where to aim to make cb travel/hit as many rails as possible?
- Thread starter evergruven
- Start date
Like the image below?
This is a shot from the official program of Artistic Billiards (carom) so it is without those pesky bank-interrupters, pockets. Here is a drawing from the book "Artistic Billiards".
![CropperCapture[626].png](https://forums.azbilliards.com/data/attachments/410/410605-979db7f5b22a8de745ec70202733825c.jpg "CropperCapture[626].png")
(The numbers around the rails are part of the position specification system for the competition. You can see little tick marks for the position of the cue ball which correspond to something like A-3.5-12. This allows the placement of the balls with half-ball resolution and an additional mechanism allows placement of the balls near each other with higher resolution. The value of 4 indicates the shot is the easiest level in the competition.)
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Starting more mid end rail with check brings the second cushion in play farther from the corner. That flattens the angle from rail 3 to 4. The angle cross table then makes the 5th rail the long rail and the end rail the 6th. I suspect the artistic shot used follow lengthening the angle into the second rail. Thanks for the diagram. It gives a good reference to work from.
This is a little off-topic but while we're on the subject of Mike Massey, does anyone remember a shot where he drew the cue ball 6 rails? The cb and ob were frozen to the bottom rail, about a diamond apart. I'm pretty sure it was 6 rails. I saw him shoot it a few times in exhibitions, so when he came to town, I asked him to shoot the shot for me. He borrowed my cue and hit it so hard the tip flew off of my cue --- and the ball did travel all around the table. Somehow I remember it being 6 rails. I remember thinking that seeing him shoot that was worth the price of a new tip.
The shot is six cushions only if you count the end rail the cue ball is frozen to which he shoots into. After the hit on the cue ball, the shot is a standard corner-five pattern shot that might come in short or long to total six cushions. I have never seen him come close spinning out of the corner to hit long rail where he got his fourth cushion.