How to find out, how far away is your high run goal .

kanzzo said:

I started the thread, because before I had no clue how far I am away from my goal and what steps I would have to take to get there. I thought I am already a good enough player to shoot 100, no idea why I never came close. I shot 2 60+ last year in a tournament, my high run is about 74. I had multiple matches with an average score over 10 (like match to 125 in 10-11 innings or match to 100 in 8 innings). I had no clue where I stand on the path to 100.

Now I know the milestones needed to get there and I can measure my process and see where I am standing and how fast I am moving. I have an understanding now, that it's not about shooting some random 61 balls once, but shooting 60 regularly, its about the number of attempts on average. I know now what level of play I have to deliver every training session to be a player that can shoot 100.

I know now that I am not good enough yet to shoot 100, but I can calculate, how much worse I am and have a way to measure how much better to get.

I will work on my goal and keep track of my success and can keep you posted if you are interested. I will definitely post my video of my first 100 no matter if you are interested or not

This will be such a high achievement - especially on my tough practice table - i will let the whole world know when I reach it

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Since you mentioned it, just curious as to the specs of your practice table? Corner pocket mouth measurements, side pocket mouth measurement and corner pocket facing angle degrees?

sjm said:

By the way, if you can only succeed 1/4 of the time, it gets much tougher. Then, your chances are (1/4)^7, or about 1 in 16,384.

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This post (and its predecessor from SJM suggesting that a 1/3 guy has a shot), together with the following statement from Kanzzo in one of his posts - “And it depends on the amount of concentrated training and attempts you put in” - got me thinking.

I am among those who have 100 balls as a goal. I am a quite a ways off, and have a lot of improvement to do. I have long been aware of the importance of developing good fundamentals, and doing drills, in order to get better. Yet, running of balls is enticing, and I have been rationalizing that I can effectively combine running balls and working on discrete areas needing improvement - from pre-shot routine to grip pressure to stroke mechanics to shot selection, etc., etc. But this approach, I think, is lacking, for two reasons.

First, there is a certain numbing effect associated with racking and running and missing, and re-racking and missing, and re-racking and running and missing - over and over. While I am trying to concentrate effectively each and every inning, I know that at some point, in some way, my concentration just isn’t always what it can be and needs to be. So, one thing that I need is to have a higher percentage of what Kanzzo called “concentrated attempts.” One way to do this is to simply impose a limit on the number of innings that I will attempt during any one session, or during any one block of a session. But here’s a different way that occurred to me, and it was prompted by SJM’s comments about the odds of getting to 100 if you are running a rack (and leaving a break ball) 1/3 vs. 1/4 times (and how starkly different those odds are).

After practicing for a session the other night with a purpose of recording the frequency of running the opening rack (and leaving a good break shot), and happening to experience, during that session, several misses that were “classic” ones for me - shots that I should make but am uncomfortable with - I decided to do this: if I succeeded in running a rack (and leaving myself a good break shot) 1/3, I earned the privilege of attempting another three innings to do the same. If I failed, my task became either (a) making ten in a row of whichever miss (of the three misses that I just had) I know to be a weak spot for me, or (b) executing well, ten times, some shot that I had failed to execute well during a run (usually a speed issue), leading to the end of that run. Only after this work can I go back to another set of three attempts at running balls.

As I was told some time ago by an excellent instructor, if you don’t have that shot, you need to get that shot. I haven’t forgotten that advice, but I also haven’t taken it to heart as much as I should. I also have in my head Ray Martin’s wise counsel to set up and repeat, multiple times, the exact same shot when trying to master it. I have become sick and tired of too many runs ending as a result of missing or misplaying one or another of the handful of shots that are my nemeses, and it is clear to me that I need to take time out to master them. This approach allows me to do that without giving up the fun of running balls, all in the same session.