to endure the fallout is enough to keep him off the table.
Scott could give Efren a ball
This is a joke, Scott could give Efren a ball and steal playing this way.
This is a joke, Scott could give Efren a ball and steal playing this way.
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No it's good. I beat the guy when I couldn't spell one pocket and ever since then he has never offered to play me at all during the couple times we have seen each other. Now, it was a little race to two but the way I see it is that even in a race to two the guy who is so great shouldn't ever let the novice get close to eight balls ever. The only thing I knew about one pocket at that time was Buddy's fram advice. If you don't know what to do then fram the rack and hope you get lucky. If you get lucky it was a good shot because that's what you were trying to do.
I still can't spell one pocket. Just barely got past the e in one.....
But I have heart. And I know Lou doesn't. Sometimes heart makes up for a lack of knowledge when the so-called better player starts to dog it a little and the underdog gets a surge of confidence.
Anyway this is all useless barking because Lou will NEVER play me. The mere thought of a tiny chance of losing to me and having to endure the fallout is enough to keep him off the table.
Well, as he put it in another post, to one amateur to another, and I have never played in a one pocket tournament and haven't played it long, close to 60, I would love to play Lou some for a few hundred, or more really, just to learn some of the superior knowledge he seems to have over most. Like he ever played my speed when we were both in our prime with his statement, one amateur to another. He is a great internet player though!