Any more bar tables with big cue balls?

I played with a big ball on a Valley in Northern Wisconsin at a Hotel. The table was in a large room with a swimming pool. The room was very humid. I practiced on that $1 table for around and hour. It’s still pool andI wish I could of matched up. Hot, humid, no draw with a beat up house cue. I was happy to have that table. My wife was in the pool and I was on the pool table.

The bar by my house in San Jose has the big ball on a valley and I think the owner prefers it that way. One weekend I serrupticiously swapped it out for an aramith magnetic one. We played with it for a couple weeks but then one day it was gone and a brand new big one was back.

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All over KY and WV.

Usually in bars that have one or two tables.

Bob Jewett said:

It seems that over-sized cue balls on bar tables are a thing of the past. The ball return mechanisms in coin-operated tables used to need a size difference so scratches could be returned. Now cue balls are magnetic or returned optically in the case of Diamond tables.

Does anyone here still suffer from the big ball problem?

At English 8-ball they took the opposite tack. The cue balls are smaller (I think 2 inches with 2 1/16 object balls) for the ball return on coin-ops.

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The English took the correct Choice. I play quite a bit of blackball these days, and I think the smaller cueball, while presenting a Challenge, is a lot more similar to a normal size ball than a larger one is. You can do everything With the small cueball and while the small size means it can't bulldoze its way through a cluster, it encourages "clean" play, by picking off the balls rather than plowing into them. It's easy to draw the ball, and follow isn't all that difficult either. Since the ball is so small and light, even a moderate amount of power will give you all the follow you need, especially since they've officially started using Simonis style cloth. The old nap "rugs" that used to plague the UK bar tables is a completely different story.

The large ball is just a nightmare to play With. Basically the game becomes all follow. Even stunning the ball gets completely ruined by the size and weight of the ball. Not to mention that the larger cueballs tend to be made from inferior materials, which hold on on to chalk and chip easily. Some are made by turning down a regular ball and covering it with something. Whatever that something is, it's not anything like the Object balls. I can see how someone playing a lot With these balls may develop a killer draw stroke, but I can also imagine someone not even attempting draw shots beyond 3 or 4 Diamonds or at all.

My home town bar had one a few years ago, nearly impossible to draw and it had chalk marks all over it. I explained to the owner that it was heavier and it would make the games take longer which meant lost revenue and they looked at me like I was some sort of alien. I was back home a few months ago and got into a bad slump and was struggling to move the cueball accurately. In four pool rooms I counted 7 or 8 different types of cue balls that I had played with.

SJpilot said:

The bar by my house in San Jose has the big ball on a valley and I think the owner prefers it that way. One weekend I serrupticiously swapped it out for an aramith magnetic one. We played with it for a couple weeks but then one day it was gone and a brand new big one was back.

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Visit up in Palm Alto every now and then....there is a bar there that had the first one I had ever seen about a year ago.....
Gave me fits!!

Around here (central Indiana) I don't see very many big cue balls, but the heavy or mud ball is prevalent. All the league players have their own green or purple Aramith balls that they carry with them to swap out with the heavy cue balls at the bars.

Cornerman said:

Zillions across the country still use a weighted ball or big ball. Most of them could use at least the magnetic system in Valleys for the Green or Purple Aramith cue ball, but so many bars still use the oversized (2 3/8) or the Universal B (resin flake / mud ball) or the Dynamo Red Dot (heavy magnet, 2 1/4 diameter). I could go to ten bars in the immediate area and find any of these three.

Freddie <~~~ needs to lose the weight

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StraightPoolIU said:

Around here (central Indiana) I don't see very many big cue balls, but the heavy or mud ball is prevalent. All the league players have their own green or purple Aramith balls that they carry with them to swap out with the heavy cue balls at the bars.

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What I find is that the leagues are generally not in the bars today that use the big ball. In my area, all the areas that have the big ball... no APA or BCAPL and associated players are walking in for a tournament or league !

In the past, when leagues were relatively new, we'd play in every imaginable table and every imaginable ball. I played in a social club that had a coin op 9' furniture table (Sterling Table)with slow cloth and with a big ball. Total home team advantage!

So I think the original question from Bob is a bit two-fold:

Are there places that still use the big ball (Yes, a zillion across the country).

Are leagues/tournaments/semi-serious play associated with big ball play (Substantially lower percentage today than twenty years ago)


Freddie <~~~ has a big ball

Bob Jewett said:

It seems that over-sized cue balls on bar tables are a thing of the past. The ball return mechanisms in coin-operated tables used to need a size difference so scratches could be returned. Now cue balls are magnetic or returned optically in the case of Diamond tables.

Does anyone here still suffer from the big ball problem?

At English 8-ball they took the opposite tack. The cue balls are smaller (I think 2 inches with 2 1/16 object balls) for the ball return on coin-ops.

Click to expand...

I have not seen them in a long time. I bet that smaller cue ball would be easy to draw?

StraightPoolIU said:

All the league players have their own green or purple Aramith balls that they carry with them to swap out with the heavy cue balls at the bars.

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I thought everyone did this, but after reading this thread I see I am mistaken. Around here, we usually have a "ballsak" with our favorite Aramith magnetic cue ball in it attached to our cue cases. We swap them out for play and then swap them back at the end of the night's play.

Us Texans are smart enough to know better than to leave our good cue balls at the establishment thinking they will still be there when we come back....unlike some in San Jose, CA. :thumbup:

Maniac

cueman said:

I bet that smaller cue ball would be easy to draw?

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A used CB is often slightly smaller and lighter due to all of the abuse it takes. For those interested in seeing all of the different effects associated with balls of different weights and sizes, see:

Pool Ball Weight, Size, and Wear Effects

Enjoy,
Dave

The bar I step into once in a while was using the big cue balls but the tables really used the later version, the heavy ball. But the big ones would work because they were heavier. I bought them the proper heavy balls and threw the over sized ones into Lake Texoma on the way home.

Chili Palmer said:

There's a bar we play at that has one. Two tables, one regular CB and one mud ball.

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The Mud Ball is not a Big Rock...
I know a lot of people refer to the big rock now as the mudball.I played out of Omaha during the mid 70'sthrough the 80's. I played all over but more in that region. We played a lotwith the Big Rock, we also played with the Magneto ball, Blue dot, Red dot among others. We played with what we called the Mudball. It was the same size as a standard cueball but looked like it was made with spun cast metal flakes giving it a dirty , muddy appearance . It was as heavy as a Big Rock but smaller. That is what we called the Mudball.

billy bones said:

It was the same size as a standard cueball but looked like it was made with spun cast metal flakes giving it a dirty , muddy appearance . It was as heavy as a Big Rock but smaller. That is what we called the Mudball.

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Yeah, that's the one we call the "mud ball" in my area, but I suppose it could be different in other regions.

I had no trouble playing with the mud ball. Funny, it always seemed easier to control to me, especially on draw shots. I could draw it well past a table length with a medium-hard effort. Maybe it was because I played with one for so many years and I just used to it. The first time I drew a Red Dot cue ball, I missed shape by a good three feet (long of course).

Maniac