After 60 Years this game still tuff

Johnnyt

Burn all jump cues
Silver Member
After 60 years of playing pool It’s still a never ending battle to play an “A” game in 10-ball rotation all the time for me. With the tighter pocket tables you see now (I have 4 ½”), the bouncy rails, fast cloth, and deep shelves, it makes it an up hill battle to improve for me.

With the old style table’s position didn’t need to be pinpoint on most shots. The pockets were larger and more forgiving (could be cheated a lot). The slower cloth made it easier for speed control (for me) on both long and short position. About 6 months ago I took my whole game apart and threw most of it away after watching many streams of the top players. I noticed that they hardly ever juiced the QB. A good percentage of the time if they were left with a long shot or left themselves a shot they had to juice that they either go for a two-way bank, cinch the shot and take another tough leave, or just play safe.

In the last six months with the tighter pockets and unforgiving pockets, fast cloth and rails I went down to “C+” and back to “-A”. This is playing at least 4 hours a day everyday. I use to use a lot of sidespin to throw balls in the pockets. Now I use very center ball and very little side and shoot pocket speed on most shots. It took me forever to make balls as well as I use to this way. I went back and forth from day to day. One day I was making balls but my position sucked and the next day I was getting good position but missing too many balls. This is a hard, hard game…but I love it. Johnnyt
 
If it took you 60 years to get to "B" level, I'm not sure you have another 60 years left, to get to "pro" :p


Eric
 
Pool player famous quote "How did I just miss that shot". If we know, we would be pros, OH wait, they miss them too, just not as often.
 
Stick with it kid, you've got potential! :grin:

Imagine all those guys with talent would be if they had your work ethic. I heard one the other day after a little weekend tournament say after playing three consecutive days that he had been hitting too many balls and it was hurting h is game. That night he said he didn't cash because he was out of stroke.
All I know is I'm writing a book about a pool player and haven't missed a ball in about 3 months.
 
I learned how to play on Brunswick Anniversary tables with slow cloth,clay balls and unknown to me at the time very forgiving pockets. So at about 16 years old(early 60's) I could run 30 or 40 balls here and there and had a high run of 101. Then a room opened with Gold Crown tables,plastic balls and much less forgiving pockets. What a shock when I struggled to run a rack on that equipment.So I had to relearn a lot of shots to adjust to this new to me type of equipment.
 
After 60 years of playing

I've been playing 47, the hardest thing for me is relearning to bank and kick on diamonds after playing on Gold Crowns all that time.
The biggest thing I see is that if you mishit a ball a tiny bit off the rail on a diamond it will show up 5 fold as opposed to a Brunswick with the same cloth.
On the other side of the coin , now that I am getting used to the Diamonds you can control the banks and angles a lot better , especially if you want to hold up a bank. The kicking I am still struggling with I went from a pro level kicker to a B level. Especially on kicks I shorten up.
I used Gradys kicking system for many years and was very confident, I can't get the reverse kicks to work on the diamonds though.
 
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