I have never played on a Diamond table. There seems to be a general consensus among players that Diamond pool tables bank differently than Gold Crowns. I keep thinking about my geometry class in high school where the teacher explained reflexive angles .... I am at a complete loss as to why the geometry could possibly be any different between tables. Isn't a bank shot, is a bank shot, is a bank shot ... such that it shouldn't matter what table we are playing on?
Light reflects off a mirror at those perfect angles your geometry teacher taught you about. Just about nothing else in the real world does.
First of all, the CB, although it doesn't really look like it to your eyes, loses almost half its speed when it bounces off a cushion, if hit straight into the cushion. That means that the component of its motion perpendicular to the cushion is cut in half during the bounce. If the other component (parallel to the cushion) were unaffected, which would be the case if the rail was frictionless, the table would bank extremely long.
But the rails are not frictionless, and the CB compresses the rubber a bit as it bounces. This makes the cushion "wrap around" the CB a bit during contact, meaning the friction of the rail cloth slows down the parallel-to-cushion component very significantly also.
On some rails, from some bank angles, at some speeds, these two things can cancel out and it can look like that perfect geometric angle in = angle out. But most of the time it'll be a little off. And both of those two factors are different depending on cushion material, cushion cut, rail construction, and probably a few other factors.
So every table banks "different" and it's not super easy to summarize exactly how. You kinda just have to get a feel for banking on different tables, and get good at adjusting to the conditions you find yourself in.
