Brutal 14.1

Assuming the pockets were just that tight but otherwise normal,
I would expect a run of over 50 within 2 hours. With pockets THAT
tight it becomes almost purely shotmaking and the vast knowledge
of 14.1 that Thorsten has loses value.

Regards, Dave

Double-Dave said:

Assuming the pockets were just that tight but otherwise normal,
I would expect a run of over 50 within 2 hours. With pockets THAT
tight it becomes almost purely shotmaking and the vast knowledge
of 14.1 that Thorsten has loses value.

Regards, Dave

Click to expand...

I agree Thorsten would get 50 within a couple hours although the table does make a difference. A few years ago at Derby City the 14.1 challenge was played on a 10' table and I believe only one player ran over 100 for the entire event. I think it was Pettiman.

I wonder if given a choice of a 10' table with 4 1/2 or a 9' table with 3 7/8 which table a pro would rather play on. I'm guessing they would take the 10' but either table can make a good player look bad.

peppersauce said:

Iirc, Pettmann was the only player to run 100 in the Bigfoot 14.1 challenge that year, and he did it twice--but didn't do so well in the Bigfoot 14.1 tournament. I think Max Eberle won it that year.

I would guess most any pro would opt for the 10' with 4.5" pockets over a 9' with 3 7/8" pockets for a straight pool match. I'm not going to discount table size, it matters. Especially when the 10' table is a Diamond with pro cut pockets. I still say a 9' with 3 7/8" pockets is a far sight harder to play on though.

A bit off topic, it would be nice to have a standard for pro pool across the board. I think 10' tables with 4 1/2" pockets would be perfect. It won't happen though.

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Pros tend to play their tournaments in public pool halls and the average person in a pool hall isn't going to play on a 10' table or a 9' table with 3 7/8" pockets. It won't happen because any pool hall owner who put a bunch of those table in his pool hall would go out of business in short order due to a lack of players.

alstl said:

I agree Thorsten would get 50 within a couple hours although the table does make a difference. A few years ago at Derby City the 14.1 challenge was played on a 10' table and I believe only one player ran over 100 for the entire event. I think it was Pettiman.

I wonder if given a choice of a 10' table with 4 1/2 or a 9' table with 3 7/8 which table a pro would rather play on. I'm guessing they would take the 10' but either table can make a good player look bad.

Click to expand...

A smaller table with smaller pockets is much tougher to play Straight Pool on - balls blocking each others way to a pocket. I'm speaking from personal experience. Check out e.g. the area behind the rack (between stack and foot rail) on an 8-foot versus a 10-foot, shoot a handful break shots and count how many balls are pocketable and virtually automatically lead to re-breaking scenarios without much moving and bumping. There's a reason the old-timers made great runs on 10-foot tables - just a matter of getting used to the it (and play on half a table all day long - which is what it comes down to: there's space enough there). Trying to get used to all the congestion on a small table is a different matter, however…

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
_________________

„J'ai gâché vingt ans de mes plus belles années au billard. Si c'était à refaire, je recommencerais.“ – Roger Conti

peppersauce said:

So I'm out of town and just watched the roughest game of straight pool I've ever seen in my life. Two guys gambling on a 50 point game played on a table with 3 7/8" pockets. The game took two hours and they tied each other's high run at 6 balls, lol.

Now, I'm not making fun of these guys. Neither of them are 14.1 players. They mostly play 9-ball and one pocket and are at least a ball or two above my speed. I've seen them both play many times and both, generally, play very well.

To the point--I didn't expect great runs but I certainly expected better than 6 balls from these two gents and that has me wondering...What kind of numbers would you expect to see from a really good 14.1 player, like Homann, if you gave them 2 hours on that table?

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For what it's worth, I'm not a pro, nor get to practice more than once or twice a week, but when I do I have a policy of not leaving before I run at least 50 (as much as I wish I ran three digits each time, I only do so occasionally these days, such as luckily, last night again - getting all jumpy and nervous about it, makes me feel old, LOL!). But I'm pretty sure I'd have to lower that goal on a table with pockets that small - at my age, I can hardly read the number on object balls farther away than a few feet. I'm already awful at e.g. combinations, can't imagine making a single one with pockets that small unless one object were hanging in a pocket…

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
_________________

„J'ai gâché vingt ans de mes plus belles années au billard. Si c'était à refaire, je recommencerais.“ – Roger Conti

acousticsguru said:

A smaller table with smaller pockets is much tougher to play Straight Pool on - balls blocking each others way to a pocket. I'm speaking from personal experience. Check out e.g. the area behind the rack (between stack and foot rail) on an 8-foot versus a 10-foot, shoot a handful break shots and count how many balls are pocketable and virtually automatically lead to re-breaking scenarios without much moving and bumping. There's a reason the old-timers made great runs on 10-foot tables - just a matter of getting used to the it (and play on half a table all day long - which is what it comes down to: there's space enough there). Trying to get used to all the congestion on a small table is a different matter, however…

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
_________________

„J'ai gâché vingt ans de mes plus belles années au billard. Si c'était à refaire, je recommencerais.“ – Roger Conti

Click to expand...

I understand what you are saying but Mosconi's 526 was on a 8' table. Admittedly it isn't fair to compare people with Mosconi bit he found a way to deal with congestion - and he claimed he had a higher uncertified run of over 600.

Actually, only a solid pro player can run 50 on 3 7/8" pockets.

The game of 14.1 suffers when the pockets are too tight, and as the original poster noted, becomes almost unwatchable. On oridnarily cut pockets, it's more a game of creative conceptualization and problem solving than a game of shotmaking, and those who enjoy 14.1 the most seem to enjoy it for those reasons.

As for the 10' vs 9', I thought it was a joke when they used a 10' table at the Derby. One of the very best players told me that he had to change his end patterns to make sure he could reach some of the break shots, and he was of fairly average height.

alstl said:

I understand what you are saying but Mosconi's 526 was on a 8' table. Admittedly it isn't fair to compare people with Mosconi bit he found a way to deal with congestion - and he claimed he had a higher uncertified run of over 600.

Click to expand...

I'm old enough to still have seen Mosconi play, what a natural Straight Pool player he was. Apparently, that 8-foot table had pockets like buckets, witnesses report, but I'm guessing it's the same as with every Straight Pool player, some days everything is going comparatively smoothly, and one gets through the couple more or less severe problems per 100 balls or so (I've had a three-digit run once in which I literally never had to shoot anything remotely tough, it was laughable, and it's not because I did anything differently, could have been the weather, as I've also run rough three-digits when conditions were humid/wet). Bottom line, to me anyhow, is that someone like Mosconi will run that many balls or more on any size table on a good day - what I was referring to has more to do with average, i.e. what are the (objectively speaking, all else being equal) chances of it happening: greater surface translates into less congestion, that's all. Pocketing ability on that level, using half a table most of the time, those who've seen the man play will wonder if he ever missed, and if so, what the cause might have been. Not the table size for sure. My guess is had he had someone who reminded him of the payday before every shot, he would never have missed. But he was infamous for getting bored quickly when there was no money in it…

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
_________________

„J'ai gâché vingt ans de mes plus belles années au billard. Si c'était à refaire, je recommencerais.“ – Roger Conti

sjm said:

Actually, only a solid pro player can run 50 on 3 7/8" pockets.

The game of 14.1 suffers when the pockets are too tight, and as the original poster noted, becomes almost unwatchable. On oridnarily cut pockets, it's more a game of creative conceptualization and problem solving than a game of shotmaking, and those who enjoy 14.1 the most seem to enjoy it for those reasons.

As for the 10' vs 9', I thought it was a joke when they used a 10' table at the Derby. One of the very best players told me that he had to change his end patterns to make sure he could reach some of the break shots, and he was of fairly average height.

Click to expand...

It's why Straight Pool suffers least once one's eyesight is diminishing - speaking from personal experience. There is no way of keeping everything quite so simple at all times in e.g. the rotational games

What you're saying about reach is true. The legendary players from that era, Greenleaf for example, were famous for picking middle pocket and behind the stack break shots whenever they could - no doubt because one could reach them easily, and because, alternating between one and the other, it's where the majority of the balls spread after every break shot.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
_________________

„J'ai gâché vingt ans de mes plus belles années au billard. Si c'était à refaire, je recommencerais.“ – Roger Conti