$25 for a piece of chalk is ridiculous!

[Scott Lee]

Kim...Psssst...(whispered) I heard it's made of "fairy dust"! :grin: Better watch out for vampires...I hear they will EAT Kamui chalk (at least if it's made of fairies)! LOL

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge

Does anyone know what it is actually made of??????

Kim

 

[BrokeHustler]

Does efren need or use Kamui Chalk? Enough Said.,...

 

[XxMerlinxX]

Does anyone know what it is actually made of??????

Kim

Gypsy tears.

 

[Matt]

Having tried Kamui chalk, I can also agree that it does live up to the claims of staying on the cue longer and producing less dust, but did not notice anything out of the ordinary as far as the way it played.

Since I have never been one to carry chalk on me, I can see the appeal of not hunting around the rails for a piece of chalk between shots, but if it was that big of a deal to me, I would have bought a chalk holder a long time ago. I am also in the same boat with some of the players on here commenting that chalking up is part of their pre-shot routine. It would be a change at first, but I'm certain I could get used to it.

The problem, as I see it, is that you may not always have a piece of Kamui chalk on hand. If you've eliminated chalking from your pre-shot routine and all you have to work with is the piece of Masters chalk sitting on the rail, you'll have to break the new routine and remind yourself to chalk or suffer the consequences.

I do appreciate Kamui's effort to advance the science of pool and provide a superior product, but I don't see pool halls shelling out $25 apiece for chalk anytime soon, so I guess I'll have to wait until the price comes down or the competition catches up to add it to my game.

 

[cheapcues.com]

The overwhelming theme I get from reading this and many other threads on Kamui chalk is that most people who have tried it say it is better than any other chalk, and those who haven't say it can't be any better than other chalk. So who should you believe- the people who have tried it, or the people who haven't? I picked up 5 pieces in Vegas and they were gone in 2 days. Every good player who walked through the doors of my shop walked out with a piece. Say what you will about the $25 price tag- it's a small price to pay for 6 months to a year's worth of something that will improve your game, especially if you play for money like the players I've mentioned. The next few months, perhaps years are going to be very good to the early adopters.

-Mike

 

[Derek]

The overwhelming theme I get from reading this and many other threads on Kamui chalk is that most people who have tried it say it is better than any other chalk, and those who haven't say it can't be any better than other chalk. So who should you believe- the people who have tried it, or the people who haven't? I picked up 5 pieces in Vegas and they were gone in 2 days. Every good player who walked through the doors of my shop walked out with a piece. Say what you will about the $25 price tag- it's a small price to pay for 6 months to a year's worth of something that will improve your game, especially if you play for money like the players I've mentioned. The next few months, perhaps years are going to be very good to the early adopters.

-Mike

As a dealer, it is definitely in your best interest to sell $25 cubes of chalk versus cheap Masters chalk. Chalk is not going to make a player. The only thing it's going to do is prevent you from having to chalk every shot if saving that motion somehow benefits your game. If you chalk every shot -- properly chalk -- a miscued shot is not going to be because of the chalk.

I can easily make a dollar or two's worth of Masters last me a whole year, so that's a sawbuck saved without having to hoard a $25 piece of chalk and fret about remembering to store it back in my case.

Of course you sold out of them. Hype and speculation does that and it works for good and poor products. My guess is the hype doesn't last too long as people will get burned out on paying $25 for a cube when there are very reasonable 50 cent alternatives.

Kamui is definitely a dealer's best friend right now with $25 chalk and tips.

 

[cheapcues.com]

As a dealer, it is definitely in your best interest to sell $25 cubes of chalk versus cheap Masters chalk. Chalk is not going to make a player. The only thing it's going to do is prevent you from having to chalk every shot if saving that motion somehow benefits your game. If you chalk every shot -- properly chalk -- a miscued shot is not going to be because of the chalk.

I can easily make a dollar or two's worth of Masters last me a whole year, so that's a sawbuck saved without having to hoard a $25 piece of chalk and fret about remembering to store it back in my case.

Of course you sold out of them. Hype and speculation does that and it works for good and poor products. My guess is the hype doesn't last too long as people will get burned out on paying $25 for a cube when there are very reasonable 50 cent alternatives.

Kamui is definitely a dealer's best friend right now with $25 chalk and tips.

Thank you for illustrating my point! Clearly you haven't tried it.
I didn't make a dime on the chalk- sold it for what I paid for it. The customers I mentioned are much better players than I am, and they are the ones telling me how good the chalk is, not the other way around.

 

[Scott Lee]

cheapcues.com...I mentioned that I tried it, and liked it, but didn't think that it was ENOUGH better to be worth 100x the price of Master.

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com

The overwhelming theme I get from reading this and many other threads on Kamui chalk is that most people who have tried it say it is better than any other chalk, and those who haven't say it can't be any better than other chalk. So who should you believe- the people who have tried it, or the people who haven't? I picked up 5 pieces in Vegas and they were gone in 2 days. Every good player who walked through the doors of my shop walked out with a piece. Say what you will about the $25 price tag- it's a small price to pay for 6 months to a year's worth of something that will improve your game, especially if you play for money like the players I've mentioned. The next few months, perhaps years are going to be very good to the early adopters.

-Mike

 

[BrokeHustler]

kamui chalk is made of Efren's toe jam that is why it is so expensive and there is a limited quantity

 

[Rocket354]

cheapcues.com...I mentioned that I tried it, and liked it, but didn't think that it was ENOUGH better to be worth 100x the price of Master.

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com

So you thought it was better? If so, in what ways?

 

[Derek]

Thank you for illustrating my point! Clearly you haven't tried it.
I didn't make a dime on the chalk- sold it for what I paid for it. The customers I mentioned are much better players than I am, and they are the ones telling me how good the chalk is, not the other way around.

You are correct, I have not tried it nor am I against giving it a try. But I am against paying $25 for product that really doesn't need to be improved upon. Sometimes change is not better.

It's not making them better players (your players) because they already are. It would be different if you stated poor players bought it and were suddenly stronger shooters. Alas, there is no such thing as magic chalk. The physics of pool are not going to mathematically evolve from a piece of chalk.

I would liken this to dimple changes on a golf ball. Most of us aren't going to be able to tell any difference, even decent players, and it's really only the strong players that may notice some slight improvement where any inkling of an advantage is a huge gain for them. Lord knows, that the golf industry tries to squeeze every penny out of you that they can with all of their "improvements" and gadgets.

 

[Roadie]

Good report and thanks for taking the time to post the info. Regardless of what it does I don't care if one stroke lasted a life time I will not pay $25 for a piece of chalk. It is exactly the title ridiculous.

This is not true. Regardless of what your opinion is now it has been proven in countless studies that proof of performance and peer pressure result in changing minds no matter the initial negative reaction.

In other words two things have to be present, proof that it works and users who swear by it. "Proof" these days is mostly marketing fluff rather than cold facts. Testimonials are powerful. But adoption is the most powerful convincer. When "everyone" is using it then it becomes a must-have item so that one is not missing out and at a disadvantage.

In the case of chalk one begins to second guess themselves. Did I miscue because of my stroke or did the chalk fail me? Does Henry have an advantage with with his chalk that I don't have? Overtly one claims not to care about these things and be perfectly happy with cheap chalk but subconsciously one always harbors questions.

If you were convinced that the chalk was truly a superbly performing piece of equipment that brought advantages to your game then the mental leap to justifying it's purchase wouldn't be very far behind. It is one thing to state one's refusal to act but studies show that even the most steadfast person can be convinced to switch sides with the right mixture of influence. Not the same thing for everyone but nearly everyone has a tipping point whether they believe they do or not.

(I have a piece on the way to me and I am already anxious about losing it)

 

[walrus_3d]

Lord knows, that the golf industry tries to squeeze every penny out of you that they can with all of their "improvements" and gadgets.

Not to derail the thread or anything, but one thing I do like about the professional golf tour is that they limit the amount of gadgetry you're allowed to use to play an "official" round of golf. Most of the pool leagues do the same thing, by limiting the amount of time you're allowed to use between shots, limiting the type of shots or cues you can use ("legal" jump shots and jump cues being a big one). I don't see chalk being one of the things they're going to limit in the future, since the main benefit of the ridiculous chalk is that it chalks your cue evenly. Eh, I say if you can hold onto the cube long enough to get your money's worth out of it, more power to you. I can't even keep a cue claw in my case for more than two months.

 

[brophog]

The overwhelming theme I get from reading this and many other threads on Kamui chalk is that most people who have tried it say it is better than any other chalk, and those who haven't say it can't be any better than other chalk.

But it isn't that simple. Everything is relative to expectations. If you follow sports, you've no doubt seen coaches who finish with the same record, but one gets fired and the other gets a raise.

One chalk being 'better' is equivalent to both of these coaches finishing with the same number of wins. The absolute is not really relevant, only the relative, and only relative to expectations.

Business is about expectations, rather than sheer quality. If a $5 item seems to exceed expectations, it can be rather mundane and still outsell a $500 item that is of far better quality, but has nearly unattainable expectations.

Marketers understand expectations, but many do not understand the backlash of raising expectations to levels that exceed their price point. Go to any review site, and the negative reviews will be of two kinds: the ones where the product simply doesn't work at all, and the ones where the product doesn't work relative to expectations. This second one is far more common of the two.

Overly positive expectations are more harmful at times than the negative ones. In the case above with coaches, it is high expectations that get them fired. Many coaches have had very mediocre, but long careers because they kept expectations low, while many coaches have also had very short careers because expectations were too high.

I bring up coaching in this analogy because coaching is an indirect activity, as they don't actually play the game. What tends to happen, then, is they get direct blame or credit for this indirectness. For example, a team may have an easier than normal schedule and rack up a long string of wins. The coach gets credit for these wins, even though he may not have done anything differently to cause them. However, the expectation that he had direct results gets passed on, and his team's future performance gets graded against these new expectations.

That's exactly what happens with something like chalk, which is similiar in that it has an indirect intermediary between the action and the result. As a coach may get the dreaded 'genius' label that he can never really reconcile, $25 chalk gets an expectation level that it can never attain.

 

[Roadie]

You are correct, I have not tried it nor am I against giving it a try. But I am against paying $25 for product that really doesn't need to be improved upon. Sometimes change is not better.

How do you know that chalk did not need to be improved upon? As we know a lot of chalk dust ends up on the table, the clothes, your hands, inside the case, etc...

Miscues happen because of stroke errors and/or a lack of chalk. Chalking every shot is a forced habit precisely because status quo chalk does not stick to the tip as well as we would like it to. Why should chalk be made and shipped in boxes of 144 pieces? How much chalk is actually thrown in the garbage when a cube is worn to a certain point? What type of energy does all this waste represent?

One can run the numbers and figure out the benefit of improvement as an economist would. Assign a monetary figure to a miscue. Using the premise that a miscue incurs an average of $1 of revenue loss to the player on average then one can simply count the number of miscues occuring daily vs. the reduction of such and figure the savings. Extrapolate that to include the expected earnings due to more success and you can easily see that a improvement which simply results in fewer miscues is worth it.

And lest you think that this is only about chalk take the same logic and apply it to stroke technique. If there were a small booklet that taught proper stroking technique but that stroking technique would 100% reduce the amount of miscues a person commits then would that investment be worth it for $25? For $100?

The fact of is that you have a choice. Cheap chalk is not going anywhere. No one is replacing it and forcing consumers to pay the highest rate. One of my cars gets off the light and through the intersection at full gas in 8 seconds. The other one is through the intersection in 2 seconds. The faster one also cost 5x what the slower one cost.

A person can play pool with the crappiest equipment or they can choose the best equipment. Neither replaces skill. Good equipment only augments skill. It is a mistake however to say that innovation should stop. Innovation should continue and the market will decide what is adopted and what is abandoned.

 

[sk8ordie]

The overwhelming theme I get from reading this and many other threads on Kamui chalk is that most people who have tried it say it is better than any other chalk, and those who haven't say it can't be any better than other chalk. So who should you believe- the people who have tried it, or the people who haven't? I picked up 5 pieces in Vegas and they were gone in 2 days. Every good player who walked through the doors of my shop walked out with a piece. Say what you will about the $25 price tag- it's a small price to pay for 6 months to a year's worth of something that will improve your game, especially if you play for money like the players I've mentioned. The next few months, perhaps years are going to be very good to the early adopters.

-Mike

I've heard many people say it crumbles and leaves blue streaks on felt and goop on the cue ball. I also read in many threads that they liked it, thought it was better than any other chalk and then 75% of the same people said they wouldn't buy it again because it wasn't that great to spend another $25 on. I never really heard anyone say it was bad or didn't work, my problem is, I don't have any problems with BD or Masters and it's at a huge fraction of the cost. I myself wanna try it but, I'm not spending $25 for something I don't need. I bet once I try it, I'll like it but, won't wanna buy it again. I'm glad you bought it and like it. BD and Masters works for me. :smile:

 

[Roadie]

Not to derail the thread or anything, but one thing I do like about the professional golf tour is that they limit the amount of gadgetry you're allowed to use to play an "official" round of golf. Most of the pool leagues do the same thing, by limiting the amount of time you're allowed to use between shots, limiting the type of shots or cues you can use ("legal" jump shots and jump cues being a big one). I don't see chalk being one of the things they're going to limit in the future, since the main benefit of the ridiculous chalk is that it chalks your cue evenly. Eh, I say if you can hold onto the cube long enough to get your money's worth out of it, more power to you. I can't even keep a cue claw in my case for more than two months.

Maybe the reason we are all afraid of losing chalk is precisely because we give no value to chalk. How many times have you had a pet piece of chalk that you cherished? I have had several pieces like that that for whatever reason I was superstitious about and would make efforts to always use only that piece. Invariably I would still lose them. But for the most part I don't value chalk as something to be attentive to as a possession.

As the saying goes though, you don't know the value of something until you don't have it. Most of us who play a lot have found ourselves in bars and other places where the pool tables either have no chalk or the chalk is horrible. If we are truly honest with ourselves then we understand at that moment how important good chalk is to our enjoyment of the game.

Magnify that to the level of Kamui chalk and suddenly the dependency relationship to what good chalk is becomes much more acute. A Kamui chalk user, which I will be soon, is certainly in danger of becoming a chalk snob and thinking that the previously great Masters level of chalk is not good enough to enjoy the game any longer.

I can certainly see a niche for premium chalk rental at pool rooms. Forgot your Kamui chalk? Rent ours for $2 a swipe, chalk applied by staff only.

 

[Roadie]

But it isn't that simple. Everything is relative to expectations. If you follow sports, you've no doubt seen coaches who finish with the same record, but one gets fired and the other gets a raise.

One chalk being 'better' is equivalent to both of these coaches finishing with the same number of wins. The absolute is not really relevant, only the relative, and only relative to expectations.

Business is about expectations, rather than sheer quality. If a $5 item seems to exceed expectations, it can be rather mundane and still outsell a $500 item that is of far better quality, but has nearly unattainable expectations.

Marketers understand expectations, but many do not understand the backlash of raising expectations to levels that exceed their price point. Go to any review site, and the negative reviews will be of two kinds: the ones where the product simply doesn't work at all, and the ones where the product doesn't work relative to expectations. This second one is far more common of the two.

Overly positive expectations are more harmful at times than the negative ones. In the case above with coaches, it is high expectations that get them fired. Many coaches have had very mediocre, but long careers because they kept expectations low, while many coaches have also had very short careers because expectations were too high.

I bring up coaching in this analogy because coaching is an indirect activity, as they don't actually play the game. What tends to happen, then, is they get direct blame or credit for this indirectness. For example, a team may have an easier than normal schedule and rack up a long string of wins. The coach gets credit for these wins, even though he may not have done anything differently to cause them. However, the expectation that he had direct results gets passed on, and his team's future performance gets graded against these new expectations.

That's exactly what happens with something like chalk, which is similiar in that it has an indirect intermediary between the action and the result. As a coach may get the dreaded 'genius' label that he can never really reconcile, $25 chalk gets an expectation level that it can never attain.

Excellent post. +1

 

[bboxgrinder]

This is not true. Regardless of what your opinion is now it has been proven in countless studies that proof of performance and peer pressure result in changing minds no matter the initial negative reaction.

In other words two things have to be present, proof that it works and users who swear by it. "Proof" these days is mostly marketing fluff rather than cold facts. Testimonials are powerful. But adoption is the most powerful convincer. When "everyone" is using it then it becomes a must-have item so that one is not missing out and at a disadvantage.

In the case of chalk one begins to second guess themselves. Did I miscue because of my stroke or did the chalk fail me? Does Henry have an advantage with with his chalk that I don't have? Overtly one claims not to care about these things and be perfectly happy with cheap chalk but subconsciously one always harbors questions.

If you were convinced that the chalk was truly a superbly performing piece of equipment that brought advantages to your game then the mental leap to justifying it's purchase wouldn't be very far behind. It is one thing to state one's refusal to act but studies show that even the most steadfast person can be convinced to switch sides with the right mixture of influence. Not the same thing for everyone but nearly everyone has a tipping point whether they believe they do or not.

(I have a piece on the way to me and I am already anxious about losing it)

You are 100% correct on the bolded text. I have also been in sales and marketing 10+ years so I am familiar with the hypes.

However I have been playing pool 28 years and that is not going to get me to pay $25 for a piece of chalk regardless who uses it. I'll drag a ball or use the so called super spin side by side anyone using that Kamui chalk with Master Chalk any day and I will bet I don't miscue one bit more then the guy using Kamui. And IF I do it is not the chalk it is my bad hit on the contact point on the cue ball.

Not saying I wouldn't try it if it was around but I would not pay $25 for a cube of chalk regardless if one swipe lasted a month. If I needed to spend that much on chalk I would quit playing and find a new sport, just not going to happen with me. That is ridiculously over priced.

 

[Roadie]

You are 100% correct on the bolded text. I have also been in sales and marketing 10+ years so I am familiar with the hypes.

However I have been playing pool 28 years and that is not going to get me to pay $25 for a piece of chalk regardless who uses it. I'll drag a ball or use the so called super spin side by side anyone using that Kamui chalk with Master Chalk any day and I will bet I don't miscue one bit more then the guy using Kamui. And IF I do it is not the chalk it is my bad hit on the contact point on the cue ball.

Not saying I wouldn't try it if it was around but I would not pay $25 for a cube of chalk regardless if one swipe lasted a month. If I needed to spend that much on chalk I would quit playing and find a new sport, just not going to happen with me. That is ridiculously over priced.

A lot of people said the same thing about Ipads and their prices in comparison to notebooks.

Now Ipads and tablet computers in general are looking to overtake notebooks in sales.

There is no doubt that many who held forth their opinions about the ridiculousness of paying more money for an Ipad than a netbook/notebook have since recanted while others have held fast to their opinions.

What is not in dispute is that the consumer now has a breadth of choice at many price points.

If one wants to spend $25 on chalk then they can and if they don't then they don't have to. If one wishes to have the once-a-month chalking feature and is willing to pay for it then they can and if they prefer the once-a-minute chore of chalking then that level is also available.

I'd be willing to bet you personally that if you were honestly convinced that the chalk was truly able to be a significant advantage to your game then you'd buy it. I think that most advanced players would come to this same conclusion. However that does not mean that they would stay with it. Some people are simply content with the status quo which is fine if it works for them.

In any event Kamui Chalk is the latest buzz and I am a sucker for certain things so I will let you all know what I think when I get it. I think it's a bit ridiculous to feel this anxious about chalk.