i just watched Ronnie O. playing snooker against someone in a tournament. The thing i wondered is if the pockets on the table were extremely tight,well i paused a shot where he made the ball in the corner and they didnt seem tight at all. I know the table is 12 ft long and you have to learn to play your shape differently then on a 10 footer,but as far as i can see the pockets are bigger then a lot of 10 footers i have played on and i honestly feel like i would drill these tables. I am a good "b "player in pool and i used to have consistant runs of 30 to 40 playing on a tighter table then those and only playing one day a week. So yall think that Alex Pagulyon,one of the best out there on the pool tour isnt going to demolish these tables. I have to ask."what the hell are yall smokin", his greatest foe will be playing a 20 game set or whatever they race to,but thats all a learned habit. I am sure he has gambled long sessions playing one pocket that last for the whole day,as have plenty of others. While i watched i tried to predict what rhey would do and i can pick out their shots pretty acurately,and their fundamentals werent any better then any of the top pro pool players. I watched Ronnie make some bonehead shots,just like everyone else does,sure he has his glorious moments,but who doesnt. These snooker players are not anything special that i saw, i cant wait for Alex to get started and kick some ass. What do the snooker players have special eyes,or muscle memory that pool greats dont have... what are the dimensions of the tables over there. I might have to make a trip up to one of the rooms that have tournaments and play on these tables to see how tough they really are,does Canada have many rooms with tables like these in the UK.
Alex Pagulayan going to UK to try pro snooker
- Thread starter gordml
- Start date
Also if snooker players fundamentals are so much better then pool players,then all of our events in pool should just be a walk in the park for them,the guys who are struggling to make it could come to our biggest events and just snap them of for several thousand and fly back home and brag about how they stomped the USA pool players in time for afternoon tea. I know that Allison and Karen and Kelly all have snooker backgrounds and i am sure its helped their pool game after aiming at smaller pockets on a bigger table. The thing i have found with snooker players going to pool is they dont move the cueball very well,because its heavier and they dont have as good of control over their english because they dont use as much in snooker,so they have some adapting to do too. Come on yall its just balls on a table,and putting them into a hole,all the rest is just putting in the 10,000 hours it takes to be great at something,and doing it.
From what I could find on the internet, the pockets are 3.3125' at their most narrow points with a ball size of 2.067'. Going by these dimensions, snooker pockets are 1.6 ball widths at the smallest point.
An equivalent pool table corner pocket would have to be 3.6' at its smallest, which is actually a hair wider than the most narrow part of a standard Diamond pocket.
Of course, you have to keep in mind that the geometry of pool and snooker pockets are quite different. The rounded openings of a snooker pocket will generally reject any balls that don't get hit into the most narrow portion of the pocket, whereas pool table pockets tend to funnel shots into the pocket if hit at the correct speed. If not hit at the correct speed many pocket cuts, and Diamond tables especially, will reject balls that are hit into the widest portion of the pocket, but not the most narrow.
Despite the difficulties in comparison, I tend to think that standard snooker table pockets tend to have a similar difficulty to pool tables that are modified to be very tight, such as tables 1 and 6 at Hard Times. They are challenging, but not something that the very best pro pool players, especially Alex, have a lot of trouble with.
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new techniques? I only see a logic way to play... so until Cliff Thorburn, no one thought about shooting and leave nothing to the opponent?
The cloths and balls today are completely different to those used in Reardons era. Today the cloths are super fast and the balls are also lighter and have a lot more technology which increases the performance. This subsequently has changed the way the player cue the ball and also has led to bigger breaks with more regularity. Thus sfleinen has a very valid point because the players today do not play shots with the same amount of cue power as Reardon or indeed a Joe Davis in his era when he was knocking in centuries playing on carpets.
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I'm not convinced it was Thorburn who introduced the shot to nothing but, regardless, the point being made is that the way the game was played changed. The shot to nothing was not new but it was played more and more as the top players began to use it more often - rather than going for a high percentage pot or playing a straight safety.
Anyway, logic is easy to spot when everyone is using it. Games evolve and it might be difficult for us to appreciate that the old timers played in a way that is now obviously not optimal. How long did it take for pros to start using the soft break in 9 ball and winning tournaments with it? Obvious now under the old breaking rules (which have changed because of its success as a strategy) so why wasn't it used in the old days?
It takes at least 3 years for a snooker player to come across to pool because the games in terms of shot selection, rules and the mentality are completely different, in fact they couldn't get any further apart and you could liken it to a table tennis player coming across to lawn tennis. I know both invoke someone hitting a ball with a bat but that doesn't have any significance in reality.
Many of the players with poor cue ball control that you might be referring to would only have had very limited exposure to pool. I say this because all of the top UK pool players such as Appleton, Melling, Imran Majid, Mark Gray, and former world champion Darly Peach and also players such as Tony Drago and Mika Immonen are all from professional or amateur snooker backgrounds and were raised with snooker fundamentals and have all dominated the game in the USA and at one time or another.
Their cue ball control is alongside the best. However, their technique also makes them better potters than most players raised using pool fundamentals which has allowed them to transition between the games and dominate in such a short space of time .
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And, interestingly, Daryl Peach employed that soft break to win his pool world championship. Probably something he felt much more comfortable playing than most players with a pool background (interesting also that Corey Deuel, a soft breaker, is taking a shot at snooker). Thorburn would have had far more exposure to pool than the other snooker pros at the time (who all would played pub pool under UK rules where a shot to nothing is largely redundant because of the 2 shots/2 visits rules) so naturally he would have been more inclined to play that way.
I think it's pretty cool that players of one cue sport can learn from players of another cue sport. And they can also respect each other - Steve Davis for one is a huge fan, supporter and advocate of pool. Even Earl Strickland has said good things about snooker and the players.
I think it's pretty cool that players of one cue sport can learn from players of another cue sport. And they can also respect each other - Steve Davis for one is a huge fan, supporter and advocate of pool. Even Earl Strickland has said good things about snooker and the players.
Things are different on The Tour - new cloth, new balls, heated slate, humidity from all those bodies in the audience in a small space changing playing conditions, and, if you make it to the TV tables, the heat from the lights. :grin:
Canadians play both pool & snooker.
Snooker Island interviewer: Can you remember your greatest hustle?
Cliff Thorburn:I knew that one was coming! I wasn’t a very good hustler. I remember once in the States I was dressed up as a mechanic…
Snooker Island interviewer: Why were you dressed up as a mechanic?
Cliff Thorburn: I was trying to hide that fact that I was a pool player! So anyway I beat this fella and he said “What are you doing in town, do you work here?” and I said “Yes, I’m working at the Mobil 66 on the other side of town” and he said “No you don’t!” and I said “How do you know” and he said “Because I own the f***ing place!”
George Chenier, who went over to the UK in the late 40s to play snooker, was the first person in the history of Straight Pool to make a 150, and briefly held the world record high snooker run with a break of 144.
So Alex is not the first on the route he has chosen.
Canadians play both pool & snooker.
Snooker Island interviewer: Can you remember your greatest hustle?
Cliff Thorburn:I knew that one was coming! I wasn’t a very good hustler. I remember once in the States I was dressed up as a mechanic…
Snooker Island interviewer: Why were you dressed up as a mechanic?
Cliff Thorburn: I was trying to hide that fact that I was a pool player! So anyway I beat this fella and he said “What are you doing in town, do you work here?” and I said “Yes, I’m working at the Mobil 66 on the other side of town” and he said “No you don’t!” and I said “How do you know” and he said “Because I own the f***ing place!”
George Chenier, who went over to the UK in the late 40s to play snooker, was the first person in the history of Straight Pool to make a 150, and briefly held the world record high snooker run with a break of 144.
So Alex is not the first on the route he has chosen.
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TheThaiger
Banned
TheThaiger
Banned
Very true.
Emigrated also to FB.
AzBilliards has become a playground for trolls, it would seem sometimes. There are a few good threads, however, that keep me coming back to read, wanting to find out the latest news. I get more out of AzBilliards Home Page with the news articles than I do this forum in recent times.
TheThaiger
Banned
You are clearly unable to follow narrative or understand logical propositions, like many others around here, so I'll show some restraint and leave that line of thought where it is, but can you tell me when Higgins beat Hendry in a major final?
TheThaiger
Banned
Emigrated also to FB.
AzBilliards has become a playground for trolls, it would seem sometimes. There are a few good threads, however, that keep me coming back to read, wanting to find out the latest news. I get more out of AzBilliards Home Page with the news articles than I do this forum in recent times.
The two people who bang on and on about trolls are you and Barton. Neither can play, one doesn't play, and they have 50,000+ posts between them.
Trolls of a feather.
Troll on, Thaiger. Wonder how long you will last this time before the next banning.
TheThaiger
Banned
You think I can't play pool? You haven't been paying attention. I don't play pool by choice, but I can play. Therein lies the difference.
If I were to play pool today, I'd venture to guess I'd shoot you full of holes like Swiss cheese. You're a keyboard cowboy who jumps in and out of threads in an effort to cause hurt and/or anger, all the while posting in anonymity, much like a coward who can't run three balls in a row but likes to brag about how big and bad he is.