Setting "traps"
- Thread starter Push&Pool
- Start date
Actually I used to do that a lot. When I was running around playing pool and often playing suckers one of the things you do to keep them playing is setting them up to fail. You let them come to the table with not much to do often after an intentional miss. I want them to sell out to me rather then me having to run out.
It keeps them playing as they had chances to win and blame themselves for the loss. If they should happen to win the game that is good to. I want them to win games on their own and not have to hand it to them in a way that may look too obvious.
In a real match I would never do such a thing. You don't want your opponent coming to the table any more then they have to. Any time someone is at the table they can beat you no matter how bad the balls were laying. We are only talking about short rack games like 9 ball and 8 ball. One pocket, or 14,1 are a different matter. In one pocket I may play a safe leaving a long odds shot maybe long and straight in and dare them to shoot at it. It will usually be a shot that gets them one ball while a miss may cost them the game.
My favorite "trap" is when the object ball is near the side pocket but past it a bit, I like to leave the cueball at an angle where you can't shoot in the corner due to the scratch in the side and you can't cut it in the side either. Most new players either try the shot and scratch or miss.
For me it largely depends on the opponent, but in many situations I actually found traps effective against better players. If you play a simple safety against a weak player, he'll attempt to get out nevertheless and inevitably fail. Doing that against a bigger fish usually results in him playing an even tougher safety on you. But a well-timed and carefully selected bait can feel irresistible even to some veterans. Sometimes it backfired as they managed to hit it, but still there were those situations where their fail saved me from the brink of defeat and brought me a much desired win.
I do that too sometimes, but my own "traps" more often rely on the opponent attempting a low percentage shot and missing, doing damage to himself in the process (pocketing one of my balls, creating new problem balls for himself, sometimes even pocketing the 8). Even if he doesn't make his own situation more complicated, he usually leaves me with a much easier shot on my OBs.
I have thought of this often. I wish I was good enough to do it.
Good players don't do this... Only idiots that play shots called he ram shot do lol
What you described is basically a bad defensive shot. You really should try to hide the cue ball instead of "leaving a ball open" for the opponent.
hang-the-9...Actually there is an easy way to pocket the OB in the corner, in the situation you describe, without scratching. Jerry Briesath showed it to me many years ago, and demonstrated it again just last summer at the BCA trade show. Ask him to show it to you next time you see him! Cool shot! :grin:
Scott Lee
http://poolknowledge.com
Scott Lee
http://poolknowledge.com
I do this a lot in 8ball, especially when playing against weaker opponents. In fact, when I won a regional event in 1999, the one thing I remember doing was the beat-down I gave in the semis. My opponent (an s/l 6) was trying to run-out but had a rather ugly cluster he was refusing to address. He missed with two balls on the table, obviously one of those was clustered. I intentionally missed meaning, I didn't play safe but made it appear I was actually trying to pocket a ball. I left him dead straight on his lone open ball with no way to open the cluster. He fell for the bait, pocketed his last open shot and intentionally fouled so that he wouldn't open the table. I took BIH and went to work on him, winning the game and the set.
I think in 8ball, the art of the intentional miss is a very important move. Unfortunately in APA, it gets a little sticky because you have to record defensive shots and this is definitely a defensive shot but you don't want to announce that it is.
That would take skill and if you read posts by this guy you know he has none nor wants any of that.
Hit it a bit thin and off the point? There is also another one where you nail it with a bit of a jump stoke and off the back of the pocket
Keep in mind these are "traps" for low ranked players. If you try many of these things that Push n Pool is talking about against a good player, he'll just laugh at you and lock you up on a safety.
Oh, I don't want skill? Since when? Because I said I don't have the time and desire to become a world class player? By the way, please define skill. If you're claiming I have none, then explain to me what I'm supposed to learn in order to have average skill.
I also fail to see what's so special about my posts. Why do my questions need to have some "secret meaning"? Ram shots? Really? A 3 year-old topic completely unrelated to any of my recent posts, and if I remember correctly you still failed to find real evidence despite trying to connect me with that stuff every time I peeked into the forum. Still not tired of the pointless trolling and spamming?
Some of your questions are "different" I think.
Why dont you post a short video of you playing against one of your opponents.
Why dont you post a short video of you playing against one of your opponents.
Because I'm not very fond of the idea of showing my face to the whole internet, and I think the opponent would like it even less :/
Tim Miller, aka "The Monk", who was a well-known instructor for a while,
wrote a little article on 9b, and part of it said this:
I think this makes sense against most players. Could Shane cut in that shot you intentionally left?
Sure. But most of us are never gonna play Shane or players of his caliber.
Vs. the other 99% of the world, this tactic can work.
Against the top tier players, I guess you'd need to figure out a different tactic.
On the other hand, the other 99% of the world also can't kick like Shane can.
So I might as well go for a full safety that hides the ball vs. them, and half the time
they will miss their kick entirely and give up ball in hand.
Speaking of Shane, there's a cool video of a similar concept being applied, at the 1:35 mark.
Only instead of intentionally leaving a tough shot...
Johnny Archer leaves Shane a tough safe. If there were an easy, high percentage safe,
Johnny would have played it. But he sees only tough options so he rolls out
and baits Shane into trying one of those tough options.
To say it doesn't work out well for Shane is an understatement.
wrote a little article on 9b, and part of it said this:
I think this makes sense against most players. Could Shane cut in that shot you intentionally left?
Sure. But most of us are never gonna play Shane or players of his caliber.
Vs. the other 99% of the world, this tactic can work.
Against the top tier players, I guess you'd need to figure out a different tactic.
On the other hand, the other 99% of the world also can't kick like Shane can.
So I might as well go for a full safety that hides the ball vs. them, and half the time
they will miss their kick entirely and give up ball in hand.
Speaking of Shane, there's a cool video of a similar concept being applied, at the 1:35 mark.
Only instead of intentionally leaving a tough shot...
Johnny Archer leaves Shane a tough safe. If there were an easy, high percentage safe,
Johnny would have played it. But he sees only tough options so he rolls out
and baits Shane into trying one of those tough options.
To say it doesn't work out well for Shane is an understatement.
I didn't make anything, certain people on the AZ made it for me and you contributed a lot. As I said, you and a dozen more people massively attacked my reputation from the start for apparently no reason and made me look like an idiot even though I was simply trying to discuss various pool topics. This forum has tens of thousands of members but thanks to all of you I ended up among the worst five from day 1, and now I can't even start a normal thread and get normal responses. Even if I did all those horrific things you accused me of, even if I really invented the RAM shot, it would still make no sense for you to keep writing all these annoying posts for something that apparently happened in distant past and had no obvious impact on the actual game at any level.
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LOL sucks having to suffer consequences, doesn't it? You made yourself look like an idiot, don't need to blame others for your short comings. Now you want people to forget your past and focus on the present in a thread that is only slightly less dumb than the RAM shot? Nice.