My 1974 Brunswick Windsor 8 ft table (44x88) needs a new cloth, wondering about pockets. If I measure with caliper, two of the corner pockets measure about 4.9 inches and two measure about 5.1 inches. Would you say these are 5 inch pockets? This is measured tip to tip of the cushions.
If I place two balls like this guy is doing below, it appears to be a little over .75 inches between the balls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG9CqK95U2E
My side pockets, with caliper, measured as above, measure about 5.6 inches tip to tip.
Is this "normal" or "too lenient" or just what for home table use by casual players? (We shoot from time to time in a local bar with a bar box 7 ft table and none of us are expert, just decent.)
Could the tech guy make the pockets narrower pretty easily? Would you do that or leave them alone? At this time, I plan on putting Simonis 360HR on it.
(Gotta find a tech guy, the guy who was recommended to me did not call when he said he would, to schedule the job; unless he got hurt or something, it appears he has forgotten about me, as that was about three weeks ago).
This is a forum with many hard core players. Some of those players are going to recommend you reduce your pocket size WAY down. They're going to make all sorts of fanciful claims about how much it's going to improve you as a player. The below points are made regarding much tighter pockets than your 4.5 inch potential pockets. However, if you are not very good they may still apply. In general, you probably won't suffer the worst consequences with a small change like you want and outline in your post.
Here are the benefits of very tight pockets as I see them, they all apply to advanced players.:
1. If your technique is allready rock solid, it will help you fine tune your accuracy to a higher level. However, personally, I think the pockets need to be super tight to really have a good effect, snooker match table tight, Chinese 8 ball table tight (what I'm currently playing on). 5 inch to 4.5 is going to have a neglible effect.
2. It will teach you the value of perfect position (if you have the capability to use that knowledge).
3. It will teach you consistency in pre shot routine (if you have the knowledge to understand how to fix the correct things. Sadly, more usually it makes players neurotic and encourage rain-dance like random behaviours, because when the technique isn't good enough, the makes are more random than skillful. A player can start bobbing up and down, taking too many practise strokes etc etc..because they did it once and happened to make a couple of tough shots in a row.)
Here are the drawbacks of tighter tables (approaching 4 inches or less), which sadly will be much more prevalent than the above advantages:
1. It will make you less likely to run balls, which will make you frustrated and bored.
2. If your technique is not good enough, you will start holding back your stroke and playing passively.
3. It will slow you down.
4. If you are in an early state of playing development, you may never experiment with and learn advanced power shots, so you risk not learning those.
5. More dry breaks (boring)
6. You risk too much "cinching" in your game, rather than stroking shots with the correct english, you hit it with your preferred english for making the ball. This is bad and can cripple your long term development.
My experience with players who are not very strong who play on tight tables is that they tend to play slowly, defensively, hold back their strokes and poke at the ball. They also get a false view of their own ability, because they play on tougher tables. If you haven't run 3 racks in a row within the last couple of months, the table you're playing on is probably too tough for you. If you can't run 3 racks on 5 inch pockets, then continue practising until you can, fairly regularly. Only then should you consider tighter pockets.
There is no magic shortcut in playing on tighter pockets. The only "shortcut" you can take, is practising proper technique. If you just want to have fun with your friends, keep the pockets at their current size and try to run more racks. It's much more rewarding than running 2 balls and missing over and over on ultra tight pockets.
