And
You've obviously never spent much time traveling around looking for gambling action. If you had, you'd have learned to play on tables with the slate showing through the cloth where you rack the balls, literally racking the 1 ball on the slate, not to mention having to pick the cushion up on an end rail so you could try banking a ball off it instead of ski jumping the object ball right off the table. As a seasoned player, if you wanted to leave with the money, you had to learn now only how to play the table, you had to learn how to play your opponents. If you don't focus as much on how your opponents play, as well as how the table plays, then you'll have failed to learn your opponents strengths and weaknesses, in order to avoid, or use them against your opponents in order to win.
Keep in mind, if all your attention is focused on you and the table, you forget the table don't shoot back, and miss paying attention to the opponents that do!!
What about june bugs? I played once on a garage table with a june bug every 6-8" on the cloth. You couldn't baby shots, just hope the balls were going fast enough to plow them out of the way.
My primary drive is to learn and discuss to figure out what is true, which is a big reason for an online forum. What motivates some of you is a mystery to me. The world is complex and not black and white.
I think they look way out of proportion, the balls are too big for the size of the table.
I have a little 7' brunswick practice table made in 1964, Its original balls are only 1 7/8" Its made with the intent of playing snooker or 8 ball/ 9 ball.
I laid out the marks per its standard dimensions but if I rack up snooker, then put the pink on the dot, the rack of 9 snooker balls is too close to the place where the black ball goes. I've been puzzled about that. we took to racking the red balls so they cover the dot where the pink normally sits and the black ball I usually set back a bit, unless they are scattered and I'm putting it back then I use its designated dot.. comparitively a 12 foot snooker table has a lot more room between the rack and the black ball and a foot or so between the black ball and the rail. If things were proportional the balls would be too tiny to be practical.
Its impossible to run a rack of 15, it would be even worse. with 8 or 9 ball it also seems so out of proportion. The result is you have these great big balls but a much smaller field, crowding them.
I guess its a little better on the larger gold crowns but if they were going to reduce the table to 7' I think the balls are too big to be somewhat "normal"
any table , irreguardless of warp, cloth type, etc cushion response , It is still a fair game so long as players have equivalent time on it. Who is to say what "normal" is? If people are having fun and they fit the tight space and transport needs then I guess its all ok by me ;-) I just got used to GC's in my youth and now when I see serious players playing on what appears to be kids tables all I can reason is, It's just how things are.
on my little table the balls are smaller so the spins do have an effect but it definitely changes things as compared to an adult sized table. as ball size decreases , it's weight decreases by an amount proportional to its size. Diamond chose to have the heavier balls and great big pockets and that's a tradeoff against making things more proportional. If the balls were proportional to a 10 foot GC then the players would need to learn to shoot the smaller, lighter balls.
I guess whatever you play on often becomes "normal"
Could it be the video was taken using the cheap plastic made in china balls and not the Aramith balls? That might explain the speed drop as the ball rolls on the cloth, less weight maybe?
From Badboys Texas State Championships. Blue label 7ft Diamonds. Incredibly short rails even at slow speeds. Cue ball doesn't slow down much. I assume rails were replaced or something wrong with cloth install? Never seen anything like it on a Diamond
I have a 9 foot Red Diamond manufactured in 2003 or 2004. The cushions were changed to Klematch P59 and the cloth is Simonis 860HR. Measured height to the middle of the nose is 35mm / 1.378 inches. The spec sheet says 34mm. My table plays short with anything above a low speed hit, but not as short as any 7 foot Diamond I've played on. With a medium hard hit, Diamonds, and my table, play short but are consistent. I do still have difficulty getting that speed right though.
True luck will normally even out. The catch is that it might take more than a lifetime to even out. Poker lends itself to modeling better than pool. In a bit of research to prove that poker wasn't a matter of luck the researchers created nine model pool players, all exactly equal. Then they calculated how many hands of poker a player would play in a lifetime and started the modeler. The results were unexpected. While it could still be argued that luck was the major factor in poker, it would take more than a lifetime to prove that.
One player in the model over a lifetime was far luckier than the others, another player was significantly more lucky than the other players. Over ten lifetimes luck might not matter although I think that is highly debatable. One thing for sure, over one lifetime, luck mattered! They had everything set up so they did a little more experimenting. Now instead of nine identical players they upped one's skill level slightly. Now there was a huge difference in winnings! The research group both proved luck was a major factor in poker and that skill was a bigger factor!
In a single pool competition, skill, luck, or conditions might be the deciding factor. Usually a combination of such things but they all count. Poor conditions can affect the better player more than they affect the weaker player. The weaker player may not be even trying the shots that conditions might be creating difficulty making.
Luck may be the most fickle mistress in the world. A short digression, my brother and I were at a boat show many years ago. There was a booth having you fill out credit card applications and as a come on they had a roulette style wheel and a chance to win a transistor radio. My brother said, "We need better music for our boat and you need a credit card." I did work his pretty hard ordering off the Net.
We hadn't even noticed the small wheel so I filled out the paperwork then told the man to give me the radio. "You have to spin the wheel." The radio was the grand prize and the nails marking off the slot for it were only about half as wide as the other nails were apart. Forty slots and they still cooked the books! I grabbed the wheel, turned it to the radio. "Give me the radio."
"The wheel has to go all the way around." I reached over and turned the wheel again without letting go of it. "Give me the radio."
He was still uncooperative and I was tired of messing with him. I spun the wheel like I was trying to crank an old time engine! Five, ten times around, just a high speed blur for awhile, no way to count. What couldn't be contested is that the pointer stopped on the radio. Now my brother and I together told the man it was time to pony up the radio. He did begrudgingly. Only two or three decades ago, he is probably still trying to figure out how we cheated him out of that radio!
Luck happens and can certainly be the tail that wags the dog in the short term. I was known far and wide as being lucky! I never disagreed. I kept something to myself, "Luck when it happens often enough can be a skill." People will buck luck longer than they will buck skill so I happily accepted being told I was lucky. Sometimes I really was lucky but skill and hard work had put me in position to be lucky.
Skilled players are more affected by conditions. The lesser skilled player is shooting at 4.25" pockets. The higher skilled player might be shooting at 2.5" of that pocket. While the ball might be pocketed, the rest of his shot might only work if he fired the ball into that 2.5" inch area.
What about june bugs? I played once on a garage table with a june bug every 6-8" on the cloth. You couldn't baby shots, just hope the balls were going fast enough to plow them out of the way.
One of my old favorite places to play didn't have a ceiling and you could look up and see stars through the tin roof.
Bugs were the problem on that old nine footer. It would be covered with them at night. Flying ants, termites and such, could be pretty safely ignored. You could fire through a june bug but it could make you pay sometimes too. Unless the shot is dead easy, remove june bugs! Even worse is a betsy bug landing in the cue ball's path just as you fire. When the cue ball flew off the table and into low earth orbit it was almost a given that a betsy bug was what it had launched off of.
Good times and good memories! The action was an unofficial three dollars a game, all we ever played for. Pretty high stakes really since these guys were mostly working on local farms and ranches. Most made forty a week and found, some only made twenty a week, usually still working on the family farm. They would get all spruced up and catch a ride to "town". Note that town was a few houses and a bar that was in this old house that we played in. Never-the-less, come Saturday night there would be the same dozen or two people there. No women including tending bar, so one of a plowboy's/cowboy's three main goals was already gone, he wasn't getting laid! No fights to win either, I don't think I ever saw a fight in the years I went there.
That left the pool table and some fierce battles on it. The place was open 24/7 and the pool action was nonstop! A friend went in there with a few dollars in his pocket, ran it to around six hundred dollars with three days of three dollar a game play, nonstop play. I don't know what he was on if anything but when I passed by his house to say hello his wife gave me the info on where he was at.
I found him out on his feet, almost didn't know where he was at, and Ol' Joe was reeling him in. Bobby was down to less than two hundred from his high point. Definitely not pool etiquette but I literally grabbed him with both hands and drug him out of the place after the current game ended. A wife and two kids to take care of. She had no money, no vehicle, no phone, and no groceries in the house.
Some of the bugs are edible, maybe even the june bugs!(the reply is now on track, sorry about the thread!
If a table plays weird during a tournament does it really matter? Both players have to deal with whatever the table throws at them, nobody has an advantage in a situation like this so why the big deal?? You don't enter a tournament to beat the table, just the other player.
Knowledge is power. The more you know about your opponent AND the table, the better off you will be . I had a tourney I was in and was on the winners side. Playing well. New opponent, new table. Match at 1-1 and playing the rubber game. Opponent left me a bank shot,.... I make it I run out, miss and I sell out. I missed my bank,sold out and my opp ran the next 3 games to win the match. ONE mistake,.... and it was that bankshot. If I knew the table, the bank was dead and I would have been in front.
I have lost many matches in a tourney due to that ONE credible miss.
Do you need to know the table,.... you bet!
And
You've obviously never spent much time traveling around looking for gambling action. If you had, you'd have learned to play on tables with the slate showing through the cloth where you rack the balls, literally racking the 1 ball on the slate, not to mention having to pick the cushion up on an end rail so you could try banking a ball off it instead of ski jumping the object ball right off the table. As a seasoned player, if you wanted to leave with the money, you had to learn now only how to play the table, you had to learn how to play your opponents. If you don't focus as much on how your opponents play, as well as how the table plays, then you'll have failed to learn your opponents strengths and weaknesses, in order to avoid, or use them against your opponents in order to win.
Keep in mind, if all your attention is focused on you and the table, you forget the table don't shoot back, and miss paying attention to the opponents that do!!
This guy is very accurate on road playing. I did that back in the day, and you had to know a lot about the tables, like he mentioned, and the limits to which you could push your opponent to get in his wallet. You also need to know which ones wouldn’t lose more than a $20 bill, but wouldn’t mind trying to take your paycheck. And the locksmiths, always looking for a lock.
I own a red label Diamond Professional 9 foot table (purchased in 1995). The cushions play very well- the balls bounce long if anything and the rebound speed is slow, allowing English to take exceptionally well.
I own a red label Diamond Professional 9 foot table (purchased in 1995). The cushions play very well- the balls bounce long if anything and the rebound speed is slow, allowing English to take exceptionally well.
I wonder if there were multiple changes over the years? I was on an East Coast road trip about 10 years ago and stopped by a room I believe in Winston-Salem that had super old Diamond Professionals. I vaguely recall the cushions played nicely, but not 100% on my memory. What I do remember for sure 100% is the pockets were not dyed, and there were zero black marks on the balls. I always thought Diamond should have simply never dyed the pockets black after seeing these. No one would have complained for 15 years afterwards about the black marks.
You have a point that the home player knows the table and conditions. However, the home player generally knew nothing about the road player, even that he was playing a road player. The road players organized just a bit. They would swap information on where to play, who to play, and the person's strengths and weaknesses. The same road players usually got angry if somebody dimed them out!
Other times the road player had a local steerer. Never understood these steerers that would dime out their fellows they were going to be playing for a long time to come to get a small slice of pie from a road player. Yet a road player can almost always find a steerer. Again, the road player knows all about the locals, why shouldn't the locals know about the road player too?
I can't see abandoning bank shots. It shouldn't take long at all to understand a particular table and how to bank on it. Often being able to bank better than average was my advantage in match ups. The best cutting player I have ever seen couldn't bank for crap. Fierce battles when I tried to hang with him cutting balls and the whole place would gather around our table. When I was more concerned about winning than the battle I added in the easy banks. Beat him every time with a modest banking game when he had none at all.
I have a 9 foot Red Diamond manufactured in 2003 or 2004. The cushions were changed to Klematch P59 and the cloth is Simonis 860HR. Measured height to the middle of the nose is 35mm / 1.378 inches. The spec sheet says 34mm. My table plays short with anything above a low speed hit, but not as short as any 7 foot Diamond I've played on. With a medium hard hit, Diamonds, and my table, play short but are consistent. I do still have difficulty getting that speed right though.
Unique material – experienced process
The strips obtained by molding have a profile with a more regular geometry. That is why we use this method instead of extrusion for the manufacture of the KLEMATCH® cushions.
The cushions’ profile regularity obtained by molding allows players a game with greater accuracy. A molded strip manufactured from the finest rubber mixtures like a KLEMATCH® cushion, allows players to combine performance and accuracy for optimum satisfaction with a maximum service life.
this page says a bit about types of rubber and the molding process.
Research the types and uses of rubber molding. Learn about neoprene, foam rubber, grommet edging, silicone rubber, and the other types of rubber molding.
www.iqsdirectory.com
here is some comparison between natural rubber and synthetic rubber
Whether you’re a company leader who’s choosing materials for your products or a consumer who’s making buying choices for your household, learning about your options is the first step.
www.yulex.com
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I cant' speak for this particular manufacturer, what we do know is that natural rubber has some different properties.
I worked in a plant that recovered printing rollers , I used to remove the old rubber and prep the core and put it into molds. It was pumped from a drum and cooked in an oven in the mold
the OEM rollers were, I believe, mainly natural rubber, one of the properties is that it is slightly porous which gives it a grippy feel, like an elastic band or a pencil erasor. The synthetic rubber is less prone to attack from the chemicals, solvents and is cheaper to produce as it can be molded easily. It's cheaper and breaks down less quickly from ozone.
natural rubber is from rubber trees, most others are from the petroleum industry.
what I have seen is that the friction difference is substantial , so if a roller is driving paper you want that grippyness, If it's slick like an O ring, it wont drive paper so well. the slickness of the synthetic rubber was a bit of a disadvantage but it can be molded as heat cures it once in a mold.
One example where the grippynes matters, is a folding machine where paper is being driven by rubber rollers. If they are slick rollers made from basically rubber like plastic, they loose their capability of having drive as soon as they get dusty.
I noticed that when looking at rubber for pool tables, there is a lot of offshore stuff made of synthetic rubber, cheap stuff from china , It can be molded cheaply. I believe that making pool table cushions by extrusion, like in the brunswick video requires a much higher cost equipment setup than a simple heat activated molding process,
this video shows the Brunswick Superspeed manufacturing process, you can see how costly and unique the equipment required ot do that is.
If you are choosing a manufacturer for pool table rubber I'd take into consideration their process and what type of rubber they are using, some companies may be secretive about their proprietary processes.
I have occasionally looked into having real rubber rollers made, where synthetics would not work well , an example is driving wood through a thickness planer. It needs that grip that natural rubber provides. a slick synthetic roller will get covered in wood dust and slip.
It is expensive they have long wait times and I once went to the plant and was interested about their process but they wouldn't let me see inside, protecting their proprietary process.
I wont speak for or against a particular manufacturer, I just think they type or rubber you choose and weather of not it is natural rubber is important. when I see its made by a molding process and not an extrusion machine, it lead me to think this is using a synthetic but that may not be completely justifiable. a chemical scientist that studies rubber types and has in depth knowledge of different manufacturing types would definitely be able to shed more light on why certain types of rubber are best for pool table cushions.
If you are ordering rubber through online dealers, id just be a bit cautions that the rubber you are getting is the type of rubber most suitable. If it's incredibly cheap it's likely made by a molding process and not natural rubber.
i suspect that the machinery that Brunswick is using , although very dated looking, may still be in use and without knowing more I'd be a bit more tempted to go with that type of rubber or a manufacturer using similar extrusion equipment. Natural rubber, not plastics.
Its a big subject, I dont know everything, I'd like to learn more. I believe the type of rubber and the process used may have a large effect on its bounce characteristics.
One thing Im curious about, how much is the type of rubber affecting the drive between ball and cushion, when you spin balls into a cushion? The cloth separates the two, does the grippyness matter ?
www.yulex.com
