Do you remember what your early "high runs" were and how they increased and approximate increments of time between them?
Do you remember how your high runs progressed?
- Thread starter MiscueBlues
- Start date
I remember a 6, then an 8. A few months later a 14. And many 14 after that. Months again before a 16, and many 14s. That pesky break shot!
Eventually I lucked into a 21, then they came much faster into the 40s.
I've made 57 twice, both times in practice, and years apart.
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Eventually I lucked into a 21, then they came much faster into the 40s.
I've made 57 twice, both times in practice, and years apart.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thank you longhair! I was months on a 14 myself lol
Not that much further now, but made it into a second rack!
Not that much further now, but made it into a second rack!
i vividly remember when i finally broke 50, my average of my higher runs was only in the 20's. for a while after that i stayed in the 20s, with an occasional 30+. then gradually high runs got a little higher until i finally made those higher runs new average high runs.
try to concentrate on a good average of those higher runs, and not fixate too much on a high run number by itself.
I owe alot of it to many books and videos, plus stuff that i have learned here in the AZBilliards 14.1 Forum.
-Steve
I played straight pool for about 10 years before I ran over 50 balls and another 10 yrs before I ran over 100 balls. But I moved to differents states when I could not find a straight pool game. And within the last six months, I have had at least one or two "daily" runs of 30 to 40 balls, however only five 60 to 70 ball runs within the same period. On August 11, 2014 I had my highest run (within the last 6 mos) of 84 balls on a very tight diamond pro-table. Please don't let my results discourage you or impede your straight pool practice because everyone is different and I am probably much older than you at 62 yrs old. Good Luck and Best regards, Hal
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I started playing 25 years ago when I was around 13. By the age of 15, my HR was 42. Then by the age of 18, my HR was ~55. At 20-21 my HR was ~65 and then every two years I ran 70-something and then a 82. Also I ran my HR in a tournament match race to 75: 74-out after trailing 53-1. Then at the age of 28 or so, I played a practice match to 100 with a top Finnish player, after a couple of fouls I ran 85, got stuck in the rack and he proceeded to run 101-out. Then in 2010 at the age of 33, I ran my PB 92, which still stands. Going for the century... 
I started playing pool at the age of 14 on a Sears plywood table. Fell in love with the game from the first hit of the cue ball. I seemed to pick up the game very fast and was a level higher than all my friends, even the ones that had tables in their homes. Played until I was 18 and did not pick up a cue until I was 30 years old when I purchased my own house. Joined a league here in the area and that helped me so much having the experience of playing other players & playing for ones team members. What really helped my game and the higher runs was the fact that I started writing and reading posts right here on the 14.1 Forum. By reading and watching videos of wonderful players like ..... Ratta, Blackjack, stevekur1, sfleinen & dmgwalsh has help me to improve my game to a level that I could only dream about. So my advise to everyone here and new players is to stick with it and learn from the posts from players like I have mentioned. Also when you run a certain amount of balls (let's say 20 consistently), it will make you confident in that number. Set your goal for 10 more and so on. The main thing is the confidence has to be there.
So you didn't play for over a decade and now you're running centuries left and right? Jealous... :angry::thumbup:
Started playing 9 ft tables at 14 yrs old and had the usual single digit runs, ran a rack a few times if I got lucky. Around 15 yrs I had runs in the 20's and 30's, one or two 40 and 50, I then popped off a 70 ball run.
All the young guys were shooting for that 100 ball mark. I was blessed to be around players like Margo, Mizerak, Martin, Colavita, Hopkins, Sailor Bill Barge and many others on a daily basis.
It kind of set a standard and the bar for 100 ball runs. Watching Pete run balls on his tight table was a thing of beauty. Those guys helped me a lot.
On my 16th birthday I ran a 131. It wasn't pretty, a combo or two, a couple banks, a crazy back cut break shot and kept going.
The older guys clapped for me when it ended, it felt great having champs clapping for you. Funny thing is, the older guys were about 30 yrs old..haha
At 90 balls I thought my head was going to explode. When I reached 100 it was almost instant relief.
Doing my homework at the pool hall, always in constant trouble with my mother because I wanted to play straight pool. She was always mad at my cousin who was 17 and had a car; he would take me around with him. If I was at the baseball field she never bothered me.
All the young guys were shooting for that 100 ball mark. I was blessed to be around players like Margo, Mizerak, Martin, Colavita, Hopkins, Sailor Bill Barge and many others on a daily basis.
It kind of set a standard and the bar for 100 ball runs. Watching Pete run balls on his tight table was a thing of beauty. Those guys helped me a lot.
On my 16th birthday I ran a 131. It wasn't pretty, a combo or two, a couple banks, a crazy back cut break shot and kept going.
The older guys clapped for me when it ended, it felt great having champs clapping for you. Funny thing is, the older guys were about 30 yrs old..haha
At 90 balls I thought my head was going to explode. When I reached 100 it was almost instant relief.
Doing my homework at the pool hall, always in constant trouble with my mother because I wanted to play straight pool. She was always mad at my cousin who was 17 and had a car; he would take me around with him. If I was at the baseball field she never bothered me.
played for 2 years in high school, around 1965-67, maybe a couple times a week, high run was 29. then went away to school and got busy with a wife and a career and forgot all about it.
40 years later [!] i woke up one day and said to mysefl "pool. what ever happened to pool? i used to Like to play pool". i know guys say all the time "oh, i haven't played in blah, blah" but i Really didn't play for over 40 years. so i went out and bought a stick and started playing again. that was 5.5 years ago, summer of 2009. i played Terribly!
fortunately, one of the first things i stumbled across in trying to learn more was a video of Blackjack commenting a run by Thorsten. i was stunned by all that was going on, and absorbed everything i could and scoured the net for more videos and watched them incessantly. but my fundamentals sucked So bad, i couldn't execute anything anyway.
then 2 years ago, Steve Matthieu (sparkle84 here) started posting on AZ, and eventually suggested we meet up. he tore apart what i *thought* i knew pretty quickly, and began teaching me how to open up the balls earlier, get on problems Right Now, not 4 balls later, and a bunch of position advice. i eventually croaked out a 42, but it wasn't pretty, and wasn't reliable, because my stroke was still a poke. for the next 18 months, i hardly broke 24, and often had whole nights of running single digits.
over the past 2 years, though, i slowly worked on the fundamentals, and this year after reading Mark Wilson's Play Great Pool, i realized some things that were really broken and set out to fix them. i also did that drill that Tor Lowry talks about in his video, where you shoot 2000 balls (no joke, it takes a Long time, over a week) straight into the pocket, forget cue ball and object ball, just stroke the ball straight in. after that, though, by doing some video of my stance, etc, i realized the conventional stance in Mark's book just didn't work for me, and changed to a much more open, almost snooker stance, which straightened my stroke considerably.
at that point, last October, my game jumped suddenly and i was running a string of 28's, but still conking out on putting racks together. then after some advice from Dan White here, i worked Much harder than i ever had before on position accuracy, and suddenly my game jumped another couple of notches, and in November i ran a 52.
since then, it's been one step backwards, 1.5 steps forward, and then when Steve M was here again a little while ago, he showed me how much focus i Didn't have, which was an eye opener. but things are gelling. i'm finally at the stage he thought i'd reach 2 years ago, where i'm starting to run 30's pretty often (had another 35 tonight, and in only 14 minutes, much faster than previous), and the occasional 40.
[here's tonight's run: http://youtu.be/7ime4AA2KlE]
so my game is still getting steadily better, in terms of fundamentals and knowledge and patterns, and Especially my position accuracy, and i think in a few years there's an outside chance that i could become the oldest guy ever to run 100 for the first time; i'm now 66 and i'm in great shape: i look more like someone in their late 40's with prematurely white hair.
but i'm not hung up on that number, and i'm pretty happy right now with how i've progressed in the past 6 months, and not pushing it, just taking my time and having fun and trying to do it right. i'll be pretty happy if i'm a geezer who can crank out the occasional 60-something and scare the young folks!
40 years later [!] i woke up one day and said to mysefl "pool. what ever happened to pool? i used to Like to play pool". i know guys say all the time "oh, i haven't played in blah, blah" but i Really didn't play for over 40 years. so i went out and bought a stick and started playing again. that was 5.5 years ago, summer of 2009. i played Terribly!
fortunately, one of the first things i stumbled across in trying to learn more was a video of Blackjack commenting a run by Thorsten. i was stunned by all that was going on, and absorbed everything i could and scoured the net for more videos and watched them incessantly. but my fundamentals sucked So bad, i couldn't execute anything anyway.
then 2 years ago, Steve Matthieu (sparkle84 here) started posting on AZ, and eventually suggested we meet up. he tore apart what i *thought* i knew pretty quickly, and began teaching me how to open up the balls earlier, get on problems Right Now, not 4 balls later, and a bunch of position advice. i eventually croaked out a 42, but it wasn't pretty, and wasn't reliable, because my stroke was still a poke. for the next 18 months, i hardly broke 24, and often had whole nights of running single digits.
over the past 2 years, though, i slowly worked on the fundamentals, and this year after reading Mark Wilson's Play Great Pool, i realized some things that were really broken and set out to fix them. i also did that drill that Tor Lowry talks about in his video, where you shoot 2000 balls (no joke, it takes a Long time, over a week) straight into the pocket, forget cue ball and object ball, just stroke the ball straight in. after that, though, by doing some video of my stance, etc, i realized the conventional stance in Mark's book just didn't work for me, and changed to a much more open, almost snooker stance, which straightened my stroke considerably.
at that point, last October, my game jumped suddenly and i was running a string of 28's, but still conking out on putting racks together. then after some advice from Dan White here, i worked Much harder than i ever had before on position accuracy, and suddenly my game jumped another couple of notches, and in November i ran a 52.
since then, it's been one step backwards, 1.5 steps forward, and then when Steve M was here again a little while ago, he showed me how much focus i Didn't have, which was an eye opener. but things are gelling. i'm finally at the stage he thought i'd reach 2 years ago, where i'm starting to run 30's pretty often (had another 35 tonight, and in only 14 minutes, much faster than previous), and the occasional 40.
[here's tonight's run: http://youtu.be/7ime4AA2KlE]
so my game is still getting steadily better, in terms of fundamentals and knowledge and patterns, and Especially my position accuracy, and i think in a few years there's an outside chance that i could become the oldest guy ever to run 100 for the first time; i'm now 66 and i'm in great shape: i look more like someone in their late 40's with prematurely white hair.
but i'm not hung up on that number, and i'm pretty happy right now with how i've progressed in the past 6 months, and not pushing it, just taking my time and having fun and trying to do it right. i'll be pretty happy if i'm a geezer who can crank out the occasional 60-something and scare the young folks!
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I remember each one was higher then the one before it.