Which is More Difficult -- Finding the Ghost Ball or Adjusting for Squirt/Swerve?

Which is More Difficult -- Finding the Ghost Ball or Adjusting for Squirt/Swerve

  • Lining Up on the Ghost Ball (using whichever aiming system)

    Votes: 4 20.0%
  • Adjusting for Squirt/Swerve

    Votes: 14 70.0%
  • Who Cares -- BasementDweller is an idiot for asking.

    Votes: 2 10.0%

  • Total voters
    20
I think I remember a poster tried to make arraignments to play with you some on a visit to Milpitas.

I think you went MIA for the week.

Isn't it interesting when there is no argument against statement, the personal attacks start.

Seems so many know how I play without ever seeing me play......guess yall just will never know huh........been telling yall where I play and no one has ever taken me up on the offer.

Just saying yall would be surprise how well I can use Ghost Ball and until you see this in action at the table playing me, yall are just talking out your ass....as usual.
 
I've never seen one, just curious.

Do "ghost balls" really exist or are they just a fragment of a player's mind? I've never seen one, just curious.


This is sort of a follow up to my last thread about high deflection shafts.

http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=359576

I thought it would be interesting to run a quick poll among those that hang out in the Aiming Forum.

What do you find more difficult, finding the actual ghost ball position -- using your aiming system of choice or adjusting your aim line for squirt and swerve?
 
Do "ghost balls" really exist or are they just a fragment of a player's mind? I've never seen one, just curious.

Ghost balls refer to the void left by the surgical operation that results in a eunuch.

:p
-Sean
 
Duckie, I appreciate your apparent passion for pool. I really do. And, your passion for ghost ball. It helped you, and you are loyal to it. I get that. But, just understand that there is much more out there than just the ghost ball. Things that may very well help you play much better than you are now. So, don't be so quick to dismiss other systems without trying them or even understanding them.

If you really want us to know just how well you play, you can always put up a youtube video, or take the Billiard University tests, or something. Words are great, but there comes a time when you have to at least back up a little of what you say. We tend to get used to seeing just the great players play, and at times get a little rough when an average Joe actually misses a make-able ball here and there. But don't let that stop you from posting something.
 
The part I found curious is that NOBODY knew who he is when asked about him at Edgies.

Think about it, a person who claims to have practiced over 1600 hours a year at that pool room, and no players, or counter people knew him?

http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=310943&highlight=showed

Aw man! You mean to tell me if I convince my employer to send me on a trip to Palo Alto, and I use after-hours time to go to Edgies, that NOONE will know who "Greg H" or "duckie" is?

You mean to say "duckie" is a verb, and not a noun?

-Sean
 
I remember a time when I was haunted by a ghost ball. It ruined me, took over my being and made me miss balls :(

I knew it was time for an exorcism. I called around trying to get as many as I could with Dr See, Dr Cte and Dr Dave being just a few that helped banish the ghost ball from my being.

Now as for this little squabble...Neil for the win :)
 
The part I found curious is that NOBODY knew who he is when asked about him at Edgies.

Think about it, a person who claims to have practiced over 1600 hours a year at that pool room, and no players, or counter people knew him?

http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=310943&highlight=showed

i ve just seen a very few smaller selfmade vids from mr. duckie.

and from what i ve seen he would need another 1.600 hours ....but with a knowledged guy to help him to get somehow some day "okay-fundamentals".
he seems to be addicted to pool......but furthermore in my opinion in all his table time sessions he never had an empty cup of tea.......until today.

and it doesnt matter what kind if system let him "land" on the striking line........with his current technics it wouldnt matter anyway..

just my 2 cts
 
Do you have to be a great player to be a great coach?

What does anyone's ability to play have to do with coaching? The best players do not necessarily make the best coaches. It is a different mind set. People can study the game, and understand it better than those playing it.

Butch Harmon, two years of playing professional golf, and one win on a small satellite tour. One of the best golf coaches. There are many more examples, in pro, and college sports.

Knowledge doesn't always lead to better performance.

It is quite funny how people on the forum are willing to bet on people without ever seeing their game. Perceptions are different. I played an old friend recently, hadn't seen him in 25 years. He was in town and saw on Facebook that I played a lot. We played, and it just happened, that I played lights out, one of my best performances. He got a little upset, because I said I was just a banger, which I am. He thought i was unbelievably good. I turned and said see the five guys at the bar, the do to me what I am doing to you, only worse. He came from a smaller town, and he had a different perception of what great play was. Making bets on your perception of someone's play is not smart.

So if someone goes, and plays Duckie, and they win it solve nothing. If it did, then after after we watched Barton play Lou everyone would have run away from CTE and Pro One.
 
What does anyone's ability to play have to do with coaching? The best players do not necessarily make the best coaches. It is a different mind set. People can study the game, and understand it better than those playing it.

Butch Harmon, two years of playing professional golf, and one win on a small satellite tour. One of the best golf coaches. There are many more examples, in pro, and college sports.

Knowledge doesn't always lead to better performance.

It is quite funny how people on the forum are willing to bet on people without ever seeing their game. Perceptions are different. I played an old friend recently, hadn't seen him in 25 years. He was in town and saw on Facebook that I played a lot. We played, and it just happened, that I played lights out, one of my best performances. He got a little upset, because I said I was just a banger, which I am. He thought i was unbelievably good. I turned and said see the five guys at the bar, the do to me what I am doing to you, only worse. He came from a smaller town, and he had a different perception of what great play was. Making bets on your perception of someone's play is not smart.

So if someone goes, and plays Duckie, and they win it solve nothing. If it did, then after after we watched Barton play Lou everyone would have run away from CTE and Pro One.

You're missing the point, Rob. The issue is that duckie is passing judgement on non-traditional aiming systems with a broad-sweeping brush, and he doesn't even have knowledge of a single one of them. Instead, he's bashing from a distance, tetanus-lockjawed on ghostball, and jumps into any threads having to do with aiming. He has a single fixation, and that's this forum.

I don't know where you get this "coaching" thing from, as his posting technique doesn't resemble any form of coaching I've ever seen. Please read his posts. You'll notice a downtrodding tone towards alternative aiming systems, *as well as* to anyone interested in learning these systems.

I consider myself a pretty decent player (ask John Barton -- we've played), and even though I'm very comfortable with my method of aiming (which is the traditional snooker method of "back-of-ball" aiming), I'm quite interested in learning any alternative techniques to expand my horizons.

Here's the thing, Rob -- if one is to consider themselves a consummate cue sports student, it behooves one to learn as much as one can. I, and others here, try to subscribe to that notion every single day. You can't tell me that duckie, with his downtrodding posts about alternative aiming systems (and why he fixates on this single topic as part of his AZB forum experience -- when there's *so much more* to read and learn about -- is beyond me) is a "consummate cue sports student." He likes to profess that he spends lots of time practicing, studies the game, advocates knowledge-building games like 14.1, etc., but yet he's hopelessly tetanus-lockjawed into his own little world of ghostball and -- get this -- Cranfield's arrow, which is a training device. (In its own right, this alone demonstrates his primer level as a cue sports student. You don't come into forums -- where it's extremely likely you'll run into members with much greater knowledge than your own -- and start bashing a topic you know nothing about.)

He needs to start looking past his nose if he wants those "thousands of hours" he's supposedly spending at the table to actually produce results. And he needs to lose this fixation with alternative aiming systems. How about reading and posting in the 14.1 subforum, as an example? He's supposedly this big advocate of the game of 14.1 resulting in greater strides as a player -- but yet the last hint that he'd ever been to that forum was more than several years ago.

Ratta (Ingo) is 100% correct -- from the videos that duckie has posted on YouTube -- he is actually the one in need of a coach more than anything. His fundamentals (lack of) are quite obvious in those videos. See here:

https://youtube.com/channel/UCX2yx79SaqMvxR1cWkyLzCQ

And finally, on the topic of "going to play duckie," the idea is to finally drill into him the fact that he isn't even close to an authoritative source of knowledge or information. Pencil drawings on a napkin (or even basic CAD drawings) aren't an indicator of knowledge. Anyone can create those. Maybe by drilling him on the table might finally send this message -- especially since he barks just as loudly as others here, saying that everyone knows where he his and where he plays (but interestingly, the ones that tried couldn't find him, or find anyone that knew him).

Like JB said, duckie just needs to SHUT UP about aiming systems. It's not an issue of "having rights to express opinion." It's just plain courtesy.

-Sean
 
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Consider this.....when you state "you cant do that" what you are really stating is you can not do that therefore no one else can.

Example......back flips on bikes and motorcycles. There was a time there were those said " You can't do a back flip on a motorcycle". Now look at what stunts are being done on motorcycles and bikes.

Over my life time, there have been those proved me wrong when I stated " You can't do that". Enough times to which I seldom say that any more but instead..to stating "there is no way I can do that."

You can not speak to what another person can and can not do, only to what you can and can not do.

Such as using ghost ball.....you can't doesn't mean others can not.

Just because I can not use CTE does not mean others can not. It's clearly apparent that there are those that can and can not use it. That's the nature of being human......what works for one may not work for another.

It's the blallant erroneous statements such as "you can't do xxx" using ghost ball by those that don't use ghost ball that is the issue.

Someone had to do the first back flip on a motorcycle......
 
It's the blallant erroneous statements such as "you can't do xxx" using ghost ball by those that don't use ghost ball that is the issue.

No worse than a non-CTE user (such as yourself) calling the system a "scam."
 
I went to edgies and asked the owner who Greg H aka duckie was, they had no clue. They paged him. Must not have been there. I stopped again a couple nights later. Still no show. No replies on AZB. *shrug*
 
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I went to edgies and asked the owner who Glen H aka duckie was, they had no clue. They paged him. Must not have been there. I stopped again a couple nights later. Still no show. No replies on AZB. *shrug*

You act surprised? Duckie isn't real, he's a ghost.
 
I went to edgies and asked the owner who Glen H aka duckie was, they had no clue. They paged him. Must not have been there. I stopped again a couple nights later. Still no show. No replies on AZB. *shrug*

Monte:

You keep writing "Glen H" -- in both this and the other thread. In his avatar text, duckie has "Greg H". Big difference between the two. I know if my name was "Greg" but someone was paging "Glen", I wouldn't answer. ;)

-Sean
 
Consider this.....when you state "you cant do that" what you are really stating is you can not do that therefore no one else can.

Example......back flips on bikes and motorcycles. There was a time there were those said " You can't do a back flip on a motorcycle". Now look at what stunts are being done on motorcycles and bikes.

Over my life time, there have been those proved me wrong when I stated " You can't do that". Enough times to which I seldom say that any more but instead..to stating "there is no way I can do that."

You can not speak to what another person can and can not do, only to what you can and can not do.

Such as using ghost ball.....you can't doesn't mean others can not.

Just because I can not use CTE does not mean others can not. It's clearly apparent that there are those that can and can not use it. That's the nature of being human......what works for one may not work for another.

It's the blallant erroneous statements such as "you can't do xxx" using ghost ball by those that don't use ghost ball that is the issue.

Someone had to do the first back flip on a motorcycle......

Boy, you're doing some serious backpedaling, and that's nothing to do with back flips or a motorcycle!

First, it was the superiority of ghost ball over the alternative aiming methods. Now that I've cornered you on that, you change tunes to "people have said ghostball can't do xxx." So we go from "superior" to a radically-changed tune of defense against statements supposedly made. :scratchhead:

You're a bit wobbly in your stance on this, duckie. I'd recommend losing the fixation on this Aiming forum, and instead start to enjoy some of the many other topics that the AZB forum offers. Since you purport to be a 14.1 student, I'd recommend the 14.1 subforum. ;)

-Sean
 
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Monte:

You keep writing "Glen H" -- in both this and the other thread. In his avatar text, duckie has "Greg H". Big difference between the two. I know if my name was "Greg" but someone was paging "Glen", I wouldn't answer. ;)

-Sean

It was Greg H, whatever is in his AZB profile. I looked it up before I asked. I adjusted my comment above. :)
 
So there are actually 4 guys that find it more difficult to line up (or aim) on the ghost ball than it is to adjust for squirt/swerve. That's the most interesting thing in this thread. I would be curious to know which if any aiming systems they use or have tried using, or even more simply -- how do they go about aiming or lining up the shot?

I find myself missing shots based on only three things:
1. I'm not lined up correctly.
2. I don't adjust properly for squirt/swerve.
3. I stroke the ball poorly.

While I have a pretty good feel for the squirt of my cue (I've played with a Predator for a long time), there are still a lot of shots that I over squirt. These are shots that I just don't account for enough squirt.

There's an awful lot of talk on this sub-forum about the process of aiming for a center ball shot on the cue ball. Judging by the polls very limited number of results -- it appears that more people have issues like I do with adjusting for squirt and swerve. So why isn't there more talk about how people make this adjustment? Is there pretty much a consensus that this has to be done by all players simply through feel? This is my hunch. If that's the case, would the ability to account for such things by feel not be a strike against a lot of the different aiming systems that players use for an aspect of the game that many feel is actually easier than adjusting for squirt and swerve?
 
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