Wow! You must have taken some smart pills because the last few pages have shown the best posts I have seen from you in over 100 pages. I'm convinced that you are a "true believer" in CTE. I'm glad to see that you say you don't know why it works but it just does. I think this is a better mindset than people who are claiming to know how it works, but then their explanations are vague.
My rhetorical question, now, is whether you are willing to take the next step to look into the "why's" of CTE. To do that you have to challenge your beliefs just the way you did when you first met Hal. A few days ago I asked if you would restate the issue that I and others have with CTE and your response wasn't so cooperative. But now you seem open to further insights. You might not really care why it works, but a lot of people do need to know why before devoting the substantial amount of time required to really learn how to execute shots with this method.
Based on what I understand of CTE up to now, I'm skeptical -- not because of the method itself, but more because of how nobody seems to be able to explain how it works coherently, in my opinion.
You have not really understood me from the beginning of this thread. As for challenging my beliefs I do it all the time.
Why don't you state or restate the issue you have with CTE and I will answer it as best I can as I have already done.
And I don't care WHY it works when thinking of it as a practical way to get something done. Just like I don't need to know how an engine works in order to drive a car. As an intellectual pursuit I want to know WHY it works because it is fascinating to me that it works.
The diagrams I showed were first published on this forum with many more years ago and were of course buried under mountains of knocker crap such as Patrick and Rick have continued to pile on here.
I have always been open and continue to be open, my question Dan is are you?
The reason I ask is because we have here some people who HAVE spent the time to learn and master the CTE method and they speak of the results based on their on-table experience and then we have some like you who say you won't try it until you know how it works.
But you see part of the problem as I see it is that if you don't get into it, like tearing an engine apart, you won't ever really know how it works or even why in my opinion.
As I said, I applaud you for doing a video analysis of ONE video that Stan made and finding ONE spot where Stan had anything but a straight stroke.
To be fair though you should mention that Stan has done numerous videos of him shooting balls in game situations, running balls in 14.1, rotation, bank pool, nine ball and also ten ball I think. Anyone can slow these videos down to half or quarter speed and see that Stan's stroke is laser straight 99.99% of the time.
That can be seen here,
28 Ball run with visuals called out.
And here;
One rack of rotation
And here:
12 Ball Run in Bank Pool
So respectfully, the CTE method works and in my opinion you do yourself a disservice not to dive into it IF you are truly interested in it. If all you want to do is tear it apart then by all means continue to do that any way you feel is working for you to do so. All that can be done is to look at your analysis and to answer it if possible.
For example, I did a super slow motion video of cue motion inside cases. There was a total of 14 drops inside our cases compared to a similar number inside interiors with less padding than ours. One person went through the video and found one instant where the shafts touched in our case during the bounce test. He posted screenshots and made it out to be a smoking gun completely disregarding the other 13 drops where nothing touched.
I went in and analyzed the video using the same software he did, FinalCut Pro. Turns out that the cue parts were too high in the case on that one drop test but more importantly the actual touching was a 1400th of a second. This was so quick as to be meaningless because in a 1400th of a second there is zero chance that the cue can be damaged. So one anomaly found and explained doesn't at all invalidate the overall system in my opinion.
I am happy to see you doing analysis, happy to see Colin doing analysis. I would love to see more people doing it because I truly believe in the power of the crowd to figure stuff out. Research bears this out as well that the more people working on a problem the more likely an answer will be found. Seems self-evident but until now we have never had a time in history where massive amounts of people can collaborate in real time to tackle issues.
Which brings me back to CTE and figuring out HOW it works. Just as I wouldn't expect you to believe my anecdotal amateur thoughts on how it works from an experienced user's perspective you should also not believe the theoretical ideas on how it works from non-users of the method either. No, instead what we want in my opinion are groups of people getting together on the table with cameras rolling to dissect it from every angle and figure it out. Not this endless is so/is not nonsense that is going on here.