Recent content by Bob Jewett

One rail can work much better but you have to be more precise in where you leave the cue ball.

No, it was Napa Jack.

I think that would work if it was the Accu-Stats style where if you're down on the shot, the clock is ignored as long as you shoot before you get back up. The extensions should be automatic.

One of the greatest snooker players ever, Joe Davis, had bad vision in one eye. What does your ophthalmologist say about playing pool?

I had three or four most excellent ideas for responses, but I'm working on self-control.;)

Yes, the silicone seems to migrate a lot. I feel that paste wax does that less, but it must go somewhere as it wears off the cue ball. I think the final result is that the slippery stuff gets spread evenly over the table, and shots just play very slightly differently. At that point it will be...

I noticed that Fedor now carries around his extension to avoid a trip back to his chair. He seems to use it quite frequently.

According to one source, the original chalk was plaster, like one would use on a ceiling. Around 1800, players would grind the tips of their cues into the ceiling to get a little more friction. That was before the leather tip was perfected.

Around 1977, I played a little trick on one of my regular practice partners, who was the house man at Star Billiards in Santa Rosa. He was also, so far as I know, the person who coined the term "squirt" (AKA cue ball deflection). I had recently discovered the joys of waxing and I slipped a...

The amount of throw can also be affected. There is a local pool hall that seems to wax the balls after cleaning them. Frozen combinations throw about a third of normal. That means that stun shots also will not throw as much as expected and the tendency will be to over cut shots. For home tables...

So the best strategy is to beat people as slowly as possible?

If anyone does the experiment, they should remove the wax after the fun.

Yup. I've seen nearly a quarter-inch gap for one cue ball. The size of the gap tells you how small the cue ball is compared to the object balls. That particular room also had small object balls, but the cue ball had a lot more wear. (The diameter error is a third of the gap.)

Does Filler just decide faster on the right shot than the ones who scurry around like rats? Maybe that's a skill that can be learned. I was watching one top player towards the end -- call him Nick O'Time -- and I kept wondering why he wasn't moving to shoot the obvious shot. Was he calculating...

Google is still your friend even though they run an unbelievable number of ads these days...