Darren Appleton 183

Great Job Dennis !


I finally got a chance to watch this great run in being the highest ever recorded in competition.

Darren played real well, his patterns were not traditional by any means. But he did what he had to do. I noticed several times that he had gotten himself out of line, and used his tremendous abilities to pull it together and make it work...

quite a few times i ws trying to follow his paterns and i thought to myself why is he doing that, but when he got to the end of that rack it all made sense. He did a great job of Breakshot recognition and creation on a few occasions. And the path he mostly chose is that of the path of least resistance. entered most of his patterns along the line rather crossing them.

There is something here that we all should try, and i myself am very guilty of it....Patterns do not have to be textbook for them to work, i mean yes there are some rules of thumb that we all have to follow to get from point A to B to C. But sometimes its good to dismiss all of that and make it work !


Great Work again, and congrats to Darren for setting the new High and for taking down the event !!!


Tap, Tap, Tap !
-Steve
 
Great Job Dennis !


I finally got a chance to watch this great run in being the highest ever recorded in competition.

Darren played real well, his patterns were not traditional by any means. But he did what he had to do. I noticed several times that he had gotten himself out of line, and used his tremendous abilities to pull it together and make it work...

quite a few times i ws trying to follow his paterns and i thought to myself why is he doing that, but when he got to the end of that rack it all made sense. He did a great job of Breakshot recognition and creation on a few occasions. And the path he mostly chose is that of the path of least resistance. entered most of his patterns along the line rather crossing them.

There is something here that we all should try, and i myself am very guilty of it....Patterns do not have to be textbook for them to work, i mean yes there are some rules of thumb that we all have to follow to get from point A to B to C. But sometimes its good to dismiss all of that and make it work !


Great Work again, and congrats to Darren for setting the new High and for taking down the event !!!


Tap, Tap, Tap !
-Steve


Yes, great job and thanks for posting it, Dennis.

Actually though, I thought his patterns were pretty traditional with the exception of maybe leaving a ball on the rail too long several times. I think the only time I did a double-take was his last rack after the break when I think he took the wrong ball first -- if he shoots the ball on the rail first I think he has a secondary break that would have made that rack easier and might have eventually led to continuing the run. In this vein, the other issue I had in this rack was when he has a chance to come off the side rail and, I believe he should have tried to bump those two ball near the bottom of the triangle. That might have helped out too. Udder than that I thought it was a tremendous run.

Lou Figueroa
duh
 
Lou,

you are right on many accounts, but his style of patterns was alot different that wahat i have seen. i guess thats the problem of always watching the same players all the time.

-Steve
 
Lou,

you are right on many accounts, but his style of patterns was alot different that wahat i have seen. i guess thats the problem of always watching the same players all the time.

-Steve


I don't know. I think what I saw was that the stack was not opening up well for him and so he was almost forced to play certain patterns. With that taken into account, I'm not sure how much more he could have riffed.

It's a lot different when the the balls have been greased and the cloth is slick and the conditions are perfect and the balls pop wide open on every break shot. Then I think there is the opportunity to see a player's idiosyncrasies more clearly.

Lou Figueroa
 
Are you OK, Dennis? I've mentioned several times that I appreciate your effort to bring these videos to us, so you shouldn't doubt that...but your comment seems to indicate you are either feeling unappreciated, taken for granted, or just in a bad mood. Let's hoep for "bad mood" as bad moods pass...
 
I don't know. I think what I saw was that the stack was not opening up well for him and so he was almost forced to play certain patterns. With that taken into account, I'm not sure how much more he could have riffed.

It's a lot different when the the balls have been greased and the cloth is slick and the conditions are perfect and the balls pop wide open on every break shot. Then I think there is the opportunity to see a player's idiosyncrasies more clearly.

Lou Figueroa

Lou: I have not watched the whole thing yet. In some of the racks I have watched it seems like with 5 or 6 balls left he still has a lot of work to do.

His break shots sometimes do not have much of an angle and this appears to be by choice. He breaks a few out and keeps control of his cue ball.

Excellent cue ball control and shot making.


By the way, all of the balls at the Challenge (cue balls excluded) were "brillianized" and it's tough to get them any greasier than that.

Are you OK, Dennis? I've mentioned several times that I appreciate your effort to bring these videos to us, so you shouldn't doubt that...but your comment seems to indicate you are either feeling unappreciated, taken for granted, or just in a bad mood. Let's hope for "bad mood" as bad moods pass...

Sorry to sound like such a baby.

I just kept uploading these and I would notice 0 replies and I figured maybe we were all getting spoiled or maybe there was a sensory overload thing going on.

5 years ago there was nothing and now there is so much. It's a good thing. :grin-square:
 
Last edited:
finally got a chance to watch this...

what i found most interesting was his use of draw to break clusters. John Schmidt does this as well, but Darren seems to actually Prefer it to going into the balls, and to use it with quite large clusters. i had to watch about 3 racks before i understood it was a fundamental approach of his, and then his patterns made complete sense. and once they did, they became, i thought, quite conventional 14.1 patterns, just with this funny wrinkle. gives an interesting way to tackle things that i'd never considered before, and i don't recall seeing the older guys do, or at least, certainly not so often.

also very surprising how late he would often wait to manufacture a break ball. there were a few times i thought he'd boxed himself in, but the way he moves the CB around, i guess he wasn't worried! there was one rack where he still didn't have a break shot with 3 balls left, and 2 of them almost frozen; that was like wizardry.

many thanks for putting this up -- i plan to watch it many times, a lot to learn here.
 
Lou: I have not watched the whole thing yet. In some of the racks I have watched it seems like with 5 or 6 balls left he still has a lot of work to do.

His break shots sometimes do not have much of an angle and this appears to be by choice. He breaks a few out and keeps control of his cue ball.

Excellent cue ball control and shot making.


By the way, all of the balls at the Challenge (cue balls excluded) were "brillianized" and it's tough to get them any greasier than that.



Sorry to sound like such a baby.

I just kept uploading these and I would notice 0 replies and I figured maybe we were all getting spoiled or maybe there was a sensory overload thing going on.

5 years ago there was nothing and now there is so much. It's a good thing. :grin-square:


Well, my take is that he got the shallow angle break shots by mistake -- I think he was trying for steeper angles but just came up short.

One other thing I thought was interesting was that he seemed to leave a ball on the rail a few times late into the rack on purpose, like a couple of diamonds from the bottom corner pocket and then left himself a good angle to come off it for position. I tried it yesterday and with a little spin it's actually not a bad way to get back to the center of the table. Since most of us are trained to get the balls off the rails early, I don't think we realize the opportunity the shot presents.

Lou Figueroa
 
Back
Top