Shotmaker.

Mensabum said:
Inch is tight. Good luck.
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Took me about two years of trying every single shot. I got to maybe nine out of ten. After that I used position more to stall than to make balls. It was brutal. Before jump cues, there were a few jump rods around, but by and large you only needed to put a small slice of ball blocking a shot for it to be a safety.

Everything was accidental. Accidental safeties, accidentally hooking myself to keep the other player in the game. The other player could see if the shot had rolled a tiny bit further or a tiny bit less they would have had an open table. Which reminds me, perfect speed control was needed for a lot of shots. Perfect speed control is going to be tougher to get now than it was then. There was the slow directional cloth still around a bit when I started, the fast cloth of the eighties which would be better called medium speed, and the fast cloth of today which is faster than greased owl crap.

Hate to bring the pursuit into play but artistic pool used to be played in two stages. The first stage was shots from the book of artistic pool. The second stage was select your own shots. You would get two tries at a shot you had practiced a lot, the other player got two tries at that same shot and you alternated turns leading I believe, make or miss. Sounds a lot like what you have in mind. It would be artistic pool lite.

Lola, good luck on spot shape. You should be able to put an aspirin sized piece of paper on the table and shade it the vast majority of the time. Rob a paper hole punch for your targets. The cue ball should stop with at least an edge of the cue ball over the paper. Just for convenience you might start with a dime but after awhile the dime interferes with the shot too often. I think you might get to seven out of ten which means you will have to think more about angles than Willie Mosconi did in his day. He would come across the shooting lanes and go ten for ten some sessions when he was a young man. He was the one that caused me gray and thinning hair when I was young. I thought I was playing shape when I could hit the next ball. I was a shotmaker as described by some in this thread. Willie made me rethink what was possible! Two people made me rethink what was possible about twenty years apart, Willie and Efren. I wouldn't say either was better than the other, they were different. There have been a lot of other players out there, some serious beasts, but none that made me say, damn I didn't know that was possible! Not talking about trick shot artists, the best of those aren't shooting pool but have brought the pursuit of their craft well past what I considered possible. I think it was Sang Lee that didn't impress my young practice partner. "I see those shots all the time," Yeah, but others are still maybe 50% on them and Sang Lee invented those shots decades ago! I wish you the best. You are on a lonely path chasing spot shape.

Hu
 
ShootingArts said:
Took me about two years of trying every single shot. I got to maybe nine out of ten. After that I used position more to stall than to make balls. It was brutal. Before jump cues, there were a few jump rods around, but by and large you only needed to put a small slice of ball blocking a shot for it to be a safety.

Everything was accidental. Accidental safeties, accidentally hooking myself to keep the other player in the game. The other player could see if the shot had rolled a tiny bit further or a tiny bit less they would have had an open table. Which reminds me, perfect speed control was needed for a lot of shots. Perfect speed control is going to be tougher to get now than it was then. There was the slow directional cloth still around a bit when I started, the fast cloth of the eighties which would be better called medium speed, and the fast cloth of today which is faster than greased owl crap.

Hate to bring the pursuit into play but artistic pool used to be played in two stages. The first stage was shots from the book of artistic pool. The second stage was select your own shots. You would get two tries at a shot you had practiced a lot, the other player got two tries at that same shot and you alternated turns leading I believe, make or miss. Sounds a lot like what you have in mind. It would be artistic pool lite.

Lola, good luck on spot shape. You should be able to put an aspirin sized piece of paper on the table and shade it the vast majority of the time. Rob a paper hole punch for your targets. The cue ball should stop with at least an edge of the cue ball over the paper. Just for convenience you might start with a dime but after awhile the dime interferes with the shot too often. I think you might get to seven out of ten which means you will have to think more about angles than Willie Mosconi did in his day. He would come across the shooting lanes and go ten for ten some sessions when he was a young man. He was the one that caused me gray and thinning hair when I was young. I thought I was playing shape when I could hit the next ball. I was a shotmaker as described by some in this thread. Willie made me rethink what was possible! Two people made me rethink what was possible about twenty years apart, Willie and Efren. I wouldn't say either was better than the other, they were different. There have been a lot of other players out there, some serious beasts, but none that made me say, damn I didn't know that was possible! Not talking about trick shot artists, the best of those aren't shooting pool but have brought the pursuit of their craft well past what I considered possible. I think it was Sang Lee that didn't impress my young practice partner. "I see those shots all the time," Yeah, but others are still maybe 50% on them and Sang Lee invented those shots decades ago! I wish you the best. You are on a lonely path chasing spot shape.

Hu
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Hu is correct on this. Don't cross your shot lines. As you start to zero in on cue ball placement, speed, angle, etc... your ball selection will change. Comes w the territory. The way you set yourself up on the table for the out will be different. You'll find yourself at center table using shot angle and speed w minimal English. If that's the type of game you want for yourself. By no means flashy, but gets the job done. Consistently. You might try some 14:1. Just a thought. Could be helpful.
 
Mensabum said:
Hu is correct on this. Don't cross your shot lines. As you start to zero in on cue ball placement, speed, angle, etc... your ball selection will change. Comes w the territory. The way you set yourself up on the table for the out will be different. You'll find yourself at center table using shot angle and speed w minimal English. If that's the type of game you want for yourself. By no means flashy, but gets the job done. Consistently. You might try some 14:1. Just a thought. Could be helpful.
Click to expand...


As you know, the whole rack becomes about speed, angles, and minimum side spin. I move up and down the cue ball a lot and any shot that isn't true zero spin usually carries a tiny bit of side spin. It wasn't unusual to play a session without really needing heavy sidespin. Not that I didn't use it when the table was empty. I like to slide up behind the last ball for a tap in to have the other player rake the ball!

Typically a session that might last six or eight hours would include serious side spin once or twice that was planned at the beginning of the inning. It wasn't that I couldn't use sidespin, there was no need for it. Without a lot of sidespin, miscues rarely happen. Since I rarely approached the edges of adhesion high and low either I went ages without a miscue. Then I added always chalking before a high spin shot and I often didn't remember my last miscue.

As almost always, we are on the same page. Most of my shots were speed and angles from less than twenty inches away from the object ball. Staying in the 12 to 30 inch range from the object ball few shots are hard. I never brought a date to a gunfight but I remember when others brought a girl that wasn't a pool player, a handful of times the girl came up to me with tears in her eyes, even crying loudly, "It wasn't fair, you got all of the easy shots!" "Yes ma'am, It works out that way sometimes."

I read about a factory shooter for Remington. He did most of his shooting with a twenty-two rifle and most at a distance of about two feet. When he was asked why he shot so close he said he didn't want to stretch the barrel on a new rifle. I thought about him and tried not to stretch pool cues!

Hu
 
Hu , the shooter for the Remington Company was a fella named Tom Frye who lived in Billings Mt .

Yes his shots were fairly close but not as close as a couple of feet ha ha on occasion I'd see Tom when I was at a mutual friends place and I'd help him load his rifle and with the targets he shot the outline of Sitting Bull and General Custer .

I'd also tape over the hole of 1/2" flat washers with freezer tape and watch him try to center punch it with a .22 and yes he did make the shot more often than what he missed .

I believe he still holds a record of blocks of wood shot without a miss his gun of choose was a nylon Remington semiautomatic .22
 
Rusty in Montana said:
Hu , the shooter for the Remington Company was a fella named Tom Frye who lived in Billings Mt .

Yes his shots were fairly close but not as close as a couple of feet ha ha on occasion I'd see Tom when I was at a mutual friends place and I'd help him load his rifle and with the targets he shot the outline of Sitting Bull and General Custer .

I'd also tape over the hole of 1/2" flat washers with freezer tape and watch him try to center punch it with a .22 and yes he did make the shot more often than what he missed .

I believe he still holds a record of blocks of wood shot without a miss his gun of choose was a nylon Remington semiautomatic .22
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That was what he said in an article. Never had the good fortune to meet him. I owned a couple of the nylon 22's, gave them to a friend that saw them sitting neglected. Light, quick, accurate, reliable. The article was before the days of the nylons or Tom was talking about older days.

Funny about the Indian carvings on rock. He couldn't resist a nice flat face of rock. When it was found the expert declared it authentic but couldn't understand what a plains Indian was doing that far south!

Another fantastic trick shooter was Jelly Brice. He was the real deal too, one of the deadliest gunfighters to ever live.

Hu
 
Rusty in Montana said:
Another interesting trick shooter was Ed McGovern of Lewistown Mt , I'm sure both he and Tom are still in the Guinness book of world records .
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I'm sure Ed still has some records. Jerry Miculek particularly targeted some and set new records. Somebody else freakishly fast. He could shoot accurately moving from target to target with one-tenth second splits. Somebody else could hit twelve aspirin tablets hanging on threads at eight feet, a pair of 357's from the waist. My brother was pretty fair shooting from the waist, my cousin as good as anyone I have ever seen.

My cousin lived in a rural area and thought he was Adam Cartwright. I think he may have went to bed in a black leather vest all his life from a very early age. He also wore a single action 22 if he wasn't in school or on a job that didn't allow it. People would point out birds, usually small song birds, at a hundred feet or more. He very rarely missed with a fast draw and shooting from the waist.

I saw the PBS expert explaining that nobody could really draw fast and shoot accurately from the waist a few months ago!

Hu
 
A man hung around my service station. An offshore worker and alcoholic as is too common. He normally ran on ninety proof topped off with beer, a lot of beer. He decided he wanted to become a fast draw. Bought a pair of new army Colts and a speed rig and practiced hours a day when he was onshore.

Finally he decided he was fast and accurate but how to prove that, and that he had the balls to get in a gunfight without getting in a gunfight? One night, well lit as usual, he decided to get in a gunfight. First issue, who else totes guns? Well none other than state troopers carry guns and are well trained. He went and found a state trooper. Fortunately this was another gun nut and Nick must have been near blind drunk. The trooper shot the gun Nick was trying to shoot then took the rig away from him. Sent his drunk ass on his way! I suspect the trooper was happy to come by the well over a thousand dollar rig back in the late sixties or 1970. Nick had over two hundred dollars of hand carved leather plus those two new armies, a very sweet rig! The trooper was satisfied to score it instead of it going into the evidence room to disappear forever.

Hu
 
ShootingArts said:
As you know, the whole rack becomes about speed, angles, and minimum side spin. I move up and down the cue ball a lot and any shot that isn't true zero spin usually carries a tiny bit of side spin. It wasn't unusual to play a session without really needing heavy sidespin. Not that I didn't use it when the table was empty. I like to slide up behind the last ball for a tap in to have the other player rake the ball!

Typically a session that might last six or eight hours would include serious side spin once or twice that was planned at the beginning of the inning. It wasn't that I couldn't use sidespin, there was no need for it. Without a lot of sidespin, miscues rarely happen. Since I rarely approached the edges of adhesion high and low either I went ages without a miscue. Then I added always chalking before a high spin shot and I often didn't remember my last miscue.

As almost always, we are on the same page. Most of my shots were speed and angles from less than twenty inches away from the object ball. Staying in the 12 to 30 inch range from the object ball few shots are hard. I never brought a date to a gunfight but I remember when others brought a girl that wasn't a pool player, a handful of times the girl came up to me with tears in her eyes, even crying loudly, "It wasn't fair, you got all of the easy shots!" "Yes ma'am, It works out that way sometimes."

I read about a factory shooter for Remington. He did most of his shooting with a twenty-two rifle and most at a distance of about two feet. When he was asked why he shot so close he said he didn't want to stretch the barrel on a new rifle. I thought about him and tried not to stretch pool cues!

Hu
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I've gotten a lot of flack over the years for my comments about parking my ass mid table, using angle, speed, minimal English, etc... and never understood why.
Don't get me wrong, I like to turn the ponies loose just like the next guy bcuz it's more fun to load up and dance around the table, but if I'm there to make balls, I make balls. No fun involved.
More players should work on the close range position play, imo. Gotta have it in your arsenal, so ...
 
ShootingArts said:
That was what he said in an article. Never had the good fortune to meet him. I owned a couple of the nylon 22's, gave them to a friend that saw them sitting neglected. Light, quick, accurate, reliable. The article was before the days of the nylons or Tom was talking about older days.

Funny about the Indian carvings on rock. He couldn't resist a nice flat face of rock. When it was found the expert declared it authentic but couldn't understand what a plains Indian was doing that far south!

Another fantastic trick shooter was Jelly Brice. He was the real deal too, one of the deadliest gunfighters to ever live.

Hu
Click to expand...
😂
 
Greg , I also having a soft spot for any of the Colt Woodsman .22 pistols they're very accurate as you well know !
Congrats on the cameo mention in the movie also !
 
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