14.1 VS Rotation?

Johnnyt

Johnnyt

Burn all jump cues
Silver Member
I know getting a good break ball, finding the right pattern is important in 14.1. Most 14.1 players swear 14.1 is a harder game than rotation pool. A lot of them say just connect the dots in rotation, like the CB goes magically from the 1 to the 2 and so on.

In rotation, yes, the # balls tell you what to shoot next, but how you get position on the next ball is very important, (what side of next ball, what angle, and how to weave through or around other balls going back and forth up and down the table). When you miss position on the 3 ball...there is no other three ball. In 14.1 most of the time you have one or more balls you can still shoot...not so in rotation.

14.1 is a great game to play and start playing with that game. IMO it gives you the foundation for most other games. But to say 14.1 is harder than rotation is wrong. Johnnyt
 
Apples and Oranges

I'm going to assume that when you say "rotation" you mean 9-ball or 10-ball.

I think safety play in rotation is harder than 14.1.

If you get out of line in 14.1 you may have a ball to shoot at (with my luck, if I do it's usually a hard one) but that ball may be your break ball. If it's not it may just be some shot that doesn't lead anywhere making it somewhat useless for continuing your run. When I get in this situation it usually becomes "recover recover recover miss". In other words, one ridiculous shot after another until I finally miss.

Position zones in rotation are much larger than in 14.1. In 14.1 if you're off by an inch or two you may have to completely change your plan.

To sustain long runs in 14.1 you have to concentrate/focus harder than in rotation. In rotation, you have more of a break (no pun intended) between racks.

In 14.1 if you miss a ball and the rack is spread wide open, you just gave your opponent a lot of points.

In rotation if you miss a ball, your opponent still has to shoot that ball and you may have left it (the object ball) hidden.

14.1 requires more strategic thinking. You have to play 3-balls ahead but often times more to get around to break up a cluster. That doesn't mean that rotation doesn't require strategic thinking, but I think 14.1 requires more of it.

Rotation games have to get over a "hump" with the break shot. You could breeze through one rack, then break dry. Played well, 14.1 doesn't have that "hump."

Rotation requires you to always hit the lowest ball first which makes it harder (if you get out of line) and easier (to play safeties).

Rotation punishes you more for a foul (ball in hand).

At the end of the day, I believe that if you are a good 14.1 player you can transition to rotation more easily than the other way around.

Edited to add: With 9-ball and 10-ball you only have 9 and 10 balls spread out on the table giving you more options for your shots. In 14.1 you have 15 balls mostly bunched up at the foot of the table limiting your options. This goes back to the "you have to be more precise with your position play" point.
 
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krupa said:
I'm going to assume that when you say "rotation" you mean 9-ball or 10-ball.

I think safety play in rotation is harder than 14.1.

If you get out of line in 14.1 you may have a ball to shoot at (with my luck, if I do it's usually a hard one) but that ball may be your break ball. If it's not it may just be some shot that doesn't lead anywhere making it somewhat useless for continuing your run. When I get in this situation it usually becomes "recover recover recover miss". In other words, one ridiculous shot after another until I finally miss.

Position zones in rotation are much larger than in 14.1. In 14.1 if you're off by an inch or two you may have to completely change your plan.

To sustain long runs in 14.1 you have to concentrate/focus harder than in rotation. In rotation, you have more of a break (no pun intended) between racks.

In 14.1 if you miss a ball and the rack is spread wide open, you just gave your opponent a lot of points.

In rotation if you miss a ball, your opponent still has to shoot that ball and you may have left it (the object ball) hidden.

14.1 requires more strategic thinking. You have to play 3-balls ahead but often times more to get around to break up a cluster. That doesn't mean that rotation doesn't require strategic thinking, but I think 14.1 requires more of it.

Rotation games have to get over a "hump" with the break shot. You could breeze through one rack, then break dry. Played well, 14.1 doesn't have that "hump."

Rotation requires you to always hit the lowest ball first which makes it harder (if you get out of line) and easier (to play safeties).

Rotation punishes you more for a foul (ball in hand).

At the end of the day, I believe that if you are a good 14.1 player you can transition to rotation more easily than the other way around.

Edited to add: With 9-ball and 10-ball you only have 9 and 10 balls spread out on the table giving you more options for your shots. In 14.1 you have 15 balls mostly bunched up at the foot of the table limiting your options. This goes back to the "you have to be more precise with your position play" point.
Click to expand...

You have some good points above, but at the end of the day I find rotation games harder than 14.1 :p. Thank you for your feedback. Maybe rotation is just harder for me. Johnnyt
 
There are four big differences.

1. 14.1 is call shot......no slop
2. 9 ball requires moving the CB greater distances to your next shot and the following shot maybe not be on the natural path of the CB.
3. Kicking.......9 ball requires good kicking skills.
4. 14.1 is a multi rack game.......many the game ain't over just because 9 balls were made. To keep going, you have to get a good break ball set up.

As for which is harder.........that is all dependent on your skill in that game.

I've found 9 and 8 ball easier after playing 14.1. I mean in 9 ball, you break hard and there is only 9 balls spread out on the table unlike 14.1. Sometimes on the break, you get lucky and make a ball or two leaving less than 9 on the table.

The luck is greatly reduced in 14.1 also because every shot is call.....even the break unlike 9 ball.

Where is the skill in picking open a rack in 9 ball.? There are times in 14.1 that opening up the rack can only be done in stages and not bust opened like seen in the movies. That's a art.

I've never seen anyone freeze a CB to the rack for safety play in 9 ball as is common in 14.1.

To really keep running in 14.1, the use of caroms, combos are a must unlike 9 ball.

14.1 is not all about high runs which seems to be what gets the most focus. There are other aspects of 14.1 that get overlooked due to this.

All the different games of pool have something for every type player. But to say which is harder, is a impossibily. Why, cause to someone new to that game, they game will be hard and if the are new to the sport, the game will be much harder.

Those with good skills in game will be able to transition quicker to a new game. So, to them the game really isn't hard, just new and a little transition time is needed.
 
Two observations.

1. I should think that fifteen-ball rotation on a bar box would be just about impossible! I don't think I've ever seen it played, but the congestion must be terrific. That congestion is the very thing that makes eight-ball so challenging on the bb. The Europeans have small billiard tables for beginners to learn on. Playing three cushion on one is not nearly as easy as you would think because the congestion makes it so much likelier that the cue ball will get a kiss.

2. The game of 14.1 as it is currently played is played by the rules of 14.1, but it bears little resemblance to the game of "straight pool". The speed of the Simonis cloth makes it much easier to smash the rack completely open (a la Thorsten) and remove the necessity of shooting "secondary" break shots to get the remainder of the rack open after the initial break shot. George Fels, writing MASTERING POOL before the advent of the slicker cloth, observed that in the majority of straight pool matches the quality of play in carrying out the secondary break shots was the determining factor.
 
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I play and really enjoy both...

for completely different reasons.

However, I do take exception to what I highlighted below. In my experience. against a good player, laying a good safe in 14.1 is exponentially more difficult that in 9 ball. Keeping them from a shot on a single ball it nowhere close to keeping them from 14. Not to mention replying to the safe is just as difficult if not more so. IMO



krupa said:
I'm going to assume that when you say "rotation" you mean 9-ball or 10-ball.

I think safety play in rotation is harder than 14.1.

If you get out of line in 14.1 you may have a ball to shoot at (with my luck, if I do it's usually a hard one) but that ball may be your break ball. If it's not it may just be some shot that doesn't lead anywhere making it somewhat useless for continuing your run. When I get in this situation it usually becomes "recover recover recover miss". In other words, one ridiculous shot after another until I finally miss.

Position zones in rotation are much larger than in 14.1. In 14.1 if you're off by an inch or two you may have to completely change your plan.

To sustain long runs in 14.1 you have to concentrate/focus harder than in rotation. In rotation, you have more of a break (no pun intended) between racks.

In 14.1 if you miss a ball and the rack is spread wide open, you just gave your opponent a lot of points.

In rotation if you miss a ball, your opponent still has to shoot that ball and you may have left it (the object ball) hidden.

14.1 requires more strategic thinking. You have to play 3-balls ahead but often times more to get around to break up a cluster. That doesn't mean that rotation doesn't require strategic thinking, but I think 14.1 requires more of it.

Rotation games have to get over a "hump" with the break shot. You could breeze through one rack, then break dry. Played well, 14.1 doesn't have that "hump."

Rotation requires you to always hit the lowest ball first which makes it harder (if you get out of line) and easier (to play safeties).

Rotation punishes you more for a foul (ball in hand).

At the end of the day, I believe that if you are a good 14.1 player you can transition to rotation more easily than the other way around.

Edited to add: With 9-ball and 10-ball you only have 9 and 10 balls spread out on the table giving you more options for your shots. In 14.1 you have 15 balls mostly bunched up at the foot of the table limiting your options. This goes back to the "you have to be more precise with your position play" point.
Click to expand...
 
ugotactionTX said:
for completely different reasons.

However, I do take exception to what I highlighted below. In my experience. against a good player, laying a good safe in 14.1 is exponentially more difficult that in 9 ball. Keeping them from a shot on a single ball it nowhere close to keeping them from 14. Not to mention replying to the safe is just as difficult if not more so. IMO
Click to expand...

I guess I should have said "personally I find safeties in rotation more difficult".

Safeties in 14.1 can be easy or hard, depending on where in the rack you are. If the stack is undisturbed, I think it's easy to skim it and get the cue ball up-table. If there are some loose balls (or only a couple balls left on the table), then yeah, it's hard to play and/or respond to safeties.
 
To add to this discussion:
I played a friend in a game of 14.1 and 9b after. I lost a close game to him in 14.1, but killed him in 9ball. What I noticed during the games was that his short position play was good, but when he had to transition to longer CB movements in 9ball, his speed was off. He definitely had more knowledge than I on working the 14.1 rack and finding the right breakshot. However, with 9b, it cut down his margin of error for position.

Consistency is king in my book. To play at a high level, as a usual, separates the players who can and cannot. I mean to say the fewer errors you make, the more likely you are to win. So I think the true question is in this discussion is in which game would your errors have the most effect. Many of the top pros in 14.1 can run 100+. In a game of 75/125/150 pts, this is killer. Many of the top pros in rotation games don't BnR as often as they should. Take Shane's games stats vs Efren recently. IMHO 14.1 is the harder game because with one error, you could be packing up you bags to go home.
 
Personally, I think it just becomes a matter of what you are used to because the style of play in each game are so different. Growing up playing rotation games, I find 14.1 tough because I never learned to play the game properly and often do silly things like mess up breakout shots, plan the runout poorly, get stuck on the rack, etc.

I think the difficulty of 14.1 lies in seeing the right patterns and having the knowledge and skill to execute breakshots and maintain focus through a long run. If I had to compare with other games, I 'd say it's tougher than 9-ball and 8-ball, easier than 15-ball rotation, and maybe on par with 10-ball?

I do find that making 14.1 a staple in practice has helped my game tremendously in many areas, including maintaing focus, breaking clusters, and various shotmaking skills(shooting over balls, short stun shots, cut shots where cue ball and object ball are very close together, etc.)
 
I think 14.1 is more difficult because you need to maintain your concentration for a longer period of time. Seems to me that once the table is opened up nice in 9-ball I can relax a little...not in 14.1
 
easy-e said:
I think 14.1 is more difficult because you need to maintain your concentration for a longer period of time. Seems to me that once the table is opened up nice in 9-ball I can relax a little...not in 14.1
Click to expand...

Agreed on the "it's a real test of your long-term concentration" thing, for sure.

Although a little on the extremist side, a way to look at this is how poolmouse refers to it in this thread:

poolmouse said:
We'll said, 14.1 is a game that you'll like the rest of your life. Always something to learn, always able to gauge progress.

It requires analytical skills, cognitive thinking, a level head and physical/mental endurance.

9 ball is for easily amused crackheads with ADHD.
8 ball is for drunk bar room mamalukes who have no clue.
1 pocket is where old people who can't shoot go to rot and die.

Welcome to the beautiful world of 14.1.
Click to expand...

-Sean <-- that should get the pool color-by-numbers short-rack rotation advocates up in arms
 
I think if you are just talking which is harder to play at an average player level likely 9 ball is harder. 9 ball requires better cue ball control plus advanced knowledge of how to get the cue ball to where you need it

In straight pool if you are a decent shot maker and can move the cue ball decent like to hit the stack and break a few out for your next shot.

But to play Great Straight pool ie mega high runs consistantly I would say that is harder. 9 ball you only have to run 9 balls or less to get out. Guy running a 100 or 200 balls at a whack is far more impressive IMO plus Straights has far more variables IMO
 
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