Thoughts on players who seemingly take Zero practice strokes, before shooting / final follow through?

[Not Dead Ted]

Exactly right. Lot of talk on here about what pros do. I'll tell you what they do. It's very simple.

They do whatever is necessary in any given situation to give themselves the biggest margin of error possible. Doing that allows them to be successful to the highest percentage possible.

Bridge or stroke length, stroke speed, amounts and types of english, position routes and many other things are just tools they use very skillfully to give themselves the best possible chance of success.

Of course most will have a default bridge length on a normal shot and though it varies player to player the majority bridge in the 10-12" range.
Watch 20 high level pros shoot in an hour long video and you'll see that with most, unless they have to stretch or need a lot of power they're bridge is nowhere near the natural pivot point of their shaft.

Don't have to believe me, just watch some vids.

Better still, for those who go to big tournaments, ask a few pros how much attention they pay to pivot points. The answer will be...not much.

You are probably correct that pros don't put conscious thought into pivoting.

It has been my observation that when using english, they are very consistent in having the same location on the shaft crossing the shot line, regardless of what the front and back hands are doing. My guess is that that location on the shaft is the pivot point.

Watch some videos with overhead views. The intersection of the shaft and shot lines is remarkably consistent regardless of where the bridge is, and for LD shaft users (pretty much everyone now) is usually at about 14-16".

 

[mr3cushion]

Brings back memories of watching George Rippe do his thing. Sometimes he'd get 6 rails on that little dance in the corner. Great players in that room. Dick Reid, Carlos Hallon, Paul Melinchuk, Larry Johnson and others.
Used to think we could put together a 5 man team that could beat any room in the country. They're all gone now other than Carlos.
Great times though.

I knew them all, played them all!

Other than Shorty & Carlos, I played Bob 'Ingy' Ingersol, Charlie D, Paul & John M, Dick R and George at Olympic 'the Mines' Billiards' in Boston!

George, Carlos and I were/are good friends, haven't spoken to Carlos in a few months!

Carlos being the Best player of those listed!

Whenever George an I would see each other, we naturally would set up difficult 3c Trick shots to shoot!

He'd alaways say to me, "How do you get so much action on your cue ball, and not hit it so hard"?

George had a 'Power stroke', I have/had a 'Finesse stroke'!

Always a Super Nice guy!

 

[Jaden]

You gotta bail 'cause I made a point? You must not beat many people.
Kidding... sheesh...

------->

You didn't make a point, you continued to talk nonsense and ignore the good information that I was putting out. I make it a practice not to play chess with pigeons so I bailed. The fact that you thought it was because you "made a point" proves the preceding.

 

[straightline]

You didn't make a point, you continued to talk nonsense and ignore the good information that I was putting out. I make it a practice not to play chess with pigeons so I bailed. The fact that you thought it was because you "made a point" proves the preceding.

Man you got a thick friggn ego. You know it's not uncommon for people to optimize and maximize certain aspects of their craft. Musicians do it all the time. In their world, those that turn nazi over their formula get pushed off the stage.

 

[Jaden]

That is a good question, and one that I don't have the answer to.

Are LD shafts more forgiving if there is error in choosing the point you pivot the cue around? I don't know, I'm waiting for someone to do the experiments on this.

In the meantime I will stick with a maple shaft that has a 12" pivot point. At least with it, the pivot point is in the visual field so I can see where I am pivoting.

The only real advantage to ld shafts are that variable conditions like humidity, temperature etc, are less problematic because the shaft isn't going as far off of the centerline due to minimal cueball deflection (squirt). Many people have a problem with ld shafts being called low deflection, because the shafts themselves don't deflect less, the cueball is what deflects less, which is commonly referred to as squirt, as the cb squirts off of the cue's line opposite the offset amount.

I've successfully used bhe with high deflection and low deflection and everything in between. Funny story that I've told on here before, I was visiting one of the AZBers, in Virginia I think or North Carolina? His name is Matt, his handle was something like coolkat9lives or something.

Anyways, I met him at his local pool hall and we played some and he introduced me to a few of the locals and one of them was an older gentleman who had a classic cue, can't remember the brand, I think it was a...I can't remember (I remembered just before I hit submit, it was a Tascarella), it was a nice older cue with an old growth maple shaft, standard deflection.

I had just recently finished my prototype ld wood shaft with standard feel and was showing them and had them shoot a couple of shots with it. The older gentlemen questioned me about BHE since I was explaining what I had to do to use it for a ld shaft and I told him, I can adjust to any cue with just a few shots.

He was skeptical so he handed me his cue. I took a few shots to find the pivot point and proceded to run out one or two racks. Both of them were really surprised that I could adjust to a cue that was so different so quickly.

 

[Jaden]

Man you got a thick friggn ego. You know it's not uncommon for people to optimize and maximize certain aspects of their craft. Musicians do it all the time. In their world, those that turn nazi over their formula get pushed off the stage.

I was contemplating whether to even respond. I didn't even look at this until going through the thread again this morning.

It's not EGO, it's frustration, not even necessarily with you. I don't know if you read it or not, but I was taught this by EFREN REYES and I was JUST like you. I thought he has to be compensating subconsciously, blah blah blah, etc, etc.

That's why I gave you such a detailed explanation so that it wouldn't be a, that doesn't make any sense, situation.

And I can understand saying, yeah ok, but I don't really want to do it. You're not doing that. You continuously question it without even giving it a fair shot.

But like I said, I'm not going to continue beating a dead horse. You can learn from my experience and doing the same thing you are doing, deny, deny, deny, or don't. I really don't care. I'm even contemplating putting you on ignore, would be only the second person on my ignore list and I've been on this forum for over 20 years.

Just don't want the headache...

 

[sparkle84]

The only real advantage to ld shafts are that variable conditions like humidity, temperature etc, are less problematic because the shaft isn't going as far off of the centerline due to minimal cueball deflection (squirt). Many people have a problem with ld shafts being called low deflection, because the shafts themselves don't deflect less, the cueball is what deflects less, which is commonly referred to as squirt, as the cb squirts off of the cue's line opposite the offset amount.

I'm sorry but this doesn't make much sense to me. Are you saying that different atmospheric conditions (say a wet vs a dry table) causes
a given shaft, LD or HD, to cause a different amount of CB squirt than it normally does? That's a new one. AFAIK changing table conditions primarily result in less/more bed speed and different CB reactions (angle and speed) off rails.

If that's true, wouldn't it wreak havoc with your (bridge length/BHE) assertions, or does it automatically adjust for humidity as well as CIT, etc. etc.

 

[Jaden]

I'm sorry but this doesn't make much sense to me. Are you saying that different atmospheric conditions (say a wet vs a dry table) causes
a given shaft, LD or HD, to cause a different amount of CB squirt than it normally does? That's a new one. AFAIK changing table conditions primarily result in less/more bed speed and different CB reactions (angle and speed) off rails.

If that's true, wouldn't it wreak havoc with your (bridge length/BHE) assertions, or does it automatically adjust for humidity as well as CIT, etc. etc.

I haven't noticed much difference in between conditions and I've traveled and played all over the country and in many places throughout the world; however, many people have reported difficulty adjusting to conditions when they're not used to the extremes. Florida and Arizona are extremes.

I was using that as a potential example for those people. Let me put it another way. The only benefit to ld technology is that CBs path is closer to the original aimline, so the deviation for adjusting for side spin is less. Any time an adjustment is finer in scope it will be less affected by uncontrollable variables, like dirty balls, cloth, or environmental conditions like excess humidity, extremely dry conditions, etc.

Any variability will have less effect due to the minimized disalignment from the shotline.

Now mind you, this is less true for people who use BHE. I really don't want to get into the details of it right now, I'm kinda tired, just got home from taking my wife out, but I do hope that the above cleared up what I meant a little bit.