Recent content by sjm

This is very likely. Cue extensions were not available across every brand of cue back then, and maybe the first screw on extensions were specific to production cues.

Good info here. Perhaps these variable length shafts for different occasions were the forerunner of the modern cue extension. I love stuff like this. For example, few realize that the bumper pool cue was, in fact, the forrunner of the modern jump cue. While most date the origin of the short...

No, they popped up in about 2002, but the first screw on extensions were believed to negatively impact the balance point of the cue stick, so their popularity was not immediate. I first tried using a screw on extension in about 2006. Certainly, by 2012, almost everyone was using one in pro...

Yes, slip on extensions (often vacuum tubes) were around in pool before that, but I clearly remember when screw on extensions began to show up in pro pool, and have taken accurate note. Players were not nearly as effective using slip on extensions as they would later be with screw on...

Yes, that's definitely true, but Dan DiLiberto noted that the invention of the cue extension (circa 2002) significantly reduced the need for opposite hand shooting. You see a lot less of opposite hand shooting (and use of the bridge) today than you did twenty-five years ago. Danny used to make...

Happy birthday, Jay. Glad to see you are still in your prime.

Can't stand it for two reasons. 1. It shortchanges the provider of the added money Somebody has put up money to stage an event and has a right to expect that event to produce a measurable amount of entertainment for anybody who chooses to watch. Splitting in the final shortchanges both the...

In 1999, the final year of the Professional Billiard Tour (PBT), which was probably the greatest ever American pro tour, they switched from 9ball to 10ball, and it was played Texas Express. 10ball was not, historically, a call shot game. The ten ball last rule, to my recollection, is about ten...

The Lepro tip was very popular forty years ago, but who knows?

Well said and also well-reasoned. Still, what constitutes a blowout will change with alternate break. I might walk away from 9-5 in a race to 11 if it's alternate break, because the trailer must "break serve" twice just to reach double hill. In winner breaks, I'm staying put, because a player...

Hooking yourself after a kick shot isn't careless. It is a fundamental risk of playing a kick shot, and sometimes having to kick a second time is and always has been a possible penalty. Among the reasons that people play safe is that opponents can so rarely control the full outcome of a kick...

Not sure what the kick shot has to do with this discussion, but I agree with you that some silliness will come with any flavor of a rule. I feel players should be penalized when they carelessly hook themselves, which happens all the time. It was that way for decades before the jump stick...

Yup, no rule will be uniformly perfect, and I can also imagine a scenario or two in which a player might play shape onto a jump but, in my opinion, the exceptions do not make the "jump on the first shot of an inning only" rule unwise.

My understanding is that can go 3-4, 4-3 and then 3-3 before reaching a shootout, so that's 20 racks + a shootout. I can take it or leave it here. I've never been a big fan of extended length finals in any sport. Wimbledon doesn't need them. Why should pool?

Actually, I love the set format and agree that it adds a lot of excitement. No deficit is insurmountable in the race to four format. If I'm watching a race to 9 and it is 5-1, I often walk to another table and watch that match. I see alternate break as just another example of how event...