Charting causes of ended runs

Sounds like you are playing not practicing. Do you want the list so you can practice? Seems like if you are practicing and miss position,a cut,or fail to execute, you can just set the shot back up.
It is not rocket science.just my 2cents.

I think it's better to be productive than negative. I mean you can list your areas of improvement or difficult shots, but not counting how often they occur. Instead, use the list for your practice check list. Practice each shot 10-20 times every time you play and try to do it with the best form possible. Try to build your confidence and master the uncomfortable shots. Don't let the missed shots get into your head like you're somehow doomed to miss certain shots forever.

Practice is certainly needed to improve. You also need to feel the pressure (that you'd feel when you're in a tournament or $) you will remember the reason you lost, whether it be a shot, your opponent, nerves etc. When you lose something that really means something to you, I believe then you'll see improvements and quicker. So I don't think any type of stats, or practice, will help you as much as feeling that kind pressure, and it'll certainly help you to remember the what you did wrong.
I'm no pro, nor a teacher so if you're really serious about it, I would ask an instructor.
JMO

i think you're blowing by alphadog's excellent answer and insisting on your own worldview; there's a possibility that you're right, but i'm guessing he's righter.

practicing the situation you Just screwed up is irreplaceable. practice it Now, while you remember exactly the situation and what you were trying to do and can try alternatives.

making lists is sometimes a good idea, but my observation is that it's often a replacement for Doing The Things.

A couple of quick cheap alternatives. An easel and an enormous pad. Or a roll of some heavy paper and tape up sheets on the wall.

I now have a huge whiteboard that I salvaged from my office. But I used the above methods before that.

I think they make a paint that creates a whiteboard surface so you could make your own board.

It might help to record whether you missed to the right or to the left, and whether it was to the inside or outside of a cut. This will help ferret out any systemic errors.

Thank you kindly.

FWIW, I recently over a period of 8 days camcorded a number of hour-long sessions of myself practicing 14.1.

I then edited each of the camcordings so that only the misses that ended runs remained. And the final step was to compile all the run-ending misses onto a single video file and burned a copy of that compilation onto to a DVD for close scrutiny of all the misses at various slo-mo modes and fast forward and back modes.

The *visual* images of all the specifics of the run-ending misses turned out to be an extremely useful adjunct to my mental and penciled notes on the sessions, and made the formulating of corrective actions far more indelible and productive. Situations and their associated misses tend to recur, as any serious 14.1 player knows, so it's remarkable to be able to instantly *see* again in your mind what went wrong previously in each run-ending situation, then have your subconscious automatically enact the evolved -- via repeated corrective shot practice -- remedial measure(s) when similar situations re-occur.

Arnaldo

Seth C. said:

Arnaldo -- Thank you for this information. Good stuff.

I want to point out that I just read a post by Arnaldo in the Main Forum (a good thread, BTW, in which Arnaldo shares old video of McCready and Efren that he converted from VHS to You Tube videos), in which allows how he just turned 80 two weeks ago. Sir, I have great respect for the work ethic, unending desire to improve, giving spirit, and excellent writing that you are bringing to the game. You are a great role model. Thank you.

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Greatly appreciate your kind, graciously expressed compliments and thoughtful sentiments, Seth. I've been in love with Straight Pool for 64 years. A week after my referenced 80th birthday I decided to type out a detailed account of my slightly unique introduction to the game. I believe you and other aficionados may enjoy reading about my memorable -- possibly entertaining -- connection with Straight Pool (and to the game’s own history). Here are my memories as I reflected on the past years; my background; a notable room-owner mentor who guided my early playing of the game; and not least an indelibly-remembered visit to the room by one of my mentor's best friends in the pool world (a legendary world-champion) who -- by peerlessly demonstrating -- shared a sine qua non bit of valuable 14.1 improvement advice:
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Some of my NYC pool background and a Mosconi position-sharpening technique

I'm going to describe a position-sharpening technique that has some wonderful merits: it permanently ingrains a great deal about handling the cue ball; it is essentially quite self-teaching; you're rewarded with supreme confidence in, and knowledge of, your own unique stroke mechanics as they relate to position play. First some background on how I appreciatively learned about this very old-time method as a teenager in New York City:

I got hooked on pool (especially 14.1) at age 16 in 1952. All the old-timers in the local NYC room had, 12-15 years previously, fed their families during the Depression with their pool gambling winnings and they wouldn't teach you anything. You had to play them for a little money in supposedly fair matches of 20 to 100 in 14.1 (you had to get 20 points before they got 100) -- which as a raw beginner you couldn't possibly win (they'd run 35 or 40 balls after each of your missed shots or bad safeties) but I played them anyway just to learn all I could, hoping to be as good as them some day.

The room's owner was Pat "Paddy" McGowan, (He was an elder relative of Frank McGowan, a great 1960s-era NYC 14.1 player. Paddy said some branches of the family used a “McGown” variant spelling, likely due to the not uncommon old-country Gaelic familial feuds/discords that frequently resulted in minor, spiteful surname spelling changes.) Paddy kind of took me under his wing when the regulars weren't around, for some inside tips on playing good Straight Pool.

And what a perfect man to do so -- he was 62 years old, born in 1890, and at age 21 played Jerome Keogh in Rochester, NY in one of the first 14.1 matches in history -- because Keogh had *just invented the game* the previous year! The next year, in 1912, Straight Pool became the official World Championship game. So, I was getting coached by a man who not only played the game's inventor, but a man who went on to play against Greenleaf several times, and then in the early 1930's played a twenty year-old Willie Mosconi in several local and regional tournaments, (all won by Willie)!

What a great link to the game's history for my teenage self. Any wonder why 14.1 has been so magical and absorbing to me all my life?

One very special day in the late 1950s, Mosconi came to Paddy's room to do an exhibition. Paddy set him up against a strong local player and Mosconi killed the guy. (Regarding opponents, over the years interviewers occasionally asked Willie if he was ever nervous before any of his matches, and Willie always jauntily replied, "I'm never nervous because I just have to play pool ... but they have to play Mosconi.")

Paddy and Willie had remained good friends over the years and after the exhibition match I overheard Paddy say "Show them the postage stamp routine, Willie." Mosconi asked for two volunteers from the audience. He instructed the first guy to set up a cut shot with the cue ball and an object ball anywhere on the table within about 18 inches from any pocket, as long as it wasn't a straight in shot with both balls on the rail.

Then Willie took out his wallet and the audience laughed, thinking that he was going to bet some money. Instead he pulled out a single postage stamp from a small envelope and handed it to the second volunteer telling him to place it *anywhere* on the table. The guy placed it near the opposite end of the table. You can guess the result: Willie naturally made the shot and sent the cue ball two rails onto the stamp.

Willie immediately had the first guy set up about a dozen more different types of shots of the guy's choice for different pockets, and each time the cue ball unerringly traveled to where some part of it covered the stamp. It was an amazing display of world-class precision cue ball control; ball speed control; targeting to specific parts of the pocket; some stun stroking; slide draw strokes; sometimes plenty of english and not surprisingly, many positional moves accomplished just with millimeter nuances of center ball hits.

In the pool room the next day, Paddy amazed me by virtually duplicating Mosconi's position play feat. He was nearing 70 years-old by then and said he could now only approximate Mosconi's unearthly precision. Paddy told me that what Willie amazed us with was based on a position-sharpening drill that was well known not only to Mosconi, but also to Greenleaf and plenty of the oldtimers who competed in the 20th Century’s first few decades of regional, state and national 14.1 championships.

They generally used 4 inch square pieces of paper, and perfecting skill at the routine ensured that they could get perfect on any sequence of shots within a 14.1 rack, perfect angles on break shots, and have near-perfect rolls to specific points within clusters to break the clusters ideally. Tuning the muscle memory and hand/eye coordination to guarantee predictable and highly consistent cue ball paths and stopping points.

Paddy had a few of us fairly serious young 14.1 devotees work out with 8 1/2 x 11 sheets for a week then progressively reduce the target size to 6 inch square pieces, then eventually to the 4 inch square target size.

It had a tremendous effect on the length of our runs and was one of the few practice workouts that became genuine fun and even exciting to perform. To this day I always mention and demonstrate this game-elevating position-sharpening technique when I give playing lessons to serious intermediates (and more than a few advanced players were pleased to learn about it when tuning up for competitions.)

Any intermediate players looking for a way to learn more about controlling the cue ball should give the above recommended routine a frequent and systematic trial, as well as advanced players who want more precise cue ball control.

And as with those very disciplined and successful old-time masters, the routine is of course, regularly performed *in addition to* the very necessary routine of dozens of solo practice racks per week of your favorite competitive game, whether it's 14.1, or 8-, 9-, or 10-ball.

Arnaldo

arnaldo said:

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snip great stuff...

And as with those very disciplined and successful old-time masters, the routine is of course, regularly performed *in addition to* the very necessary routine of dozens of solo practice racks per week of your favorite competitive game, whether it's 14.1, or 8-, 9-, or 10-ball.

Arnaldo

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I can almost feel both the IQ and class level in AZ Billiards rise anytime Arnaldo posts something.

Great post!

Seth - While your idea of categorizing misses might be an interesting exercise, I wonder if you might rather work on the 80/20 rule instead. I think you probably already know two or three shots that give you trouble (in fact, I think you listed them). Just work on those two or three problems every day for a couple of weeks and you'll probably solve 80% of the problem. Then just play and observe problems until you see something else you can fix.

For me, a lot of my misses come from undercutting a ball when I'm trying to cheat the pocket and keep the cue ball from drifting too much. I've become more aware of that issue and when I see it, I try to stop and make sure I'm aware of what I'm trying to do.

The problem I got into when I tried to categorize misses is that it became a grey area as to what was important to record on my list. For instance, let's say I missed a long cut shot that was a little unreasonable to expect to make reliably. The reason I had the difficult shot was because on the previous shot I missed my position play. So what's the important thing to record -- "missed long cut shot" or "didn't follow enough and missed position" or do you record both? Personally, I gave it up and realized that I already knew what the majority of my problems were.