7 ball
- Thread starter chuckg
- Start date
That happens to many 9 ball players. You are used to running 5 or 6 balls and then you get uncomfortable sub-consciously. There is an easy/quick answer to this.
Practice playing straight pool by yourself. When you start running a rack of balls from time to time, you will be in a comfort zone of running many balls. This will carry over to 9 ball.
Practice playing straight pool by yourself. When you start running a rack of balls from time to time, you will be in a comfort zone of running many balls. This will carry over to 9 ball.
Sound wisdom. 
That is about 80% of my losses, selling out the 8 or the 9 ball. I need to either be better so I don't hang up balls or miss so late in the rack or worse so I miss much earlier or by a lot, so the ball is not in the pocket for the other player.
Every single game I see between weaker players ends up being who will make the mistake closest to the end of the rack, usually on the last two balls or so. There are like 3-4-5-6 misses per rack, eventually someone will leave the 8 or the 9 as an easy shot for the other and they start over the next rack. The first half of the rack for anyone under a B level or 450 Fargo is basically just moving around to clear the balls off for the last couple of shots. They may as well just play 3 ball. I have gotten a few people mad at me for pointing this out to them "it does not really matter what you do in the beginning since neither of you will finish the game for a while so just do whatever till the last few balls", and they get mad at me for being honest.
I was just making light of how things went that day...,Today was better. We raced to 5 to end the day,my buddy breaks and does not get out,I do . The next 4 games I broke and ran 3 and made the 9 on the break to close it out . It felt good to finish strong .
Chuckg
Chuckg
Playing at this level? They need to study. Shit riding the 9 seems like the answer but riding the 9 effectively is the hustlers answer. That only comes with practice practice practice.
3 ball for quarters is a good practice game. Playing 3 ball for $50 is a test.
I made $250 a week for a year and a half at the Seed 2 in Bellevue. 9 ball ring game for 1 and 2. I wasn't hustling. I was giving lessons. My personal rule was, never make more than 3 in a row without riding the 9. Or 5 ball. with 2 moneyballs the Billiard action was fun and profitable. I never quit the day job. 
in a 5 handed ring game $50 a night average made for $13 @ to the students. Well it was lessons. They then took what I taught them to Tacoma on the hilltop and played Lim for $50 a game. One of my students took me and sponsored me to play him. He had already been scored on for decent money by a couple of Players. So he was cautious. A Laotian or Vietnamese or Cambodian environment. He wouldn't get up off of $10 nine ball. He even called in a hired gun. The shooter walked up and offered the 8 ball for $20. I just smiled and replied, "I came to play him. When he quits, I leave." He quit at $100. My sponsor/stake horse wouldn't even take his half.
in a 5 handed ring game $50 a night average made for $13 @ to the students. Well it was lessons. They then took what I taught them to Tacoma on the hilltop and played Lim for $50 a game. One of my students took me and sponsored me to play him. He had already been scored on for decent money by a couple of Players. So he was cautious. A Laotian or Vietnamese or Cambodian environment. He wouldn't get up off of $10 nine ball. He even called in a hired gun. The shooter walked up and offered the 8 ball for $20. I just smiled and replied, "I came to play him. When he quits, I leave." He quit at $100. My sponsor/stake horse wouldn't even take his half.
The sweet part is, the table was like a mine field. Pock marked and grundgy. No telling where the ball might go at the end of the roll or any slow roll. Pluss he had the antique cash register that rang a bell when he opened it to get the quarter for the rack, with his best timing/shark skills.I made $250 a week for a year and a half at the Seed 2 in Bellevue. 9 ball ring game for 1 and 2. I wasn't hustling. I was giving lessons. My personal rule was, never make more than 3 in a row without riding the 9. Or 5 ball. with 2 moneyballs the Billiard action was fun and profitable. I never quit the day job.
I don't mean actually play 3 ball as in the game, but playing only with 3 balls on the table since that is the number of balls that they can effectively run out to win. The first half or more of the rack means nothing to the game past wasting time till someone ends up with an easy shot on the last few balls at the end, 20 minutes later LOL. I have seen a finals league match, where in two sets the players were averaging about 30 minutes a game of 8 ball. Might as well not waste all that time and just toss out two stripes, two solids and the 8 on the table and have them go at it without wasting the time on missing 10 times each before that point. Even at the better but not great levels that I am in, the game tends to be won at the last few balls. I just played a 9 ball tournament this week where I was playing 4-2 races, and both of my losses where on the 8 or 9 ball, my opponents made maybe 4 shots in two games they won, but I lost two sets because those shots were super easy and on the 8 or the 9 ball.
Of-course it's a joke since no one is going to do that, but effectively that is the game for a D or a C player, a bunch of misses, then someone sells out an easy shot on the game winner or one or two balls before the game winner, so really nothing much matters in the first half of the game till a player is a B- or higher. It's like when a doctor gives you a bunch of crap to take when you have a cold, none of it really does anything for you aside from making you feel a bit better till the thing ends on its own, but you feel like you are doing something even though none of it affect the final outcome.
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In a team tournament I played Rafael Martinez a half hour game of 8 ball on a 7 foot Valley. The time is not always an indication of skills or lack thereof.
In a 9 ball game involving weak but equal players, it makes more sense to ride the money early on. Especially if your high run in the game is 6 balls.
I once gave a stalling stake horse the 6 for $10. He opened with 6 run outs. Boy was I steamed but I did get it back after about an hour. Mad mostly because I had to stop drinking the beer.
At conclusion his player told him, "I told you he was a Player." Treatment of the game as recreation is my formula for having fun with it now.
In a team tournament I played Rafael Martinez a half hour game of 8 ball on a 7 foot Valley. The time is not always an indication of skills or lack thereof.
In a 9 ball game involving weak but equal players, it makes more sense to ride the money early on. Especially if your high run in the game is 6 balls.
I once gave a stalling stake horse the 6 for $10. He opened with 6 run outs. Boy was I steamed but I did get it back after about an hour. Mad mostly because I had to stop drinking the beer.
Treatment of the game as recreation is my formula for having fun with it now.
No, time to finish a game is not always an indication of skill, but if that time is spent shooting each ball 4 times before it goes in and having position only by luck, then it is LOL
A skilled player can leave the big fish thinking that he's incredibly lucky. Funny how an apparent miss is sometimes just playing to reposition the soldiers, leaving no way out for the opponent but gaining mechanical advantage. You know like Jui Jitsu.
dquarasr
Registered
The problem for most C and D players, myself included, is that they (we) have the belief that every new rack, every turn at the table is an opportunity to run out, in spite of a history of not being able to go beyond 5 ball runs in 100 tries.
Like Brian at FX Billiards says in one of his training videos, as a beginner or intermediate beginner, running out 3 balls is hard. Practice 3 ball runouts. When you can do 10 in a row, go to 4. It’s harder still. He says, and I agree, once you get to consistently running 6, improving to 7, 8, and 9 is a shorter trip.
Most of my runs fail beyond 4 balls because the further into a rack, the more off line the cue ball gets, resulting in failed hero shots to maintain the run.
The key is to have realistic expectations and play safe probably well before the ego says you should.
I think it's the opposite, going through the first part of learning to mid level play is pretty quick, given someone has learned good mechanics. It's the tip of the pyramid that takes the most time to reach. There are many players that hit say an APA 5 or 6 and then stop there, because they don't have the consistency and experience in getting through the rack properly. To max out APA or another league and to go over that, that is the part that takes years of experience. I know several players that started a year or less ago and are close to running out racks, they have most of the skills in shot making and moving the ball, but they don't have the knowledge yet of what the right shot is or the steadiness of experience in situations or how table conditions can affect your shots. It's the same in anything, progressing through the lower levels is easy, getting to the top takes 90% of the work and time. Look at something like a car, it's easy to get a car traveling say 100 mph, but the progression from 100 to 200 mph is much harder than the first 100, and the higher you get, the more effort it takes to get there, the limitations curve is steeper the closer to the limit you get for anything. That's why there are so many average athlestes and equipment and so few top ones that use the best equipment. You can buy say a $1,000 bike that is very good, but the levels that you would see on an Olympic track or Tour de France are many times more to get even an extra 20/10/5 % better, you spend 10-20-30 times the cost and effort to get to the top of the pile.
Almost everyone I see that is not able to run out a rack even in many tries, is stuck there due to mechanics or some mental nervousness thing that just blocks them from executing. Those that can run out a rack every so often or most of a rack, that can't beat the better players in the room, are at that level due to lack of experience in situations they end up in and picking the wrong shot to play. I have been stuck playing someone just ready to go rack for them, and they pick some shot that is less than ideal and end up giving me the win because of their mistake in planning the rack. My thinking goes from "this is an easy layout they should win" to "hmm, wonder why they played that ball instead of this one, I guess I have a chance since they just lowered their run out chances by half".
Of course, this is general statements, but ones that I have found to be true after watching and teaching all sorts of players. Going by APA skill levels, if someone is a 1/2/3/4, they are there as either new players or because of bad mechanics, if they are a 5/6, that is mostly due to less experience not so much shooting properly, although that may also be due to flawed mechanics where their shots break down but just less often. Another reason a player may be stuck at a lower level is due to not playing outside of a small circle, say if one only plays in APA matches a few times a week and never sees any good players, or is not interested in learning or broadening the pool world they know about. A lot of league players have no idea what the "real" rules of pool are or just how good the good players are, their gods are APA 5s, 6s and 7s, who are in turn easy wins for any decent tournament player.
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