That's not true, entirely. You said you were playing your best in Europe, I think, running 90 something balls in straight and winning in CO, etc. That was before Hal, no?
Simplified CTE
- Thread starter Patrick Johnson
- Start date
I wrote an article on AZ about how Willie told my father "Don't miss." So there. You can also go to the main forum and ask this question and I'd be surprised if you didn't get a dozen people who heard this directly from the man.
When did this cue sweep thing become significant to CTE? Stan always said the "visual sweep" was just that. It was something you did with your vision and had nothing to do with sweeping the cue into place. Now it seems sweeping the cue means something? Hard to keep up with this stuff.
I don't know. The service packs should really be numbered.
Service pack is a good 21st century term for it. In the 20th century it might be called an update or a bug fix. In the 19th century I suppose it could be an enhancement or even an amelioration -- something fancy, lol. I can't think of anything good for the 18th century, but pool wouldn't be much fun with those powdered wigs dropping talc all over the table...
Nope I said that I had some of my best results there and I attributed that to playing every moment I could be playing. I was fortunate to have a gold crown in the barracks basement and an active league system and tournament system to play in. Through HAMB and massive hours playing the best I got to was 98 balls in straight pool and five racks run in 8 ball and five racks run in 9 ball. After Hal I won a Colorado state championship but the frequency of my play was already at a way lower level than when I was in Germany.
When I learned aiming from Hal I was truly sad that I hadn't learned it when I was 17. If I had had that aiming method WHEN I was playing 4-8 hours a day then I thnk I would have done even better. By the time I got to Colorado my back problems were present and I was working on my business. Even before that in Germany I was not playing nearly as much as I had been in the early to mid 90s.
I feel that I could reach higher levels even now IF I were able and willing to spend the same amount of time getting my game in order. I see it every time I do spend time diligently practicing.
More importantly for me personally I feel that I am simply more accurate now than I was in the mid 90s BUT I am fighting physical and vision issues in addition to mental issues caused by a variety of factors. One of those factors is the CONSTANT PERSONAL TROLLING that some members of this forum, who have come here from other forums destroyed by trolls, engage in. It is a mental hangup FOR ME when I am out playing and I "think" that people are judging me based on my outspoken advocacy for objective aiming systems.
In fact, just a couple months ago I literally sharked myself in a $600 a game one pocket match when I made a great mid-table shot and said "yeah, say something about CTE now". Up until then I had been receiving compliments on the accuracy of my shot-making and NO ONE had said a word positive or negative about aiming systems. I stupidly made that outburst and opened the door for ridicule with any missed shot afterwards. Had I not done that then I would have not had that extra performance pressure on me.
The increased accuracy however came from adopting the newest CTE techniques outlined in Stan's book and in the video series he made as a companion to the book. Another user who is more diligent about practicing than I am helped me to understand the visual sweep technique that I had failed to grasp due to my own hangups and other responsibilities in my life.
So for me even though I haven't run five racks in a long time I am still playing and enjoying the game BECAUSE of objective aiming and specifically because of the objective aiming I learned from Hal Houle, Stan Shuffett and Ron Vitello. I see people who are younger than me and in love with the game at the level that I was when I was their age who are learning advanced and correct CTE now who are progressing faster than I did and it is really nice to watch them.
I actually enjoy helping people get interested in CTE and am in the process of setting up my training facility to be a hub for teaching and learning CTE in addition to all other aspects of the game. So at least when the wide-eyed younger version of me shows up then that person can get better information and instruction than I did and their "million balls hit" will likely be far more productive than mine were.
What I did tell you was that SOMETIMES I do wish for the time before I got involved in aiming systems when I just played by feel because of all the animosity and negativity over it that is in my mind now when playing that does sap the joy on some level. I am actually the MOST HAPPY when I go to an out-of-the-way room with people playing who are not on the forums and I can be just a pool player instead of the case guy or the aiming guy. That's when I am completely free of real or imagined criticism of any method I use and all that matters to me and my opponents is playing good and winning. Respect is given to each other for playing well with zero debate about why we did well.
Refinement is a better word. In leatherwork we use techniques that are hundreds of years old with modern refinements that make those techniques work even better.
I can appreciate all of that but your comment that nobody knows your level of play before and after meeting Hal was a bit misleading, if not disingenuous. You implied that your game took a step up after Hal. The fact is that your game had fallen off due to life and responsibilities so it is not possible to gauge Hal's impact on your game from where we sit.
As I recall Hal had something that worked so miraculously that top pro's kept it a secret. 20 years and countless "refinements" later and it's even better than that? Where's my wallet?
The visual sweep and the stepping are the same thing. But Stan didn't figure out that one could lock onto the edge of the cueball with the eyes objectively and "step/sweep" to center from there in order to land on the shot line until after he had put out instructions on doing visual sweeps which were letting the eyes come to center from the left or right. That part of the instruction was not easily understood and now it is easy to understand and easy to demonstrate. None of the instructions use the cue as part of the aiming process. However, the process of using CTE means that the cue is going to come in from the side and not be laid down straight on a line as some ghost ball instruction said to do it. That is where Hal felt that those pros who bring their cue in from the side are likely to be using some kind of objective aiming and not ghost ball.
I Have often mentioned that sometimes the body movements of some pros is very similar to the body movements that CTE use produces and have wondered if CTE and similar methods are indeed a more formal way for a player to end up looking at a shot in the way that a pro might be even if the pro isn't formally using any sort of "named" aiming method. And in fact many pros I have spoken with use objective references such as the shadows, light reflections, full ball connection, half ball connection, and so on which gives them some sort of consistent starting point.
All I know for sure is that CTE works and whatever body motions are produced through going through the process are of with me.
So there? JFC ok you confirmed it great can we effing move on. From here on out I will say that FOR SURE willie said it with extreme confidence whenever I want to use his quote for some reason.
NOBODY here knows it. Come on man be real and stop TRYING with the gotchas.... both you and Joey are going down this road of calling me a liar without actually saying it.
What matters more running five racks once in one set in a decade or consistently running 2-3 racks per set on a weekly basis? I ran 98 when I was into straight pool and by the time I got to Colorado I wasn't interested in playing straight pool that much. I have run 14 balls in one pocket a few times after learning CTE so what does that mean?
Here we are again BACK at the SHOOT THE MESSENGER phase of this bullshit. All of you want to knock me looking for every tiny thing that you think you can use as a GOTCHA moment but NOT A SINGLE ONE OF YOU gives Stan Shuffett and others the slightest credit for turning in great performances after learning CTE. Not once.
I could do a social experiment and take a CTE user that is unknown to you and film him running racks and ask for feedback and the overwhelming comments would be along the lines of you play great, wow how smooth, you're a natural, and so on.....
Take that exact same video and overdub it with the player calling out the CTE perceptions/sweeps for each shot and present it here and the knocks will start. How many titles have you won? What was your playing record before and after learning CTE, you aren't really using CTE, you're self-deluded, you play well DESPITE CTE, nothing you say about your own CTE experience is true.........
Surely you can see the absurdity present with that approach. Stop the knock. All I want to do when you and Joey and others try the "your a liar" approach is to say you're motivating me to do even more to promote and teach CTE. I want CTE in your faces everywhere you look online that has to do with pool when I see the ways that you all try to knock. It's very uncool for you all to do this IMO.
No wonder that these forums have less and less people willing to freely share their life experiences when there are people here keeping score to attempt to "gotcha" them.
I think CTE users are so desperate for validation that some will use anything to prove themselves right. Implying that pro's are using CTE based on how they come into the shot is junk science. Saying it another way, it is a bridge too far. I'd also say that the number of players that come down with the cue entirely on the shot line is in the vast minority and I don't even think it has any connection to how one aims.
Terrific!
With all due respect, and I mean that, if you don't want people misrepresenting what you write then maybe you should be more clear. Not more wordy, but more clear.
I don't see an issue with your social experiment. If a guy plays great he plays great. So what? If he uses CTE then good for him. I'd simply say that CTE doesn't do what he thinks it does and his success is due to time at the table and learning what a successful shot looks like. I use an objective starting point in my PSR for many shots, too. It is a center ball cb to center ball ob alignment that changes to the shot line alignment by the time I am down on the shot. I don't credit that objective reference for why I made the shot, though.
I would say these two bring there cue in in two very different ways.
I would say it's much ado about nothing and it's their, not there.
Ralph Eckert, who is a world class instructor, say you should have your grip hand already in line before going down .
And that makes a lot more sense than all the sweep, pivot and head tilting eye switching gimmicks and service packs of cte SP10.
Neither do I. I credit THE WHOLE PROCESS for why I made a shot. I credit the CTE method of aiming with putting me on the correct shot line which in turn means that if I deliver the cue straight then absent any external factors outside of my control I should make the shot. The more often I can accurately get to the shot line means in general that I will be more likely to make more shots that I attempt.
You use one objective starting point and I would say that this BY ITSELF is already helpful to you to estimate where the shot line should be from that objective starting point. At center cueball to center object ball the ghost ball line is ALSO going to be very close to the center cueball-object ball line. And you will KNOW with 100% certainty that the shot line is to the left or right of that center/center line based on the cut direction. So already your brain, simply by looking at the cueball in the objective center/center alignment, is processing two objective truths and can focus on a very small area of the cueball when deciding which line to adopt.
So I posit that if I took two beginners and taught both of them to have a perfectly straight stroke and I told one of them to take a pocketing test with ZERO aiming instruction and for the other one I told him to start at center to center and choose the shot line from there with no other discussion on aiming theory or reasoning it might be likely that the center/center player would have a better average score over say ten attempts at the shot-making test. Which, IF that were the actual results, would possibly indicate that starting the aiming with a clear objective connection between the balls, is a consequential factor in the higher score.
Clarity between people is a mixture of what the speaker says and what the listener hears. I can attempt to state things in other ways when a person claims not to understand or demonstrates misunderstanding but I cannot know what cognizance the listener has unless I happen to know them fairly well. On a forum I default to writing as if I am speaking to adults with a similar level of cognizance and change my approach as I get to know individuals by their statements and replies.
Man you really have an obsession with CTE lol. Do you think the phrase “service pack” will make you famous
Well Albin Oushan brings his cue in from the side, and he plays pretty darn good
His arm is from the side of his body